Last week, we gave you an introductory spiel on WordPress.  Although, let’s be honest, you have probably already heard of it!   Today, we want to give you more insight into how WordPress can be optimized for your internet marketing needs.  WordPress is a pretty versatile blogging engine, and there are a lot of ways that you can use it to your advantage!

Connect with social media outlets

Especially with the capabilities for social media widget use that we mentioned, WordPress is a great addition to your business’s family of social media that customers can connect with!  Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter can also simply be used as engines to link back to posts on your WordPress page.  Interesting post snippets and photographs can be linked back to in Facebook status updates and Tweets.  Sending Facebook or Twitter users to a contest via your WordPress page is also an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog (or whatever exactly you are using your WordPress site for)!

Improve customer relations

Simply the fact that WordPress posts can allow for comments can help improve your customer relations.  Getting customer feedback can help you to find out who to target and how in your Denver marketing campaign.  Web analytics tools can also be used to discover what customers you are reaching with your WordPress page.  In terms of improving customer relations, Facebook and Twitter can also be utilized in tandem with WordPress.  For example, you may post a call-to-action on Facebook asking for customers to send in questions about your business’s offered products or services.  A week later, after collecting and putting together answers for every question, you could post a blog article on WordPress that takes the form of a compilation of customer questions and answers.

Take advantage of WordPress visual capabilities

For example…take advantage of the fact that you can post a series of photographs on WordPress!  Whether these photographs are a trade show recap, multiple angles of a new product, or portraits of satisfied customers, WordPress allows for plenty of visual customization and creativity!

Connect with partners

Via the “blogroll” widget, you can link to blogs you love!  WordPress also allows you to visit other WordPress (and various other blogging engine) sites and post under your business identity as a commenter.  Commenting on other blogs with a directly linked identity back to your own blog is an excellent way to get more blog viewers, and hopefully more readers!

Themes in your blog posts

So, here is a good way to encourage viewers to make sure they click the little RSS icon at the bottom of the screen: give viewers something to keep them coming back.  Whether that means a special themed blog post each week (for example, “Give Aways for a Better Monday”) or another customer call-to-action, getting more readers to connect with your blog via RSS means more potential customers!

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As a Denver marketing agency we are constantly asked about growing businesses online communities. There are many companies in the same industry as us who promise so many new community members in a certain amount of time. We however don’t. We aren’t going to promise a set amount of new community members first, because we don’t want to place ourselves in a box but secondly because we don’t believe there is a direct correlation between community size and interaction or even sales. This week we will look past how many people are in an online community and talk about how to truly determine the value of a companies community.

It all stems from interaction…

There are online communities which number in the thousands which don’t interact at all with their company because they aren’t there because they love the brand. They are there because they were promised something free or a friend asked them to join, any host of reasons really. Quality of community members will be shown in a direct correlation with their interaction amount. There are multiple types of interaction:

• Encouraged: This would be when a company asks for a response from their community. Quality communities will have a response and interaction rate proportional to their community if not above expectations. Poor communities will have little to no interaction in this type.
• Reactionary: This typically comes from the community in response to a change enacted by the company, or a positive or negative encounter with a product or service. A good brand will either have constructive reactions and/or swift responses to this type of interaction. Good brands will see high praise from their loyal brand supports on a consistent basis. A brand with a low quality community will receive incessant bashing without any constructive and united response from brand supporters.
• Organic: Anytime a community member starts a conversation with the company “just because” we would consider organic. This also happens when a brand loyalist shares the company’s product or services with a friend. Organic interaction is when a brand can know they are high quality. This is what every company should be working towards.

When a company searches us out to enlist our services we don’t promise a high community count, we promise something more. As an online marketing agency we are going to make sure our clients are found online. Past that though we are going to make sure our clients are found by their target audience.

Reaching a company’s target audience breeds interaction…

Once we have begun to build a community for our clients around their target audience we can then see customers who are interested in the companies brand. A community built on a company’s target audience can quickly embrace the brand and become brand advocates. A company willing to spend some time finding the right community members instead of a quantity of community members will be set to stand longer than a community built completely on numbers. A company will know they have done that when community members express an embodiment with the brand instead of referring to the brand as a separate audience. Essentially saying “I am *insert brand here*.”

Increase your company’s brand visibility

Every company should want what we just spoke of. If your company could use assistance in this area but you still aren’t sold we have an e-book for you. Take some time to read our Inbound Marketing Success Stories and you’ll be sold.

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WordPress is pretty popular in the world of Denver website development these days.  From humble beginnings as a free online blogging software, WordPress has expanded its capabilities and customization options for users.  Chances are, you have heard of WordPress (psst…we are using it right now!).  In fact, you may be utilizing it for your own business.  Today, we want to give you an overview of the history of this multi-faceted tool, and an introduction to the possibilities it can offer you!

The Basics

WordPress had its first release in 2003.  As it was in the beginning, WordPress is still open source and free of cost.  However, this program is used more and more as a content management system: in fact, it is the most widely used content management system on the internet today.

Features

Selection of themes – WordPress users can choose from a multitude of templates, or edit their own combination of HTML and CSS to customize the look, feel, and function of their WordPress site.  Virtually all facets of a WordPress site are customizable, which brings a big creativity factor to this website design tool!

Widgets - The word ‘widgets’ inspires smiles when said out loud, but is a great way to manage blog content online!  Wordpress widgets allow users to help manage and organize content such as lists of blog archives, links, blog tag listings, and more.

Tagging - Aforementioned in our spiel on Widgets, tags are a great WordPress site feature.  Tags allow users to make individual posts more accessible in WordPress and other search engines.  Tags can help WordPress users connect with other users on relatable content.

RSS support - Although seemingly a given, WordPress fully supports RSS content into feed readers from any WordPress site!

Currently…

3.3  - The most up-to-date WordPress users are operating their site from WordPress 3.3.  This version of WordPress was released several months ago, with a focus on making the program more usable for tablet operators.  Following the trend of the rest of the web, apps for mobile devices are in place to allow more WordPress usability.

Social Media Widget - To help users connect multiple social media outlets, and to help users connect better with other users, WordPress has recently released a social media widget.  Profiles from a long list of social networking sites can be embedded as part of a WordPress site.  Handy, eh?

Shared Posts Widget - Another social media widget that helps users connect posts with Facebook likes, tweets via Twitter, and the like!

P.S.

WordPress is free, easy to get started with, and easy to use!  With an array of pre-built templates, even those with minimal web knowledge can customize their site.  A built in media library is also helpful for users without an ftp storage bin.  Let’s not forget our key underlying consumer insight either…blogs are fun!  People enjoy reading blogs about content of interest, and people often enjoy commenting on blogs; and hey, some people even enjoy writing them.  Stay tuned for our next post in the WordPress series, we will talk about some ideas on the best way to utilize your WordPress site to cater to your online marketing needs.

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It was bound to happen, we all knew we would eventually see the day when this Denver Marketing company wrote an article about Pinterest. Why is that? Because everyone is writing articles about Pinterest.

This year we are going to try and write a few blog posts about different trends in social media. Every year we see different social media trends. Last year we were able to see how Google+ was built by those who work online and systematically failed to catch on. We were also able to see how Spotify became a new way to socially listen to music. There are many trends each year and to kick us off we have Pinterest.

Many people are posing questions about what exactly is pinterest, does it have long term viability, why it quickly rose to success, and who should be involved in their community. This article is going to weigh in with our thoughts on each of these questions and then at the end of the year, we’ll be able to see if it was a boom (like Spotify) or a bust (like Google+).

What is Pinterest?

It operates like a virtual pinboard. This allows for users to “pin” items that they would like to come back to later. Marketed towards women, users can typically find recipes, clothing projects, jewelry projects, clothing or jewelry they would like to purchase, the list grows daily.

Is Pinterest Here to Stay?

The unique thing about Pinterest is that it is the first social media site to have this large of a woman demographic. Whether this helps them in the end is yet to be determined since it’s the first of its kind. It is growing rapidly and appears to be retaining active users better than Google+ has been able to. So if Pinterest keeps up what they are doing and women don’t grow tired of the site then we don’t see why it wouldn’t continue to grow. Especially if men and businesses begin to gravitate to the site as well.

Why is Pinterest Popular?

Simplicity. Though it requires work in the beginning as it grows the users knowledge grows. People are able to finally place the things they find online in one place and manage them the way they should be managed. They are able to take and share items they love while following and gathering items they love from other friends who are sharing. When usability and commonality meet then it spurns growth for that site, which is how Pinterest has become so popular.

Who should Utilize Pinterest?

Any company which falls under the categories we listed when describing Pinterest would work. We know of a company which has fit beautifully into Pinterest and is seeing great returns on their pins, even more so than what they were posting on Facebook and Twitter. People who are interested in good clothes, accessories, crafts, and food would love Pinterest as well. Really it’s what you make of it. In the UK Pinterest is nearly 50/50 gender wise and the males are sharing information very similar to what was being shared on Google+ when it first launched.

We can see that Pinterest is a new fad here in 2012. Will grow and make a name for itself online? That’s yet to be seen. We close with this question, do you use Pinterest?

Can Pinterest Help You?

We have several stories of Inbound Marketing success from our clients. Though there isn’t anything in there about us working with Pinterest, we can and will use it to help build your business. Download our success stories today. Once you read them, you’ll know why Chris Strom LLC is the company for you.

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In case you have missed it, we’ve been talking quite a bit about social media lately.  We have established that social media is a very important part of a strong online marketing campaign these days.  That’s right: having a presence on the web simply through owning your own domain is not enough anymore!  Social media can help connect you with customers and other businesses, it can help you convert online customers, and it can simply allow you room to be get creative.

So that’s what we want to discuss today.  We want to give you some ideas on how to spice up your Denver internet marketing plan with social media.  There’s a universe of possibilities out there for you, and we are here to help you get started!  So, let’s continue on with the brainstorming…

Host a YouTube video contest.  Let’s say, for example, that you own a chain of resorts in Vail.  To promote your resort and get an influx of customers, you could encourage current customers and fans to upload videos pertaining to “What a great day in Vail at [your resort].”  Ten winners could be featured on a YouTube channel for your resort, and one grand prize winner out of those ten could win a week-long all expense paid vacation in the mountains.  Now, don’t forget that your contest can be promoted through tangible mediums such as signs, flyers, or even billboards around Vail.  Better yet, your contest could be promoted through other social media channels: tweet it, post it on Facebook…you get the picture!

Giveaways.  Everyone can appreciate a discount, or a freebie.  Get customers to follow your Facebook posts, read your tweets, and subscribe to your blog with the occasional product or service incentive.  This also makes prospective customers more willing to give your business a try.

Let the customers take control.  Allow for customer feedback on your blog or other social media channel, and make sure you ask for it!  For example, a company that makes granola may post on Facebook asking for customer feedback on preferred ways to enjoy their tasty varieties of granola.  This could even be taken a step further and made into a contest: i.e. “Recipe for the Best Breakfast Parfait,” or “What Flavor of Granola Would You Create?”  The point is, people like to feel involved, and people like to have their opinions heard.  P.S. this is another idea that probably needs an incentive…for example, maybe the winner of the “What Flavor of Granola Would You Create?” contest gets this granola mix on the shelves in the company’s packaging for a special summer feature.

Make it a game.  For example. you could use your company’s website to implement a scavenger hunt of some sort (psst…don’t forget about those incentive prizes!).  The scavenger hunt (i.e.” find the white rabbit and get a free [your product here]“) could be advertised on Twitter and Facebook, maybe made a little humorous with a YouTube video…anything you can think of, really.  Interactivity is a great way to use social media.  Maybe you get even fancier and implement the use of Four Square or other “check-in” type social media channels to make the scavenger hunt happen in real life…now that would be fun!

We hope these ideas get your brain ticking.  Social media offers infinite possibilities to take your Denver marketing campaign to the next level, and we have really only touched on the tip of the iceberg!

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