First we looked at the fundamentals of onsite SEO, including page structure and duplicate content, and what themes and plugins can help you address these issues. Then we considered integrating Wordpress with Facebook Connect, and plugins that can with that integration.

Below is our presentation, as well as some links to the themes and plugins that we discussed during the presentation.

SEO Themes & Plugins for Wordpress

Thesis Theme — I actually use this theme to power my personal blog. It isn’t a free them, but it offers many user-friendly SEO and web design options that make it well worth the $87 it costs.

Genesis Theme — We haven’t test out this theme yet ourselves, but Chris Brogan uses it, so it can’t be that bad. Also, before Chris moved to Genesis, he used Thesis. So if it’s good enough for Chris, it’s probably good enough for the rest of us. Genesis sells for $60.

All in One SEO Pack — This is a free SEO plugin for Wordpress. It will also get you about 3/4 of what Thesis or Genesis will get you.

MembersWing Plugin — This plugin allows you to implement Google’s First-Click-Free, which allows Google to index restricted content behind a registration wall. There are both free and paid versions, but we haven’t tested either of them out ourselves just yet.

Facebook Connect Wordpress Plugins

Here is the list of plugins that we discussed during our presentation. You might want to try to integrate Facebook Connect with Wordpress.

• Simple Facebook Connect — I’ve personally tested this one out, and it gets you just about everything that Facebook Connect has to offer. However, it doesn’t always play well with every theme.
• Faux Facebook Connect — This plugin allows users to comment on a WordPress blog using their Facebook credentials.
• Gigya Socializer — This one is designed to help increase site registration and engagement by using a number of social ID APIs, including Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Twitter and OpenID.

This, of course, isn’t an exhaustive list. If you want to shop around a bit more, you might also want to check out this list of 12 Facebook Plugins for Bloggers.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Brian started off with an overview of what a CMS was — namely, software that allows you to update a website. In face, Brian argues that even a Twitter client is technically a CMS because it updates Twitter.

Now, Wordpress is a more advanced CMS because it can be used to both power a blog and manage a website with static pages. It allows you to add text, media, edit sections, manage users, and add comments. So it actually allows you to do a lot more than many basic CMSs that power many conventional business websites.

The point is that a blog is a website. The only difference between a blog and a website is its purpose. So you have to start thinking of how Wordpress is being used by the end users.

Why Wordpress is Such a Powerful CMS

First off, it’s free. This save you money on resources that you can reinvest in something like marketing, design, etc…

Second, it’s really easy to use. It’s easy to install, and its user interface is very intuitive and easy to use.

Third, Wordpress is extensible, adjustable, adaptable, versatile, and flexible. Essentially, it can accommodate a lot of different features and integrate them quickly.

Fourth, there a ton of themes available. Many of them are free, but even the ones cost money are relatively cheap and represent great value for the degree of design and coding talent you get when you buy one.

Fifth, there are the plugins. So many features and functions can be added on, and your site can be adapted as needed. Also, the average Wordpress installation can usually handle 40-50 plugins, meaning you can get very custom with your site.

Sixth, it has a strong community behind it. If a bug or glitch arises, there is a vast amount of forums, docs, and message boards to help you trouble shoot your problem.

Seventh, Wordpress is mobile compatible. Between apps and

Eighth, it is modular by nature. There are 3 mains parts to it: (1) content, (2) design, and (3) programming. This means you don’t need to know all 3 to do any of the individual one — i.e. you don’t need to code to update content.

Using Wordpress as a CMS

The first thing you want to do is go to your Reading settings and choose a static page as the homepage. This way, the index page won’t feature the reverse chronology of your blog. Of course, you’ll have to create a page called “Home” with the appropriate content in advance.

Next, go to the Permalinks section, and set the URL structure to only feature the page name. For example, change www.example.com/2009/08/post-name to www.example.com/page-name

Third, you want to disallow comments. Go into the discussion settings and un-check the box that reads “allow people to post comments on new articles”. This will deactivate comments on all future posts. For any previously created page that have comments active, simply go into the edit setting for those pages and deactivate the comments box.

Wordpress also lets you set up a page hierarchy. For instance, you can create pages with sub-pages. This allows you to feature only higher level “parent” pages (such as product category pages) in your navigation menu, and exclude sub-pages (such as individual product pages) from top-level navigation.

Wordpress Plugins and Themes

What Wordpress doesn’t do out of the box, there are many plugins and themes to add on that functionality.

First off, you can install premium themes to really customize your site. These cost a few bucks, but are often very worth it for the design/functionality that you get. Also, there are CMS specific themes that will offer custom functionality that is ideal for using Wordpress as a CMS.

Of course, you also want to rank well in search engines. There are several themes and plugins available (both free and paid) that allow you to optimize your site content for search engines.

As for managing the website, Wordpress out of the box support different user permissions, meaning you can give different users different levels of access to changing content. There are also some plugins that allow you to make user permissions even more nuanced and customized.

And when you are making major changes, some Wordpress plugins offer a “maintenance mode”. This allows you to take the site offline and put up a maintenance notifications while you work on it.

When it comes to maintenance, though, you want to back everything up first. Several plugins are also available to do this. So if anything ever goes terribly wrong during maintenance, you can always roll everything back to before you started tinkering with things.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

As a video blog host, Scott had been talking to everyone who’s anyone at the conference, and one thing that he noticed this year was that there doesn’t seem to be one predominant theme on everyone’s mind. Instead, there’ve been so many different developments that different people seem to be focused on different things, from Facebook Ads to Google Acquisitions to Twitter’s new sales force.

We also asked Scott what was on his own mind, as well as his thoughts on Twitter’s recent hire of sales force. He thinks what Twitter is doing is the logical next step, but he’s waiting to see whether it’s one that’s going to work.

iPhone Version

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

First we discussed Facebook ads and what Murray’s experience with them has been, as well as the opportunity he sees there for marketers in general. Then Murray shared his thoughts on Facebook marketing in general, and how Facebook Ads can be used to support your other Facebook marketing activities. Finally, we also talked about Twitter; specifically, we discussed sponsored Tweets, and what Murray thinks of Twitter’s new sales team.

iPhone Version

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

First off, Plenty of Fish has been expanding its ad platform. They’ve been adding new features so that advertisers have a variety of targeting options.

But Kim also discussed how Plenty of Fish is approaching its own marketing. One point of interest is on the social media front: even though Plenty of Fish is pretty much a social network, it does not use any social media to marketing itself.

They are also relatively secretive about their online user acquisition strategy in general. But Kim talked a lot about how active company is offline. They’re doing everything from conventional advertising to appearing in Lady Gaga videos.

iPhone Version

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Facebook’s core product, i.e. what they sell, is you and your data. So they’re all about keeping you active on Facebook, growing their user-base, obtain as much user data as possible, and hoard it. This is their incentive to maintain the user experience.

In 2007, they were very open to affiliates. In 2008, they marveled at how “affiliates really know how to scale.” In 2009, they re-interpreted that as “affiliates really know how to exploit.” Now, in 2010, they are very antagonistic toward affiliates — and feel they detract from the user-experience.

Basically, Facebook started out allowing for a lot of leeway. This attracted a mass of small advertisers, which increased its profile, and in turn, attracted larger advertisers. Once they had the larger advertisers, they would prohibit the tactics they used to attract the small/affiliate guys.

In fact, many of their changes to Facebook Ads TOS are aimed at affiliates. So many of the things they allowed to attract affiliates, are now prohibitted. For instance, they outlawed advertising free-stuff. This lead to affiliates advertising free events. This would allow affiliates to collect the data of event attendees, and Facebook has prohibited this, as well.

However, big brands are being allowed to collect user info in a way that Facebook prohibit. So there seems to be two-tiers of advertisers in Facebook’s eyes.

And when it comes to seeing an ad that you think offers a loophole around Facebook Ads rules, you should avoid copy-catting because by the time you mimic it, it will probably be prohibited.

Facebook Ad Creation

There are three elements to a Facebook Ad: (1) title, (2) body, and (3) image. Jeremy focuses 70% on the image, 20% on the body, and only 10% on the title. This is based on his own personal experience with Facebook Ads. So, he has found that the image impacts an ads performance much more so than the body or the title.

In fact, Jeremy did an experiment where he sent US traffic to ad pages where some of the ads featured a cleavage pic and some foreign text. The cleavage/foregin language pics got more clicks than the non-cleavage ads that had English copy.

When you develop a Facebook ad title, keep 4 things in mind:

• have a strong Call to Action in the title
• maintain the “association” — i.e. if the ad is for a brand, mention the brand somewhere in the title
• keep it consistent with the Facebook look and feel
• and Keep it Simple — i.e. the title should be self explanatory, and not dependent on the copy to explain it

When it comes to the body, there are 3 things you should pay attention to:

• mention Results — i.e. what the product you’re advertising will do for the user
• reinforce the Call to Action that’s in the title
• leverage Scarcity — i.e. “act now” or “limited offer”

Facebook also offers a choice between CPC or CPM. However, they work off a CPM average on the back-end. So, if your CPC ad isn’t generating, on average, a 23 cent CPM, they’ll drop that ad.

That being said, you always want to start with CPC because it gives you more room for trial and error — i.e. an non-compelling ad won’t cost you anything to run.

Facebook Ninja Techniques

First, you should use Facebook Reporting. It will give you all the data you need to refine your campaigns and figure out who to target more/less.

Second, consider Responder Profile Reports. This will give you more insight into the interests of people who click on your ads — e.g. the stuff they like.

Third, when it comes to capping, Facebook does not cap how many times someone can view your ad. So to prevent having your ad shown to the same people over and over again, use what you know through Responder Profile Reports to refine your ads, and weed out the kind of user that (1) isn’t clicking, or (2) clicks through but doesn’t convert.

Fourth, Day Parting is also important because if you’re running ads at a time no one is clicking on them, it will drive down your CPM and get your ad dropped.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

John now focuses mostly on social media to drive qualified traffic to his site. He shared with us some of his experience with using Facebook ads and fan pages to build a community around his brand and drive traffic to his site. We caught up with John in New York at Affiliate Summit East 2010.

iPhone Version

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

Online marketing has become mainstream and hit the flat part of the bell curve. But everyone keeps doing the same old thing. The new lead generation model, though, is social, mobile, and viral.

The New Sales Process: How to Turn Friends into Fans & Customers

With social, the customers are in control. So the trick is finding a way to monetize why users are already there (not drive people to your monetization scheme). A “friend” is in the attitude with which you approach them. In social, they’re not ready to buy.

With mobile, it’s about reaching quality audiences wherever they are.

With viral, you have to remember that people aren’t eyeballs, they’re “friends” — bringing us back to them not being ready to buy yet. Overall, it’s about moving people from the world where they’re connecting, and moving them into the world where they’re buying. Essentially, you don’t want them in Facebook. You want them in your social network.

Start by building the audience, then consider how to monetize it. If you’re trying to build it within the “squeeze” of monetization, it will never scale because you’ll be trying to force an organic community into a pre-existing business model. Rather than letting the community develop and then matching a monetization model that’s appropriate for the community’s dynamic.

This is where email becomes important again. Ads and promotions have no place within the community itself. But community members receive email notification for just about everything that happens withing the community. And it’s a lot more appropriate to promote something within that email than it is to do so through the community itself.

So with social, even though customers are in control, you can harness them. Focus on their narrative about your product. Keep your users happy and at center stage, and let them refer their friends (rather than trying to build your audience directly yourself). Have fun, and as your users enjoy the community, they’ll invite others to join.

It’s all about monetizing intent. Once the community is there with its own intentions, build a monetization around that by lending value to that community. Find a way to make referral commissions based on tipping the community off on what they’ve showed interest in.

Mobile: Move Beyond Hype in Your Copy and Invoke Curiosity to Reach Quality Audiences.

Your mobile audience is not captive. They are not tied to a desktop.

More importantly, there’s not a lot of screen space with mobile, so banners and ad copy just don’t work. So the magic word become “download.” MP3s and micro-content work on every smartphone. So either charge only a few bucks for micro-content or use a free download as a lead-gen tool.

Overall, it’s about (1) referral, and (2) making users feel good. The question becomes: how can we sell to pleasure?

To App or Not To App?

You can simply increase page views to mobile phones by optimizing it all for mobile phones. Take Wordpress or MovableType apps, for instance — they’re a great way to instantly adapt all your content for mobile devices.

The Capabilities
These are the things we can do with mobile that capitalize on the “fun/pleasure” experience of mobile:

• Click to Mobile Web
• Click to Call — this is huge, with 5-10% conversion increases; it works because people like getting calls; it works because it’s “fun”
• Click to Video — this is easy, and also fun, because it piques the user’s curiosity, giving the user instant entertainment; but make sure the videos are entertaining, and hire talent to achieve this if you must
• Click to SMS
• Click to Locate
• Click to Buy
• Click to Storyboard

Who’s Mobile Working For?

• Games — wither (1) find a game, and put your ads in the game, or (2) make it a game by getting users to tell their stories and share them with their network
• Retail — coupons, in general, are huge
• Financial Services
• Automobile Info/Services
• Coupons for Food — these are very popular while already in the grocery store.

All in all, we’re still in the early stages, so there’s still time to build your audience, and monetize it afterwards. And while doing so, ask the right question, and don’t as 20 of them. Keep it down to about 3 questions, and if you can, keep them to yes or no questions so that users see less of an incentive to lie.

Post from: NVI Blog - Professional, technical, and a little bit twisted.

But so many purchasing decisions are emotional ones, so it’s important that we remember how to approach marketing as an art.

Well, The Art of Marketing conference is coming to Montreal and NVI can offer you a promo code to save $50 on registration. With its roster of world-class marketers and best selling authors (such as Seth Godin and Avinash Kaushik), it promises to be a day of great insight from some of the best in the business.

So register here to save $50 on your ticket.

If you can’t make it, NVI will be there live blogging and trying to interview as many of the speakers on video as we can. But if you still haven’t made up your mind, maybe this clip will help sway you.