The Open Source Marketer

Is It Time To Say Thank You To Your Customers?

Charles McKeever — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:50:31 +0000

I recently renewed our GotoMeeting subscription for a full year and they did something I didn’t expect. They sent me a real live, no strings attached, thank you gift in the mail. I can’t remember the last time a company sent me anything in the mail that wasn’t connected to a self serving promotion, much less an actual gift.

So what did they send me? Well as you can see in the image below, they sent me a box of Godiva chocolates wrapped in a Citrix bow with a note attached to the top that simply thanked me for being a customer.

So why would they do that? To be honest, I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory.

Saying thank you to your customers does three things:

It communicates appreciation
It sets you apart from your competitors
It sets the stage for future business

For a year we used GotoMeeting on a month to month basis, and each month it proved itself valuable. As a business tool GotoMeeting has been key to helping us gain new business, provide a high level of customer service, and almost fully eliminate our regular travel expenses. So, we decided to invest in the service with an annual subscription. We paid for a full year in advance, which got us a small discount on the price and provided GotoMeeting with working capital they can use today instead of a possible promise of money tomorrow.

As a business owner myself, I think they valued the commitment I made as a customer and wanted to make sure that I knew that they knew it. There are a lot of competing services out there and frankly most of them are a distraction. I know because we tried most of them before deciding to go with GotoMeeting.

By sending me a thank you gift, I’m also likely to remember that when it comes time to renew my subscription. The chocolates will be long gone, but hopefully over the period of the next year the company will have built upon the feeling of appreciation and respect that I feel right now. It’s not a guaranteed slam dunk, but it’s a nice deposit in what Stephen Covey would call my “emotional bank account”.

So, if you’ve just completed a project for a new client or you’ve been working with a client for a long time, it might be time to say thank you. It doesn’t have to be expensive or grand. It just has to recognize them in some way and communicate an appreciation for the value they’ve brought to your business.

So, thank YOU for taking the time to read this post.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

BTW, this post was totally unsolicited by GotoMeeting. What can I say, I’m a cheap date ;)

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TubePress Playlist Not Working – Fix

Charles McKeever — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:50:36 +0000

If you can’t assign a playlist to the TubePress plugin, you might want to check your YouTube playlist id. Prior to recent YouTube changes the playlist url followed the format http://youtube.com/my_playlists?p=D2B04665B213AE35 with ?p=D2B04665B213AE35 being used to identify the playlist.

Now the url format has changed and list=PLC2D4546065D7119F is the new format with a PL in front of your playlist id. TubePress is aware of this issue and for now the recommended fix is to remove the PL from the beginning of the playlist id when applying it to the TubePress playlist settings.

Have a WordPress plugin tip to share? Leave it in the comments below.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using a blog.

Business Building Roadmap Webinar Replay

Charles McKeever — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:25:46 +0000

Last year we hosted a webinar to discuss what we called the “Business Building Roadmap”. The webinar was intended to be an overview of topics we would be covering in the year ahead and to give everyone a basic outline for jumpstarting their business no matter where they were in the process. Well a year has passed and honestly, these topics haven’t changed. The basic concepts for building your business and marketing it online are still the same no matter where you are in the process.

So, I decided it would be good to repost the webinar for you. The webinar is an hour long, so you might want to jump to the part of the video that applies best to you and your business in it’s current state. The webinar is broken down into segments by time so you can jump around as needed. I’ll also be breaking out each of the topics we discuss during the call in the coming days so that you don’t miss anything.

Business Building Roadmap

Introduction – Min: 0:00
Join us on chat – Min: 2:28
We’re taking notes – Min: 3:10
What We’ll Cover – Min: 7:11
January, Business Essentials – Min: 11:40
February, Planning – Min: 20:07
March, Design – Min: 26:08
April, Build – Min: 32:48
May, Content Creation – Min: 37:35
June, Optimization – Min: 41:33
July, Monetization – Min: 46:48
August, Marketing – Min: 54:17
September, Marketing – Min: 58:15
October, Marketing – Min: 1:00:06
Questions – Min: 1:03:15

At the time of the webinar we online had topics on the calendar up through October, but we eventually announced the topics we would cover in November and December. I’ll be reposting those on the site as well, so be sure to subscribe to the blog to get the updates.

Have questions? Leave your questions in the comments below.

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Market Samurai Gets Nunchucked!

Charles McKeever — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:01:50 +0000

If you’ve been using Market Samurai for keyword research, you might want to read their most recent blog post. Google’s tolerances for high query volumes has changed recently and the staff over at Market Samurai have been scrambling to find work arounds. They’ve been able to restore all of the SEO research features in a short amount of time, but there are some changes that you need to be aware of.

Here are some of the questions the blog post answers:

What’s working in Market Samurai?
Will Market Samurai become a monthly subscription product?
Will Rank Tracker have a monthly cost, and what will it be?
Can I use Rank Tracker on my local network?
Where does Market Samurai now use Bing data?
Is Bing a valid measure of competition? Aren’t I trying to rank in Google?
Why are other SEO products not affected?
Will Market Samurai be offline for six months?
With over 400,000 users, why can’t Market Samurai just absorb the cost?

There are lots interesting points in the post, but two of them stuck out for me.

One was the perspective they offered when answering the, “Is Bing a valid measure of competition” question.

“Ultimately, in SEO, you only have 10 competitors, and they are those sites taking the top 10 rankings that you must displace in order to pull traffic. SEOC (and related measures) should be used as a basic filter, but NEVER (let me repeat that; NEVER!) as the sole basis for selecting a keyword, particularly one of the primary keywords on your site. Once you’ve filtered out the likely high competition keywords, it’s by reviewing results from the SEO Competition module (which continues to be based on the front page of Google) that you can determine with reasonable certainty your capacity to gain a ranking.

The SEO Competition module allows you to see at a glance the key SEO metrics for each of your competitors ranking in the top 10 positions.”

and the other item of interest was that Market Samurai has a little over 50,000 paid users out of the over 400,000 users. That’s about 12.5% conversion rate for a tool that gives some pretty awesome value. That means they have a great product and a loyal customer base. I believe they have that because they do such a great job of responding to changes in the SEO market. Whether it’s a change in Google’s tolerances for high query volumes, or the complete closure of Yahoo Site Explorer. They always seem to overcome the challenges.

If you haven’t read the Market Samurai blog post yet, go take a look and see what’s changed.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using WordPress.

Solved: Shadowbox-JS Doesn’t Work With WordPress 3.3

Charles McKeever — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:26:32 +0000

If you’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 3.3.x and noticed that your shadowbox-js lightboxes aren’t working, then you’re not alone. We use shadowbox-js on a lot of our sites because it’s easy to set up and provides a nice light box interface for videos, images, web pages, etc.

So, when I upgraded some of our sites to the latest version of WordPress, I was surprised to find that the lightbox feature of our sites wasn’t working anymore.

Last night I stumbled across this “Shadowbox JS is broken in WP 3.3 RC1” WordPress support forum conversation. Which led me to this “Shadowbox JS removed from wordpress.org” conversation, which led me to download the latest version of shadowbox-js off of the developers website.

Here’s the fix

Without going into a lot of long drawn out details, apparently older versions of shadowbox-js don’t get along with WordPress 3.3 (or vice versa) and at the same time shadowbox-js has been removed from the WordPress.org plugin repository because of a licensing snafu.

The good news is you can fix shadowbox-js on WordPress 3.3 sites by upgrading to the latest version of the shadowbox-js plugin. However, because the plugin isn’t in the WordPress repository, if you click the plugin update button inside the WordPress admin panel, you might not be getting the latest version of the shadowbox-js plugin.

So, you have to manually download the latest version of shadowbox-js first and then upload it to your website. After that WordPress 3.3 and shadowbox-js work great together.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.

Does Your Business Have A Story?

Toff Ward — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:20:50 +0000

People like stories. They like to tell them, and they like to listen to them. They like to share those stories with others and ponder the possibilities. “The fish that got away” is a much better story than the fish on the dinner plate. Companies who sell their products and services as stories are getting a huge bonus that goes with their product. Its a feeling that remains after you take the product home. It compels you to think about that car, computer, or brand long after the need for that product is gone. There are online forums that do nothing but let people talk about what they have, how they changed it, or where they will take it. It inspires pride and brand loyalty. If your business doesn’t have that story, you are losing out on a powerful tool for success.

My new vehicle is a story

Its not a car or truck. It doesn’t just get me from point A to point B. What it costs, doesn’t even matter. I bought a story.

Its a trail jeep. Big tires, armor plating, lift kit, and hundreds of little parts that I honestly don’t have a clue what or where they go (transfer case shifter anyone?). The bottom line is that I am NOT a car guy. I don’t even change the oil in my cars. The fun part, is that I know people who are. They take pride in what they do. Its their passion. They spend time polishing the bottom of the oilpan knowing that they will be the only one who even knows it was done. I’m always impressed by these guys and the care they show for their vehicles. It makes me want to go wash my own car (ok, maybe not). I’m typically very conservative with whatever I buy. I have always made very practical decisions regarding price, fuel economy, etc.

Yep, boring stuff. But this time. I bought something that was pretty much disassembled, cleaned, restored, painted, armor plated and put back together better than it ever was.

Why would I do that?

This jeep starts a conversation. This jeep makes people ask “what”, “How” and “does it fit in the garage?”. I grin every time I start the thing up and it rumbles down the street. My kids think combining a jungle gym and a car is the greatest thing you could ever do. I consider it a privilege that Shane and Gary will even part with these jeeps they rehab (They haven’t asked for visitation rights yet :) .

All I know is that the story of what has been done to restore the jeep is something that I enjoy retelling over and over again. In retelling my own story, I am actually telling the story of the company who rebuilt the jeep.

Do your customers have a story to tell?

Toff
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using Facebook.

iBooks Author iPad Preview Won’t Open Book Fix

Charles McKeever — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:46:24 +0000

After watching Matt’s Macintosh’s video review of Apple’s iBooks Author app, I was really excited to try it out. So I downloaded iBooks Author from the Apple App Store, connected my iPad and tried to preview a newly created iBook. The book was transfered to the iPad iBook app but the book wouldn’t open. I tried everything I could think of, but the book just wouldn’t load.

So finally, I tried to view E.O. Wilson’s “Life on Earth” book that I downloaded from the iBookStore and it wouldn’t open either. I tried several times and then I decided to delete the book and download it again. This time, when I tapped download the iBook app prompted me to download the updated version of iBook. I hadn’t thought to do that and the app hadn’t prompted me before, so I tapped to update the iBook app to iBook 2 and then went back to iBooks Author. Sure enough, now my newly created iBook previewed on the iPad just fine and the iBook opens like a champ.

So, if you are having trouble opening your book using the iBooks Author iPad preview, try updating your iBook app to the new iBook 2 version. It will make your book creation experience a whole lot better.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using a blog.

How To Market Your Business Online In The New Year

Charles McKeever — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:19:19 +0000

During this week’s Open Source Marketer webinar we discuss the big picture overview for creating an online marketing plan for your business in the new year. We discuss creating a plan of attack, choosing a starting point, and how to keep things on track. If you need help getting focused, watch this video and hear some fresh ideas to help you with that process.

Recommended Resources:

Talking Points:

Introduction – Min: 0:00
Marketing Chart Overview – Min: 4:48
What We Covered In 2011 – Min: 8:15
Business Essentials – Min: 10:17
Planning – Min: 14:20
Design – Min: 16:26
Build – Min: 20:16
Content Creation – Min: 24:10
Optimization (SEO) – Min: 30:18
Monetization – Min: 33:41
Ecommerce – Min: 39:24
Marketing – Min: 43:16
Resources – Min: 01:03:46

Slides:

Have questions? Leave them in the forum and we will answer them on the next webinar.

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.

A Look Ahead At Affiliate Sites, WordPress Plugins, and Mobile Development in 2012

Charles McKeever — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:24:38 +0000

2011 was filled with great opportunities for us here at Open Source Marketer.

Among other things:

Toff and I launched a fully customized WordPress ecommerce site for a line of designer children’s clothing
added ecommerce to an existing WordPress site in time for the holidays
converted a major corporate site to WordPress and established three supporting international sites
redesigned an active child care website and a popular fashion blog
worked with a charity that brings clean water to people in Africa and supported 10 new entrepreneurs in developing countries
created a membership site for an organic farmer and a popular food blog
completed several onsite client video shoots
sold a 9 year old’s website to a trademark owner
launched almost 20 new client sites and consulted with over 40 different clients
created a handful of new affiliate sites
and hosted a weekly community webinar that produced over 520 hours of training.

It was a busy year to say the least and through it all we continued to add members to the Open Source Marketer community.

So, what are our plans in 2012?

Well, to start, we want to help you get everything you can out of your business this year. So we’ve decided to give everyone full access to all of last year’s community webinars, which includes over 520 hours of training on how to market your business online. It’s all yours for free. We could have put it behind a pay wall, but we decided we didn’t want to do that. A lot of work went into planning, organizing, producing, and publishing those webinars and we want to make sure everyone benefits. That’s why we spent the whole month of December posting and making every webinar public on the blog. There’s a lot of information provided, so if you missed ANY of the live webinars last year, now you can watch them anytime you want. And of course, as an Open Source Marketer member, you can also access the 320+ how-to videos in the training library and ask questions in the private forums.

One of the new things we want to do this year is shift from hosting a weekly webinar to creating a whole new series of in-depth videos on the tools and techniques that can be used to market a business online. Getting an inside look at some of the best tools and services out there can save everyone in the community a lot of time, effort, money, and frustration, so we feel like this is one of the most important things we can do this year.

We’ll be covering topics like:

We also have a few other goals this year that we want to share with you along the way.

Affiliate Sites

Last year we saw consistent increases in our affiliate sales, so this year we want to focus on building up our affiliate sites. Affiliate sites provide a lot of long term value and the best part about making affiliate sales is that it’s a form of passive income, which means we can put in time and effort up front and that work continues to pay us dividends over time. It also means that everything we do to build up the sites content and traffic, increases our overall revenue. It’s like having virtual real estate that we earn money on year after year. Whatever improvements we make to the “property” helps to increase our profits.

As we work our way through beefing up these sites, we’ll be sharing what we’re doing on the blog so that everyone can benefit from our efforts. So be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up to the mailing list to keep up with what’s going on there.

WordPress Plugins

We also have plans to develop a bunch of WordPress plugins this year. I think we mentioned it about a gazillion times during the webinars, but in case you missed it, the number of available WordPress plugins just keeps climbing, which makes the market for WordPress plugins even bigger. If you can think to do it, there’s probably a plugin for it, or there will be shortly. So, we want to hop into that space and offer up a few plugins of our own. We already have some ideas in the works and we’ll we moving on them very quickly this year.

Needless to say, we’ll be sharing those experiences too, so stay tuned.

Mobile App Development

And finally, at the end of last year we started researching tools for developing mobile apps. The mobile device market has exploded and the holiday season last year saw record activations for new devices, so we want to become active participants in that space.

At first we thought it was going to take a lot of time and effort to produce even the most basic of apps. I even audited the Stanford iOS Development course through iTunes, but in the end, we found some very interesting options and we’ll be sharing them with you as the year moves on. We already have a few ideas on the drawing board for iOS and Kindle Fire apps. So, if you have an idea for an app you’d like to make, let us know.

In Closing

2011 was awesome for us and we plan to make 2012 even better with more in-depth information on how to market your business online, access to a full year’s webinar archives, real world insights on building up affiliate sites, tips on creating and publishing WordPress plugins, and lots of good material on how to plan, develop, and publish mobile applications. Occasionally we’ll throw in an Open Source Marketer podcast episode or publish an impromptu rap session, when we’re not working on a client project, of course.

So like I said, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or join the mailing list to stay posted. This year is going to be full of new great adventures and I hope you’ll join us for the ride.

Talk with you soon,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.

How To Create Your Own WordPress Plugins

Charles McKeever — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:24:51 +0000

During this week’s Open Source Marketer webinar we discuss the process for creating your own WordPress plugins. We look at the tools involved, where to get help, and how to share your plugin with others. We walk you through an example plugin to help you understand everything you need to know to get started. If you have an idea for a plugin or you would like your WordPress website to something totally custom, then you’ll want to watch this webinar.

Recommended Resources:

Talking Points:

Introduction – Min: 0:00
Plugin Overview – Min: 5:34
Plugin Folder Structure – Min: 9:37
Plugin File Requirements – Min: 13:56
WordPress Plugin API – Min: 15:49
Database Tables – Min: 17:24
Plugin Demo – Min: 21:38
Plugin Publishing – Min: 35:48
Recommended Actions – Min: 39:01

Slides:

Have questions? Leave them in the forum and we will answer them on the next webinar.

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.