Corvus - From RavenWood Creative
A Conversation about Communication in Today's World
WordPress has emerged as a popular and easy to use content management system. Many of RavenWood Creative’s clients are using it and loving it.
Do you want the ability to publish to your site anytime you’d like? Or tie in your social media presence to your site with ease? Then WordPress and RavenWood Creative could be for you. Check out our client list to see who’s using WordPress.
I recently had the pleasure to listening to Guy Kawasaki speak about innovation at the IABC World Conference in Toronto. His Top Ten items for Innovation really resounded with me. But it was his example for number 6, Let 100 Flowers Blossom, that really stuck with me. Guy was a member of the original Apple Macintosh design team. As Guy explains it, when they launched the original Mac, the team thought they had created a great computer to compete with all the other computers of the time that let users manipulate data in early spreadsheets. But a little known desktop publishing program called Aldus Pagemaker was also just starting to bring desktop publishing to the masses. Well people soon realized that the icon-based Graphic User Interface (GUI) of the Macintosh, worked hand-in-hand with this new program and the popularity of both grew. Pagemaker eventually evolved into Adobe InDesign, still a desktop publishing powerhouse. And we all know what happened with Apple. According to Guy, “Aldus Pagemaker saved Apple, if we had been restrictive of what the Mac could do and stuck with spreadsheets, Apple wouldn’t exist today.”
Guy had other examples of products being used for pursuits outside it’s original purpose, such as AVON Skin-So-Soft being used as a bug repellent. His advice, “take the money, let the 100 flowers blossom.” My question for you is what unforeseen purpose, product or service helped make your business a success? For me, I was asked to help a business communication organization I belong to revamp its Philadelphia chapter’s website. The result was having to learn WordPress on the fly and design the site at the same time. WordPress development and customization has become a majority of my business, but who knows if it would have happened if I didn’t volunteer for the website redesign assignment. What unforeseen event or product use helped make your business a success?
Let me know, until next time, Tim
Within the last six months, my graphic and web design business has seen a shift. WordPress-powered sites are becoming quite popular with my clients. And who can blame them? The features a blog-based site gives them outstrips old, static websites. Also I’m finding this powerful content management system has something to offer everyone.
Here are my Top 5 Features Customers are asking for with WordPress.
1. Control Over Their Content
When I visit with a new client. I can tell you the first topic they bring up. It goes something like this, “I have this website, [insert name of young relative, inexpensive web design co. found in yellow pages, or themselves] designed it. It’s okay, but I can’t update it, and when I want to it takes days to update it.” Sound familiar? It’s a refrain I hear from clients all the time. WordPress solves this by putting the control over content back in the proper place, the site’s owner. With the user-friendly dashboard interface, I can train most people on how to update their site once it’s set up and customized in a matter of hours. Want to update your site? Take your pick of pages, posts or widgets and you’re ready to go. Clients love that they can ask for a certain look and feel to their site with WordPress and then it can be turned back over to them to expand and develop their site and online brand the way they want.
2. Tie Social Networks into My Site
Many of my customers are dipping their toes in the social networks or they have dived themselves and their company whole-heartedly into social marketing. A blog-based site helps you wherever you stand or “swim.” With the thousands of plugins available for WordPress and the ease of which sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn make it to cross-reference and cross-populate your social networks, the hours spent tweeting about your latest project or the comments you’ve gotten on your work on Facebook can all be featured on your homepage. With automated features such as tweeting your latest blog post, making social media marketing a part of your marketing mix, a WordPress blog becomes very attractive.
3. I want easy-breezy, lemon-squeezy ways to upload photos and video
By giving my clients some training on WordPress, I find they pick up rather quickly on how to upload and feature their photos and videos in WordPress and, more importantly, on their website. I have a real estate firm, Dan Helwig, Inc. Realtors that is using WordPress to feature the properties the want customers to know about. They upload hundreds of image every year and WordPress helps them feature all of them and a few “special” properties on their homepage. WordPress makes it easy.
4. Migrate my old content to my new blog
Another client of mine, Environmental & Engineering Solutions, Inc. recently added a WordPress blog to it’s site. By doing so, they were able to eliminate the older model of creating a subscriber-only area on their site for newsletters and information. By migrating all of this past content over to the blog, we were able to quickly add existing content to the blog (enhance SEO) and organize the content chronologically to offer EES clients a searchable, tagged database of all its past articles, related websites and commentary on environmental engineering issues. The subscriber model has changed a bit, rather than supplying an email to access the information, a customer can now subscribe to the blog’s feed and be updated automatically when EES posts something new. It greatly simplifies the site for the user, enables them to find what the want when they want it, and keeps EES in the front of their mind for future projects.
5. I need to organize my site
Another way WordPress helps is by organizing content in a fashion most people can understand. With Categories, Pages, Posts and Widgets, I haven’t found a business or organization yet that can’t benefit from organizing their content in this fashion. I find it particularly powerful for non-profit organizations that have upcoming events and updates for members to be able to post the latest information for its members and the public. Two recent examples I’ve worked on are MidAtlantic Tax Solutions, Inc., a firm that helps homeowners reduce their property taxes and Flourtown Fire Company, both are enjoying new WordPress-based sites. MidAtlantic is enjoying the fact that update no longer take hours to complete and are excited by the ability to expand the site along with the business. Flourtown Fire Company, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization also is enjoying being able to update the site soon after responding to an incident, but also the ability for multiple members to update the site and feature upcoming events. The various areas of the company from Ladies Auxiliary, to officers and its rich 100-year history all have a place on the site and can easily cross-reference with one another through tags and categories.
As you can see I’m a big fan of WordPress and have been finding it answers the needs of my customers. What are your thoughts on WordPress and what are your favorite features? Let me know below. Until next time, Tim
As a Communicator/Marketer | Web Designer | Writer and Blogger, I’m a big fan of Inbound Marketing, the Internet is a great forum for any business to present itself to customers who are researching “what’s out there” before they buy. To help you attract attention online and to honor the unusual date 09/09/09, I’ve put together 9 tips for Marketing Online. Forget, trade shows, traditional advertising, cold calls, and the yellow pages, the web is where you should be.
1.) Develop a flexible website:
Many of the clients come to RavenWood Creative seeking to either establish a web site or redesign one where they can “control the content” and “update it” whenever they like, without having to depend and wait on IT Professionals to make the changes. Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and other Content Management Systems today make it the right choice for businesses today. It enables business owners to control their content and more importantly respond to changing market conditions, world news, and their competition online, where the customers are looking.
2.) Make your Online Presence – Attractive:
Anyone can have all the greatest content and be subject matter experts in their field, but much like a box of cereal on the market shelf, without attractive packaging and an organization behind the content, no one will spend the time to stop and peruse the offerings. Visuals in Web Communication are as important as the words on the screen. People often forget that the World Wide Web is a visual medium, much like television. That images and how information is categorized is paramount to the content itself. If a potential customer can find what they need from you in an easy and attractive fashion, you’re one step closer than the competition to landing that customer. People like clean and easy, they move past unorganized and screens full of text for sites NOT designed in the 1990s. Break up the text with visual cues, and use visuals as part of your navigation.
3.) Don’t forget “Grammar” School:
Writing, that subject you learned in grammar school, is also important. Sure you’ve attracted a potential client to your site by means of a good ranking in a search engine and a visually attractive web site, just to make them click the back button. Why? Because your pages are full of typos, run-on sentences, and a general “let’s put everything up there” attitude about the web site. Your site shouldn’t be a dumping ground for every profile or market report you’ve ever produced. Editing is good. People scan web sites, if they want more, they’ll ask. Less is more on the Web, and your bad-typing skills and lack of organization over your content will lead them to look elsewhere.
4.) Seek Other Opinions:
Sure you know your business and you know what your customers want, you wouldn’t be successful if you didn’t. But, have you ever asked your customers how you can better serve them? The web is a great place to get other opinions about your work. Polls, surveys, comments, and testimonials are the backbone of most social media sites and other successes on the web. Why do you think people seek out recommendations on LinkedIn, or answer a polls on Facebook? Businesses like people seek feedback. Generally, the feedback is constructive and helps you focus your efforts. Use the tools available on the Internet to your advantage and allow other to comment on your work. The next five tips on on tools to use to spotlight your business online.
5.) The Magic of SEO:
With every web design client RavenWood Creative works with, the question of search engine optimization, SEO soon pops up. Many clients have heard of it and many know they should have it on their web site. It makes sense, increase your web site’s ranking in the search engine and drive traffic to your site, but how? It’s like some sort of magic to most, but it all comes down to using the right keywords and other tools within your site that match what a typical or ideal customer will search. The confusion comes from which search engine the customer is using, Google, Yahoo, Ask. Or what the search engine returns, BING returns are slightly different than Google rankings. But all search engines like new, fresh content (see #1) and any way you can do that for your business will pull your information closer to the top in rankings.
6.) Blogs:
You reading one right now, you probably read one more often than you think. Blogs are a great way to keep your site fresh, up-to-date and relevant (remember, search engines like this type of content). But it’s more than a way to post information fast, blogs are a two-way street and comments and conversations are their life blood. Post as often as you can and comment on other blogs more often and soon you’ll be positioning yourself and your company as a subject matter expert. Blogs can be your entire web site, as WordPress and other blogging technology gets more and more sophisticated, keeping your content rich and your visuals up-to-date is easier and easier.
7.) Social Media Worlds:
Each day the Social Media sites converge more, and with this convergence your customers, old friends, and existing clients are spending more time on the sites. It makes sense to be in the location where your customers are asking questions, seeking advice, and sharing thoughts. Ask Comcast, Zappos, and other corporations that are using social media like Twitter to address customer needs. It’s the future of customer service, no longer do you search out an 800 number to call, you Tweet about your service on Twitter and more often than not, you get a response from someone with advice or help. Go where your customers are, go on social media sites.
8.) Social Media Releases:
Gone are the days of typing up a press release on paper and sending it to the local business editor. Social media releases are rapidly taking the place of the static, and stale press releases. Releases with video clips, images, and actual quotes or testimonials are helping get the word out for many companies. PRXbuilder, Pitchengine, storycrafter, realwire are some of the companies helping to push the social media release technology.
9.) Viral Marketing:
We’ve all received them in our inbox, a video or photo that has circled the globe with sleeping cats, crashing cars, or blenders chewing up an iphone. Take advantage of the human behavior to share the fun, the wacky, or the unbelievable. Don’t take yourself or your business too seriously and word-of-mouse techniques can work for you. Ask for opinions, ask them to share and reward those that help you. Sooner or later something will go viral, ask the Blendtec folks.
Have any other tips about inbound marketing to share, please share a comment below. Until next time, Tim
I started using Twitter at IABC International Conference in 2008. It was held in New York City and I soon became a big fan of Twitter and saw that it was a great tool to recap conferences. Back in 2008 there were a handful of us using Twitter and commenting on keynote addresses, what we thought of the breakout session speakers and what we were doing in New York. Checkout out my tweets about the IABC world conference 2009.
This year’s conference was in San Francisco and before the conference event began there was buzz about the conference on Twitter. Then as the conference started, I witnessed an entire sub-conference going on. I’m recapping it here and linking to other recaps from fellow members of IABC.
Prior to the conference and recapping the conference as it happened was OutoftheGate and Linda Johannesson. Byran Person and the Daily Boo also did a nice job recapping the conference.
It’s interesting to see each individuals takeaways from the conference and even the difference in opinions as the session were taking place. Typing in ‘#IABC09′ into Twitter search you will find a plethora of opinions, tips, and recaps. I also made lot of new friends on Twitter through recapping the conference, including: @valpakcoupons @dave1meyer @glendarholmes @distruptivethink @Punkpoet_jb @jenbenz @tomroux @zingzone @kathryncobb @shaileymotial @llibitz @willy26 @paulbartonABC @paulacassin and many more… If you review any of their tweets you’ll see a different perspective on the conference.
Twitter the Conference’s Hot Topic:
As for the conference Twitter was a part of the majority of the sessions I attended. I think it was mentioned in every session where social media was the topic or not. It’s the hot topic in communication. It was used live to demonstrate how social media is changing the communicator’s role and job in today’s business world. Neville Hobson (@jangles) in his podcasting session did a live Audio Boo recording and instantly had a photo and audio up on the site. That’s me in the green shirt in the blurry photo. He did it all from his iPhone, so lots of other equipment isn’t necessary. Shel Holtz (@shel) showed off the future of the Social Media News Release, I like that he called it a Social Media Kit as it has multimedia information for the press and everyone else out on the net to use as they like. Stacy DeBroff, aka @momcentral discussed Twitter at length and so did Barbara Gibson @Barb_G and @BryanPerson who did an entire session on Twitter for the Communicator.
Opening Session Sunday:
The overall feeling about Blair Christie and Cisco’s opening session was that is was a bit heavy handed on what Cisco could do for its clients and not the expected 30-thousand foot look at the communication industry. The tweets flew fast and furious throughout the speech and demonstration of Cisco’s intranet software packages.
General Session Monday:
Brian Dunn COO and soon-to-be CEO of Best Buy was awarded the IABC Excel Award for his leadership in communication. His thoughts on there no longer being internal and external communication (is all shows up on the Internet) was spot on. And the work his communication staff of 70 is doing with videos for employees and the new ads featuring real employee stories was a great way to highlight the youth of his company’s employee (avg. age 24) and the creativity of the company.
Monday Afternoon:
Branding session: David Grossman, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA and Marty Campanello, APR, Fellow PRSA Did a great job recapping the Carolinas Healthcare System and it’s rebranding effort: Highlights: Branding and brands the currency of business today marketing from the inside out; Branding session – 26% of employees engaged according to Gallup leaves lots of disengaged and not engaged; in the age of mergers employees need to know what brand promise is and act on it; Carolinas Medical Center transformed their brand – the challenge was encouraging caring staff over other measures; Internal branding isn’t a logo, tagline, giveaway, website. It’s the promise of the brand that make people act; Grossman -branding brings up ops issues that get in way for employees must be addressed.
ROi to SOI: Stacy Debroff: Return on Investment to Sphere of Influence: Stacy who is the CEO of Mom Central Consulting demonstrated how she’s captured the niche market of moms on the social media networks and turned it into a successful consulting business. She’s been a part of campaigns for Frigidaire, Motrin (post-Motrin Moms incident, which she recapped for her point of view). Like any great blogger, she dropped a lot of names, but also backed it up with great content. Highlights: ROI to SOI: social media is changing the way we do everything. Power to the Moms!; ROI to SOI google is new corporate homepage. What people say about you is more important than you say about yourself; SOI increase enthusiasts, negate detractors, drive to action, change perception; transparency and authenticity again appears. The truth will set you free; Now following @momcentral from roi to soi at #IABC09 huge crowd majority of audience is in SM her followers growing by the minute; SM has given rise to crisis management via SM by 45%. Can companies manage a crisis on Twitter?; Stacy DeBroff getting clients off Twitter. MomCentral connects with Pepperidge Farms via a tweet exchange.; Great examples about the power of social media Frigidaire, Ringling Bros., Disney on Ice.; “motrin put out a stupid, bad ad about baby-wearing.” deep analysis YouTube twitter bloggers jumped on it.; how to crisis respond via SM for your company? Need to be able to respond where the conversation is taking place.; Debroff “never argue with an idiot because from the outside you can’t tell who is who!”; SOI is all about relationships. ROI to SOI #iabc09 create brand enthusiasts, stream of conversation – thread a story together. Impressions.; What is the story you want to tell via social media? ROI to SOI Can you change the perception of your brand with those on SM?
My question for @momcentral was how do you stay transparent that you are tweeting/blogging for a paying client? Still waiting for an answer.
Until next time, Tim
The Web. Whether it’s a web site redesign or a build from the ground up, RavenWood Creative can help you put the pieces together for your business. We’re experts at integrating social media, blogs, and graphics into a professional and solid web presence. We use the latest tools and web standards to either build a CSS/HTML site from the ground up, redesign an existing site or convert your static website to a WordPress blog-based site that the client can update themselves. As an Accredited Business Communicator – RavenWood Creative can even help with the site’s content.
I recently upgraded my blog’s backend, yes, I know it sounds dirty, to the new WordPress 2.7. The new interface is very sleek and more intuitive than past dashboards. Like most new interfaces it will take some getting use to, but I’m liking it so far. The tools I use most in creating posts are still in the same area, but the other organizational tools are, well, more organized.
What do you think?
Until next time, Tim
Looking for the slides from The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 presentation that VP and Chief Digital Officer of the Brownstein Group, Adam Deringer, Senior Communication Specialist, Siemens, Karen Saydlowski, and Tim Ernst from RavenWood Creative presented for IABC Philadelphia?
Look no further.
Please share your thoughts on the presentation here and I’ll be sure to pass them onto Adam and Karen. I thank Adam and Karen for helping me put this together and we thank IABC Philadelphia for hosting us.
Until next time, Tim
Welcome to my first blog with the new look and feel. I finally got around to getting my blog closer to where I want it – is a blog ever complete? It’s like asking if there’s an end to the universe … it’s a question that gets you thinking. I figure blogs are abandoned all the time, but never completed. People get busy, there isn’t time to keep it up to date, or life interrupts. I wonder what happens to blogs from bloggers who die?
Morbid question, I know, but I wonder if there has been any research into that. Anyone know the answer to that?
Back to my new look and feel, what do you think? I found a great resource on WordPress from Blizzard Internet Marketing, a whitepaper called SEO for WordPress Blogs. It’s a great step by step way to increase the search engine optimization for blogs – something I desparately needed. It covers everything from blog directories to plugins.
Well let me know what you think? Until next time, Tim
