interactiveAmy.com » WordCamp Chicago

What I Learned at WordCamp 2010

Amy — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:24:15 +0000

Last year’s WordCamp was my introduction to WordPress, and one year later I feel like I’ve come a long way but still have so much to learn. Two days, two conference tracks, and 15 pages of typed notes later - here is a high level overview of key takeaways I learned at WordCamp Chicago, held June 5-6, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Merchandise Mart.

I’d classify myself as a WordPress “advanced beginner,” and I am a user, not a developer, so I stuck to the User Track and attended sessions on: Using WordPress and Buddy Press for Education, Creating Custom Menus with WordPress 3.0, a WordPress User Experience, session, but for me the meat and potatoes came in the afternoon of Day One.

I was blown away by Amanda Blum’s session entitled “Sitemap to Success” and Scott Stawarz’s session on how to Maximize the All in One SEO Plugin. So let’s start there.

Every website is selling something. Is that clear on your site?

Many business cater to multiple audiences, and your website should have a clear call to action for each user group. After you’ve done the initial leg work of defining what you do and who you serve; address each one specifically and determine what constitutes a success point on your website? Make sure you create a path to buy!

Amanda suggests starting with the following four questions:

Why do I want crap?
Why do I want *your* crap?
What is your process to give me crap?
Give me crap.

Everything should be a call to action! On every page what are your options to buy and/or contact for more information. Remove the roadblocks, website design should be supporting content, not the other way around.

That said, Scott Stawarzs’ presented a great session on a popular WordPRess Plugin, called All In One SEO Pack (AIOSEO for short). Since the bread and butter of a website is its content, ask yourself: What key words do you want to rank for??

Creating great content is the best way to be Search Engine Optimized, so regardless of what tools you are using for SEO begin by identifying the keywords you audience will use to find your site. Then write fantastic content and tell a story! SEO is an important part of the process of improving the volume and quality of search results, and only after you’ve created compelling copy, will the All In One SEO Pack be your blog’s best friend!

Scott offered the following practical next actions steps, which I will use as a guide going forward:

Spend 80% of your time on creating new content
Spend 20% of your time on SEO
Spend 100% of your time helping others
Follow Google SEO Guidelines

So you’ve created a sitemap and a plan to get people to take action, you’ve optimized your site for the search engine, but have you backed your site up?

Data losses are very common, 66% of internet users have suffered from serious data loss. Are you prepared?

A perfect way to end this post is with another very important takeaway I had from WordCamp. Chris Jean offered a comprehensive session on Backing Up and Upgrading WordPress – and you guessed it… I can not stress enough how important it is for you to back up your site, both the files and the database. Make sure you have a strategy to back up your site, before you need it! After you’ve selected your back up tools, create a schedule, and stick to it, oh yeah…and test the back up too!

Chris suggests the following schedule of how how often you should back up your website:

do a full back up at least once a week
do a database backup if possible once a day
do a full back up before a WordPress core or major plugin upgrade

Did you also attend WordCamp, what takeaways did you leave with? Please share the learning!

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WordPress.com – Let's Get You Started!

Amy — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:35:56 +0000

Congratulations, you’ve decided to start a blog! Now what?

That was me, a week ago. I had the good fortune of attending WordCamp Chicago, a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. Well, everything except for getting started, that is. In a room of 200, I was one of a handful that wasn’t already a blogger. Intimidating? It could have been, rather I seized the opportunity to learn from my peers and decided right then and there that on day two I was coming back with a blog!

I had a website, interactiveAmy.com, but it wasn’t on WordPress and it didn’t have the capabilities to support the type of blog I wanted. So I issued a tweet for help.

My tweet for Blog help!

Jason Pelker was the first to respond, and we met up during a break. Jason listened to my dilemma, how to switch my static domain to WordPress, and assured me I could do it!
He also told me that he didn’t think I was ready to start a self hosted blog, so he directed me to WordPress.com to get started with a free WordPress hosted account.

Jason could tell that I was a smart cookie, so he pointed me in the direction of the WordPress.com support page, and then said to figure it out on my own. So there I sat, the last one to leave the WordCamp conference room – busy logging in and setting up my interactiveAmy.wordpress.com account.

And that was that! With additional hand holding from Dan Schulz, I was determined to go home and figure it out. And I did! Day two of WordCamp I came back with a blog!

Steps to getting started:
The WordPress.com sign up page is the place to begin. Simply sign in, register a blog domain and blog title and then wait for your confirmation email to arrive in your inbox.

After confirming your account, you can log back into to your newly created blog!

On the front page of WordPress.com you will find the link to your blog’s Dashboard. That is the hub of your blog’s activity. From the Dashboard you are able to set up pages, create new blog posts, modify your blog’s theme, and once you publish your work, you can access your stats including traffic, page views, etc.

Many people are using WordPress not only for their blog but also as their primary website as well.

What is the difference between a post and a page? Pages are category headings on the top of your webpage. Setting up a page is the same process as posting a new entry. Within the Dashboard you can Add or Edit new pages for your website. In my case my pages include a welcome letter, my bio, an overview of social media and a page for each of the services my company provides – social media consulting, digital publicity, personal branding. Since this information was already on my static site, setting these up was as simple as cutting and pasting my previous text and formatting within the page entry. I had 7 pages set up in about 2 hours.

Upon logging in, WordPress issues a “Hello, Word!” post and invites you to edit, approve or delete. I modified mine to let the world know that I have arrived in the blogosphere. To post a new entry simply go to your dashboard, select “add New” from the drop down menu and type away! WordPress allows you to save drafts as you go, and also lets you preview your post before publishing. I admit I was a little trigger-happy and over the course of this week I accidentally published HTML code as an entry, which I had to delete right away, no biggie it was easy to fix!

And the crazy thing is, that as soon as I published my first posts, I tweeted about it and invited people to check out my new blog. The best part was, people came and they left wonderful comments congratulating me on launching my blog and engaging in conversation. When blog post comments come in, you receive email notification and then are directed to approve and publish or ignore the comments. Comments are a sign that you are engaging your audience, so if you stop by let someone know you were there: say Hi, offer advice, express your point of view, share an experience, I invite all of my visitors to leave me a comment!

I have been posting diligently every day so far this week, and the more I play around with WordPress.com the more confident I am that I can handle self hosting and site maintenance on my own! I am allowing myself one week on WordPress.com, and then everything will be rolled over to a self-hosted version of InteractiveAmy.com, my home on the World Wide Web. I hope you’ll come visit!

** Thank you to Nile Flores, who invited me to write this guest post for her blog Blondish.net!

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Becoming an Internet Celebrity – Erin Blaskie at WordCamp Chicago

Amy — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:24:09 +0000

Andy Warhol said that everyone will have his or her 15 minutes of fame. But what if you want more than 15 minutes?

How can YOU become an Internet celebrity?

At WordCamp Chicago Erin Blaskie gave a standout presentation entitled “Becoming an Internet Celebrity using WordPress and Social Media.” Anyone looking to break into the spotlight, pay attention!

Who is Erin Blaskie, and what makes her an Internet celebrity? Erin is an Internet Marketing Strategist from Ontario, Canada, or as she describes herself, “A Girl Involved in a Passionate Love Affair with Internet Marketing.” In order to demonstrate how to gain exposure and maintain relevancy within a target market; Erin created an alter ego and became her own real life case study – Bonus: an Internet Celebrity was born!

Meet Erin Games.

Erin Games did not exist before February 2009. Erin Games 1.0 was created using Brian Gardner’s Church theme on WordPress, social media channels including YouTube and Twitter, and a World of Warcraft membership. Within four months, the Erin Games YouTube channel had over 9,000 views and 500 subscribers, and was listed on the second page of YouTube’s Gaming Channel. Erin Games gained over 2,000 followers on Twitter, and the website now ranks at 279,000 of US sites according to Alexa. On top of that, Erin was asked to cover ComicCon and BlizzCon, she is the gaming/MMO correspondent for TheStream.tv, and was offered a clothing line sponsorship with Jinx.com!

How can you apply a similar strategy to become an Internet celebrity in your area of interest?

Internet celebrity is interchangeable with industry expert, leader, guru, go-to person. Simply stated, it’s all about the know, like and trust factor. – Michael Port

To begin your path to stardom:

Chose a specific target market where you have knowledge and passion
Share your personality!
Target specific people in the industry and on the web who will drive the brand forward, partner with larger sites for increased exposure
Gather a following for your blog as opposed to capturing a one-time audience
Create buzz and appeal for your markets, which increases sales, visibility and market appeal

Remember – It is important to maintain relevance to YOUR target market, not the entire world.

Authenticity sells, so be yourself!

People will seek you out when you give them reason to, don’t try to fit into a mold.

When you are blogging, do so in your own voice, so people get to learn about YOU and not just your company or chosen topic.

Tools to get you started:

Video – if you are comfortable with it, get on YouTube and do videos about your content area
Blog different mediums, video, blog posts, excerpts from other bloggers, give people a lot of things to interact with.
Interweave your efforts – when you blog tweet about it, turn blog post into articles, turn videos into blog posts.
Live streaming video sessions – invite people to come and ask you questions
Guest bloggers – invite industry leaders to blog on your site
Interaction & interactivity – get community involved through contests, etc (freebies help sell stuff)
Get out of your bubble – look at industry and outside of your industry to see what’s hot now
Attend specific events: going to networking events & conferences

Remember – Reach out as much as your expect to be reached to…this is a two- way street!

Erin has it going on, and is therefore an Internet Celebrity in my eyes (even though I am not a gamer!) You should get to know Erin too, and can by visiting her sites:
www.bsetc.ca
www.thevacoach.com
www.learnaboutonlinebusiness.com

In case I haven’t encountered your favorite Internet Celebrity yet, please turn me on to some of your favorites!

Don’t forget – It is OK to talk about what you do, who you are and why you’re the Rockstar in your industry.

If you are an aspiring Internet Celebrity plug yourself below!

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What I Learned at WordCamp Chicago

Amy — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:25:28 +0000

Is it possible for a weekend at WordCamp to turn someone into a blogger?

Yes, I am living proof!

This past weekend, I attended WordCamp Chicago to immerse myself in the world of WordPress. While not an entry level blog conference, this blogging newbie was on a mission to learn from the best.

I will follow up with more WordCamp Chicago highlights and presentation recaps in posts to come, but in the meantime here are some takeaways that inspired me to log into WordPress and create an account before heading home after my first day at WordCamp Chicago.

Liz Strauss, founder of SOBCon and blogger extraordinaire kicked off WordCamp Chicago with a lesson on how to make your blog stand out. With over 100 million blogs out there, any and all tips will certainly help!

If you’re still thinking about what you’re going to blog about – choose something that you love! Blogging about your passion will attract like-minded people, and you will also look really smart!

People can find information anywhere, blog your experience with your information.

For example – if movie critics only blogged information, all of the movie reviews would be the same.

(And speaking of movies, if you are a movie buff with a small bladder, check out RunPee.com, it tells you the best time to run to the restroom mid-movie, just heard about that site and had to share!!)

So now that you have something to write about, how does one build online influence?

According to Micah Baldwin, founder of #FollowFriday, if you truly want to be influential online, just influence one person. He even provided a formula to back that up:

Influence = Reach [Brand*Expertise*Trust], where reach is a multiplier of influence.

If I lost you at #FollowFriday, here is the run down – each Friday on Twitter, users recommend interesting and exciting people to follow, and people follow them back. Talk about extending your influence, a recommendation from someone you trust goes a long way!

WordPress can do just about anything…So where does one begin?

A great way to learn is by example, and seeing how other people have used the platform is a great place to start! Luckily, Doug Hanna’s session was about “Showcasing the WordPress Showcase.”

In order to be included in the WordPress Showcase:
-   you have to use WordPress in a unique and innovative way,
-   have thousands of regular readers,
-   be written by someone famous, or notable in his/her particular field,
-   or represent notable organization, government entity, corporation as an official blog or website.

If WordPress is good enough for Martha Stewart, Sir Richard Branson, Harvard Law School and I Can Haz Cheezburger, it is good enough for me! Check out the showcase, what are your favorite WordPress sites?

You didnt have to attend WordCamp to have great advice to share – so tell me, what are your tips for new bloggers? Please share some pearls of wisdom, resources or words of inspiration for those who are just joining the world of WordPress.

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