Month: April 2010

Posted on

Make Sure You Have a WordPress Backup Application

This last week a client that I help on occasion who has one of the highest traffic blogs that I have seen lost his MySQL database that runs his WordPress blog. The crash was devastating to his blog and to his business. What is even worse is that he did not have a recent backup of his blog post; lost were 6 months of blog posts and comments.

To prevent this from happening to you, I recommend that every WordPress owner install a WordPress plug-in called WP-DB-Backup. This simple to use and configure blog post database backup allows you to email yourself a backup of your blog posts in MySQL format on a schedule you select.

I routinely backup my blog posts weekly and recommend that all clients and WordPress users do the same. Although you can tell the application to store your backup on your web server, I like the additional security of saving the backup to my own hard disk.

Just make sure that once you install the plug-in that you review it to make sure that your folder is writable. You will access the plug-in control panel from your WordPress “Tools” navigation link. If the directory location is not writable, you will need to correct that to use the plug-in.

Although you may never have a situation when you will need your backup, what if you even do. Will you be wishing you had a backup plan in place like the client I mentioned in the first paragraph or will you be able to get back up and running quickly only losing a day or two of blog posts?

Posted on

TweetMeme Allowing Others to Share Your Content on Twitter

I have just recently added TweetMeme to my blog. That’s the little icon to the right of each post that allows you to click the word tweet and share my content on Twitter, plus tracks how many people have retweeted a blog post.  This is similar to the Digg icon you may have seen on the Web on other sites.

Both TweetMeme and the Digg icon allow for easy ways to encourage the sharing of your content in new innovative ways. Take a look at the bottom of our blog post and you will also see our Share This icon. This WordPress plug-in gives your readers more options to share your content on Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking sites.

The reason I have chosen TweetMeme over the Digg icon is simply that I am much more active on Twitter at this time than I am on social bookmarking sites.

It is very simple to set up TweetMeme on your blog or on your web pages.  Here is a link to the TweetMeme plug-in page for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and other applications. If you prefer to install TweetMeme on a web page, here is the link to the code creator for pages, RSS feeds, emails, and other ways to share your content.

By encouraging the sharing of your content you reach a much wider audience and create more opportunities for your content to go viral. TweetMeme makes it easy!

Posted on

Press Release Writing Seems Easy, But Is It Really?

We’ve started writing press releases again after a several month hiatus. Writing a good press release is a real art and requires a different mind set than either blogging, content writing, or creating marketing content.

Press releases are best written in a third person, objective, informational tone. It is not unusual for me to spend two hours to three hours in writing a press release. The wording has too be dense yet creative, simple yet engaging, and informative and not too self serving.

That being said some of our press releases have really gotten our clients noticed. One press release got one of our client’s a call from a buyer at the Shopping Network, another got a phone call from Inside Edition, and another got an interview in a news piece that was nationally syndicated over 50 television stations on the nightly news.

Not every press release grabs the mainstream media attention, but a well-written press release on a topic that is trending can reap big rewards with free press and news media coverage.

When I write a press release I use the format that PRWeb, my favorite supplier, uses – the who, what, where, when approach. I always use a title, summary, and about closing complete with contact information. I find that that is the most concise and professional format.

Client’s sometimes get confused on press releases. They are not marketing pieces (well not like the typical marketing piece), they are not stories, they are not white papers, and they are not blog posts. Press releases are short pieces that put a newsworthy event in a easy to understand concise format to try to engage the media. I find it important to always have an angle to use as an approach. Sometimes with the right angle you can attract a national news audience.

To check out samples and pricing for our press release writing services I invite you to visit http://www.mccordweb.com/copywriting/press-release.php.

Posted on

Google AdWords Trends for April

This is interesting and as I am seeing this over many accounts I felt it warranted a comment. Conversions are very tough to come by so far this month using Google AdWords and nearly non-existent on Yahoo.

I have a feeling that much of this behavior is tied to tax time and feel that things will open back up for advertisers after April 15th, but so far this month and starting at the end of March I have seen a consistent drop in the number of lead conversions.  Yahoo seems to be hit the hardest, but Google AdWords is affected strongly as well.

Click traffic and impression traffic is still good at this point, but people are not buying at this time. AdWords works in cycles with ebbs and flows. It is the advertiser who sticks through the tough and good times that ends up with the best results. So if things are “flat” in your Google AdWords account, take heart other advertisers across many business sectors are experiencing this same trend.