January marks a new year and new opportunity to make and achieve your business goals. If your WordPress website is part of your goals, you are going to need to make sure that it is as healthy as possible. What do I mean by a healthy WordPress? A healthy WordPress site is one that is backed up on a regular basis, always updated to new versions of the core and plugins, and is secure. If
Read MoreYou may have noticed something new with Instagram. Stories is Instagram’s version of Snapchat in that it allows you to create stories that will last in your followers’ feed for 24 hours. This can be a an image, a video, or a set of videos and images. You can add text onto the images as well as doodles. People that already use Snapchat have been quick to jump into Instagram Stories, for everyone else there
Read MoreHave you ever started putting together an email campaign, but stopped because you realized that it wouldn’t be relevant to everyone on your list? Maybe you are having a local event and your subscribers on the other side or the country or world wouldn’t be interested. Maybe you want to send a reminder about a promotion to convert new customers, but don’t want it to land in a current customer’s inbox. It may be time
Read MoreRetargeting and remarketing are very similar words and have similar purposes, but are executed in different ways. I am willing to bet you have seen both in action as a consumer. Let me explain. Let’s say one day you are doing some searches on Amazon.com for a new camera. You look at several cameras, but you are not ready to make a purchase so you leave the site and go about your business. The next
Read MoreAccording to Wikipedia, Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks. If you begin to do some research into what marketing automation is, you can quickly get overwhelmed. There are so many tools you can use and there are even more features and processes to try and manage. The term
Read MoreI started my business over 17 years ago when the majority of Internet users were still on dial-up, websites were coded by hand and we walked uphill both ways to school in the snow. Ok, so maybe that last one isn’t true, but technology has become easier to use and less expensive to implement than ever. Technology that was only available to large Fortune 500 companies is now available to smaller businesses with much smaller
Read MoreWe all know to collect email addresses on our websites, but if we interact with our target audience other places such as your store, a craft fair, tradeshow or speaking event it can be a little more difficult. The standard solution has been paper and pen. Once you collect those addresses on paper, someone has to then type all those contacts into your email software. This takes a lot of time and can be difficult
Read MoreAnyone that knows me and my family personally, knows we love all things Disney and always look forward to our yearly trip to Disney World. As a marketer, these trips are also research into how to provide the best customer experience possible. The most impressive thing with their customer experience is just how consistent their messaging and branding is across all their touchpoints. What is a touchpoint? A touchpoint refers to any interaction between a
Read More(This post was originally a guest post I did for Wood Street’s blog) It’s no secret having a niche is important in business these days, but it can be hard to identify the niche that will work best for you. Let’s take a look at a few characteristics that go into making the anatomy of a good niche. Authentic. By authentic, I mean you should be both knowledgeable about your niche and you should like
Read MoreThis was sent to my email list a few months ago. As I have said before, what I send to my email list is not published or shared anywhere else. It is exclusive to my subscribers, but I decided to make an exception today for 2 reasons. One, I think this topic is very important and the basis for everything I am doing for clients right now. Second, I want to share with you the
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