Why use WordPress?

There are many free blogging and CMS tools available to use. I recommend WordPress for a number of reasons

• WordPress is free
• WordPress is easy to use
• WordPress is highly customisable
• WordPress is evolving every day
• WordPress is very well supported

Why host WordPress rather than use WordPress.com?

Hosting your own WordPress blog gives you more freedom to customise the product by adding more plugins and enhancements. This gives you more independence and is also a great way to learn a little about how hosting works.

How do I set up a WordPress blog?

Follow the following steps to learn how to set up a WordPress blog.

1. Research your marketplace – Use the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool to find out what your audience is searching for in Google. This will give you great ideas for blog content and provide you with some suggestions for exact match domain names that may be available.
2. Register your own domain name  – There are many ways to get cheap domain names. Get a domain with a suffix that is relevant to your target audience (for example a .uk domain for the UK market) and try and get an exact match domain name (a domain name that exactly matches a phrase you want to rank for like cheaphotelsinwales.co.uk). If no exact match domain names are available look for sites that sell pre owned domains.
3. Get some web hosting – To have your own site you need your own hosting. Site5.com is a great place to start – you can get reliable blog hosting in your own country for as little as $4.95 per month.
4. Install WordPress – Once your hosting is set up at your domain name you can install WordPress. This is easy. Assuming you have Site5 hosting you navigate to SiteAdmin, click Web Apps on the left hand side then select Fantastico. Within Fantastico select WordPress and follow the three easy steps by completing the form fields. This should install WordPress in your domain.

Setting Up WordPress

You have nearly learned how to set up a WordPress blog. To complete the final stages in the process you need to login to your admin panel at yourdomain.com/wp-admin with the username and password you selected in the previous step. Once logged in you need to complete 2 tasks:

1. Add www to the WordPress URL – Click the settings tab in the right hand side menu. Add a www in the correct place in the field ‘WordPress address (URL)’. Do the same in the field ‘Site address (URL)’. Click save changes.
2. SEO Friendly WordPress URL – Change WordPress URL’s to make them search engine friendly: From setings click permalinks on the right. Select the ‘Custom Structure’ Option and change it to /%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/

Adding Great Content

If you are still interested in learning how to set up a WordPress blog there is only one final step. This is the most difficult and time consuming: Adding great content.

Colleagues and friends who work in traditional media businesses frequently ask me for advice on how to get a career in digital. Unlike medicine or the law there is no formal entry structure so ‘getting in’ is considerably less formal. After interviewing hundreds of candidates for digital roles the tips below will guide any budding digital evangelist as to how to get a career in digital. Following these steps will demonstrate more digital knowledge and desire for the business than most candidates I have met.

Here are my 16 steps to follow if you want to know how to get a career in digital:

1. Learn about the digital industry
2. Find out how to set up your own blog
3. Establish a presence in social media channels for your blog
4. Set-up tracking, analytics, moitoring and reporting for your blog and social media channels
5. Publish great content regularly to your blog
6. Use social media to tease audiences
7. Grow the audience Whto your blog
8. Make your blog pay
9. Analyse what is working and what is not
10. Plan improvements to your blog and social media presence
11. Gather your own great case studies
12. Decide what area of digital you want to specialise in
13. Learn more about your area of specialism
14. Get digital qualifications
15. Digitise your CV
16. Apply for digital roles

Let me know what you think about these suggestions as to how to get a career in digital.

After using an Apple iPad for over a year, and in the process becoming the number one advocate for tablets, I was keen to compare the experience with an Android Tablet. Great though the Apple product is I found the lack of FLASH frustrating and the need to pay for mediocre Apps upsetting.

I needed a low cost Android Tablet with 32Gb of hard disk space and child friendly construction to deal with everything a three year old can do it. After much shopping around I decided on the Acer Aspire ICONIA A500 Tablet.

My brief was to give the students an insight in to how a digital agency approaches a pitch and enable the team to gain some experience pitching an idea to a prospective client. I worked with the students studying a range of MSc and MBA courses.The scenario we worked on involved a small independent high street cycle shop with a modest online presence. The outcome is essential reading for any small retailer wishing to get the best out of online trading or any prospective digital employer looking to recruit exceptional talent to lead their online strategy.

The students divided in to teams of four. Each team assumed the role of a digital agency.

All of the teams were given the same brief and were asked to present their recommendations in only three hours. The resulting presentations were first class. A downloadable PDF shows the diverse range of ideas and suggestions that the team produced. This is a model any independent business with an ecommerce presence should follow.

The brief  focussed on a real life cycle shop so the teams could do some real world research. I have changed the detail to protect the anonymity of the cycle shop in question:

Craig Johnson Cycles has had a website for a number of years but doesn’t get much business from it. You have twenty minutes out of Mr Johnson’s busy schedule to identify areas for improvement in his online marketing strategy and show how he can benefit from the following digital services provided by Photolink Creative Group:

•    Website Design and Development
•    Email Marketing
•    Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
•    Pay per Click Advertising (PPC)
•    Social Media (SMM / SMO)

In this scenario you have already had a fact find meeting. You know that Mr Johnson currently spends £50k each year on his marketing in the regional press, website updates, directories and leafleting. His website is three years old and cost over £10k to build. He has a database of 10,000 clients with email addresses. Most people who find the website in search engines use terms like ‘Craig Johnson’ or ‘Hexham Cycle Shop’.

His biggest seller is the Specialized Rock Hopper mountain bike and his average order is £250. He makes a 40% margin on this product. If you need any other facts to complete your pitch just make them up, or use your questioning skill to tease additional information from Mr Johnson during the pitch.

Identify ways to convince Mr Johnson that this budget could achieve a better return on investment if channelled through digital options. Look at the existing website and identify areas for improvement with regard to the wording, design and its ability to perform in search engines.

The resulting presentations were first class. A number of diverse themes were highlighted in detail:

• Web Design: The teams identified many improvements to make the site easier to use and showcase products more effectively. One group even presented a wireframe design despite the fact there was less than 3 hours for the task!
• Web Development: Using an off the shelf ecommerce system with a simple checkout process was  highlighted as a way to make buying easier and also save time and money updating the latest offers.
• Website Content: Diversifying content to include reviews, suggested routes, videos, 360 degree images and professional photography was suggested to improve the sales message and engage potential customers.
• Search Engine Optimisation: Technical, content, linking and research elements were correctly identified as areas for improvement to increase customer numbers, generate sales, improve brand perception and grow market share.
• Email Marketing: Growing the database, more targeted messages and effective tracking were identified as essential to keep existing customers coming back for more.
• Social Media: Utilising Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn were highlighted as online places to engage with new customers whilst portraying a softer sales message.
• Pay per Click: The return on investment calculations highlighted by some of the teams were compelling and worthy of commitment from the client on the day. One group correctly identified the return on investment on an easy to follow spread sheet.
• E-CRM: The need to collate all marketing data to analyse customer habits and formulate effective targeted campaigns was presented in an effective manner.
• Competitions, Promotions and Events: Using offline events and viral competitions would reach out to new customers.
• Usability and Information Architecture: The detailed knowledge demonstrated in these areas by some students is close to that one would expect from a professional designer!

When collated together the collective creative ideas and lateral thinking from the students was more than a match for many small digital agencies.

The compelling way that the different approaches were presented was more than a match for many journeymen sales people currently trying their arm at selling digital services.

The day was very enjoyable, worthwhile and rewarding for all. If the crop of students studying at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School is representative of future entrants in to the digital marketplace than I am convinced the future for creativity in digital is bright.

Don’t just take my word for it – download the online marketing tips for cycle shops PDF summarising the collective thoughts presented on the day and give me your comments below.

If you are an ecommerce business and want to work with a team who will deliver these ideas today please contact me or give me a call at Photolink Creative Group

• website design
• website development
• mobile marketing
• search engine optimisation
• pay per click advertising
• web analytics
• social media
• e-mail marketing

Most catchy valuable domains are already registered so it is a hard task thinking up great ideas for domain names in the first place. Once you have identified a domain name that is not registered it is then a task trying to find the best deals on cheap domain names.

As any experienced domain name owner will tell you the price you pay can vary significantly from one provider to another. Different extensions have different prices and not all websites provide the best rates for every extension – To get cheap domain names it is recommended that different extensions are registered with different providers.

To make this process easier here are my suggestions for locating cheap domain names.

.co.uk cheap domain names

Buying cheap domain names ending with the extension .co.uk is best done via 123-reg. This company have been helping internet marketeers take advantage of their great service for years. The service is slick, the control panel well equipped and help desk satisfactory for almost any online operator. The service is very competitive and even enables webmasters to transfer .co.uk domain names free of charge.

.com cheap domain names

A .com domain name is the preferred extension for most businesses. Having a .com domain indicates an established site and has international coverage so is great for global organisations. GoDaddy is difficult to beat for cheap domain names ending in .com. Millions of domain names are hosted with this service and the website is easy to navigate. Look out for GoDaddy promo codes to make additional savings on domains.

I think that this opinion is way off the mark and that  reciprocal links can be good for your site.

For example, take a lowly blog like this Fly Fishing site. The traffic levels are likely to be unremarkable. The site is hardly bursting with quality content and the brand awareness of this is a big fat zero! If this blog was able to get some good quality reciprocal links from established angling websites for publishers and retailers this would be likely to increase traffic, particularly from website owners with similar properties. Some good unique content may encourage the audience driven to the site by reciprocal links to even set up one way links.

The phrase ‘sprat to catch a mackrel’ springs to mind.

Alternatively, the site could resist reciprocal linking and continue to stagnate forever.

On a more extreme note: Could a credible web marketer turn down a reciprocal link with the BBC or the public sector?

In 1996 this was what was known as ‘New Media’ when I first knocked on by bosses door at the Hexham Courant newspaper and told him I thought we could make some good money out of the ‘Information Super Highway’. Thankfully he backed my ideas,  unlike the dozens of regional press executives who in 1997 belly laughed at my suggestion that their monopolies of motors, recrutiment and property advertising could be under threat. I doubt they still find this amusing.