WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service... » Marketing Tips

Time to Ditch Your Comfort Zone?

Judith — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:38:33 +0000

Ask yourself if you are in your comfort zone and be honest about it. If the answer is “Yes”; or even “sorta” it’s time to step out — it’s time for you to be prepared to be a fish out of water!

Once you are willing to leave your comfort zone, you’ll find that almost magically you will be more open minded and willing to seriously entertain the concepts, methodologies, practices and reality of what it takes to survive and thrive online!

Ask any successful Nentrepreneur and they will tell you that they leave their comfort zone on a regular basis!

comfort zone ~ noun: an environment or situation in which a person feels secure or at ease; also figuratively, an established lifestyle in which a person feels comfortable as long as there is no drastic change

Nothing online resembles to the above. If you want online success you need to be prepared to leave your comfort zone in the dust!

As a matter of fact, those who do ditch their comfort zone, do not feel 100% secure, are not completely comfortable with testing out new things and are not entirely open to drastic change. But they do it anyway…

I remember one of my most stressful comfort zone desertions. I had to empty some information from one of my site’s databases. Not the whole database — just the tables that contained invalid and no longer needed data. I remember how nervous I was — I checked and double-checked I was doing the right thing. I remember thinking (and actually saying a little prayer) that I wasn’t going to crash or destroy the whole database in the process!

Once I completed that task I was not only relieved that I did it properly, I was actually pleasantly surprised the site in question didn’t crash and was still working properly! That night I had several shots of Ouzo in celebration. Now, doing this task is a no-brainer. All because I pushed myself to learn and challenged myself to complete that task risking possible Armageddon.

When was the last time you left your comfort zone? A bit of discomfort can be a great motivator and downright exciting due to the anticipation of the unknown that lies ahead. Give it a try!

“We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.” ~ Thomas Edison

At your service,

Your WordPress Consultant

Time to Ditch Your Comfort Zone? is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

5 Characteristics of Successful WordPress Site Owners

Judith — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:44:35 +0000

Everyone wants online success, right? But why is it that so few actually live the experience? There are many reasons — buying into the hype, not willing to work hard, not willing to learn… I could go on.

But for those who do reap online rewards there are certain characteristics they all have in common when it comes to having a successful WordPress Web site.

Prioritization of Certain Tasks: Understanding what is at the core of your program and what you must do on a regular basis is critical. For example, having a backup system in place and keeping your theme and plugins updated is at the top of that list. (I work on sites every day that do not have a backup process in place!) Excuses of it being too difficult is not something that comes to mind. You realize the importance of protecting your hard work and your online presence.

Professional Communication Skills: You respond to comments (and site inquiries) promptly (if not sooner) in a courteous, professional and educated manner. This goes for your social media interaction too.

Scheduling and Follow Through: You post regularly with content your site visitors will value in a tone that talks to them — not at them. You leave out all the narcissistic hyperbole you see on so many other sites that is of no value to site visitors. You freely and willingly share your knowledge and expertise knowing doing so lends to your credibility and authority without you having to be braggadocios.

Expert Listeners: You learned a long time ago that everything you ever need to know to be successful can be found if you take the wax out of your ears. You relish the tremendous insights into what direction you should go, what content you should add and what you need to plan for by being keenly aware of what your market is discussing. If customers or site visitors ask you the same questions more than once you take note and add the topic to your FAQ and/or posting schedule.

Embracing Knowledge Acquisition: That’s fancy-schmancy for being open to learning and the frustration that goes with that. You understand that technology isn’t going to wait or slow just for you so you hop on the train and hang on for the ride. You read, review, test, tune and try new concepts, programs, software, plugins, themes — whatever it takes — so that you remain on the edge. Yeah, that can be as frustrating as hell, but you know this is how you can keep ahead of your perceived competitors while contributing to your inevitable success.

If you cannot minimally acquire the above characteristics, you really should not expect any realistic level of success. Online is not a forgiving environment — as a matter of fact it is now one of the most brutally competitive business arenas that exists.

If you approach your program by keeping these five characteristics front and center and do your very best to do your best — you will enjoy results. Don’t claim you are “trying” — become a doer and do! That is the ultimate characteristic of a successful WordPress site owner!

At your service,

Your WordPress Consultant

5 Characteristics of Successful WordPress Site Owners is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

WordPress Site Stat Tips You Can’t Live Without

Judith — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:33:02 +0000

You know you are getting traffic to your Web site — but that isn’t good enough! You you really need to know the nitty-gritty of your Web sites statistics so that you can plan accordingly when it comes to landing pages, new content or even revising/resurrecting older content. Did you know that you have this data at your finger tips 24/7?

If your hosting server has a cPanel, you’ll find your Web site’s stats located in Logs | AWSTATS. Every host is different so if you cannot locate your stats, just ask your hosts where they are located.

When most folks login to their stats they are overwhelmed with all the data displayed — graphs and menus abound explaining pretty much every bit and byte of activity on your site. Many express surprise at how much is being tracked on the server side with the next comment being “what do I do with all this?”

Below are the five criteria, that if you work towards becoming familiar and comfortable with — you’ll have a very good idea as to what is going on with your site.

Unique Visitors: You hear site owners throw around how many “hits” their site gets. While that large number may sound impressive, when you know what hits really are you can then understand why that is not as important of a metric as Unique Visitors. The simplest way to explain hits is that hits are every call to the server to respond to a request. Look at your home page and count how many different images are displayed — each one is a hit. Then you add to that number your home page file itself and every script that is called in the background to display your home page. See where I’m going? One visitor can be responsible for a bunch of hits! That is why looking for Unique Visitors — individual different visitors to your site — gives you a more accurate view of the number of actual visitors to your site.
Top Entry Pages: This metric will show the page visitors entered your site on. Not everyone is going to land on your homepage the first time to your site. That is why it is so important to SEO each and every page with a unique Title and Description that accurately reflects the topic at hand so that it can stand on its own and get found when searched for. Top Entry Pages can show you the information the is most sought out and that visitors are interested in so you build on that moving forward.
Top Exit Pages: This will tell you where folks are leaving giving you an insight on where you may want to work on your calls to action. Look for patterns to determine if you need to work on your navigation or content flow. The fact is visitors will exit at some point so use this information to fine tune your top exit pages.
Terms: Here you will find the keywords and phrases used to find your site. You may be surprised at what you find! While we work so hard at targeting our primary terms in our SEO efforts, many times we are also optimizing for other terms that naturally are used in those efforts. In addition, this metric gives you a solid view of what potential customers are looking for so you can provide more of the same.
Referrers: In this area of your stats you will find referring search engines and sites. These are the sites that links were clicked on to get to your site. Not only does this metric show you which search engines are sending your the most traffic, you will also see where other sites have linked into your site. I make a habit of checking out these sites and if I like what I see, I take a moment to e-mail the site owner and thank them for their support. I’ve also found scrapper links — sites that have mechanically scrapped my content and put it on their site. In some cases I don’t mind, but if they butcher my content, or change every other word into a keyword link that they commercially gain from, that site owner will hear from me too with a request to remove my copyright protected collateral.

These five criteria will help you determine what is working, what isn’t and what to add more of. There is a ton of other information contained within your server logs that is pretty self-explanatory. The more you understand your stats the better you are able to notice trends and differences in site activity.

Make a point of visiting your stats at least once every month. This allows you to be more proactive when considering the growth and nurturing of your site.

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”
Frank Herbert (1920 – 1986)

At your service,

Your WordPress Consultant

WordPress Site Stat Tips You Can’t Live Without is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...