Kacee’s Posts – Page 15

What to Do When Your Web Site Goes Down

March 30, 2013 Beth Devine

Your web site is down. Your customers are unable to find you. Your business is an unreachable Internet entity. Your frustration level reacts with a terminal velocity akin to Superman.

Relax. It’s inevitable that your web site will experience some downtime. Servers are not in a position to guarantee 100% site uptime.

A .1% Downtime Is Over 8 Hours a Year

Maintaining 99.8% uptime means nearly eighteen hours of downtime a year. When you experience web site downtime, you’re experiencing what every site owner experiences.

Even top sites have to manage site downtime. Here’s the evidence: Check out the site downrightnow where favorite web services are monitored for status alerts on any site issues, including Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Netflix.

Where There is Internet Service, There is Interruption

Before you notify your web host provider, here are several things to check to be sure the issue is with your web site.

1. Refresh your web site page.

By clicking the “reload” button located next to the web site address at the top of your screen, your browser if forced to download the most recent version of your web site.

2. Try to connect to another well-known web site, such as Google.com.

If your web site page won’t reload or you can’t access a different web site, then the problem is an internet connection issue and you should contact your internet service provider.

3. Check your domain registration at Whois.net.

By entering your web site name, you can check to see if your domain name registration has expired and if you simply need to renew your registration with the domain name registrar to get your web site back up and running.

If you have a web site provider like Web Savvy Marketers, we take care of this for you before it ever expires.

4. Contact a friend and ask them to check your site as a last-ditch effort to be sure it’s down.

They can also check Where’s It Up or Down for Everyone or Just Me to see if your site is down for others and not just you.

5. Call your web hosting provider.

When it’s an issue that lies with the server, your web hosting service will be able to make the necessary calls to confirm any technical difficulties to get your site up and running again.

Major server issues are not uncommon, as in the major web host and domain registrar GoDaddy outage, which took down millions of sites.

The World Wide Web runs 24/7, which means your website is continually open to technical problems as well as cyber attacks. Cyber thieves continually compromise Internet security. The FBI has had to step in, shutting down thousand of sites in an effort to do a global clean up.

We Fix Your Website Woes

Having a web hosting provider you can easily reach, whom you can count on to be available to take your phone calls when your web site’s function is in question, is the key to obtaining quick recovery to web site problems.

Let us know if we can help with your web hosting questions by leaving a comment below.

The Hashtag is Invading

March 24, 2013 Beth Devine

Amidst the Internet rumblings of a #hashtaginvasion, there are those who remain blissfully unaware.

“Why is there a number sign before all these highlighted words?” my husband asked me this week as he checked out my latest tweets on Twitter.

Even my college-aged son, who’d been creating his own off-the-wall Twitter hashtags for weeks, didn’t realize that hashtags are links to a common page where all other hashtags like it can be followed.

The Demise of Hashtag Ignorance

This obliviousness is about to change. The goliath of social media, Facebook, is stomping into your Timeline, hashtags in hand.

No longer will you be able to avoid it, much to the distress of hashtag-bashing opponents. Facebook page “This is Not Twitter. Hashtags Don’t Work Here” recently hit 10,000 fans, with the cause “If you can’t click it, it’s not real.”

Reality is about to change. With hashtags working on Facebook, will users take to it like they do on Twitter? We can be sure of one thing. Facebook’s hashtag invasion will assure more people understand it’s use.

And You Thought Hashtag was a Weird Name

Hashtag has a unique history in the name “octothorpe.” It seems that Bell Laboratories’ scientists made up the name for the newly added key with the eight-pointed edges symbol, what we commonly call the pound key, made to send instructions to the operator.

Today the hashtag continues to send instructions in the form of common topics, conversation beginnings, and search options.

Hashtags are used on Twitter as keywords or phrases (with no spaces) preceded by a hash mark (#) to identify a topic of interest, create and facilitate a search, and categorize Tweets.

Hashtag Envy Breeds Copycats

A good thing begs to be imitated. Whereas Twitter refuses to buddy up with Facebook-owned, hashtag-using Instagram, its new photo-flame, Flickr, has just introduced an IOS app using – you guessed it – hashtags.

It doesn’t stop there.

Google+ has adopted the hashtag, listing its Trending Topics with hashtag-laden keywords, promoting awareness on topics such as #DownSyndrome and #WorldWaterDay.

As of now, hashtags don’t have functionality on Facebook or Pinterest, although people add them to status updates and pin descriptions, much to the annoyance of those who understand how they work.

Once Facebook incorporates the hashtag function, it will be similar to tagging for people and location with the @ symbol. With the # symbol, anyone who wants their posts easily searched and categorized can create public posts based on specific keywords.

Hashtag is Still a Weird Name

There are those out there, undoubtedly from Twitterland, who are born and bred on hashtags. A baby girl recently named Hashtag marks the level of social media preoccupation some of us share.

France is not immune to the hashtag infiltration, although they’ve banned the use of the word. Instead, social media followers must use the French term for “sharp word.”

What else is there to do but accept the pointed-edge invasion and follow the hashtag links? Is our social media destiny to be a clamoring for hashtag acknowledgement and authority?

What about you? Are you a hashtag supporter?

Photos are Getting Bigger: On Facebook and Beyond

March 8, 2013 Beth Devine

Facebook Gives Visuals the Royal Treatment

Content may still be king, but images, videos, and music are holding higher court on Facebook. Facebook’s changes in its News Feed include new ways to filter what you see as you pay homage to the stream of information. No longer will the various feed options be hidden in the left sidebar.

Oh, you didn’t know about those either? They’ve been spread out among the Newsfeed, Pages, and Apps categories, where you’ll still find them until the upgrades are fully dispersed.

With the News Feed upgrade, front and top-center or top-right (depending on what type of device you’re on), you’ll find options for a photos feed highlighting Facebook and Instagram photos, and a remade music feed sharing what friends are listening to, as well as new albums and concerts.

Instagram Takes the Stage

The format is very much like Instagram in its clutter-reduced and photo-focused approach. Richer content, larger visuals, and interactivity is designed into the News Feed as cross-platform features. Whether you’re viewing on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, the results will be similar.

Images from both friends and advertisements are larger as part of this new wave of dedicated feed. Since acquiring Instagram, this is a strategic move to utilize the power of the photo. Studies show that we process images 60,000 times faster than text, and Facebook photos generate more engagement than text alone.

Read: more likes, comments, and link clicks, all in less time.

It’s easy enough to satisfy that basic desire to respond to images in Facebook and drive more traffic to your website. Instead of sharing as a link, which brings up a smaller-sized photo (these screen shots are pre-News Feed updates), add as a photo and include a comment with the relevant link.

Be sure to always include a live link to allow easy click-through to your website. With the add photos/video option, you can share more than one photo to further engage your users.

Photos are Content’s New Queen

Photos are growing in size and number everywhere. On Google+, the cover photo specs just got bigger, so be sure to update yours with an eye-catching maximum resolution of 2120 x 1192.

Larger photo backgrounds are a fast-growing design trend and large images on website homepages are surging on the swell of the photo-riffic movement. While these make marketing sense in capturing your visitor’s attention, other photo trends lean more towards the unconventional.

Stranger Than Photo Fiction

Facebook’s Poke app came out soon after Snapchat, both boasting disappearing photos and videos for your ephemeral viewing pleasure. With Poke, the photos and videos are only viewable for up to ten seconds before they disappear, and a warning will appear if a screenshot was taken.

Beware of the temptation to send something you’ll regret later. Sources say that disappear is different from delete, however, and there are ways to record Poke videos permanently without alerting the sender.

Stemming from the disappearing-photo craze are horror stories based on the phenomenon. And any picture-taking and photo-sharing culture wouldn’t be complete without the bizarre Pretty Girls Making Ugly Faces as seen on Reddit, a user-generated social networking site similar to Digg.

Let us know what you think of the Facebook News Feed changes. Do you think that visual integration is at a saturation point, or are we merely skimming the surface of a potential image-laden future?

This is Your Brain on the Internet

March 4, 2013 Beth Devine

Are you a victim of the internet? — Flickr photo: Wallula Junction

If you’re reading this, you may already be a victim. Driven to distraction with the Internet, you are well on your way to becoming part of the “pancake people” phenomenon.

Those of us – and we are many – who have fallen under the spell of instant gratification, information overload, and easy access, are at risk of mirroring the World Wide Web that we are so intimately connected with: “Spread wide and thin” like pancakes, as playwright Richard Foreman describes the Western culture.

If you find it difficult to read long essays, rarely ever read books, and find yourself bouncing from link to link, skimming instead of actually reading, you’re in danger of growing flat. What’s missing from today’s computer-centered thinking is “deep reading,” which leads to deep thinking.

Allow Yourself Time to Think

“Sound bites, text bites, and mind bites are a reflection of a culture that has forgotten or become too distracted by and too drawn to the next piece of new information to allow itself time to think,” writes Maryanne Wolf, developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

She worries, as do I, that the “digital glut of immediate information” threatens to erode intellectual effort. What will we be left with?

Screaming goats and Harlem Shake videos, for starters.

This is what competes for our attention when surfing the Net. But it’s all so entertaining and, well, distracting. In part it’s easy to consume because it’s quick. Harlem Shake videos are capped at thirty seconds. Screaming goat videos are often shorter.

I ask you, is Google making us stupid?

“Apparently, it is,” Super Savvy Carolyn answered, when I explained these inexplicable video crazes.

Is Six-Second Brevity the Soul of Wit?

Shakespeare’s long-winded Polonius in Hamlet ironically proclaims that brevity beats beating around the bush, leaving us to ponder exactly how and where this applies.

Pare viewing time down to a mere six seconds with Twitter’s new app, Vine, which boasts creativity-boosting acumen in its super-short video looping. Like Twitter, with its 140 character limit, Vine hopes to launch unexpected inspiration through similar constraints.

The shortened writing trend in twin culprits Tweeting and texting continues to promote, if not creativity, short-circuited thinking. A far cry from email, and our parents and grandparents thought that was a sad move from the now-archaic handwritten exchange.

“Searching for Dummies”

Don’t get your digital reading brain all in a tither just yet. The studies on how all this short-and-quick information decoding and viewing affects our thinking aren’t complete.

One study suggests that for people with prior Internet search experience – that’s you and me – our brain’s neural circuitry is improved. “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching” leaves us with hope, which tends to spring eternal.

Further hope is from a review in the Journal of Communication (ISSN 0021-9916) on the books The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains, by Nicholas Carr, and You are not a gadget: A manifesto, by Jaron Lanier, showing there’s little evidence that our minds are being warped by Internet consumption.

The alternative, however, is unthinkable.

As technology visionary Edward Tenner wrote in the New York Times in 2006, “It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it.”

Have you experienced mind-altering repercussions from so much Internet exposure? Do you worry about how this affects the way we think? Let me know your thoughts.

Keep Your Passwords Safe From Attack

February 19, 2013 Beth Devine

cyber-vipers steal passwords — Photo credit Jaymis

It’s a nest of cyber-vipers out there, ready to strike and steal your online information. And if you’re like most of us, you’re vulnerable because you’ve committed the cardinal cyber-sin.

You’ve reused the same password in multiple accounts. Or you have passwords that are easy to remember (and crack). Or you’ve written them down somewhere and lost them.

So how do you create and protect multiple, secure passwords? A password manager, that’s how.

What’s Password Management?

A password manager will capture your username and password when you visit a secure site. When you revisit this site, it will offer to fill in your saved credentials. Also known as password vaults or safes, they are a central storage place for all your passwords, encrypted and protected by a single password.

This way you have to remember only one complex password to access the vault.

When you decide to create this master key, check out this surprising needle-in-a-haystack password developer. How Secure is My Password? will tell you how difficult your password is to crack, and whether it’s on the list of most-common passwords.

The more you learn about website security breaches, the more anxious you will be to create safe, strong passwords. The list of hacked sites continually grows: Sony servers, including Sony Pictures, with over one million accounts hacked; nearly a half million Yahoo users were violated; social Q-&-A site Formspring, to the tune of over 400,000 passwords stolen; and Zappos, who reset 24 million user passwords due to security risk.

If the idea of inputting important passwords into a software system concerns you, then start with storing passwords to all those numerous online accounts like member blogs, shopping accounts, and social media sites.

Just think, you’ll never again have to wait for an email to reset a forgotten password.

Best Password Managers

Password managers vary in features and price, with some set up to store additional information, such as credit card numbers and bank card pins. Here are some of the most-reviewed and lauded.

1Password securely stores all your passwords, credit cards, and notes. It starts at $49.99 a year, and did well in a lot of recent reviews, but didn’t make the top ten of this list. For a more in-depth review, read here.

The highly recommended LastPass is free, with a $12/year upgrade that allows you to use it in mobile applications. While it did suffer a breach in 2011, users with strong master passwords were safe.

The top-rated RoboForm Everywhere is a steal at 9.95 for the first year, with a discount plan for college students and a free 30-day trial.

KeePass is another free option, made for Windows, with open source, OSI certified, where you can check out the encryption algorithms to make sure they’re implemented right – if you’re into that sort of thing. It also has many plugins to assist you in a variety of ways, including integrating with other browsers.

Because I like free, I wanted to also mention Clipperz, a password manager that doesn’t require a software download. You can also access your password data offline by downloading it to an encrypted local file. It’s compatible with any computer that runs a browser with JavaScript, including Safari on iPad.

End the Password Insanity

If you’re feeling paranoid, then begin with something free and experiment simply for ease of use on no-brainer accounts. Put an end to your password-induced mania.

It’s easier to recover from a password hack when your accounts are tidily kept in one encrypted vault. And you’ll never have to resort to picking super-easy-to-remember passwords, like the popular 123456, or the second runner up, “password,” followed by 12345678, as the Gawker hack revealed.

Have you tried a password manager? What is your experience with them?

Content Marketing and Copywriting: No Sibling Rivalry

February 8, 2013 Beth Devine

To understand what content marketing and copywriting are – both integral components of your marketing package – try looking at them as part of a family tree.

Publicity Meets Business

As one of my favorite tweeples and copywriters, Matt Loomis, explains, because Copywriting and Content Marketing are seen as such closely related branches on the family tree, many people might consider them to be twins.

Not so close as that. Copywriting and Content Marketing are, however, definitely siblings, both the progeny of their illustrious parents, Publicity and Business. When these two got together, the family tree began its inevitable climb.

The First Child Arrives

It wasn’t long before Publicity and Business bore fruit, creating Copywriting. Their adored firstborn, whose natural traits included enthusiasm, creativity, boldness, and persuasion, was coddled and indulged. His aptitude grew for all things commerce.

His wise parents raised him well, teaching him all aspects of advertising, including how to create brochures, direct mail, press releases, radio and television scripts, and website writing. All was well with the world.

Then, as Matt Loomis goes on to explain, because change is unavoidable, the family tree experienced some unexpected growth.

The Family Expands

It wasn’t until much later, as Publicity and Business neared the ripe age of grandparenthood, that their surprise second child announced herself. Content Marketing was born.

She was embraced with equal warmth and devotion, basking in the attention of her parents and her older brother. She excelled in the bright new land of the World Wide Web. Her natural gifts of generosity, confidence, friendliness, and worldly-wise intelligence afforded her to meet the increasing challenges and opportunities of the Internet: white papers, videos, eBooks, social media updates, and blogging.

Sibling Compatibility

As Matt Loomis points out, Big brother Copywriting and younger sister Content Marketing share a terrific relationship. They both understand the importance of knowing your audience. And because neither feels the need to control or outshine the other, they live side by side without quarrel.

That’s not to say they agree on everything.

Copywriting insists on getting straight to the point. He sees the end goal at all times and can be very focussed on completing his objectives. His sister Content Marketing prefers to linger awhile, make friends, engage in friendly conversation, and be the sweet harvest that brings people to her.

She’s the irresistible apple. Her brother is, well, more like the straightforward salient snake.

The competition they sometimes engage in is a healthy way for them to learn cooperation and teamwork. As a matter of fact, they both agree that they wouldn’t happily exist without the other.

Their parents couldn’t be a prouder set of tree limbs.

It’s a Family Thing

A big thank you goes to Matthew Loomis for his illuminating family analogy! Thanks to him, I understand the unique relationship of Content Marketing and Copywriting as two branches of the same tree.

Whether you’re geared for the direct sales approach – using Copywriting for an urgent call to action, or you’ve discovered the inbound marketing strategy works well – a Content Marketing approach to giving away free content and attracting followers who become customers, each one has its strengths for your business.

When creating a marketing plan, these siblings work together to help your business grow. How have you experienced the benefits of this happy family tree?

Pinterest Tools to Get You Started Pinning

January 30, 2013 Beth Devine

You’ve been invited!

Pinterest has officially invited businesses to join its growing pinning craze. You can join as a business or convert your existing account. The new tools available for businesses include verification of your website, new buttons and widgets to connect your website, and upcoming features notification.

Once you sign up, you select a few people, businesses, and boards to follow. From these, you can easily re-pin the pins that appeal to you onto your own boards. With Pinterest there are no friend requests, lists, circles, or conversations to worry about.

“Pinterest is like your own museum; you are the curator and you need to gather interesting content,”

Wayne Moran, Oxrun.com

The next step is creating your own eye-catching pins. This is an opportunity to create links back to your website. When your pin gets re-pinned, more people will have access to your pin and your website. When you create a board for your pins, you have the opportunity to choose a category, ranging from animals to women’s fashion, that is searchable within Pinterest by other pinners.

The top boards and pins continue to fall into edibles, home, and women’s fashion and beauty, although the “remaining categories” is the largest overall. To help increase searchability, include relevant hashtags (yes, like Twitter) and text in the pin’s description field.

Your pins and boards become the online visual content searched for and discovered by its users, and even those who search on Google.

When you join Pinterest, you are adding valuable visual interface to your website.

“Social networks like Pinterest act as the connective tissue between a person’s social media experience and the brand’s “home base,” the website. It drives people from its platform back to the brand site – to more information, products, service and purchase. As a result, the website has never been more important.” (engauge.com)

To get you started pinning your own pins, here are some fun tools. With a few pinning resources, a new way to connect and share on the internet is now yours.

Tools to Get You Pinning

1. Pinstamatic

Take a website snapshot.
No background? Choose from six text styles and coordinating backgrounds and type in a quote.
Write a caption on your favorite photo.
Make sticky notes in your choice of four colors.
Choose a favorite song for a pin – and an instant Spotify connection.
Add a Twitter profile pin – yours or a follower’s – with a link to the Twitter page.
Include a calendar date of an upcoming event or highlight another important date.
Pin a map with your location/address for followers to click on for a Google Map link.

2. Pinwords

For super-simple yet amazing results, give Pinwords a try. First, upload an image from your computer or the web, or use one of their four background choices. Then choose from one of six text designs and type in your quote.

It’s that easy.

For free photos which don’t require attribution or a link back, check out morguefile.com.

Source: pinwords.com via Web Savvy Marketers on Pinterest

3. Share as Image

Pinterest pins

An online pinning tool for your most basic needs. If you want anything else, you need to purchase the pro version for $6.99. It’s handy bookmark tool makes creating quotable pins easier than ever.

Once you’ve dragged the link into your bookmarks toolbar, all you have to do is highlight the text you want quoted, then click on the Share as Image button. This can be done from anywhere you are on the internet.

4. Video

Videos are growing in their numbers on Pinterest. Brands can use this to pin short, informative videos of a production process, an entertaining musical skit to honor or celebrate something, like several Connecticut manufacturers did, or create a time-lapse video highlighting a creative process.

There are many YouTube opportunities, including free time-lapse video apps to implement into a workday, capturing a sequence of motion to tell a story.

Imagery evokes a powerful emotional response.

Pinterest is all about the visual content. Brands that connect visually with their consumers are better equipped to inspire and influence their choices.

Make the connection on Pinterest. Let us know what you found.

Best WordPress Plugins for SEO, Backup, and Social Media Sharing

January 19, 2013 Beth Devine

Best SEO Social Media Sharing Backup plugins — Need help choosing your WordPress plugins?

Want to get your website running at its peak SEO form, without data-loss worries, and suited up for social media sharing?Read on for the best WordPress plugins for data backup, search engine optimization, and social media sharing buttons.

WordPress Backups

Your WordPress plugin repertory wouldn’t be complete without a plugin that gives your website a safety net backup. Because your WordPress database holds every post, page, media, comment, and link you have on your website, a solid system for restoring things in the event of uncontrollable loss is prudent.

With WordPress backup plugins, you can schedule automatic backups and store your backups in a remote location. In the event of a hardware or disk failure, the digital graveyard does not have to be the final resting place for your website.

Many free WordPress Backup options are available. Here are the top mentions: WordPress Backup to Dropbox, BackWPup, BackupWordPress, and Online Backup for WordPress. They are all very similar and are worth a quick comparison in description. Remember to note the rating, number of downloads, and the compatibility with your version of WordPress when comparing.

The top premium choices include Backup Buddy for a minimum of $75/year (covers two sites) and Vaultpress for $15/month basic service. If your budget permits, these are among the most recommended backup systems available.

Search Engine Optimization

All-in-One SEO

When you use SEO (search engine optimization), you’re improving your website’s visibility in search engines such as Google and Safari by customizing your posts and pages with a few clicks.

With All-in-One SEO, you can optimize your keywords, titles, descriptions, and meta tags for all posts and pages. WordPress creates default title tags and snippets – the preview of each post as seen by users when searching – but these aren’t always going to increase your visibility in search engines, which is why you need an SEO plugin.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Another plugin option for easy SEO help is WordPress SEO by Yoast. The features include writing specific, targeted keywords and descriptions as well as many other SEO enhancements (even more than All-in-One SEO).

You’re improving your content for SEO when you take a few extra minutes to choose a focus keyword and apply it to the various areas Yoast guides you through. After you’ve finished with the general tab, click on the page analysis tab for more tips on how to improve your content for search engines.

The debate continues on which is better, Yoast or All-in-One. So far, Yoast is the winner. If you already have All-in-One SEO and wish to change to Yoast, go here.

Social Media Plugins

Share Buttons by Lockerz

There are a number of ways to create media sharing on your website, and Share Buttons by Lockerz is one of the best. You can share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using over 100 social media sites.

The newest addition is the Pinterest Pin It Button, adding to the Facebook Like Button, Twitter Tweet Button, Google+ Share Button, and Google +1 Button. The customizable Smart Menu even puts the services most used at the top of the menu, depending on the browsing history of each user.

If you go to the bottom of this post and hover your cursor over the Lockerz Share/Save box, a drop-down menu appears with the other services Web Savvy Marketers has for sharing, including the handy email tab. Check out the Share Button Demo on Lockerz to see what else this plugin can do.

Social Media Widget

Another popular media sharing plugin with icons for all the notable services, as well as an option to create six of your own media links. The added bonus is its icons come in three sizes, four styles, and four animations.

This is extremely easy to use and allows you to add a colorful and personal touch to your social media sharing. The Twitter icon doesn’t show as updated, because the screenshot still shows the old Twitter version.

Slick Social Share Buttons

Your choice for a social sharing plugin that takes up little website space and looks super-slick with its optional floating effect. The social media buttons are limited to the most-used services, includes the Pinterest Pin It Button, and has a useful social statistics admin page, showing the summaries of all your social metrics.

The most critical plugins you will use on your WordPress site involve backup security, SEO, and social media sharing. Take the time now to choose the plugins which best suit your website needs.

Flickr photo courtesy of angel n.

Best WordPress Plugins to Help Your Web Site Perform

January 11, 2013 Beth Devine

Have you checked out the more than 23,000 WordPress plugins available, designed to enhance your website? If not, then it’s like you’re sitting at a playground and refusing to play.

The plugin rules of use do advocate that you download on an as-needed basis. But who says you can’t explore? You might discover some amazing plugins that your website simply can’t live without.

Here are some of the best plugins to help your website perform, and give you some plugin playtime. You know you don’t want to be left out of the fun.

(If you’re a Web Savvy client, then your WordPress site came with a host of amazing plugins already. But don’t let that stop you from getting even more plugin pleasure.)

WordPress Plugins for Serious Fun

1. Wordfence

A security plugin that has firewall, anti-virus scanning, malicious URL scanning and live traffic. It can verify and repair your core, theme, and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups. Scans occur hourly instead of daily, has login security including checks for user and admin password strength, and a real-time view of all traffic.

Founder Mark Maunder is on top of his game in remedying any security holes, making the reliability top-notch. He claims complete transparency with his users (see comment on 6-26-12 on this blog), and seems thoroughly committed to Wordfence’s efficacy.

2. Bad Behavior

The good-guy counterpart that you want to be sure and add to your spam-preventative arsenal. This plugin stops the spam before it even gets through to your website doorstep.

Every time a user – or software system – requests a website URL, it has to greet the server. Bad Behavior intervenes at the doorstep, checking the details of the requesting device, and slams the door in the face of spamming intruders.

3. Jetpack

Great website stats tool for all computer newbs and those way up the scale. The site stats feature alone is worth a download of this plugin. You get a list of the sites that referred traffic (i.e. Facebook), search engine keyword terms used to find you, top posts and pages visited, and any links clicked on.

That’s not all. Other features include a Twitter widget that lets you display your Twitter feed, a shortcode embed for easy and safe embedding of media (i.e. YouTube, Flickr), an easy-to-insert contact form, and much more.

4. Akismet

Comes with your WordPress installation as a standard plugin, checking your comments against their web service for spam look-alikes, and letting you review any spam caught red-handed in the “comments” admin screen.

In order to activate it, you need to enter an API key. There’s a handy link on the Akismet WordPress plugin page that will take you to the Akismet.com API key page, where you can enter your API key, if you haven’t already done so. All you need to do is register an account with WordPress.com, where your key can be obtained. (There are paid options to choose from for business accounts.)

5. WPtouch

Make your WordPress website mobile-device ready, even customizing different aspects of its appearance, without having to change any code. This plugin won’t affect your regular desktop appearance while it automatically transforms your theme for all popular browsing devices (iPhone, iPod touch, Android, BlackBerry, and more).

Viewers can even switch between the mobile-ready WPtouch screen and the regular theme. All the while, WPtouch actually helps your site to remain fast-loading by optimizing content for your mobile visitors.

While You’re Out Playing

Be sure to check out the source of any plugin you’re thinking about installing. Look for these key points:

What is the most recent plugin update? It should have been recently updated to be compatible with the latest WordPress version.
What is its rating? A good plugin will have at least 3.8 stars from the WordPress community.
Are there any mentions of decreased performance or security issues?
Is the plugin author’s website current? Is there support available?

Next week check back for more WordPress plugin fun.

Flickr photo courtesy of aturkus.

Les Miserables and Authenticity in Marketing

January 4, 2013 Beth Devine

The new year is underway and your recently wrought resolutions are being fervently pursued with the tenacity of a she-lion.

Or maybe not.

For those who could use a bit of inspiration for the new year, here’s some encouragement. Just be yourself.

The new Les Misérables movie’s characters played by Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman teach us how to do just that, and still be likable. More on that soon.

The internet, like post-French Revolution Paris, has a dark underside. And within its underbelly lies the cheaters, stealers, and liars. Their deception will eventually cause people to distrust and abandon them.

You might’ve discovered the truth of Sir Walter Scott’s words, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” the hard way. Sticking to the truth, however, requires little effort.

There’s a core sense of ethics which we all have and we deny them to the peril of our self-preservation. Getting caught lying might seem like the worst thing that can happen, but what about having to endure the loss of integrity and self-respect?

Assuming you’re not willing to compromise yourself, your business, or your customers’ faith in you, you’re safe to forfeit a mask and show your authentic self. Keeping an authentic connection with your audience is essential to your success.

Being “you,” however, poses one risk as a marketer.

The internet allows us to communicate in a rich variety of ways; we can blog, tweet, and share on Facebook, Google+, and a host of other social media. These communication outlets are happening in real time, and the temptation and pressure increases to break the cardinal rule:

Focus on the needs of your audience.

Being authentic works only when your online persona genuinely puts the needs of others first. Your mom probably told you this when you were growing up.

It’s never too late to listen to your mother.

It’s not just what you say, but how you say it, another thing your mother probably told you. Sharing your own story on social media becomes the loophole through which many a marketer might slip and be tempted to forget whose story is most important. Social media can make egocentric personalities out of the most humble of us.

Yes, even you.

If you’ve seen Les Misérables, then you can guess which character is not only authentic, but also manages to stay true to the cardinal rule. Jackman’s Jean Valjean learns the secret to success is putting other’s needs first, whereas Crowe’s Javert is so threatened by this belated revelation that he is unable to live with it.

Inspector Javert is absolutely transparent, while ex-convict Jean Valjean is forced into living a facade to survive. It is both men’s plight to be authentic. In the end, only one man’s authenticity is likable.

You get to choose. Be real and still be likable, however challenging it can be, or find another talent, one where you’re able to tell your own story all day long.

As Seth Godin said, “the best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.”

Flickr photo credit Shannon Kringden