Picking the Right WordPress Theme for Your Business


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:06 Introduction
0:07 – 0:44 WordPress themes
0:45 – 1:16 Comfort is key
1:17 – 1:33 Get professional
1:34 – 1:53 The wrap up

Get your new WordPress website built by iConnect Media

Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video we’re going to talk about web design more specifically WordPress themes. Let’s get right to it.

One of the questions that I get asked actually quite a bit, “Is there a big difference with using like a child theme for Thesis or Genesis which are specific frameworks for WordPress or using kind of one of these all in one themes that’s built by one of these third party developers that sometimes come with these really nice custom dashboards and user-friendly menus, all of those extra things that you see in these third party premium themes? Is there any benefit to going with something like that opposed to building something or using a child theme with Genesis or thesis which again provide a great framework but don’t provide that nice admin dashboard.

The way I would answer that is it’s really up to you if you’re comfortable using WordPress as is then you know you can go with the Genesis or a Thesis child theme. But if you’re a new user to it and you still want to have all of the controls without having to do all of the programming or knowing how to code HTML, PHP, CSS or anything like that, then you know you may want to look at one of those themes. They’re approximately the same price so price most often is not gonna be a factor that will make you pick one or the other. It really comes down to what your comfort level is.

how to pick the right wordpress theme

iConnect Media can build you a custom child theme using Thesis or Genesis. We can also setup and deploy a pre-made WordPress theme for you as well. If that’s something that you’d like to discuss, click the link below this video, get in touch with us and we can discuss some of the options with you.

In terms of the overall difference between using a child theme on a framework like Genesis or Thesis versus an all in one third party theme, it really comes down to your comfort level and the comfort level of the person who’s gonna be administering the site going forward.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful, I’ll talk to you soon.

BIG Google Update Coming Summer 2013


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:06 Introduction
0:07 – 0:20 Next Google Update
0:21 – 1:10 Update highlights
1:11 – 1:35 Use of webmaster tools
1:36 – 2:04 Summary of update video
2:05 – 2:20 Recommendation and wrap up

Watch the full video from Google’s Matt Cutts

Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video we’re going to talk about SEO and changes coming on the horizon. Let’s get right to it.

Even though Google just released Panda 25, it looks like they’re at it again.

Look, we knew it was only a matter of time before the next Google update would be rolled out. And sure enough, Matt Cutts released a video announcing that in the next few months some time over the summer, the next roll outs gonna happen. Here’s a couple of highlights from this video.

Essentially the Panda update is going to be even more tight than the first iteration. They’re coining the term Panda 2.0; that’s something to be definitely mindful of especially if you were impacted by it or still recovering from it. It’s going to be even tighter after this next release. Another interesting thing he said was they’re going to start identifying authority both on the local and I guess on the national level in all markets and niches whether it be doctors, attorneys, lawyers, marketers, all different types of business owners. They’re going to start identifying in the algorithm and promoting those people more as authorities in their specific marketplaces.

Now’s a great time if you’re not already doing things to build authority, trust and relationships in your market or niche. Start doing that right now.

the next google update
One of the cool things he mentioned especially since recently we’ve been talking about WordPress sites being hacked and just hacked sites in general is that they’re going to do a much better job both identifying and communicating to website owners who have been hacked and they’re going to do this through webmaster tools. Not only are they going to do a much better job of alerting people that there’s a problem, but they’re going to provide them much much better information so that they can actually take action on it and fix the issue.

These are all things you can expect to see over the next few months when they roll it out some time over the summer. I’ll put a link right below this video, you can go to Google Video and watch the full thing if you want, it’s 5 or 8 minutes. After you watch the video, you’ll realize though that everything is staying the same, it’s just more of the same. Panda’s still there, it’s going to get tighter. Authority has always been kind of been there and there’s going to be more focus on it. Again with the hacked sites, they’re going to be taking action on that, which is great to hear. All in all it sounds great.

Now is a great time to get away from automated link building tools and black hat tools and start building quality content and quality links for your viewers and your readers and start building you own authority.

Again this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful, I’ll talk to you soon.

4 Ways to Increase Security of Your WordPress Blog


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:11 Introduction
0:12 – 0:50 Protect yourself from attacks
0:51 – 1:36 Tip #1: Passwords
1:37 – 2:38 Tip #2: “admin”
2:39 – 3:08 Remove files from public folder
3:09 – 3:44 Tip #3: wp-config.php
3:45 – 4:33 Make sure you are secure
4:34 – 4:39 Wrap up

Get your WordPress security reviewed and improved

Andrew Hiddleston here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. Today’s video is extremely important especially if you use WordPress for a CMS. Let’s get right to it.

A few weeks ago we did a video about the number of websites that are hacked and just to show people how much it happens and just the frequency and the volume. Then last week there was a report that WordPress specifically has been targeted in the last few weeks. All the web host companies seeing increase in WordPress attacks. So what can you do especially if you use WordPress? We use WordPress for all of our sites so obviously that’s extremely urgent and important news to us. If you use WordPress as well, what are a few steps you can do to protect yourself? Now nothing’s a hundred percent but there are steps that you can do so you won’t at least make it easy for them.

Number one on the list is passwords. You have to have a secure password; that goes not only for your WordPress blog but for absolutely everything. Take this as a little reminder, you shouldn’t be able to remember your password. In fact, if you can remember your password to get into WordPress, that’s a bad thing because that means that someone else can remember it as well. You want to use an encrypted password and then use a tool like LastPass. Lastpass will store all of your passwords online, encrypted and it will recall them and populate the forms. When you login to WordPress, Lastpass will automatically pull your password and user information and plug it in so you don’t have to remember it but you can still use an encrypted password. That’s LastPass.com and it’s totally free to use, highly encourage that you use that.

Next on the list is you don’t want to use “admin” as a username. WordPress gives you a default installation “admin” username. The very first thing you want to do after you install WordPress and even today if you still have an “admin” username, you want to go in there and create a new admin. Don’t use the name “admin” create a new username, create administrator, and what you’re going to do is you’re going to delete that original “admin” account and you’re going to assign all the posts, all the information to the new user. And that will get rid of the admin account and it’s also going to get rid of user account #1. That’s another thing that people don’t realize, the very first user that WordPress generates is obviously user 1 and that’s obviously always associated with an administrator account. And hackers and spammers and people know this so they look for user id 1 which is often and pretty much always an administrative account. Get rid of that admin account and get rid of user id 1 so you kill two birds with one stone. Go ahead and do that as well.
4 Ways to Increase Security of Your WordPress Blog
After you install WordPress, there will be a readme.html file and there will be an install.php file. If you go into your Cpanel or if you go into your FTP, you can find those files within your installation folder, you want to remove both of those files. You don’t have to delete them but I would put them in a folder outside of public access so outside of your public html folder. Just put them in there, you don’t really need them after the installation and again you’re just giving away information to potential hackers like what version of WordPress you’re using.

Now last on the list, this may not work for everybody. It really does depend on what theme you’re using and how your site is configured but sometimes you can also move your wp-config.php file, you can move that from your public html folder right out of there, outside of public so that people can’t access it and no one can access it but you. You might want to test that and see what happens. Sometimes for some themes it works and you can get away with it and that makes your site very secure but some themes actually need it and you’ll end up getting errors. When that happens just move it back to the folder that you moved it from.

Again, those are just a few basic simple tips that you can kind of beef up the security on your WordPress blog. Again, nothing is a 100% garunteed. Yes there are plugins out there that can help you do this but those plugins are just going to tell you what the issue is, they’re not going to fix it for you. So if you’re uncomfortable with this because there’s about 42 security checks that you should be doing on your WordPress installation, if you’re unsure about this or you’re uncomfortable with your hosting account or with messing around with web servers and this type of thing, you can contact iConnect-Media which is our web design company. We offer hourly packages. So you can use our web developer hourly package for website security. Our team will go through your site and they will secure it. They will do an audit and they’ll do all the necessary checks and fixes to make sure you are as secure as you can be.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful, I’ll talk to you soon.

Fastest Way to Build Profitable Online Relationships


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:05 Introduction
0:06 – 0:22 The community
0:23 – 0:38 Problem with free
0:39 – 1:23 Entreprenuer’s community
1:24 – 2:02 $1 to try it out
2:03 – 2:09 Wrap up

Get your Founderfly membership for $1
 
Andrew here with a quick internet marketing tip video. Let’s get right to it.

Whether you’ve been online for a short period of time or whether you’re a wily old veteran, the importance of having a community or a group of people that you can go to and bounce ideas off or just talk and discuss issues that you’re having and get different perspectives is critical.

Of course there’s lots of free forums and there’s lots of other free resources. Most of these large communities are free and anyone can join them. But because they’re free, sometimes the quality or the recommendations or the relationships that you build might be a bit suspect.

I think it’s important that you have somewhere that you can go that the information that you receive, the advice that you get, and the conversations that you engage in are gonna be not only good to develop you but also to build your business.

One of the communities that I’m part of is FounderFly which was created by Ryan Lee. There’s hundreds of members that are part of it. One of the big selling features of FounderFly is that it’s got over 40 information products that are available to its members and that’s great; some of them are sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars originally. I think that’s great and a lot of people get tremendous value from the training. But what I really like is that the members who have joined are obviously all paying to be a member there so they’re all serious business people and there are a lot of wonderful networking and relationship building just within that one form.

fastest way to build profitable relationships

If you’re not a member already, I would highly encourage you try it out for at least just a month. You can get a one month membership for a buck. So essentially you’re getting it for nothing, there’s no risk to you. And if you don’t like it at the end of that month, you can just leave; no harm, no foul.

But I’m a member of it and many people I know are also members of it. We’ve been members right from the beginning and it’s almost a year old now. I highly encourage you to check it out. There’s a link right below this video, simply click on that. Head over and sign up, try out your one month.

If you’re already a member of FounderFly, leave some comments in the section below and let me know what you think. Let me know if you think it’s worth the money and what your impressions are of it.

Again this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful and I’ll talk to you soon.

3 Ways to Increase Your Conversions and Profits


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:09 Introduction
0:10 – 0:31 What to do with traffic?
0:32 – 1:11 Tip #1: Different logos
1:12 – 1:31 Tip #2: Copy and text on website
1:32 – 1:53 Tip #3: Free conversion checklist
1:54 – 2:03 Wrap up

Get your website conversion checklist
 
Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I want to give you a few tips that will help you convert that traffic into customers. Let’s get right to it.

I think kind of a bad position to be in is having traffic coming to your website but that traffic is not taking action, not converting, subscribing, buying, whatever you want them to be doing at your website.

The question obviously is: What can you do to take that traffic that’s coming to your website and start improving your conversion rate and start turning more of them into subscribers and customers?

My first tip is actually something very simple that you can do. You’ll notice at the bottom of LeanMeanMarketing.com we have a graphic banner of different logos. Those include different podcasts, directories as long as different search engines. These add authority and almost a proof style element to the website and they build authority. And even though it seems like a small thing and it’s just a couple of logos at the bottom of the page, they have a way of creating trust and building authority with your visitor.

3 way to increase your conversions

So it’s something that you can easily do and then you might want to split test different locations you can put that banner. But that’s something that you could quickly do on Photoshop on your own and add to your website. You can see that it’ll have a slight impact in your conversion rate.

The next thing I recommend is the copy and the text that’s on your website. Has that been written for a search engine? Or has the copy been written for a person? I would go back and review it. If it’s an SEO landing page, there are ways you can go about rewriting the text so that it’s written for the person but that you won’t lose any ranking doing so.

The third thing I would do after those two is I would grab my free conversion checklist, which is going to be included in the ActivateTraffic product. You can sign up and get a free copy of it by going to ActivateTraffic.com. It includes items about SEO copy landing pages. It’s actually a 5-point checklist which will help you tweak all the different valuables to help you improve your conversion rate on your website.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful. Head over to ActivateTraffic.com and get your free checklist and free other reports. I’ll talk to you soon.

How to Get Affiliates Selling Your Products


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:11 Introduction
0:12 – 0:28 Increase response rate
0:29 – 1:07 Tip #1: Affilate vs. JV
1:08 – 1:46 Tip #2: Why should I?
1:47 – 2:09 Tip #3: Product and resource page
2:10 – 2:39 Brief review
2:40 – 2:46 Wrap up
 
Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I want to give you some solid tips when you approach partners for either affiliate or joint venture relationships. Let’s get right to it.

I get a lot of emails from people requesting that I either promote their product or enter into relationships with them, joint venture relationships. A lot of these emails I really don’t even read, they get deleted. I want to give you a few tips today that’ll help increase your response rate when you contact affiliate partners.

Number one on the list is understand your terminology and understand what you’re asking for. I get people all the time that email me essentially asking me to be an affiliate for their product but they tell me it’s a JV, they want a JV partnership. A joint venture and an affiliate relationship are two completely different things. For example, a joint venture if you’re going to create the product and I was going to organize a traffic strategy and then we were going to split the proceeds 50-50, that would be a joint venture. If you just want me to send an email to my list of customers promoting your product for a commission, that’s simply an affiliate relationship. You have to understand what you’re asking for and be clear about what you ask.

How to Get JVs and Affiliates to Promote Your Products

Next on the list is the first thing I get bombarded with in these emails, the commission – it pays 100% commission or it pays this much or we’ve made this much; it’s all about money. Believe it or not, the number one concern that I have and a lot of other people that I know as well is that what can this product do for my customer? Instead of talking about commission, why don’t you tell me if I promote this product for you why are my customers going to come back to me and rave to me and thank me for recommending this product and showing this product. Although a commission is really important to most affiliates, also delivering a quality product that’s going to deliver on what it’s being sold as is really important as well.

Another tip after that is make sure your sales page, all your marketing material and that you have an affiliate landing page, make sure all of that is set up. So when you’re referring these people, when you’re contacting them via email, you can send them somewhere and you can show them documentation, you can show them a sample of the product, you can give them some information that they can feel comfortable knowing that the person they’re dealing with a professional.

Again just to quickly recap, when you’re contacting an affiliate partner or a joint venture partner, make sure that you understand your terminology; there’s a difference between a JV relationship and an affiliate relationship. After that, make sure you hammer home why this product is so great and why this person’s customers are going to rave to them and thank them and really be thrilled with it. And after that obviously you can start mentioning commission. Finally, successful affiliate marketers expect you to have a resource page with complete information about the product. Make sure this is complete so you have a place to send them.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful and I’ll talk to you soon.

Avoid These Mistakes When Buying a Domain


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:09 Introduction
0:10 – 0:33 Are you memorarble?
0:34 – 0:59 Increase your CTR
1:00 – 1:12 Sell and get higher return
1:13 – 1:37 Some examples of branded domains
1:38 – 1:46 Wrap up

Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I want to talk to you about brandability and having a good brand domain. Let’s get right to that.

Today I was reading a post on Problogger.net that was written by Darren Rowse. I’ll provide a link right below this video. It discussed 6 domain purchase mistakes that he had made at some point in time. I thought it was interesting; but one of the things that was not mentioned in the post was having a good brandable domain. By that I mean a memorable name, something that can easily be shared to friends and family members.

avoid these domain purchase mistakes I personally think that the days of EMD’s, which are exact match domains, are pretty much over. And although you still may get some ranking benefit from it, but I just don’t see any long term value business value.

Now some of the great benefits to having a good branded domain, not only are your visitors going to share it and discuss it and want to tell other people about it, but when you appear in search engines and other places online, having a branded domain is going to increase your click through rate as well.

Now one of the other benefits that people don’t talk about a lot is that if you ever decide to sell your business, having a branded business or a branded domain name will yield you a much higher return if you decide at some point you want to sell your website.

Here’s a couple of great examples of branded domains – I already obviously mentioned Problogger. Another one is Copyblogger, then there’s Superfastbusiness with James Schramko which again not only is it an excellent blog but an excellent brand. And then obviously for myself, my main or parent company, I didn’t feel was a very good brandable name not for online business, so that’s why we went ahead with LeanMeanMarketing.com which obviously is a lot catchier and has a much better brand to it.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful, I’ll talk to you soon.

Simple Recipe for Creating High Quality Content


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:15 Introduction
0:16 – 0:32 Expert interviews
0:33 – 0:48 A win-win situation
0:49 – 1:25 Contacting the expert
1:26 – 1:46 Get your tools ready
1:47 – 2:06 Simple procedure
2:07 – 2:20 Recommendation and wrap up

Sign-up early for Activate Traffic and get your PREMIUM reports
Check out my recent interview with Ben Settle

Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I’ve got a really simple traffic generation tip for you. It’s going to not only help you create some amazing content for your website but it’s also going to help you get a lot of traffic back to your website as well. Let’s get right to it.

One of the methods that I absolutely love right now for not only creating high quality content that’s getting shared and people are really loving. But the transcriptions are being indexed which in turns creates traffic back to our website is doing an expert interviews with other industry experts.

The reason that I really love this method is not only do you get to speak with people your customers and your subscribers obviously like but also because you’re setting up the interview, you can identify the experts that you also like and respect and that you want to talk to. It’s a win-win situation.

how to quickly create high quality content If you’re worried about having to contact an expert or even more concerned that they might turn you down, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. With all the different people I’ve contacted, both in the IM industry and outside, I’ve only been turned down a handful of times. And most people are absolutely thrilled to do it. It’s not only exposure for them but can also increase authority and even send new customers and subscribers their way.

So most people are happy to do the interview. You might need to negotiate, providing them questions in advance just so they can prepare themselves but the odds are the person’s going to jump at the chance to do it. Don’t let that stand in your way.

Now obviously you want to be prepared for the interview. You want to have all the tools ready to record the interview so you can provide the guest with a copy and also use the transcription for syndication. This helps you get maximum use out of a single interview.

To make things really simple for you, I wrote down the procedure that we use here at LeanMeanMarketing to not only record the interview but also to syndicate it out as well. I’m going to make that available to you. It’s going to be provided as a free bonus for signing up to the pre-notification for ActivateTraffic, which is my new traffic generation training system.

Click on the link right below this video. Head over to ActivateTraffic.com and sign up for pre-notification.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful and I’ll talk to you soon.

Important Tool for Bloggers and Internet Marketers


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:10 Introduction
0:11 – 0:22 Mind maps
0:23 – 0:49 My personal favorites
0:50 – 1:21 Some benefits
1:22 – 1:47 Start using mind maps now
1:48 – 1:53 Wrap up
 
Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I want to talk to you about probably one of the most powerful tools you can use for your business. Let’s get right to it.

What is it? It’s mind maps. There are a ton of resources out there that you can use to not only leverage them for your own business but also for product creation and new projects that you set on in the future.

Important Tool for Bloggers and Internet Marketers Some of the free mind map utilities that I like are bubbl.us, mindmeister.com, and really my personal favorite that I’ve used for the longest amount of time is Freemind, which is a Windows-based desktop application you can download and install on your computer and it’s totally free. Mindmeister is free to use, there is an upgrade option and so does bubbl.us. All three of them are great and all three of them essentially do the same thing.

Not only are they fantastic to help you create procedures and systemize your internal business and make sure that internally, if you have a team or your virtual assistant, make sure that everybody’s on the same page and clearly and visually document procedures, they’re excellent for that and they do a great job. They’re even better to create products and to map out training. When you’re trying to explain a concept or an idea to someone, mind maps work fantastic to visually show them what you’re trying to explain.

The best place to start is with either two of the web-based applications which are Mindmeister and bubbl.us. If you have a Windows machine, go ahead and download Freemind; it’s a little bit old and you’ll see when you download it and install it you’ll see it’s a little bit old, it’s a little bit dated but it still does a great job and has all the functionality that you need. I highly encourage you to check it out if you haven’t. If you’re not using mind maps, start doing that today!

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this video useful; I’ll talk to you soon.

Email Marketing Mulligans | How to Resurrect a Terrible Email


 
Video Breakdown:
 
0:00 – 0:10 Introduction
0:11 – 0:18 Are your emails unnoticed?
0:19 – 1:03 Get a second chance
1:04 – 1:43 Play around with segments
1:44 – 2:07 Brief review
2:08 – 2:14 Wrap up
 
Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. In today’s video I’ve got a quick email marketing tip for you for when those emails bomb. Let’s get right to it.

Sometimes you’ll write an email and you’ll send it out and no one will open it, it’ll get very few clicks or it will almost go unnoticed in people’s inboxes.

One of the neat things you can do, at least with Aweber which is the autoresponder we use, is you can go into your subscriber’s list and identify the subscriber’s that haven’t opened an email from you within a certain period of time; you could set it to the day before you sent that email. You can save that segment and what it will do is it’ll save a new listing of customers that are only including customers that haven’t opened your email.

What you want to do is you go in and create a new subject line, maybe tweak the body, tweak the text a little bit and send it only to that segment. What that’ll do is that’ll let you send essentially the same message to that same group of people and give you a second chance to get them to open, read, and click on your email.

email marketing mulligans Even if you’re using a different autoresponder, like Getresponse, ImnicaMail, InfusionSoft, or Office Autopilot, I would imagine that they all have the exact same capability. We use Aweber and within it, it’s called a segment.

That’s just one of the types of segments you can create. You can pick essentially about 20 different variables and save a segment based on that. So it’s something you’d definitely want to play around with.

If you use Aweber, go in and check it out. If you don’t, go into your autoresponder and find out what it’s called in your service and start making use of it especially for those emails that don’t work out but even on the emails that you do get a good response.

It’s a great idea to save a segment and send it to the people who don’t open the email because chances are if you’ve gotten a good response from the people who did open it, those people when they finally do open it will also respond.

Most of the time you only need to change the subject line, that’s really the main thing. Change the subject line, go with something completely different, resend it to that segment again and see what happens.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston for LeanMeanMarketing.com. I hope you found this email tip useful. I’ll talk to you soon.

Copyright © 2013 LeanMeanMarketing.com - All Rights Reserved | Created By iConnect Media

Copyright © 2013 LeanMeanMarketing.com
All Rights Reserved | Created By iConnect Media

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