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56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by Beth Hayden in Blog, Featured, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing

In case you’ve been living in a mountain cave in Bhutan for the past couple of months, Pinterest is a relatively new social networking site that allows users to create online image collages, then quickly and easily share those collages — called “pinboards” — with other Pinterest users.

It’s fun, easy, and catching on like wildfire right now.

Part of Pinterest’s appeal is that it’s beautiful. Enter the lovely world of Pinterest, and all the troubles of your day-to-day life just seem to slip away in a stream of perfect little black dresses, baby otters, and cherubic children who never seem to get dirty or mouth off to their parents.

Because it’s image-based, the core of Pinterest is overwhelmingly positive. I like to think of Pinterest as Facebook without the whining.

Yes, Pinterest is beautiful. And yes, its users love it. But don’t let all the hearts and flowers fool you. Behind those lovely images, Pinterest is fast becoming a heavy hitting marketing tool for brands and businesses … like yours.

Let’s take a quick look at why this is, and then we’ll get into 56 specific Pinterest tactics you can use to your own marketing advantage.

What is Pinterest and why should I care?

Once you’ve got a Pinterest account, you can create online collages (“boards”) for different topics you’re interested in, and then add images and videos to your boards by “pinning” them (the equivalent of using glue sticks on old-school vision boards, but faster, slicker, and considerably cooler.)

Pinterest has nearly five million users, and is rapidly growing. Nearly 1.5 million unique users visit Pinterest daily, spending an average of 15 minutes a day on the site.

Think those inspiring vision boards don’t result in referral traffic to websites and blogs? Think again. In January 2012, Pinterest drove greater traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube — combined.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how beginner, intermediate, and black-belt Pinterest users are using it to grow their businesses and connect with their customers using these appealing online collages.

Here are 56 powerful ways I’ve come up with to incorporate Pinterest into your content marketing mix …

Pinterest marketing for beginner pinners …

1. Make sure you feature your business name on your profile for maximum exposure. Use your business name as your username, or change your profile name to your business name after your profile is set up.
2. Add a paragraph about who you are and what you’re interested in to the “About” section on your Pinterest profile. It will show up right under your photo, and will be one way that users can find out more about you.
3. Connect your account with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Not only will it help you gain followers, but making this connection adds social media icons under your profile picture that link to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.
4. Don’t forget to add your website URL in your profile, too!
5. Pin lots of stuff. Pin content steadily, instead of in huge bursts, to maximize your exposure and engagement.
6. Come up with creative and interesting board names. They get shared whenever you pin something, so make them enticing. But be creative — you need to keep your board names short. There isn’t a lot of room for long descriptive titles.
7. Tag other Pinterest users in your pins by using “@username” in your descriptions. Network with other professionals and vendors in your field by using this feature. Not many people are doing this yet, so it’s a great way to build your following and stand out.
8. Comment on other people’s pins. Just like with tagging, this feature hasn’t really caught on yet, so use it regularly to really engage with other users. Obviously, use the same good manners and common sense you would when commenting on a blog or other social media site.
9. “Like” other people’s pins to give a thumbs-up when you want to recognize great content.
10. Pin from lots of different sources, instead of just from one or two sites. Variety is important on Pinterest.
11. Mix pinning your own unique finds with doing lots of “repinning,” which is repeating someone else’s pin to your followers (just like a Retweet on Twitter). The person whose image you repin gets notified via email, and they also get a credit on your pin, which increases their following.
12. Feel free to pin your own blog posts, but don’t over-promote. Follow the usual etiquette rules of any other social media site, and don’t be the boorish one at the party who only talks about himself.
13. Pin videos! Pinterest has a special section just for pinned videos, and there are far fewer videos than images on Pinterest at this point, so use them to distinguish yourself. Any YouTube video is easy to pin.
14. When you pin an image, add a description under it. Be smart about these descriptions — a good description will stay with an image as it gets repinned all over the Pinterest world. If the image is something from your own site, definitely use your business name in the description.
15. After you pin a new image using the very handy Pinterest browser bookmarklet (a great tool in its own right,) use its built-in social media prompts to re-share your pin on Twitter and Facebook, too.
16. Use Pinterest’s embed option to publish pins as content in your blog posts and website pages. Note: As Pinterest is catching on, you may need to tell your users that they need to click on a Pinterest image to get to the original source. When I tried this last week, a reader wrote to me and asked, “Is there more to that Pin thing? Or is it just a pretty image?”
17. Get the Pinterest iPhone app, so you can repin on the go, pin from your camera and add a location to your pins so others can find your images.
18. Optimize your website content for Pinterest sharing (Part One): Use images in every single post you write, so your post can be shared on Pinterest. When you find yourself getting lazy about this, remember –- not using an image in your post means no one will pin it. And remember — the prettier the picture is, the more it will get pinned. The images that appeal to Pinterest members are powerful and emotive, so keep that in mind when choosing your pictures. That combination tends to work well for your blog readers, too.
19. Optimize your website content for Pinterest sharing (Part Two): Consider watermarking your images, or adding text to them. If you’re using your own images on Pinterest, one of the best ways to help your image stand out is by adding a clear description to the image itself, or adding a watermark with your business name. Make sure it’s clear, but that it doesn’t block out the main subject of the photo.
20. Create seasonal or holiday boards that relate to your brand. Example: New Year’s Resolutions, Fourth of July, etc. Users love these.
21. Add a prominent Follow Me on Pinterest button to your website to advertise that you’re a pinner!

Pinterest marketing for intermediate pinners …

22. Search for new images to pin (or for trends) by using Pinterest’s search function. The search bar is in the top left of every Pinterest page.
23. Use keywords in descriptions of pins, so pinners can find your images and boards when they do their own searches.
24. Make sure you’ve got a Pin It! button added to the footer of each of your blog posts so your readers can quickly and easily share your content on Pinterest.
25. Your Pinterest page has its own RSS feed! Find your Pinterest feed by clicking on the RSS symbol under your profile photo, then use it anywhere you can use a feed (Facebook, LinkedIn, for syndication on other sites, etc.) Advertise your Pinterest feed to your readers and ask them to add you to their RSS feedreaders.
26. Got a WordPress site? Feature your recent pins in a widget in your WordPress sidebar by using a Pinterest widget.
27. You can add contributors to any of your boards. Use this feature to engage your staff and let them contribute to your Pinterest presence by using adding to your company boards. Your staff will love this, and your boards will be richer for it!
28. Want to find out who’s been pinning your stuff? Go to: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitehere. For an example, check out Copyblogger’s source page. Look at your site’s page often to discover which posts and images are resonating with Pinterest users. Use that information to shape your content strategy.
29. Add prices to your pins to create your own Pinterest shop. To add a price to a pin, type the $ or £ symbol followed by item’s price in the pin’s description. When you add prices to your pins, they may be featured in Pinterest’s “Gifts” section.
30. Create a board that tells the story of your company and communicates your core values. Make this board available to people as part of your sales process.
31. Consider creating “thank you” boards for current or past clients that send special appreciative messages. Could you create a holiday thank you card? Or one that celebrate the launch of a new client’s big project with your company?
32. Pin tutorials on your boards. Need to walk a client through how to use your products or services? Or do you want to create free how-to videos to use as promotional materials? Pin your videos and presentations on special “How-To” or “Tutorial” boards. Anything you teach your clients can be made into a tutorial.
33. Watch for trends. Click on the “Popular” link on your Pinterest home page to research what’s catching on with pinners, then integrate those trends into your content strategy.
34. Be yourself. Pinterest is all about personal expression, so don’t be afraid to pin stuff that represents who you really are.
35. Create a special board to highlight your company’s team members. Use the description under each photo to write a bio of each person.
36. Show behind-the-scenes photos of your company. People love knowing how you make things!
37. Become an information curator for your niche. Gather the newest and best resources on your boards. Become a trusted source of information on Pinterest, and your following will grow by leaps and bounds.
38. Integrate your Pinterest account with Facebook’s timeline feature, so you post content in both places at once.
39. Highlight old content on your blog so that people can repin your archived posts. The LinkWithin tool will add a footer to your blog posts that features images and links pulled from old content, giving people the opportunity to pin previous articles.
40. Thinking about freshening up old photos, or going back through your blog archives and adding photos to those text-only posts? Now is the time! Remember — the prettier the picture, the more pins you will get.

Pinterest marketing for black-belt pinners …

41. Find out when you’re getting the most repins, likes, comments and referral traffic by regularly analyzing both your Pinterest profile and your site traffic stats. Test out pinning on different days of the week and times of day to maximize traffic and audience engagement.
42. Connect your clients who use Pinterest by introducing them to each other. Recognize your best pinners by sending out a weekly “Best of Pinterest” email that includes spotlighted boards and pins from your clients’ profiles.
43. Create moderated boards for your fans to express their support for you. They can add videos, blog posts and photos from your events.
44. Do you have a number of different ideal client personas? Create a separate board to represent each client persona, then use those boards during your sales cycle and embed them into your website pages so people are clear about the kinds of clients you’re trying to attract.
45. Create boards for the classes and webinars you teach, and use them as supplemental material for your students. You can use the boards during your class or presentation, or send your students home with Pinterest boards to explore after class. If you’re teaching a live class or workshop, include pictures from the actual event.
46. Create boards for referral sources, affiliates and strategic partners, and let them add to the boards. Engage with the partners so they know they are included and appreciated.
47. Allow your best customers or star students to join in on certain boards and pin ideas and suggestions about how to use your product, or themes that go along with your products and services.
48. What could be better for showcasing how awesome your business is than creating a dedicated testimonials board?
49. Use Pinterest boards to tell client stories. Turn boring written case studies into powerful visual stories.
50. Check out your VIP clients’ boards to get ideas for special thank you or holiday gifts.
51. Create quick-start guides or owner’s manual boards for your products. Or if you’re primarily a service provider, create a “How to Get the Most Out of Working with Me” board with ideas and suggestions on maximizing your service relationship.
52. Create boards for conferences that you attend. Carry cards with instructions on getting invited to post on that board — conference attendees will love this!
53. Create beautiful, visually interesting coupons, and add them to your boards.
54. Your clients will be blown away if you create special boards just for them that include resources and ideas tailored to their individual situations. This will really make your company shine is done regularly and well.
55. Offer exclusive Pinterest promotions. Create pins that give special promotions for following you on Pinterest.
56. Run a Pinterest contest. Invite your readers to pin links and images from your site that inspire, motivate, move or entertain them. Then judge the winners by creativity or ingenuity and offer a juicy prize. Offer to promote the winners’ Pinterest boards on your site as part of the contest.

Pinterest is a beautiful (and effective) content marketing tool

Pinterest is not only picking up steam in social media circles, it has become a proven source of traffic for blogs and websites, quickly surpassing current favorites like LinkedIn and YouTube.

While lots of folks are flapping their jaws about the impressive statistics of Pinterest, some companies are quietly using this fabulous new tool to pin their way to better customer engagement and a visually interesting, personally appealing brand.

My advice? Take a long, hard look at including Pinterest as part of your 2012 content marketing plan.

And start making your social media strategy more beautiful, one little pin at a time.

How have you been using Pinterest as a marketing tool? Let us know in the comments …

About the Author: Beth Hayden is a blogging coach and Pinterest marketing convert. You can follow her pins at @bethhayden. To learn how to market effectively with Pinterest, download her free report, “5 Stupid Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Make Money with Pinterest.”

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7 Essential Tips for WordPress Beginners

Posted on 13. Feb, 2012 by Pamela Wilson in Blog, conversion, Featured, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar …

You meet someone and they say all the right things. They’re full of compliments and accolades.

Except, something bugs you about them. Their words don’t quite match their actions. They can be forgetful, and even mean. Eventually, the glow wears off, and you see them for who they really are.

It’s not what people say, it’s what they do that makes a relationship work.

And that’s how it is with your WordPress website, especially if you’re just getting started.

That’s because you can’t just talk about how great WordPress is and expect it to work for you. You can’t just read about it, either.

To see the results you want, you have to put some action behind those words. You need to use the WordPress best practices outlined below.

WordPress beginners who implement these helpful (and effective) techniques early on will set themselves up for success, and see results faster.

1. Your sidebar isn’t your hall closet

You know that hall closet you’re afraid to open because all the stuff shoved on the top shelf might come tumbling out and hit you on your head?

That’s what a lot of WordPress sidebars look like.

They’re stuffed with your ads, your social media icons, links to your most recent tweets, photos of your Facebook fans, and on and on. Buried among all that information might be a link you’d really like your site visitor to click on, but if they can’t find it, you might as well not have it there.

The solution? Pare down your sidebar to the absolute essentials.

Go into Appearance & Widgets and remove everything except the widgets that actually do something for your business or your cause.

If a widget doesn’t add people to your list, put money in your bank account, or get someone to take an action you’d like them to take, remove it.

2. Make it easy to find what’s in your library

If you own a library of books, does it make sense to house the books in separate buildings by the month they were acquired?

Of course not. You’d end up walking from building to building, searching for the book you wanted.

Your Media Library in WordPress is the same way. Creating one integrated folder where you place all your media makes it easy to search: just plug in a keyword and you’ll have the file you’re looking for in no time.

To set up your WordPress site so all your media files go into one folder that you can search by name, go to Settings & Media and uncheck the button next to “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.”

3. Clean up your permalinks

You work hard to create compelling content for your site, so you want Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find it. Make it easy for them by using short “road signs” that point to your information.

How do you do that?

You want to take a little time to learn the basics of SEO Copywriting (it’s not as hard as you might think). One quick improvement you can start making immediately is to use the built-in WordPress permalink field at the top of the editing page to revise your links before you publish them.

Eliminate unnecessary words, and make intelligent use of keywords in your description.

Don’t stuff it with keywords — make sure the end result is pleasant to read for a human being.

For example:

yoursite.com/7-ways-to-choose-the-best-tires-for-your-vehicle

becomes …

yoursite.com/choosing-tires-tips.

And this:

yoursite.com/the-copywriters-guide-to-getting-more-clients-than-you-can-handle

becomes …

yoursite.com/getting-copywriting-clients.

The idea here is to create a compact permalink that tells search engines what your post contains in a glance, and helps you rank for a keyword you’d like to be known for.

4. Maximize impact with targeted titles and descriptions

When you share your posts and pages on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, these services pick up a page title and description to go with the link you share.

And when your page turns up as a result in a search engine, the title and description are what people use to decide whether or not to click on your link. Page titles are also an important element for search engines.

That makes the title and description some of the most important text on your page!

To get better control over what appears in these results, use SEO optimization software like Scribe to edit the page title and description.

Remember, descriptions are mainly for readers. Don’t try to cater to Google robots with these — instead, make them enticing, elaborate on the promise made in your headline, and use a strong call to action to encourage clicks.

5. Put your images to work for you

Images add beauty and interest to your pages. They can have a search engine optimization job to do, too.

Every time you upload an image to your website, you have the opportunity to add a keyword in your image title and alternate text fields.

What are those, you ask?

The title tag for your image generates the helpful little text that appears when someone hovers over that image.

And if for some reason the image is unavailable — or your reader is using an assistive device to view your web page — the alternate text tag is the text they’ll see in place of your image.

Again — they need to make sense. If it’s a story about tires and you’ve used an image of a muddy tire, don’t just call it “Tire.” Call it “Best Tire Brand for Muddy Roads,” or some other text that describes what people will find in your content. And make sure the alternate tag accurately describes the image you’re showing. This isn’t a place to stuff random keywords, it’s just another way to make it crystal clear what your site is about.

6. Focus attention and spark a response with a landing page

Want to get your site visitors to take action? Remove distractions and focus their attention with a landing page.

Many premium themes — including Prose from StudioPress, my favorite theme of all time — have a landing page template built right in. It produces a page with no navigation menu and lots of white space to work in.

This focuses your visitor’s attention on the one action you want them to take, and increases the chances they’ll fill in that form, click that Add to Cart button, or follow that one, single link you share.

If your theme didn’t come with built-in landing pages, the Premise landing page software for WordPress can help. And even if your theme does have a landing page template, Premise can help with the copywriting advice and an extensive library of images that will make your page effective.

Premise creates versatile landing pages and gives you complete control over style and content without knowing a single line of code, and it works with any WordPress theme.

7. Don’t forget the lowly footer

Down at the bottom of your WordPress site is the sometimes-forgotten footer area.

It’s where you can include a copyright message, a link to an important page, or information about who owns your website.

Many premium themes allow you to expand this area into a full-fledged content section where you can include a short bio, an opt-in to your email list, links to popular posts or pages, and more.

Remember, people scroll down to the footer to see who’s behind a site, so give them what they’re looking for and continue to engage them in this important space.

Start off on the right foot

Relationships work best if they get off to a good beginning. That goes for your relationship with your blog or website, too.

Fulfill your needs by building a long-lasting relationship with your WordPress site using the 7 techniques outlined here.

Need more tips for WordPress beginners? Take my free Love Your Website class today.

Have a burning question? Don’t be shy: let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Not loving your website right now? Let Pamela Wilson and Wendy Cholbi show you how easy it is to love your website. Click here to sign up for their free, on-demand Love Your Website class, and learn how to create a site that’s easy to maintain and looks great.

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The Amish Guide to Intelligent Web Design

Posted on 14. Nov, 2011 by Pamela Wilson in Blog, Featured, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Less than an hour from where I live in Pennsylvania — if you point your car in the right direction — you see road signs that warn you to beware of horse and buggy carriages using the road.

The Amish people live a life very different from yours and mine.

For the most part they don’t use electricity. They avoid most machines, preferring a simple lifestyle that revolves around farming and handcrafting everyday items.

Amish furniture is coveted in some circles for its high quality and classic beauty. Their food is simple and delicious, and their household items are made with masterful craftsmanship and attention to detail.

The Amish don’t use computers, so what could they possibly teach us about web design?

The key to gorgeous site design if you’re not a professional designer is to keep it simple.

Does simple mean plain? Boring? Unadorned?

No. Simple — in this case — means effortless (as in, effortless to read and absorb), and accessible (as in, easy to find what you need).

In today’s post, we’re going to talk about how to achieve the kind of simplicity that leads to a sophisticated, ultra-functional website.

It’s easy, once you know how.

Start with a well-proportioned theme

Your design job will be much easier if you start with a theme that has “good bones.”

By this I mean plenty of white space, and an open, airy feel. You want your words and images to be surrounded by open space like you’d put a matte around a beautiful painting.

Plus, working with a solid WordPress theme gives a cohesive structure to your site, and makes each page look like it relates to the one before.

Use a reduced color palette

Amish clothing is very low key and modest.

The result is that when you come face to face with an Amish person, you really see them. You don’t see their flashy clothing or notice their hairstyle.

What you see are their faces. Their personalities shine through, unembellished by the trappings the rest of us use.

How does this translate to our web pages?

On your site, this means using a design style whose goal is to let your content shine through. Your message should be the star of the show, and your design style shouldn’t detract from the purpose of your pages.

One way to accomplish this is to use a reduced palette of colors. I recommend starting with two main colors in addition to black text and a white background.

Using a reduced color palette helps direct attention where it belongs, which is on your words.

Because — as we know, the writer runs this show.

But, the designer makes you look.

Do more with less

The Amish are masters at making the most of whatever they have on hand.

Used clothing becomes a beautiful quilt to huddle under in the cold winter months.

The sap from maple trees is tapped and boiled down to become delectable maple syrup.

Wood is reclaimed from barns and turned into furniture.

One quick and effective way to apply the “use what you have on hand” concept is pare your fonts down to two. Use one for text, one for headlines. Pick fonts that have a full family of weights: bold, semi-bold, and italic.

Then put those fonts to work all over your site. Use different weights, or try them in all caps. But don’t go beyond your two fonts.

Designing within these “restrictions” will set you free. Your pages will hang together and look cohesive because your fonts will be consistent throughout.

Lighten up your sidebar

Most of our websites have some sort of content area, as well as what I like to call the “business side of things,” which is usually a sidebar.

It’s tempting to cram your sidebar full of all sorts of ads, social media icons, opt-in forms and affiliate banners. The result is that each item competes visually with all the others, and no one wins.

Instead, approach it like the Amish.

They don’t use big, blinking neon signs to point out their businesses. They state their offerings simply, and present them in uncluttered surroundings so the customer has space to think and really see what’s there.

On your sidebar, this means paring down your offerings and making some hard decisions. If your theme allows it, it might mean running different combinations of sidebar content on different pages of your site. This allows you to spread your offerings out and feature them where they’ll make the most sense.

Look at your sidebar and decide what one action you’d most like your visitor to take. Then make a call to action that stands out visually. Make it larger and more colorful, and place it and higher up in the column.

The rest of your sidebar options should be less colorful and smaller so they don’t compete.

‘Tis a gift to be simple

Simplicity can be beautiful when your aim is to create a site that’s intelligent, effortless to navigate and easy to understand.

What can you do to apply some Amish craftsmanship to your site?

Let’s talk about it in the comments …

About the Author: Pamela Wilson teaches small businesses to grow using great design and marketing at Big Brand System. Brainstorm ideas, solve problems and achieve goals with other small business owners in Pamela’s Leap Year mastermind group.

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Comments

• Great advice. There is nothing worse than seeing a busy and … by Sam Scholfield
• There’s nothing simple-minded about simplicity. And the same … by Mitch Devine
• Good! I can’t wait to read it by Janessa
• I love that idea, Janessa! by Pamela Wilson
• [...] a recent CopyBlogger article  The Amish Guide … by Social Media Tips: Simplicity in Blog Design | Keiki Hendrix
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Further Reading

• Grab the Copyblogger Theme for WordPress
• The 5 Keys to Content Marketing Mastery
• 3 Reasons Why You Should Be a Formulaic Blogger

Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online Marketing Sheet

Posted on 29. Oct, 2011 by Robert Bruce in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Keyword Research, Landing Pages, List Building, Metrics, persuasion, productivity, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traditional Media, Traffic

Welcome to The Lede.

Every week I’ll be digging up and linking to stories, news, and opinion relevant to online marketing and copywriting.

Email, social media, innovation, SEO, productivity, mobile, conversion, publishing, and everything in between.

No commentary, just a fast, single page of headlines that you can grab, scan, and squeeze for all they may (or may not) be worth.

All right then, on with it …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

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Comments

• Hi Robert. Very valuable information is posted. I have really … by Henry Louis
• Since most people have little or no clue what “lede” means, … by Don Bates
• [...] post: Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online … by Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online Marketing Sheet … | The Way Of Making Money Online
• This is a fabulous list! To those that are overwhelmed by the … by Tracy Schutz
• Hey,Really Great Post, I am looking forward for more post … by Peter Zmijewski
• Plus 5 more…

Further Reading

• The Art of Finding Ideas
• What Bestselling Fiction Can Teach You About Writing Better Landing Pages
• 23 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Any Money (And What To Do About It!)

49 Drop-Dead Gorgeous Reasons You Should Run Your Website on WordPress

Posted on 22. Sep, 2011 by Robert Bruce in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Yeah, you can pick up a theme to bolt onto your WordPress website just about anywhere these days.

But why would you go just about anywhere to find something that’s so vital to your work? This is 2011 after all.

Your website should be stunningly designed.

It should make performing the basics of good SEO very simple.

You shouldn’t have to worry about things like state-of-the-art security, hassles with manual updates, or wondering if the underlying code of the theme you’re using is silently undermining all your work.

Oh, and it’d be cool if all of the above was found in one place. In 49 unique variations to choose from. Right?

Well, check this out …

Our StudioPress team has done the heavy lifting for you when it comes to website design, search optimization, and security.

Between our in-house StudioPress themes and our newly-built, StudioPress-approved, Theme Marketplace, we’ve got 49 stunning WordPress themes for you to lay on top of our rock-solid Genesis Framework for WordPress.

And, as always, there’s more going on over there than I can keep up with.

I’ll write more later about all the powerful plugins, the free (and growing) graphics library, etc.

For now, check out these two hand-made theme designs from the StudioPress.com workbench:

Scribble down a little note, or much more

Sometimes it’s personal.

Sometimes it’s business.

Either way, you need a place that’s yours to get it down.

Click here to straighten out your website with the Scribble theme.

Every company is a media company

Small business or large, you’re in the game.

Suburban, exurban, urban, or rural, you’ve got the opportunity to speak to the world.

We talk a lot around here about content and media. Take a step toward dominating your industry with this killer 21st century printing press.

Click here to setup your publishing empire on the Magazine theme.

Meanwhile, over at the StudioPress Theme Marketplace …

We introduced the StudioPress Theme Marketplace to you last month, and have since doubled the number of approved third-party themes available.

Ummm, there’s going to be no stopping this little shop.

Below is just a taste of what’s going on (and what’s coming) over at the StudioPress Theme Marketplace …

What will your grandchildren say?

We often think about the Internet (and what we do with it) as ephemeral. What if you thought different?

You may not be writing War and Peace, but you definitely want your best stuff out there in the wild.

Click here to leave your mark with the Legacy theme.

Legacy was designed by Wes Straham.

Style is the answer to everything

Come on, it’s time your content got the same treatment as those folks in the fashion industry.

You may not be in a professional makeup chair for three hours every morning, but your website can be in the equivalent. Ready for your closeup?

Click here to get your style on with the Fashionista theme.

Fashionista was designed by The Genesis Ninja.

56,459 people take WordPress further with StudioPress

OK, here’s the short version:

Our Genesis Framework from StudioPress empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress.

With search-optimized code and functions, 49 turn-key designs, and unlimited support, updates, and websites you can build, Mashable calls Genesis the “best of the best” among premium WordPress themes.

56,459 online publishers trust Genesis to provide a solid foundation for their sites.

Whether you’re a novice or an advanced developer, Genesis provides you with the rock-solid infrastructure to take WordPress places you never thought it could go.

Get Genesis (and one, or all of the 49 themes) right here.

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Comments

• I am a huge fan of WordPress – it makes it so simple. You … by Danielle
• Yes that’s something I also noticed too and this article hits … by Kirby
• wordpress is just awesome, I don’t think any other blogging … by tanvon malik
• Brian, thanks for the post. WordPress has become my go to … by Willis Allen
• [...] 49 Drop-Dead Gorgeous Reasons You Should Run Your Website … by Blogging for Your Business | Professional Website Design
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Further Reading

• 6 Design Tips That Will Have Your Audience Licking Their Screens
• 23 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Any Money (And What To Do About It!)
• Introducing the StudioPress Marketplace: Great WordPress Themes from Exceptional Designers

6 Design Tips That Will Have Your Audience Licking Their Screens

Posted on 30. Aug, 2011 by Pamela Wilson in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Online Product Launches, personal branding, persuasion, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traffic

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.

~ Steve Jobs

You’re creating great content to attract an audience. A loyal audience that comes to know, like and trust you.

But what if you never get the attention of that audience in the first place?

What if your blog visitors take one look at your well-written words and move right along because your page looks bland, boring, and amateurish?

You lose them at hello. Your words never had a chance to take root.

That’s where design can help.

Design creates a welcoming first impression.

It engages your site visitors and draws them in so they’ll actually spend time with your information.

It’s the difference between throwing some fast food on the table in front of your guests, and presenting a meal that’s carefully prepared, beautifully plated, and smells delicious.

Want to build up an appetite for your content?

Today’s post shares 6 tips to make your blog so luscious looking, you’ll need to warn people not to lick their screens.

1. Think about your guests

Delicious design starts with an understanding of who you’re cooking it up for.

Knowing your target market and what they’ll respond to is crucial if you want to pick typefaces, colors and images that will resonate with them.

What do you need to know about them?

Ideally, you have a grasp of their age group, predominant gender and education level.

Bonus points if you are aware of psychographic details like what motivates them, what their beliefs are, and what other companies they’re attracted to and buying from.

And just like you’d want to know about food allergies before you prepared a meal, it’s important to be aware of what your target market finds unpleasant or repulsive so you can avoid it on your pages.

2. Speak their language with typography

Custom typography allows you to break out of the Helvetica-Times Roman-Georgia-Verdana fonts our sites marched in lockstep to just a few years ago.

You can express your brand or your blog’s personality through your typefaces’ personalities.

Serif typefaces — the ones with little “feet” — are classic and traditional.

Sans-serif typefaces — those with streamlined letters — are contemporary and modern.

There are exceptions within these major categories, so trust your eyes to tell you what your typeface choices are saying.

It’s easy to use custom typefaces on our blogs now. There are several good commercial offerings that will “serve up” unique fonts to your site. The Google Font API will even do it for free.

It’s an extra step, but will make your content stand out, and give your words personality.

Here’s more on choosing and combining typefaces.

3. Use colors that make sense to your market

If you’ve carefully researched your target market as outlined in step one, you may already have an idea of what colors will work for them.

To start, I recommend you choose two main colors to represent your brand.

For you, two colors are simplest to work with — you’ll have a short list to choose from every time you need to make a color choice.

For your audience, two predominant colors will make it easier to recognize and remember your brand.

How can you pick just two colors from the millions available?

Start by looking at the consumer goods your target market already buys. What colors already appeal to them?

You don’t need to walk around your local shopping mall with a swatch book, but keep your eyes open to color combinations that sell to your particular market. Take inspiration from what’s already working.

4. Tell your story with enticing images

I’ll be the first to admit it: finding a good image to work with your posts is a huge pain.

It adds to the time it takes to finish your piece, and — because you typically look for an image after you’ve finished writing — it feels like just One More Thing To Do.

But, it’s worth it.

As wonderful as your carefully-crafted words may be, they’ll sit there limp and lonely on the page if you don’t pair them up with a compelling image.

A great image is like the cover of a dinner party invitation.

It gives people an easy “in” to start engaging with your writing. Images are processed quickly, and if you’ve picked one that’s attractive and creates just a little bit of curiosity, it will draw readers into your headline and the first paragraph of your post.

5. Order your information hierarchically

Visual hierarchy helps your visitor navigate through your page and absorb your information in the order you prefer.

Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Here’s how to make it work …

Look at the information on any given page of your blog. What do you want your site visitors to notice first? It’s probably your site name.

Then what do you want them to see? It might be your headline, or the image you’ve used with your first post.

Once they’ve taken in the name of your site and you’ve drawn them into your content, then where do you want them to look?

Visual hierarchy directs the viewer’s eyes through your information by giving it an order of importance by where it’s positioned, how bold or bright it is, and how much white space it has around it.

The most important information? Make it larger, bolder, and brighter. Give it some breathing room, too: white space draws eyeballs.

The next-most-important information? Make it a bit smaller, less bold, and not as bright.

As you move down the ladder of visual hierarchy, remember: the less important the information, the less visual “weight” it should carry.

6. Keep it together with a style guide

OK, you’ve used color, typography, gorgeous images and visual hierarchy to create lickable, luscious pages.

Now what?

Keep up the good work!

Maintain consistency with a simple style guide. It doesn’t have to be a complex 20-page document.

Try this:

• Open any word processor, and note your official colors
• Log your typefaces, and which font you use where
• List the file name for your official logo or header artwork, and where it can be found
• Note any resources for photography so you know where to find more of a style you’ve used in the past
• Continue to add to this document as you make design decisions about your site

Once you’ve created an attractive blog, keep people coming back to it by serving up beautifully-presented content consistently over time.

Make good design decisions, then continue applying them using your style guide notes as a reference.

And don’t forget the “please don’t lick your screen sign.” You’re going to need it!

About the Author: Pamela Wilson teaches small businesses to grow using great design and marketing at Big Brand System. Get her free Marketing Toolkit and follow her on Twitter.

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Comments

• Glad it was helpful, NayMarie. That’s a super cool animation … by Pamela Wilson
• Great read! I went back to my site to make some tweaks in the … by NayMarie
• I’m not a design genius in any way, so I find it rather hard to … by Simon
• I really like your article. Very nice writing too. Very … by Jacqueline Snider
• [...] read an article on Copyblogger today and gives some great … by Why Content Isn’t King
• Plus 5 more…

Further Reading

• How to Build a First-Class Email List in 30 Days — from Scratch
• 3 Steps to Finding Your True Writing Voice
• 3 Simple Techniques to Getting Your Message Seen, Heard and Out There into The World

New Blog Design Now With Comments

Posted on 15. Jun, 2011 by Michel Fortin in Blog, brian clark, chris brogan, clutter, comment, Darren Rowse, feedback, News, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

After a much needed change, I decided to completely revamp my blog. The old one was good, but it was cluttered, too busy, and distracting.

I wanted to simplify.

I wanted to get rid of the clutter and look crisper, cleaner, and more focused. The previous one had too many ads, messages, social icons, etc.

I loved the overall design and some of the main design elements from Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, and Darren Rowse. So I decided to emulate them.

I realized that they use Genesis as their framework, but I’m in love with WooThemes. In fact, I wanted a WooTheme theme because all my other blogs have WooThemes, and I love their framework, their sidebar manager, their built-in shortcodes, etc.

I wanted those features on my own blog!

Lastly, I wanted to re-introduce commenting, but with a twist. I once used Disqus, which I liked a lot. But I wanted more social media integration. Recently, LiveFyre came along with full social networking integration and some good reviews.

So this is it! But I need your feedback on a couple of things…

What do you think? I’m still tweaking it, and I not 100% sure I want to keep it like this, including the comments. Let me know in the comments.

What else do you think I should add or remove? If you look at the bottom footer section, there’s nothing (compared to last time where I had the most popular posts, etc).

Brian Clark and Chris Brogran have nothing, too. But Darren’s blog has a neat footer section. Ideas? Suggestions? Let me know in comments below.

New Blog Design Now With Comments originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

12 Awesome Resources For Design and Copy

Posted on 30. May, 2010 by Michel Fortin in ajax, Blog, conversion, Copywriting, css, icon, javascript, jquery, News, payment, plugin, rss, salesletter, script, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, tip, tool

One of the things I do is spend about 30 minutes a day reading my RSS feed reader — which is Google Reader. And I have it set so that, when I share a feed I like, FriendFeed picks it up and reshares it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many others.

I also click “like” if I like them, or “star” if I want to keep them bookmarked for myself. I do this with articles and posts I come across that I find interesting and helpful, and that I think my readers or followers would find interesting, too.

But while doing this, I keep forgetting that my blog readers miss these.

So here are some of these articles…

1. 20 Best WordPress eCommerce Themes

If you ever wanted to setup an online store using WordPress, in a way that it doesn’t make your website look like a blog but like a full-fledged Internet retail store, this post provides some great examples. (Of these, eShop, by the way, is my favorite one.)

2. 13 Pure CSS Techniques for Creating JavaScript-like Interactions

This one is neat. Ever wanted to have javascript-like interactions on your website but without javascript? This article shares some of the best CSS-only ways to make your website dynamic and interactive, without any scripting.

3. 47 CSS Tips & Tricks To Take Your Site To The Next Level

CSS is a fantastic tool, not only for design but also to make your website appear the way you want it to, to make it cross-browser compatible, and more importantly, to make it convert like crazy. This article offers a ton of little tricks you can use.

4. 30 Fresh Icon Sets For Developers and Designers

Icons galore! If you need icons for your website, digital product, or software, this post offers a ton of them — most if not all of them are free to download and use.

5. 15 Uniform Payment Options Icon Sets for Ecommerce Design

Speaking of icons and online retail stores, this article provides a variety of payment option icons — from credit card logos to alternative payment methods.

6. 45 Fresh WordPress Tutorials, Techniques, and Hacks

As I’m sure you already know by now, my favorite CMS is WordPress. There’s so much you can do, and it isn’t just for blogging anymore. We’re using it with all our sites. Well, this article provides some fantastic WordPress tutorials and tricks.

7. 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

This is another WordPress tips and hacks post. However, it does offer quite a few different ones — some I really like and plan to use myself.

8. 40+ Effective Call-to-Action Buttons

Your call to action is one of the most important elements of your sales or marketing website. But designing an effective call-to-action button is just as important, especially if you test a lot and want to know which button creates the best conversion.

9. 35+ Essential Submit Button Enhancements

In addition to call-to-action buttons, the most prolific button online is without a doubt the submit button. Whether it’s for submitting content, making your site interactive, or getting a response, this article shares some neat submit button tips.

10. 50 jQuery Tools for Awesome Websites

Three years ago, I talked about how websites and particularly salesletters need to be interactive, dynamic, and personalized. Some scripts help you do exactly that. This one offers jQuery scripts you can add to any website for this purpose.

11. 30 Fresh AJAX Tutorials And Techniques

Same as the one above, but with AJAX. What I particularly liked about this article is that many of the AJAX tools it offers are helpful in commercial and sales situations.

12. 50 Fundamental jQuery Controls, Components and Plugins

Finally, this one offers a ton of jQuery plugins and tools that make a website more usable, friendly, and responsive. From sticky slideup footers — great for unobtrusive ads and opt-in forms at the bottom of the page — to collapsible panels and menus.

Nevertheless, I share quite a bunch of these articles on social media websites. If you want to stay on top of what I do share everyday, follow me on Twitter or on Facebook.

12 Awesome Resources For Design and Copy originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.