It’s hard to believe that the Summit is over. It was starting to feel like part of my regular routine, to pack up work early and start listing to great speakers for a while!

There were 18 sessions in total, and I told you a bit about the first seven in my previous posts Kicking off Social Media Success Summit 2010 with Guy Kawasaki and Social Media Success Summit continues… Rather than providing an overview of the remaining 11, I’ve decided to share the nine things I learned that I found most interesting or valuable, and that I’ll be most likely to use. Some of these were new concepts to me, and others important reminders of things I knew but may not be doing as well as I should.

1. Not only does the Tweetmeme button make it easy for people to share your blog posts on Twitter, because of its prominence it also encourages them to do so. It also provides you with metrics, because it displays the number of tweets that link to your post, not just those tweeted via the button. (@GuyKawasaki)
2. It’s better to use the Networked Blogs application rather than Notes to import your blog feed to Facebook. For one thing, it brings in your posts more quickly, so people get to read them when they’re fresh. Secondly, when your friends or fans click on the link, they are taken to your actual blog, which is of course good for traffic, but it also means that any comments will be left on your blog, instead of having some on your blog, some on your personal Notes, and some on your business Notes. (@MariSmith)
3. You can easily export your LinkedIn contacts to be imported into your email application. (@LewisHowes)
4. If you think of your website or blog as your home base, your various social media profiles are your outposts to direct people back to your home base. You should choose the outposts that are used by the people in your target market. (@JayBaer)
5. 25 to 50% of users access social media via mobile phone, so many of us are using mobile marketing and don’t even know it, so this market should not be ignored! (@KimDushinski)
6. Automation is important, however, rather than substituting for active participation, it should be used to give you more time to engage with your audience. Overdoing it may cause people to hide your feed or stop following you. (stressed by nearly everyone!)
7. Titles of blog posts are very important! People are much more likely to click through to a post with a compelling title, and titles with numbers in them generate three to four times as many clicks! In addition, using appropriate keywords in your title will help with search engine positioning. (@DeniseWakeman)
8. There is an Editorial Calendar plug-in for WordPress which is ideal if you decide to post specific types of posts on certain days. (@ChrisGarrett)
9. To be effective on social media, you can’t just show up – you need to have specific goals, a plan to achieve those goals, and a way to measure your results. (message carried throughout the Summit)

I hope these tips are helpful to you!

I’ll be sharing further details of these strategies and much more in my upcoming Social Media Strategies for Small Business Workshop in Hamilton. Hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: Mark Smiciklas, Intersection Consulting

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Top 9 Things I Learned at Social Media Success Summit 2010.

One topic that seems to be a common interest among WordPress users at all levels is the vast variety of plug-ins available, so I’m going to conclude my coverage of WordCamp Toronto with a look at some of the plug-ins recommended by the speakers, as well as a couple of new ones that were demonstrated.

Not surprisingly, many of the speakers advocated the use of tried-and-true plug-ins such as Contact Form 7, All in One SEO Pack, and Akismet, but with over 9000 plug-ins currently available, there are lots of unique ones which are worth learning more about. Here are just a few which I heard about for the first time at WordCamp and that you might want to check out, depending on the goals of your WordPress site.

• Broken Link Checker – if I need to tell you what this does, you probably shouldn’t bother reading the rest of this post
• Flickr Photo Album – pulls in your Flickr photosets and displays them as albums on your WordPress site
• Google Maps for WordPress – allows you to easily configure Google Maps and insert them into your blog.
• Post-Page-Association Plugin – lets you attach the posts from one or more categories to a page
• SlideShare – allows you to embed SlideShare presentations in your posts
• Socialite – automatically publishes blog posts to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace
• Su.pr – sends notifications of new blog posts to Twitter, using URLs that are attached to your StumbleUpon account so you can track the number of clicks
• WordPress Exploit Scanner – searches the files on your website and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious, and examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames

Pretty interesting stuff, eh?

The two plug-in demos were pretty cool too.

Author Avatars List is a plug-in for multi-author blogs that allows you to display a list of author avatars on your site. You can also insert individual author avatars on appropriate posts or pages. This is going to be really handy for a new project that is on my horizon!

Trailmeme for WordPress is a really amazing plug-in that provides your readers with a navigation aid over and above the standard categories and tags. It is ideal if you create a series of related posts, especially if they’re not published one right after the other. The best way for me to explain it is to let you see it in action at http://trailmeme.com/trails/WordCamp_Toronto_2010, which is a “trail” of posts about WordCamp Toronto 2010, including links to the presentations and related websites. While you’re checking it out, you can also find out what else you missed by not attending!

By the way, I haven’t tried any of the above plug-ins yet, so if you have, I’d sincerely appreciate your feedback.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on 10 WordPress Plug-Ins I Discovered at WordCamp.

Since my last post, I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on my new blog theme. I hope you like it!

Now that I’m up and running again, I’d like to share some of the highlights of last weekend’s WordCamp, as promised. A few people I spoke to before the event said they weren’t going because they weren’t heavy-duty WordPress users, but there was something there for everyone, from techie types to people wanting to learn how to get involved in blogging and social networking. In addition to the nine formal sessions, there were two blogging success stories as well as demos of two new WordPress plug-ins.

In my opinion, the best three presenters (in order of appearance) were:

• Jeremy Wright, on Blogging and Social Media
• Mark Evans, on Writing for Multiple Blogs
• Brad Gosse, on SEO

Jeremy’s lively presentation was an excellent kickoff to the conference. He didn’t speak so much about blogging as about social media and the many ways it fails, such as spam and focus on numbers instead of interaction. His advice is to not let these issues keep us from participating in social media, but rather to make sure we’re not adding to the problem and to avoid those who do. In summary – to remember that it’s SOCIAL media, not social MEDIA. You can view Jeremy’s presentation here:

I especially enjoyed Mark’s presentation, since I write for multiple blogs. He suggested many strategies for capturing and organizing ideas, including the cleverly named Packrati.us, which automatically adds any URLs from your tweets to your Delicious bookmarks. (I have recently started using Delicious myself, and there’s a link to my bookmarks under “Stay Connected” on the left. Any new bookmarks that I save will also show up in my Lifestream.) You can view Mark’s presentation here:

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on WordCamp Toronto 2010: My Top 3+1.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Blog-Off II competition, and I’d like to thank those of you who have read and commented on my posts on the Community Marketing Blog. If you haven’t had a chance to do that, here are links to my three entries:

• Ten Types of Tweets
• Whatever Happened to Ryze?
• Facebook: Where Worlds Collide

Overall, it’s been a very rewarding experience. With 25 competitors posting more than 100 posts in less than two weeks, it just wasn’t possible for me to read all of them, but it sure was interesting to see the different topics people chose to blog about, ranging from dog grooming to product development. There were quite a few posts related to my main area of interest, social media, and I definitely picked up a few tips and techniques.

For me, the best part of being involved with the project was the opportunity to connect with some really great bloggers, particularly Sam Diener, Therran Oliphant, Sean Nelson, and Laurie Dillon-Schalk. I’ve learned a lot from their posts and will continue to follow them in the future.

I’d like to thank Jim Love for suggesting I enter the competition, Andrew Ballenthin for accepting me as a contestant, and Conrad Hall, who really went out of his way to let us know how we were doing in terms of the judging criteria.

It’s been a great experience, and I look forward to finding out the week of December 21 who will win the big prizes. Do I stand a chance? If you think so, be sure to support me by commenting on my posts today.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Blog-Off II Wrap-Up.

I thoroughly enjoy blogging and social media, and although I don’t have special training in either one, I observe what other people do, try to emulate what I like, and avoid doing the things I find annoying. I guess I must be doing something right, because I’ve been selected as a contestant in Blog-Off II, a competition to find “the best social media and marketing experts who know how to command top online social media and marketing performance.”

The competition begins today and runs through to December 12^th. During that time, participants from Canada, the US, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and India, will each contribute at least two posts to the Community Marketing Blog. Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of eight judges, and the top three bloggers will receive some very exciting and valuable prizes.

The judging criteria include the quality of the headlines and the writing itself, and naturally I’ll put forth my best effort. My posts will also be rated according to the number of visits and comments they receive, and that’s where I need your support.

Take any of the following actions to find out when I’ve posted to the Community Marketing Blog:

• Follow me on Twitter
• Connect with me on Facebook or LinkedIn (if we’re not already connected, please be sure to introduce yourself so we can get to know one another)
• Add the Community Marketing Blog to your RSS reader
• Bookmark this blog and remember to check the “Addicted to Blogging” section on the right for new posts

When you see that I’ve contributed a post, please take a moment to read it and get involved in the conversation. I’ll especially appreciate it if you share the link with your network!

As you can probably tell, I’m very excited to be involved in this project, and I look forward to connecting with you on the Community Marketing Blog.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Blog-Off II Begins – and I'm In!.

If you’ve had a website for several years, you know that after numerous updates, changes, and additions, inconsistencies in design, format, and even content can occasionally appear on your site. Even a carefully maintained site can begin to look tired over time. When Daisy Wright of The Wright Career Solution contacted me, her website looked like this:

Building upon Daisy’s existing brand, I created a fresh new look, using WordPress, so she could easily update it herself. The end result is here:

Her original blog used a fairly basic Blogger template, which was not unattractive, but lacked pizzazz, as you can see here:

What also concerned me was the presence of the Blogger Toolbar, which allows readers to easily click through to other random blogs. Of course, most bloggers like to link to other blogs, but we should be able to choose the recipients of our link love!

Although we could have imported Daisy’s blog into her new website, she preferred to keep it separate, but wanted to capitalize on the functionality and flexibility of WordPress. Here is the end product:

I don’t like to brag, but I think I’ve done a very nice job on both sites! Please check them out, and if you know someone who is in the market for a new job or career, have them give Daisy a call. She has earned several certifications, has recently been named Outstanding Canadian Career Leader by CPC for the second time, and is the author of No Canadian Experience, Eh?

Take a good look at your own website. Is the information current? Does it reflect the professional image you wish to convey? If it’s time for a makeover, contact me for a no cost, no obligation consultation.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on A Web Makeover.

For several weeks, I’ve been seeing warnings about WordPress sites being hacked, but I didn’t worry about them too much, since all my sites were already at 2.7 or higher. Admittedly, I was a little reluctant to upgrade to 2.84, having run into some problems the first time I tried upgrading a site to 2.7. I’m happy to say that I finally bit the bullet and was able to perform the upgrade without a hitch. (Well, I did run into a problem, but it had nothing to do with the upgrade process. Continue reading to find out what happened.)

If you’re already running WordPress 2.7 or higher, it’s really not difficult at all to upgrade. Just a few steps:

Step 1: Run a full back-up

If you don’t have a back-up system in place, there’s no time like the present to implement one! I recommend using two plug-ins: WordPress Database Backup to back up your database, and Wordpress Backup for your themes, plug-ins, and uploaded images. Once you’ve installed the plug-ins and downloaded your back-ups, you can set them up to automatically run back-ups at regular intervals, and either save them to your server or send them to you via email.

Step 2: Deactivate all plug-ins

Step 3: Update WordPress

Simply click on “Please update now” which appears at the top of your screen.

Step 4: Reactivate all plug-ins

It really only takes a few minutes, so don’t put it off. I really mean that. Much to my dismay, after successfully upgrading four sites, when I got to the last one, the screen went blank when I started running the back-up.

This bore no resemblance to the problem currently being reported by thousands of users, so I didn’t think I’d been hacked. Since I’d completely lost access to my dashboard, I logged into my hosting site and downloaded a copy of the database, and when I looked at the file, I could see tons of stuff in there that clearly did not belong. Fortunately, that particular site had very little content and I’d found the theme very cumbersome to work with, so I decided to start with a fresh install and recreate the site. If this had happened with a larger site such as this blog, it would have been a far more serious problem, and I would probably still be off crying in a corner somewhere.

I learned a very important lesson, and believe me, I won’t make that mistake again!

Upgrading from a version of WordPress older than 2.7 is trickier, as it must be done manually, but it’s not too bad if you closely follow these step-by-step instructions.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.84 will make your site more secure, but you might also want to install the WP Security Scan plug-in to check for any outstanding vulnerabilities.

I owe a big thanks to Neil Matthews, AKA WP Dude, for teaching me about all of the above plug-ins (although I foolishly neglected to install them until now). If you need any technical help with your WordPress site, I highly recommend his services. He offers one-on-one coaching to individuals wanting to learn more about WordPress, as well as technical services for those who just want something done.

Whether you do it yourself or get someone else to do it for you, make sure your sites are as secure as possible.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on How Secure is Your WordPress Site?.

One of the many things I love about WordPress is the fact that there are plug-ins for practically anything you can imagine – and then some.

Some plug-ins are so popular that nearly everyone with a WordPress site uses them, or is at least familiar with them, such as Google Analytics for WordPress, Contact Form 7, All in One SEO Pack, and of course Akismet, which comes pre-installed with WordPress. I won’t take any time or screen space explaining those, but if you’re not familiar with them, I suggest you click on the links to learn what they do.

I’m much more fascinated by the lesser known plugins, which often serve functions that aren’t even needed in most cases. Here are a few I’ve installed recently.

By default, WordPress displays categories in alphabetical order, and that works well in most cases; however, I had a client who wanted the categories displayed in a specific order. Not wanting to disappoint my client, I went to the WordPress Plugin Directory where I discovered My Category Order, which allows you to simply drag and drop the categories into the desired order.

Another client had spent hours entering tags on all her posts, only to find that the search feature on her blog still only brought up posts that included the search term in the title or body. I felt terrible, because I was the one who recommended that she enter the tags. Fortunately, I was able to find, install, and configure the Search Everything Plugin very quickly, and now things are working just the way she wants.

It’s not uncommon to place affiliate ads in the sidebar. After all, affiliate earnings is often the only income generated by a blog, but if you have too many ads, your sidebar can look cluttered and even a little cheesy. You can offer up a variety of ads without sidebar clutter by using the Datafeedr Random Ads Plugin. In addition to the plugin files, you copy the html code for the ads you wish to rotate into a text file which you upload to your server, following the instructions provided. Each time the page displays, a different ad will be displayed. You can see this in action on my other blog, Your Organizing Business. Take a look at the ads for OnlineOrganizing and FranklinCovey, then refresh the page – you’ll see different ads appear.

Whenever a client asks me to do something on their WordPress site and my initial reaction is “that can’t be done,” I always go to the WordPress Plugin Directory, and it hasn’t let me down yet!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on WordPress Plug-Ins You Just Don’t Hear About.

It’s been many weeks since FoVA, and I just realized I haven’t told you about the last workshop I attended! I know quite a bit about WordPress, but I want to learn as much as I can, so I was pretty thrilled to learn that Frances Palaschuk was going to be doing a workshop on WordPress.

I knew from following her on Twitter that Frances would have lots of resources to share, and I was not disappointed. Here are a few of her recommendations:

• Studiopress for professional WordPress themes
• Jing for creating screencasts which can be used to demonstrate tasks to clients who are visual learners
• 123RF for royalty-free stock photos
• Oddiophile’s Technorati Tags Bookmarklet
• Google Webmaster tools, which I knew a little about, but learned even more

I also learned that when creating websites (as opposed to blogs) using WordPress, it’s better to use a premium theme (as I did for the Golden Horseshoe Virtual Assistants Group and Maestro Quality sites), because most free themes are more suited to blogs. Furthermore, when using free themes that are not listed on WordPress.org, it’s important to watch for hidden ads which may lead to “bad neighbourhoods.”

Perhaps most valuable of all were copies of Frances’ Ultimate Blog Planning Workbook and WordPress Site Design checklist, which have already been very useful.

All in all, FoVA was a wonderful experience and I am so glad I went. If you avoid industry conferences because you don’t understand the benefit of networking with and learning from your peers, I urge you to reconsider – you just don’t know what you’re missing! For more on that subject, read The ROI of Attending a Conference.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on The Wonderful World of WordPress.

I’ve heard it said that “the proof is in the pudding.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, so I looked it up and learned that the complete quote is actually “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” meaning that results are what counts.

Another concept I didn’t quite grasp before is one that comes up a lot when you read about marketing a business, that of defining your niche. I understood the general idea, but had trouble understanding the difference between niche, target market, and ideal client. I know what type of projects I enjoy most and what type of clients I prefer to work with, but like many others, I’ve worried that being too specialized would cause me to miss out on opportunities. On the other hand, I haven’t worried too much about it, since I always have enough work to keep busy and generate a regular income.

I began this blog in 2006 with no particular goal other than to see what the fuss was all about, but since then I’ve experienced firsthand the powerful benefits that can be gained by blogging. In addition, I’ve discovered that it’s something I thoroughly enjoy, and I’ve received positive feedback from enough people that I know I have a knack for it. Earlier this year, I decided to learn what I could do to make my blog even better and to increase my ROI. Since everything I read recommended focusing on a particular niche, I set about identifying my niche and, not wanting to make drastic changes to this blog, launched Your Organizing Business in April.

It’s only been three months, but I have been astounded at the results. My Google Page Rank is already at 3 and the number of readers is steadily increasing. In fact, I had to upgrade my hosting package because by the 10^th of July I had already exceeded my allowable bandwidth for the month, something that’s never happened in the seven years I’ve had a website. Even more significant is the increases I’m experiencing in my passive income through Google AdSense and various affiliate programs, as well as inquiries from new clients in my target market. Or is it my niche? I’m still confused about the terminology… In any case, I can clearly see that I’m doing something right, and I look forward to continuing in that direction.

If you’ve been afraid that choosing a niche might force you to limit yourself, I highly recommend testing the waters by creating a niche blog. You can take comfort in knowing that your current website is still actively working for you while your new blog helps you assess the viability of your chosen niche.

After all, wouldn’t you like to enjoy a delicious bowl of pudding?

Photo credit: shrk

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Have You Chosen Your Niche?.