Smart Marketing Show

Everyone wants to start a podcast. But do you have the audience to sustain one? Unlikely. Besides, you don’t even know if you like podcasting yet.

Instead, why not be a guest on podcasts? In this episode, Jason and Bridget are joined by Warren Whitlock to get insight on how to market yourself by being a guest.

Take a listen. Let us know your thoughts.

Preroll Sponsor

Thank you for being a preroll sponsor, ServerPress! ServerPress is the maker of DesktopServer, WPSiteSync, and so much more!

WPblab Sponsors VendorFuel

VendorFuel is a next-generation shopping cart plugin that will ignite your eCommerce. Built using AngularJS VendorFuel lets you keep your customers on your website for the entire checkout experience. Start a 90 day free trial now and Ignite Your eCommerce at https://VendorFuel.com

Kinsta

If you are you tired of unreliable or slow hosting check out Kinsta.com, who takes managed WordPress hosting to the next level. Powered by Google Cloud, all their plans include PHP 7.3, SSH access for developers, one-click staging area, 20 global data centers, free SSL, free CDN and 24×7 expert support who will also migrate your site free of charge.” https://Kinsta.com

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A Bit About Warren Whitlock

Warren has a diverse broadcasting background from the radio days (we’re still in radio days) as well as having his own podcast: Distributed Conversations. More than anything he is a futurist — always intrigued about the newest technology whether it was video, Twitter, WordPress, or block chain — his current passion.

The golden thread in Warren’s career is content production. He’s produced and created content since 1969. Though the recording and distribution technology evolves, the principles do not.

“I open my mouth and it turns into content.” Warren Whitlock Why Should You Be a Podcast Guest?

Podcasting is a great way to give back. Warren paraphrases the Zig Ziglar principle that in order to get anything out of life, you must give first.

“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” Zig Ziglar

At the end of the day, podcast hosts are much like television producers: they have time to fill but it needs to benefit their advertisers.

Not only is giving a good way to elevate your brand awareness for your company and yourself, it’s a healthy part of any SEO strategy.

Tips For Choosing a Podcast

1. Ensure the podcast is sharable. Meaning, how will it look if you share your episode with your following. There should be more than two episodes.
2. Ensure the podcast enables and encourages commenting. Comments are important for follow-up conversations after the podcast is over and so people can find you — the guest — later.
3. If the podcast doesn’t feel authentic, it won’t do anything for your own brand awareness.
4. Podcasts are about connection. If you don’t feel the connection, it’s not a good fit. (This is why it is important to listen to a podcast before you agree to come on.)
5. Find a podcast you love and become it’s biggest fan. This will get the attention of the producers so they are more likely to invite you as a guest.

Tool or Tip of the Week

This Tool or Tip of the week is brought to you by VendorFuel.

VendorFuel is a next-generation shopping cart plugin that will ignite your eCommerce. Built using AngularJS VendorFuel lets you keep your customers on your website for the entire checkout experience. Start a 90-day free trial now and Ignite Your eCommerce at VendorFuel.com!

Warren recommends riding Uber Pool. It’s a great way to meet new people. You might have fun, too!

Jason recommends Shift. It...

In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard were joined by Jeff Matson from Pagely's NorthStack. He gave insight into Managed WordPress, WordPress Hosting, and Managed AWS Service.

Thank you to our sponsor!

The WPwatercooler network is sponsored by ServerPress makers of DesktopServer. Be sure to check them out at https://www.serverpress.com as well as PeepSo.

If you're interested in sponsoring the 40 minute mark of this show, check out the details on our sponsor page. We offer episode by episode spoken ads, rather than large contracts. A show by you for you.

Stop Getting Cheep-A$$ Hosting

WordPress hosting matters. Hosting is hosting is hosting until it's not. When it comes to your "hobby," if you take it seriously, it has the potential to become your career.

It seems like WordPress hosting is saturated, but it's really not. Pagely was the first to create Wordpress Managed hosting back in the day. You can hear Joshua Strebel talk about the last ten years in his WordCamp Phoenix talk.

So, how do we convince content creators, bloggers, and non-inside baseball writers to think good hosting is important?

When you pay for $5 hosting, you get $5 hosting. They're digital slumlords, Bridget says in jest. If the support folks are getting paid minimum wage ($7 something in VA), the Five Dollar Host loses money every time one of their customers calls.

"Even if they are getting paid minimum wage, if they talk to you for an hour, the company lost money on you." Jeff Matson

Bridget spends $25 a month on Pressable and thinks that's a reasonable amount for anyone to spend. To her, it matters that the company she chooses has a reputation of treating their employees well.

"I don't want to use a service that has a big turnover. If they can't keep their employees, they have internal issues." Bridget Willard Hobbyists Learn Everything When Their Sites Blow Up

It's true. When your blog gets notices, as Jason points out, and all of a sudden you're getting traffic, your site may not be able to handle that. Managed hosts will scale the traffic.

Do you want to learn the hard way? Your hobby or small business needs to value website hosting.

"You teach them that their business is important." Jeff Matson

You don't need more web hosting than your site requires, especially if you're getting only 20 hits a week. But with something like a managed service, you can scale up and then down when you need it.

What do you get with Managed WordPress Hosting?

If you're in the $250 a month or $25 a month plan, when you pay for managed WordPress hosting, you're paying for support. Larger fees at the front pay for concierge-level service. Jeff recalls how Pagely had top-tier folks in their slack helping with Gravity Forms site migrations at midnight. That's the kind of service you get with top-tier Managed WordPress Hosting.

Why not run your own box?

You could run your own DigitalOcean box, but why? If you're running your own box, you have to do all of the security maintenance, patches, and updates. Also, if you're facing a DDOS attack, you have to face those trials, too.

Almost any level of business should outsource these types of things so they can focus on working on your business.

"Is that really what you want to spend your billable hours on?" Bridget Willard

So, the perfect solution between running your own box and buying high-end Managed WordPress hosting is managed AWS service.

What is a Managed AWS Service?

With NorthStack, Pagely is bringing the same level of product without the support. You can get a fast site that scales when someone posts your article to Reddit.

"It's an unbelievable product to host your sites on without all the extra stuff that you might not need." Jeff Matson

This is made for developers who use GitHub and CLI to create apps and build sites. For now, that's where NorthStack is focusing. You pay for the amo...

This week on WPblab we’ll be talking with surgeon Dr Andy Fragen about how he builds WordPress plugins as a hobby.

Andy Fragen Geek Surgeon / Plugin Developer

• thefragens.com
• afragen (Andy Fragen)
• Andy Fragen (@andyfragen)

Andy doesn't do WordPress during the day, he does it as a hobby

• CSS Zen Garden:The Beauty of CSS Design
• The Events Calendar Category Colors

Scratching your own itch has lead to making some plugins for favorite things

• Github Updater
• Software Licensing-Updater Implementation for WordPress Plugins

Some people go home from a crazy day at work and do puzzles to unwind... Coding is a puzzle – figuring out how to accomplish something or meet a need with a plugin

Started using Git/GitHub mainly for version control for his own purposes ... not primarily seeking help/input to start

Rachelle Wise: I've written a bunch of plugins, but they've been mostly specific to client sites and haven't submitted anything yet, but I've been thinking about it. Any tips for submitting to the WP directory? Andy Fragen: Use some batch script to make it easier – but definitely go for it! What’s the worse that could happen? You’ll have to support it

Use hooks, use filters, use the WordPress API

Try to test plugins in both single site and multi-site environments

Bridget: How do you handle support when it’s just a hobby / side job? James Tryon: Brian Hogg had great advice about saying in the warranty “you only support the plugin on base WordPress with no other plugins installed and a default theme”... so you are not stuck with all the support

– WordPress – Profiles – Andy Fragen

Great plugin: – Local Development

No meetups in Palm Springs? There are some people who livestream their meetups – good alternative for people without a local meetup

Bridget: How do you start contributing? Andy: Hang out in support forums and answer questions – if you have a product you really like, start there ... more than one person has gotten hired by volunteering their time in support!

Use the proper tools – PHPstorm is a good one

• PhpStorm IDE
• Local Development
• Pippins Plugins
• Tom McFarlin | A Perspective on Professional WordPress Development
• Deploys a WordPress plugin from Github (git) to the WordPress Plugin Repostiory (svn), taking account of git-flow usage.

Thanks to these people for helping us with these show notes! Jen Miller @jenblogs4u James Tryon – @jamestryon Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

The post WPblab EP63 – Building WordPress plugins as a hobby w/ Andy Fragen appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week's guest Isaac Irvine, a personal branding expert, will talk to us about how we can balance the promotion of our employer's brand (or clients) without neglecting our own. Be sure to tune in for this show, which will be sure to have tweetable nuggets. Join the live chat for an opportunity to ask Issac your questions, too!

Isaac Irvine

@theisaac

https://isaacirvine.com/Social and Community Manager at GoDaddy. I love talking about #PersonalBrand | #EmployeeAdvocacy | #StarWars. #Podcast host. Opinions are mine.

Bridget: Sometimes working for a brand is like a marriage – if you get divorced, then what becomes of your identity?

Shawn Pfunder told Isaac his personal brand is ‘cheerleader (for the company)... no one really knows what you’re about’ – he was devastated at the time, because he realized he didn’t have an identity outside of what his personal facebook friends saw

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isaac-irvine-the-unexpected-personal-brand-coach_us_59371d69e4b04331b6694a4d

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-teaches-9-year-old-son-important-lesson-about-bullying/

Ask yourself “what do I really want to be known for” ... talk about what you are passionate about! If it lines up with your brand, that’s great, but don’t hide who you are! Bridget: “Don’t be a paper doll.”

Sometimes we forget, as people, that it’s okay to talk about ourselves

A good place to start – Google yourself and see what comes up – ask if those are the things you want to be known for ... if not, it might be time to start giving more attention to your personal brand

Think about a few things that you’re passionate about and make a list – then go from there, pick a few topics that float to the top and ask yourself “Can I come up with 10 articles/blog posts about this subject?”

For Isaac, the thing that stood out to him that he loved was ‘Star Wars’! He could come up with articles, videos, cosplay etc.. endlessly – it takes 0 effort for him to talk about it! If he is going to be authentic, he is going to talk about Star Wars and engage with others about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB0wzy-xbwM

Naturally people will want to talk to you on social media about your job because they perceive you as an expert, but you need to remember to open up and be yourself too

If you run an agency/business, it’s a really good thing to have your employees active on social – if people are connected to your employees, then they are more likely to trust your business – because they trust their friends and their authenticity.

People can immediately tell if someone isn’t being authentic – you can’t fake that sort of thing. The more employees talk authentically about what they’re passionate about, the more it reflects positively on your brand.

If you want people to share your content... 1) make it good and worth sharing 2) be authentic

Don’t talk about your official job/roles too much on your social accounts, no more than 20% – talk about what makes you – YOU! What are you interested in, what do you care about? That’s what people need/want to see! Get comfortable sharing your stuff! Don’t self-censor so much that you’re no longer who you are.

His son started growing out his hair so he could donate it. He was having some trouble getting bullied at school. Isaac asked him what was going on and asked him to talk about it – he only agreed when Isaac offered to record it and share it! (he loves the idea of becoming a popular YouTube video personality). Isaac posted the video and didn’t think anyone would watch it, but the next morning, his phone was overflowing with notifications – the post went viral! Over 14,000 views in 8 hours!!! By that night, there were 2 news trucks outside to interview his son. By the next day it was on CNN, Fox News and Yahoo! By the end of that week it was all over the globe.

A lot of people suggested he should start blogs / video series about bullying – there was the temptation to think “this is part of my brand now”. But he’s not an expert on bullying – he’s not going to capitalize on that because it’s not authentic to his brand – it was a great parenting moment, but it’s not a passion of his.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-teaches-9-year-old-son-important-lesson-about-bullying/

When building your brand, ask yourself “is this something I can really carry forward – am I passionate enough about the subject to keep...

In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard, along with you in the chat room, will reminisce on the show, the community, technology, and even their own careers. We'd love to have you join in.

Celebrating Two Years!!

Late September 2015 – Bridget was working as an office manager for a construction company. Jason said there was a new video / chat platform called Blab.im and decided he wanted to give it a try and suggested Bridget join him!

Bridget said “I don’t know anything about WordPress” and Jason said “That’s why I want you to do the show!”

Started as a 90 minute show and has since been trimmed back to an hour

Blab.im allowed anyone to pop in as a random guest during the show and they had guests from countries all over

Was originally just a WordPress focused show, so any topic around WordPress was fair game, has since evolved to focus on WordPress marketing and social media

Just as Jason was starting to get tired of / annoyed with Blab.im ... it went away! It was the perfect time to try a new platform – tried Firetalk and eventually landed on Google / YouTube

Jason has been using Google Hangouts for about 5 years, so decided to keep using the platform for WPBlab

Having a show whose content is totally dependant on people showing up and asking questions proved very challenging, so moving to have a set topic with guests just made sense

Originally almost felt like a virtual meetup, where the audience was heavily involved in the content of each show

Bridget will be appearing in the Women Who WordPress panel at WordCamp Seattle this weekend (as a freelancer). She will also appear at WordCamp Rochester and will be at WCUS for Contributor Day with the Marketing team.

Both Jason and Bridget have switched jobs since starting and Bridget is now freelancing. Bridget has also now travelled to two different countries!

Started ‘Community Connections’ spin-off this year with Bridget Willard and Jen Miller – highlighting members of the WordPress community

Where do Jason & Bridget want to be in the next 2 years?

• Bridget hopes her life is personally and professionally drastically different! She also hopes she’s seen Iceland and learned how to do something WordPressy, like make a plugin! She hopes she finally understands DNS
• Jason is looking forward to some big new projects at work

Where did you think you’d be now, 20 years ago? Are you there, did you surpass it, fail to meet it?

• Bridget – I’ve exceeded my college education, but I don’t believe in 10, 20-year plans – when you meet people and experience things, your goals/dreams keep changing! “The more you experience in your life, the more your dreams change!”
• Jason – knew he’d be married and have a couple kids and be doing the kind of nerdy stuff he does! He’s happy with where he’s ended up and enjoys doing the podcasts and keeping up with his friends without having to be in the same room

The coolest thing Bridget has learned is that she can do whatever she wants to do and succeed if she sets her mind to it, and her friends believe that she can

Show notes contributed by:

Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl

Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

The post WPblab EP87 – A Look Backward in Time appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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