Top 10 WordPress Plugins You Must Have
Why WordPress in the First Case?
Did you know that WordPress powers more than 60 million websites online? Generally, WordPress is a content management system that is rocking in the online world. As opposed to the traditional HTML websites that would require a lot of time and money to set up, WordPress has made work much easier for most bloggers and website owners. Perhaps this explains why a whopping 22% new websites launched are powered by WordPress in the USA. Apart from that, WordPress makes it convenient for your to manage your content, it is flexible, and it is SEO friendly.
The Role of Plugins
That being said, you also need cool plugins to go with your WordPress website. Having the right plugins can do a lot of things for you, which includes: improving your SEO and user experience, usability, and various conversions. The following WordPress Plugins are just what you might need. As a matter of fact, these are the plugins that have been given a vote of confidence by the online community; most of them are free.
1. All in One SEO Pack: This is exactly what any blogger or website owner would want. All in One SEO Pack has been downloaded over 15,000,000 times. What it does is that it automatically optimizes your blog for the search engines. It also generates Meta Tags automatically. All you need to do is just to download it and install it, and the rest of the things will work themselves out. If you are an advanced user, you are free to fine-tune its features. Another alternative to this plugin is the WordPress SEO by Yoast
- Contact Form 7: you will love Contact Form 7 if there is need for you to manage multiple contact forms. You have the option to customize the contact forms to suit your unique needs. There is a CAPTCHA integration option for you to help you fight spam. Contact Form 7 comes in over 50 languages. If you need to create a fancy Contact Us page, Contact Us Page - Contact People, is the plugin for you. There are actually very few websites whose contact us page is stunningly vibrant.
3. Clicky Web Analytics: You’ve got to love Clicky Web Analytics if you have a lot of Google data you are handling in Google Analytics. Unlike the Google Analytic tool which is so cumbersome, this plugin is so refreshing, and it provides a clean interface for you to view your data even if you are the type of person that likes checking your statistics more than once a day.
- Secure WP: this plugin gives you thorough security check and makes a number of changes in your WordPress installation so as to make it as secure as possible. For instance, it hides your WordPress number version.
5. Buddy Press: BuddyPress lets you build a community from your visitors by enabling users to create profiles, send messages to one another, and interact through chat. It is a kind of creating a social network in a box.
6. Feedweb: Every website owner needs to get feedback from the audience on how they getting on with the content. This plugin will allow you to receive feedback from your visitors on how they are experiencing your services or who they feel you can improve on the content.
7. Members: Members is a plugin that contributes to making WordPress one of the coolest Content management systems for web sites. It extends your control a little further by letting you control the roles of members of your blog. It allows you to create, edit, or delete the roles played by various members. It gives you powers to control permissions of the members as well.
8. Social Gallery Lite: This is a great way for you to boost your social network for your blog. The Social Gallery Lite is your Ultimate Social Lightbox Plugin which is a good substitute to vanilla image lightboxes.
- Tumblr Importer:Tumblr importer helps you to import blog posts from a Tumblr blog. This is the ultimate Tumblr Importer that will maintain the format of the blogs, as well as the backgrounds. It can also import drafts and pages.
- Hotfix: Hotfix will fix common WordPress without having to wait for next WordPress core release. In other words, you’ll fix bugs quickly even if you have not updated your WordPress.
There are actually countless plugins floating in the online sea. The type of plugin you need depends on your specific needs. However, there is no need to install every other plugin you meet as this can slow down your WordPress site.
7 Ways to Increase Your Social ROI
William S. Woodside and David J. Reibstein (Professors of Marketing at The Wharton School) boldly claimed that “If an ad doesn’t increase brand awareness, it's not doing its job”. Any CEO, marketing executive, and business owner knows very well that marketing is the integral part of any organization/business set-up. Without it, there is no business.
Ridiculously, in times of economic difficulties, the marketing budget is normally among the first culprits of cost-cutting strategies. In other words, if your marketing budget is not bringing in the returns, its importance will diminish. With the social media here with us, marketers are utilizing the social media platform to drive up their brand awareness, and advertising. Trust me, businesses spend lots of dollars in social marketing. But how do you ensure that each dollar spent in social media marketing plays a part in bringing in customers or create brand awareness?
Here are 7 ways to increase your social ROI:
- Make it a Team Effort
It is tempting to imagine that advertising on social media is a piece of cake. Behind every Facebook like; every YouTube view; every twitter follower, there is an effort or cash expended. This can’t be done by one person, nor can you depend on your ads alone to do the job, you must ensure that every person in the organization is contributing towards the campaign. A survey conducted by openforum.com shows that about 53% of people engage in social media marketing campaign alone. If you are a small business owner, make sure that your employee, suppliers, distributers (and family members if possible) are contributing.
- Be Authentic
This is what Sid Shuman, who runs social media for Sony PlayStation had to say “You can't fake it online; they can smell that a mile away." You can’t hide behind your monitor and run a marketing campaign you don’t believe in. you might dismiss this as a ‘pastor’s sermon in church’ but is the truth simply because it has been tried and tested. Before you spend your cash in social media campaign, you’ve got to be part of it; you’ve got to believe in what it is you are selling to them. Only by doing so will you be able to answer your fans’ questions and engage with them.
- Put Your House in Order
Make sure your social profiles are in shape. Make sure they look professional and attractive. Your social profile is your social shop-front. Don’t expect customers to jump through muck just to come and listen to you. Also, make consistent list of the tasks you’d like to accomplish on a periodic basis. For instance, you can draft a list of twitter updates to send every 6 hours, each day. You can re-tweet interesting updates, share interesting photos, or descent jokes. Sometimes, it doesn’t have to a serious stuff.
- Target. Target. Target
Your time is very precious. Your followers/fans’ time is precious too. Don’t waste any of it by engaging in nihilities. There is no way you are going to realize a ROI in your social marketing activities if the message is not reaching the targeted people at the right time and place. Poor advertisement strategy is like a boy winking to a girl in the darkness.
- Engage
Don’t just listen to the audience, engage with them. Treat their feedback seriously and let them know that their views are being integrated in the process. Organizations can use social media tools to improve their services and products. In fact, social media is now an important too in brand development. It starts with listening to the customers’ complains/complements/suggestion through intelligence gathering, analyzing the information, implementing where necessary and appreciating them for the contribution.
- Identify influencers
Social media is about trust; whether you are talking about casual chat or business marketing. Invest in research that will determine what customers appreciate and trust. You’ll reap better fruits if your produce a product that your customers have endorsed. It is important to pay heed to what the customers are saying, what their fears are, what makes them happy, what annoys them, and so on. Your team of marketers need to extremely alert to changes in market trends and customer psychology. Rather than being reactive, being proactive is the safest road to success.
- Know Your Budget
If you don’t know your budget, how else will you be effective in what you do? Knowing your budget will enable you to plan, improvise, cut unnecessary expenses, and concentrate only on useful activities. If you don’t know your budget, you might find yourself spending a lot of money and time on non-essential things at the expense of the essential ones. You will also be in a better position to know whether your social media activities are producing the right rate on investment.
Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. ROI is definitely going to scale up if you invest on this kind of marketing for your business, We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
How to Create a Smashing Brand: 5 ideas to refresh your online branding
Did you know that a strong identity helps your customers to remember you and makes you stand out in the marketplace? However, here is some news for you: branding is more than just shinny logos and a fancy name. Branding essentially involves helping customers to have a sense of belonging and attachment to your products, services, culture and values. If you want to create an unforgettable brand online, it needs to be consistent, recognizable and should appear across all aspects of your online presence. Learn how to create an unforgettable brand using these five tips.
- Are you prepared to spend some money?
When it comes to online branding, you cannot avoid spending some money. If you want to make more money, you have to spend more money. It means you will have to spend in things like social media, Ad Words, and content creation.
- Identify and convey your purpose
In order to create a powerful online brand, you need to create a defining purpose that will act as your compass. Sometimes it is good to go back to the basics. Why are you in this business in the first place? Does your mission and purpose translate into your online presence?
- Keep it real
Sometimes small businesses suffer into oblivion because of their insistence to look ‘big’ and corporate like. The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to. If you want your brand to stand out online, do not hastate to put your personality behind it. People are more receptive to people. For instance, try to include your picture in your company profile. You could also infuse some humor into the content. Authenticity should be your goal regardless of whether you are new in the market. Be passionate and you will attract passionate clients into your online business.
- Revisit your target audience
Do you really know who your target audience is? You need to know who your target audience are and where there are or where you can find them. Therefore, you need to make sure you can consistently target your audience so that your audience find content when they expect it.
- Conduct yourself professionally
Whatever you do, remember that this is business. So you should pay a close attention to how you conduct yourself. Avoid being remembered for the wrong reasons by ensuring you post or publish credible and factual content. Go for quality over quantity. You have probably heard the saying that goes: it is not what you say, but how you say it that is essential when it comes to marketing. Although your personality reflects on your startup at the beginning, the personality of your startup will become an integration of voices that write for your brand.
It is important to keep in mind that what is being said about your brand is very important; therefore, it is important to make sure you listen to your audience.
Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Are you Utilizing the Power of YouTube Marketing
If you have been ignoring the impact of YouTube marketing, then you have been committing a cardinal marketing sin. There are some shocking statistics that will show you just why YouTube marketing has become a big hit. Nielsen report shows that in the year 2011, internet video streaming views increased by 35% compared to only 0.2% increase in television views in America. Mobile video viewing also increased by 20%; therefore, it is clear that internet video marketing (like YouTube) is now more popular, cheaper, and result oriented than the traditional TV marketing. As a matter of fact, the number of people who visit YouTube for entertainment, research, and education is alarming. YouTube is now the second most search engine by volume.
However, something else you should know is that about 35 hours of videos are being uploaded in YouTube every minute, meaning if you take 10 minutes to read this article, you will meet about 350 hours of newly uploaded YouTube videos. So what? So, it means that if you are thinking of using YouTube to advertise your products, then you should bear in mind that competition is extremely high; so, you need to approach it with some plan if you hope to achieve positive results. In other words, just uploading a video does not necessarily mean that you'll automatically get YouTube hits.
The following are two suggestions to get you started on how to get positive YouTube performance:
1. Just like a website, content is king, and good quality is paramount. Please invest some time to create a quality and compelling video before you upload. Potentials customers should find your videos useful, engaging, and attractive to view. If you let them feel like they have wasted their precious moment viewing you video, be sure that the video will never go viral, or worse still, they wont come back. The rule of the thumb is this: the video should address the needs of the viewers. Anything else is thrash. Therefore, invest some time in researching on what the customer needs and create something relevant. For instance, it doesn't help uploading a video that talks about meditation, yet you are selling cars. In that case, you would want to talk about 'how to maintain a car'.
2. Since it is Google that owns YouTube, you have to play by Google Search optimization rules to get an edge. For instance, in order for the video to be findable, it must have a title, good descriptions, and tags, among others. Also, you should create a brand if you want to attract and retain customers. This doesn't have to be done with massive investment; all you need is to be consistent with your content, create a similar backgrounds, create a playlist for the most popular videos, and choose an appropriate layout.
All in all, taking your business online is not an option in this internet age if you are to stay profitable, and relevant. YouTube presents you with one of the best channel of informing the online users about your presence; hence you should take advantage.
Media Solution Company Company talks about Struggling in search
Media Solution Company Company talks about Struggling in search? Gone are the times when search results didn’t affect your business. If you’re still thinking this way, it’s time to redirect your focus. Search results have an impact on your bottom line.
Luckily, search engine optimization tactics are available to improve your presence in search results. Google even gives out a great starter guide for anyone wanting to learn.
There are two main areas you will want to start with when optimizing for search engines - your business listings and your website. These are the typically the areas with the most problems and also have a big impact on your search presence. Here are a few tips to help improve your search presence in these areas.
Check your business listings. Have you listed or claimed and verified your business on Google? Do you have a business listing on Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo! or YP? Do you have social media profiles? If you don’t have all of these, you have some work to do. Not only that, you need to make sure your business’ name, address, phone number and URL are all consistent. Fill out each listing to 100% complete, name your files with your business’ name, location and services, and make sure to select the right categories. Many of these sites are interconnected, so you are sending information to more than one business listing directory. Make sure it’s right.
Tip: Don’t spend any money with any business listings. You can find a plethora of business listing directories that don’t charge you anything. Excluding social media profiles, Bing and Google, I don’t recommend advertising with any of these business listing directories, either.
Next, check your website. Do you have any broken links? Do you have an XML Sitemap? Have you filled out and optimized the meta information on all of your site’s pages? Are you pages filled with content? Ask your web developer to check and fix any broken links on your website. If you use a Wordpress website, remember, when you change a URL on an already published page, you have to create a 301 redirect, or it will be a broken link, which search engines don’t like. Follow Google’s guidelines for creating an XML Sitemap and submit it in Webmaster Tools. Fill out and optimize your meta information on your website. Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to guide which keyword you should optimize for and include the location in which your business operates and services. Lastly, content on your site should be flowing at all times. Through a blog, updates, social feeds, etc. Get used to being a publisher, because the best brands are becoming so. Make sure your pages have lots of content, provide great direction for your visitors, and speak customer service.
Before sending users to your site, search engines want to know that your website will provide an optimal experience for the searcher. Tactics such as building an XML sitemap, filling out meta information, and having a presence on major business listing sites and social media, help by providing a trustworthy and consistent data and information for Google to store in its database to remember about your business the next time someone is searching for a business like yours.
Once you get the basics down, the next key is to get social, on social media, and always keep your website, social media profiles, business listings and everything else fresh and updated. If you are actively taking care of your search presence, your search results will improve and so will your profits. Investing time in your organic search presence will last longer and reap many rewards. The key is to stay patient.
To partner with MJRVisuals for your next video project, send us a message through our contact form.
A video production company speaks on Google Analytics
A video production and media solution company speaks on Google Analytics.
Data. Data. Data. Data is a powerful tool. With data, you can gain insights, learn from your mistakes and even predict the future. Oftentimes, data is overlooked and left behind, never to be learned from or utilized. But, why? You're missing all of the fun!
Google Analytics is a necessity when it comes to getting data from your website, and now, Google has introduced the new and improved version, Universal Analytics, to the public, but it is still in testing mode. Google has invited its current Analytics users to upgrade to Universal Analytics, and new users can select this when they first get the code to place in their website.
If you haven't already installed your very own Universal Analytics tracking code on your website, now is the time. Let me tell you why.
First of all, it's free. And, if it's your unfamiliarity with websites that's holding you back from digging into the analytics dirt, just send the code to your web developer, and they can put it in for you.
Goals are a great feature of both Universal and regular Google Analytics and give webmasters the ability to track and define the successes on your website. For example, maybe you'd like to get more people signed up for your newsletter or fill out your contact form on your Contact Us page. By setting these up as goals in your Universal Analytics platform, you can easily see if you are reaching them or not. Google gives you four different types to choose from, the ability to apply monetary values, and templates to help you set them up. You can even see just how the goal is reached.
Annotations are another valuable benefit of both Universal and Google Analytics. Annotations give you and your web team the ability to leave placemarks when you updated specific parts of your website, started a social media campaign, or began your television advertising campaign. Marking these as annotations in your timeline allows you to put a cause with an effect if you see a spike in traffic in a particular area and takes out the guess work.
With Universal Analytics comes User IDs. If you use a CRM that creates unique user IDs, you can integrate this with Universal Analytics. With this integration, your users can now be associated with their sessions on your website. This allows you to identify problems with user experience, see your customers' behavior on your website, and much more.
Whether you are new or seasoned when it comes to data and analytics, make sure you're taking advantage of all that Google Analytics has to offer. Google has an amazing help database covering every single facet of its Analytics platforms, so you have no excuse to pass up all of the great advantages it has to offer.
When it comes to creating a videos for your next marketing campaign, look no further than MJRVisuals. From conception to production, it is our pleasure to connect, inspire and move your audience. Contact us for a consultation today.
Telling stories with video on social media; Snapchat
Another social media platform is making way for businesses - Snapchat. If you’re marketing to millennials or younger, it’s time to get on Snapchat before your competition does!
Snapchat just introduced a new feature, Discover, which lets Snapchat users connect to an exclusive group of world-class leaders in media, including CNN, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, Food Network and several more, in a new storytelling format, which puts creativity first. It is intended to be a new way of exploring the Snapchat Stories feature. Snapchat’s Stories feature lets users create compilations of snaps that last 24 hours for their friends to see. In 2014, Snapchat’s Our Story features was introduced, which compiles snaps that users submit during select big events around the world, like college game days and festivals.
Discover’s goal is to partner with trusted media companies to tell stories that put the narrative first. With Discover, the technology is accommodating creatives, not creatives accommodating to technology. Now that Snapchat is clearing making way for businesses, it’s time for hop on the wagon before the others do. Although it is unlikely that your business will be making its way to the Discover feature, Snapchat, in general, is a great opportunity for businesses to provide their fans with updates in real-time -- to lessen the technology gap even more. It’s a fun and interactive app, which is a unique mix of Instagram and YouTube.
It’s easy to sign up, find your fans, and promote your new Snapchat account on your social media page. It is a must if you are marketing to millennials and younger, but it will not be long until it will be a must for all.
Snaps can be either photos or videos, taken in real-time, not uploaded, and they can be decorated with text and graphics. Once you have your snap ready, you can post it to your Stories for your followers to see. As you keep posting, the longer your story will get, and the more fun it becomes! Users can reply to their friends’ snaps in both private chats and in Stories.
MJRvisuals is a full-service video production company, based in Washington, D.C. Our goal is to bring your vision to life. If you are interested in working with dynamic video production team, contact MJRvisuals today.