April 2013 - Design Theory

5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Bother With Social Media

This may come as a shock but, what I’m about to lay out is very much true. Not everyone should be getting involved in social media. I’m not saying this to be mean, however I am going to shed some light for those who may be thinking of using social media in their business, but don’t really want to invest in doing it right.

Here at Design Theory, we use a LOT of social networks, apps, tools, and more to reach our audience. Through time we’ve learned what works for us, what to spend most time on for better feedback, and what networks may not be worth much effort for the target audience we want. How can you learn some of these things? A lot of trial and effort. If you’re not in it for the long haul, here are some reasons why you may not want to start.

You May Not Really Have Time

This is a classic and very human reason why not to get involved. You’re a business owner or freelancer. You’re already focusing on so much to get your business off the ground, legal paperwork, contracts, advertising. Though all of these can be helped or you can find help through social media, but we won’t go there right now. Thing is, it will eat up your day. When’s the last time you went on Facebook and spent less than 5 minutes on the site? Checking friends status updates, funny videos, wishing friends happy birthday. Well imagine spending about 10-15 minutes on at least 5 networks once or twice a day. Oh it adds up very quickly. Why do you need to spend that much time? Well because each network has users that are on it for a certain time. Finding the right time of day to post is crucial for your engagement. And you’ll also want to be available to respond whenever you get a tweet or post or message. Strike while the iron is hot to lead your visitors and followers back to your site to sell them on something.

You Think You Can Automate Everything

If there was one single app or service that could take what you’re thinking and edit it down to 140 characters, or create a cool viral video that gets shared among millions instantly, I’d be rich because I would develop it. So no one stop shop maybe, but there are social media agencies all around that if you spend time with them and allow them to get to know you and your business they’d be able to be effective at this for you and your brand. But that would cost some serious money to be done right. I don’t want you to fall for the social apps that let you post everywhere at once with the same message. Think about it; the people who follow you on Pinterest want to see pictures and video and not much text. Twitter followers are going to be looking at what you type, maybe a link to find more info or download something for free (and that’s if they see your tweet among the hundreds in their timeline). We all know Facebook posts that have pictures and video get much more attention than just text-only posts. And the biggest issue, what time you post to what network.

You Think It’s All About You

Unless you’re an already established brand, people aren’t going to be super interested in just you or your business. This interest is something you’ll have to sow, water, and grow (if you get what I mean). Chances are there are already known name brands that dominate your industry that your audience is quite familiar with. Its going to be an up hill battle for you to break in and make a name for yourself. Having a good client/customer base will be crucial at the beginning, and making them your “superfans” will be just as crucial to your social engagement. Your potential audience is going to be interested more in what you can do for them (free first then paid) than about who you actually are at first. Spend more time offering great tips and help on your industry and services and less time trying to sell directly.

You Just Want To Sell, Sell, Sell

Speaking of selling, don’t even bother. Well unless you have a hot product that people absolutely love and you’re having a tough time keeping them in stock, try not to start into social media with an “I must sell” agenda. Most people using social media networks have figured out how to ignore or parse ads from their normal view. Facebook realized this, and they’ve moved to incorporating sponsored and suggested posts in the mix of your news feed. Why? Because they noticed how people were totally ignoring the right side of their Facebook screen because that’s where the ads always were everywhere they go on Facebook. Try to talk more about differences in available products, why your products are actually better than the leading competition, ways your products may save money or time, and how your products or services actually are awesome.

You Anticipate Huge Results Immediately

If you’re thinking that for every tweet you’re going to get 20 new followers, or for every new Facebook post you’re going to have 10 reply comments, or for each board you create on Pinterest you’re going to get 50 new re-pins and followers, or each video you post on YouTube will go viral in a few hours, please walk away now. It doesn’t work that way. There’s no secret formula to what actually becomes viral. And results like that are quite seldom. Even for those that are able to go viral, its more rare for them to do it again. It is going to take some time to develop your audience and following. Regardless of what network it is. I have 500+ connections on Linked In, but I don’t get 500+ likes to ever single discussion I post. It takes genuine content, posted at the opportune times when engagement is most likely for each individual network. And yes social media can be tracked, but no you’re probably not going to get two dollars for every dollar you invest in it.

Agree with me or disagree, I’d still like to hear your thoughts. Lets discuss in the comments below.

Image Credit: GraphicsFuel (download them for free!)

Make Life Easy WP Plugins

Product Reviews, Social Media, Web Design, Web Development, WordPress

If you’re a web designer or blogger, you know that WordPress (WP) has quickly become one of the fastest growing, most popular content management systems (CMS) around. It’s extremely quick to install as well as easy to navigate and master. And they are consistently evolving across all platforms with simple-to-use themes as well as free updates and plugins that are only a few clicks away via the dashboard Most of us WP users and web designers purchase a theme with majority of the bells & whistles we think we’ll need. But sometimes the theme falls short, you need your website to have certain functionality that you could not have foreseen needing or you need to add functionality at the behest of your client. So this is where plugins plug in-filling in the gap between wishing and less limitations.

In the last year, I’ve begun having more fun in the dashboard and realize that I’ve been missing out on all the cool plugins that make building/editing a site more efficient as well as functional. Some are tried and true while others are indeed new. So here’s my list of my favorite WordPress plugins to date.

All-in-One SEO Pack – All in One SEO Pack Pro v2.1 improves on the most popular WordPress SEO plugin. Not only can you set site-wide defaults in WordPress as well as customize the search engine settings for each individual WordPress post, page and custom post type but now you can manage exactly how search engines crawl each page or post. All in One SEO Pack Pro even gives you complete control over your social meta or OpenGraph meta so you can control what appears on your favorite social media sites.

Custom Link Widget – A Simple, straight-forward plugin that lets you insert links as the widget. Just insert your link, name it and it will convert it to a hyperlink automatically.

Image Widget – A simple image widget that uses the native WordPress media manager to add image widgets to your site. It automatically resizes and aligns your image, allows you to link the image and even allows you to override your theme template!

Post Types Order – You can custom order the posts without making any php file changes or publish date resetting. Simply install plugin, drag & drop.

Widget Logic – This widget gives you extra control field called “Widget logic” that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

Ultimate TinyMCE – A chock full kitchen sink of editorial/functional options.

WP Touch – This plugin reformats your website to a mobile site for easy navigation & shortcuts on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touchscreen smartphones.

Acurax Social Media Widget – This so ridiculously simple plugin lets you define the icon style & add multiple social media linked icons to your Twitter,Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube,RSS Feed,Linkedin, and Google+.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

So there you have it – just a few ways to make WordPress work better for you.

I’d love to hear your faves – which are some of your favorite plugins?

Free Lightroom 5 [Beta]

All Posts, Photography, Product Reviews

Yes you heard me right, Adobe is offering a free copy of Lightroom 5. If you haven’t heard of or used Lightroom before, you should know it is an image editing software very similar to Photoshop – but not as hard to learn and use. The support for Lightroom 4 is awesome, there’s many tutorial videos posted by many photography enthusiasts like Kelby Training, Lynda.com, Adorama, and more.

Why is Adobe giving it away? Simple, it’s the easiest way to crowd-source for possible bugs, glitches, and feedback for enhancements before the product is fully launched.

What’s new in version 5? See what Adobe posted:

New Features in Lightroom 5 Beta

Advanced Healing Brush – Easily remove objects and fix defects—even those with irregular shapes such as threads or lint—with a single brush stroke. Take precise control over what’s being removed as you make unwanted objects just disappear.
Upright – Straighten tilted images with a single click. Upright analyzes images and detects skewed horizontal or vertical lines. You choose one of four correction methods, and Upright can even straighten images where the horizon is hidden.
Radial Gradient – Lead your viewer’s eye through your images with more flexibility and control. The radial gradient tool lets you create off-center vignette effects, or multiple vignette areas within a single image.
Offline editing with Smart Previews – Easily work with images without bringing your entire library with you. Just generate smaller stand-in files called Smart Previews. Make adjustments or metadata additions to Smart Previews and your changes will be automatically applied to the full-size originals later.
Video slideshow sharing – Easily share your work in elegant video slide shows. Combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD videos that can be viewed on almost any computer or device.
Improved photo book creation – Create beautiful photo books from your images. Lightroom includes a variety of easy-to-use book templates, and now you can edit them to create a customized look. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks.

Ok so enough of the fluff, go to Adobe and login with your username and download your copy. It will only be active to use until June so get cracking!

How To: Add A Menu To Your WordPress Theme

All Posts, How to, Web Development, WordPress

Have you ever installed a new WordPress theme that didn’t have native support for creating and selecting custom menu (navigation bar). Now before you jump in be sure to either do a backup of your files, or as you get to the Functions.php and Header.php files copy the original code to a text editor before you modify it. Once you’ve done these preventative “CYA” measures follow these steps below:

From your Dashboard menu, go to Appearance > Edit and add the code below to the theme’s functions.php file: (in some cases I’ve seen this called “Theme Options” just above where it says “functions.php”. This is the same thing.)

You can add this code below towards the bottom of your page code so that you can easily find it later should you need to reference it.

add_theme_support( ‘menus’ );

(you may need to add this on the next line if you get to the end and your menu doesn’t show up:

add_action( ‘init’, ‘register_my_menus’ );

function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
‘menu-1’ => __( ‘Menu 1’ ),
)
);
}

User your browser’s Find feature and search for this code in your theme’s Header.php file:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=&depth=1’); ?>

Highlight this string of code and replace it with this code below:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘sort_column’ => ‘menu_order’, ‘container_class’ => ‘menu-header’ ) ); ?>

Lastly click on Appearance then Menus and you should be able to create a custom menu.

How To Be Your Brand’s Ambassador

Branding, Marketing

What is a Brand Ambassador? Is there a sash or tiara one gets? Per Wikipedia: “The brand ambassador is meant to embody the corporate identity in appearance, demeanor, values and ethics. The key element of brand ambassadors lies in their ability to use promotional strategies that will strengthen the customer-product/service relationship and influence a large audience to buy and consume more. Predominantly, a brand ambassador is known as a positive spokesperson appointed as an internal or external agent to boost product/service sales and create brand awareness.” So unless being a brand ambassador is your promotion strategy – no satiny sash or sparkly tiara for you. But let’s talk about how to make your brand shine without them shall we?

If you have a business then you have a brand. And for it to be successful, that brand has to create awareness to its target audience to ultimately achieve and acquire brand loyalty.

Fact: Promoting your brand is a necessity!

Fact: Customers will pay more for brand names that they’ve come to know and trust.

Fact: For your brand to grow, you must promote your brand consistently and disseminate your brand message in as many forums as possible.

If you don’t have confidence in promoting your brand, why on earth would a consumer have confidence in it? You are the impression-setter for your company. Being a good brand ambassador is all about having confidence when talking about and marketing your brand’s product or service. Your brand is your responsibility and the success of it greatly depends on your attention to it. It’s in your hands!

HOW A BRAND IS REPRESENTED TRULY AFFECTS THE SUCCESS OF WHAT’S BEING SOLD!

Another facet to consider is where are you promoting your brand? Representation of your brand, via your website or print marketing materials, is paramount to supremacy as opposed to mediocrity. Have you considered using the free tools provided by social media?

If you’re busy actually making your product or providing your service, you might not have a lot of time to promote your brand with your own ear to the phone or feet to the pavement. You know the old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them?” Well how about “if you can’t do it, pay for it.” Consider hiring Brand Ambassadors who will beat the street for you. It’s also called Guerrilla Marketing and it’s become a very common and acceptable marketing strategy. So there are many businesses that provide this type of service and the rewards can be worth the investment if you choose correctly.

So ask yourself – Do I have the vision, tenacity and marketing savvy to leverage my brand to all its potential and watch my sales and profit margins soar? I’m sure the answer to the latter part of that question is yes, but you may not be sure about how to employ the leveraging part. I’m no expert but I do give some noteworthy morsels in my blog titled http://blog.jpdesigntheory.com/branding-to-dos-tidbits/. So take a few maneuvers from my playbook and let me know how implementing just a few of these tips works for you, as well as your potential or current clientele. I look forward to hearing how you represent your brand best.