A few clients have been asking if they can customize the thumbnail, title and description of their website when shared on Facebook. The answer is yes, we can with the use of Open Graph tags.

These tags are very similar to your search engine meta tags. They give you control over how your website is displayed (og tags for facebook & meta tags for search engines).

A friend recently shared the Facebook Linter with me, which is a debugging tool to test your OG Tags and much more.

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Have you ever wondered who else uses wordpress? Did you know there’s a featured list of users on the wordpress.org home page? Here’s an article I wrote for WPMU.org featuring 7 celebrities that use wordpress to power their websites for various reasons;

http://wpmu.org/7-celebrities-youd-never-expect-to-be-using-wordpress/

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http://wpmu.org/5-bad-wordpress-habits/

Happy blogging,
WP Chef

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Sounds dramatic but it makes a lot of sense.

On one side you have people who are in a jam, they are sick, they are tired, stressed, annoyed, angry, depressed what have you… they are in pain and they want relief now! These people are not going to take the time to shop around and get the best price… in fact these are likely the kind of people who will not only buy now but pay through the nose depending on how bad the pain is.

Conversely, at the opposite extreme we have people who are very comfortable in life and are looking for thrills and pleasure. These are the people who have all the time in the world and will certainly shop around before buying anything. So in Heinz site, if you’re selling a product that is pleasurable you are force to be even more competitive than if you were selling a remedy to someone’s pain.

Take that into consideration when you are marketing your services/products. Try to identify the type of buyer you are dealing with and conduct yourself accordingly.

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Truth is, I am going to tell you how to design C.R.A.P. instead of crap. I learned this while in design school at Humber College and it goes like this;

Colour: I learned colour instead of contrast because there are a few “laws” when it comes to colours such as contrasting colours versus complimentary colours. You also have the psychology of colours, i.e. red means stop, green means go, orange means cheap, blue means trust-worthy, etc.

Repetition: nothing brings a sales point home like repetition, although in the context of design this really refers to consistency is your colours, your fonts, your shapes, sizes, etc.

Alignment: I recommend you all text with the same alignment (all left, all centre or all right). The human eye is conditioned to read in blocks of text or paragraphs. A successful ad/poster is quick and easy to read.

Proximity: negative space (empty space) is another term that can be used to describe “proximity”… be sure not to cram too much on the page and clutter things up, you want to have a safe distance between all elements in your design. Contrasting colours may help you cheat proximity in your design.

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That being said, there are 3 things I will do right off the bat which are all verified by Google. That’s right, Google will literally list what they want from you… all you need to do is sign up for a Google Webmasters account and do 3 simple things;

1. Create a sitemap.xml file listing all the pages/posts you want to have listed
2. Create a robots.txt file listing all the directories/pages/posts you do not want to have listed
3. Create a unique meta description and title tag for every page/post in the site

Once you do that, you will at least have a two way dialogue with Google where you can make requests of them such as listing/removing your pages from their database. The rest is really content optimization (text formatting, choice of words, link building, etc.) based on market research and competitor analysis.

Have more questions? Post a comment or email me, I’d love to hear from you

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There are three major sales points to every deal; good, fast and cheap. The rule is that you can only 2 of the three.

If you want good and fast it won’t be cheap. If you want fast and cheap it won’t be good. If you want good and cheap it won’t be fast.

I use this one on clients all the time and when presented with that equation, people tend to understand what they can expect. Managing your client’s expectations is crucial to retaining their loyalty so be sure to make this little anecdote clear up front so there are no disappointments.

My personal motto is this “Under promise and over deliver, never over promise and under deliver”.

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“Slowly and wisely” said the Friar

1) Preparation

This refers to researching the prospect before making your first contact. Now this is not always possible but let’s just say that you shouldn’t speak with the client about pricing, turn around or other pertinent deal points before doing your homework. What’s homework? Collect data! Get as much information about the prospect and make a list of items you think are strong and a list of things you can improve upon or help them with. Keep this to yourself for now.

2) Approach

This would be your “first contact”, this is where you introduce yourself and simply ask if you can book a meeting to discover how you may be of help. I find it helps to pitch it as a non-billable consultation where I sit down with the prospect to review their product/service/business and offer my insights.

Be sure to ask a few questions to get them in the right frame of mind. If you’re a web consultant like me, perhaps ask them questions like “When did you last update your website?”, “When was the last time you had an upgrade?”, “Have you considered all your marketing options?, etc. This gets them thinking about the things that need attention if they aren’t already thinking about it.

3) Discovery

So you got them to agree to a meeting and you’re now sitting with the prospect, just remember to shut up and listen. You may need to help them spit it all out by asking questions or offering ideas/examples to get the ball rolling. As they share their thoughts, take notes and re-interate everything they say to confirm that you’re on the same page.

Budget 1 hour for this meeting, if it takes longer than 1 hour you’re being inefficient… or perhaps the prospect is, if you find your prospect likes to talk too much, then try asking closed ended questions (where the answer is yes or no).

Before leaving the meeting, be sure to book your follow up meeting where you will present the “solution” to all their “problems”. I usually book follow-ups within 1 week or sooner so that everything is fresh for both me and the prospect.

4) Solution Design

After having your first meeting with the prospect (the discovery meeting) it’s time to get back to the office and scope out a proposal. Make a concise list of all the things the prospect requested, all the things you’d like to suggest and factor it, X hours @ X dollars = bottom line. Be sure to include the words that were used in your meeting to showcase your consistency and attention to detail. Don’t over complicate it, make your write up for each line item short and concise. Less is always more.

5) Presentation

It’s now show time, this is where you strut your stuff and show them what you’ve got. Power Point presentations go a long way but I myself just surf the net on my laptop showing real client samples for each component that I am pitching for my prospect. They say more than 80% of the world’s communication is visual and that visuals are easier to remember than what you heard or felt.

As you conduct your presentation look for visual cues in the prospects body language, i.e. hand on chin, arms crossed, leaning forward, bitting lip, etc. Keep everything in context and you’ll be able to pick up on the prospect’s interests and then know when and where to cut corners.

Don’t think that everyone wants to hear everything you have to say… focus on what excites them. By the end of your presentation, ask for the sale, i.e. “So without further adieu, let me ask you… would you like to get started?” or something to that effect, be yourself…

6) Implementation

So they said yes and it’s time to start working. Now I don’t think i need to tell you that you need to have a terrific product, backed by terrific service and competitive pricing if you want return business. The question is, what does that really mean? Well, there are 5 Characteristics of Great Products & Services but at a glance, a great product is designed to fulfill the buyer’s needs and does so seamlessly. A terrific service starts with courtesy and respect and ends with a smile.

Each customer will be different, some appreciate a phone call while others prefer an email. I think everyone wants quick and sometimes that’s not easy to do so at the least let your customer know that you are always in their corner and on top of it. As for competitive pricing… that’s really up to you, there are various levels of business in every industry. If you want to compete with the giants, you can’t undercut them too much. From my experience, if you go too low, your credibility is brought into question.

So there you have it, the 6 step sales process. Try it out on your next opportunity and let me know how it panned out. If you have any questions, post a comment below and I’ll be more than happy to respond.

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1. Do it – some emails required immediate attention
2. Delegate it - some emails really don’t require your personal attention
3. Delete it – a lot of emails can often be deleted
4. Date it – some emails can be dealt with later, so make a deadline for yourself and get to it later

Chances are you can group these emails into the four d’s using mail rules. The easier way of doing this is to have a dedicated email address for each purpose, i.e. billing@yourname.com, support@yourname.com sales@yourname.com etc.

If you’re running a small businesses or are not fond of the idea of having to give out multiple email addresses, then the mail rules route is what you want. Refer to your email-client software’s manual for details on how to set it up. Examples of mail rules would be “if From: client@rogers.com” move to “the date it” folder.

If you have any questions post a comment and I will gladly share more.

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Now you may already know that I use social media as a form of generating links for search engine optimization (SEO) but it is by far the most efficient way to establish a rapport and develop loyal “fans” (that means customers). The other weekend I had time to kill while downtown and decided to go to the bookstore to snoop around.

Funnily enough, I wasn’t looking for a book on social media. I mean, I’m still in my twenties and I use social media every day, what could a book possibly have to teach me? Well to my surprise, I came across Dan Zarrella’s “The social media marketing book” and found some intriguing insights.

It’s a really easy read that is broken down into 10 chapters (excluding the introduction). Each chapter starts with a high level overview of its given social media topic and closes with a set of “take away tips”. I thought it would be interesting to see how the book’s take away tips actually line up with what I took from reading it.

This book does pack-in a lot meat, I’d say that in a pound for pound face-off with a book like “The 4 Hour Work Week”, The Social Media Marketing Book is a definite winner.

Below I’m going to give you my 2 cents on each chapter and include the take away tips that were found at the end of each chapter.

1) Blogging

• start your social media campaign with a blog, make it the focal point to all your social media efforts
• stick to a posting schedule you can deliver on in order to build a following
• comment on other blogs to make friends, pingback other blogs to generate comments

2) Microblogging

• ask questions and comb the net for conversations you can get in on
• include links, user names and other shortcode in your status updates
• act as a filter/distributor of other microbloggers

3) Social Networking

• find a network that works for you and stick to it, there is no need to be on every network
• get quality friends not quantity, be sure you qualify each person before you “spam them”
• share the love, i.e. promote your friends, know the politics of your network

4) Media Sharing

• host your media on the platform, i.e. photos on flickr, videos on youtube, etc.
• use the embed codes for your website, social profiles, etc.
• let your fans embed your media into their own websites/profiles

5) Social News and Bookmarking

• stick with a news site that is relevant to what you do
• don’t submit your own story, find a friend to do it for you
• prepare for server crushing traffic

6) Ratings and Reviews

• Submit your business to the review sites, i.e. Google Places, Yelp, etc.
• Invite customers from offline to submit reviews online
• Link to your review profiles from your blog/website

7) Forums

• start by visiting other forums, assess what you can contribute
• no forum is better than an empty forum
• police the forum, moderate the posts and kick out the flame throwers (trouble makers).

8) Virtual Worlds

• See if any video games relate to your product/service, i.e. Second Life, Mafia Wars, etc.
• Don’t open an account with a campaign, settle-in slowly and participate
• Understand the culture of the Virtual World for maximum results

9) Strategy, Tactics, Practice

• Note the difference between campaigns and on-going efforts.
• Have clear calls to action (big green button or something easy to spot)
• Promote your Brand (be consistent and targeted)

10) Measurement

• Focus on quality not quantity metrics (bounce rate, time on site, # of pages view per visitor, etc. these metrics tell you if visitors like what they see)
• Track goals such as clicking to a form page, checkout page, etc.
• Use Google Analytics

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