UltraCart and WordPress Content Strategy

KP asks: my client on UltraCart is considering adding a content management system such as WordPress. What are the benefits of doing so? UltraCart is a full-featured shopping cart that works well as an ecommerce solution for small to mid-sized businesses. A business that exists solely on UltraCart is going to find that platform lacking in certain content management features …

Social ROI Presentation at the VCCF Center for Nonprofit Leadership

A keynote presentation on March 5th, 2013 at the new Ventura County Community Foundation building in Camarillo focuses on establishing metrics to measure social media return on investment for non-profits who invest precious time, resource and money on engaging their audience through social channels. Following is the deck, also available for download here (PDF, 4.7MB). Tyler is available for corporate …

Six Principles of SEO for Online Communities

I am putting together an online marketing proposal for a philanthropy-based network, where an existing base of 5,000 or so members will be interacting in an ambitious online community. It so happens that when you get a bunch of like-minded, passionate people together in one place and give them the tools, they create a LOT of content. It’s not phrased …

Building a Website on Pay-For-Performance

Dear Tyler: I had a friend reach out to me with a question. She is building out a website for her new business and has someone who she trusts who is willing to build it out for her. She currently doesn’t have the cash to pay for this project so he is suggesting a pay for performance arrangement where he …

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The Advertising Threshold

A client received an inquiry from an ad network – would they be open to offering banner ads on their website from advertisers with products that may or may not be unrelated to the client’s website? It can be rewarding receiving recognition for having grown a website to a size that can attract advertising, but has the website truly reached …

Notes on Content Strategy

I recently discussed content strategy with an associate of mine who runs a very successful professional services business with nearly twenty employees. Combining the content they already produce (articles for print publications) with a moderated democratization of content creation across their employee base could easily produce a thousand or more posts a year. This creates an amazing foundation for a …

Via Tea: How to Find and Hire the Right Marketing Coach

I responded to Tea Silvestre’s inquiry about hiring a marketing coach last week. Her post entitled How to Find and Hire the Right Marketing Coach, aggregating the replies from a number of marketing professionals, is now up on her site. There’s a bunch of great information in there from half-a-dozen people who know what they are talking about. Check it …

Is a Marketing Coach Actually What You Need?

Tea Silvestre, talented proprietress of The Word Chef, asked some of her friends this question: Do you have any cautionary tales or tips on hiring the right Marketing Coach? While I think she’s putting together the replies into something more substantial than a quick blog post, I thought I’d give her my thoughts here, and share her results with my …

Fresh and Recent Search by Google

On the official Google Blog, there was a post a week or so ago entitled “Giving you fresher, more recent search results.” This post shows how Google continues to improve near-real-time and timely search without cannibalizing or otherwise discounting the value of their vast index of the web and the deep amount of information that represents. Put it another way: …

ICANN Opens Up Top-Level Domains: Reaction

ICANN, the non-profit organization that controls Internet naming protocols (including top-level domains (TLD’s) such as .com, .net, .org and newcomers like .biz and .jobs) has voted to open up the system so that groups can apply to create virtually any TLD such as .music or .food.