Like The Look Of A Website? Here’s How To Get It.

No need to try to rebuild a website from scratch.

It’s fairly common practise to send your developer a few examples of websites that you like the look of or, if you’re building it yourself, to try and mimic the style you like. This is a super slow process and it’s often difficult to get exactly what you want. Rest assured, though, because there’s a brilliant way to find out EXACTLY what theme a site is using.

Introducing, WP Theme Detector. This simple site lets you plug in the address of a website you like and it’ll tell you which WordPress theme is being used. Admittedly, if the site is hosted with service such as Squarespace or Wix, this won’t be any help, but I’ve found that most searches came up with gold.

WP Theme Detector will not only tell you the name of the theme being used, but the provider of the theme, the popularity of that provider, a demo of the theme and a list of plugins used by the site. Gold, I tell you!

THE Key To Headlines That Hit People Hard

Headlines are one of your most important lead magnets.

Grabbing someone’s attention amid the chaos of the internet is a difficult task – especially if you don’t have a real standout image or video. That’s where great headlines come into their own and can even help empower images and video.

One of my favourite tools in this regard is the Headline Analyzer at Advanced Marketing Institute. This nifty tool will look at your headline and determine its Emotional Marketing Value, basically measuring the words in your headline against a list of high-impact words in different categories – Intellectual, Empathetic and Sprititual.

 

The great thing about this is that you can modify your headline to try and increase the score or to lean more toward a different type of person. As a general rule, your score should be at least 30% but a bit of creativity should shoot you up above 50% with the best in the business.

One area this tool unfortunately doesn’t deal with is the use of capitalization, which can be a really simple yet effective way to increase the impact of certain words (check out the headline of this article for example.)

Create slick mockups with Freebbble

Freebbble is free and/or affordable, yet expensive-looking.

Images are your most powerful marketing tools but getting really slick shots of your products or services is time-consuming and often expensive. Luckily, there’s Freebbble – a resource for free or affordable images which are easily integrated with your own images to produce slick-looking mockups. There is also a large number of wallpapers and backgrounds, but the mockups are what really set this service apart.

It’s great for showing how your app would look on devices, demonstrating a brand on different products and even showing off your products in different environments.

Getting potential customers to imagine having your products or services in their lives is a HUGELY effective strategy – it’s the reason for test drives and it pays off.

Mobilegeddon is here

Has your website survived Mobilegeddon?

On April 21, a major event took place in the online world. You may not have noticed Mobilegeddon, but the effects were huge. Google updated its algorithm to favor mobile-friendly websites – meaning that if your site wasn’t already mobile-optimized, your ranking dropped considerably. Hopefully by then, you had read this report from Business News Daily and prepared for the changes but, if you still haven’t, here’s what you need to know.

Factors that google takes into account include; readability, ressponsiveness and the use of software such as Flash, which tends to cause issues with mobile devices. Fortunately, Google makes it easy to check our site with their Mobile-Friendly Test, which also has information on how to mobile-optimize your site.

If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you can also generate a Mobile Usability Report and find exactly where possible issues exist.

Get a mobile office and free up your time

When you can work from anywhere, you gain A LOT of time.

A lot of people think that a mobile office just means that you’ll be working longer hours but the truth is that you’re vastly more able to set your own hours, get things done faster and have the lifestyle you choose (that’s not even counting the gaining the time normally spent commuting).

The trick is to focus on using technology to make tasks quicker and cut out distractions so that don’t end up in the same position as before.

The guys from Digital Samurai For Hire recently shared their preferred setup with DigitalShortcuts.net while they were interstate.

The online marketing advantage of being able to work from anywhere is that you can be immediately relevant, create interesting content and interact in real time.

 

How to get recommendations with LinkedIn

LinkedIn recommendations are easier than you think.

The power of referrals is well appreciated by everyone who’s had to claw their way to more clients so it goes without saying that any way you can generate more referrals is worth its weight in gold. That’s where LinkedIn comes in – and it’s free!

So what’s the secret?

Ask.

This probably seems overly simplistic but it’s an incredibly effective approach. It does require a methodical approach, however. Luckily, HubSpot has put together this detailed guide which includes an email template.

The basic idea is to target specific people with the skills to write a high-quality recommendation. You then approach this connection and ask them – making sure to offer some form of value. An added bonus of this approach is that it strengthens your relationship with the people you approach – leading to increased opportunities in the future.

 

Blogging Outside The Box

There’s a whole lot more you can do with your blog than simply publishing it and linking to it on facebook and twitter. For example, if you turn your blog post into a Powerpoint slideshow, you can post it on SlideShare and reach a whole new audience with much less competition.

Or how about turning it into an infographic and publishing on Instagram and Pinterest?

There are so many new platforms out there which can easily be used with a little creativity. Search Engine Journal have a great guide to transforming and spreading your blog even further.

Get The Most From Your Facebook Videos

It goes without saying that video is the most powerful weapon of engagement an online marketer can have so most of you are probably already on board and posting video content on facebook. What you might not know is that the method you use to post a video can have a big impact on your results.

Jason Surfrapp at Jason Does Stuff has put together a great Guide to getting around facebook’s quirks.

Facebook does as much as it can to drive you to upload your video content to facebook and share from there so why do it any other way? Well, that’s where the rocky relationship between facebook and seemingly EVERY other platform comes in. Google, for example, won’t show your facebook videos in its results, which limits your organic traffic.

The solution? The best approach so far is to upload an image and link this to your video. It means your video can’t be played within the News Feed but the numbers indicate that this isn’t too terrible a thing. This also means that you can choose a better converting image (which will also be displayed in a larger format), rather than simply using the classic video thumbnail.

The almighty play button won’t be there either but if you simply post a link to a video, facebook will remove that anyway in the News Feed so you’re no further behind.

The Dreaded Bad Review – How To Come Out Ahead

For online businesses, the time comes when someone eventually isn’t happy about something related to your services and they decide to make it publicly known. This moment can be harrowing, overwhelming, and discouraging – but it needn’t be. The truth is, every online business has to deal with unsatisfied customers in the public domain occasionally and the guys who do it best can even turn an apparent service fail into a huge customer service success and come out ahead.

This task is made even easier with the Online Marketing Dashboard’s “Brand Presence” tool which allows you to instantly track all mentions and reviews of your brand and respond immediately. How you respond, though can potentially have a huge impact on your brand. In this example from entrepreneur.com, you’ll find some great advice on dealing specifically with Yelp reviews.

“Unhappy zone in Three Oaks, Michigan” by Kevin Dooley is licensed under CC by 2.0.

Get ahead of the pack with Reddit

Reddit is famously known for breaking content several days before facebook. Don’t let the super basic interface fool you – some of the biggest players in the online community are heavily involved in this simple bulletin board system, which now boasts Snoop Dogg and Jared Leto as major stakeholders.

Viral posts start here.

It’s often as simple as going straight to reddit.com and skimming through the list of trending posts. Failing that, you can search for keywords more closely related to your area or search for subreddits (categories).

Check out this nifty guide to getting set up on Reddit