Google +1 Button – What it Means to You

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plus one

Are You Getting the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

Google has been working on the +1 button, and in the last month or so it has changed character.  It used to just add a count on your profile, where nobody saw it, but it’s now similar to the Facebook “Like” button, which is what I suspect Google had in mind all along.  So what does this mean to you?

The big benefit I see in the +1 button is the ability to share content with specific groups of people, using Google Plus‘s “Circles”.  One of the frustrations I have found in Facebook is that this capability, although it exists, is not easy to implement.  I have over 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, and clearly not all of them are interested in the same topics.

Let’s suppose I’m working with Google Plus and have three circles: “Friends anddog Family”, “Colleagues” and “Internet Marketers“.  If my dog gets fleas I might choose to tell my friends and family, and perhaps my colleagues, but it’s doubtful if any internet marketing friends would find that very interesting unless they happen to be marketing flea powder.  (As it happens, I don’t have a dog, so please don’t inundate me with anti-flea information!)

On the other hand, if I have just found a new web hosting package that I like, most of my friends and family won’t be remotely interested, but my colleagues and internet marketers may be.  Do you see how neat this can be for segmenting your market and avoiding spamming family and friends?  I really wish this was as easy to do with Facebook.

What is the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

You guessed it!  Google uses the +1 ratings to help rank websites.  Of course, it’s not all they use, but it can certainly help your site to get better SEO rankings and hence more traffic.

Here is a video from Google explaining how you can use this new capability:

Try it out now by “+1“ing this article!

PS: If you figure out how to join the preview group, let me know! Google has not released the new capability to the rest of the world yet :-(

 

Software Freedom Day + Hackathon

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Saturday, September 17 is Software Freedom Day. To that end, a few announcements about this weekend’s hackathon and WordCamp Portland.

3.3 Hackathon

WordPress 3.3 is about to hit feature freeze. This means it’s the last chance to squeeze in features that haven’t quite been finished, and enhancements and fixes that no one has had time to address yet. Around this time, there are often dozens of tickets that have patches, but the patches have not been tested enough to be committed to core. Then the contributors who worked hard on the patches are disappointed that their code doesn’t make it into the current release. You can help us prevent this!

This weekend, we’ll be running a has-patch needs-testing marathon for the 3.3 milestone. Basically, we’re looking for people who can help test patches and/or refresh patches that need updating. Lead developers and core contributors will be hanging around in the #wordpress-dev channel on irc.freenode.net to answer questions as needed, and will be committing patches as they get enough verification. As you test the patches, report your findings on the trac tickets in question. If all developers who make a living working with WordPress helped out for even an hour or two this weekend, we could clear the 200 tickets or so that are in this situation. To make it fun, why not get together with other WordPress devs and have an in-person hackathon meetup?

WordCamp Portland

At WordCamp Portland this weekend, some of the WordPress core team will be in attendance, including me, Nacin, and Koop. In addition to giving presentations and participating in the unconference sessions, we’ll be involved with a couple of other cool things at WCPDX:

  • Hacker Room. There will be room set aside for people to work on core bugs and features slated for the 3.3 release. Hopefully PDX developers will hang out in here some of the time helping with the marathon.
  • Welcome Free Software Projects! Normally WordCamps are 100% focused on WordPress, but in light of Software Freedom Day, the WC PDX organizers, in conjunction with the WordPress Foundation, would like to extend an invitation to all free software projects to participate in WordCamp Portland. There are a couple of rooms set aside that can be used for unconference sessions and/or hacker rooms for other projects. It would be great to have local representatives from a bunch of projects there — almost a micro version of OS Bridge or OSCON — to maximize the free software love and cross-pollinate ideas. Developers from other projects are also welcome in the WP hackathon room if they’d like to pitch in. Saturday will also feature the Software Freedom Day Happy Hour at the end of sessions. For more information or to get your project involved, contact the event organizers via the WordCamp Portland website or email support at wordcamp dot org.
  • Usability Testing of 3.3 Alpha. As mentioned, we’re about to hit freeze, so we’ll be giving WordCamp Portland attendees a sneak peek at 3.3, seeing how they adjust to the new features, and getting feedback to help us with our last round of fixes before we get to Beta. There will be a signup sheet to participate.

So, if you live it the Portland/Seattle area and haven’t already bought a ticket to attend WordCamp Portland, hurry up, as it’s going to be a great celebration of Software Freedom Day and WordPress.

A Tale of Two WordCamps

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This coming weekend, two WordCamps will be going on simultaneously — yep, it’s WordCamp season again! This weekend will be the first of many this autumn with multiple WordCamps. Tomorrow (not quite the weekend but close enough) is WordCamp Cape Town, and then this weekend, first-time WordCamp Albuquerque coincides with 4-time returning champ WordCamp Portland, a cool juxtaposition of a more established local community with one that is just getting started. If you’re anywhere near the Portland area, you should try to attend. The WordPress Foundation will be sponsoring some special activities around Software Freedom Day, and some members of the core team (me, Nacin, Koop) will be there.

Is there a WordCamp coming up near you? Let’s find out!

Sep 15: WordCamp Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa

Sep 16-18: WordCamp Albuquerque Albuquerque, NM

Sep 17-18: WordCamp Portland Portland, OR

Sep 24: WordCamp Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

Sep 24: WordCamp Germany Koln, Germany

Sep 25: WordCamp Sofia Sofia, Bulgaria

Oct 1: WordCamp Louisville Louisville, Kentucky

Oct 8-9: WordCamp Sevilla Seville, Spain

Oct 15-16: WordCamp Jabalpur Jabalpur, India

Nov 5-6: WordCamp Toronto Toronto, ON

Nov 5-6: WordCamp Gold Coast Gold Coast, Australia

Nov 5-6: WordCamp Philly Philadelphia, PA

Nov 12: WordCamp Caguas Caguas, Puerto Rico

Nov 12-13: WordCamp Kenya Nairobi, Kenya

Nov 12-13: WordCamp Detroit Detroit, MI

Nov 12: WordCamp Richmond Richmond, VA

Nov 12-13: WordCamp Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark

Dec 17: WordCamp Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV

Feb 3-4 WordCamp Atlanta Atlanta, GA

There are also a number of WordCamps still in the early organizing stage that do not yet have dates set. These include: Ft. Wayne, IN; London, UK; Edmonton, Canada; Baku, Azerbaijan; Oslo, Norway; Sacramento, CA;  Birmingham, Alabama; Pittsburgh, PA; Omaha, NE; Orlando, FL; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; Zagreb, Croatia; Nashville, TN, Washington DC, Baltimore, MD; Bangkok, Thailand; Istanbul, Turkey.

Hope to see you soon at a WordCamp near you!


New Domain Hosting Service Offers More for Less

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domain hostingYesterday, GVO.com announced a new domain hosting package.  OK, I know domain hosting isn’t the most exciting topic around, but the interesting thing about this announcement is the price point.  Joel Therien has recognized that in the current economy marketers are looking to save money wherever possible: his new offering (Host Then Profit) is intended to meet that demand.

You may know that Joel moved from Canada to San Antonio, TX a couple of years ago to get better bandwidth and less costly support for his servers.  I used to be with Kiosk, Joel’s previous domain hosting company, which later changed its name to Global Virtual Opportunities (GVO). I left Kiosk because I found their service somewhat erratic and difficult to use.

Since then, I have used a variety of services, including GoDaddy and HostGator, before domain registrationjoining GVO again a month or two ago. I made this move when I recognized that I was paying too much for domain registration, domain hosting and autoresponder services. I found I could save money and also have a single point of contact for problems by moving all that under one roof.

Apart from price point and functionality, the three main concerns with a domain hosting service are:

  • Reliability
  • Ease of Use
  • Support

Kiosk had its problems with the second and third of those criteria. I’m delighted to find that the problems have now disappeared: the last few years have made a huge difference. So now I’m excited to see the new offering, which should fill the bill for a lot of marketers.

What does Host Then Profit offer?
It’s a “GVO Lite” package designed for marketers who want domain hosting for a limited number of websites but also need some of the other facilities a marketer requires, such as autoresponder, blogs, videos and a conference room. It also includes massive amounts of free training, notably the renowned GVO Academy webinars, which occur daily. (If you’re not interested in GVO’s other offerings, you might find value in these free training webinars, which cover everything from marketing to WordPress.) And, of course, if you need to upgrade to a more versatile account, GVO has the packages to accommodate you.

For me, the big saving comes in the free autoresponder that is included with all the GVO domain hosting packages: right now I’m paying for an Aweber account that looks after one non-profitable website that just costs me money! I am also looking forward to working with the Video Producer when I can find some time and, maybe later, the conference room. I pulled together some information from GoDaddy and HostGator for comparison with Host Then Profit, and created the following table:

HostThenProfit

GoDaddy

HostGator
Domain Hosting (per month)

4 domains

$9.97

$15.96*-$59.96

$6.36*-$7.96
Domain Registration (.com)

1yr

$14.95

$15 (after 1st.yr.)

$15.00

(per year)

5yrs

$9.95

$11.99

$15.00
Email accounts

500

500

unlimited
Autoresponders

4

-

-
Campaigns

5

-

-
Blog Builder

4

-

Site Builder
Video Producer

5

-

-
Conference Room

seats

5

-

-

*3-year rate

 

I hope I got all those numbers right: GoDaddy and HostGator always seem to have special deals going on, but my experience has been they catch you for the first year and then raise the price after that. The prices I have given for Host Then Profit are monthly with no contract. Oh, and by the way, there’s a $1 trial offer if you want to put a toe in the water.

 

QR Codes – How You Can Use Them

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One of the cool things about QR codes is the curiosity factor.  It is not possible for the qr codeaverage human being to look at a QR code and have any idea what it represents: it just looks like a puzzle.  If you have a smartphone that can read it, it’s difficult to pass up the opportunity to scan it in and read the results.

In the previous article I explained what QR codes are, why they are important and how to get them at no cost. This article shows some of the ways you can benefit from using them.  I’m sure I have not thought of every possibility, but here are ten to be going on with: use your imagination to think of other ways you might use QR codes to promote your business.

1. Business Cards. Rather than clutter your business card with links, you can include your name, a photo and a QR code for your website, email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ pages, etc.

2. Website Sales. QR codes can lead to specific URL’s, so you can create codes linking to certain products on your website.

3. Free Downloads. If you use e-books or downloadable software to promote your business, you can use QR codes to distribute them. When customers scan the code give them a free e-book or software download.

4. Flyers. Let’s suppose you own a restaurant. You can create a QR code linking to a URL with a discount on a meal and directions to the restaurant.  You can probably think of similar applications for other businesses.

5. Build Your Subscriber List. You can build your e-mail list by creating a QR code linking to your signup form.

6. E-courses. If you are an expert on something, you can create a QR code that generates an e-mail that tells your autoresponder to send regular course lessons to subscribers.

7. Discounts, Contests and Giveaways. These can be really effective when used in conjunction with QR codes. You can create promotions specific to the QR codes and place the codes in your advertisements or post them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

8. Scratch and Win Promotions. People love scratching cards! Even if they don’t win, they’re excited by the possibility: you can create that excitement by getting them to scratch and scan a QR code card to see if they’ve won.

9. Customer Service Help. You can use QR codes to give customers information about your product or service. Create a QR code that leads to a FAQ page where customers can get answers to their questions via email or live chat.

10 New product promotion. You can give customers a preview of future products using QR codes.  If you scan the code at the beginning of this post, you will see that I have included over 200 characters of information, including an e-mail address.  Send me an e-mail if you managed to read it.reading qr code

Let me know any other ideas that come to mind: this is all about sharing!  One of the questions I have is what is the best size for a QR code?  I used the medium size here, but there are many different sizes available.  Also, I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com but if you google “free qr code generators” you will find there are several.  Let me know which is most suitable for your needs, and why.