In the US here we had the 4th of July and I took in the views from atop Los Angeles and let me tell you: Everyone in LA collectively ignores the county’s mandate on no fireworks.
My hope for you all is that no fingers were lost to fireworks, that you were excellent to yourselves, and that you enjoyed that last newsletter I sent out.
Check Your Defaults
Perhaps it’s common knowledge, perhaps it’s not. But any service you sign up for, that produces automated email notices that go to your clients, deserves a second look.
We use Zoho Books around here for our invoicing. I had a client recently reach out to me asking what the deal was with “taking the easy way out” regarding an upcoming invoicing payment.
Obviously, I’m a fan of chaos and confusion but guiding your clients to take the easy way out and send you money might leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth. The note above indicates that there’s a hard way out. What the heck-y is the hard way??
Also, it’s another opportunity to inject your business’s personality into your customer/client interactions.
Hmm, what else should I have put there instead? 🤔
“Please pay our invoice so we can finally shut down our OnlyFans showcasing wholesome marketing automation advice!”
“Pay your invoice online, BECKY!”
“YOU GET A FREE PUPPY WITH EVERY INVOICE PAID!”
Oh dear, this is not how I should be spending my free time.
This is an excellent post by Michelle Frechette as she calls out all-too-prevalent misogyny in the popular Open Source project.
It serves as a reminder that there’s a lot more work for us to do. By us I mean men. I’m guilty of not being vocal in places where it would help, fearing backlash from colleagues and such. Fuck it. Being a good ally === performative and I don’t want to continue being that. I can do better, we all can. Point out misogyny and bias where you see it. Not everything needs to be an argument or super confrontational; opt for conversational, and create a dialogue. I think that’s a helpful start.
SVG Patterns are a nice thing to have, whether you’re building layouts in the browser, this resource has a nice collection of patterns for your projects.
The Ghost of Internet Explorer? The hell you say??
As someone who works with a couple of Gov agencies I can say this is accurate. I recall going into a training where a user had some version of IE 6!!! I about had a mental crash when I saw that, IE PTSD y’all.
I haven’t quite figured out what this portion of the newsletter will be exactly so I’m just going to share products that I’m currently having a full-on crush for. Some of them may be WordPress related and sometimes now.
Missive App
I use and love Missive for our team. A couple of years ago I was looking to get away from our support app and use something a little less kludgey.
Missive is a collaborative email app. You can create team inboxes that you can share with other folks on your team, you can assign emails, or chat about emails—I’ve found it to be a super helpful tool. Is it necessary? No but golly I love the utility of the thing.
We did a trial with Front App and it’s a wonderful tool BUT we found Missive did exactly what we needed, was cheaper, and a delight to use and we’ve been using it ever since.
MemberPress
MemberPress is a membership plugin for WordPress, created by Blair Williams, owner of one of the best beards and smiles of all time.
Why I like it
It’s easy to use and set up and it’s powerful. It has a lot of thoughtful add-ons to connect to 3rd party tools like ActiveCampaign or WP Fusion (another plugin I love a lot). I’ve used A LOT of membership plugins and MemberPress, for my use cases, is the most feature-complete solution out there.
Of note, they have Course Creation features through an add-on and they also provide gated content capabilities, which has come into use over the last year. Check em out – https://memberpress.com
Admin Menu Editor Pro
Any time I see a tweet from someone sharing their favorite lesser-known plugins, I should ADMIN MENU EDITOR PRO from the mountain tops! The plugin is built by Janis Elsts. Janis gets high marks (and probably hugs) from me.
Why I like it
Look, you know it and I know it: The WordPress admin UI is dated and needs serious help. Admin Menu Editor Pro allows you to easily re-arrange the menus in your back end, remove menus, add new custom menus, and it allows you to create your own custom admin meta boxes, too.
Personally, I ship this plugin on nearly every website to help logically organize the menu. It’s a minor (but important) detail for helping to make the WP Admin a little easier to use.
According to MarketingPlatform, email marketing has never been more relevant than in 2022 and reigns as one of the best channels to reach current and potential customers for your business.…
According to MarketingPlatform, email marketing has never been more relevant than in 2022 and reigns as one of the best channels to reach current and potential customers for your business.…
5 Jul 2022
The modern adage: Just Hit Publish is true. It is. I mean, it’s not as simple as hitting the button. You need to make sure you’re measuring traffic and other important metrics.
Publishing this newsletter last week led to more interaction, traffic, a few email replies, and a scheduled phone call. Are you hitting publish? If so, send me a link to what you published. If it’s cool, I’m happy to share whatcha send me.
Sometimes all it takes is publishing one podcast, posting one blog, one Youtube.
Hear me out…
JUST. DO. THE. THING!
SEO isn’t there to boost traffic to your site, it’s there to boost conversions for the traffic that comes to your website. SEO and Conversion Optimization are best friends.
A lot of people get it twisted. I want my website to rank higher so I get more visits. No. You want your website to rank higher so they give you a call; so that someone fills out your form; so that a stranger on the internet will give you their money.
What number of visitors comprising your traffic make it through to a conversion? If you’ve already done your SEO basics then focus on the conversion part—you’ve gotten the horse to the water now how do you get it to take a drink?
You could ensure that the path to conversion is simple. Get your friends to signup for your call or form or whatever. See what their feedback is. Did they get confused? Are there aspects of your conversion path you can simplify or make more clear? If getting your friends to do it for you is your jam go that route but if you want a neutral 3rd party, you could use a service like UserFeel https://www.userfeel.com/pricing – check em out and get that feedback!
I’m reminded of the book Don’t Make Me Think (a good read). Make it as simple as possible for people to do the thing.
The Ultimate Backlink Guide Does Not Exist. Here’s the Ultimate Backlink Guide
Backlinks, the internet equivalent of voting for your Prom King and Queen. Backlinks remain one of the strongest signals that affect a website’s ranking.
I ran across an informative video on the topic and because my mom says I’m such a good and sweet boi I’m gonna share it with you below!
SEM Rush, a popular online SEO tool used by many a digital marketer the world over, put together a nifty YouTube video dissecting backlinks, how they work, what they are, how to get them, how to put them to work for you. Check out the video.
That’s it For This Week
I’d love to get your thoughts on this newsletter. Love it? Hate it? Tell meh! Just reply to this here newsletter.
