Talking everything Social Media, Tech & Online Marketing. Covering pertinent social media news, and Craig’s weekly Random Resources!

Broadcast Summary:

• 
  
• News Desk – Chey talking about Facebook’s Mobile Newsreader, Yama partnering with Cloud and Dropbox’s new team features;
  
• Random Resources – Chey and Craig talking about various accounting programs available;
  
• Random Resources – Craig discussing website design themes and plug-ins, and blogging;
  
• Random Resources – Chey talking about e-commerce and shopping carts for all sizes of businesses;
  
• Random Resources – Chey talking about Seven Tiny Tweaks to your Blog that will make a massive difference.
  

CHEY:       No. You go!

CRAIG:      Welcome to Social Media at The Pulse. This is a show where we talk about all things social media, tech and online marketing, and I’m Craig McCarthy. I’m here with Cheyanne Ainsworth. How are you going, Chey?

CHEY:       Very well thank you, Craig. How are you?

CRAIG:      Very good, thank you. I was looking forward to you actually talking like you did at the start of the show last week.

CHEY:       Oh, well that hot chick’s gone somewhere. I don’t know where she is. Look – I’m sure we can get her back.

CRAIG:      Yes. We could. I’m looking forward to that. Maybe one day when you don’t turn up! You know? Until half an hour into the show, then I could do the whole show.

CHEY:       Yes. Well, you know! Stuff happens.

CRAIG:      It does!

CHEY:       How’s your week been?

CRAIG:      It’s been …

CHEY:       Bikram. Cross Fit.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes. I did the usual stuff. It’s probably been a bit – it’s been really good actually. It’s been a little bit non-eventful, but really good fun.

CHEY:       Ok.

CRAIG:      Yes. Hanging with some good people, having some good times!

CHEY:       Nice.

CRAIG:      Yes. How’s your week been?

CHEY:       Crazy. It feels like yesterday was Monday!

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Had a great weekend up in Albury.

CRAIG:      Oh, yes.

CHEY:       Nice 4 ½ hour drive. Up and Back. And it was beautiful weather, like I could see the weather radar in Melbourne and I was like ‘Wow! This is so nice’. There’s no wind. The sun’s out. It’s just beautiful.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes. Great to see friends, family and people up there. So yes, but come in on Monday and – yes – it feels like hell broke loose really. We had server issues, power issues. Throughout the week they’d been doing some work in the area, and so we’ve had power outages, and all sorts of lovely things.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       So making sure everything’s charged and iPads are out, and stuff like that. You know? It’s been a challenging week.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       9 o’clock last night, I got a message from one of the team – “Chey, we have a server issue!â€, and I thought that’s all we need. That’s all we need. That’s right. Ok. Let’s bring it on. We can handle this.

CRAIG:      Right. It doesn’t help when you’ve got an online business and you’ve got multiple computers in the office running, and …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. And the power goes down. It’s not ideal.

CHEY:       No, it isn’t. No. So it has been fun-filled!

CRAIG:      Thanks to Sue and Belinda for the last 2 hours.

CHEY:       Yes. And it was …

CRAIG:      Fairly nice space.

CHEY:       Well, it was nice to go in there and have a bit of a chat.

CRAIG:      It was, yes.

CHEY:       And you won $50,000.

CRAIG:      $50,000. That’s right. I learned that …

CHEY:       In Monopoly money!

CRAIG:      That FJ was the Fiji Suffix.

CHEY:       Yes!

CRAIG:      Yes. I actually – when she asked the question, I was like ‘Fiji?’. I’ve never bought a Fiji domain, or bought some different domain extensions. But no! I might …

CRAIG:      They seem to be a lot more available now. They are really branching out, aren’t they?

CHEY:       Yes. And you can actually buy them. So if you wanted to have your own …

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Like if you wanted to have .CRAIG instead of .COM, then you could buy it. It costs you about $150,000.

CRAIG:      Yes. That would be ridiculously expensive.

CHEY:       They are. So, you know, corporations – they are great for them. But I’m still always astounded by how many people think that .TV is a television, and it’s not. It’s Tel Aviv.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       So yes! What else has been happening this week? Oh, lots – actually, talking about domains, lots of issues with people and businesses buying certain domains and trying to sell them back to clients. So yes!

CRAIG:      Oh, right. Some people trying to buy trademark-type domains …

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      And then sell them back to the people who might find them valuable.

CHEY:       Yes. Really dodgy.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Just unethical in my book.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       They want to make a quick buck, there’s a better way to do it.

CRAIG:      I thought all that happened, like, 10 years ago when people just went on a rampage and buying domain names.

CHEY:       No. Still happening.

CRAIG:      Still happening?

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Oh, ok.

CHEY:       Yes. Certainly does.

CRAIG:      We had a good show last week. I enjoyed your segment on Facebook scams.

CHEY:       Yes. I actually had someone call the office, and say ‘can you explain it a bit more?’.

CRAIG:      Oh, really?

CHEY:       Yes. And so I went through a couple of things with a lovely lady from Ocean Grove. And – a listener to the show, which was fantastic to hear.

CRAIG:      Great.

CHEY:       And yes, she said ‘Oh, Look. You know, I know the show is only short. So I was just wondering if I could ask you about this, because this happened to me on Facebook’. And yes …

CRAIG:      Yes. Great.

CHEY:       So yes.

CRAIG:      So if you want to listen to last week’s show, go to socialmediapulse.com. You can stream it from there. Or go to the iTunes Store. And check out socialmediapulse podcast.

CHEY:       Yes. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter too.

CRAIG:      That’s right. And give us a call today, if you want to have a chat to us. If you’ve got any social media news, or any …

CHEY:       Questions.

CRAIG:      Questions, or anything like that …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Give us a call – 5222 5947 – and they’ll ping you through to the studio.

CHEY:       Yes. That would be good.

CRAIG:      Yes. Today’s show!

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      I want to talk about – just brainstorm a little bit, or pick your brains a little bit about web design and blogging.

CHEY:       Ok.

CRAIG:      So I’ve had a few questions during the week about to blog or not to blog, and …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      You know, should your website be a blog, or should it have a standard cover page? And that’s sort of stuff. So I just want to get back to a little bit of basics, and talk about that.

CHEY:       Well there was a – I had dinner last night with a friend, and he did work in the marketing area for a very large company and was a franchise manager with them. And he’s gone off on his own, and was talking to me about different e-commerce solutions. And so that he doesn’t have to host it himself, so he doesn’t have to worry about all that sort of stuff …

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       So I think I might talk about a little bit about that, because after – it’s always the way. You know, once you speak to somebody about something, and all of a sudden the next day a couple of things come up that are directly related to it. And yes, so I thought I will just mention a few things about that. And I’ve got the News Desk. And that’s about it really.

CRAIG:      Speaking of online shops, I notice this week – I was having a look at Pozible, which is the crowd funding …

CHEY:       Like KickStarter.

CRAIG:      website. That’s right. Yes.

CHEY:       For Australians.

CRAIG:      If you’ve got a – yes – if you’ve got a project, an idea, you can crowd fund it and people can get on board and support you. And if you achieve your goal, then you get the money and that sort of stuff.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Great thing.

CHEY:       There’s somebody we can interview about that. They’ve actually just got their book now. They had crowd funded the production of the book. They already had all of the authors come in and write different chapters.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And that’s Joanna. She’s down in Tassie. She was a Sydney girl. Met her on Twitter, and she’s just brought out a book called Baby On Board.

CRAIG:      Right.

CHEY:       So it’s about small businesses and mums at home that have built their businesses. So I reckon we get her on the show. I’ll give her a bell.

CRAIG:      Yes. That sounds great.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      I saw it because I supported a – there’s a group that produce clothes for the Cross Fit community, down here at Cross Fit Geelong. And they’ve just got their money. Or they reached their target this week as well.

CHEY:       Yes. And I think I’ve seen some designs too!

CRAIG:      That’s really funky, yes.

CHEY:       Makes you just want to join Cross Fit for the clothing!

CRAIG:      Well, why not? What? On you? What I found interesting though was that once you – it says once you’ve reached your campaign, once it’s finished, you can then set up an online shop on Pozible.

CHEY:       Wow.

CRAIG:      So yes. It says you can basically register with them, and then it will become an online shop. And I guess I’m not sure how domain names work, and that sort of stuff, but you do it all this Pozible. So – and I guess you’ve already got your supporters. You’ve already got them on board.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So yes. I thought that was interesting. A little bit handy.

CHEY:       And it’s often the case, what I’ve seen on those sorts of sites of crowd funding type sites, that the people that actually – when they reach a certain target, they have a second target in mind. So if they do then reach over and above by, you know, $500 or $1,000 or $2,000, or whatever it is, then they’ve already got another product in mind that they are going to be making or producing. So I reckon that’s awesome, to be able to have a shop there for that as well.

CRAIG:      Yes. It seemed like it’s a pretty simple type shop, so I don’t think that it could take credit card payments. It could only take PayPal payments.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So I imagine it’s pretty simple, pretty cheap, cheap with monthly fee. Not like a Shopify or something like that. It’s a little bit more …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      You know, user friendly and it could take all sorts of payment types. But I thought yes, nice handy way to continue your crowd funding and turn it into a store.

CHEY:       Nice one.

CRAIG:      And so yes. That’s it. Stick around. We are going to come back with the News Desk, and – just bear with me for a minute, while I get a little bit organized here.

CHEY:       You are eating chocolate, are you?

CRAIG:      I’m not eating chocolate. Jesus, Chey, the show’s just come up on us today, didn’t it?

CHEY:       It did. As I said, it felt like Monday yesterday.

CRAIG:      That’s right. Stick around. You are listening to 94.7.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      And Chey!

CHEY:       Are you still …

CRAIG:      I don’t know what’s going on today! It’s like – bear with me.

CHEY:       Ok. We’re bearing.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      Still!

CHEY:       Gosh! Mr Music Man, where are you? That’s all right. I’ll just – Actually, whilst I was out to dinner last night, we were also talking about a new Evernote App, and it’s called Evernote Hello. So we both downloaded the App whilst we were having dinner and it’s where you can actually photograph your business cards. So if you are at an event and you take a photograph of a business card that you’ve just collected, it will actually then download information from wherever you have linked accounts. So if you’ve linked it to LinkedIn, or if you’ve linked it to Facebook or Twitter, all of these – that persons details will come up and show you where you are linked.

CRAIG:      Right.

CHEY:       A bit stalker-ish, and it also then says if you are together. So we were at a café together, and it actually came up with the café that we were actually sitting at.

CRAIG:      Right.

CHEY:       So it was locational based as well. Pretty amazing. So in the essence, I sort of thought about it and went ‘well if I was at an event in – I don’t know – Spain, and I met somebody, took their details and took a photo of their business card, uploaded it to Evernote Hello and then it would remind me where I met that person.

CRAIG:      Oh, right. Ok.

CHEY:       Or what. And I could actually tag it in Evernote at an event or wherever it was. So then, you know, a couple of weeks later, come back to Australia and then I can go ‘oh, yes. I remember. I met him or her at such and such an event’.

CRAIG:      Yes. Wow.

CHEY:       I reckon that’s …

CRAIG:      That’s pretty handy.

CHEY:       Yes. So then I thought it’s not that stalker-ish.

CRAIG:      Yes. It’s just smart. We like it. Ok. I’m ready now. Stick around. You are listening to Chey and Craig.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CHEY:       And welcome back to 9437 The Pulse. You are listening to Craig and Chey on 94.7 The Pulse Social Media Pulse!

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Too many socials and …

CRAIG:      Too many Pulses.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. This is The Pulse.

CHEY:       Ok.

CRAIG:      I see – I’m looking forward to The Cats are playing on the lights again here in Geelong tomorrow night. Second time under lights.

CHEY:       Awesome.

CRAIG:      I’m loving those lights.

CHEY:       Well you can see them a mile away!

CRAIG:      I know. You can.

CHEY:       Not 1 mile, like 100 miles I reckon.

CRAIG:      You see them

CHEY:       It’s huge.

CRAIG:      They light up the city. It’s great.

CHEY:       Yes!

CRAIG:      Let’s go to the News Desk. Chey, what’s happening in Social Media this week?

CHEY:       Well we’ve got a short News Desk, and then we’ve got lots to talk about after that. But Facebook has been developing a Mobile Newsreader, and basically the service that they internally refer to as Reader – READER – which enables users with mobile devices to see other content from other Facebook users and publishers in a visual format created for their devices. The social network has been working on Reader for about a year now, and in at the Journal they added that Reader is aimed at news content in particular. That recent versions have been tested are similar to the mobile App Flipboard. Now I love Flipboard. I remember when Flipboard came out. And I installed the App immediately and started putting stuff in there. It’s very visual. And so, apparently, when Facebook revamped the news feed in March this year – remember when they changed the columns and, you know, bigger pictures and all of that? We reported that – he basically compared it to a newspaper, saying that whilst we are trying to … what we are trying to do is to give everybody in the world the best personalized newspaper we can. We believe that the best personalized newspaper should be of a broad diversity of content. It should have high quality public content from world renowned sources, and it should also have socially and locally relevant updates from family, friends and the people around you. It should also enable you to drill into any topic that you want to discuss. Yes. I can see your mind is ticking.

CRAIG:      Yes. It sounds interesting. That’s quite an algorithm there, that they want to create there. To drag in based on, you know, friends interests, your interests, your age, your – all that sort of stuff that’s relevant.

CHEY:       Yes. And scoring of that. And yes – incredible.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       They were up for about a year. So it will be interesting to see when that comes in and how they do it. Now – something else here. Yammer has partnered with Clout. We talked about Clout and the different social scoring platforms that have surfaced and how they grade people. So basically it’s to unlock influences with the enterprise in mind. As in Yammer. So I think there’s figures here that say that 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use Yammer. So …

CRAIG:      Yes. And Yammer is like – is it a social media for corporate business?

CHEY:       It is, but it’s internal.

CRAIG:      It’s internal. So it’s behind firewalls and that sort of stuff.

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes. So I know that Deacon uses Yammer.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Internally. There’s other larger …

CRAIG:      Ford use it. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes. Well there you go. So basically now organizations that use Yammer will more easily discover hidden talent and expertize, so that it can be identified and optimized across company. You now have the option to show your Clout score and topics of influence in your Yammer profile. Clout is also beginning the process of injecting data from Yama to create a Yammer-specific Clout score. So this is – again, we have been talking about data for so long. This is where these 2 partnerships can make it so much more viable for Fortune 500 companies, and I’m tipping the ones outside of the Fortune 500, but the data contained within their own talent of – within the company – you might actually be able to see talent in different people that you didn’t realize were influencers in certain areas. So I really like that idea. I think that’s probably the first stable content for me to see the Clout is not just a ‘My clout score is such and such and I’m gaming the system’. They are using Yammer internally so that means that they can actually gauge really good information on Clout scores.

CRAIG:      Can you game Clout scores, can you?

CHEY:       Oh, absolutely.

CRAIG:      Really? Yes?

CHEY:       Yes. I’ve seen people game it. Yes, Absolutely.

CRAIG:      Ok. Yes.

CHEY:       But again, there’s Clout, and there’s Cred. So Cred was actually – I think the original investors in that were also the original investors in Onetel that went under. So there’s an Australian influence in Cred, but with both of those – and there’s more out there – that have been more specific about how their algorithms work within Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and those sorts of things. So I really don’t think it’s going to be a longer than probably 12 months – 18 months away where there is a scoring system on influence on different platforms for different reasons.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Interesting.

CHEY:       Ok? Now this one, we are absolutely loving. Dropbox – we all love Dropbox. It is sharing with your whole team in one step. So that’s a new feature that Dropbox has for business, and it lets Admins create a folder that is instantly shared with all members of that team.  Now all the important information that you and colleagues need, such as HR documents, training manuals, videos, whatever it be can be shared with the whole team in one step. They’ve just finalized a bunch of prep materials around an upcoming company-wide meeting, so Dropbox and their whole team so that everybody has instant access. Apparently, it’s even better when a team folder has been created, so all new team members will automatically be added to that folder as soon as they join the team so you don’t need to worry about remembering to share the company onboard folder with the interns joining in the summer or whenever it be. So new team members will have access to all the folders they do straight off the bat. I cannot tell you how much time saving and – you know – the productivity-wise. That’s just – great.

CRAIG:      Yes. So previously, did you have to add people individually with an email?

CHEY:       Yes. Correct.

CRAIG:      Yes. Ok. To each box.

CHEY:       Every single one.

CRAIG:      Yes. Ok.

CHEY:       And that’s where things can slip through the floor, basically. There’s been times where I’ve said where’s such and such a document, and they are like I put it in this folder because that’s where – unless I know it needs to go into such and such a folder. And oh, ok. I didn’t invite you to that folder. Ok! So yes. There you go. That’s the News Desk this week.

CRAIG:      Great. Ok. Wow. Geez, I’m all over the show! So stick around, people. We’ve got lots more to come!

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      Welcome back to Social Media at The Pulse this Friday afternoon. Nearly the end of the financial year. It’s exciting times.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      For accountants especially.

CHEY:       Oh, yes. We’re seeing our accountant next week.

CRAIG:      Oh yes?

CHEY:       I already booked in and done.

CRAIG:      That’s very efficient of you. First week of the new financial year.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      I love that sort of stuff. I love – you know – numbers and garter and accounting and –

CHEY:       I love the systems around things.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And I think that business and processing systems all come into those numbers. And so I like both sides of that coin.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Especially with the Cloud in place. So accountant, book-keeper and us can log in and know what’s going on at any time when you’re off.

CRAIG:      What system do you use?

CHEY:       Zero.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       We also use Freshbooks, and we also have another system that we use, which is Debit Success.

CRAIG:      Oh, yes.

CHEY:       Yes. That’s for reoccurring payments, and we don’t need to handle any other side of it. So …

CRAIG:      That’s very common these days. I signed up for Cross Fit and Bikram through – it was either a debit success or …

CHEY:       There’s only 2. Yes. There’s only 2 in Australia that have the accreditation.

CRAIG:      Ok.

CHEY:       That you would require. And topnotch and that’s Easy Debit and Debit Success.

CRAIG:      Ok. There you go.

CHEY:       Yes. I’ve tried both and yes, I prefer one.

CRAIG:      We’re stuck on my – with my accounting, which I really should move on from this week.

CHEY:       Well you need to speak to Alicia about that.

CRAIG:      Yes. Was she that lady? She’s a Zero lady?

CHEY:       No. No. Alicia. Alicia from …

CRAIG:      Oh, 3228.

CHEY:       From Biz3228. Alicia is an accountant by trade, and runs a book-keeping business.

CRAIG:      I’m trying to avoid Alicia at the moment.

CHEY:       No!

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       You’ll love her to pieces.

CRAIG:      No. No. She’s – I’m trying to take the Mayorship off her. So one …

CHEY:       No!

CRAIG:      Yes, so I don’t even talk. I want to talk about website design.

CHEY:       Go for it!

CRAIG:      I’ve noticed website design continually changes. It’s surprising how quickly it changes, and it’s easy to be stuck in the past if you don’t update your website or …

CHEY:       Keep it refreshed.

CRAIG:      Keep it refreshed. That’s right. And I’ve noticed there’s a lot more – there’s definitely a lot more images these days that there was. And I’m noticing that websites are getting a lot simpler.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      And easier, which is a mixture, I think, of a lot less words.

CHEY:       Clutter.

CRAIG:      A lot less clutter.

CHEY:       A lot less advertising too!

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes. Less advertising. I’ve noticed social media buttons are getting smaller and more discrete. They used to be big, proud buttons on the websites, but they’re nice and discrete now.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      But there’s still the often – you still get – you want a Twitter-stream or a Facebook Like box and that sort of stuff.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. I went on to theme for us, so I was looking through a lot of themes. As we’ve talked about before, we both build the majority of our websites on WordPress.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      And Theme Forest is a great place to pick up those themes, so once you do install WordPress on your website/blog, you can pick up a nice theme.

CHEY:       There are also plug-ins there too.

CRAIG:      Is there really?

CHEY:       Yes. If you go into Themeforest – it’s owned by – I think they’re a sister company to Codecanyon. And Codecanyon have video, audio, images and also plug-ins. So there was a particular plug-in I know the guys were testing this week. There was 3 different plug-ins, and one of them – the one that they liked the most – was from Codecanyon, which is – yes – linked to within them.

CRAIG:      Yes. Ok. So it’s Themeforest.Net. I’m pretty sure it is.

CHEY:       It is, yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. So you can go and check out themes. And it’s interesting to look at the ones most popular. So they’re selling – there’s one theme on there that has just sold 800 last week which is, you know, big numbers. There’s lots of themes on there. I really like your Cheyanne.Com blog theme.

CHEY:       Yes?

CRAIG:      Is that from –

CHEY:       That is …

CRAIG:      Is that a custom job?

CHEY:       No. I don’t like to custom unless I have to. But we are good at butchering. So all themes, depending on the experience of your webmaster, should be able to butcher a theme to however they like, you know, within the back end code. So Cheyanne.Com.Au is an elegant theme and with elegant themes, I think, there’s a – I can’t remember what the pricing is – but you can literally buy I think it was 30 themes or something like that in the one development license.

CRAIG:      Right.

CHEY:       So it means that we can literally go into Elegant Themes, and go ‘ok, this suits. That doesn’t. I like the top part of that. I like the bottom part of this. I like this widget or this whatever it is. Can we combine these?’. And that’s where the butchering comes into it. So when you look at social – no, socialmediapulse is a different theme. I can’t – no, that was a …

CRAIG:      No. That was a radio …

CHEY:       That’s radio show. I think. But anyway, they’re themes and as long as – I don’t like to do more work than is required for what it is. So I don’t even think I’ve categorized it yet. So really, it was up, get it done, simple.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Keep moving. I think people get stuck so often for months on end. Like I’ve had people come to me and say ‘Look, we’d really like you to do the social media management for us, but we are getting our website built’, and 6 months later they still haven’t got it finished.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And that’s where I look at it and say ‘do the steps that you need to do so that you can build on it, and you can always change it later’.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       There is no reason why you can’t change a theme later, or you can’t change a column. You know? There’s all of those sorts of things, that I said get what you need done to get up and get moving.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And that’s what Cheyanne was about. We had that up within 24 hours.

CRAIG:      Wow! Yes. So is it costly to get those modifications made by Coder?

CHEY:       Look.

CRAIG:      Is there a lot of hours work?

CHEY:       No. Well it depends on what sort of changes you want to make.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       You know? I mean if you really want to butcher it part time, then yes you are looking at hours of code. But for me, I look at the one that I don’t have to butcher the most, and what I can add in to it, and say take this away, add this, do whatever.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. I like it because it’s very simple, it’s very clean. I think, for me, a white …

CHEY:       Background.

CRAIG:      Background seems to – over time, it doesn’t bother me, whereas a dark background I tend to get sick of the website over time.

CHEY:       It’s your eyes. And you know the reason behind that?

CRAIG:      What?

CHEY:       We, as humans, read newspapers and we always have. And it’s always been a white background with black print. So when we come across something online or anywhere else that has a black background with white writing, our eyes don’t like it.

CRAIG:      Oh!

CHEY:       So hence I will never, ever in my life do a black website. Full Stop. Sometimes banners, like banners work and advertising for black backgrounds on certain things – absolutely – but not for a full website. If someone says ‘I want a black background’, I’ll say go somewhere else. I will not, and I don’t plan on banging my head against a brick wall trying to explain to people why they shouldn’t have it when they think it’s going to be elegant or this or that. White is pure and, you know, the reading of your customers is what you want. What you want on a website means nothing. It’s what your customers want.

CRAIG:      Absolutely. That’s great.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. So I thought that was fascinating. I also want to talk about, while we’ve got a little bit of time, blogging because also …

CHEY:       I’ve been slack in the last 2 weeks. I’ve been sort of busy.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes. No. It’s hard to keep up a blog. Absolutely. Although …

CHEY:       Unless it’s scheduled.

CRAIG:      Yes, unless it’s scheduled or weekly. I think weekly is a good, easy.

CHEY:       Yes. Well I think I went for 45 days.

CRAIG:      Wow.

CHEY:       Yes. Before – yes – it got a bit too much, and I went ‘ you know what? I’m just going to stop it until I can clear a few things off the plate and then I’ll get back into it’.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       So yes.

CRAIG:      Sure. So I did some work on – my sister’s got a website for Ortho Bionomy Melbourne, that we did some work on this week. And we moved. It was originally set up as a blog. As a blog on the main home page, which I think is not as common these days. I think in the past it was quite common, that you’d set up a blog. But it’s pretty common these days that the blogs generally, along the menu there and towards the end. But I mean we’ve spoken about this show many times, that we really do recommend people do blog. They do have a blog on their website because it does help with content marketing. It does help with your search engine results. Google loves seeing fresh content and regular.

CHEY:       Relevant quality.

CRAIG:      Relevant quality. It’s great for social media because you can …

CHEY:       They are common words we use, aren’t they?

CRAIG:      They are, yes! You can share your content every time you do a new blog post. But yes, so we did that on my sister’s site this week where we moved the – we made the home page a unique page, so when people came to the home page. Moved the blog onto the menu. And she wanted to set up a secondary blog, and we decided against it, because we would get a little bit too confusing with …

CHEY:       Set up a second category.

CRAIG:      Yes. We tried that. We set it up as we were going to blog and then have a different category, and then have it along the menu there. She’s gone against it.

CHEY:       Sub-menu?

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       In a drop-down? Something along those lines?

CRAIG:      Yes. Maybe. Yes. Like I said, categories and sub-menus on the categories. Something like that.

CHEY:       And when we talk about categories, I know that I’ve gone to blogs that have 50M categories, and really your site is about more – there’s not more than 10 sort of categories that I’d suggest you have on your blog. So it needs to be under 10, and I think an optimal of probably 6. So if you have to have more, you have to. But really, no more than 6 because people will see that and identify with whatever category that is. So if you are doing a food blog, and you’re specifically doing vegan or vegetarian or, you know, it could be Indian or whatever it be. Then basically, when you look at your categories, you can break those into 6, so it could be Indian recipes for birthdays or something, and then it could be for Christmas, or for this or for that. And you’ll break it into those, or it could just be recipes in that section. And then on the other one, it could be different elements of food and whatever it be. So yes – 6 or 10.

CRAIG:      Again, it’s talking about simplicity.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      You’ve got to keep it simple for people, because they will visit your website, they’ll move straight on if it’s too confusing or too busy. Something like that. I’ve noticed even websites – a few of them have a button or something simple saying for people who are new to the website. Saying ‘are you new here?’. That sort of stuff to make it simple for people who are first-timers so they don’t get confused. Just click a button and it takes them through who we are, what we do, or the steps to take for whatever they are looking for.

CHEY:       Yes. Well I’ve also found that – and I was actually speaking with a customer this week about it – that within a program that they are doing, and I said ‘well why don’t you do a video?’. It’s like a 2-minute video for ‘are you new here?’.

CRAIG:      I love a video.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Oh, lovely. Yes.

CHEY:       And I think – oh, who is it? We interviewed him a little while ago. Travel agency.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Oh, can’t think of his name. I can see his head in my – anyway, he’s got a video on his contact page.

CRAIG:      Oh, yes.

CHEY:       And I love that. I reckon that’s a great idea.

CRAIG:      That’s great – yes.

CHEY:       I think it’s something I should do. Yes. You know, it’s like anybody can go to a contact page and there’s usually fill in this box, or whatever. But to go to a contact page and see a video there, and the person who owns the site there saying ‘Hi! Give us a bell’. You know. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah! You know – just something a bit different. I like different.

CRAIG:      Yes. Or even a video on – I’ve seen video on when you subscribe to someone’s newsletter and then …

CHEY:       Jake – Jake Hower. That’s it.

CRAIG:      Jake. Yes, that’s it.

CHEY:       Yes. Sorry!

CRAIG:      And then you come back to their website, it says thank you for subscribing. There’s a video there …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Which is very personalized. Hi! Great! Thanks for joining the team. Thanks for subscribing.

CHEY:       We’ve had some …

CRAIG:      I thought that’s quite nice.

CHEY:       We’ve had some new subscribers this week to our mailing list. We might need to do a new letter.

CRAIG:      Really. Great. Yes, Go to our website and subscribe to our newsletter. We’ll send out some stuff.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Some interesting stuff.

CHEY:       Maybe we should send out a video.

CRAIG:      All right. Ok. Stick around. You are listening to Social Media Pulse.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      Welcome back. I didn’t plan that because I know you don’t like it, Chey.

CHEY:       No. I don’t. And we still haven’t got around to it. It’s Show 31, and we still haven’t pulled that thing out.

CRAIG:      We haven’t done our intro. I know. It’s pretty slack.

CHEY:       Ok. I think we need to do something about that. But …

CRAIG:      Book a meeting!

CHEY:       Yes. Before …

CRAIG:      Have a Google Hangout. All right. I’ll stop talking now, so you can go.

CHEY:       What I was going to say was before, when we were doing our little babble bit at the front (is that what we call it? It’s a bit of a banter babble?)

CRAIG:      It sounded a bit like a babble bit.

CHEY:       Yes. And I was saying that I was talking to a friend about e-commerce, and we were discussion Shopify. And you’d mentioned Shopify just before as well. There’s also another one called Big Commerce, and the other one was Magento. Now we manage not only a couple of Magento sites, but they are Big Daddies. The other 2 are probably better to start with, and when we were talking about this before, it was when you were saying about Pozible, and how they’ve got shop options. And I know that people often will ask us what’s the cheapest option for a shopping cart without having to spend bazzillions of dollars. And there’s actually another place that I sort of tell people to have a look at, and that is your Facebook Shopping Cart. So it really depends on where your market is, what sort of budget you have to spend, and how many products you have, because people will say ‘oh, can’t you just build a shopping cart into WordPress?’. And yes, you can but it wasn’t made for that. And if you’ve got less than, say, 20 products and that you are not going to grow that product listing. Then yes, you can do that in WordPress, but I wouldn’t see that as an issue.

CRAIG:      Yes. And you can use – there is WooCommerce.

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      So WooCommerce is a plug-in for a shopping cart within WordPress, so you can use that too.

CHEY:       Awesome.

CRAIG:      But it’s very basic.

CHEY:       Yes. Basic. That’s right. And it also depends on what else you want the cart to do. You know? So hence I was just going to say that Shopify – good option. Big Commerce – a good option, and low prices too. For something that calls itself Big Commerce, I think the lowest fee per month is like $39 or something. I thought that’s really affordable. And different features and benefits, obviously. But for a really huge sites that are e-commerce driven, Magento would be the platform that you would be wanting to build on. So yes, I just thought I’d mention that.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       But what …

CRAIG:      So those – so I guess Shopify and Big Commerce, you’d need to move to something like that if you are going to have a volume of sales. So they are going to handle the transactions for you. They are going to handle all the credit card processing and that sort of stuff. If you are looking at a smaller option like WordPress with WooCommerce or something like that, you might be looking at using Ebay – not Ebay – but PayPal …

CHEY:       PayPal.

CRAIG:      And that sort of stuff.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      For handling the transactions, but Shopify and Big Commerce style – I think they even host the shopping cart.

CHEY:       Yes, they do.

CRAIG:      They host the shopping cart, they take care of all the payment transactions, they can handle high volumes and your servers aren’t going to crash if you do have some sort of promotional activity or something going on. So they are a great option.

CHEY:       Well I sort of look at it and think well because so many bricks and mortar stores have to now go to online, or they are just not going to compete which means they are not going to have a business, I think it’s well worth investing money into your shopping cart, purely because that’s where you customers are. And if you are not there, then your competitors are going to take your market.

CRAIG:      That’s right. And these shopping carts are really nice too. I mean if you are trying to create your own shopping cart, then it’s going to be a bit clunky and you are going to lose sales and people are going to drop off. And they may get confused and the payment process itself might be quite clunky, through lots of screens, whereas these proper applications …

CHEY:       Platforms, yes.

CRAIG:      Proper platforms – they are good quality, they are clean, they are nice.

CHEY:       Tried and tested. They’ve got engineers behind it.

CRAIG:      Tried and tested.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Continually improving them, so checkout is easy and you are not likely to lose people through the sales process.

CHEY:       Yes. Absolutely. The other thing when I was looking at Big Commerce, and even at Shopify, but I was specifically looking at Big Commerce this morning. That basically, there is so many different examples of different store fronts. And so I was just looking from a design perspective as well just to see, you know, how well they could be designed. And so I went through and I found this – I think it was called Hill Billy Glasses. And they are actually crystal glasses with – like a mason jar. And I was looking at it, and so I just went through the cart process just to see what it was like and it was simple. It was – yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. These sites are really easy to set up so if you wanted to do it yourself, you could. And if you had a handful of products and you could very easily pick a template and set something up yourself if you wanted to.

CHEY:       Yes. Absolutely. And that’s where I was saying – like when we were talking just before about the Cheyanne.Com.Au blog. It was simple. I set it up – done within 24 hours. That’s the sort of thing that I would be suggesting people have a look at in Shopify or Big Commerce and set something up that’s simple and then add to it. You know? It’s …

CRAIG:      Yes. You can customize it later.

CHEY:       Absolutely.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes. So there you go. That’s what I wanted to have a little bit of a chat about there. There was something else that I pulled up this week – let me find it here – as we were talking about blogs. There was a great article and – where was it? – lorirtaylor.com, and it’s a blog post called Seven Tiny Tweaks to your Blog that will make a massive difference and I thought it’s really simple. I’m just going to run through the seven points.

CRAIG:      All right.

CHEY:       Get an email list early. So we talked about that last week, about Mailchimp. It’s free. You can upgrade it to a paid service when you want. [coughs]. So that’s the first thing. Get your email list done. Go self-hosted. Once you go self-hosted, you will never go back. So yes, it’s a bit contrary to e-commerce, but again it’s a different kettle of fish. You wonder how you managed without all of the themes and plug-ins that are available to self-hosted bloggers. Seriously. These make your life way easier and give you/your blog a professional touch. So we are talking about Notepad and Blogspot, and those sorts of things that are hosted somewhere else. If you’re running your blog and only posting it on Facebook, then you don’t have your own self-hosted. So that’s what that sort of means. Number 3 – focus, focus, focus. When it comes to writing a blog, this leaves it with the dilemma – do we stay true to ourselves and write about all of our interests? Or do we segment ourselves and only write about one part of our lives? The answer is both. Using a clearer type niche is vital, Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Number 4 – write like a human being. Number 5 – learn the art of speed writing. Number 6 – remember SEO. And number 7 – build a community. Again, if you want to read that article, it is at lorirtaylor.com.

CRAIG:      Great. Fantastic. Thanks for that, Chey. That’s about us for the week.

CHEY:       Awesome.

CRAIG:      Yes. We look forward to talking to you all next week. Have a great Friday night. Have some knock-off drinks for us!

CHEY:       I’m doing girls drinks!

CRAIG:      All right. Sounds good. See you.

CHEY:       See ya!

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

End of Transcription: 39:20

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