Another week closer to Christmas and the frost is really setting in here in Ireland. Here’s my pick of reads this week for you to read while toasting your toes in front of the fire. I’ve couldn’t choose just one video for you this week so I’ve picked two that I really enjoyed this week. There’s some basic WordPress tips, some great design tools, some serious social media stats, a rant and a bit of fun with some Skype emoticons you probably haven’t seen before.
5 essential WordPress tips
This article from Mashable is described as WordPress tips for beginners but there’s a few tips in here that even a hardened WordPress user like myself could have missed. For example I didn’t know the keyboard shortcuts for making text in to headings. I’ll be experimenting with those in this post.
Of course you may know all of these easy tips already but it’s worth having a scan through in case like me you’ve missed something useful.
Facebook UK audience insights
This video is way better than the title suggests, it’s really cute and easy to watch and some of the stats about how Facebook affects buyer purchasing and decision making is really interesting. Although it’s UK data I think it’s safe to assume similar statistics apply to Ireland.
13 free design tools for visual marketers on a budget
I’m always looking for new design tools, although I use open source Photoshop alternative ‘GIMP’ I’m always looking for web friendly alternatives. These 15 tools collated by HubSpot are not just image editors however, they help you choose a pallet for your design, fonts and icons for your websites, blogs or anywhere you can use HTML. I’m sure I’ll be trying some of these out for future Cool Tool posts so watch this space.
A rant on why I disagree with so many blogging and content marketing experts
Rants can make the best blog posts, and although The Sales Lion flags this post as a rant I think it’s a well considered piece and definitely worth a read.
What is content marketing? In simple terms it’s the process of creating and distributing content (blogs, photos, posts) in order to reach a target market. So this blog could be considered content marketing as can those clever photos you share on Facebook. It’s become one of those buzz terms this year, and because of that lots of people are writing about it and voicing opinions. It can be hard to cut through this and get the really good advice and that’s what The Sales Lion does here so give it a read.
Nielson’s social media report 2012
If you have a while to sit down and review this report from Nielson you won’t regret it. Packed with easy to digest information presented visually it makes it easy to get a grip on the current social media statistics. It will give you a good insight as to where to concentrate your social media plans for 2013. And if that sounds too technical think of it as a big book of Infographics!
The science of persuasion
It’s very rarely that I will sit and watch a video online that lasts longer than 3 minutes but this one kept me watching all the way to the end. It takes you through 6 steps to persuasion and how we as marketers can use them.
33 hidden Skype emoticons
I’m a huge fan of Skype and I love the instant messaging. There are lots of emoticons built in to the system and as a bit of a smiley addict I tend to pepper my conversations with them… so imagine my delight when I discovered there were some additional hidden emoticons that I wasn’t aware of. Of course I didn’t use the (mooning) one over and over again 😉 Here is a cheat sheet for the hidden icons.
And from Spiderworking.com this week
Cool Tool – Find out how often your links are being shared on Twitter
This weeks cool tool BackTweets has proved popular, input a link and it will search Twitter to find out who has been sharing it. It’s a great way to find mentions of your blog that may not include your @ name. It can be a bit addictive, particularly if you have a lot of links to check and want to benchmark yourself against your competitors.
4 words to avoid in your email subject lines
There are some words that you should avoid using in your email subject lines, particularly when you are email marketing. This weeks short video tip shows you the 4 worst, the ones that will mean people won’t open your mails or end up reporting them as spam.
4 reasons to get opt-in for your email marketing
The Irish Data Commissioner fined several companies in Ireland this week for breaking the rules relating to unsolicited communications (texts and emails) so I compiled four reasons why you should ask for opt-in from your email subscribers, it’s not just the law that matters, there’s costs, sentiment and more to consider.
And finally
If you enjoy reading my blog please nominate it for the Social Media Examiner Top 10 Social Media Blogs. Last year I reached the finals but I’ve been working hard all year long to make it better. I would be over the moon to make it in to the top 1o this year. To reach the judging stage I need to get a lot of nominations so please nominate www.spiderworking.com by visiting this post and leaving a comment including the link and why you think I should win.
Have a great weekend.
