The Ultimate WordPress Plugin List

User ImageMichael | October 16, 2007


While I’ve always believed in working hard once I’ve set my mind to something, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year or two trying to teach myself how to work SMARTER as well.

One of the ways I try to do this is by automating my daily life as much as possible. This allows me to slice the time I DO have just a little thinner.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons I love apps like Wordpress and Firefox (although I definitely DON’T like how heavy the newest Firefox runs). Some of the plugins available for these programs are incredible and allow me to squeeze more work into less time by taking advantage of the work of other very smart people!

I owe a BIG thank you to the 2,000′ish people who’ve taken the time to visit and help make my first couple of weeks on the new blog great! And, as I continue to tweak the template and improve the SEO’ability of the blog I’ve received a few emails asking about what it is I’ve been doing - and why!

So instead of sharing individually over and over again, I thought I’d just bare all (so to speak) and compile a list of ALL the great wordpress plugins I’m using, have used, or may be thinking about using…

The Ultimate WordPress Plugin List:

There are a few other good ones out there, and I’ll be updating this list over time, but this is an excellent place to start and should cover all the major bases you’ll need!

And if you use any plugins that you can’t live without but I’ve somehow missed (it happens more than I like to admit!), I’d love to hear about them! Let me know what they are and where I can find them and I’ll add them to the list and credit you with the addition!

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Topics: Blogging, Lifehack | Comments

Future of the Press Release

User ImageMichael | October 14, 2007


My mini-holiday is quickly coming to an end (will be back in the office on monday) and I’m trying to get my brain back in the game tonight by catching up on some RSS reading (shhh. Don’t tell my wife!)

Unfortunately, typical to my partially type-A personality, my light reading quickly became heavy research on a couple of fasinating topic and I find myself not wanting to turn off my computer at 2:30 AM.

Where am I going with that?  The fact that I don’t have enough time (or energy) for a long post for starters…

Second, my brain has been almost completely occupied with Social Media related topics since I attended the BigSeminar last week and I know it’s going to be difficult getting back into my irregular groove in the office on Monday.  Meaning, in part, that I’ll have to use this blog to get some thoughts out of the way this week.

One of the big ones that has been bugging me and you should therefore expect to read more about, (I suppose that’s a bit presumptuous of me - you will come back and read more won’t you?) is the whole concept of a Social Media Press Release.

I’ve seen both good (both long and shorter examples) and bad ones recently.

One of the questions that I am interested in is what is the core of the future Press Release.  Is it something that demands conversation and interaction?   Something that caters to Social Media outlets? Something that delivers traditional Press Release speak in a flashier document?

Don’t overthink this!  I think the better approach is simply the same direction I see marketing, advertising etc heading in general.

That is, to stop force feeding a general audience marketing and business propeganda using a very particular channel and start offering specific audiences access to great free content via the channels they already prefer using.

The result will foster conversations between the right people and groups while providing the toolbox full of goodies they need.  It’s a slam dunk and lightyears better than a traditional Press Release.

I think one of my favourite aspects is the fact that, while a lot more work to compile, it could become a destination all on it’s own.  Unlike a traditional Press Release that you have to get right once then send it out, the future Press Release could be an evolving and dynamic entity that could be released early and evolve along with the associated product (or whatever the PR is about).  Of course a robust RSS feed would be mandatory and enable interested parties to follow the progression/release/evolution of your product.

Food for thought.

I want to discuss this more in the coming weeks and would love to know your thoughts on the future of Press Releases!  Where do you think their going? What will work, and what won’t?  Have you seen any good, or bad examples lately?

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Topics: Press Releases, Social Media | Comments

Blogging / SEO tip of the day…

User ImageMichael | October 11, 2007


I have a quick Blogging/SEO tip for today:

I finally figured out what went wrong with my template. Thanks for all the suggestions, but it looks like it was my own error in the end (not that I thought it was going to be anything else!)

A snippet of code I put in to prevent a particular category from appearing on my HomePage seems to have turned all of my paginated pages into copies of my HomePage. (But it DID work to supress the specified category)

So, for now I’ve pulled the code, and my Twitter category is back on my main page; leaving me to try and decide if there is enough value in having my twitter posts regurgitated here on my blog.

It’s too bad too. I searched a long time trying to figure out how to supress a category from the homepage in wordpress. In case anyone is interested, here is the php I was using that caused all the issues:

?php if (is_home()) {query_posts(”cat=-3″);} ?

And for those of you who may be wondering why it all really mattered (as most blog visitors don’t surf through a blogs paginated archives much anyway)… I was receiving a decent amount of traffic on a couple popular Facebook related keywords for a short post I made on Facebook Grant Money and as soon as that post dropped off my HomePage (and became inaccessible to Google) the traffic dried up.

So the moral of the story is…

It’s REALLY important to provide Google with a path to your post’s permalinked URL from your homepage.

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My Daily Twitter - 2007-10-08

| October 8, 2007


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Why continue learning?

User ImageMichael | October 8, 2007


You only pay for education once.

You’ll pay the rest of your life for ignorance.

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The Big Seminar - Georgia ‘07

User ImageMichael | October 8, 2007


I finally arrived @ home last night around 1 am, tired but pumped after a great weekend in Georgia. The Big Seminar was great. What made it so great you ask?

The People.

Yeah, capital ‘P’ - People. All of them. If any of the people I met, connected with, or chatted with over the weekend happens to find their way back here, thanks for making The Big Seminar a great weekend.

I love being in a room of similarly motivated people, passionate about their subjects. The presenters were great, the gurus and experts in the audience were wonderful to talk to, and the newbies who were attending, trying to find the direction they needed to launch their business online were humbling, awe inspiring and motivating.

I even had a great time talking to the staff and can honestly say that the Medici restaurant in the Waverly Ren. hotel in Atlanta serves some of the best food I have ever had (and the single best meal - bar none). I’ll find some links when I have a few minutes.

So, whats the take away?

Tons. I talked to a lot of people.  I was invited as a VIP (through 1SC) and the very first speaker on Friday targetted my coworker and I, out in the audience, so we were busy chatting all weekend.

But that’s a good thing, and made the weekend even better.

The good news is, I have enough food for thought to last me weeks. But I’ve been away from home for 5 days and todays a family day, it is Canadian Thanksgiving afterall.

I just wanted to take the time to give thanks to what made The Big Seminar such a great event for me…

The People.

Thanks.

Stay tuned to learn more!

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Topics: Seminars | Comments

My Daily Twitter - 2007-10-03

| October 3, 2007


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Off to the BigSeminar in Georgia

User ImageMichael | October 3, 2007


Tomorrow’s going to be a long day of travelling.

I’m heading to Atlanta to attend Armand Morin’s BigSeminar.  Many of the shows attendees are merchants of ours, so it is always an interesting show to attend.

Unfortunately I’ve gone and let my passport expire.  I haven’t been out of the country much in the past couple of years (3 babies in 3 years will do that to you!) and hadn’t realized that I needed to renew my passport.  And of course, as the US is in a ‘heightened state of security’ I can’t fly in without a passport anymore; which means we need to DRIVE into Buffalo and catch a flight to Atlanta from there… ridiculous!

I hate that it’s more difficult to get across the border now-a-days, and before any of my American friends and readers get their knickers in a bunch, I DO understand it, but I still hate it for a number of reasons.

While we may have our little cultural differences, Canadians and Americans really are just two sides of the same coin and I for one am fiercely proud of the fact that our nations have the world’s longest undefended border.  And it’s been that way for a long, long time.  Anything that impedes on that is ultimately unfortunate.

Anyway, I’m tired and getting off topic here a little.

This started as a post about the BigSeminar :) 

So I leave the house tomorrow around 7:30 am, and should get to the hotel in Atlanta somewhere around 5:30  pm.  Long day of travelling!

But, good times will be had by all.  I’m looking forward to talking to our merchants, and some of the presenters.

If you happen to be going, make sure you look for the 1ShoppingCart team!

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Facebook the next Wikipedia?

User ImageMichael | October 3, 2007


Is this blog about Facebook.

No. It just so happens that Facebook is big (like Oscar Meyer big!) and I’ve been having a number of Facebok related conversations lately…

And this blog IS about the conversations.

So, Over on MarketingConversation.co I’ve been talking some more about Facebook opening up to Search engine traffic and what may or may not happen.  I find it an interesting topic and wanted to get into it a bit here.

First, if you haven’t seen what Facebook profiles will look like in Google, click here for the original post I made, or here for the image.

These are the comments in response to an article Jonathan wrote about the Search benefits of FaceBook opening up:

3 Responses to “SEO Shows It’s Strength”

  1. Michael Valiant Said:Agreed (that Facebook will enjoy positioning in the SERPS).

    But I doubt Facebook opened up their walls for the SEO benefit (although I’m sure they’ll consider it icing on the cake).

    Facebook is positioning itself as a platform for life & business and they understand the key concepts of the new eCommerce.

    To put it simply, in Facebook’s terms, Friend don’t buy from Friends…

    Michael Valiant
    http://MichaelValiant.com

  2. Jonathan Trenn, on October 1st, 2007 at 9:18 pm Said:True, indeed. But making it searchable makes in more likely that more people will join as they see profiles of people they know.
  3. Michael Valiant Said:It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next year. I’ve already seen a few facebook profiles pop up in Google, but since I don’t know the people, it wouldn’t entice me to join facebook (assuming I wasn’t already there of course)

    There’s enough link power to possibly make facebook the next wikipedia, in so far as in 8 months you may see Facebook profile pages popping up for all sorts of searches; but I doubt it.

    Facebook profile pages aren’t interlinked with each other. And in Google’s eyes, they are going to be very similar from one to the next, so duplicate filtering may come into it.

    Also, outside the tech saavy 20% - Do people actually search for other people (friends and family) on Google? (the only time finding a facebook profile would actually be useful!)

    Michael Valiant

Of course I WAS wrong about the accounts not being interlinked.  For some reason I didn’t think that the ‘view friends’ link was included on these forward facing profiles, but I was wrong.

Given that I was wrong how does it change things?

On one hand the massive amounts of interlinking will allow Google to work their way through the Facebook database quickly and very likely everyones Facebook profile will appear withing the SERPs for their own names fairly quickly (I know mine is already on page one - but only 1 of 2 [Yes - I have 2 Facebook profiles! The reason why is a whole other story}).

And like wikipedia - which seems to be everywhere in the SERPS sometimes - Facebook profiles may soon start appearing more and more in regular searches.

But there are a few significant differences to consider.  First, unlike in Wikipedia, every Facebook profile page contains the same thing, but on a different URL.  The ONLY difference between my Facebook profile page and yours is the name, image and the link to the list of friends; I’m pretty sure some duplicate content filtering rules will kick in somewhere along the line for this problem.

Second, what’s the benefit?  I can see how it may help  Facebook with increased exposure… but what’s the benefit to the end users?  Not much.

Does it help me to have my profile page in Google?  Only to the extent that it gives me 1 more tool to pad out my branded SERP.  If people were looking for my name specifically anyway then it wouldn’t really matter if there were a facebook profile page or not - the would have found me anyway -

But really, I’d worry more about getting traffic to my blog and have them find my facebook from there.

 Does it help Web Surfers to have my profile page in Google?  Possibly IF they are specifically looking for me.  But again, I’d just assume they find my site instead.

IF the profile pages start showing up in random searches then NO, it’s going to be nothing more than SPAM in the search engines.  Imagine these scenarios if you will:

Do those Facebook profiles help our searchers in an way?  No!!

Hopefully we won’t see Facebook clutter up the SERPs too much but only time will tell.

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Topics: Facebook, SEO | Comments

My Daily Twitter - 2007-10-02

| October 2, 2007


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