How to Answer Common Introductory Marketing Questions about your Agency’s Services

Posted on July 9, 2017 by yasha

The Background

This article about common marketing questions people initially send to marketing agencies, was inspired by the sheer volume of similar questions our agency receives daily, yay, e’en on weekends and holidays. Sidetrack Data Facts: After all, only about 1/3 of the world even celebrates Christmas. And far fewer celebrate any other holiday. In fact, more people celebrate or watch the Soccer (Football) World Cup (3.2 Bn watched the one in Brazil in 2014) and the Olympics (3.5 Bn watched the one in Brazil in 2016).

So with that in mind, it seemed logical to share some ideas about the types of questions we get, and how we very often respond to them. When reading it, it’s impossible not to notice certain patterns, and develop certain efficiencies around the commonly asked questions.

OK that’s enough background on the article. Here it is, in all its glory. I hope you enjoy it, and share it with your peers and colleagues in the marketing world.

how to make sure answer marketing questions to get your leads get where they want to go

The Barrage of Questions & Answers

I get a nice, healthy amount of inquiries by email and on various websites, about new businesses seeking help with marketing.

The exchanges often go something like this:

“Hello! I have seen your profile and maybe you can help my start-up. I have a [product or service] that [has these differentiating features]. it’s a little like [the market leaders] and better [in these ways]. It should be a [product or service] for [business or consumer target audience segment] in the [target group, ie: age, business type] in [target geolocation]. Or so I believe :-)Can you help me with my new business? I need an online marketing strategy, a detailed plan of specific steps and tactics I have to do … to have success with this [product or service].

Regards,

[Joe Smith]“

To which a pretty typical initial response I send reads as follows:

“Hi [Joe],

Thanks for reaching out to me. I’ll be happy to create an online marketing strategy for your new [product or service] company.

To get this done, simply [place the order or request for further information] from [the relevant web page], and any [optional feature / extras] you want.

Or, if you prefer, i can send you a custom offer.

To do that, I need to know these basic questions:
1) What’s your company or product’s website address, (if you have one)?
2) Are you able to generate leads and traffic?
3) What’s your current monthly marketing budget?
4) What are your growth targets for the next year?

Thanks,
Yasha“

The inquiring person then usually follows-up with something in this direction:

“Hi,
1. [I don’t have a website right now, though I plan to have one soon.] or [My website is at http:/ /theproductorservicewebsite .com]
2. [YES, I can generate Traffic], or [NO, I am not able to generate traffic.] Sometimes the respondent adds in things like, [“I am sure I can create traffic with google/facebook/instagram ads, if I can just target them properly.”]
3. [My budget is $XXXX / month]. Sometimes they add in info like, [“I cover all my own costs ‘out of pocket’, with the money I earn at my day job.”]
4. I want to [Sell X # of Products or Service contracts or Orders] This Year. That’s the minimum I have to sell to cover my costs. In the next year I want to sell minimum of [2X this year’s monthly average orders] every month. Do you think this is a realistic goal?

Regards,
[Joe Smith]“

To which, again, a pretty typical response I send reads as follows:

Great. Yes those are realistic targets. Sell them to [shops / websites] and try for a small [chain of stores or network of sites] or two.You could sell many more if your product is good and you can handle larger orders.

FOR CONSUMER PRODUCTS THAT ARE SELLABLE IN THE FIELD, I USUALLY ADD SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
Go to one huge event, a festival or a huge sports game, and you could unload hundreds, even thousands.

AND THEN I INEVITABLY ASK ANYONE INQUIRING:

What is your cost per unit [or case/crate/rental/lease or other metric]?
Really what I’m asking here is ‘What’s your cost per sale?’
factoid: More than 23% of inquirers we received just in the last two years, say they don’t know their cost per sale. Marketing Tip: KNOW YOUR DATA, OR ELSE!

The prospective client then usually replies with something that goes like this

“For the [YYYY number] of Units I pay USD [X.XX] per Unit.”

Knowing all of that very insightful data, I can then follow-up with an offer. So, for example, I’ll send a message that reads like this:

OK.

Here’s your custom offer.

COST: $2500

DELIVERABLES:
I will do strategic business consulting and marketing expertise
I will create an Online Marketing Strategy for your energy drink business.

As part of that Strategy, you will also receive a Big To Do List, and a Tailored Action Plan.

Your consultation sessions with me will help you crush your goals.

You will also get guidance to implement the high level business strategy, business policy, or more technical aspects / tactics in SEO, SEM, Social Media and other Growth / Acquisitions Channels (Email, Direct, Referral, etc).

Plus, you get a written summary of the key points discussed.

Ongoing work to implement, maintain and advance the strategy can be offered and ordered separately.

Specifications:
10 Day Delivery. Offer Expires [X days from the date this message is sent].

The person inquiring then usually writes me something like this

“Hello,Thank you for your offer. At the moment I’m considering a few other offers for my marketing.

Please make me an offer for “ongoing work to implement, maintain and advance the strategy”.

I need pay the costs myself for the first [X] months.

Also, would you please explain exactly how you can help me during the first [X] months, and how much time you have to invest?

I want to sell the first [YYYY Units] using only online marketing.

This is the main goal i am targeting: I want you to use your marketing service to help me to sell [YYYY Units] in [Target Geolocation(s)] [to Target Demographic(s)] via the internet within the next [X] months.

Can you do that for me? If you are able to get that done, then please send me an offer for that.”

Once I see that the company is a startup with very low budgets and is in need of immediate revenues, and keeping all costs in check, then I do something that is unusual. I tell them something like this:

If your goal is only for the next [X] months, then what you really need is a sales effort.

You can definitely sell online, but to sell [YYYY Units] online in [X] months, without any prior sales of the product, it will be harder to do that with just a website and online marketing, rather than with a basic site that can accept purchases, and a person to send sales emails and makes sales calls.

The marketing strategy I proposed was for your longer term (1 year, 2 year, etc) business goals.

If what you need are immediate sales and you are short on funds to invest in a sales person, then you should frankly hit the pavement yourself and start knocking on doors of every [website / shop] that [buys/sells] [Similar Products Or Services] in your [local area / online markets of influence].

Small and Medium sized shops are your best bet. Small shops are easiest but will pay the least, often, though they’ll still pay. Medium sized shops are your sweet spot because you’re more likely to close a deal with them than with a large [chain / network] (at first), and they usually can pay more than the little shops.

That said, if you live in an area with lots of “specialty” shops (small, medium or big), then those are another matter, as they often pride themselves on offering rare items and new items, as it gives them a certain “cachet” / flair / style / vibe / culture that appeals to a certain demographic, and it’s one that is usually willing to pay a slight premium for unusual [products / services] like yours, or cool looking branded [products / services] like yours, that they have never heard of or tried before.

Have you tested the branding of the [product / service]? If not, frankly, you should test, test, test, and then go sell like the rent’s due tonight. If that doesn’t motivate you to get sales, nothing will. I am confident that if you go that route, you’ll sell [YYYY Units], easily, within a month or two, let alone three. If you do it right, you might sell many more than [YYYY Units] … and then you’ll be experiencing what is known as “a good, high quality problem to have”.

So there’s some free marketing and sales advice for you. If you try it and it works (and i’m sure it can), then please be kind enough to let me know how it went, tell your friends, peers and colleagues about it, or better yet … order my marketing services to help you grow once you have an actual marketing budget of a few grand a month, which is what you’ll be looking at spending to take your brand to the next level.

Until that time, you really can and should DIY, and ask folks like (read: other marketing professionals) that you know or can reach ie: in marketing fora & groups.

Otherwise, you risk investing in something where any little thing that doesn’t go as planned will be too stressful to your business.

When you’re running a lean operation, you should not try to spend beyond your means. Otherwise, even a tiny tumble can be a bad crash.

OK, now that I’ve done my part to tell you why you should do it yourself at this stage …. If you STILL want me to help you at this stage, feel free to let me know. I’ll send you an offer for ongoing work. Just don’t be surprised by a monthly cost that’s somewhat in the [mid-to-high four] digits at first. Or, if you want to only spend that amount [or less] at the most, then I can send you such a plan, and just keep in mind that it will be, by definition, a smaller effort than I would normally offer.

EFFECTIVE RESULTS:

Using efficiencies, we have seen this process of inquiries and responses, impact our business’ bottom line, with a 37% Growth Rate in First Time Buyers (FTBs), YoY. And for our clients, signing up with us has led to even higher yields of Growth Rates and Primary KPIs for our clients.

If this is of interest to you, you are welcome to visit our marketing agency website. We look forward to hearing from you … and replying to you in kind.

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on July 7, 2015 by yasha

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 2 of 2)

Create high quality content for powerful SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media mentions about your site.

secret sauce for online marketing, illustration

(cont’d)

Be Insightful

Your target demographic (aka: your audience) is endlessly searching for new information and the best methods to optimize the performance of routine tasks. If you publish video content that is both interesting and informative, then by definition, it is also highly sharable video. Practically every single person I can think of, and definitely anyone sharing anything they recently discovered, wants to learn something they didn’t already know from that discovery. And people love watching videos more than anything else they currently do online. That’s why videos can be a powerful tool for curating top performing content.

At my fun-based website The Daily Dose, we curate the best related content, including videos for viewers, whether they’re looking for editorial cartoons, jokes, pranks, cat videos, current trends, or world news. Therefore, be sure to use a similar tactic with your videos, and curate the best, most informative and sharable content which surprises and enlightens your viewers. And it should, of course, be relevant to the audience.

Be Inspirational

As you may already know since a long time, the story of Upworthy’s success is amazing. The website grew to more than six million unique page views per month in its very first year, partly due to its catchy and memorable headlines. One other key reason they grew so rapidly, was that the site searches for inspirational stories and content to share with their sizable audience.

In order to earn the viral advantage you so desire, go and find stories that are inspirational to your readers. Maybe it’s an article about overcoming adversity, or finding ways to cooperate and collaborate. Perhaps it’s about how to succeed in some way. People love stories that relate to their own aspirations, and the more inspiration it gives them, the more your viewers will share it with others.

Of course, making viral videos is not a cake walk. If it were easy, then every business and individual with a smartphone would have their 15 minutes of fame, if not more.

Using this guide and the six key tips properly will help you achieve more shares, likes, comments, re-tweets, follows, etc. and more importantly, it will help you raise your own standards in terms of quality. That in itself, will significantly increase your probability at successfully creating viral content.

Do you have any great tips for creating viral videos and other top trending content? Share in the comments below!

*****

All right. Now let’s go over how to optimize your content. The following instructions are applicable to most, if not all, content pages.

Section 1: SEO

SEO: Optimize Your Content For Search Engines

The procedure is standard on any WordPress site with the SEO Yoast plugin installed and configured as described in Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins.

Here’s what to do in your WordPress Admin area:

Step 1: In the Admin area, go to the Posts or Pages menu (depending on the type of content you wish to publish) from the Admin toolbar. That’s the vertical menu bar seen on the Left on WP installations in English and other Latin languages.

Here’s the quick list of options and fields to configure:

SEO – What to do to rank well in Search Engines

Bad Behavior Plugin

Acunetix WP Security Plugin

WP Login Security Plugin

WordPress Firewall 2 Plugin

WordPress 2 DropBox Backup Plugin

Akismet anti-spam Plugin

Done all of that? If yes, then Awesome. Your content is now optimized for search engines. You can put a big green check next to SEO on your page’s list of critical to-dos.

Section 2: Email

As any serious marketer will tell you, email lists are the key to your business’ success. Email lists drive new prospects to Sign Up, Register, Subscribe, Buy and Buy Again. Inside what is commonly called the Acquisitions Funnel, or the Growth Funnel, Email is the key to Retention. And in any serious business, Retention (your repeat customers) quickly becomes the bulk of your revenues.

Email – Your List Is Your Business

Setting Your Permalinks

Customizing Your Website Title, Subtitle, and other key WP Settings

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Contact Form 7 Plugin

GD Star Rating Plugin

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps v3 for qTranslate Plugin

Section 3: Social Media

Your social media efforts complete the cycle of creating optimized content, distributing it through your best spokespeople (your email list subscribers) and succeeding at content marketing.

Social Media – Earn proof, authority, interaction and popularity

Jetpack multi-purpose Plugin

Digg Digg Social Sharing Plugin

Pretty Link Lite Plugin

WordPress Short Codes Plugin

Step 2: Keep in mind that most plugins are not installed by default. However, some may be, especially if you installed it via a version customized by your web hosting provider. If any plugin on this list is pre-installed, then you just need to check the Read the Instructions, make sure you setup the Settings with your specific details for each one (when required), and make sure any pre-installed plugin is activated by clicking the word Activate in the Plugin’s summary on the Plugins page.

Step 3: For all other plugins, which are not pre-installed for you, click on the “Add New” button which is at the top of the Plugins Page.

Congratulations! Once you have followed the steps outlined above on your target content, your page is rolling and picking up steam. As your content’s distribution grows, you will start to see opportunities to monetize as it reaches a growing number of people.

Step 22: Now be sure to keep your content up-to-date. Do this by editing the page from time to time.

Step 23: On the Plugins or WordPress Updates page, you may update your plugins one at a time, or more than simultaneously, or even all of them at once.

If you prefer watching a video tutorial about installing your site and various key plugins included on this page, checkout this highly useful clip by a fellow online content marketer, Matthew Woodward, who created and maintains his own great website about creating real value and earnings through web publishing.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to analyze the data relevant to your website and its content. The article covers the use of Google Analytics (GA), Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and other leading data analysis tools. It is the easiest guide to follow the best practices of business intelligence or business insight, both commonly known as BI.

As usual, if you like this article and care to help us in our efforts to put Google’s quality content claims to the test, then I ask you to please share this page with your peers and colleagues on your social networks or any place where web publishers may find it beneficial.

A little bit of self-promotion: If you need a great marketing agency on a budget you can afford, try our agency, which you can visit at YashaHarari.com. We know you’ll love the level of service and of course, the results.

Previous Lesson:Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (pt. 1 of 2) Adding the power of High quality content, SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media to your site

Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 7: Launch It Lean. When and what your pre-seed startup should spend on with your Marketing & Sales budgets.

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on January 3, 2015 by yasha

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 1 of 2)

Create high quality content for powerful SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media mentions about your site.

secret sauce for online marketing, illustration

WARNING: 99.99% of you WILL FAIL to get your content to go viral. So if you’re looking for a 1 minute fix, a trick or a magic bullet to make your crappy content loved by everyone who sees it, then please, skip this page and get on with your life. Only the Top 1% of the Top 1% of you that bother to read and apply this information will have a shot at that ephemeral sort of Internet publishing success known as “gone viral”.

This article is an easy to use, step-by-step guide to give any article, post or Page on your WordPress website the juice it needs to go viral in the easiest, best and fastest way possible.

Got your WordPress website powered up and ready to grow, but just don’t know what to do to make your work earn massive reach?

No worries. This article shows you specifically the ingredients necessary to make your content be popular.

Those ingredients include four major components, and they are usually best done in this order:

0. Content

1. SEO

2. Email

3. Social Media

Aside from being the most efficient method for adding the secret sauce to your content, you can repeat this process for just about any page on any type of site. It just happens to be very easy to do on your WordPress site.

Okay, so let’s quickly review what you should have already done.

Step 1: Register your domain.

Step 2: Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Step 3: Install WordPress

Step 4: Setup plugins to secure your WordPress site and give it the extra powers you need.

In case you skipped straight to this page, and still don’t have a domain or website host, here are some quick shortcuts for you to catch up.

Recommended Registrars:

GoDaddy

JustHost

OK, so we’re all together now. Super.

Now before you can actually optimize, distribute and get social media to popularize your great article, post, page, or other object, like a video, an infographic or an ebook, you first have to create that great piece of content that will appeal to masses of people.

And here’s how you do that.

Section 0: Content

6 Common Traits To Make Your Videos And Other Content Go Viral

As you undoubtedly know, viral content is the most sought after type of content. Of course, if you’re new to publishing, or if you’re stuck in old rules and regulations about how to create content, getting your videos to go viral is more of a Herculean feat than it is a walk in the park. Extremely sharable content is so powerful that it may boost your business, big time. This surge in growth can lead new people to your site, even multiple times, and increase your conversion rate (that’s the percentage of visitors to your website, who take the action you want them to take). Creating a viral video or other type of content is far from easy, unless you know these six simple secrets.

Most people, and especially “experts” and “gurus” will tell you that getting any content to go viral is akin to winning the Internet’s equivalent of the lottery. You’ve no doubt heard about how hard it is to earn viral status for any piece of content, and usually it’s even harder to repeat, let alone to do better and better with each successive attempt. For every viral video success, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of total epic fails. Even sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy, two massive leaders of viral content creation, only have about 0.3 percent of of their posts going viral.

Fortunately for you, I have spent decades researching, experimenting and working through trial and error in the content and marketing business, taking copious notes and distilling them into teachable moments, so that you don’t have to. You can simply read the following and try it out for yourself. You’re welcome.

The good news, despite what others will tell you, is that there are a great deal of things you can do to greatly increase your chances of success at making your content go viral.

So if you want (or need) to help your business claim its stake on the rewards of viral content, follow these six tactics:

Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)

Remember, the content you create is for the Twitter generation. And that means, you have to be able to crystalize your social media message in 140 characters or less. Brainwidth given to any topic is shrinking. And despite the ever-increasing population on Earth, the available slice of earned brainshare in the total minds’ pie is getting narrower for any publisher. This is happening as a result of a shift in the ratio of publishers from few publishers for the population, to many more publishers and channels for consumption than ever before. Human attention span keeps getting shorter. That means you need to tighten up your content be it in written, graphic, audio or video form. Edit your words. Less is more. Unlike this article, which is lengthy and abundantly verbose for a reason (which will be revealed soon), your viral content should live by the old saying that “Brevity is wit”.

A survey published in The New York Times found more than 19% of people had left a video after only 10 seconds. By 60 seconds in, the video had a whopping 44% attrition rate of viewers. And that means, if you’ve even read this sentence after having read the article from the start (at an average adult reading speed), then you’re already in the top 1% of consumers; a sole survivor in the war for mental attention, fought by publishers eager to win your time. So congratulate yourself. You’re now fully in the labyrinth while all others have already admitted defeat and departed the field.

You see, by keeping the article lengthy, I have used mere words to separate the wheat from the chaff; the genuinely interested people who want to succeed at publishing viral content, from the general “gimme” people who just want to copy & paste their way through the production of content. That leaves you in pole position to take the flag, as soon as you get through the rest of this article, and apply its secrets to your own content.

And now that you know that about half of your audience is gone by the end of the first minute, and about 99% is gone by the end of minute two, be sure to put your most astonishing, interesting, mind-blowing, captivating, funny, or shocking information first and foremost in your content.

Creating viral content generally means do not save the best for last. Throw your first punch fast and hard, and get as many more hits in before that first minute is up.

Of course this does not mean you have to constrain your item to a bite-sized chunk. Viral content can in fact range anywhere in size from a single asset, like a .JPG file, all the way up to rich, multi-page experiences. But just like the Universe we live in, it has to start with a big bang.

After all, if you can’t sum up what you’re doing in a short phrase or two, how are you ever going to get it to go viral on twitter, facebook, linkedin, pinterest, imgur, reddit, etc?

Be Positive

In Contagious: Why Things Catch On, the book’s author, Jonah Berger, wrote that he learned that the most highly sharable or viral content tends to stir strong emotional response in the viewer, reader, listener or other sort of consumer. And of those emotions, the most sharable content has a tendency to be that which has an upbeat tone or a positive note. With the application of the empirical research method, Mr. Berger and University of Pennsylvania Professor Katherine Milkman discovered that happy emotions tend to perform better than sad emotions in terms of actual sharing results.

To be shareworthy, content must hit chords of emotion in viewers. These same people (or deep learning Artificial Intelligence machines) are more probable to share content of a positive nature, so if you want your videos to go viral, it’s important to strive for an upbeat or uplifting spin.

Be Timely

To make your content go viral, it can help to be updated on current events. Although much viral content seems “timeless” in terms of topic, a good deal of it is influenced by the goings-on of the real world. Making reference to an existing popular topic or theme, like an Internet meme, you improve the likelihood that your content will be seen and shared by the people who have already shown an interest in the topic.

You can use any current event in the world, including politics, pop culture, arts, science, culture, travel, or any subject dominating the news. For instance, see how many parodies of popular entertainment like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones exist on video channels, content curation sites and image sharing sites. If you speak the lingua franca of your target audience and you express interest in their topics of interest, they are more want to share your content.

Be Engaged

A critical component of going viral is engagement. Engaging with a High Value Audience (HVA) leads to better rates of interest, involvement and loyalty. Do not underestimate your audience’s voice and opinion. This understanding is utilized by major brands including Coca-Cola, Old Spice and Amazon in everything from advertising campaigns to comments and other feedback channels on their websites and social media pages.

In addition to having a natural and organic fan base on social media channels, the British magician Dynamo engages larger audiences by doing appearances on BBC and with celebrity hosts like members of the boy band One Direction (when they were quite popular in 2012 – 2014). At one event, he answered fan questions who were using social media to send questions to a television show, the videos of which are up on YouTube. By involving himself with people who might normally be outside of his sphere of influence, he engaged more new minds to videos and TV shows that feature his talents as an illusionist, magician, and mind-reader. By answering questions from those viewers, he gave his brand of content a major boost and made his videos much more sharable.

To Be Continued …

Previous Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

Posted on April 12, 2014 by yasha

Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

This article is an easy to use, step-by-step method to enhance your WordPress website with some extremely powerful plugins in the easiest, best and fastest way possible.

wordpress plugin setup comic title

Got your WordPress website installed and want to make it rock … but you don’t know how?

Never fear. This page will show you what to do to make sure your site is safe, solid and super. And you can do this for practically any WordPress website you install.

All right, so let’s quickly recap what you should have done by now.

Step 1: Register your domain.

Step 2: Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Step 3: Install WordPress

In case you skipped straight to this page, and still don’t have a domain or website host, here are some quick shortcuts for you to catch up.

Recommended Registrars:

GoDaddy

JustHost

OK, so we’re all on the same page now. Great. Now we can begin the procedure for setting up your site with important settings and poweful plugins that will make your site so powerful, it just might be able to help you single-handedly crush even the mightiest evil forces in the world.

Here’s the quick list of plugins and things you may learn to install and configure on this page:

Section 1:

CRITICAL – for security

Bad Behavior Plugin

Acunetix WP Security Plugin

WP Login Security Plugin

WordPress Firewall 2 Plugin

WordPress 2 DropBox Backup Plugin

Akismet anti-spam Plugin

Section 2:

POWERFUL – for site functionality & search engine friendliness

Setting Your Permalinks

Customizing Your Website Title, Subtitle, and other key WP Settings

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Contact Form 7 Plugin

GD Star Rating Plugin

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps v3 for qTranslate Plugin

Section 3:

AWESOME – for website content development, flexibility, reach and social proof

Jetpack multi-purpose Plugin

Digg Digg Social Sharing Plugin

Pretty Link Lite Plugin

WordPress Short Codes Plugin

Section 4:

SWEET – for maintaining your website without having to waste your time

Keeping your WordPress core site code and WP plugins up-to-date

All right. Now let’s go over how to install Plugins. The following set of instructions is fairly standardized for most, if not all, WordPress plugins.

Here’s what to do in your WordPress Admin area:

The procedure is standard on any WordPress site.

Step 1: In the Admin area, go to the Plugins page from the Admin toolbar. That’s the vertical menu bar seen on the Left on WP installations in English and other Latin languages.

Step 3: For all other plugins, which are not pre-installed for you, click on the “Add New” button which is at the top of the Plugins Page.

Step 4: In the Search field, enter the name of a plugin you wish to install and hit the “Search” button.

Step 5: Look for the plugin on the search results page. You can verify it with the plugin’s name, Version (if you know it), Rating, and Description. The plugin should be at or near the top of the list of related plugins that come up in the results of your search.

Step 6: Beneath the Plugin’s name, you can see a link to read the plugin’s Details, and another link to Install the plugin.

Step 7: Click on Details to make sure the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress (Some fall out of date from time to time, until they update their software).

Step 8: If the plugin is out of date, do not install it. Instead, search for a similar plugin with a high rating and many downloads, and that is compatible with your version.

Step 9: Once you have verified that the plugin you wish to install is compatibile with your version of WordPress, click on Install either from the Plugins page, or from the Details page of the specific plugin.

Step 10: WordPress will then ask you to verify the installation instruction, by asking you “Are you sure you want to install this plugin?” in a popover window. If you do not wish to install the plugin, click “Cancel”. If you wish to install the plugin, Click “OK” to proceed.

Step 11: Once you have clicked OK, you will see the progress of the installation in a page that reads something similar to this:

Installing Plugin: CaptionPix 1.4.1

Downloading install package from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/captionpix.1.4.1.zip…

Unpacking the package…

Installing the plugin…

Successfully installed the plugin CaptionPix 1.4.1.

Activate Plugin | Return to Plugin Installer

The last line contains two links, which allow you to immediately activate the plugin, or to return to the Plugins page.

Step 12: If you installed the correct plugin, click on Activate Plugin. The plugin should then be activated.

Step 13: Go to the plugin’s Settings page (most plugins have one, but not all do), and set the details specific to your site and use of the plugin. Some plugins have just one page of settings, others have multiple pages. Be sure you go through all of the settings for each plugin, to optimize its use for your needs and your site’s performance. Examples of plugins with multiple Settings pages include: WordPress SEO by Yoast, GD Star Rating, Pretty Link, WordPress Backup 2 DropBox.

Step 14: Click on the Save button or link, usually found at the bottom of the Settings page.

Step 15: In most cases, you’re done installing the plugin at this point, and you may proceed to installing the next plugin, or go on to other matters.

Step 16: If you made an error and installed the wrong Plugin somehow, you can go the Plugin Installer page, and click on the “Delete” link which is beneath the short description of the Plugin in question.

Step 17: If you click on Delete, you will see a page with text similar to the following, except of course for the Plugin’s name and its Author’s name, which will depend on the plugin.

Delete Plugin

You are about to remove the following plugin:

Caption Pix by Russell Jamieson

Are you sure you wish to delete these files?

Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted

Step 18: Click Cancel to cancel the deletion, or click OK / Delete the Plugin.

Step 19: If you clicked on Cancel, you should be returned to the Plugin page.

Step 20: If you clicked on Delete WordPress should delete the plugin and its related files, and return you to the Plugins page.

Step 21: Proceed installing, setting up and activating further plugins that you need.

Congratulations! Once you have installed all of the plugins on this page’s list, you have installed the critical plugins for your WordPress website. Your site is now strong, flexible, and has massive potential for creating, distributing and monetizing unique, high quality content to enormous audiences around the world … and beyond! And why not? Astronauts like Chris Hadfield use the Internet in space, too.

Step 22: Now be sure to keep your plugins up-to-date. This you do by looking at the Admin Dashboard of column of administrative tools in the Admin area of the site. If there are any plugins to update, you will see a highlighted number (representing the number of plugin updates available) located next to the Plugins word of your Admin area’s vertical toolbar.

Step 23: On the Plugins or WordPress Updates page, you may update your plugins one at a time, or more than simultaneously, or even all of them at once.

Step 24: If any of your plugins fail to install properly, you will see a WordPress note about the error in most cases. Usually this is not a big deal, as you can often leave the plugin as-is until a better update becomes available. Or, you may deactivate the plugin, or even delete it, just as you would do in the steps written above. In some cases, a plugin update may actually temporarily cause your website not to function properly. In this case, the easiest thing to do is to delete the plugin. The next easiest thing to do is to Restore your website from your backup. Fortunately, if you installed the plugins on this page, then you have also installed a great, easy-to-use backup plugin, which allows you to quickly restore the site to its latest backup. Simply follow the instructions to restore your backup, and Presto! Your site is restored, and you may proceed.

Step 25: Keeping your overall WordPress core up-to-date is also vital. Fortunately, WordPress recently implemented an auto-updating technology. What this means is that since WordPress released version 3.8.1, standard installations (and even some customized ones) now have the ability to automatically update the WP Core, so that your website will always remain up-to-date with the main code that powers your wordpress website.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to add high quality content, leading to the use of the best practices of SEO and Social Media.

As usual, if you like this article and care to help us in our efforts to put Google’s quality content claims to the test, then I beseech you, please share this page with your peers and colleagues on your social networks or any place where web publishers may find it beneficial.

Previous Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 4: Building A Site After Domain Name Registration

Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce. Adding the power of High quality content, SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media to your site.

Web Marketing Lesson 4: Building A Site After Domain Name Registration

Posted on March 17, 2014 by yasha

Web Marketing Lesson 4: Building A Site After Domain Name Registration.

This page contains an easy to use, step-by-step guide to help you build your website in the best, easiest, fastest way possible.

how to setup your website graphic by yasha harari

So, you want to set up your own website? And you don’t know exactly what to do, step-by-step?

Well, put aside your fears. This page explains what you can do to setup your site in 30 minutes or less. And you can use practically any decent web host to get it done.

OK, so let’s review really quickly what you should have done by now.

Step 1) Get your domain.

As explained in this web marketing tutorial’s first lesson, you should have registered a domain, using any of the registrars you prefer, that can register your chosen domain name(s).

Remember that while most registrars can register .com, .net, and .org domains, practically all other Top Level Domains, or TLDs, like .ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .tv, .mobi, or .info all have a much smaller list of registrars to choose from. So make sure you look around and choose your registrar carefully, and remember that cheaper prices do not always mean a better deal.

Keep in mind that while a domain is a virtual piece of property, it’s still a form of electronic real estate. And just as with real estate in the real world, sometimes it’s worth paying a few extra bucks for a bunch of additional features and services, a big one of which is location location location — just like in the real world.

Domain Name Registration Recap:

Step 1 & 2: How To Get a Domain Name and Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Before you can start your your blog or other website, you first need to set up a domain name and find a website hosting service.

I prefer GoDaddy and JustHost because each of them is a well-known company with reliable uptime.

GoDaddy offers extremely affordable web hosting, email, and other services you may want.

JustHost offers a domain at no extra cost when you buy one of their web hosting packages.

In both cases, registration and web hosting account setup is easy and inexpensive.

Recommended Registrars:

GoDaddy

JustHost

Here’s what to do on JustHost:

Go to the JustHost.com home page and click the red button that says sign up now. It will ask you to enter a domain name. You may do so and then click ‘Next’.

Their system will then ask you for a bit more information. You should fill out the details properly. Then you will get to pick a internet hosting plan for your account. At first, a one year plan is okay.

Of course, if you have the beans to put into it, and if you see your new site as a long-term, multi-year effort, then bear in mind that the longer your register your domain for, ie: 3, 5, or 10 years, the stronger its initial presence will be in Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing, etc. The reason for this is that the search engines look at how long you have registered your domain for, as a sign of how serious you are about making it a real, long-lasting business.

Okay, so now you’ve chosen your domain name and your hosting package. So make sure you pick a good, strong password and keep it safe.

Here’s what to do on GoDaddy:

The procedure is very similar at GoDaddy. You just go to their site, search for the domain name you want, and after you’ve selected the one(s) you want, you add the internet hosting packages that you want to buy, to your shopping cart, and you can pay online using your credit card or paypal account.

It is worth noting that these days, you can do this procedure of domain name registration and web hosting setup at just about any of the best registrars and web hosts. So look around to find the registrar and host that best matches your needs. This should not take you a long time. You can do it in as little as 3 minutes. At the extreme end, you should not spend more than 60 minutes on this task. If it takes longer than that, it probably has to do with the TLD you have chosen. If not, and if it’s just a lame registrar and web host, then go get served somewhere else, by someone who actually wants your business and respects your time.

Finally, please note that if you want your website to be a WordPress site, then make sure that the web host your choose offers WordPress hosting. The best large commercial webhosts all offer WordPress, and they let you install it yourself, or you can also choose to install it automatically using their own backend account control panel. So you can choose to use the host’s customized installation version, or install a clean, default version yourself. Either way, this page lets you know what to do.

All right, now you’ve got your domain name and web hosting package selected.

Guess what? Now it’s time to setup your website or blog!

In the next step, we will review exactly how to setup a WordPress site. Even though there are an enormous variety of ways to build your website, we choose to use WordPress as our example. This is because it is easy to use, flexible, and incredibly powerful. Also, nearly one-fifth of all websites today are built with WordPress, and that number keeps growing, so it makes a lot of sense to familiarize yourself with one of the most popular ways to build a website. WordPress is a great solution for someone who does not know how to write code by hand, and for people who just want to be able to install a site simply and quickly, and have it ready to do whatever they need, very well.

WordPress is a marketer’s dream, increasing scalability and reducing cost and time to market, with just a few clicks. And there are so many ways to customize WordPress sites, that your creative juices won’t be very limited. This means that in most cases, you don’t have to worry about whether or not your desired outcome is possible, and you can remain focused on delivering your amazing content, products and services to your best business asset: The people who are your audience and your customers.

Step 3: Installing WordPress

Once your web hosting account is setup, you just log in to your account and go to your account’s Control Panel.

From inside of your control panel, you will typically see a graphical user interface, or GUI, where you can choose various Applications or Apps to install. One of those apps is WordPress. Most web hosts have a very easy installation wizard to install WordPress onto your hosting space. In the case of GoDaddy, it’s literally a few clicks, a few details it asks you to fill in, which you should write down in a safe file, and then your site is installed and ready to customize and fill up with your content.

If you’re on GoDaddy, for example, they add a little plugin that helps set up key details about the site. It’s helpful the first time you setup a site, but after that, you can pretty much remove it, unless you think it has some greater value. I like keeping my sites lighter, so I remove it. Besides, it does not do anything that you can not do without it. It just takes you on a kind of tour of important elements of your WordPress site’s Admin area, and familiarizes you with what is vital to customize, and what you can leave as-is for the time being.

If you’re on JustHost, you first need to login to your JustHost account (This you do with the domain and password you just created). After you access the administrator tools, click on websites.

Now do these next steps to complete installing WordPress:

1) Click on the Install WordPress option.

2) At the next step, leave Installation Preferences with the default settings, and also leave Advanced Options with the default settings.

3) Unselect the recommended plugins and themes box — We’ll cover those things afterward, when you actually should do them.

4) Click ‘Complete’ which you will see at the bottom of the page.

Congratulations! You have now installed your basic WordPress website.

And remember to be sure to write down and safely store your password and login.

All right. Nicely done. If you followed the instructions on this page step by step, you should have spend not more than 30 minutes registering your domain name, setting up your web hosting account, and installing WordPress.

Now it’s time to start contemplating the fun stuff, like customizing your website to make it as serious, sexy or silly as you like, and filling it with the best, hottest and richest content that you can put out there.

While you’re letting your imagination run wild, here are some fun, titilating banned GoDaddy TV commercials for you to enjoy.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to add critical Plugins, and how to make sure your new website is optimized for search platforms and different devices, right from the start.

And as always, if you read something you like here and want to help in our effort to test Google’s quality content claims, then I urge you to please share the link to this page on your social networks or any place where others might benefit from it.

Previous Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 3: SEO Dos and Don’ts.
Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins. The super easy walkthrough to secure, enhance and optimize your customers’ user experience on your website, served best for any device, from the get-go.