For all those waiting for a new version of the Quick Post Plugin, it’s coming. My plugin makes extensive use of the jQuery JavaScript library. With the release 2.5, Wordpress uses jQuery extensively. So I am rewriting my usage to use the packaged libraries, there by keeping the code cleaner and less redundant.

Plus, one of the most requested features is the ability to upload images. Since the new WP uses an instance of TinyMCE that supports media libraries, I’m hoping to use that code to simultaneously update TinyMCE and provide this much needed feature. Plus, I’d love to have the full screen mode in my plugin. So the new version of Quick Post will not be backwards compatible, sorry.

What all this means is a pretty extensive refactoring of code. I’m working on it, but it will take a little bit of time. Thanks for your patience.

In my roles with Twelve Horses over the last 8 years, I’ve been involved in a lot of client strategy meetings. These meetings are usually about achieving some specific goal online and the tactics and technologies we can use to make this a reality.

When I first started as a bright eyed ambitious developer in 2000, most of the time I was pushing hard on automating this or integrating that. Since the commercial web arguably started as a marketing endeavor, most these conversations ended with the VP or Director of marketing looking at me cross eyed as the talk turned back to target audiences, focus groups and the 4 P’s of marketing (In case you’re wondering: Product, Pricing, Promotion, and Placement). This wasn’t all bad since my degree was in advertising and this conversation came as natural as the technical ones.

In 2003, talk turned to outbound marketing via email. In the previous 3 years, the coolest apps we could get marketers to agree to fund were those around customer acquisition (read: can I have your email address please?). Now after a few years, they had CSVs, databases, and sometimes Outlook Address books full of customers’ and prospects’ email addresses. Outbound marketing became very hot.

By 2005, more and more savvy marketers were coming to us saying things like, “yeah but my contacts are stored over here” or “can you connect to our CRM?” Obviously, internal IT projects had been launched and marketers were now endowed with the secrets that player tracking systems in casinos had known for years. Information technology could store more valuable consumer information than just email addresses.

2006 was the first year customers started to ask us about search engine optimization (SEO) - prior to that, it had always been us bringing it up. For marketers, search engines dictated how successful you could be online.

2007 was all about blogging and social networking. Discussions like, “I want to have a two way dialog with my customers and prospects” or “I want to go to where they hang out online.” Also, these techniques didn’t hurt SEO either.

My prediction (and what I’ve seen in the first quarter) for 2008, VIDEO! Broadband now proliferates the homes the way you used to have to go to work to get. Video online is becoming more compelling than that found on your TV. Anyone can create and publish it, and it’s surprisingly engaging. Video use cases have just started to scratch the surface of what we’ll see by the end of this year.

I would love to hear how your experiences with the web have changed from the prospective of a web developer, marketing person, or innocent bystander. Please comment below. I’m sure you can fill in many changes I didn’t describe above.

-Josh

Quite a number of our clients use blogs for business to establish an online presence and publish informative and searchable content to the web. Of those blogs/websites, we always use Wordpress because of the flexibility for custom design and access to a seemingly endless array of community applications.  As powerful as Wordpress is, it is not always the easiest application to use for non-technical business owners and employees who want to provide more than just text and links. However, there is a solution.

Windows Live Writer is a free, downloadable desktop application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to publish pictures, videos, and other rich content to your blog/website. There are also a number of useful free extensions available that you should check out if this is of interest to you.

As an example, I will use it to show you some recent blogs/websites that we have launched in the past week or so.

Here is an example of how you can use Windows Live Writer to create a table, format, insert pictures and links. No html knowledge required.

Business	Location	Business Type	Website
Red Rover	Corvalis, Oregon	Software
Eagle Gate	Salt Lake City, Utah	Education
SouthernLINC	Atlanta, Georgia	Telecom
Big Valley Honda	Reno, Nevada	Retail
The Godfather	Las Vegas, Nevada	Entrepreneur
International Bank	Concord, New Hampshire	Finance

You can also use it to insert videos or maps. I’ll just stick to the same example as above and show the locations of these particular clients.

View Larger Map

You can also input tags that specifically relate to your blog post, which help with search engine optimization.

tags: blogging tools windows live writer

When you are ready to publish your post, simply click Publish, and it will also do a quick spell check for you. If you are not ready to publish yet, simply Save Draft for later, or set the publish date and it will post automatically. There are several other handy little features for you to explore and find on your own.

To get started, simply go to the Windows Live Writer page to download it. Once you have installed the application, go to “Weblog” in the upper navigation and select “Add Weblog Account.” There you will be asked to give the url of your blog, as well as your username and password. That’s it! You can even add other blogs if you like. It will detect the styles, plugins, categories, and recent posts for each one.

A key component of a successful blogging strategy is doing it fairly frequently The more empowered you and your colleagues are to publish content to the web the more likely you are to do it. I hope this helps.

QuickPost Wordpress plugin

I added two new features that were being requested by the users.

1. Ability to turn the WYSIWYG editor on or off in the plugin admin page
2. Ability to define a unique default category per posting type in the plugin admin page

Let me know if you find any issues.

Inspired by the tumblr.com’s bookmarklet which allows users to quickly and easily post to their Tumblr blog, I have created a plugin that will allow you to quickly post text, images, photos, quotes, and videos to your Wordpress implementation.

NOTE: This project is now maintained and distributed here - However, feel free to comment with any issues, ideas or questions below.

When our clients want to blog, we put them on Wordpress. Wordpress is awesome blogging software that we love and support. The creators of wordpress also have developed a plugin that blocks comment spam called Akismet. This help keeps the blog clean and professional.

So here’s a quick tip for any of our clients or any readers who use Wordpress with the Akismet Spam plugin. Periodically, go into the Comments section under your Admin login. There will be a link in the dark blue bar labeled “Akisment Spam”. Click on that link and click the Delete All button (shown below).

The reason you need to do this is fairly technical, so read on if you are interested.

I have a blog that receives a fair amount of traffic. Recently, I had to switch hosting providers for this blog - it’s a personal hobby blog, so I don’t host it at Twelve Horses. When I requested a backup of the database from the previous hosting provider, the SQL file was 22 megabytes. Of this 22 MBs of database space, 19 MBs of it were the comments. And of the 19 MBs of comments, only about 70 kilobytes were real comments (not spam). Due to the size, I had a very difficult time trying to get this database backup into my new hosting provider’s database. Since I didn’t delete all my Akismet spam on a regular basis, I had to try and work with a 19 MB text file to get rid of the spam comments before I could import the real comments. If you’ve ever worked with large text files, you can understand how difficult it was.

So keep your database small and nimble. Delete your spam comments on a regular basis.

Companies invest considerable amounts of time and money into their email marketing campaigns. Why? Because it still represents one of the most effective means of communicating and converting customers. But all that time and effort is often applied to but one brief moment in time before it goes to die in the Deleted Items folder.

Businesses can extend the shelf life of their email content by using blogging software to publish it online. It serves as a resource for information, a driver of search engine optimization, and a continuation of the conversation.

The following article, published by BtoB, is an interview with our CEO, David LaPlante about the subject of improving email marketing with blogging:

Using e-mail to promote your blog

By Karen J. Bannan

Story posted: May 17, 2007 - 1:10 pm EDT

Today, Technorati, the online blog search engine, is tracking and indexing more than 81.2 million blogs. While the majority are penned by regular Joes and Janes, an ever-increasing number come out of corporate America—first-person marketing vehicles that often spawn conversation and buzz.

If your company has its own blog, experts such as David LaPlante, CEO of interactive agency Twelve Horses, based in Reno, Nev., say you can and should be leveraging it via your e-mail marketing program.

“The e-mail-to-blog connection is quite effective because it archives all of your content online, which means it’s searchable and helps with SEO [search engine optimization],” he said. “It also extends the conversation by allowing people to make comments and refer to your marketing in their own later posts and Web articles. If companies simply send out e-mail marketing to a specific list without any tie-in to the Web, then that content stands a good chance of dying after a short while.”

LaPlante and Todd Van Hoosear, social media practice manager at Woburn, Mass.-based public relations firm Topaz Partners, provide these tips to help you get the most out of your blogging activities.

1) Use Web analytics often. Because blogs are usually updated every day, you might be tempted to reference your CEO’s latest missive. But LaPlante said a better option is to highlight the blog post that was most popular, even if it is a couple of days or weeks old. “Analytics will give you insight into what people really care about and what they are more likely to read,” he said. Van Hoosear said his company likes to use “Best of the Blog” or “Most Commented On” lists in the e-mails it designs.

2) Use your voice. People like blogs because they are conversational; they usually aren’t preachy and don’t use too much marketing-speak. LaPlante suggested taking a page from your own blog when writing e-mail newsletter copy to help boost readership satisfaction.

3) Use your blog to cross-promote—when applicable. If you’re offering e-mail readers a free white paper download or a coupon code, you can carry it over to the blog as long as it’s done right and doesn’t seem like you’re pandering, Van Hoosear said. “You’ve got to be very clear that yes, this is a promotion, and it can’t come out of nowhere,” he said. “If your blog is all about your technology and all of a sudden you’re throwing out a sales pitch, it’s not going to work.”

4) Help others blog about your marketing messages. Van Hoosear said it’s imperative to give people many ways to consume your content so they can make their own decisions. “When you put your e-mail into blog format, you’re making it easy for them to quote your newsletter and pass it on,” he said. “Bloggers want a URL so they can quote and link, so you should always let them know where they can find your content.”

LaPlante said you can benefit even more by turning your blog into an e-mail message. “We have a tool that automatically sucks up RSS feeds according to rules, organizes them, applies rules and filters, and passes it out as an outbound e-mail,” he said. “At the end of the day, people believe in blogs. They aren’t sugar-coated, not edited and re-edited. They are the real deal. People like them, and you’re still extending your brand.”

I wrote the following article for the Nevada Business Journal’s May 2007 issue. I sent it in a couple of months ago at the very least, and it is amazing to think that since then Technorati is now tracking more than 70 million blogs.

Blogging for Business
Why should businesses care about blogs?

There has been a lot of talk about blogs lately. Politicians and businesses alike are entering the blogosphere at a surprising rate. Why? Currently, more than 57 million American adults read blogs.

For a long time blogs were simply thought of as conduits for personal expression by individuals who were not in the buying stage. There seemed to be no real application for business. This popular misconception turned out not to be true.

Blogs are in fact websites. They are hosted on a server, built on the same programming languages, and most importantly, indexed by major search engines like Google and Yahoo. The major difference is blogs give businesses a personal voice, and they can be built and launched for far less money than it takes to build a website.

The Power of Search

“Internet penetration has now reached 73% for all American adults,” according to Pew Internet, which is an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet. This means there are millions of potential customers that are online every day looking for specific products and services that you offer.

Internet users search for products and services by entering specific terms or keywords into search engines. These keywords or terms produce immediate results that introduce users to many different companies vying for their business. But how do they find you?

Search Engine Optimization

Search engines place a significant amount of importance upon fresh, keyword-rich content, and the more relevant content a business puts online the better. Blogging software helps you publish this information easily and frequently.

Search engines also put a lot of value into linking. Companies will find online conversations that are based around what their company has to offer. One blogger links to another blogger because they find value in what they have to say. This continues the conversation until multiple bloggers and websites are linking back to original creator of that content. This helps push your website or blog to the top of the search engine results.

Differentiation & Demonstration of Expertise

Consider for a moment that a potential customer is shopping online for a particular product or service that you have to offer. They type in a specific keyword or phrase, and several competitors appear in the search results. They click through to one of the websites and begin to analyze their offerings in regards to price, benefits and presentation. They return to the search results to compare that initial experience against other competitors. After a few more clickthroughs, the potential customer has not found any distinguishing differences.

But then they find your company’s blog. Your blog demonstrates a personality with a voice and a willingness to share information to further empower their customers to make the right decision about what they want to buy. Instead of representing an impenetrable and impersonal corporation with no direct connection with its customers, you are seen as a personable and interactive company that wants to engage its’ customers.

Bringing Businesses and Customers Together

Blogs not only help with search engine optimization and differentiation from competitors, they also offer a way for companies to understand their customers better. Blogs are a chance to establish ongoing dialogues with customers and receive useful feedback that empowers a business to become better at what it provides.

Blogging is a time commitment, and it is not for everyone. But if you love to write, and you are passionate about what you do, then you will find that blogging is a powerful tool for attracting new business, creating loyal customers, and developing a deeper understanding of what can make your company even more successful.

tags: blogging, business, technorati, search, engine, optimization

Disclosure: While I read John Chow’s blog and I love the Wii, I have never used our purchased pens from 1234pens.com.

The root of all evil, John Chow is giving away a Nintendo Wii. To enter, all you have to do is write a blog post about it. This is mine. Where’s my Wii? The contest is sponsored by 1234Pens.com. They make promotional pens.

This is the exact copy for the contest on John Chow’s site. By making this post, I have entered to win the Nintendo Wii. The reason John Chow has asked bloggers to make a post like the one above may not be obvious, so let me explain. The first reason is it’s viral. Because of the uniqueness, it causes bloggers like me to write about it and readers like you to learn about it. At the time of writing, this John Chow post has 177 comments. If a conservative estimate of 1 out of every 10 blog readers post comments, this means his traffic to this one post is probably well over 2,000 people.

Second, and more important, it creates great search engine optimization (SEO). Having people link to you to enter a contest gives you link popularity, a very important factor in most search engine algorithms. If you search Google for “root of all evil,” John Chow’s site comes up third. If you search Google for “giving away a Nintendo Wii,” Chow’s site comes up first. But, since the contest is sponsored by 1234Pens.com, I imagine the real hope is to get them to show up on the first page for “promotional pens” (currently they don’t show up until the 4th page in the 3rd position - basically 43rd).

For $250 - the cost of a Wii - this is a great SEO campaign for next to nothing in terms of cost. However, John Chow had to leverage his site in order to make it happen, so I’m sure he was paid too (although he doesn’t disclose anything about that).

You may ask if it’s ethical for bloggers to use their blogs in this manner. Since Chow didn’t ask bloggers to post a positive review of 1234pens.com, it’s a tough question. Frequent reader’s of Chow’s blog will know that linking is an important factor in SEO. However, bloggers that hear about this through viral techniques may not know they are a “pawn” in this strategy.

I probably wouldn’t have posted it if Chow wanted me to say “They make great promotional pens.” But his very fact based copy - which is just a sample post - compelled me to participate.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Contest, John Chow, Nintendo Wii, Search Engine Optimization

It’s official. The BIG CHEESE has taken his personal brand to another level. Not only has David LaPlante gained control over his domain by going from davidlaplante.typepad.com to davidlaplante.com, but he has also improved the originality and visual appeal of his design. He did it with the flexibility of Wordpress, which is empowering so many people and businesses in the realm of self-expression and sharing of information.

It is going to be difficult not to sound like I am kissing up to the boss, but know this, he wouldn’t want me to do this post. If I know him well enough, he will never be fully satisfied with it, and he will continue to tweak the navigation, the plugins, the design, and basically anything you can think of. Meanwhile, I am letting you know about it.

What is the impression you get upon visiting David’s blog? For one, you can certainly get a sense of what is important to him - social marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, family, skiing, Reno, Nevada, Tahoe, to name a few. Secondly, you get the impression that this is no ordinary CEO of a successful company with a global base of customers. He is not hiding behind the corporate veil. He is actively engaging the online community, sharing his ideas, and demonstrating his personality. He is inviting people to interact with him. He is building his network and seeking knowledge.

When I first started working at Twelve Horses there was no company blog. David actively encouraged its creation and even offered Twelve Horses’ servers and expertise if employees wanted to start their own. Since then, many employees have entered the blogosphere and have grown their networks, their knowledge-base, and their sense of themselves.

I for one feel that blogging is and will continue to play a significant role in the development of my life. I am constantly learning, and it’s really cool to have a CEO that will come into your office and show you a brand new widget, plugin, or social networking application like Twitter that he has found. The only irritating part is that I have a hard time finding them before he does.

To advise clients on the use of new technologies we have to be using them ourselves. We have to practice what we preach. It is why the environment at Twelve Horses is one of constant learning, collaboration, and change. And it is not specific to one department or set of employees. It is everyone, including the CEO.

So there you have it. Add David’s blog to your RSS Aggregator, bookmark it, remember it, do whatever you do to keep organized, because I suspect he has a few things to say in the days to come.

tags: David LaPlante, Twelve Horses, blog, social, networking, brand, Reno, Tahoe, Nevada