I often use a WordPress plugin when doing maintenance or construction on an existing website.

For a long time I was using “Under Construction“, a very simple plugin, that outputs a very simple and customizable coming soon or under construction page.

However, a couple of months ago I decided I wanted a better more robust plugin for creating these types of pages.

Now I use, Coming Soon Pro by SeedProd.

My primary reason for switching, better design options, that didn’t require me to use HTML and CSS!

Here’s an example I created with Coming Soon Pro => http://chrisegg.com

This video is from my Website Builder Blueprint program, but it’s the development of the example site above!

Other features I love about the SeedProd plugin:

• Limit Access with Client View
  • Give your clients a secret link that allows them to bypass the Coming Soon page and view the website without logging in.
• Mobile Ready & Responsive
• Full Screen Slideshows
• MailChimp Integration
• Gravity Forms Integration
• Social Share Buttons (including Google+)
• Search Engine Optimized
• Easily Embed Photos & Videos
• Maintenance Mode
• Landing Page Mode
  • After you launch use the plugin to create a landing page on your site or run a contest.
• Progress Bar / Countdown Timer
• Google Analytics Support

There are a ton more features, but these ones were most important to me!

Give it a try!

Download the Plugin Now!

Did you know, 53% of adult cell phone owners use it to access the Internet?

And the reason the majority of adult cell phone owners use their mobile phone to access the Internet is because it’s more convenient to use and they always carry it with them everywhere they go (Source: Pew Research Center).

Now an important question, is your website mobile friendly?

To find out, view your website on a smartphone or tablet, how does it look?

Is the site small and hard to read like the screenshot on the left? Or does it adjust to provide a clear easy viewing and navigating experience (image on the right)?

Why should you have a mobile friendly website?

Bottom line: A bad mobile experience can cost you customers!

• 57% would not recommend a business with a mobile site. (Compuware)
• 40% have turned to a competitor after a bad mobile experience. (Compuware)
• 79% prefer mobile sites for product review. (Adobe Mobile Experience Survey)
• 63% prefer them for purchasing. (eMarketer)
• 50% of mobile searches lead to a purchase. (Lightspeed Research)

When considering mobile you have two options:

1. Responsive design, which is the process of designing the site so that it automatically adjust based on the screen size of the device being used to view your website. With responsive design, content and layouts are rearranged to provide easy viewing.

2. Mobile design, this is the process of developing a completely separate website, just for mobile devices. Now, often times, mobile does not include tablets, but always smartphones. Mobile websites enable you to deliver just the information the consumer wants, or that you want them to have.

Click here to learn more! 

Schedule a Consultation

And I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong and that the strategy I’m about to share with you in this 3 part series is the absolute solution.

I just know, from experience, if you’re not seeing a return on your efforts, it’s probably not as effective as it could be!

Now the definition of a “return” is going to be unique to the overall goal of your strategy, but realistically, receiving more money (because you’re signing more customers or selling more widgets) should be a part of your “return” at some point!

Let’s start by taking a quick look at the benefits of this strategy.

• Will run on autopilot
• Will more effectively reach your target market
• Will bring the customer to you
• Will continually produce results over time

Sound like something you’d be interested in implementing?

The first component in this strategy:

Build a Community Platform

Let’s start by looking at the definition of the word community:

“In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness” (wikipedia).

Take for example, Apple Inc.. They’ve built a community around their products. A group of people who have the same preferences, beliefs, needs, that help spread the word about Apple products and that provide feedback to essentially make the products (and possibly event he company) better.

A community platform is a place for your community to share, engage, and connect (with you and others like-minded individuals).

Your community platform should start with your website!

Your website should be your home-base, the cornerstone of all your marketing components. The one location your “community” (target market, customers, etc) can learn about you, your company, your products or services, connect and engage with you, and ultimately do transactional business with you.

Evaluate your website, is it a community platform or just a website?

When people visit your website, is it inviting? Does it support engagement? Is there a sense of belonging? Are visitors receiving any value? Can the right people find what they need?

If you can’t answer those questions with a yes, you don’t have a community platform, you just have a website!

In my article, Is Your Company Making a Good First Impression, I wrote, “Remember, we are humans trying to interact with other humans. And humans crave relationships, connecting with people they can relate to and rely on.” In other words a community!

I’ve also recently talked about the value of adding Google+ Comments to your WordPress blog. The number one reason we added G+ comments was for better engagement.

Why do you think one of the most focused on features of Google+ is the Communities. Places where people can connect with other like-minded people who have the same interest.

This concept of building a “Community Platform” or turning your website into a “Community Platform” is so important I made it the first part of our entire development strategy.

1. Establish Presence
2. Gain Exposure
3. Enable Conversion

In our email course, Recipes for Building Your Business Online, I make your website the focus of the first week because that is how important it is! The things I teach in this course are the same philosophies and strategies I use to help improve my clients online presence.

How do you make sure your website is a Community Platform?

Your website needs to support these core aspects:

• Learn about you, your company, your product/service
• Inform and Educate
• Establish Credibility
• Build Trust
• Connect and Engage
• Automate Lead Generation
• Complete the Sales Process
• Automate Sales

You can learn about each of these things in my email course, Recipes for Building Your Business Online, so click here to enroll and start your training course (yes it is free!).

If you want to know exactly how you can improve your website, to turn it into a community platform, buy a website review!

Have questions about building a community platform or want to share how your community platform has helped you build your business, use the comments below!

What is the difference and how does it look?

Text CTA:

Click Here to Download

Button CTA:

Click Here to Download

I’m going to show you how you can easily start using buttons on your WordPress website or blog.

First, there is obviously a WordPress plugin, because there seems to be a plugin for everything, which is a good thing!

These are two of the plugins I found and liked

• MaxButtons (also available on WP.org)
• ET Shortcodes

I however, prefer to not use plugins and just add the style to my stylesheet and use a bit of HTML to display the button.

That’s what I’m going to show you below.

First step is to add the code below to your style.css file.

/* Call to Action Buttons
------------------------------------- */
a.button {
    border-radius: 3px;
    -moz-border-radius: 3px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 3px;
    box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #eee;
    -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #eee;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #eee;
    display: inline-block;
    font-family: 'Oswald',arial,serif;	
    font-size: 13px;
    font-weight: normal;	
    line-height: 13px;
    margin: 0 5px 10px;
    padding: 8px 14px;
    text-decoration: none;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px #444;	
    text-transform: uppercase;	
}

a.button:hover {
     opacity: .8;
    -moz-transition:all .5s ease;	
    -o-transition:all .5s ease;	
    -webkit-transition:all .5s ease;
    transition:all .5s ease;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px #000;		
}

a.button.small {
    background-image: url(images/button-small-bg.png);
    font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    font-size: 13px;
    font-weight: bold;	
    line-height: 13px;
    padding: 10px 12px;
}

a.button.medium {
    background-image: url(images/button-medium-bg.png);
    font-size: 18px;
    line-height: 18px;
    padding: 12px 20px;
}

a.button.large {
    background-image: url(images/button-large-bg.png);
    font-size: 24px;
    line-height: 24px;
    padding: 16px 32px;
}

a.button.black {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #000;
	border: 1px solid #000;
}

a.button.blue {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #274d70;
	border: 1px solid #274d70;
}

a.button.green {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #3d5302;
	border: 1px solid #3d5302;
}

a.button.orange {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #b94f00;
	border: 1px solid #b94f00;
}

a.button.purple {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #770777;
	border: 1px solid #770777;
}

a.button.red {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #770000;
	border: 1px solid #a90505;
}

a.button.silver {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #888;
	border: 1px solid #888;
}

.big_button_right {
    border-radius: 4px;
    -moz-border-radius: 4px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
    background: #333;
    border: 1px solid #222;
    color: #fff !important;
    display: inline-block;
    float: right;
    font: 22px 'Oswald', arial, serif;
    margin-left: 20px;
    margin-right: 4px;	
    padding: 8px 10px;
    position: relative;
    text-decoration: none;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px #444;	
}

This style gives you three different button sizes;

Small
Medium
Large

And seven different colors (Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Silver) which you can change to fit your needs.

Second step is to add the HTML to your link so the button style is displayed and not just a text link.

Below you’ll first see a standard HTML link, and the second, the HTML link with the piece that adds your button style.

< a href="http://example.com">Click Here to Download< /a>

< a href="http://example.com" class="button size color">Click Here to Download< /a>

NOTE: you’ll need to remove the space before the ‘a’ and before the ‘/’ in order for this code to work properly.

You change the size and color by replacing “size” and “color” with the appropriate name, as it is displayed in the stylesheet.

Have questions? Need help implementing this into your site? Use the comments below!

With the availability of instant access to potentially hundreds of articles, reviews, images, and other information about you and your business, consumers are finding it relatively simple to establish a first impression.

Are you making a good first impression?

Take a minute to think about all the different components of your online presence.

1. Website
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Google+
5. Customer Reviews
6. Business Directories (i.e Better Business Bureau, Manta…)
7. Press Releases
8. Blog Articles
9. Comments

This is not a complete list, but you get the idea.

There are a lot of different avenues for potential customers to make an educated judgement or a first impression about you and your business.

Have you been monitoring and maintaining these different components to ensure your making and a good first impression?

It’s not just about the content being published, these savvy consumers are reading your profiles to gage your character.

How do you make a GOOD first impression?

1. The most important thing is to truly understand who your target market is!

Not just a statistical visual (i.e plumbing contractors with revenues less than $200k and 10 or fewer employees), you need to know their frustrations, pains, and worries. What are they struggling with right now, and what avenues are they using to find the solutions to these pressing issues?

Once you understand this you can create content that will speak directly to them, which will help them see you and your company as the solution they’ve been searching for!

Consumers need to know that you have the solutions they need. If their first impression is that you’re the “expert” with “all the answers”, you’ve done a good job.

2. You need to make your online profiles personal and engaging.

By personal I don’t mean they need to be able to learn every detail of your personal life, but they should be able to relate to you on a personal level.

Remember, we are humans trying to interact with other humans. And humans crave relationships, connecting with people they can relate to and rely on.

Add some details to your profile that humanize you;

• Are you married?
• Do you have kids? (maybe throw in their ages)
• What are your hobbies?
• What do you enjoy doing on your days off?
• Why do you do what you do?

Again, this isn’t a complete list, but you get the idea.

When people can relate, “oh I have 3 kids too!”, they feel compelled to engage. You can make your profile engaging by making it easy for them to contact you (email address) or to continue to learn more about you and your business (links to other content).

Their engagement opens the door for more opportunities for you to make a good first impression!

3. Use videos and photos to provide consumers with a visual.

For some professions, a profession headshot is a must, but sometimes, it’s better to use an image that offers a glimpse of your personality. Don’t go overboard on this one, too much personality can create a bad first impression.

You may even find it effective to add images of your family, especially if you’re a family owned and operated company.

Remember to include images of your employees on your website, individual photos are good, but “team” photos help consumers gain insight into your company’s culture. Make these “team” photos fun!

Videos, as long as they aren’t too scripted, can offer a good introduction to the real you! With a video consumers get to have their first “interaction” with you “face-to-face”.

A simple video of you and others they will have contact with, can help you make a good first impression!

4. Make sure your website’s design is making a good first impression.

Your website is often the very first impression a prospective customer gets of your company.

You want to be sure they see something that is visually appealing, organized, and professional.

Because consumers are spending much more time researching and reviewing companies before they make any kind of buying decision, they often judge your companies professionalism by the look and feel of your website.

Having a professional and appealing website doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive.

With WordPress, WP Engine, and StudioPress Themes, you can have a professional and appealing site in no time for less than $150.

 What experiences have you had? Have you asked your customers about the impact your virtual first impression had on them?

The reason for this article today is because I subscribe to +Manta‘s “Tip of the Day“, which I usually agree with and find very useful. However, today, my reaction, well, obviously I have something to say because I am dedicating an entire article to this topic.

Manta’s Tip:

How to Deal with Negative Reviews

One negative review can damage your brand. Neutralize a bad online review by contacting the customer privately to work through the issue. Meanwhile, proactively ask happy customers to write positive reviews and publish good content in other places on the web to get stronger search results, making it less likely that the negative review will be displayed.

I want to break this down and address pieces of this statement individually.

One negative review can damage your brand.

I do agree that negative reviews can damage your brand, however, the level of damage will be determined by a couple of factors.

1. The legitimacy of the review, how detailed and accurate.
2. The individuals level of influence, are they someone people view as a credible source?
3. If the issue appears to be unresolved or if there is a lack of attention from the business.

Neutralize a bad online review by contacting the customer privately to work through the issue.

Look at number three above. Lets think this one through!

In some situations (very few), completely handling the issue in “private” is necessary. However, if you want to minimize the “damage” to your brand from any negative review, it needs to appear to the consumer that you are addressing and trying to resolve the issue. Even if publicly, you reach out to the reviewer letting them know you’d like to connect with them to address their concerns, and then following up with the results of your efforts, even if the reviewer is still unsatisfied.

People need to see that you care about them. That you care about the experience they have when dealing with your brand.

This is why so many companies use Twitter and other social media outlets for handling their customer service.

…proactively ask happy customers to write positive reviews…

I use a local service, Boyett Family Rayne Water Conditioning, and they encourage their customers to leave reviews on their BBB profile or their Google Local Page. What they do is this. A customer can leave as many reviews as they’d like, but every 6 months, they will reward you for your review by crediting your account for a months worth of service.

Some might think that their reviews are going to be skewed, but in reality, if you’re not satisfied with a company, would continue to pay for their service just to get free service twice a year?

…publish good content in other places on the web…making it less likely that the negative review will be displayed.

Now this only makes sense if your positive reviews outweigh the negative. Negative reviews will always be displayed and findable, and trying to hide your negative reviews can be just as damaging to your brand.

Remember, consumers today will pay a premium price for a product or service if the customer service is better than the cheaper company.

My advice is to embrace the negative reviews, look at them as an opportunity to show how awesome your customer service is and how much you CARE about your customers experience with and perception of your brand.

Bad reviews should also be an opportunity for you to identify how you can improve your business. Maybe you need clearer verbiage on your website, or more FAQs. Maybe your support team dropped the ball or you dropped the ball because you’re trying to do everything.

Whatever the reason, you have the power to turn it into a positive experience for future customers!

How have you handled negative reviews in the past? Were you successful? Did you notice the positive impact it had on your customer’s and prospective customer’s perception of your brand?

A couple of months ago I was searching for a way to add Google+ comments to my WordPress blog, much like you can with Facebook comments, however my search came up empty. It just wasn’t a possibility.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Google announced that they were, Bringing Google+ Comments to Blogger (Google’s blogging platform).

Then about a week later I decided to see if anyone had developed a plugin that would allow me to add Google+ Comments to my WordPress Blog. And sure enough, +Brandon Holtsclaw had done it, and he had done a really great job of it!

I instantly installed and activated the plugin!

For These 3 Reasons:

1. Engagement

Google+ Commenting system offers a much better solution for actual engagement.

With the normal commenting system, you’d miss out on the ability to actually engage in a real conversation with your readers if you weren’t monitoring your blogs comments.

Also, if I want to make sure the individual I was engaging with sees my reply or comment, I just add their G+ profile name to the comment and they’ll get another notification.

It also offers a much more convenient why to engage. With the standard commenting system, the only way for me to comment is to go to the site and leave a comment. However, when using the G+ comments you can post your comment directly to your G+ profile. Now, anyone can comment directly from G+ and it will be posted to your website comments as well!

Because your readers have the ability to share their comment with their Circles, you now have the potential to reach a larger audience and increase your potential for engagement.

And because I can hover over the commenters name in a G+ comment, I can see a snapshot of their profile or click-through to their profile and get a really good idea about who I am engaging with, which will enable me to better construct my comments for a more personal and direct message.

2. Exposure

The success of our content becoming recognized as a valuable resource has a lot to do with exposure, or more commonly referred to as, “Social Proof“.

We’re all familiar with Google’s authority ranking, which relies heavily on how much influence your articles have. That influence is partly determined by the amount of comments, shares, and +1s you content receives.

Now with G+ comments directly on my blog post, I have a better chance of increasing my social proof and becoming a much higher ranked authority.

I’ve also touched on, in the engagement section, the fact that when my readers comment using the G+ comments, if they share that comment with their circles, my content is now being exposed to a larger audience, which could result in new subscribers!

This type of exposure is like one of your readers personally referring your blog or article to everyone they know. Referrals are a powerful way to grow your readership and business!

3. Encouragement

We all know that commenting on blogs is a great way to gain exposure to our own expertise. It is an important part of a content strategy because it is a quick way to drop lots of bread crumbs that will hopefully lead more of your target market back to your website.

By using G+ comments, your bread crumbs have a much greater chance of being seen and followed back to your website or G+ profile.

It’s easier, and less intrusive. No longer do you have to enter your name and email address to leave a comment. If you have a G+ profile (which you should!) and you’re logged in, you can comment without giving up any information.

Finally, standard commenting systems don’t allow much more info about the commenter than their name and a link to their website (unless you’re using Gravatar). With G+ comments, you have the ability to provide other readers and commenters much more insight into who you are and what you do!

So be sure your G+ profiles are completed!

Are you going to add the Google+ comments plugin to your WordPress website? What are your thoughts about using G+ comments over the standard WordPress commenting system? Feel free to try it out, by using our comments area below!

These attackers are trying to exploit the default username ‘admin’ to gain access to your website. First they verify that your site has the username ‘admin’, second they start trying a number of passwords to access the account.

Read more about the known issues on the Sucuri blog.

I’m not going to address the issue as much as I am going to provide some suggestions on how to ensure you’re better protected from these type of attacks.

What you can do…

There are two primary things that you can do to protect your self from such attacks.

1. Do NOT use the username ‘admin’ for any of your WordPress user accounts.

If you are using admin, you will need to create a new user account and delete the admin user account. And use a STRONG password.

We have a tutorial on how to create and delete user accounts in WordPress.

2. Make sure your WordPress installation and all your plugins are up-to-date!

This is a simple process. You can run these updates by clicking a button within your WordPress dashboard.

We also have a tutorial on how to update WordPress, WordPress plugins, and WordPress themes.

Additional security options…

1. Get a better hosting provider

We recommend WP Engine. This is a managed, WordPress hosting provide. They only host WordPress websites and because of that, their environment and services are tailed to provide an ideal solution for WordPress users.

Plus, when there are issues like these brutal attacks, you can rest easy because WP Engine hosted websites are prepared.

Read this tutorial on how to migrate your WordPress website to WP Engine.

2. Use Sucuri

Sucuri is web monitoring and malware clean up service. They are always on top of the biggest and smallest threats to keep your site safe and secure.

Yes, We can do all of this for you!

Now if you’re not interested in doing any of these improvements yourself.

Take a look at our Support Services, and Schedule a Consultation to discuss your needs!

Feel free to use the comments to ask any questions or address anything I may have missed!

Follow this tutorial to learn how to replace the “admin” user account with a more secure user account!

Use BackupBuddy to backup your database before performing any changes!

Use BackupBuddy to backup your website before performing any updates!