Many of our clients are using WordPress as a CMS because of it’s extreme ease of use and large number of plugins made available by its community. One thing we take for granted is the knowledge behind what makes a WordPress plugin worthwhile. Is it the idea or the implementation? Maybe it’s both. But furthermore we take for granted the number of popular plugins and rarely take a look to see who has possibly done it better.

So here are a few of the things I take into consideration before installing a new WordPress plugin on our site.

Age

Basically, if a plugin hasn’t been updated within the last few months there is cause for concern. Was the plugin really that good to begin with that it never needed to be updated? Chances are someone just forgot about it and it may not even be compatible with your current version of WordPress.

Speaking of compatibility. The WordPress plugin directory just added a new community moderated compatibility box. Once this takes off, if it takes off, it could become the most reliable way to find updated plugins.

Popularity

Another sign of a quality plugin is just it’s popularity. Every plugin allows you to view it’s stats which can be a great metric for the plugins quality. Spikes in traffic are usually do to high profile referrals from sites like Smashing Magazine and LifeHacker which is usually a good sign the plugin is worthwhile.

Rating

Now just because a plugin is up to date and very popular does not mean it’s going to work the way you want. I always check the ratings and look into anything with less than 3 stars.

Proof of Concept

This is usually the first thing I look at when trying to decide between multiple plugins that serve the same function. Most good plugins will have a Screenshots page. I like this for two reasons:

1. It shows how the plugin works and what your getting
2. It shows the developer took the extra time to set up their readme.txt with the proper information

However, if there are no screenshots I’ll usually click on the Plugin Homepage link to see a working demo or screenshots on the authors site.

Support

When all else fails, this is the best way to learn the inner workings of a plugin without installing it. It’s the easiest way to see what’s working and what’s not. Just look for the “See what others are saying…” text on the plugins Description page for a list of forum topics about the plugin. No topics can mean it’s just not popular or has no problems.

-

So now that you’re better educated on the art of finding new WordPress plugins, go and explore the WordPress directory with ease.

WordPress has had a small hole in its soul I liked to call “the multimedia gap”. It always struck me as odd that such a powerful blogging platform had not yet completely satisfied the needs of a web 2.0 audience. That is, until I stumbled upon the Apture plugin. Not only does it make embedding videos into WordPress ridiculously easy:

But it also makes linking to images with creative commons licenses a snap:

All within the WordPress wysiwyg. Now moving beyond just regular embeds …. Apture takes hyperlinking to the next level as well. You can now easily link to Twitter accounts (Magicomm), wiki pages (Social Media), and more without sending your readers elsewhere.

So go and Download this plugin as soon as possible and start bringing some rich media to your readers.

If you’re monitoring Twitter and Google for mentions of your brand or website, you’re probably only seeing half of the conversation. What about people that shorten your URLs and share them without linking to your Twitter profile? What if someone mentions your brand name in the comments of someone else’s blog? Do you even know where to go to find this kind of information. We at Magicomm run into this problem from time to time and have adopted a small set of tools as part of our monitoring strategy to help keep us in the loop.

To solve the problem of not getting notified when people link to our blog using a shortened URL, we use a service called BackTweets. It basically shows us everyone linking to our site or specific pages on Twitter. It’s also a great way to surprise people by thanking them for the RT when they never mentioned your Twitter handle.

Now what about comments scattered across multiple forums and social media sites. SocialMention is an all powerful mention aggregator. You can search for mentions across blogs, forums, micro-blogs, Q&A sites and more. It’s one of the better free tools out there for monitoring your brand.

These two tools in conjunction with Twitter search and Google search should give you a more realistic picture of who’s talking about you and sharing your content. So don’t listen to just half of the conversation. Become the ultimate eye in the sky and really see what’s going on.

- Photo by BL1961

I see most businesses approaching social media the same way. The first thing they look for is a standard set of best practices and social media etiquette. Then they might go off and find some case studies or social media marketing examples. If they aren’t overwhelmed by the diverse results they receive they will most likely adopt the best social media strategy for their business.

But is this enough?

Some of the best social media campaigns and strategies are those where someone wasn’t afraid to tread new ground. Social Media is really just the word that describes a collection of websites that help us communicate and share information. It’s what we share and how we are sharing it that really matters.

Be original

Any time you post something, first do the proper research to see if someone else wrote about the same topic. Be sure that your unique point of view is adding to the conversation and not just echoing the thoughts of others. This happens more commonly than people think and a few simple google searches can clear the air and possibly even help you push the subject further.

Experiment

Wordpress, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media sites out there. There are hundreds if not thousands of niche networks out there you could be using to target a more precise audience if necessary. Furthermore, there are a number of ways you can use your existing networks to get more exposure and encourage the sharing of your content or message. You often see the more creative of these messages surfacing to the top. Try something different and you will be more likely to be heard.

These tools are all still in their infancy and no one really knows the best way to use them or where they’ll be in a few years. There is no need to leave it up to the “experts” and “influencers” to lead you on your journey when you can very well create your own path to success.

- Photo by Alejandro Hernandez

With the Internet moving at the speed of light it is important that companies keep up in an age of on-demand lifestyles. It may not be for everyone, but for most it is essential that you be kept up to date in the latest communication methods. Furthermore it is more important than ever that your company is only clicks away from your next most valuable client.

Here are a few things companies need to know these days:

1) Your website is more than a business card. The days of static websites floating out in the Internet are gone. Websites these days need to be focused on providing the most appropriate and up to date information to it’s viewers at all times. This is why it is almost essential that your website be on some sort of content management system that allows your most qualified staff to update your site with ease. It’s also important to have some sort of analytics in place so you can optimize your site based on it’s usage.

2) Position your self. Forget the yellow pages, is your site optimized for Google searches? Like I said before, we live in an on-demand world now and you need to position yourself to be found by your target audience. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website with keywords and easily indexable code. Some content management systems help with the SEO by cleaning up the HTML and linking structure of your site so it’s important to take into consideration when choosing the best platform.

3) Communicate. Who needs cold calling or newspaper ads when you have services like LinkedIn and Twitter ready and willing to facilitate your business networking at lightening speed. The mind shift has already taken place and people are openly talking about their lives with millions of other people from around the world. Learning how to use and leverage these tools to expand your business’s potential is a necessity in this economy.

4) Embrace your community. Companies are starting to submit to the candid discussions happening in social media. It’s no longer about controlling your image but rather responding to your communities feedback to make it better. This is a great reason to start blogging and monitoring the blogosphere for relevant conversations in your industry.

-

The times are changing fast and you can either get on board and ride a long or you’ll get left behind.

Contact Magicomm today to learn how we can help you make the transition.

- Photo by boboroshi

Twitter Spam, we all hate it and want it to go away … but what is IT?

The general population of Twitter tends to classify spam as unsolicited promotional material that provides little to no value to the community.

Some (possible) examples of this are:

• Bots that RT specific users
• TwitterFeeds of blog posts
• Affiliate link feeds
• Software that forces you to Tweet a standard message
• Anything repetitive

I’m sure there are a lot of other spammy uses of Twitter but my main focus here is to explain how you can avoid being classified as a spammer.

First off, we need to remember that Twitter is an opt-in service. Basically you need to subscribe to someones Twitter feed before you start receiving their Tweets. Whenever you subscribe to someones Twitter account, they are most likely notified by email of your follow. This is where it is important that your public timeline is filled with conversations and quality links that people might find beneficial. If that user decides, in the split second they may view your page, that you are not contributing to the greater good of the Twitter community, they may write you off as spam and not follow you back.

Everyone has their own classification of what spam is on Twitter. Some other contributing factors to spammy accounts might be:

• You’re following too many people
• You never filled out your profile
• You never post anything
• You only post things from your blog
• You’re too good looking to be real
• You sound like a robot

So my advice?

• Avoid using services that promise mass amounts of followers.
• Don’t set up a TwitterFeed and instead manually post interesting content
• Complete your profile with as much information about yourself as possible
• TALK TO PEOPLE

Blogs are amazing forms of communication that allow and encourage the proliferation of information across multiple platforms. The question is are you optimizing your blog for your web readers?

We at Magicomm are planning a complete website overhaul however I thought it would be nice to give our blog a jump start. We didn’t give it a complete overhaul but rather took a close look at some of its functions and contemplated their purpose.

Social Bookmarking Links

We were previously using sociable as an easy solution however, it ultimately presented two problems:

1. No one was clicking on the links because they were small and not actionable
2. We couldn’t track who was clicking on the links

We in turn narrowed the social bookmarking sites down to Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicous as they were ultimately the most used. We also used the provided widgets from Digg and Reddit as well as custom programmed AddThis analytics functionality to the StumbleUpon and Delicous links.

Post Collections

Some of our most popular posts were part if ‘Printer Tweet Tips‘ or ‘The Dead Series‘ yet we weren’t pushing people to the series overview pages. This was easily solved with some new visual links in the sidebar.

Contributors

You can see which Magicomm employee composed a specific post by looking at the bottom of any specific page however, there was no list of all blog contributors anywhere in the site. Once again, this was easily resolved by replacing the rarely used ‘Archive’ section of the sidebar with a ‘Contributors’ section.

New Plugins

There is always someone working on something that’s going to bring social media to a new level. It’s everyone else’s job to find these new services, plugins and products and put them to good use. We feel passionately about providing more value to Tweets about blog posts and therefore installed the CommenTwitter plugin. The idea is that people can tweet their comments to a post right from the comment form. This generates traffic to that users comment as well as the blog …. basically a win-win.

-

So when is the last time you looked at your blog and made some changes for the better?