And just focus on that. That’s your niche! There’s a famous saying out there that says you can’t boil the ocean and it’s the same thing as a Freelancer with your products, you can’t serve everyone.
So finding a niche is finding a specific Subset of your customers or the products that you offer And just focusing on that, So you want to take A look at your skills and see what you’re really good at This should include some base knowledge and even some trends, things That are really popular in the market today, So let’s say that I make pottery and I offer everything You could ever want Well, let’s say the Majority of my customers actually buy my vases’cause I have a really cool design and people love it, and it’s just the way that I do.
It is super unique. That’s my niche and that’s What I should focus on Kinda like that scene, in Ghost, with Patrick Swayze, on the pottery wheel. So let’s say that I actually Hate making those vases that’s going to be a big problem, because I’m going to focus on a niche that I don’t enjoy at all. So you need to take a look. At what your audience wants, but also what you want, To do and focus there So not just about the money, you really need to Enjoy what you’re doing So, one thing that you can do when you’re determining your niche is: you can create a persona For who is your ideal customer? So let’s say my ideal: Customer he’s an urban client he’s aged 25 to 35, his name’s Billy.
You know, let’s just give Him a name and a face, and so I can use this and anytime that I’m developing a new product, I’m always relating it back to that customer that I Am trying to serve Billy So now you’re going to need content, Content, content and more content, but the content needs to be specific to this person that you’re after Billy Billy, You will need to realize What does Billy look for and where is Billy looking for it? Billy’s a young guy he’s Probably not on MySpace right, don’t go there.
Maybe Not even on Facebook, Let’s say Billy for the most Part is only on Instagram, that’s good to know, And another thing to think about is how is Billy consuming this media? You want to think more Of just them blog posts, but you also have infographics Tutorials articles — Podcasts Exactly So. The next thing you want to do – and you actually should consider – is collaborating with other people in your industry and in your market.
So if I make ceramics, I shouldn’t see everyone else who makes Ceramics as competition, because I have my specific niche, they probably serve a different niche. So it’s in our best interest. To partner and collaborate so we can get to each Other’s markets and audiences and share the wealth, The key is consistency. What you put in it is definitely What you get out of it, and especially once you start to monetize like your website and your blog it’ll, make everything That you’re doing now so much worth it With.
That being said, Check out our other articles, where we talked about Some of these things and creating a email, signup List creating your own blog, we got you covered, We would love to hear from You in the comments below some of your ideas of your business, Be sure to like Subscribe to this article and hit that notification bell, so you can be notified of our next article And with that until next Time this is The Journey
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
” All right, so today, We have a special guest Alycia from Sucuri. Thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah thanks, I’m happy to be here Awesome, so we’re Talking about what is a CMS and which one should you Use for your website, Can you tell us a little Bit about what a CMS is So CMS stands for. Content management system and it’s basically an easier way to put pages, live on your Website or blog post manage your image media Library all that kinda stuff Awesome and now, let’s Go over the top three CMSs, I’m going to be a little bit! Biased in this episode, That’s my disclaimer right there, I’m going to start with WordPress WordPress is the most popular Content management system out there today powers Over 1/3 of the internet, It has tons of plug-ins tons of options and it’s pretty resourceful And probably my favorite Reason for why I use WordPress is the community behind it.
They’re such a large community that that just all comes Together, there’s meetups, there’s wordcamps and everyone just helps each other out For sure, and I mean with 40,000 plugins almost like you, have no end to the kind of functionality you can add to your CMS Absolutely. So what are some other CMSs that we can possibly use For sure, yeah,,’cause everybody’s heard of WordPress, so Yeah Drupal is another very popular one.
It’s been described to me as Kinda, like a Swiss cheese, you need to be a bit more Technical to use Drupal, but it does have a lot Of different features compared to WordPress, it has A different user experience and ultimately it’s been Used for a lot of things like government websites, And that kinda thing because of its ability to be a little more secure in some areas: yeah Yeah and it’s definitely One not for like the smaller business type sites as Enterprise or large Corporation type sites right, Yeah, yeah for sure Yeah Joomla – is another really Popular one as well, It’s got a really good.
Community – and it’s got, I think, the second highest Market share after WordPress, Although WordPress is Like 30 % – and I think, like It’s, a giant Joomla’s like 6 %, so just A little bit of a gap there between the top two but Joomla’s, also a really awesome CMS to use You wan na make sure that you’re using the most latest version. If possible, There are two active versions: Available that you can use Yeah, you definitely wan na stay on the most recent branch.
Of any CMS, if possible, Yeah that’s just a best practice there. All right. Let’s talk! About really figuring out, which one should you use right Like what are some of the first Steps we wan na think about. Definitely you wan na Make sure that you know what your requirements Are for your website, So how does it need to Be for your users to use! How are you going to go about? Actually creating posts and what are the processes that you’re going to use as part of that And then once you have all that you can kinda look at each CMS and see what are the extensions and Themes that are available And see if they’ll match the Requirements that you have for your website, That makes sense and It all comes down to figuring out what’s right for you Like, I will stand by WordPress all day, but WordPress may not be Right for your situations, Figuring out those requirements, With those applications are super important, Yeah and usually a Lot of the CMS websites have a great community Because they are open-source, So tell us a little about open-source Yeah for sure.
So all Those top three CMSs they’re open-source they’re, also free, which is very important, Open-source, basically Means that the source code used to build WordPress Or Drupal or Joomal, it’s all open and available, and anybody can contribute to it as well Right on So that just means it’s Constantly being improved by the community and the Community’s also checking to make sure that, what’s Being added is secure All right, so we want our Website to look good right, So is that something to think About when we’re choosing what platform we use and how easy it is to create those sites Totally so different themes will have different attributes like They may have a sidebar on the left or the right, Or they may be all one column in a never-ending scrolling website.
Different themes will Allow you to accomplish, maybe what you need by Having custom backgrounds or custom menus, so you Wan na look at the options for your theme and you also don’t wan na discount like premium themes, A lot of premium themes out, there will add extra functionality, So you’re, essentially Paying for the theme, even though the CMS is free, That’s an awesome option. There’s premium plug-ins as well, Depending on what you Need the default themes that come with it are Sometimes a little restrictive, so you wan na take a look at What the default themes are: Try some different free themes and see what the options are to get your site to look.
The way you want it to Yeah and what was kind Of controversial at first in WordPress and 5.0 remember Gutenberg, Oh yeah, Gutenberg is essentially The new WordPress editor, The whole point is to kinda mirror the printing press of just Blocks and everything else, Yeah, what you see is what you get So as you’re typing — Whizzy, wig, Yeah whizzy wig, Thank you So as you’re typing Yeah, you see exactly what you would see on the website, So that comes default by WordPress.
It has made the experience. Especially for first-time users easier to create, Then there are page Builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder or WPBakery Builder, that makes that user-experience A little bit easier, If you’re going on the WordPress realm and really want something: That’s pretty customizable, you don’t have to be a Web developer or guru to build that website For sure CMSs are having to Make things a little easier, You know, there’s a lot of Different places out there that are creating website builders that are super easy for people to use, and so it’s helpful for These open-source CMSs to make the user-experience a little easier All right.
So another thing we probably have to think about. Is the hosting requirements We’re going to need for our applications? Talk us through a little Bit of what that looks like For sure, so most of These are running on PHP, so you want the most Updated version of PHP, especially if you want The latest features and to make sure that you’re Getting those security updates? Yes, So that’s really important.
A lot of hosting companies will offer one-click Install for most of these major CMS applications, Some hosting companies Especially when I first started creating websites – and I Was on a super budget, but also a very secure host, it took me a long time. It took me like three days to install WordPress and they have a famous 5-minute install You wan na look and see, and maybe talk to your hosting company.
About what the options are for getting this CMS Installed on your server Right,,’cause, taking three Days to get a website going just the beginning is not Something you wan na do There’s a lot of places out there that will do managed hosting Especially with WordPress There’s managed WordPress that has just already automatically installed some extra security features And then what most people End up going with is like a cPanel type Hosting Since it does have that one-click install with Installatron or Softaculous, Whatever they’re, using Totally Couple of clicks of a button and then it’s there, You can start building and Designing, however, you want All right, so the real Reason I brought you on to this.
Episode is really talking about security with CMSs They’re open-source. You Constantly have to update them, so there’s lots of things. That we need to really think about to make sure Our stuff’s protected Totally well with It being open-source not only are all the good People contributing code, but all the bad people can Also, look at that code as well and find vulnerabilities. So that’s something that a lot of people are concerned about.
Especially with WordPress being so popular, it is a large target. The CMS itself is actually quite secure because there’s a great Community checking things out. You wan na make sure that you’re Not installing more plug-ins than you need Trying to make sure that you’re keeping everything up to date. If you have a managed solution, They’ll, do it for you, Which is awesome. Yup, You wan na make sure That you have something some kind of security plug-in That’s monitoring your site, letting you know if there is A problem that they detect There are some that can also Add features for protection like adding Two-Factor Authentication, which is a second password on your phone that you need to enter in Order to get into your website There’s all kinds of Cool security, plug-ins security utilities that You can use with your CMS Yeah, I know with WordPress the top security plug-ins That come to mind, of course, Sucuri has This security plug-in, but there’s also Wordfence And then with having an SSL on your site, super important just to Encrypt that password,’cause, you have to login The beauty with CMSs that You can access them anywhere right, Yup, So you wan na make sure that wherever you’re accessing’em Your password isn’t being sniffed out by someone in the middle Yeah.
You wan na, be careful. You don’t wan na. Maybe do It in like an airport or coffee shop, Wi-Fi Unless you’re using a VPN.’Cause, if you are sitting There on public, Wi-Fi and there’s a hacker sitting next to you, they could sniff your password As you’re typing it in And then the next thing you know, there’s a bunch of spam pages on your site that you need to deal with. So what about firewall? I’ve heard that it should be important.
Should be added to the site, What’s the validity with that? Definitely one of the nice things about a website firewall Is that it will virtually patch your CMS? So if There is a security issue, essentially the firewall’s Taking care of that, It surrounds your website. And if somebody’s trying to exploit a vulnerable Plug-In on your site, the firewall will catch. That attempt and block it They’ll see a blocking page.
Meanwhile, all of your legitimate Visitors are being sped-up because of the global Network of the firewall and content delivery network, So we’ve figured out what Cms we’re wanting to use We’ve got it installed, how Do we go about documentation, learning the program itself? There are some awesome Resources out there, You talked about WordPress WPBeginner has some awesome? Training guides and tutorials There’s an awesome community.
For all of these CMSs, with very active, like support forums, That’s a great way to go about it And then, obviously, if you have a developer, Or something like that, that’s helping you get some customization. They can usually help you. You wan na make sure that You’re documenting everything as part of your website as well, so It’s just going to help you Later on down the line, if you know you have a List of all the users, all the plug-ins and that kind of stuff and you’re keeping that up-to-date Yeah, especially if you Have people on your team that needs to access the site, Giving them documentation on What they should be accessing, what they shouldn’t be, because sometimes the wrong click can Make just chaos happen Totally and good user passwords making sure that you’ve Got the right role levels assigned to your users? Whether they’re just an editor or author or contributor Right Those roles are usually built into the CMS to allow you to make Sure they can only access what they should be allowed to access.
You only wan na grant admin privileges to somebody for as long as they need it, and that kind of thing Now, with this website, I know many of the entrepreneurs or even solopreneurs out there with their stuff, has Many hats to wear right, Sometimes maintaining it, isn’t always something that they have time for Yeah. It may not be top of mind Right. What should we be? Doing with those updates Yeah, definitely I would say that it’s very important to make sure that you always retain Access to your property, your web property, So I’ve seen cases where a developer will leave a client and Leave with the passwords and then you can’t get Into your hosting account, or you can’t into WordPress, It’s not ideal, so make sure you always have access to those things And make sure that you’re just practicing safe security practices.
Throughout all of it Right on and with WordPress and Joomla everything else, we Talked about it earlier, make sure you’re at least going in there every now and then to update It to the next latest version: It’s not only for performance, but it is for security Yeah for sure I mean with some CMSs there might be different branches that are still being actively developed So having a firewall That can virtually patch and make sure if there Are any vulnerabilities you have a little bit of an extra window.
‘Cause whenever there’s a Security update released, the hackers are looking going. “: Okay, here’s the old file; “, here’s the new file; oh look: “! There’s the security flaw!”, So it can be –. Then send all our bots out Totally it can a matter of minutes hours after a security patch is released before there’s active attacks in the wild So definitely update your Sites as soon as possible, Auto-updates are amazing, WordPress has auto-updates on most hosts, Yeah and or you can hire developers like most designers or Developers will have like a website care plan, so you Can them just do it for you, If you’re using WordPress, Godaddy ProSites or ManageWP has the one-click updates.
So you can update all your Plug-Ins and your themes, You even have a safe update option. So what it does is It’ll update your site, take a snapshot of before and after and make sure they’re all the same. And if there’s an issue It’ll retract, back to it It’s a free option for you Yeah, that’s perfect! You hit on a good point, It’s not a set it and forget. It thing with a website: You need to make sure that You’re maintaining it And that it’s part of your business, it’s how your business looks.
So you should definitely Make sure that you have some kind of plan for keeping It up-to-date and maintained All right. The last point that we should really talk about is really your time and investment with the CMS of your choice. Talk us through a little Bit of that about that For sure we’ll you Wan na go in and realize that it’s going to take you Time to setup all the pages that you want Right: It may take you time to find the right plug-ins, so you wan na kinda think through whether You want to hire somebody or get some help with that To find the functionality and the look and feel that you’re after Definitely budget when It comes to free CMSs.
Well, you don’t have to pay for the CMS. So that’s helpful Right! But it’s customization and security and all Those things that you definitely wan na consider as part of the whole package of having a website On-going costs for domain WHOIS privacy, SSL certificates, Right firewall, All that kind of stuff, All that good things Totally yeah, there’s A lot of accessories that go on with having a website, So you wan na figure like I said at the beginning what those requirements are And then make sure you have a plan for how you’re going to budget and the timelines around When you wan na launch Perfect and with Drupal And Joomla they are, they do have that smaller market share, So there’s really specific requirements of when you wan na use those applications.
Those developers that you hire for Drupal or Joomla might cost more than a WordPress designer as well For sure yeah, and you wan na make sure that you’re really looking at the work that the developer has done and make sure that it Matches what you’re, after There’s lots of great Websites out there that you know can tell you more About how to pick a developer depending on what you’re after Well? Thank you so much for Coming out on the show today and helping us figuring Out what a CMS is why we should use one You’ve been awesome Thanks my pleasure.
Well, if you liked this article go ahead and smash that, like button, add a comment below on Something that you’ve learned and subscribe to this blog and ring that bell, if you’d like to see these episodes first, This is “ The Journey.,” we’ll see you next time.
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
We are building her keyword, seed list, we’ve got it all together. We’ve got it categorized documented and now we’re going to pull things full circle, we’re going to align them to business goals because Amy. It is not enough to just spend this time searching finding all these keywords: jotting them down, categorizing them if they’re not aligned to goes, you really want to achieve or website goals, and the other reason you want to do.
This is also because you want to identify any opportunities or gaps for keywords that you need to maybe include in some of your content right. That makes sense absolutely now. I did ask you to do a little bit of prep before you came so. Could you maybe give me an idea of some of your business goals sure so my monthly Instagram goal is to increase my followers by 100. Okay and I’m wanting to have four new coaching clients per month, okay for people signing on for packages and then increase my email list by 10.
New email addresses a month fantastic now, the first place I would go if I was looking to align with the goal of increasing Instagram followers is in your seed list, anything related to social media. Okay right, so let’s go back here. Competitor keywords: remember: when we search for hashtags right go to the hashtags, that you’ve got here right and even narrow it down to Instagram, specifically right.
If your goal is to increase your number of Instagram followers, then let’s focus on Instagram. You could search for ways to gain Instagram followers. I’ll bet, there’s a little bit of information out. There sure that’s a great idea cool, let’s move on to the next one: okay, okay! So for this bowl it’s clearly a business-related goal, so we definitely want to look at the business and industry keywords that are in your seedless right, we’re going to definitely find something there, but your target audience keyword list is really where we’re going to find the gold.
So go back to that one! Let’s go here, we’re going to look through all the keywords that we found around target audience, because it’s about gaining new clients right right, so we want to know what they were searching for. So I would look for words. Maybe that are associated with a sense of urgency, so finally Aimee we’re going to tackle the third goal that you’ve got here, which is increased email subscribers by 10 per month.
Yep awesome, it’s clearly a business goal. Let’s look at the business and industry keywords, kind of search through those what we have okay, let’s look at some target audience keywords: nothing’s, really standing out that matches up. You know this is a good one, because this means our strategy’s working because we’ve kind of identified a gap. I think right, I’m not really finding anything related to email subscriptions or how to do it or any of that in the seed list that we’ve built.
So far, okay, that’s alright! It just means this is an opportunity, a little bit of homework right um. Clearly this is a goal for you. I know I’m sure, that’s what you want to hear tiny bit, but it’s really just means. Go back maybe find some keywords that are related to people subscribing. You know growing subscribers increasing subscribers things like that. Just just see, if there’s anything and anything that we’ve done before just kind of rego through that process, see if any keywords related to this goal come up, because obviously you want to incorporate them right.
So, with everything ties together, you see in the big picture. Aimee. Absolutely that is so helpful. I’m so excited all right. Now we’re going to recap, because we’ve done a whole lot. Today, we’ve covered a bunch, so we went through some discovery and built you a keyword, seed list, awesome split it up into three categories: business and industry. Keywords: target audience, keywords, competitor keywords: we went and we documented a lot of things under each of those categories.
We’ve got this huge list going on and then we actually came back around looked at your business goals and aligned those keywords and phrases to your business goals. So you can actually, you know, improve some of that get found issue that so many small business owners have you’re out there. You’ve been working really hard. You’ve got a website. You want to grow your business. This is how you’re going to get there wonderful.
Thank you. So much for the help Emily Amy, it has been a pleasure working with you, I’m so happy that you just let your son, you open yourself up to this process. I’m sure it wasn’t easy and I know you were a little overwhelmed and it can come across that way, but that a lot okay we’re here to help. I want you to keep up the hard work and a good work. You’re doing awesome. Thank you. I want you guys to keep reading.
Also this, I think, determination in small Businesses that they’re like “ There is no way to do this.”, So they love to hear about Roi return on investment. You get asked this too right Right. They end up spending so Much of their time on there, they wan na make sure they’re actually getting something back, Which I totally get right. You’re time is super valuable, you’re doing a million other things and then now social media Is added to your plate? How do you justify the time or the money if you outsource it like GoDaddy Social, You wan na justify that time and money and a way to do that is understand.
Are you getting a return on investment And the good news is there’s a lot of ways to See if you are or not, There’s data analytics metrics, but I’m going to break it. Down into four umbrellas of how to measure ROI, starting with number one brand awareness Cool, how do you Measure brand awareness, So brand awareness can be measured in one way that you’re, probably Already thinking at home, your number of followers How many people are following you More people following you on Twitter, seeing your tweets following you on Instagram Seeing your great photos following you on Facebook and Reading those great captions, The more exposure you have and the more followers you have seeing it that’s brand awareness Perfect And does that count likes and comments, and things like that too Totally So likes comments.
Love shares retweets. That’s just going to help You get in front of not only your followers The awareness there, but your friends and their friends, maybe their family members as well, So the awareness just Spreads like wildfire Spreadin’, the love Spreadin’, the love All right, so digging in On the analytics aspect, It’s easy to see the amount of followers you see the amount of Likes and things like that, is there a step further? We can go to really see the nitty gritty Yeah totally.
So that’s a cool thing. If you have business pages set up, they allow you a clear view of what’s working. What’s not working what time of a day a post works? Well, how many people are seeing It et cetera, et cetera, So with Facebook, you Have your “ Insights” tab And, what’s really cool, is it breaks down a ton of information And they even have a little Information button on each one. So if you’re reading a Metric and it’s like “, I’m not even sure what Engagement rate means.
”, (, laughs, ). You know you click on it. It’ll break down what it is Perfect And Instagram too. You have To make sure you create a or turn your account Into a business profile that way, you can see insights and how many people viewed Your page liked it commented what time of the week you Get the most engagement If you’ve turned your Instagram account into a business page. Let us Know in the comments below Just say, “ I’ve turned It into a business page.
”, So that’s with Instagram Twitter there’s the top tweet. So you can see that in your Twitter analytics as well So go in. There see what Your audience likes, in other words your customers and then have that inform Your strategy moving forward, which will also help you be More efficient with your time and give the customer what they want, Give them what they want, Give them what they want: ( laughs, ) All right, moving on Tip number two: where are we at with that? So tip number two: one Of my personal favorites customer satisfaction And you’re, familiar with This inside your business, whether you have a barbershop Or a car dealership, you can see it on the person’s face that they’re satisfied or not.
I can’t make a frowny face: Aw Darn it I was cuing them up. So one way you can do it. Online with social media is well your reviews. Your customers are going to tell you if they had a poor experience. Or a great experience But make sure you’re Reading those reviews Believe it or not, I still Come across businesses that don’t take the time To read their reviews, I’m like “ Wait. This is a great place “ to see if your customers Are satisfied or not.
” Also what they’re saying when They mention you on Facebook, Right, Especially, you have to Respond good or bad. I know most people will just Respond to the good ones and try to just ignore the bad Ones like they don’t exist, Just give them a response. See if you can make it right, apologize to the situation and move on Totally So again pay attention to What your customers are saying, They’re talking to you online And if you wan na even a Deeper dive into that we have another episode of The Journey on social listening so check it out So cool statistic: I read the other day: actually, a quarter of people who have a positive Experience at a business will go and tell 10 people Both online and offline – That’s pretty awesome.
All right. Tell me What’s tip number three Tip number three is actually Gaining new customers, which is your favorite, I know When I say “ You’re Gaining new customers”, you can picture just dollar Bills in your pocket Make it rain, ( laughs ). So how can you do that with all this social Media and online stuff Couple ways: One: your customers are going to Click on your Google listing for their directions.
I know I do that before Every business I go to because I get lost very easily, But if I’m clicking on the directions, I’m coming to your business and I’m coming to spend Money with intent Also calling Calling you That’s another great way to measure that you’re getting a new customer You’ve already learned. That a lot of customers don’t take the time to call So if they’re calling You they mean business, they are serious about Spending money with you, You got yourself a new customer And so because the Google Listing’s really important Yelp and that “ Click to call” you wan na, make sure I’m sure this obvious that everything is up to date, The right phone number, the right address The hours right.
How many times have you gone to a business? That said it was open, you get there and it’s closed And that’s a bummer Just makes me so sad. So sad, And also besides that, if you have a chance to Speak about your business, maybe “ About You” or add Photos do that as well too and make sure that’s up to date, Maybe you’ve remodeled. Since the last time you had your Yelp photos. Updated or your Google Add that in there spice things up Take some photos, Keep it up to date, so When your customer comes in that new customer, you just gained they’re getting an experience.
That they predicted that they expected Right All right, so we’ve reached The end of our journey, We’re on tip number Four, the very last one: What do you got for us Brand loyalty, Another one you’re familiar With the terminology, but what does it look like online? Well, there’s, don’t worry, It’s not tough math, but well, let’s see how It goes for Justin here All right, engagement rate. How do you measure that? Well, it’s pretty easy.
It’s the number of likes You receive on a post divided by the number of followers times. You guessed it 100 And that’s going to equal Your engagement rate ( mumbles ), Oh no! No! It’s not that hard, So write it down, keep it nearby And when you’re posting Check in do the quick, math And then you’ll determine is that engagement rate Where it should be, And what’s also awesome, About brand loyalty is actually 85 % of customers – 85 %.
I know that’s – almost 100, 85 % of customers will actually Engage with your brand if they’re, loyal daily And when I say, engage they’re going to be liking. What you’re posting commenting sharing on a daily basis And that’s huge That constant, like and That constant, following they’re, going to continue to see their stuff and they’re going to continue. To tell their 10 friends and onward and onward and onward All right, so that’s a wrap.
We just covered four ways to measure ROI when it comes to your social media. Make sure you, like this article, subscribe to the blog and ring that bell. If you Wan na see these articles first, This has been The Journey. Thanks for reading
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
So first thing’s! First I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess:…. I know what you’re going to say: get organized Yes, But before we really jump in, I wan na say huge. Congratulations to you at home, you’re wanting to start a business! That’s why you’re reading this article? It’s a scary first step, but we’ve got your back Now with starting that business.
You wan na get organized and first thing’s, first figuring out what your business name is. We have a super cool article. We’ll have the link right up here for ya. You can check it out Where we go into how to figure out what your name should be and some tips on pickin’ the right name. It’s a good one Yeah. So what was your name from that brainstorming session? What’d? You come up with Coffee and Kickflips.
I love it Dig it So now, once you have that name, you really wan na figure out. And create your business plan, This is just a simple document: that’s going to go over! What your business is, what you do, who your market is, who your customers are everything that you need to Potentially show to investors to give you money right, You wan na get that bread Yeah. You got ta have a clear action plan with all the details, Plus it’ll help you to really flush out what you need and the goals You should keep top of mind in order to succeed And commit to those Right, And it keeps you kinda.
Grounded so you’re not going in a million different places as we all do. I know I do it a lot. I do it a lot. If I don’t have that plan written out, I’m everywhere and nowhere Same After you get organized and you’ve committed to what you wan na do with your business. What comes next I’ve seen my entrepreneurial friends and I went through it myself. With Coffee and Kickflips is determining, do I do an LLC? Do I not, Can you elaborate on that Yeah, so you definitely have To register your business in some shape or fashion right, What most people do is the LLC, but there’s also sole proprietorship, there’s partnership, there’s corporation but again the most common one is LLC.
Why is that? Well, it helps you Really protect yourself from your business, So if your business was ever sued, they can’t come after your Personal stash of pizza, It’s going to keep that separated, Hands off Hands off All right and then once you have that you can go ahead and get your federal tax identification number or known as the employee. Identification number EIN: That’s really going to help You, when it comes time to creating a business bank account All right so next up, you need to get your business license, Which you can contact.
Your Secretary of State to get more info about that. But this does vary by state and also depending on what Type of business you have, this will mix it up as well So check out the description. Below to get more info All right So now, the next thing you need to do with starting your business is figuring out where you wan na work. Now with your Coffee and Kickflips, I know that you can’t Really do that at home you have a brick and mortar store, but maybe you can do it at home or you can do a coworking space, which is super popular.
If you don’t know what A coworking space is you essentially rent Out part of a building or you rent out a desk and there’s tons of other Entrepreneurs, just like you doing the same thing, So it’s cool to get that Same little, brain trust and people, just like you, workin’ and you’re out of the house. I know I love workin’ from home, but I need to kinda mix It up every now and then So it’s that or coffee shops Yeah same.
I get it And also it’s cool about The coworking space think about it you’re in such an exciting time, you’re starting a business. You might meet someone that Could help you network or help you with that next step, because there’s a lot of like Nealey, said like-minded people hanging out there doing productive things like you Absolutely, And I have a really good buddy that works at a coworking Space called Galvanized in downtown Phoenix and they have a shared slack blog of all the entrepreneurs.
In that coworking space And there’s nothing Gold mine, but leads all day so he gets most of his work. He doesn’t have to go to The coworking space most of the time, it’s just in that slack blog and he’s getting business All right. So one thing I thought about: With Coffee and Kickflips you mentioned, I have a Brick and mortar location, yes, but I had to think about okay. Well, do I wan na rent a space? Do I wan na buy property? How does that look? I need money, ( laughing ).
So how do you go about that? We got ta talk about the hard stuff. Yeah money is important right, So first thing’s, first get a business bank account, don’t use your personal account, especially when you’re Paying your employees and everything else it’s going to get real, just jumbled up between all your pizza expenses and your business expenses, And then with that open up a line of credit. Just In case something happens, you have those quick funds And then possibly talk to a tax attorney or an accountant to help you Keep everything organized That’s been very helpful for my other local heroes out there.
My friends recommend that All right, another big topic insurance. This was a huge topic of discussion at Coffee and Kickflips because well, there’s ramps in the back, so you’ve got kiddos on their skateboards Little Billy Tryin’ to turn into A Tony Hawk overnight and let me tell ya, you need to cover your Business with insurance And also your employees, a helmet, isn’t just going to keep you safe Right.
Your insurance Shouldn’t just be a helmet Everyone coming into your shop, Here’s a helmet, you’re, good, You’re, good ( whistling ) Good luck on the half pipe Yeah, So yeah check out just Different insurances and do your research to make Sure you’re fully covered,’cause, you never know what might happen. Someone might hurt. Themselves at your location, or just who knows All right Nealey. Now I wan na talk about Branding your business, The fun stuff, It’s a fun stuff.
Your email address your logo. I know we have a article on that There’s also social media, all the marketing. What are you going to do with your website..? Let’s jump in So branding. We were talking about All the not so fun stuff, but those are pretty Important essential things Branding’s also super important and essential. We have a article on the basics of branding, But let’s kinda jump into a couple of the different sections to give you just an overview.
Of what these look like, So, let’s start with a domain. Name and your email address, So your domain name that’s going to get people to your website. You don’t wan na have some random URL. You want it to be your business, So Coffee and Kickflips… [ Emma ], Coffee and Kickflips coffeeandkickflips.Com right! That’s the address! That’s the URL. People are going to Type to get to your website And with that you’ll have that professional email, so you can have Emma @ coffeeandkickflips.
Com versus coffeeandkickflips @ gmail.Com, If you have the ending Not be your domain name, it doesn’t look as professional. I love Gmail, but as a business have it your domain name, You can still do Gmail for business. There’s Office 365. Lots of email providers that you can use to really make your Business look professional and credible And then jumping into your website. That’s the whole point of Having an online presence, It’s something that you control Is have some type of website, even if it’s just basic Information on what you do, or some articles of your kickflips And coffee in the back, Yeah Yeah Put the merch on there Maybe an option for people to Spend money on your website, Yes Get those helmets’cause That’s your insurance right, (, laughing ) And then social media Tell us about social media.
And really the basics of it with branding their business? Yes, that’s where you wan na, go and really take the logo that you have be consistent with it across All of your platforms, so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and then from there definitely identify the Voice of your brand and be consistent with that As you’re creating content day in and day out, Because you wan na be consistent And make sure those are business pages, not personal pages Very important, Can you elaborate a little bit on what the voice means Totally People throw it around a lot and it’s hard to Understand What does that mean with Having a consistent voice, Okay, Very good topic, One thing that comes to mind right away from being in the coffee: Business for years before I decided hey, I wan na Have Coffee and Kickflips I worked for a variety of coffee business And they did have their own voice Like there was one coffee spot that was just very upscale and very fancy.
I spent a lot of money there as a customer before I worked there, So their voice was a little bit more…. I don’t know just very classy. And true to the art of coffee, Whereas when I worked at a Spot that really inspired me to open my own. It was a little bit more divey. It was in Long Beach, California, we would say things like rad dope, sick. This coffee is awesome, as we were doing captioning and creating our social media content.
It was just a little bit: More loose and chill Different vibe Different voice, So whatever your voice is identify that before Going and creating content across your social media pages And finally policy. What are your policies? I know. I saw this a lot when Speaking to retail businesses, and when I would consult them, it’s like okay. So what are your policies? What are your return policies? I know I personally love when I shop when the return policy Is a little lenient,’cause, I lose receipts all the time, ( laughing ), But the tag’s on it, But the tag — I swear.
But so what are your policies? In place for your business, All right now with almost Any type of business you need a terms of service Now you should probably consult some legal council with this. If you’re, not a lawyer, you Shouldn’t just make up stuff, But you should have something Like what is your return? Policy, like you said: what’s your privacy policy, do you keep customer information? What does all this look like? Have some type of terms of service to help protect you and your business, and it’s absolutely important And then have a copy of that For all of your employees and have that there readily Available for them to review Yeah, most companies will Usually have it on their website, usually down at the bottom, there’s a little link.
To the terms and service and the privacy policy, Speaking of your website, another important thing to bring up make sure you have contact info, Be accessible, Yes And also have some social proof. That is definitely today’s word of mouth So be easily accessible. Easy for me to contact you and definitely make sure I can find you readily easily available on Facebook. Twitter and Instagram All the things And that social proof, that’s basically just testimonials reviews of other customers that they say: hey, Emma’s, pizza’s, awesome or Emma’s.
Coffee shop is awesome, or whatever that looks like it really helps people identify with you and trust you and a pro tip for you all, do not be just a cave. Dweller go out into the open and be social Talk to people on social media. Talk to people in real life and really put your business And yourself out there.’Cause, you can’t expect them. All just to come to you,’cause. That will not happen. I know that it’s a famous quote “.
If you build it, they will come”, they won’t. You have to go to them and show Them what you’re all about Be proactive And add the human element? To your online presence, All right, That’s a wrap! If you liked this article make sure to give this A like at the bottom and while you’re there leave a comment on what You’ve learned today And be sure to subscribe and ring that bell. So You’re the first to know when we come out with another article.
This is The Journey. We’ll see you next time.
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
I’m Emma – and this is my friend Darlene and we’re going to show You how to do just that, But before we dive into the tool Emma, can you share some Ideas of digital content and how it can be used Sure Darlene As more and more businesses Are thinking of new and innovative ways to Offer services and goods to their customers during The COVID-19 pandemic, adding digital products just makes sense Here – are some of the Digital content offerings I’ve seen in my area A one fitness instructors, Are offering articles with new exercise routines? For their clients, I actually walked by a Business the other day and saw then shooting a article like this Cooking, shows or restaurants, they’re selling their secret recipes or showing articles with Step by step, instructions on how to recreate the magic Books stores are offering e-books, and one of my favorites musicians or bands are Offering audio files of new and existing songs? All of these are great examples.
Emma And I love seeing businesses That I use trying new things, and this is a great way to support them during the COVID-19 crisis. Let me show you how to add: Digital products to your site, so customers can start Supporting you in new ways We’re going to start on your websites plus marketing dashboard, Choose the store and select products. We want to add a new Product so click add For the product type: let’s choose the article or digital option.
Now we need to add the Details for a digital product – Let’s add a product name and cost and we’ll leave digital Products as the tax category For the categories – let’s Choose digital sales: If you don’t have this category yet you can choose add to make it Now, let’s add an image which should represent what The digital product is about, Let’s scroll down and add A product description And, let’s jump over to the Downloadable content tab: This is where you upload any files.
You want your Customer to receive after they order the product. Let’s add our file, Give it a name And click save Okay, that’s it for adding Our digital product Everything looks good So, let’s click save A message. Displays letting us know that we successfully added our product. Let’s go check out what it looks like Click website. Let’s look at our shop page And scroll down until we see The digital sales category All looks good And there you have it, That’s how you sell digital Content on your site, Thank you so much Darlene.
I hope that all small Businesses are thinking of new and creative ways to keep money coming in during these difficult times, and digital content is Another way to do just that, That’s right Emma And as always thanks For joining me today, Of course, stay safe, And stay healthy, Darlene
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
So hey I’m Sam, and this is Emma. So I’m constantly knowing social media’s important and you need to be on it. Or your thought is I have to like. I have to comment. I have to constantly post Actually Emma. I know you’re the social media Queen here. So what is some of your Tips on saving time on social media, First and foremost start a social media content calendar.
This is a great way to help you plan ahead, also to help you get Creative with your posts, because it is all about quality, not quantity, So to improve the quality. If it you want to plan ahead, To get those holidays in there with some cool posts, Also think about it. This way you got Instagram Facebook Twitter. How often do you post I get that asked all the time And the worst thing you want to happen.
Is you wake up it’s Thursday and you Haven’t posted anything since last Thursday, So with Instagram, post At least once a week, But I recommend a couple times a week – Also take advantage of those Instagram stories’cause, that’s really to me easier to fit in because it’s more Raw unpolished content, So it’s a really great Way to some like behind the scenes, I know we’ve done it here on set And then for Facebook again post a couple of times a week And think about what photos, you can add, Show photos of your team Showcase.
Your expertise share something that’s entertaining and of value, Educate me and then Twitter. Now Twitter. You can get A little more frequent to stay on top of that newsfeed, So you can be posting every day Once a day, maybe twice a day and keep it short and sweet. Like me, And informative, I wasn’t going to say it And you might be thinking I’m a seasonal business, so I’m going to like take some time off with that social media calendar Eh wrong, Let’s say: you’re a hotel.
It’s the off season show me a picture of the beach Wish. You were here, Happy get excited about it. Take this and put it top of mind for your customers, your guests, so they don’t forget about you throughout the year Wow Emma! That’s all great and it’s Valuable information, However, I’m only one person And it feels like it’s a lot to do. Do you have any kind of Tips on how to kind of go about all that.
Yeah totally So I will bring up, Go Daddy, Social. We are a do it for you service, we’re on that team And we’ll take this Completely off your plate, After all, it’s a full time job So we’ll give you the Writers to handle all this, If you want to handle this on your own Rad, there’s hootsuite TweetDeck, those are scheduling apps, So that can help you to plan ahead and get that content. You know think about it ahead of time, Ready and it’ll post on your behalf.
In the future, I also recommend to Keep in mind, especially on social media, that you don’t always have to create original content, Which does take more time. You can also share content from relevant folks in your industry. So let’s say you have a restaurant and you read this great tweet from Bon Appetit. Oh, my gosh click retweet. There’s your content for the day and it’s super relevant to your audience.
Maybe some cool recipes and cooking tips, Or maybe you are a landscape artist and you read something about on homes and gardens or better homes, And you get excited about it. You’re like this is something My audience will love Again: repost retweet And don’t forget user generated content. Your customers are already big fans of what you do. They might be taking photos of your food, your products capturing their experience.
With your services Pay attention to that when you’re mentioned and repurpose that Share it, retweet and That’s going to save you time, Just like the scheduling apps that I mentioned prior So I’m sensing a theme here that I don’t have to come up everything myself Exactly and that’s. What’s so cool about these Social media blogs They are very social and that, yes, it’s not always about You and it shouldn’t be Just dishing out your content, your expertise, sell, sell, sell.
You want to drive some Conversation and engagement with the help of your friends on social, Like other businesses in your industry, So I know one of my bad habits in the past is really just always being on social media. So do you have any kind? Of tips to kind of help with that Yes, you can definitely just set aside some time a window where you take that time to really focus on your social media content And also go and check out what other people are posting.
So you can get new followers. You can get eyes on your brand by just following, like minded people, And in addition to that, I’m a big fan of setting alerts and reminders. Oh yeah, I love to do whatever I can to declutter up here and take off my brain One less thing to think about. I am all for it. I live by my calendar, so I get that Yeah same You should see it mine’s color coded It’s ridiculous.
Oh mine’s bland So have an alert, Have a reminder and then, when that alert goes off this is your time to hone in and see you know who’s commenting on your post. Did you get any reviews And if you did take the Time to respond to those Read them and respond: In a personal manner, And any mentions that you have, Which I just talked about, User generated content: this is another great time to Check in setting that alert, like hey Sam, remember, see if Your customers are posting about you and, if so, acknowledge that, because this is clearly a Testimonial to your business, if they’re out there mentioning you Or taking photos of your services, your products Take advantage of it set an alert: Your users, your clients, your customers, they’re the best marketers for your business.
Another thing that I recommend for a good time saver is write out the copy before you post, So your caption. I see this all the time. With my influencer friends, They got that great shot, they’re ready to post that awesome photo on Instagram and then they’re Just hanging out stumped for words like Em Em Em. What do I say? I’m, like I don’t know, you’re putting me on the spot. So it’s something to Think and put time aside to put these captions, Maybe in a word doc, I often use my iPhone notes.
I see my influencer friends do the same So that way, they’re not rushed to come up with a witty creative caption. They have like this caption bank. If you will So you’re saying pretty much, you don’t have to do. Everything in the moment, You know you can plan it out Yeah and that actually brings up a good point. We’re talking a lot about captions and having a caption bank if you will, But also have a photo Bank, so if you come across some compelling photos that you think you might use one day to represent your brand or Your team or your business store those in a place where You can easily access them And just put them out there.
It’s going to save you so much time versus that day, you’re coming in to the kitchen, You haven’t posted on Instagram in a week and you’re like already rushing to get the orders out, Be like oh team, get Together, we’re going to do a behind the scenes photo, It’s like no. This is our busiest time of the day. People need to be served. Customer service is still important, So get a photo bank it’ll save you time in the end, All right, that’s a wrap comment below with your Favorite time-saving tip And make sure that you, like this article, subscribe to our blog and ring that bell to make sure you’re notified when our brand new content comes out.
This is The Journey
Hire a professional to manage your website! Find out how much it costs in the video below.
Social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram can help you stay in Touch with your customers about important news and Updates about your business, So here are five ways: social Media helps businesses send updates to customers Number one. Let your customers know that you are still here Due to COVID-19 restrictions. There’s uncertainty about What’s changed for businesses and customers alike, Use your social media platforms to let your customers Know that you’re here and thank them for continuing to support small businesses like yours And to help customers find you make sure all of your social media buttons are included on your Website and vice versa, Don’t make it harder for them to find you or the information you’re sharing Yeah.
Additionally, Make sure you’ve updated Google, My Business page with the most current information like your business hours phone number and don’t forget those Social media handles Oh actually Darlene. I have an example of a business that I Came across on Instagram, that’s located in Austin, Texas, I’d love to take you Through their Instagram page and show you how they’re Using social media to still stay connected, With their customers, One thing I wan na point: Out is on their Instagram, and I noticed that they have actually the information About their curbside pickup and their online ordering – And it’s right here in the bio, I love that that’s front and center, So any customer new or Loyal customer knows like okay, great, Like this is an option for us to still get what We love from this business And, in addition to that, they even have some Instagram highlights about their curbside Service and their catering and their posts are keeping Everyone up to date as well, which I really love.
But I wanted to point out when I was checking out Their Instagram stories that they have a lot of User-Generated content from their customers who have already started To order from them and take advantage of the specials, And one in particular that I really loved besides all the customer content here is, they also did a little re-share of a post about their curbside pickup and a behind-the-scenes of Them still putting together their delicious cakes in their bakery Number two promote your online store for customers who need to stay home Since we’re all practicing.
Social distancing we’re not able to visit Physical businesses right now so take this opportunity to Reach out to both your current and potential customers by Promoting your online store on social media Yeah build on your Brand’s social media presence with posts about featured products, positive customer reviews, And current sales to drive visitors over To your online store – And this can be done via Instagram stories, tweets, Snapchat or good old Facebook, Also, like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’ve added Links to your online store as part of your social media, Account’s bios and posts No use in posting about it.
If you don’t tell them where to go Yeah. Actually, I saw an example of that Does a great job of this Aviator Nation, A small business. That’s Promoting their online store through Instagram posts, like you see here So number three run special deals to retain customers during the shutdown Spread. The word about good deals to get your customers talking similar to what we saw. Aviator Nation doing And social media promotions Can bring in new customers to your online store, For example, a fun way is To encourage your customers to share photos of your Products and tag your business And you can offer a Chance to win a free item: online-only discounts, Or waive shipping fees – These are great additional Ways to get the word out on your online store, That’s something you can handle As customers like to like And share your posts, they spread awareness about your business.
Your customers’ posts are Visible to their friends, which can bring in more Business to your store, Even if you don’t have a Physical or digital product, you can still post about Deals on gift cards or upcoming virtual classes, So number four find ways: To engage with customers despite social distancing. If your business relies on foot traffic, we understand you might be struggling with ways to communicate.
With your customers And your customers, Well, they’re missing out on the face-to-face conversations. About daily specials and products that offer Solutions to their problems, This is where being active. On social media comes in, Engage with your customers by frequently posting on Your social media accounts at least a couple times each week so that your business stays present in your customers’ minds.
So try to respond to Comments and direct messages, so customers feel acknowledged, And now this is a good Practice all the time, but it’s especially important now that there’s limited in-person contact Number five have customers Follow you for updates. Your social media presence reminds current and prospective customers That you’re still open or if you need to temporarily Close your storefront you’ll be open again.
Unfortunately, some Businesses might need to close for a limited time. I know my hair salon is doing that And if you’re one of those businesses urge customers to follow You on social media, for important updates on your re-opening Post about any changes to your hours or any other differences in How you conduct your business And remind customers if You’re available for takeout delivery, curbside pickup or any other ways that You’re still operating Creating content around Your adjusted processes might be very interesting.
To your customers, I mean, I know, that’s helped me with one of my favorite Pizza joints that’s closed, So give them a peak behind the scenes as to how your business is. Running during this chaos, It could be the reason they continue following your journey long after COVID-19, Whether you’re sheltering in place following social, distancing or still figuring out your Business’s restrictions, it’s tough for everyone; Thankfully social Media offers the ability to do more than just market your business, but it’s a means to stay connected when in-person contact Just isn’t an option Exactly Remain active on your Business’s social media accounts to promote your online store and deliver updates to customers And, if nothing else, your social media presence Can bring people together in a time when it’s really needed Stay safe and stay healthy?
Who is helping with your digital business footprint?
On your website and force a bitcoin ransom, or something like that SEO spam, which infects your Website with spam keywords and pages, not a good look And then there’s also things Like Crypto-Miners adware, that kind of stuff, Nobody Wants that on their website, Nobody want’s that right. No, So it’s not just something! That affects computers. It affects websites too. Yes, websites are definitely At risk – and you want to make sure that you are taking steps – To monitor your environment and protect it and having A plan for response is also very important.
How big of an issue really is this? Well, there’s a stat out. There that says, there’s about 75 % chance that a business Is going to be attacked And right now they say there: Is about 40 % of traffic to your website? Is actually Bots and about half of that is malicious, bots Ugh. That is gross Yeah, it’s not good. No, so how do we go about? Identifying, if our site is infected with malware Well, what you can do, Is you can run a scan on your website? We have a tool called Sucuri site check.
You can also just monitor Your activity logs, if you have somebody who can do that, Maybe a developer – You also wan na make sure That you’re practicing good password management, making sure that you’re users are set with the permissions. That they should have So obviously the least Privileged principle, you wan na make sure that They only have admin for as long as they need it. And then you put them back down to the role level that they need Right on, So that site check is great.
Are there anything that Like super obvious that we should be checking Is it like on Google? Is there on our website? What does that? Look like Yeah? Definitely Well, One of the biggest things is to make sure you’ve updated your site, A lot of the problems. That we see are because of websites that are out of date and have security, vulnerabilities Updates, don’t always mean new features. Sometimes they mean that You’re, actually, you know patching a security flaw that Would let a hacker get in and then do whatever they Want with your website Right, So I was actually Talking to when I was just a customer service, rep at Godaddy I had a customer on the line.
She basically had an interactive book site for little children And she was using WordPress She hasn’t really touched in a while And little kids go on there to read books with their parents. She was unfortunately hacked And the thing that they did was redirect them to a not so great site for little kids. So little Timmy was seeing Some very very adult things So super scary. Is there anything else There was something About Google, you said Like the SCO: What is that Yeah SCO spam is another Really bad one where they inject pages and Keywords into your site, It can show up in your Google search when people are looking for your brand and you’ll see pharmaceuticals, gambling stuff Like discount fashion spam, it’s pretty nasty The malicious redirects That you’re talking about are also terrible cause.
They’re taking your traffic and sending them to like another website, that’s maybe unsavory And you know that’s not A good look for your brand: It causes a loss of trust, So it’s definitely not ideal. Having a website firewall in Place is a really great step to mitigate that It forces All traffic to go through the firewall first Before The visitors hit your website and it also has the Benefit of speeding it up by cashing and using our CDN network, So the firewall is kinda.
Like digging a moat around your house and keeping All the bad neighbors out The in-laws, Anyone that you Don’t want to come in Right, Yeah there you go. That’s One way to look at it: (, laughs, ), All right, Alycia, So website is hacked I’m running around. I’m Screaming that the world is on fire to me right, How do I get this out of here? Yeah? That’s a really Important point, and not a lot of people, have a Response plan in place, Obviously, if you have Somebody you can trust who can remove the malware And has those technical skills that’s a great way to go? There are some tools that can Remove things automatically, but that doesn’t always catch a lot of the hidden back doors.
An attacker will always Try to leave some way to get back in If you just You know go in and clean up the spam pages and keywords the next day, they’re back in And your sites reinfected and a lot of that is Automated on the hackers part, So if you wan na take steps, There are some guides out there. We have one on sucuri.Net on how to clean your hacked website scan for malicious files in the database, and then you can just remove The pieces of malware manually, But generally you probably Want to contact a professional and have them help you Out, It’s usually going to be a bit faster and, like I said they’ll make sure those back doors are gone and that you’ve been removed.
From any blacklists as well, That’s another really important. Point is you don’t want to get blacklisted by Google, Nobody likes that, Then you’re rankings are gone And an important thing to Remember is these hackers they don’t care who you Are They don’t care what your site is about? They just care about hacking. Your site and making money off of you, So it’s not Personal, They just send out their bots to anything that they can find They get in They’re in Automation is super scary, They’ll just write a little script go, get a coffee and Come back and they’ll have a list of like thousands of WordPress websites that they might wan na attack, It’s not ideal and then They can further automate the attacks from there And again small websites.
Are fine because they can use your server resources? They Can use it for SEO spam to try to get other sites To rank that they want They’ll, just use your Resources They can even use your site to attack bigger sites Wow Like what does that look like So like? Let’s say you Are a hacker and you have a bot net of like a Thousand infected websites: You can use the power of all Those servers to launch attacks on like a larger company, So a DDos attack right Yeah, A DDos attack, So, essentially with that you can think of it as like a highway And there’s you know: cars Getting into your website and the hacker is flooding That highway with a bunch of fake cars and now no Real people can actually get into your website And that’s no good And Then all that traffic’s down and it looks like you’re doing it – ( laughs, ), Yeah yeah, nobody Wants to come to a website and see that blank white Loading page, like you know, most visitors, will leave a Website, after like three seconds of waiting for it, To load and it can cause you know a lot of of Disruption for conversion rates and that kind of stuff, So Not ideal for your business, No, and I mean, if you think, About a hacked site right, If your website ever gets Hacked like, if you have a visitor that comes there, they’re likely never coming back.
They’ve lost the trust with your business, Because, if you can’t Protect your own site, how can you protect their information Totally, It’s doubly important if you’re an eCommerce site, Even if you have gateways for Payment that are not hosted on your site, Like through Paypal or Authorize.Net or anything You still have to be PCI Compliant and make sure that you’re protecting the details, Of the people on your site Now with the website and Security we’ve talked about like the malware removal.
And things like that, Should our customers and Our audience really have an SSL on the site, too. Is that important? Yes, absolutely SSL is Awesome and a lot of people equate SSL with security. What SSL does is it makes Sure that any communication between the visitors Browser and your website is encrypted, So it’s data in transit, that’s being protected. Ssl doesn’t actually help Your website from not getting attacked by a hacker But Ssl is still very important.
It’s a ranking signal for Google, So it can help your website get to the top Of Google, if you have SSL And it’s just rapidly Becoming kind of defacto that you have to have SSL On your website as a way to establish trust with your visitors, I love it And that Trust thing is important Cause if you don’t have An SSL on your site, top left of the browser, says “ Not Secure”, To an everyday person. They See “ Not Secure” they’re out, So after we’ve cleaned up the malware.
What should we do going? Forward to make sure that this doesn’t happen again, Or that we’re just protected For sure yeah, You don’t Wan na deal with reinfections Those really suck So number One most important thing is to change all of your passwords, So passwords for your server, your FTP, your hosting account any of Your user accounts, because any of those could have been Compromised during the attack And don’t use password1, Yes Make sure you’re Using good long, complex, unique passwords for everything, Because if they get one password and you’re reusing It everywhere, that’s just They’re in your Facebook Account now your bank account now they’re everywhere and It’s hard to get them out.
Password managers make it a Lot easier, I can’t recommend them enough. I think that’s Probably one of the top security tips that we hear at Sucuri. What’s a password manager, A password manager is a Tool in your browser that will allow you to store And even generate really good passwords, So when You go to a site as long as you’re logged into your Password manager, with your one master, password that by the Way has to be super strong cause, it stores all of your passwords, One password to rule them all Yeah, Which is awesome As Long as you’re logged into your password manager, it’ll Even auto fill the passwords for you, So it makes your Life a little easier And it takes the guess: Work of it out of having to create a password that You’re going to remember, but that’s also very strong, And difficult to hack Awesome What else should We look at to really prevent this from happening again.
Or just protecting ourselves, There’s a lot of different Post-Hack actions and we could go into security forever. It’s A never ending kind of thing, There’s no such thing as Zero risk You’re always some element of risk, But obviously you know making sure that you’re Changing default settings Like don’t use the username admin. You know you can do a lot. Of things through plug-ins and that kind of thing, If you’re using a CMS But there’s also a lot of Steps to take on the server Like changing file permissions And things like that Definitely recommend.
Looking For some guides out there for website security, We Have a couple on sucuri.Net that are freely available: But yeah Definitely taking just extra steps to Make sure that you’re thinking about security and setting those options Awesome Now backups I hear this all the time: Backups backups backups What’s your emergency plan, How often should should We be making backups and what does that look like? Well, it really depends on your site If you’re updating your site, Very frequently, you know it’s very important for You to be able to restore all of that recent content.
Then you wan na be making you know daily or even More frequent backups, You know for some sites, That are only updated, weekly or monthly. Maybe those are How frequent you want them! One important thing to think: About with getting hacked and using a backup is Sometimes the attackers will attack your site and wait. For months to actually launch the attacks, So They’ll, get in and they’ll sit there for a while And then your backups are actually infected, That’s scary! So if you restore a Backup, that’s still has a backdoor in it that Could be troublesome, But still nonetheless, it’s Great to have that safety net, Especially if you have Custom files on your site, If those get overwritten By a hacker – and you don’t have any way to restore the Custom files – it’s not like you, can just pull down The WordPress plugin files or the core files You wan na, make sure for sure That those are backed up All right.
Thank you. So much For coming on the show today and helping us out with How to find malware and what to do with it? It’s been a pleasure, Thank you so much for having me And hey make sure you, like This article and comment below on something that you Learned that you’re going to do with your website to Make sure you’re secure While you’re there Subscribe to this blog Ring that bell, so you Know when these episodes are coming out first, This is “ The Journey” We’ll see you next time,
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There are so many different ways you can go about that, but We’re actually going to cover how to actually optimize Your images for web and SEO here on The Journey All right fun facts with Nealey time. Did you know that images are The second most popular way to search after keywords.
No, but that makes sense I mean people buy with their eyes right Absolutely so leveraging The power of images with your content is crucial And that’s why, if you want to really make your business stand out and be noticed, you have to leverage the power Of images with your content, So there’s a lot that goes into it and I’m not going to do. All the work for you Come on. Please help a girl out All right I’ll at least help you I’ll.
Take you through your own website and show you at home a quick demo of how to optimize your Images for web and SEO Perfect: Let’s do it Cool compromise All right Alex. So, let’s Check out some of the images on your website, so where do You go and upload your images, So I normally go to where it says: media [, Nealey, ], Okay. So let’s Check out some of the content that you’ve uploaded All right, so all burgers, I dig it [ Alex ], Nothing wrong with that.
So let’s check out one of these images Cool, so I’m noticing some good things and noticing some not so good things. Let’s dive into this little bit: Okay, Alright! So we’ll start with a good Start with the positive right. So I do see here you have Some of what’s called “ Alternative Text.” Now, when Google or other Search engines crawl, your site, it can’t actually see This delicious burger, All it sees is that it says “ image”.
It doesn’t know what to do with that. That’s where that Alternative text comes in so this one, you put awesome Burgers, which is good, it’s descriptive, shows Exactly what it is, But I don’t see you have it On any of your other images, So you definitely want to Write some type of description of what that is, that way, it Gets indexed by search engines because, like we said before, it is the second most Popular way to search Okay, so every image gets Its own alternative text Yeah, and you really Want to describe it too, The more descriptive the better.
This also helps for Visually impaired people that are on your site, That have screen readers So if they’re on your site, It’ll have delicious burger it’ll. Have this or it’ll have that versus just going and saying Image is not very helpful. You got to keep the site successful to Moving on to title Your titles aren’t bad I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen The ones that are like screenshot dash this date dash blah again, that’s not really helpful.
You want to be as descriptive as possible. [ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ], So this one says Beef dash blur dash bread and then some numbers. How do I make it better? So we can probably just Get rid of the numbers Again, it has to be Descriptive of what the image is all about, so beef dash blur Dash bread that one’s fine You want to have those dashes in there,’cause that’s! What’s going to Show up in the address bar [ Alex ], Okay, It’s also something that Google kind of takes a look at as well, And then WordPress saves in real time.
So as soon as I clicked Off of that, it saves So you kind of have the same trend here. Blur dash buns dash burger those numbers just get rid of the numbers All right. The next thing, You really want to look at are the captions of the image themselves. The captions are one of the Most read parts of a website so having something there again, As descriptive as possible, Now, if you got this image elsewhere, usually caption has the source Of where you got that image, These are your photos and Since you’re Alex eats food, so it’s yours there and Then description same thing As descriptive as possible: The more descriptive, the more keywords you can Add to your website’s images, the better you are going! To be in search engines, [ Alex ].
So what would be a Good example for a caption here, literally just really describe it Juicy delicious burger. I can’t type today I really can’t type today With tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, And Dijon mustard sure, So it’s a pretty solid caption and I really cannot type today, Let’s add burger in there too, Oh yeah, maybe I guess Burger there. We go Nope, not there. Let’s put it right here, I’m struggling today, I’m just hungry.
It’s about that time. [ Alex ], ( laughs, ), A mustard burger Juicy, delicious mustard, all right All right now with this, it’s not really optimizing it for SEO. But it is optimizing it for your website itself. Now what you don’t want, To do is have an image: that’s like 5000, with by 5000 height, It’s way too large. My screen, Is definitely not that big? You want to keep them condensed If they are pretty big.
You Can resize them on a computer and re upload them? You can actually resize Directly in WordPress, by going to edit image, And then right over here, there’s new dimension. You Can literally just type say I want this to be 800 width, it will automatically Constrain it down to by 533 Click scale and then It’ll shrink my image, so it’s not as large. You also use the plugin WP Smush, smush And it’ll.
Basically do What exactly what that is it’s going to smush your Images so they’re not as large, because also the faster Your website is the better search results. You’ll come up with whether it’s text based search results or image, search results, Good to know perfect. Well, thanks, so much Nealey. Hopefully my great burger pictures will get seen a lot more now, Yeah Be sure to let us know. In the comments below what kind of articles you Want to see in the future Yeah and while you’re there make sure you smash that Like button as always Subscribe to, the blog and You can get this content first.
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