If you are wondering about the success of your social media efforts on Pinterest, you will be happy to know that this month Pinterest introduced analytics.  With this new analytics tool, you will be able to monitor how users interact with pins that originate from your website.    Pretty cool!

So just what will these analytics tell you?

With the analytics, you will be able to see how many people pinned or repinned images from your site to their boards.    You will learn how many images from your site are pinned or repinned daily and how many people actually pinned or repinned your images.

You will also be able to see the exposure of your pinned images both in terms of impressions and reach.  Impressions will show you how many times your image has appeared on the main Pinterest Feed and reach will show you the daily average number of people who saw your images.

The analytics will also show you how much web traffic your site has gained directly from Pinterest.  Clicks will show you the daily number of clicks to your website and visitors will show you the number of people who visited your site from Pinterest.

Analytics will also show you your most repined images, the most clicked images and the most recent pins.  This information will give you a visual overview showing which of your pins are most popular.

How to Access Pinterest Analytics

In order to access analytics you need a business Pinterest account or you must have a website listed in your profile.

The first thing you will need to do, is convert your Pinterest account to the new look.   Hover over the profile menu and click Switch to the New Look.

Secondly, if you haven’t already done, so verify your website.  If you see your website in your profile with a check mark beside it you are already verified. If you need to verify your website, edit your profile and you will see a verify button next to your website address.  Click the button and follow the instructions. (Basically you will need to download a file and upload it to your website.)

Once you have verified your website you can access analytics.  Just hover over the profile menu and select analytics.

Take your time and review your Pinterest activity!

If you have questions about your Pinterest analytics, share them.

The post Pinterest Introduces Web Analytics appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

In this article, I am going to identify goals you should set for your blog and then provide some ideas on how to accomplish these goals.

Setting Goals for an Engaging blog

It is important to set expectations on how you want your site visitors to interact with your blog.

Goal # 1 – You want to receive frequent and relevant comments on your blog posts

• Are you receiving comments on your blog posts?
• Are you staying up to date on approving comments?
• Do you respond to comments posted to your blog?

If visitors are commenting on your blog it means that they are finding your blog posts interesting and worthy of a dialogue.  It is important to approve comments and to respond to questions in a timely manner.

Goal #2 – You want people to link to and share your content

Ideally, you want your visitors to share your content on Facebook. Twitter, Pinterest and other social media networks.

Goal #3 – You want visitors to subscribe to your feed or revisit your blog regularly

When you are providing valuable and frequent content your site visitors will want to subscribe to your RSS Feed or will revisit your blog.

Goal #4 – You want to build ongoing relationships with potential clients/customers.

The ultimate goal for your blog is to build a relationship with the website visitor.  If you have done a good job using your blog to position your business as an expert in the field, your visitors will transition from a visitor into prospect.  This will happen as the visitor signs up for your mailing list or contacts you for more information on your products or services.

Achieving Your Goal for a More Engaging Blog

Here are 10 tips for increasing visitor interaction on your blog:

1. Make it easy to comment – Don’t be afraid to ask your visitors to leave comments and make it easy for them to do so.  Don’t make your site visitors jump through hoops or turn over their first born before they can leave a comment.  Use a good spam filter like Akismet to help combat your spam and make it easy for visitors to leave a comment.
2. Make it easy to share – Make it super easy for your visitors to share your blog content.  Add share buttons for the popular social media networks, so your visitors just have to click a button.
3. Ask questions- Give your visitors a reason to respond by asking questions.
4. Use polls – Add a poll to your blog post so you can collect your visitors opinions on a particular topic.
5. Use giveaways or contests – Encourage visitors to share your content with a giveaway.  Ask your visitor to comment or share to enter to win. For example:  Use Twitter Hashtag #mybathtimefavorite to let us know, in 140 characters or less, which of our bubble bath scents is your favorite and be entered to win a $50 prize pack!
6. Be funny – Humor is a great way to engage visitors.  People who laugh and enjoy your content will want to return to read more. Share clever comics or memes that relate to your business.
7. Tell stories – Make your blog posts relatable by sharing stories that your visitors can identify with.
8. Use a catchy headline – Make sure your blog gets read by using a catchy or clever headline to attract attentions.
9. Be on topic and current – Visitors don’t want to read about something 3 years after it was relevant. Make sure your content is of interest.
10. Make the blog post easy to read - Make sure your blog post is easy to read by using short paragraphs and bulleted lists.  Include quality pictures and graphics to break up long sections of text.

Do you have other ideas on how to make your blog more engaging?  Share them with me!

The post 10 Tips for Making Your Blog More Engaging appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

You could just link to the PDF and let your site visitors view it with their PDF viewer or you could embed it right in your WordPress website so  the visitors can view it right on your site just like the major retailers do with their weekly flyers.

There is a really cool plugin you can add to your WordPress site that lets you do just that!

Google Doc Embedder is a WordPress plug-in that lets you embed a PDF (and other file types) into your web site using the Google Docs Viewer.

Supported files types include:

• Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
• Microsoft Word (DOC/DOCX*)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT/PPTX*)
• Microsoft Excel (XLS/XLSX*)
• TIFF Images (TIF, TIFF)
• Apple Pages (PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG**)
• PostScript (EPS/PS)
• OpenType/TrueType Fonts (OTF/TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (XPS)
• Archive Files (ZIP/RAR)

The cool thing is, this plugin does not use flash or any other Adobe browser plug-ins required and it works on mobile devices.

Unlike other services like Scribd, the files do not need to be uploaded to any service; the files simply need to be uploaded to your website or anywhere else on the internet.

This plugin also gives you the ability to offer your site visitors the ability to download the files by adding an (optional) download link to the document.

Here is an example of an embedded document.  Pretty neat!

Download (PDF, 52KB)

Ready to add this to your site?  You can download the plugin here or search the WordPress Repository for Google Doc Embedder.

Have ideas on other ways to use this plugin? Share them below.

The post Add a Catalog or Flyer to your WordPress Site appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

1.  Think of a phrase or saying that is easy for you to remember. As an example, let’s use “I Like Bacon”. Take the first letter of each word ILB. Then add a couple of numbers that are easy for you to remember, let’s use 25. Next, add some characters like *#. Finally, add a small letter or two.

ILB*#25at

Now, that’s a good password! Take these ideas in any order you choose and have fun creating a powerful password.

2.  Another idea is to take two words like Black Dress. Insert numbers, characters and small case letters to create your own unique password. Example: *Black#Dress!

3.  If you Google “Password Generators” there are several tools that will create passwords for you. These won’t be as easy to remember as in steps 1 & 2. However, they do produce strong, secure passwords.

In some cases you may be limited to 8 or 10 characters for a password. Once you have a good technique for developing great passwords you will never draw a blank again.

It’s really tempting to use the same password for all of your accounts. I recommend using passwords that are completely different for your bank accounts and site access. Everyone who has a website should have their site access. If you don’t have that – ask your web person to provide that to you. Your bank account and website is a prime target for hackers. Keep them at bay with secure, strong passwords.

Choose a date every year and change all your passwords on that date. A date you will remember. A birthday, anniversary, holiday or January 1^st.

Do you have a good strategy for creating passwords? Post a comment and we will all learn something from your ideas.

The post 3 Steps for Creating Strong Passwords appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

Do you know what social media platforms will best reach your customers?

How often do you need to make posts?

Where do I come up with new content ideas?

If social media is starting to feel like social mania, here are some tips that will help you develop a social media plan that will have your business thriving.

Be in it for the Long Haul

It is important to understand that the benefits of social media are not instantaneous and it often takes time and a lot of hard work before you reap the rewards. You need to be prepared to make a commitment to your strategy and give it a chance (several months to a year) to blossom.   Of course there are indicators that you are making progress, for example,  increased engagement, or a growing following etc.

Make a Schedule

You need to create a comprehensive social media schedule and stick to it.   Haphazard posting will not keep your fans interested and certainly won’t help build your fan base.  In fact, most social media failure is a result of infrequent interaction.   Plan some social media posts in advance and use tools like Hootsuite to schedule them, but don’t forget to be spontaneous and share your thoughts as you have them.  Did some new products arrive? Share some pictures.  Did a customer compliment your staff? Share the story.  Did something funny just happen? Share it!

Know your Target Audience

There are many social media platforms to choose from and it is important that you know what social media networks your customers are using.   Look for your customers or products on popular networks to help identify where you already have an audience or presence.  It is completely okay to not have a presence on every social media site. Let’s face it most small businesses don’t have a social media army on staff and trying to manage too many networks is a recipe for disaster. It is always better to focus on one or two networks and do them well, than it is to try to do them all and end up doing them poorly.

Create Engaging Conversations

The information you are sharing will be critical to your success.    Don’t be limited by textual information, share pictures, infographics, videos and more.  It is fun to create teaser content to encourage followers to interact with you. “Guess who dropped by our office today?”  or “Facebook Fans, check back tomorrow for a sneak peek  product launch of our new A5632 Widget!”   Remember social media is all about starting a conversation and engaging your customer. Be sure to respond to customer comments and questions.  Successful social media marketing is a two way street.  If you have trouble coming up with fresh new social media content, don’t be afraid to get help.

Don’t let social media marketing get you feeling overwhelmed.  Use the tips above to develop a successful social media strategy for your small business.

Do you have other suggestions on how to develop a social media strategy? Share them below.

The post Avoiding Social Media Mania appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

A visitor sitemap is typically an orderly index of all your pages and is readable by the general public.  An XML sitemap is coded up using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and shares additional information with the search engine and is hidden from the general public.

What additional information does the XML Sitemap share?

An XML sitemap shares important information about each page (url) on your site:

• the date of the last update to the page
• how frequently the content of the page changes
• how important the page is in comparison to other pages.

Are there SEO benefits to adding an XML Sitemap to my site?

Absolutely! There are a few SEO benefits to adding an XML Sitemap to your website:

• Your sitemap can list all the pages on your site.  This is particularly useful on very large sites or sites with complex navigation.
• You can submit priority information about the pages on your site so the most important pages are more likely to be indexed.
• You can let search engines know how often the content changes and when the content changes so the search engines can crawl your site in a more efficient way.

Adding an XML Sitemap to your WordPress site.

There are several plugins you can use to add an XML sitemap to your site. These are my favourite two:

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin automatically generates and updates your XML sitemap when you make changes to your site.  It also provides the ability to manually add non WordPress pages to your sitemap.  Finally, this plugin also notifies the major search engines when you have added new content to your site.

Yoast SEO Plugin – If you are already using the Yoast SEO Plugin you already have the ability to add an XML sitemap to your site.  Just enable it in the dashboard!  This plugin also notifies the major search engines when you update your site.

Creating an XML Sitemap for non-WordPress sites.

You can still have an XML sitemap on a non-WordPress site but unless you install automated XML software it means more work for you.  To set up an XML sitemap manually, you can use an XML sitemap generator like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com which will create the XML file for you.  The only thing is you will need to recreate the file every time you update or add to your website. Bummer!

Take things one step further with Webmaster Tools

If you use Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster tools to monitor your site, you should submit your XML sitemap to them.  These are great tools to help monitor and assess the health of your site.

An XML sitemap is simply one SEO tool and is not a guarantee that any or all your pages will be indexed based only on your sitemap.  Google suggests that XML sitemaps are simply a hint for the search engines so it is not a replacement for a comprehensive SEO strategy. It is simply one more tool in your tool box!

The post Adding an XML Sitemap to your Website appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

His website was using over 80% of the servers resources and it took the web host almost 24 hours to restore his site.

Ouch!  There are some steps you can take to help prevent brute force attacks.

First of all, what are brute force attacks?

Brute force attacks occur when a hacker tries to access your administration dashboard by guessing your user and password.  The hackers use software to continually try combinations until they find success.   In the case of my client, this meant so much drain on server resources the web host was alerted and shut it down.   The good news is the client didn’t have a breach in security but the bad news is his site was down for 24 hours.

Okay, so how do you prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site?

Make sure you are not using Admin as your website login.

Many WordPress installations use Admin ad the default login and hackers know this.  Change your login to something more difficult. (Learn how do change your username here)

Use a strong password. 

Make it difficult for hackers to guess your password.  Here are some ideas on how to create a strong password. You should also change your password every 60-90 days.

Install a plugin that helps secure your login. 

There are several plugins that you can choose from.  Here are some of the more popular ones.

More Secure Login – add an additional field to your login.   You will print an access card with a code key.  When you are logging in you will be prompted for a key. Look it up on your access card and enter the correct code.   You and anyone else who logs in to WordPress will always need your access card when you want to login.

Login Security Solution – increase your password security and block brute force and dictionary attacks.  This plugin enforces strong password selection and monitors and blocks abnormal login attempts.

Limit Login Attempts  –  limit the number of login attempts and lock out users after too many failed attempts.

Limit your wp-admin access by I.P. address.

One great way to prevent attacks is to limit access to the login to your I.P. address.  Unfortunately, this is difficult for many WordPress owners to do.  It won’t work well if multiple users need to access WordPress or if you do not have a static I.P. address.

It is really important to take these extra security precautions to not only prevent hackers from gaining access to your website, but to help prevent downtime to your website.

If you have other ideas on how to secure your WordPress website, share them with me.

The post Preventing Brute Force Attacks appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

In this article I am going to examine a couple important search engine results and what they mean for your website.

Visits  vs. Unique Visitors

Visits (or sessions) is the number of times people have visited your site.  Unique visitors are the number of people that have visited your site.

An individual may visit your site 5 times in a month and all 5 of those sessions will be counted in your Visits total.  However, that same individual will only be counted once towards your unique visitor total.

Sometimes I find that site owners focus too much on the number of visits or unique visitors to their site and judge their success on the how high this number is.    A high amount of traffic doesn’t necessarily mean a successful website.

You could have 1 million visitors but they are invisible unless they are talking action by buying from you, or contacting you for your services.

Of course, you  want more traffic but ideally you want targeted traffic that is interested in your products or services.   Once of the best indicators of the type of traffic you are getting is the bounce rate.

 What is Bounce Rate?

Very simply, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that only view a single-page  (or single event trigger) during their session.     Some examples of a “bounce” are:

1. A visitor lands on your homepage, looks it over and leaves your site without taking any further action.
2. A visitor arrives on a page of your site from a link in social media or from a friend.   They read that page and then leave the site without taking any further action.
3. A Customer arrives on your site, finds your telephone number and then calls you.

As a website owner you should be looking for a low bounce rate.  Of course not all bounces are bad (for example #3 above) but you should have a pretty good idea if your phone has been ringing off the hook! In most cases, a high bounce rate is a very good indicator that it is time to make some changes on your site as you need to find a way to get your web visitors engaging with your or site content more.

What Causes a High Bounce Rate?

Here are a few reasons websites experience a high bounce rate:

1. Search phrases for the site are not really relevant to the actual site – In this case site visitors arrive at your site expecting one type of content and find something different, so they leave.
2. Layout & Navigation – your website layout or navigation may be distracting or confusing.   Site visitors may not be able to find what they are looking for, so they leave.
3. No Call to action – Your website doesn’t seem to serve a purpose.  Web visitors don’t take further action because you haven’t asked them to!  What action do you want visitors to do on your site?  Shop, subscribe, contact you…
4. Too many options –Your website is too overwhelming and your visitors don’t know where to begin.

How to Improve a High Bounce Rate?

• Related content – Increase the number of internal links on your site by linking to other related content.
• Redesign your homepage to make it more effective with a clear call to action
• Add more navigation in your sidebar to popular content.
• Improve your content
• Create targeted landing pages for web advertisements.   If your visitors are landing on your homepage when they clicked on your Pay Per Click advertisement for Contact Lenses, they are likely to bounce.   Take them directly to your information on contact lenses.

Do you have other suggestions on how to improve your bounce rate?  Share them with me! 

The post Understanding Some Important Google Analytic Results appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the PowerPoint or PDF was embedded right in your site as a slideshow?  It can! Keep reading to find out how.

SlideShare is a service that hosts PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or Open Office presentations. The presentations can then be viewed on the SlideShare website using your computer or mobile device or the presentation can be embedded directly into your own website.

Think of SlideShare as the YouTube for slideshows. SlideShare is free to use but does offer paid/premium membership levels as well.

Here is a SlideShare presentation on how to upload to SlideShare!

How to embed a Slideshare presentation on your WordPress blog

Login in to SlideShare and navigate to My Uploads.

Select the presentation you want to share by clicking on the thumbnail image

At the top of the presentation click on the <>Embed link.

Then Click the Customize Button.

These additional settings give you the opportunity to:

• Block related content from showing at the end of the presentation.
• Select what slide you want to start the presentation at.
• Select the dimensions of the player

Under the settings you will see the Shortcode for WordPress Blogs.

Copy this code and paste it into your page or post where you want the player to appear.

Publish or Save the page/post and you are all set!

(If you don’t have a WordPress blog you can embed the slideshow on your site using the iframe code at the top of the box.)

What kind of documents and presentations will you want to share using SlideShare?  Share your ideas in the comments below.

The post Sharing PowerPoint Presentations as Slideshows appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.

There are three basic ways you can create a mobile  version of your website – Use wordpress plguins,  create a custom mobile theme or convert your website to a responsive theme.  I have explained each of these options below.

WordPress Plugins

There are many WordPress plugins that will give your site visitors a great mobile experience:

WPTouch – a mobile plugin that transforms your site for mobile users.  It gives the visitor the ability to toggle between your mobile site and your regular site.   There is a PRO (paid) version of this plugin.

Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress – Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to mobilize your blog in minutes.

Pros:  Inexpensive or Free, Can be very easy to implement on existing WordPress sites
Cons: Doesn’t always work well with websites that are highly customized.

A Custom Mobile Theme

You can develop a custom WordPress Theme for mobile devices.  You would have two themes for your site – your regular site theme and a mobile theme.  When someone visits your site, your site will check what technology is being used and then display the appropriate theme.  This option requires a plugin like Any Mobile Theme Switcher which will let you designate your mobile theme and adds the code necessary for your site to “switch” between the two themes.

Pros:  Completely customized, you have total control
Cons: Price – you need to have a custom theme developed.

Responsive Theme

A Responsive Theme is a flexible foundation with fluid grid that basically collapses down to fit the width of mobile or tablets.   In the simplest terms – think of the site layout as a bunch of boxes perhaps 3 wide when viewed on a computer screen.  As the screen size/resolution decreases the boxes shift so they are sitting on top of each other.

Pros: This is a nice approach as it is an all in one solution and doesn’t rely on plugins or a second theme.  Cons: Because of the way the site architecture needs to be built a responsive theme may mean compromising on your site layout.

If you are wondering what kind of technology is being used to access your website you can check your Google Analytics. (Go to Audience > Mobile > Devices).  Your analytics will show you exactly what devices are being used.  Pretty cool!

Are you ready to go mobile? Do you have other ideas on how to make your website mobile?  Share them in the comments below.

The post Making a Mobile Friendly WordPress Website appeared first on tanyabeaudoin.com.