If you missed this ReadyTalk webinar the other day, you can catch a recorded version here.   We had special guest Don Campbell, one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on the WordPress platform and President of Expand2Web. In short, if you have no money, no resources, and no technical skills– no problem! You can get an easy to use site for free– just pay a few bucks a month to have it hosted somewhere. Let’s go over some of the key takeaways from the webinar, plus answer a few common questions we received:

• Isn’t WordPress just blogging software? While that’s what it’s most commonly used for, WordPress can be your non-profit community, a video gallery, a shopping cart, a news publication, or anything in-between. There are modules called plug-ins that you can add to your site to perform nearly any function you can think of.  With a community of tens of thousands of developers and millions of sites on WordPress, it’s likely you’ll find what you need.  There are also thousands of free themes, which are pre-made templates– some you can pay for, too.
• How is this free? The open source software movement is about software that is designed by a community versus a corporation. This volunteer effort has built Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and most of the technology that powers the Internet and the largest sites on the Internet.  While you don’t have a support contact, you can ask questions in the forums and get help from thousands of others.  Odds are that you’ll not need to do this, since you’ll probably be able to get what you want without needing a programmer.
• Is it safe? Like any software, there are always security concerns.  Our advice is to keep your version up-to-date, so that you have the latest security patches.  Do this and you’re unlikely to have any issues.  Your bigger concern will likely be spammers who will leave fake comments on your site– a nuisance, but one you can filter out, just like via your spam guard in your email.
• But I’m not technical. No worries– if you can use a web-based email tool, you can update your website without a hassle. This software is designed for ordinary people to use.  But if you are a programmer or know one, there certainly are things that you can tweak.
• What’s the catch of free WordPress versus a site that would cost me $100k? That site which costs you $100k probably has time built in for design labor, project management, custom engineering to integrate different databases, and so forth.  Thus, if you don’t have a lot of money, hunt for one of thousands of free themes, so that you can either get by with no labor cost or can hire someone for $100 to customize something you already like that is close. A proprietary expensive platform is not “better” or safer– what you’re paying for is labor.
• What’s the offer of the free theme I’ve heard about? BlitzLocal is offering a free WordPress theme designed specifically for non-profits, as a courtesy to attendees of the ReadyTalk Non-Profit Webinar series.  There is no catch.  The theme is free– but you will need to find a hosting company for between $5 and $20 a month.  And if you want customization, you will have to pay someone to do it, whether BlitzLocal, a friend, or a freelancer on a job board.

Stay tuned for the next two webinars in the Non-Profit Series on Google Grants (featuring representatives from Google and NTEN) and then on Facebook (with special guest Jon Fougner of Facebook).

For more information on WordPress for your non-profit, please visit wordpress.org or expand2web.com.  If you have questions, feel free to reach out to don@expand2web.com or dennis@blitzlocal.com

About the author: Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal, an ad agency specializing in local online marketing and Google Grants management.

Web conferencing services have expanded their uses beyond simple collaboration. Many organizations are spending a great deal of money on conducting educational webinars, training videos and sales demonstrations. These conferences are often of high production value and with a hired speaker. It only makes sense to record this conference and re-purpose it for later.

If you are going to put all that money into creating a webinar, you should also think about how you are going to distribute the content and archive it after it is made. The demand for tools that allow you to easily record, publish and distribute conferencing recordings is increasing, as organizations do more produced webinars.

We have always led the industry in content distribution and recording. With our integrated audio and web platform for one-click recording and our industry first podcast ability and hosted RSS feed. We have supplied these things to our customers at no extra charge.

With Conference Center 4, we have re-done the ReadyTalk Media Player and have added several nice new features that add to the production value of your conference recordings.

Check out this short video of the ReadyTalk Media Player.

1. We have re-skinned the player and gave it an up-to-date look with embedded controls, a new thumbnail view and thumbnail previews. It also scales to fit in your browser to avoid scroll bars and clipping
2. You are now also able to embed your recordings into your website or social media site of your choice. This meets your audiences viewing expectations (think YouTube) and also allows viewers to stay on your site while they watch your content. No more annoying pop-ups to watch recordings

Business to business selling is a much different animal than business to consumer. Consumers are interested in what is hip, trendy and cool. Businesses are into what works, saves money and is well supported. Additionally, most business go through a much more complicated buying process than your typical consumer. For the B2B marketer, social media is just one tactic in a portfolio of techniques that we use to generate awareness, drive leads and nurture relationships. whereas B2C is mostly about exposure, branding and impressions.

Let’s use my industry as an example. The web conferencing industry has been through some consolidation recently. Audio conferencing has become a commodity and most web conferencing platforms tout the same features and functionality. Within this industry, your mainstream social media tools will not work as effectively. Link love rewards the trendy and controversial and viral campaigns the same. This does not mean that social media does not have a role to play in B2B marketing. Quite the contrary, social media is important for driving traffic, building though leadership and creating word of mouth.

In the next couple of blogs, I am going to talk about some of the social media tools that B2B people have at their disposal. I wanted to start out by linking to one of my favorite B2B blogs.

There is a plethora of ways to reach prospective customers, but how do you know which one is the most effective? It is easy to talk about a campaign or an idea, but executing it and determining if it was effective is an entirely different ballgame. Each campaign that a company decides to implement will most likely have a different means of tracking. Email campaigns can track opens, clicks, and forwards; landing pages will have a tag; trade show promotions and direct mail pieces can include a promo code; and press release vendors have their own tracking software in place.

Pay-per-click providers such as Google have developed easy-to-use analytic tools to assist organizations in determining the most effective keywords and ads being used. The tools have come so far to provide suggestions on ways to improve performance. For ReadyTalk, the keyword phrase ‘web and audio conferencing’ rings in around $30+. That is pretty tough to justify when all that does is send someone to your website. There are no guarantees that you will retrieve that person’s name. If your server is using a tracking tool, such as Awstats or Webalizer, with the right data analysis you can find out what company they accessed your site from, how long visitors are on staying on your site, and what pages are accessed the most and least. This user activity can be used to define campaigns around company demographics and during peak viewing times.

Before launching a campaign, start with the end in mind. Understand what will determine the campaign to be a success and how it will be measured. Just saying “it was good” does not constitute success. Put it on paper with numbers attached to it and then decide if “it was good.”

Technorati Tags: lead generation, marketing, tracking, data analysis, conferencing, meetings, teleconferencing

Blue Lithium Labs did a research study comparing the conversion rates, the CTR and CPC of traditional media sites to those of user generated content sites like YouTube and MySpace. The report can be found here and is free to download.

The highlights of the study were:

• Ads on non-2.0 sites (classic editorial content sites) convert 31% better than ads run against user-generated content (see Figure).

• Ads on top-brand non-2.0 sites (defined as comScore’s top 250) convert 175% better than user-generated content sites.
• However, 2.0 media is so *cheap* (as of now anyway) that it’s still worth testing.

While the study is a cautionary tale about investing in advertising on Web 2.0 sites, I think it misses the critical point of Web 2.0. The study measures traditional advertising traffic on sites that are geared toward non-traditional users. Web 2.0 is about the user. Advertising is about the company. Therefore, it makes sense that people that are browsing Web 2.0 sites are not interested in the traditional advertising medium.

The strength of Web 2.0 lies within creating relationships, telling a story and two way communication. Using traditional advertising buys on Web 2.0 sites is almost like trying to get a square peg to fit in a round hole.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, web conferencing, SEO, Blue Lithium