Archive | February, 2012

Moving from Thesis to Genesis

thesis to genesis wordpressThere was a lot of response on the prior article on how to choose your best wordpress theme so thank you everyone for commenting and engaging on the conversation.

If you want the quick answer on why I moved from Thesis to Genesis, is because I want to learn how the framework works in order to code my own themes and for my clients as well.

Nothing else.

I still love Thesis and I intend to keep using both of the frameworks as I need it but I’ll be using Genesis on the Marketing With Sergio blog.

If you want the long post version, then keep on reading…

Thesis Framework (DIY Themes)

I paid for the Thesis developer’s license ($164) but they also offer a single site license for $87 (with options to upgrade to developer’s for $77).

The developer’s license means that you can install Thesis on as many sites as you want as long as they are yours and you can also buy licenses for clients at a discounted fee.

Thesis does not offers skins (child themes) themselves but there are many third party companies that develop custom child themes for Thesis.

I have seen free skins for Thesis on the web but I never used any of those so I don’t know how good or bad they are.

In my own experiences with Thesis, I believe the framework is fast loading, has amazing SEO properties and looks really neat outside the box.  Continue Reading →

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How To Choose Your Best WordPress Theme

wordpress theme basicsI have been getting this question asked a lot lately from fellow marketers, bloggers and even friends.

They all have one thing in common and that is, they all are interested in creating their first website on the Internet.

The easiest way to do this is using wordpress and this leads us to the following…

Question:
What is the best wordpress theme?

Answer:
It depends on what you want it for.

I can’t just recommend a one size fits all kind of theme because there is no such thing as the perfect theme.

Every wordpress theme is built around solving something. It can be fast loading times, great SEO capabilities, flexible customization, ease of modification, etc.

1. Identify Your Project’s Core Requirements

First things, first… Write down everything you need focusing on one single site only (one project).  Continue Reading →

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Major Blog Revamp

Blog RevampOkay guys, I’m going to shake things a little bit around here…

I had a big article to be published today but I decided to do something else instead.

If you see the header image (above) you can read it says:

Learning Internet Marketing Online

While I AM learning Internet Marketing and I’m also willing to teach you whatever I know that might be helpful for you, I don’t want to focus on the little things that you can find in every other blog.

I think that would be boring and dull if you ask me and that’s definitely not what I’m aiming for.

Now, I’m currently enrolled in a number of different marketing trainings and these include leaders like:

  • John Thornhill
  • Dave Nicholson
  • Marc Milburn
  • Omar Martin
  • Corbett Barr
  • Kris Mainieri
  • Liz Tomey
  • Jeff Dedrick
  • Cody McKibben

I’m not “name dropping” here to soft sell you into their trainings or anything like that.  Continue Reading →

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Basic Video Marketing Production

Video Marketing Camera

Okay today is Friday (did I just sound like Rebecca Black? LOL I certainly hope not!)

And while I know that most of you are already shutting your computers off and are most likely going to check this update until tomorrow…

I still know I promised you that I would be publishing something new today so I’m just going to do that, keep this article very short, sweet and straight to the point.

This is about Video Marketing.

Ever heard the phrase “an image is worth a thousand words”?

Well a video is worth even more than a thousand words and also…

  • Has more weight on the search engines
  • Captures your viewer’s attention quicker
  • Gives that feeling of “knowing you” in a very short time
  • Shows your own unique voice to your audience
  • Allows you to be instantly branded as an authority (if done correctly)
  • And many more benefits but let’s just stick with these for now

Many people are doing videos these days.

Almost everyone knows how to do a basic video with Screenflow or Camtasia, add some titles, maybe even throw in some music as intro/outro and voilá, you are doing great videos already!

So I spent some time studying how the pro’s do it and do you want to know why they can charge a lot for their products?

It is just not the content… They actually say the same things everyone else says!  Continue Reading →

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Achieving Blog Commenting Stardom

Commenting RockstarOk I want to thank everyone who commented on the last post about my Social Media Blackout experiment.

It was really insightful to learn how you guys deal with productivity yourselves and how much stuff are you able to get done in just a few hours as long as you have the proper mindset and take massive action.

As a side note for this new update, I know I haven’t published anything here in the past two weeks.

Even if I tried to let you know everything I’ve done, you would probably end up complaining about the length of the article so I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’m going to write some brief articles for the most relevant things that happened and we’ll take it from there in the upcoming days so let’s get this party started with blog commenting.

Blog Commenting

How blog commenting works, is you normally visit a site on a particular topic, read the article and if you have anything to say (hopefully something constructive at least) you’d leave a comment with a link back to your blog (assuming you do have a blog).

This establishes a communication channel between writer and reader and if you write an interesting comment, you’d normally expect an answer.

If the blog owner is smart enough, the blog will have a plugin to let you know that your comment has a reply so you can go back and check it out (and more visits to your site).  Continue Reading →

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6 Hours Self-Imposed Social Media Blackout

Social Media BlackoutI just decided to make this little experiment today.

It consisted on turning off every social platform for six hours, starting at 7:00am up to 1:00pm

This included NOT checking twitter, facebook, e-mail or Skype, AT ALL and I also had my cellphone on
vibration mode.

The only thing I decided to digest as content was Gideon Shalwick’s video on How To Become Rich and Famous on YouTube (it’s more than one hour long btw)

I was passively listening to that while focusing on doing some other things since I didn’t want to lose one
whole hour, particularly not from this experiment.

So this is how it went, I woke up at 5:50am and then…

6:00am – 7:00am

  • Checked personal e-mails and then closed my e-mail inbox for good
  • Replied to comments on blog
  • Checked stats for yesterday’s visitors on Clicky

7:00am – 8:00am

  • Had breakfast
  • Logged in to a few Traffic Exchanges while I was still trying to wake myself up
  • Started playing with some text fonts on Adobe Fireworks
  • Started listening to Gideon Shalwick’s How To Become Rich and Famous on YouTube video
  • Closed all the browser tabs that I didn’t consider important  Continue Reading →
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