Software Prices

Software Prices

Social Media Brand Strategy: Tips for a Consistent Presence

Posted on by Zafer
social media brand strategy

The Internet and digital marketing is continuing to explode and continues to be a leader when it comes to generating and analyzing marketing ROI. It comes as little surprise then that most businesses need to make it a major priority to own social media channels for their business. Still, with thousands of businesses and startups creating social profiles every day, how can you stand out from the competition and create a consistent presence for years to come? There are a few key factors for maximizing your potential, creating consistency, and long term growth from your social campaigns.

Brand Voice

How do you want or think your company is perceived? Are you witty and funny? Are you reserved and thoughtful? Will you respond using we or I? Not every company is the same and that’s what makes your brand unique and stand out amongst the rest. Convey a brand voice on your social media channels that reflects who you are as business and helps your audience form an emotional connection with your business while keeping it consistent throughout the channels you choose. Remember, there’s no right or wrong way, as long as it’s consistent.

Consistency

While we’re on the topic of consistency, its essential that you remember to be consistent with everything you do on social media in order to clearly define your brand identity across all channels. Own a color or certain look and feel, and be sure it’s present across all of your social media platforms. How your audience feels about you and your brand should be the same feeling that is portrayed on your profiles. For instance, we can all associate red with the Target brand – and they totally own it through the imagery they feature on their accounts!

Target FB 1

Target Twitter 1
This is true for B2Cs like Target, but also for B2Bs like our digital agency! The CEO & Founder of Blue Fountain Media had a vision that our branding and overall legacy was to create a feeling of calming water and azure scenery. As a result, we work hard to keep this type of branding prominent across our social media channels; it’s how we want people to remember us!

Blue Fountain Media Facebook

Blue Fountain Media Twitter

Tagline

That’s your tagline and you’re sticking to it!

Do you have a phrase or tagline? Think: “Redbull gives you wings” or “I’m Lovin’ It!” If you do, those should be on ALL of your social profiles as well.

Response

When responding to the feedback or comments of your followers make sure to keep your responses similar across channels. Everyone has his or her preferred social channel, and regardless of which one they are active on, the voice should almost appear as if it is one person saying it. Whether they follow you on Facebook or Twitter or both, if you reply, keep your tone the same.

Educate

Educate your audience and always remind them why they follow you in the first place. Is it because you’re the first to know about a niche topic? Do you offer top-notch career advice? Do you always have sales and promotions for followers? Whatever it may be, provide audiences with lots of valuable content that keeps them up-to-date on everything they need to know.

Your audience will never forget or “unfollow” the brand that keeps them in the know. And no, not just about what YOU can offer, but also for the knowledge you spread to users on topics in which they are truly interested. Your ultimate focus should always be to provide users with a real value.

Pretty Things

We’ve all seen a million articles about the importance of color and how aesthetically appealing imagery can work wonders on the human brain, how it can make us feel, and how it can boost memory. Yes, even brands that cater to the more serious types of audiences can portray information in a pleasing manner. Make sure your visuals are top notch and watch the engagement and reach of your posts consistently achieve impressive results.

Pretty Custom Imagery

Cross Reference

Let users know that your brand is on other social channels, and why they should be following you on those platforms too! Although your message and branding is the same across channels, maybe you update your employment opportunities on LinkedIn, or hold contests on twitter. Let them know!

On that note, run the same campaign on multiple different channels! Don’t worry about it being “too much” because remember, not every person is on every channel at all times. People have their preferences, so don’t miss out on reaching users with your newest and greatest campaign because you didn’t want to run it on all social media channels.

Don’t Neglect

And last, but most importantly, don’t neglect your social media profiles. We know you’re busy, everyone’s busy, but you need to actively update your social channels with new content whenever possible. No, not everything has to be brand spanking new. Remember to repurpose that amazing content that you have, not everyone saw that insightful article you wrote in the beginning of the year, so reuse it!

– See more at: http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/social-media-brand-strategy-tips-for-a-consistent-presence/#sthash.8WSOjab9.dpuf

3 common WordPress errors, plus how you can fix them

Posted on by Zafer

featured16@wdd2x

1) The white screen of death

One of the most infamous errors, it has resulted in broken crockery across the globe. It will most likely be down to one of three things:

  • Exhausted memory 
  • A plugin
  • A theme

If the screen occurs on different sites, that use the same host, then you can safely assume that the issue lies with your hosting provider. If not, then you can be sure that the problem is with your site itself:

Exhausted Memory

Reaching the memory limit is often the problem behind this error. To increase your memory, access your wp-config.php file — navigate to the root file of your site using an FTP client or the File Manager in your hosting panel. Within the main php tag you will need to add a line of code, which will increase your memory limit to 64M:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

It’s possible to go higher than 64M, but it’s dependent on your server so 64M is generally a safe amount. Maybe increasing the memory didn’t help, or you already have an even higher limit than 64M? The issue could then be down to a plugin, or your theme.

Plugins

If you have access to the dashboard then troubleshooting plugins is simple. Simply click on ‘Plugins’ and disable the most recently installed one, if this doesn’t help then you can deactivate all of your site’s plugins, select all the plugins using the topmost tick box and choose ‘Deactivate’.

If you don’t have access to the dashboard, then an alternative way of testing plugins is via FTP. If you have an FTP client, then simply navigate to the relevant directory. Open up ‘wp-content/plugins’, which will contain all the plugins you’ve installed. Simply rename the ‘plugins’ folder slightly, maybe add a word at the end – so ‘plugins’ becomes ‘plugins-test’.

Alternatively you can also use this same methodology to rename the folders of the individual plugins, which will test each plugin individually – rather than all of them at once. If you’re happy to reinstall your plugins, simply rename the folder back to its original name.

If a plugin is at fault, there could be one of many reasons. The best approach is to simply remove it and find a plugin that achieves a similar result. Try and find a more recent plugin, or one that has been updated so that it won’t cause issues.

Themes

If troubleshooting your plugins hasn’t helped, then annoyingly it could be your theme. The first thing to do is backup your theme folder. You can then simply delete your theme, and WordPress will install a default theme. If you’ve determined that the theme is at fault, then you will want to look at your theme’s functions.php file. Some poor coding may be the issue, if you’re not confident in adjusting this yourself, then perhaps contact the theme’s author. Purchasing a trustworthy theme whose author offers support is always advised.

Still thumping the desk in frustration? There is another method that might help – Enabling Debug mode.

Enable PHP debugging

If the solution above haven’t fixed your issue, then you will have to dig a little deeper. The process outlined below will help to identify your problem. However, fixing the problem once you’ve discovered what it is might require some more advanced skills.

Firstly, open up the wp-config.php file. Then locate the following line:

define('WP_DEBUG', false);

Place ‘//’ at the start, so that it becomes

//define('WP_DEBUG', false);

The above is now commented out, for the next step paste in the following code directly below the above line:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);
@ini_set('display_errors',0);

Now this is where you will need to have some knowledge of coding. The steps you’ve just taken will result in errors being sent to a file named error.log (found in the wp-content folder). If you’re having trouble finding this, it might be that you don’t have permission to create this file. Simply create a new error.log file and give it permission of 666.

Open up the file in a text editor and check for PHP errors. If this is something you don’t understand or aren’t confident with, then it’s advisable to seek some help.

2) Internal server error

If you’ve received a 500 internal server error, then you might not be aware of the really bad news – it could be one of many problems! So make a highly caffeinated hot drink, take a breather, and be prepared for some more troubleshooting. The good news? Some of the methodology is the same as the previous section.

Plugins or theme

Refer to the ‘Plugin’ and ‘Theme’ sections of the previous section. The troubleshooting methodology is exactly the same.

Exhausted memory

Again, this process is the same as the previous section.

Bad .htaccess

Not any of your plugins, or your theme? Time to check if your .htaccess file has become corrupted.

Firstly rename the file — again just add ‘temp’ or something similar on the end. Can’t see the file? Then you’ll have to make sure that you’ve enabled ‘viewing of hidden files’. How to achieve this will depend on your FTP client, but it will be fairly simple. For example in Filezilla, simply select ‘Server’ from the top and then select ‘Show hidden files’.

Now onto the next step, firstly go back to the WordPress admin area. Navigate to ‘Settings – Permalinks’, and then reset your permalinks. You’ve now generated a new version of the working file, so you can check to see if the problem has been fixed.

Enable PHP debugging

This has also been covered in the above section, so once again, scroll up.

3) Error establishing database connection

There could be several reasons for this error. It is commonly a server error, but it might be that you’ve simple changed your database login details.

It’s important to establish if you receive this error on both the front and back end of your site. If you see the same error message in the back end (wp-admin) – ‘Error establishing a database connection’, then you can skip the next step.

However, if you’re seeing a different error message which includes something along the lines of ‘…..The database may need to be repaired…’ then you should add the following to yourwp-config.php file:

define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);

Then visit this page on your site: http://www.examplesite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

You’ll then be able to see an option to repair the database, once you have repaired it, make sure you remove the above code from your wp-config.php

WP-Config file

Have you changed your root password, or database password? If so, then you’ll also have to change this in the wp-config.php file. So jump into your wp-config.php file and make sure the information is correct.

define('DB_NAME', 'database-name');
define('DB_USER', 'database-username');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'database-password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

It’s important to verify what your DB host value is, so that the final line is correct. In the majority of cases it will be localhost, but do some research just in case. If you’re running WordPress on a local server then replacing localhost with the IP address might fix the problem.

Communicate with your hosts

If you notice this error when your site receives a large amount of traffic, then the fault could be with your web host provider. There are methods that allow you to see if MySQL server is responsive, but your web host will also be able to tell you. Maintaining communication with your web host is always a good idea anyway, so why not give them a call?

 

Further solutions

In the majority of cases the above solutions will provide you with a fix to your error, however there are always rarer issues that may have caused similar problems. If you’re still struggling then I recommend visiting this page as a good starting point: http://codex.wordpress.org/Common_WordPress_Errors

Good luck!