How To Make Sure Your WordPress Site Looks Good on Facebook

how to make your WordPress site look good on Facebook

Here’s an interesting factoid for you. Approximately once every 13 seconds* another blogger posts on an internet forum or group a variation on the following question: “Why does Facebook always show the wrong image when I post a link to my blog ?!!”

This post is a guide to what’s going on and how to make it right.

I preface it with this caveat:

Facebook is a mean ole bully and often changes the way that it operates suddenly and without warning. What works today could become obsolete tomorrow. Today, this is what works.

Get To Know The Open Graph Protocol

The Open Graph Protocol is a particular set of meta data – that is, information about your site, that goes into the code of your site. Both Facebook and Google Plus look for this meta data in order to learn about your website.

When it’s all present and correct your site looks lovely in Facebook.
When it’s not there, they make stuff up based on whatever they can grab.

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Effective WordPress Sidebars – Part 2 in the Conversion Series

Conversion Friendly WordPress Sidebars

How To Make Your WordPress Site Conversion Friendly: Part 2 – Effective WordPress Sidebars

Sidebars are one of the best places to put your calls to action. Widgets make your life easy and almost every theme has ’em! But we need to exercise some self-restraint when working with sidebars to make them effective.

Control Your Sidebars!

The reason you need to control your sidebars is so that you can tailor the content based on the area of the site the user is in. Some themes may have already baked in a way for you to choose different sidebars on different pages so that you can have different widgets accordingly. But many have one sidebar that will display the same set of widgets on every area of the site. If you want to get really refined about the conversion process you’ll need more control.

My favorite plugin for this is Display Widgets which I discuss over here

If your theme does not give you a way to choose a different sidebar per page, you need to go grab yourself one of the plugins listed.

What Should Go In Sidebars?

Sidebars often become the dumping ground for all the stuff you want people to see but can’t fit anywhere else. But less is more in this case, and more is just…..diluting and confusing.  So try to keep sidebars lean and mean. The very top of your sidebar should house the most important elements. What those elements are will vary according to your business, what you are selling (if anything) and what your conversions are (see part 1). Here are some ideas.

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WordCamp Los Angeles – Get Your Tickets!

WordCamp Los Angeles 2013WordCamp Los Angeles is taking place September 21st & 22nd – two days of awesome WordPress fun, learning and connecting. If you haven’t bought your ticket yet, I recommend you do so ASAP since they are likely to sell out. As I write this there are only 60 remaining. You also want to make sure you can snag a T-shirt in the correct size. That’s right, in addition to 2 days of presentations and workshops, your $40 ticket also includes lunch and free T-shirt! Can’t say fairer than that. This is the cheapest, most value-packed tech conference around. If you are a WordPress user anywhere near the LA area, attendance is a must! You’ll have tons of fun, learn more than your head can hold, and will connect with other users, developers, designers etc. WordCamps really embody the spirit of the community – everyone freely shares ideas and you can ask all your burning WordPress questions.

WORDCAMP REGISTRATION

Speakers have just been announced and there are going to be some great sessions.

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Beginner’s WordPress Class at Coloft, Santa Monica

WordPress class - Coloft Santa MonicaColoft is an awesome co-working space in Santa Monica. In addition to providing the physical space where entrepreneurs can work together, they also foster community and creativity. One of the value-adds they provide is Coloft Academy – an ongoing series of extremely affordable classes on everything from productivity, business strategy, design and marketing. I am going to be teaching a Beginner’s WordPress class as part of the Academy series.

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How To Make Your WordPress Site Conversion Friendly (A Series)

Defining Conversions and Calls To Action

Part 1 – Defining Your Conversions and Calls To Action

Mastering the use of WordPress is just one step in making your online presence effective and successful. Your website is going to be in a state of refinement until you’ve really figured out what works and what doesn’t. However, those folks that aren’t designers or developers tend to leave a lot of important decisions about how their website functions up to the developer of whichever theme they’ve purchased, and that’s not always a good thing. For example, just because every theme has a carousel on the homepage, doesn’t mean it’s an effective strategy for your website. Theme developers are trying to sell you a theme, so their objectives are different than yours when presenting a theme demo. Oftentimes people buy into the beautiful presentation of a theme without fully thinking through how it will affect their business goals. Your job is to create a website that has your own objectives in mind – you are going to be guiding your visitors on a path that you have determined.

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