WordPress Has Curb Appeal, Episode #57

Episode Transcript

Carrie: Hey there! Welcome to officehoursfm. The podcast where we put WordPress to work. I am your host Carrie Dils. Today I have two guests on who are totally normal people at least normal in the terms that they are not WordPress developers, designers, consultants. They’re regular people who have chosen to use WordPress as a platform to support their business and in the case of both Angela and Doug they’re real estate businesses so before I introduce those guys I would like to clear my throat because I had some amazing hot sauce right before the show…and a reminder…note to self…don’t ever do that again. I would like to thank our sponsors ManageWP and DesktopServer. ManageWP is the world’s first and finest WordPress management console that gives you complete control to manage as many WordPress sites as you would like. For more information check them out at ManageWP.com or if you’re already to sign the dotted line and want a 10% discount use cdils.me/ManageWP and then we’ve got DesktopServer a tool for both Mac and Windows that lets you streamline your workflow for local development. You can create new WordPress installs in seconds. Check them out at ServerPress.com and tell them that Carrie Dils sent you. Not to be confused with large Marge sent you. But all right. Without further a do let me get onto my lovely guests Angela Culpepper and Doug. How you guys doing?

Doug: Great. Good to be here.

Angela: Great.

Carrie: All right. And Doug I’ll let you introduce yourself say where you are and what you do. Go for it.

Doug: First of all I want to say that hot sauce is so strong it’s coming through my…(all laugh)

Carrie: Is it blowing your hair back?

Doug: Yeah. Wooh…come on. So I’m a residential real estate agent in Northern Virginia, Vienna Virginia, outside of Washington DC. And I’ve been in the business for over 20 years and have seen a lot of cycles not only in the real estate business but also on how I use technology in my business and how I’ve incorporated my WordPress site into generating actual paying customers.

Carrie: Oh. And we are going to dig deep into that in the show today. Angela. Tell the world who you are, where you are and what you do.

Angela: All right. I’m Angela Culpepper. I’m in Fort Worth Texas. I also work in residential real estate. I’ve been an agent for fifteen years. I would say that I’m new to technology and using it to generate business.

Carrie: Ok. Well you just keep your ears perked today because you might be getting some hot tips here. I really wanted to have you guys on. Most of the guests I have on the show are technical people. They’re the people you would hire to create your sites. I thought it would be really interesting to hear from…basically get inside the mind of my listener’s clients. That’s what you guys are and for the sake of disclosure, Doug you actually are my client. So I hope that …feel free to say what you need to say. I got my tough shoes on today. I was going to say is my big girl panties but I always hate to start off the show talking about panties. It just takes things in a weird direction.

Doug: Yeah

Carrie: And then Angela is a personal friend. So, with those disclaimers aside if you have questions for Doug and Angela throughout the show feel free to Tweet @officehoursfm or just use the #officefm. So until the questions start rolling in like the noonday tide…I don’t even know where that came from. Let’s start with you Doug. What was your …how did you even stumble upon WordPress? Were you just out there Googling one day or did somebody tell you about it?

Doug: Well it’s a good story. So back in…believe it or not …back in 1999 I was at a tradeshow and a marketing guy who was into the Internet suggested that we leave the room and go and register our names as our domain names. I thought that’s kind of crazy. I’ve got my AOL account and I’m certainly happy with that. But he made a pretty compelling point. He was from California so I went out found out that it was it was available so I registered it. Of course I didn’t know what the heck to do with it at that point. I put together a very much circa 1999 website. I pretty much kept that in place all through the roaring 2000s in my real estate business because most of my clients were doing a lot of research on other sites and pulling up information for listings and things like that. We’d go and meet. So it wasn’t really generating leads it was kind of like a thing to have on my business card at the time. As everybody knows in 2008 basically the real estate market, the whole economy tanked and the majority of my clients had worked for a game company, a division EA which was in Fairfax. EA pretty much said your last game wasn’t that great and we’re gonna start to cut back on the studio with an eventual closing of the studio. For a decade that had been…I don’t like to refer to clients as gravy train but they were real advocates for my business.

Carrie: That’s what I call you by the way.

Doug: I just think you know that that was a big thing… was you know…all those folks basically moved out of Dodge and I had to get back to square one. So I consulted with a couple my clients who were technology people. I started to do a lot of research online and found a lot of people out in California and Arizona and Seattle who were real estate people who were doing a lot of blogging and I thought it was great…I really got into it. I sat down with my friend Alison and talked a little bit about what she was doing. She was a big Joomla… is a right Joomla?

Carrie: The censors will come back and bleep that part out later.

Doug: (laughing) So then my other friend who is a big technology guy…we got talking about WordPress and I actually stumbled across Studio Press. You know whatever it was before the official…before it became part of CopyBlogger. I just thought that was very interesting and right up my alley. He had a very early version of this agent press type thing. And so I…again…my business had walked out…so I have a lot of time on my hands. Not to say I was a tinkerer but I’m a tinkerer. I started up a site and I really had that the idea that I needed to have a site that would attract new clients. And what would those clients look like? And into trying to tie this whole thing up I kind of pictured somebody sitting in the airport. Moving here doing research online on every single website out there and needing deeper local information. Ok. And my client always told me my stories were great and I should blog about that. So I started to write. I’ve always loved writing and started to crank out blog posts. Which, kind of most of the people were saying…Doug you’ve got to go to get an IDX site. You cannot do this blogging thing. It’s not to attract anybody. Um…they were wrong. So anyway I could go on…but it generates business for me. It’s a lot of work but you know. It’s been a great experience but a lot of hard work though.

Carrie: How much time on average you spend on your site each week?

Doug: Well I used to create content probably three blog posts a week. And it was really easy. It flowed really well. I had a million stories. These days I probably have a lot more on autopilot that’s generating content and things like that. And after I worked with you it was a little bit better organized…Ok it is a lot better organized. So these days you know I get on it in the morning, make sure that everything’s up to date. But I’m on a little bit of a writer’s block point in in my career and haven’t been writing as much as I’ve liked. And I don’t know, I just read a great blog post by Henneke…I don’t know…I can never remember her last name. Duistermaat or something. She’s English.

Carrie: Better than I could.
Doug: It’s enchantedmarketing.com and I read a great blog post about writing blog posts…and um…so that’s really inspired me to kind of get rolling. But honestly it’s generated so much business recently that I’ve been out actually with customers.
Carrie: Awesome. Some great points in there that we’re going to dig into. Angela? I know you’re newer on the WordPress scene. What was your…how did it even come on your radar…and why did you even care if you had a website?

Angela: Well I had transitioned from one side of real estate into a full-time residential sales business. I felt that I needed an online presence. Well the company that I work for offers web sites and when I got into the back of those websites and tried to use them, I found it virtually impossible. It was like a foreign language. The aesthetics and design were nothing like what I felt identified me. And nothing that I really like to be identified with. So it was actually you. You changed my online presence. I mentioned it to you. You mentioned WordPress to me and showed me the design possibilities and I mean that was site one. We’re on site two now, so you changed the world for me in WordPress. For me, I’m still developing my site. I’m still developing where I want to go with it…yes…bow down to Carrie Dils please.

Carrie: You know I really…the whole reason I have this show today was just so you two could come on and say nice things about me.

Angela: Well it’s working. It’s working. So I would say my site is still in development. I’m deciding whether my site is more a personal landing page where you get to know me or whether I’m going to be delivering streamlined content specifically in the real estate realm.

Carrie: We have a fantastic question from Jackie who also has a background in real estate and also is a web developer herself. The big question about IDX and for anyone who is listening who is not familiar with IDX, it’s basically a way to serve up real estate listings, search through them and sort through them for a given area and when you know when there are such…why am I blanking out? I want to say Trullo… Trulia. I was thinking Trillo altogether.

Doug: I’m glad you prepared for this.

Carrie: (laughing) It’s the hot sauce Doug. Come on. Ok, but when you have these huge services out there that are basically donned the googles of real estate IDX is there value to offering IDX search on your sites?

Doug: Well I’ll chime in on that. It initially… my feeling was I’m not gonna have an IDX on my site. That was because I knew most of my clients were already searching on Zillow and Trulia and Realtor.com and you know Redfin. They were all on those sites and but what they were doing was printing out those houses or emailing them to me and saying hey let’s check this out. So what that made me realize was that they were looking at me for more detailed local insight. Ok? That’s what they put a premium on not the ability to search. The reason I added in the IDX was to kind of generate that search capability. I think what’s interesting if you go to kind of one like my key…so I’ve really concentrated my site in the past few years in on Vienna real estate. Ok? It’s a pretty big mailing address. I think most real estate agents get nervous about pigeonholing themselves in a certain market but there was a lot of content to write about. There are a lot of new homes under construction. There are a lot of people relocating here. The town has a lot of events going on. There was just again…a lot of good material that I could blog about but then also with IDX I could make a great community-landing page. That one page which is on autopilot… it’s not focused in on Doug Francis ok? It’s really focused in on Vienna real estate. What it winds up doing…I’ve got some very simple links in there…I mean it talks a little bit about the town shows a good photo that’s got a lot of tags in there and I can talk about tagging photos and in search results and things like that…but that one page comes up right with Realtor.com, the Zillow. It is an IDX page but what I’m trying to do…the goal there is just to show…and I hate to throw word authority around…but you know that is really critical on any of your efforts out there…is to focus in and establish yourself as a local authority. Consumers recognize that. They dig into those IDX pages and then they see other articles that I’ve written and they click on…you see what I mean? It’s kind of is like a way to get into the site to get to know who I am and the fact essentially that I’m experienced and that I’m competent. That’s the one thing those sites don’t allow agents to do is really demonstrate individual…Ok. I got it. So you can’t hear me? I love these technical glitches.
Carrie: (laughing) I think she was gesturing to someone else. We don’t know.

Angela: That was for us. I forgot I was live on camera. I was telling him get back. I’m doing this.

Carrie: (laughing) Well hey. While you’ve got the floor, what are your thoughts on IDX and is it important… like does that generate leads for you? Is it worth paying for? Are you getting that through your company site versus your personal website? How’s that working?

Angela: Ok. Right. I do use an outside IDX that I have it attached into my website. I agree with Doug on a lot of points that it’s not going to be the first site that they come to search properties on. However, if you can keep them rolling through your site with the use of the IDX it’s very beneficial. I don’t hate to have one embedded in my site directly. It’s something that I plan to do in the future. Right now you actually leave my site to use the IDX that’s linked to it. But it’s a high-powered IDX and I do think they’re important to tie in certain areas of your site.

Doug: So you know if you don’t like chiming in on that. So you know I think people get really kind of focused in on this is the critical thing. And I hate to tell you know the truth and the success of my site. Ok? Where literally I’ve had the majority of my business over the past few years…I’m talking 80% come from high quality leads, buyers and sellers…ok…who have already done the research. Then they come across my site, dug in and there like you know…again it’s like this guy kind of knows what he’s talking about and it at least gets me up to the plate. Now so I go on listing appointments and some of them I get and some of them I don’t get. I kind of have opened up a forum. I consider every page on my blog DougFrancis.com to be a landing page. And so I’ve got a forum there so they can contact me if they’re thinking about moving cause I know that most people searching for homes also have a home to sell…and so it’s kind of like a well yeah I have thinking of…it’s kind of vague enough to attract both. Ok. But the IDX thing you can’t be focused in on because…Zillow, Realtor.com Trulia, Redfin…man…they do a great job and you can’t compete against that. You’ve got to focus in on your local expertise and write about that. If you write enough…at the beginning…one of my clients was the chief community person over at this this game company…and I said hey I am putting together a blog. She was l like Doug after you’ve written 100 blog posts tell me about it. I was like ok that was pretty sobering but it really gave me a target. Ok. It gave me a target and that’s what I think that most people don’t realize is that it takes a real commitment and late nights and writing about the same subject…not say over and over again…but finding a new angle on it and um paying attention to what you do everyday.

Carrie: So what you’re talking about we call it content marketing and I know you follow the Copyblogger school of thought…But it’s a long game, Right? It’s not flash in the pan…I’m gonna run an add on Facebook or Google. Day in and day out …week in week out..consistently putting resources into my website with the hopes of compounding payoffs…as Google picks you up and so forth. Doug you’ve done a really awesome job at that. That was one of the things when I originally looked at your site that I was shocked at the amount of unique and original content there. I don’t see it on a lot of real estate sites interestingly.

Doug: But you know that’s the thing to be successful. This conversation shouldn’t just be about real estate. If you’ve got a small business there are so many things that you can talk about without breaching confidentiality with your client that people will find as interesting. I went to one of the original copy blogger events when they tried to put together…when Brian Clark decided he was going into real estate again. He put together the agent press site. I’m sure you’ve seen that over at Studio Press and they really were going hard on that. They had a conference in Los Angeles a couple of years ago and I was like…I’ve got to go to this thing. And so I flew out of Los Angeles and was in a room…I mean…I really felt like I was way over my head. Ok? I’m just a real estate agent on the street who’s a tinkerer. I was in a room with… oh man it was it was a great collection of people but there were only like 100 people in there. I know you know everybody who was there. I think Damien had liked joined the company like the week before hand. It was a cool thing to actually meet those guys not to say I’m a fan of the company but you know I could stalk those guys as well as anybody.

Carrie: Well you know I do too. It’s ok. This is a safe place.

Doug: But I learned a lot. One of the things that they had was they had a chiropractor in from…oh come on…Venice Beach. He focused his business on blogging about runners. Ok? So really targeted like the LA Marathon where he got a press badge and he wound up going…he loved taking photography…and he would post on his Flickr account after going in depth to label everything. You know when you go into Flickr you’ve got put in tags and descriptions and stuff and he put in the first I don’t know if it was like 100 runners in LA Marathon and they would follow-up. They would find these things and share his photography and he just talked about you know leveraging that to your best ability in order to kind of aggressively market to your ideal customer. And you know when I talk about that guy who’s sitting in the airport who’s trying to move to you know Vienna Virginia and he’s got his wife and kids back in Chicago and he’s trying to do research…he really appreciates that local insight. That’s why started a blog. It was for that type of ideal client that was relocating here to our area. We have an average sales price over $800,000 so you’re really…any client like that…I think any realtor across the country would be like…that’s freaking amazing. So did we lose…is it just the two of us?

Carrie: I’ve received a message that she’s having some technical difficulties with her Internet service so we’ll keep rolling until Angela is able to join us back.

So a question that was brought up and not to keep hanging on to real estate because I think that what we’re talking about does have application beyond that industry, but if you take a service like Placester or really any other service where they’re hosting…it’s kind of a one-stop shop, it’s easy to get your stuff up and running but they have and control your content. Like what you stop paying them monthly there’s no way to export or move on. As the “normal” person albeit you’re a tech savvy person, does that distinction mean anything to you or would you realize that there’s a difference in value between owning your content and having it where you could pack it up and go if you needed to.

Doug: Do you want me to answer that one?

Carrie: Yeah. Go for it.

Doug: I think that the Placester sites are beautiful. The amazing thing is that they made it ridiculously inexpensive for any agent to put together what looks like a $5000 site for 10 bucks a month. Ok, I mean really $10 a month. I would look up those sites in a minute if I didn’t have my own site. I put a lot of value on this when we wound up sitting down and talking about how I wanted to concentrate my business using the WordPress site. You know I just knew I didn’t want to go that route. I really wanted to…I don’t know…is that feedback on my end or feedback on your side?

Carrie: Oh I’m not hearing it so…
Doug: So as far as what I wanted to is encourage people who don’t have decent sites to look at in the Placester site simply because it is a really inexpensive option for a real estate agent. But their other excellent platforms that are out there.
Carrie: All right. Angela welcome back to the party.
Angela: Thank you.

Carrie: You just missed pretty much 90% of the conversation but that’s all right (laughing) we’ve still got time. I want to turn the tables a little bit. So if either of you were going to look for professional services or say okay I need some help, I’m kind of getting outside of what I’m comfortable doing myself. Give me some advice. Give the listener some advice. What would make a service professional attractive to you and say that makes me want to hire that person? Angela, I’ll go with you.

Angela: Ok. Well what I appreciated most was the fact that Ginger listen to me. She listened to me for hours. My personality…what I wanted with the site and what I wanted you in the future with the site…who I was put into the web site…and I felt like she did a great job understanding that. And not just putting out content but helping me to build the site that reflecting my personality, which makes it easier for me to go in and add the content. Because the whole thing flows together and feels like…yeah this is me…this is mine. You’re right. I did lose connectivity, but I caught up right there at the end. I for awhile had hired somebody to add content to my site. It wasn’t my own. It wasn’t coming directly from me. That really disconnected me from the whole project. I think there’s a happy medium that you can use on just housekeeping type items. But as far as genuine content…I take a lot of ownership and a lot of pride in developing it myself. I think it’s what makes the site work.
Carrie: I think you bring a good piece of advice that listening as service providers; to listen and be able to take and interpret what a client would tell us and then be able to put that in the form of a site. And the other thing that you said that was really interesting to me is comfortable. That having a site that felt like “you” made you feel comfortable getting in there and adding content. I would have never really thought of the comfort factor there. Doug, did you have any…you’ve got a look on your face…did you want to say something?

Doug: Well you as far as putting things together and telling a true story of something that’s a routine matter that it might seem routine to me…Ok…like a home inspection…some little trinket in the process. There’s so many questions that people have. Again, it’s a content rich environment. Ok? For example, today on my phone I had a call from a woman in Ohio who was asking me about termites in her house. I said now you’re in Ohio right? She goes yes. I am in Virginia. She said yes but what you wrote was so clear. I can’t find that anywhere. Is it going to impact me when I sell my house? I apologize I’m not moving to Virginia but, you know honestly…what I think any business needs do is realize that this is an opportunity to really kind of serve a consumer that’s got a product that I sell but not in Ohio…and kind of leave everything on a very up note. The reason being you don’t not say that I beg for people to write reviews or comments and things like that but you know at the end of the day you know she may be inclined to go online and simply write up a nice comment. Like you know I live in Ohio and he answered the right questions. These things I think are very important to understand that when you’re writing content your audience may be anywhere in the United States. Ok? A popular post that I wrote four or five years ago is things to know before you move to Northern Virginia. That probably gets hit 20 times a day. After I sat down with clients for the umpteenth time you know I wrote an article or blog post about you know… things to get your house sold in 30 days. Ok? The idea was to spend 30 days getting your house ready for the market. The photo that was with that…and I linked…I tagged the whole thing I did it properly. Somebody posted that to Pinterest. On the tracker data I get… probably again 25 times every day a click from Pinterest comes to that blog post. It blows me away. But what it does is creates conversation, opportunities and again if somebody is local we’ve got 2 million people here I work in a pretty unique place. But you know that’s the type of content that I…it’s the same thing I’ve told people over and over again. I use my own tone of voice. I talked about clean out your old salad dressing bottles out of your refrigerator. You know something to get a laugh out of people. And it’s actually generated this is for me. I think that any business can think out of the box for a minute and come up with some creative…not…you don’t have to try and be corny…but you still should be smart and intelligent when you’re writing. That’s one thing that…I do feel reading blog posts and going…I want to write like that…Ok? I want to have that structure…I want to have you know the H3 tags…I want to have…you know short sentences…all these things I think make the readability, shareability…I could talk about shareability but you’ve got other questions.

Carrie: I’ve got a list. But you’re sending some good stuff out. So a question Angela for you. Do you think your site could be doing more for you than it is? That’s kind of a loaded question but I guess are you are you seeing results from it? Do you think you can see more results?

Angela: Yes and Yes. Yes I’m seeing results. People will refer back to something that they read on my site or thank me for putting it there because they use it as a reference link in their own life. And so yes I feel like I’m getting a little bit of traction but certainly I could go a lot further. Part of that is my own wrestling match with content. Just building a time in my day. I need to be doing that every day. And then just not over thinking it. Just create it and get it out there versus laboring over it to the extent that it becomes irrelevant because you’re spending so much time on it. I wrestle with myself and then that’s not even getting into Google analytics and how far up the SEO I can get it. Yes I think I could do more.

Carrie: Have you ever hired someone? You mentioned that you’d hired someone to do content writing but that was kind of awkward because it didn’t necessarily sound like your voice. But what about any sort of SEO optimization? Have you ever hired someone for that?

Angela: I never have but I think I should. I’d like to know…I’d like to see some facts and some data… and that isn’t something I have time to learn how to do in my daily life. I just don’t. So that would be something I would have to hire. I would be willing to do that.

Carrie: Would it valuable to you to have someone say go in and target certain…basically, come up with a content schedule for you. And say these are some topics that you could rank well with in Fort Worth,Texas…basically give you suggested topics.

Angela: Yeah that would be good.

Carrie: All right. Well if you’re listening to this call up Angela after the show…
Angela: Give me a call.

Carrie: Doug It sounds like even though you mentioned you kind of have a little writer’s block right now that you seem to have a ready flow of ideas for content. Are you thinking about SEO when you’re writing or are you just kind of what’s coming to mind you’re throwing out there?

Doug: You know it is structured. I know I can sound a free spirit and I do consider myself a pretty free spirit when it comes to things but I know it’s important to concentrate on certain objectives and not to sound shallow when I’m focusing in on Vienna real estate but you know it is…it’s tough to compete out there. Of all things I do it’s all organic. So I’m not doing any add words with Google. I’ve always resisted that even though they send me free 50 bucks or whatever. Actually I think they stopped sending me that. But you know what I’ve found is that if I try to focus in on writing something for sellers specific to them. Ok? You know whether or not it’s…and you have to realize it’s very easy to kind of divide and organize this…so content that a seller would really appreciate…So I’ve got that category obviously. If you’re a home buyer…that category…again you can kind of go off on financing, go into inspections…scores. I think useful information on blog posts that are maybe in a 4 to 600 words or so, on a regular basis, it’s not that difficult. But you know most of my readers and most my clients that have come for my site have one been college educated, a lot have advanced degrees and can range in age from their mid-20s to 70 some odd years old. Ok? Where they’ve sat down and they’ve been like…I walked away with something. I guess that is always been my philosophy that the target reader would feel like that was a valuable use of time in between you know commercials watching The Good Wife.
Carrie: (giggling) I don’t know…I mean I usually play word crack during commercials but that’s just me.

Angela: Why are either of you watching TV with commercials? Please.

Carrie: Well that’s true. It’s all about the DVR or the Tivo or whatever the kids call it these days. I would like to say a little hello and welcome to any listeners who joined us at the midpoint. I’m chatting with Angela Culpepper and Doug Francis both WordPress users who happen to be the real estate industry but are figuring out ways to leverage WordPress to make their business better. To drive business in. If you want to ask questions you can use the #officefm or Tweet to @officehoursfm. So rolling back into it. I was listening to another podcast earlier this week and they were talking about the idea of further niching down your service. And for folks like me that can be a scary idea because you want to be…you don’t want to make that the door to hire you even narrower; you want to get as many clients or customers as you can. But this idea that by narrowing your focus you actually invite more qualified people and people who you can ultimately serve better. And Doug what you said me think of this. So they talked about that defining your niche by defining a specific platform, defining a specific type of person and then also solving a particular problem. So Doug, in your case you picked the geographical niche of Vienna, you’re serving people who are relocating and trying to sell a home. That was kind of your impetus getting started and then…oh crap…I was on a role. What was that third one I said? This is what happens when you get over 40 people. You can just be talking…

Angela: You’re barely over 40. You’re like 1 day over. Whatever.

Carrie: But still. Anyways…that seems to have been very successful for you, and even though you’ve narrowed down. My gosh. You have people from Ohio calling you.

Doug: Well you know…again I don’t look at that as a waste of time. Ok? And I think a lot of people think why is he bothering to take that phone call? It took five minutes. I always looked at this is part of my PR platform and where I used to publish a newsletter back in the day that got mailed out. My blog posts that I wrote 4 or 5 years ago are still out there making an impact on people. You know I would say that focusing in your site…for my site was the smartest thing I could of done. Geographically my ideal customer is somebody who’s pretty close by to me and where I don’t have to drive through tolls. You know this is the big problem is that most people think they have to jump after every customer possible. That’s just not the case. The smart thing to do running a business is…you know… if you get talking and develop relationship with somebody who’s even in Ohio…and I’ve had people call me from different parts of the country asking me if I could recommend somebody who had a site like mine. Ok? Who is a like-minded real estate agent. Sending off that referral is one way that I can generate income. Ok? If I send it to a real estate licensee who goes and meets with that person gets the business and sells the house. So I’m not trying to open up a national brokerage but I recognize there’s an opportunity there where I could you know get a referral fee for $1000.00 for a 5 minute phone call because I was nice answering questions about termites in her attic…um…there’s potential…Carrie…for stuff like that in the business that I have. So it as far as focusing in…what I realize with my kids and things like that really did not want to hop in the car and drive you know 45 minutes through bumper-to-bumper traffic to go show a house to somebody I didn’t know. I’ve really cut down on that by focusing in my strategy. I think that every business needs to look at who their ideal client is. Their future customer and build their site around that. If you’re a chiropractor working in Vienna you should talk about you know the local fun run or look…or go into Washington DC look at in the Marine Corps Marathon or something like that. You have a lot of potential for that. But for finding a customer that is a short drive from your office…I don’t know.

Carrie: That’s golden advice right there. We have a question for images. So while are out writing all this great content where are you going for images? You snapping them on your phone? Are you stock photographing it up? Angela how about you?

Angela: In my blog post I am using my own images. In the actual creation of the website page I used stock photos for the quality and perfection of those images to give the look I wanted. But in my blogs believe…
Doug: (the doorbell rings). Doug gets up to answer the door.
Carrie: I believe someone just rang his bell. Quite literally.

 

Angela: (laughing) He left. It was the client from Ohio.

Carrie: Drove all the way to Vienna to answer that one. When Doug comes back….there he is. Was that an important package from UPS? (laughing)

Doug: Yeah it’s dog food. But can I interrupt and talk about…so I actually use this Canon DSLR very easy-to-use, takes great pictures but I also take a lot using…this is a 5S (holds up Apple iPhone). You know it’s not special, but it really takes great photos my opinion. I have a lot of apps that I use…like over…I don’t know if anyone’s ever used over…you can kind of write on it and it’s really easy…but you know really what I try to is…before I put it in…you know I go into the all description…I try and make it as keyword relevant you know to the topic that I’m doing. I know that there’s some value there. Maybe I’ve been to too many different Copyblogger events and been brainwashed but I do know it’s important to take your own original photos. Especially of topics here…like the Cherry Blossom Festival. Ok? Everybody knows the Cherry Blossom festivals so I wrote a post about that. I have my own original photo. I don’t know. One of the categories that I have is just living here. It really has nothing to do with real estate. I’ve gone off to different things because people do research online, trying to figure out what it’s going to be like to either take the metro to work or you know go over to Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center to check that out. Having those photos in place with proper tags you know you start to get recognized as being knowledgeable in that particular area. And so original photographs is what I try to do.

Carrie: Go for it. Excellent. Well we lost Angela again. She either hates us or her Internet just really sucks. But good question here from Leonica. When you started working with your WordPress site…you know you’re learning as you go…were you finding the actual little help menus in WordPress helpful? Were you out there Googling? Like how are you teaching yourself to use the tool? Doug: Well you know isn’t that interesting? So you going…I did a lot of DYI. As a matter of fact, when I first met Carrie she was like…you made some comment to me…that I was like now I’m really not going to say that you belittled me…but you kind of pointed out that I was like a tinkerer, a DYI type guy. And I was like…ok…but I make money off this type thing and it looks halfway decent compared to every other thing that’s out there. So WordPress is difficult. It’s a challenge. Even to this day what I wind up doing is going…YouTube is one way of going through a three minute tutorial. I did sign up to actually see the Lynda Carrie Dils tutorials and went through that. If you haven’t signed up for Lynda.com…

Carrie: I did not pay him to say that.

Doug: (laughing) So those are all really helpful. I just say that the community is changed a little bit… but you know 5 years ago I would say that it was a little bit more you know…it wasn’t as slick as it is today. Lynda’s great ok? It’s pretty darn slick compared to some of those YouTube you know…kind of done in a bedroom…where it’s kind of like ok this is what I did. You know the guy’s got the headset on and it’s really bad audio and they might have crummy music. But you know so that’s where I learned a lot of it…on the street…picked it up that way.

Carrie: So Angela, you are coming in sort of mid-question. But when you go to actually using your site how do you even know what do? Are you just sort of clicking things until right thing happens or Googling or YouTubing?
Angela: Yeah. I’m a button clicker until the right thing happens. And occasionally the wrong thing happens and it’s really difficult to recover from that. Yeah, I’m a hunter and a pecker and figure it out. I do have Lynda.com Carrie Dil’s WordPress number one beginner on replay. Yeah I just have to figure it out as I go.
Carrie: People are going to listen to this episode and think I was just being really self-serving. And Doug you called me out for making you feel kind of bad up front. So I want apologize for calling you a tinkerer if it carried a negative connotation which it…

Doug: Hey! You know this is the thing you know. You’ve got to be real with yourself and realize what you are putting out there has got to be quality stuff. And when I made the decision that you know my…I had gone through a couple of upgrades and believe it or not it’s like oh and do you want to upgrade to Streamline v 2. And I was like…yes…click. Basically the whole site screwed up. Because version 1 and version 2…I mean…Oh My God…talk about a nightmare situation. Just the whole thing went kaput. I literally had to stop doing everything and kind of go back in and try to reconstruct the whole website. Very frustrating but…again I’m kind of getting feedback loop on my end…so that’s why I’m hesitating a little bit…so really one of the key things when we sat down and talked that you really made me kind of get a lot more structured and organized for the site. So it wasn’t so scattered with so many different categories. And so the dougfrancis.com site version that I’ve got now, which you helped me with…ok you pretty much put it together…but I literally remember sketching that out on a piece of paper with pen and scanning it in and sending it to you. This is kind of what I have mind and you wound up saying like well let’s try the minimum theme and go from there and try that. We tried another theme from Studio Press that just…it looks like my old streamline scene theme and I just don’t want that. So the important point I’m trying to make here is that the consumer that’s out there that’s going to…in my business pay you know a real estate agent’s fee…is locked ok? And they expect to go online and find a real quality website and that’s what you know you need to concentrate on…not only on your content but just how it looks. For most real estate agents instead of doing…you know having the full WordPress site which is complicated…it’s definitely complicated… to actually you know do the Placester scene that we talked about. It’s really streamlined and the backend is really crisp and professional. I think that’s a smarter way to go spending 10 bucks a month.

Carrie: If it gets the job done…

Doug: Yeah.
Carrie: We’ve got a handful of minutes left here for questions and see if we can get through some of these. Leonica’s asking do you maintain your site yourself? So are you updating WordPress…now WordPress updates itself… or plug-ins…are you having someone take care that for you? Angela? What’s your story?

Angela: My story?

Carrie: Or do you need to go get off line right now and go update your plugins?

Angela: Yeah…I need kind of need to get off…are there plugin updates that I need? Maybe there are. I don’t know. I just recently did an update…a full update to my site. So I think I’m up to date today. As for the future…Yeah…I would probably need help knowing where all those pieces needed to be added in. As far as updating content I’m doing that on my own.

Doug: So OK Carrie. Just real quick, on my dashboard it comes up and if there’s an update it’s really simple. Click and update it. I’ve never found that be you know an issue ok? As far as updating plugins.

Carrie: Yeah. Updating themes. Now that’s a …you mentioned you get yourself in trouble with that one. I’ve gotten myself in trouble with that one. When I was a new WordPress user. Yeah, you don’t know until…you wish you could take that button click (laughing) back. And that’s when you know you thank the Lord if you happen to be using a backup plug-n or a hosting service where there automatically backing up your site for you.

Angela: For sure.

Carrie: So one of the things that I was thinking about before I had you guys on the show is that in the WordPress community were very myopic and work…and we get our panties in a wad about all sorts of things that ultimately I suspect you two and other “normal” people don’t care about. So for instance, the fact that WordPress auto updates…is that a yay or a nay or I didn’t even know that it did that.
Angela: For me it’s a yay! Because I don’t have to think about that. I don’t need to worry about that. So yay! Go WordPress. Yes!

Doug: You know I got a notice the other day that it was ready for an update so it sent me that alert that I needed to do it. What I always learned is to give it a day or two. You know not to say that everybody out there winds up going like yeah we need to do you know 6.2.1. You know that we found there is security hole in what we sent you yesterday. I always let it shake out for a day to two.

Carrie: Wise decision there. Usually by the next day or two there’s a 4.2.1.2 there. OK. Let me see. I do have…we’ve got a question from Gail. She wants to know for both of you if there was a distinct decision to go with WP.org which is self hosted WordPress versus WP.com which is a little bit more DIY friendly. Did that even enter into your thought process?

Angela: No.

Doug: Um…you know for me no. You know I help a local citizens Association and I help do their WordPress site and so that’s on the .com right? And so… but my sites the .org whatever…I don’t even think about that stuff.

Carrie: See that’s why we’re over here doing all the thinking about that unnecessarily for you. You don’t even need us to be thinking about it. Ok. So we are about to wrap up here. I am going to say some housekeeping stuff and come back around with you all. I would love it if both of you could come up with one piece of advice that you would give to me or someone like me…a person that you would hire to do some sort of web service for you. A piece of advice and how we can serve you better. So before I come back around to that I do want very much thank both ManageWP and Desktop Server for being faithful supporters of this show and of the WordPress community. Please do check them out. ManageWP.com if you need to manage multiple WordPress sites. Which I just saw a little Tweet from Ginger that Angela your site was updated using ManageWP. And then DesktopServer if you’re doing local development do yourself a huge favor and check them out @serverpress.com and if you want to get reminders of this podcast each week just go to officehours.fm/subscribe and also would love to thank everyone who’s taking the time to go to iTunes or sound cloud and leave a review for that podcast. That helps other folks just like you find us. So with that said Angela do you have any advice?

Angela: Any advice for..?

Carrie: How can I serve you better? How could someone like me serve you better?

Angela: I would love to be asked if I know how do one simple task every couple weeks. And then learn how to do that task. So Angela, do you know how to do a plugin? No. And then I work on that for the next two weeks until I do know how to do it. So just short simple challenges that side of the WordPress platform would focus me and it wouldn’t be such a major thing that I had to learn like a whole entire project. Just hey! Do you know how to do this? And then go after it.

Carrie: Ok. So like little client follow ups…little tips…newsletter full of tips if you will…excellent. Doug? How about you?
Doug: You know my advice to you Carrie and anybody who’s out there…is to focus in on providing some value not just when they’re doing their research and finding your site…but making sure that when you’re communicating to your potential client that you’re focused in on helping them attract new customers. And understand the value of that. There are lots of different ways…but to understand their ideal customer is really essential on anything. As far as you know you on the backend…I’ve asked you when I’ve been slightly panicked before…you know I’ve shot you an email and always appreciated you sending back even like a small comment on how I could correct something or you know not delete something to help save the day. I don’t know if that made a lot of sense but I think that bringing in new business is what every business is trying to out there. And to understand that not just have a groovy website but to have new customers coming in the door is really whether they get thrilled about what to do.

Carrie: I think that’s a really fantastic point Doug. Because you can build a fantastic website or a really killer looking website but at the end of the day if it’s not helping your customer make money or do whatever it is their goal is for the site then that no bieno. That’s a waste of money.

Doug: Well put. Thanks.

Carrie: Good advice there and we’re gonna wrap it up here. Angela where can people find you? I know that is surely not on Twitter. But where can people find you if they want to say hello or follow up with you later?

Angela: AngelaCulpepper.com.

Carrie: There you go. All right. Doug? How about you?

Doug: So you know it’s Doug at DougFrancis.com I think if anybody could flip through and just see how I’ve done. There are still some holes in the site. I understand that. But I think just to see what my strategy is…how it’s set up and then you can also follow me @DougFrancis on Twitter.
Carrie: Awesome. Guys I appreciate your time…taking time out of your day to join us and thank you for sharing with our listeners…and to everyone who tuned in…thank you for joining us on…you know I don’t even think I said the episode number for today. It’s episode # 57. So with that we will see all you next week. Cheers!