Pressing On

I have WordPress envy.

I started using Blogger, Googles blog platform about five years ago. It was perfect for getting my feet wet in the blogosphere. But like most technologies, if they don’t evolve, they often get left behind. At the end of 2014, I decided I needed to have capability to design and add functionality to my blog and website.

So the journey has begun to learn WordPress.

As with anything new that you learn, you have to be driven and motivated to make it happen. Heightened curiosity to understand what’s behind the curtain of a cool site pushed me to make the leap.

I’m not ready yet to present my new site to the world as it is still in progress. But I have learned some valuable lessons so far.

The Name Game   

I spent a lot of time thinking about a URL that made sense for my objective. MomentSlater fits wonderfully as a blog title, but who am I writing this blog for and how can I find a name that fits my positioning?  To start, I created dozens of key words and then combinations of words and then search WhoIs to see what is available. I knew that the word marketing had to be part of the new URL. Words like wisdom, advice, advisor, coach, coaching, guide, counselor, were some of the ingredients in my URL recipe.

As I reduced the list down, I shared a few ideas with several people who know me and understood my mission.  

I got wonderful feedback. As often is the case, my wife Ra El had a very strong instinct about one idea in particular. She reminded me of the audience I was writing for and how one idea fit my mission perfectly. Overtime, I saw her logic and reasoning and that’s the direction I took. 

Host and Parasite 

Since my daughter Fanny was also starting a new website, we got her hosting on Blue Host and I got to be a parasite using the same hosting platform. She can have several blogs hosted through Blue Host for the same fee so we were able to share the expense. Her new site, www.fannyslater.com is also a work in progress but it will be a platform for her personal brand that promotes her TV work, her new book, her catering business and other food related activities. 

Simple as Possible

I knew that I wanted the design to be incredible clean, simple and easy to navigate. I am not building a complex site and had one main goal in mind. The purpose of the new site is to share my marketing knowledge and to make it easy for anyone to connect with me. 

I needed a design that makes it simple for someone to schedule time for marketing coaching sessions in the evening or weekends. (I still have a very busy full-time job). This new site had to eliminate the clutter and be a platform to engage a community. 

Build a Mailing List

If there is one piece of advice I give during my coaching sessions, it is about the critical importance of building a mailing list so you can communicate to people directly who are interested in your work. Third party hosting of pages on Facebook, et al are susceptible to change. But a mailing list of an interested tribe has more currency than anything else you do. I needed some better technology to assist in this endeavor. I needed to take my own medicine and expand my own list. 

Looking Forward

I plan on working full-time for at least five more years, but I like the idea of preparing for the next phase way ahead of when it is needed. In spending my spare time on this site, it will give me a platform for the future when I might continue to consult on marketing issues. I could get by with Blogger but I love the challenge of learning something new.  WordPress is the technology behind about 70% of the Internet from The New York Times, to CNN to www.nomacorc.com  It is clearly the future. I needed to get on the super highway.

It may take another month before I am ready to switch to the new site. I still have a lot to learn and understand. Some of the technical things aren’t too difficult and some things make me feel like I am back in graduate school at The University of Pennsylvania studying statistics. 

But I am motivated to learn and I love the visual aspect of this work. If you have recently set up your own WordPress site, I’d love to hear about your experience too.

So for now, I press on.

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Could you use some marketing coaching to help you press on?  Give me a call through Clarity and let's talk.