Headway
Headway Themes New Soon To Be Released Theme – A 1.7 Overview
As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of Headway Themes and highly recommend it for anyone running a WordPress Blog. This is a short video by Danny Brown of http://www.dannybrown.me – Danny will give a quick overview of the new 1.7 version. In my humble opinion, Headway Themes provides the best solution for website’s, no matter what level of expertise you may have with WordPress, this is the Premier WordPress Theme bar none! A BIG thanks to Danny for this video, if you want to see other sites using Headway, here is a list of 200 for you to review – enjoy!
Start Blogging Today
There has never been a better time to be an Entrepreneur, never a better time to be a Blogger, there has never been a better time to be an early adopter. In many respects, if you started your Blog today, you would be an early adopter. Why? Well, there are only 1.8 Billion People on the Internet, not all have a Blog, and there is still another 3 Billion people coming over the next 3 – 5 years. That’s 3 Billion people you will be ahead of when the dam breaks, you’ll be on high ground, ready to serve the other 3 billion yet to come regardless of whether selling a service or product, or if your giving your help away for free. Imagine what a time such as this could do for you & your blog, do you have a Blog, are you thinking of starting one, I would, and I would start right now. But where do you turn for help?
Look no further than a site called Start Blogging Today! The site is all about you and your success as a Blogger, an incredible support team that takes the stress out of wondering what to do next. I charge you to make a good decision and visit Start Blogging Today, get involved with the community and ensure your blogging experience is a positive one. Imagine, help at your finger tips, the kind of help you can’t find anywhere else! A site that provides weekly training and tools for your blogging success.
Start Blogging Today is run by true blogging professionals, Grant Griffiths, founder of the Headway WP blogging theme, and Michael Martine of Remarkablogger. Meet the rest of the team standing by to help you.
Why do I endorse this program? The people, it’s the people behind SBT. They have built a first class how to system for any business professional who’s starting out with a blog, or even for those who’ve been around for a while and want to take their blog to the next level.
Patsi Krakoff a veteran blogging professional herself, interviewed Grant Griffiths and here are a few words from Grant, I share it with you here, taken from Patsi’s blog word for word:
“The thought which became Start Blogging Today came into existence because we saw a need and a desire in a marketplace. Every single day we saw businesses struggling to gain an online presence.
While they could all throw up a simple web site similar to the Yellow Page ad they were running. what they really needed was a way to communicate and engage with their target audience. And we knew blogging was the method they needed to use.
The problem too many businesses, whether they are home based, small or any size, face is that they think they are seeing too many other bloggers. How can they compete and where would they fit in?
What we set out to do with SBT was to provide a framework of 26 core lessons to get them past that unwarranted concern and to learn how a blog and social media can market and promote their business.
The other roadblock to their own online marketing success was their lack of knowledge on how to actually use a blog and blogging platform. SBT deals with this by giving them the tools from day one to get a blog up and going from day one.
From the very beginning of mapping out SBT we wanted to build a community and we feel we have done that with the members’ only forums and the structure of the site. We are even using Twitter and “protecting updates” so members of SBT can use twitter to communicate with us and we can make announcements for them too.
Also included with SBT is a members-only blog category which members will only see when posted. We wanted to show members that all of the tools we were suggesting to them to use could be used and used well.
While our target audience for SBT might be the noob blogger, the newbie or the brand new blogger, it’s good for others as well. The just started, and even the blogger who has been around for a while can use Start Blogging Today to correct their course and kick an existing blog up a notch. We feel any level of blogger can benefit from the core and bonus lessons in SBT.”
THE END
Enough said, whether you’re a veteran blogger or a blogging noobie, or you haven’t considered setting up a blog, before you do anything else right this moment, visit Start Blogging Today right now, get a free report on blogging while your there!
How To – 3 Core Traffic Drivers
After almost two years of blogging and learning the ropes so to speak, I have come down to three core traffic builders that have worked for me here on my Blog. Let me state up front, Blogging is not easy, getting traffic through free (not buying traffic) methods still costs you something in time. In fact, all three of these Core Traffic Drivers require planning and time.
Before I get into my big three, one thing you should do is study the traffic you already have, look for when they are coming to your Blog, time of day and which days of the week. That will help you determine a good posting schedule, which days to post and what time of day to do so. The busiest times on this blog are between 5PM – Midnight Pacific Time, so I post a few hours before 5 PM, I may do a late night post around 10 PM too. I can only share with you what I have done, I use WordPress with Headway Themes,(affiliate link) it has great SEO support within the theme, so I highly recommend it. The big 3 have sub-sets of things you will have to do as well, nothing is truly simple.
OK, let me share with you the 3 core traffic drivers that are working for me.
3 Core Traffic Drivers
1.) Social Media Networks – I have to tell you this is where most of my traffic comes from, not because I’m there, but because I’m always there and you will see me participating with a few people. Thats the hot tip with this Core Driver, openning up an account and then hoping it will just happen will fail you time & time again. Now I realize not all of you will have the same amount of time I invested in Social Media Networks so bare with me for a bit. When I started using these networks I learned alot about what not to do, I’m not going to get into those things in this post but may do so at a later time. In fact, I did write a post here on Owen Greaves Consulting called, ” 10 Days To a 1000 Followers ” , this tells of how I started with Twitter.
One of the key secrets to using these networks is to centralize, make your Blog your home base. Use plug-ins to send your blog posts to your out-posts. Out-posts are these networks, FriendFeed, FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and so on, there are so many of them out there I won’t list how many I use.
The best way to use these networks is to promote other people, promote other peoples products 9 times out of ten, promote your site, products and services at a 1 in 10 or 1 in 12 ratio. Edify others always, help others always,and build powerful relationships with those who are likeminded with you and your blog. Share, Share and share information you find useful for others, things that are interesting and helpful, information that teaches and directs. You need to become a TRUST AGENT,(affiliate link) someone who connects with others and connects business with others, make a positive impact on society. Maximize Social Media Networks, it’s word of mouth that can put you on the map or take you off it.
2.) Consistant Blog Posting – There’s not much to say on this topic because it plain works, post regularly to your blog and the search engines go nuts! This means a couple things, I won’t go into detail but there are a couple of other things you need to pay attention to while here.
a) SEO – I’m not especially strong on this topic but I have learned how to make it work for me. There is a science here that baffles most people, it can be learned so expect to spend some time here. You may need to get help, so don’t feel bad if you don’t grasp it.
b) Study your sites traffic numbers for the purposes of scheduling your regular blog posting strategies.
I have found that posting to your blog regularly builds traffic better than anything, especially if your posts are teaching something of value. This post will be useful to many and should generate considerable traffic, why, because everyone, and I mean everyone is trying to find the silver bullet to getting traffic to their blog.
Again, I won’t go into details on SEO & traffic numbers but they are important. My secret weapon is Headway Themes. (affiliate link)
3.) Commenting on other Blogs /Forums – I fought this hard for along time, I just didn’t want to spend time on other blogs, it felt like I was wasting time. I was WRONG! I think this item is a true weapon for Bloggers, especially high profile blogs & forums that have large followings. I mentioned earlier that this traffic thing takes time, lots of time, and lots of your time.
So what do you do at these Blogs & forums? Answer questions, help those looking for answers, ask a question you need answered, promote someone else’s product or service, strongly disagree on a post, you will get noticed for sure. I can’t stress enough how good this works, I challenge you to spend some time on this and see what happens.
So there ya have it, 3 Core Traffic Drivers that I do and have been working for me, I have not paid for any traffic, I have paid for Affiliate products which you will find in this post and on my blog. Someday I’ll spend money for traffic, but I haven’t as of this writing.
I hope these help you, I’m here helping you make sense of Social Media, Blogging and I.T. Strategies, let me know how it goes for you, please leave comments and suggestions below, I really would love to hear what’s working for you.
Blog Update for Owen Greaves Consulting
For those of you who visit regularly you probably already noticed, but for those of you who check once and a while and or maybe once a year, I’ve made one big change and added a few more things for you to get in to.
The first big news f
or 2010, I made the move to Headway Themes (affiliate link) instead of Thesis, I just love it, the Visual Editor is simply amazing and allows you to make changes on the fly.
With that in mind, you will see on the Menu an item called Headway, there you will find a video that gives you a snapshot of how great the theme is. Also, I have put a link to their website (it’s my affiliate link), yes, I am more than happy to endorse and promote Headway Themes. You should too!
Many of you know I’m all about I.T. Strategic Planning, I have added a new page with a high-level view of what your I.T. Strategic Plan might look like, also, I have provided you with all the links to the posts I wrote to help you build your own I.T. Strategic Plan. I hope it works for you, and of course, I’m available to help you should you need me.
I hope you like the new look and feel of my Blog, it’s not labour intensive anymore, thanks to Headway Themes.
Take a look around, if you see something wrong and or something you would like to see on the Blog, Let me know ASAP.
Until next time.
I’m Making Headway!
For years I have held off paying for a theme for my blog because I like free. What I have learned is that free themes are bare bones and usually clone in nature. Having just purchased the Headway Theme after considerable deliberation, OK, I was being all wishy washy on the decision but I eventually did it.
This isn’t a review of the Headway Theme, I’m just sharing how easy it was for me to make the transition. Virtually pain free, I had to learn where things were located and the order in which the Visual Editor likes to function, but that didn’t take long. In fact, I was able to make the shift in a few hours last night, today I have been tweaking the small stuff.
Yes, I am endorsing Headway Theme because of its ease of use, and you will see much thought that was put into it, feature rich, and simplistic in nature. You don’t need to be a coder of any kind, just learn the tools and you can build a slick looking site in no time at all.
I love how each page is treated individually, the sidebar is not automatically assigned to all pages in your blog, you get full control over that Leaf. You can duplicate your Homepage Leaf and place it on specific pages within your Blog, just a couple clicks and you’re done!
I made the shift, please take a look at my Blog and let me know what you think (unless its negative). Just kidding. I’ve tried to keep it clean and simple, I am considering a background on the Banner but that will have to wait, I have to run off to a meeting.
I highly recommend you consider purchasing a Headway Theme (Affiliate Link), you can find them here.
So what do you think of my new theme?