Category: Toolkit

HubSpot – Marketing Automation

HubSpot is a great “marketing-in-a-box” solution for those getting started with inbound marketing. It is a good fit for companies with a one-person marketing department or a small staff. It will save you considerable amount of time and streamline the whole process of lead generation, nurturing and conversion. The dashboard provides you with a quick overview of your marketing efforts and you can customize it to meet your needs.

I’ve used HubSpot for larger industrial companies that wanted to use some of their marketing automation features. I’ve integrated HubSpot with front-end WordPress websites and on the back-end, with CRMs such as SalesForce. (HubSpot offers its own free CRM too).

Is it perfect in all situations? The short answer is, no. For example, you’d need to develop custom applications such as Parametric Search, Interactive Part Number Builders and other applications outside of HubSpot. These external applications may not be easy or even possible to integrate with HubSpot.

The best way to decide if this is the right marketing solution for you or not, is to take advantage of HubSpot’s FREE 30-day trial for their marketing automation software.

November 30, 2018
SiteGround – Web Hosting
Tired of a slow-loading site or your site being down often? Those are typical problems with inexpensive shared hosting. Don’t want to pay the high cost of a managed hosting service?

SiteGround is an excellent hybrid solution that gives you the best of both shared and fully-managed WordPress hosting services that you can control. This blog, two of my company websites and several client websites are hosted by SiteGround. It is also officially recommended by WordPress.org.

There are hundreds of hosting companies out there; I’ve used many of them over the years. For the past four years, I have used SiteGround for my own and clients’ hosting needs. There are a few exceptions where I have recommended another hosting company where SiteGround wasn’t the best fit.

What SiteGround has to offer:
- Choose from their datacenters located in United States (Chicago), Europe (Amsterdam, Milan), Asia-Pacific (Singapore), and United Kingdom (London).
- Pro-active server monitoring. It not only detects current issues and fixes them immediately, but is also able to foresee upcoming problems and to take actions to prevent them.
- Automatic backup system and instant backups on demand based on the plan you select. Back up certain files, folders, databases, emails, or your whole account and save multiple instant backup copies for 30 days.
- Unique anti-bot AI. Brute-force attacks by botnets are a fact of online life and a serious global problem. SiteGround has developed an extremely effective Artificial Intelligence solution that stops between 500,000 and 2 million brute-force attempts per hour across all their servers before they have even reached your site.
- Files and databases are stored on cutting-edge Solid-State Drive (SSD) technology. SSDs provide for a 1000x increase in input/output operations as compared to regular drives.
- Top-rated WordPress hosting support from their Customer Care team that is fast, multi-skilled, knowledgeable and available 24/7 via phone, chat or tickets.
- Free professional WordPress transfer service with their GrowBig and GoGeek plans. Or you can do it yourself with just a few clicks with the free SiteGround Migrator plugin.
Get started with SiteGround today.
November 29, 2018
WordPress Training – WP101

Are you responsible for managing your WordPress site? Are you new to WordPress and need to get up to speed quickly? Then WP101 is perfect for you.

You can always find free, homemade videos on YouTube, but they lack the quality and often, are outdated. Not this 21-part video training course. Each video is professionally scripted, meticulously produced, closed-captioned, and always up-to-date.

Sample a FREE, 3-minute video to get a feel for the quality. It provides a quick introduction to WordPress and shows why it has become the most popular web publishing platform today.

WordPress 101 for Beginners

Each video is just 5 minutes or less and provides a complete overview of WordPress in a little over an hour. By the end of the basic course, you’ll have a solid grasp of all the WordPress fundamentals.

Ready for more advanced training? Continue learning with additional courses on specific topics related to WordPress or return anytime for a quick refresher.

Your All-Access Pass includes the 20-part WordPress 101 course, plus unlimited access to 180+ tutorial videos across 10 courses. You’ll also get every new course created while your subscription is active! Try WP101 for up to 30 days. If you don’t like it, cancel and they’ll refund your money, no questions asked.

November 27, 2018