Welcome to another edition of Sites Weekly.
In this week’s jam-packed edition, you will find links to articles about the following:
- Content. What happens when your humanity befriends your knowledge
- Design. How to use color psychology for glowing sales
- Technology. New Forrester report lays out priorities for mobile marketers
- Strategy. How to use collaborations to grow your blog
- Bonus. The Oxford comma and why we argue over grammar
But first …
Last week on Sites
Above all else, you want to make a hosting choice that gives you peace of mind. And that means rushing the choice is probably not a smart move.
There is plenty to consider — more than we can dive into in just one podcast episode. But the three questions I’ve prepared for you here should move you in the right direction toward picking the right host for your website.
Listen: [37] 3Q for Picking the Right Host for Your Website
WordPress hosting can make or break your site. So if you are serious about WordPress, then you will want to know the right ways to pick one.
Listen: [38] The 5 Most Important Factors When Picking a WordPress Host
LAST DAY: Save $100 on the StudioPress All-Theme Pack
Quick reminder about the promo this week at StudioPress that I mentioned in last week’s newsletter.
You get $100 off the Pro Plus Pack, which includes every theme StudioPress has designed and released, every third-party theme currently available on the StudioPress website, as well as all future SP and third-party themes.
Get the full details and claim your discount here: https://my.studiopress.com/pro-plus-offer/
The offer ends today (Wednesday, February 28, 2018) so be sure you hop on it right away.
What’s the story behind the StudioPress.com redesign?
So glad you asked … and Loryn Thompson has the answer. (As she usually does. In fact, she’s also good at having the question too, which is a really good combination.)
Read: Behind the New Customer-Focused StudioPress.com Design
And now, on to this week’s links …
Content: What happens when your humanity befriends your knowledge
In other words, what happens when you actually give some much-needed focus to building the oft-overlooked like aspect of know, like, and trust.
As Stefanie Flaxman pointed out on Copyblogger, we commonly group know and like together, assuming that if people know us they will start to like us. Maybe. But why leave it to chance? Especially when there are specific strategies you can implement to ensure that the people who should like you actually do like you.
Design: How to use color psychology for glowing sales
Notice the subhead says glowing sales, not growing sales. (How did you read it originally?)
I say that only because I just realized it when I pasted the article’s headline in here. Funny how our brains are primed to read one thing so we don’t notice the small details sometimes.
And also, I tried to trick you a little bit with the headline for this week’s newsletter. It fits. Your sales can’t really be glowing if they aren’t growing, now can they? 😉
This is a long post, but it will help you make important color decisions for your branding, your sales page, your call-to-action buttons, and your social media content.
Two of the most important decisions you will make about your WordPress website are your theme and your hosting. Wouldn’t it be great if they worked together to make your website more powerful?
Now they can.
Discover why over 213,675 website owners trust StudioPress.
Technology: New Forrester report lays out priorities for mobile marketers
And the priority is the same as it ever was: Stop being distracted by shiny, new tech objects to the extent that it causes you to overlook the fundamentals.
This is the advice Copyblogger has been delivering for a decade now!
You can purchase the entire report here, or read the MarTech Today overview first at the link below.
Strategy: How to use collaborations to grow your blog
“When you’re juggling alone you can only keep so many balls in the air … But if you juggle with other people, you can keep more balls in the air for longer.”
I love that quote as it relates to online projects. And reading it now was especially timely for me because I just got back from a meetup for my Assembly Call project, which is now in its 7th year.
This was our third meetup, and every year our team dinner has grown — from just my co-hosts and our wives, to now including people who have guest-hosted, student interns, people who contribute written content to our site, and more. It was such a great experience, and such an important reminder of how many people it takes to keep this little project humming along.
Learn more about the importance of collaboration in this podcast episode from ProBlogger. (Full transcript available if you want to read.)
Bonus article: The Oxford comma and why we argue over grammar
As a strong supporter of the Oxford comma, I appreciated Ann’s inclusion of the famous — and so spot-on — example of JFK and Stalin morphing from mere party attendees into dancing strippers from just the removal of one comma from a sentence.
Yes, it really is that simple. 😉
But the other reason I loved this article is because of this passage:
“The editor is often silent and invisible, grafting weak sentences and buttressing feeble structure into something more hearty and lasting. They don’t get the credit for the bounty or the beauty, either: That glory lands squarely on the needy writer.
So if we think of grammar less as rules and more as a handy set of guidelines for clear communication, then grammar works for us — not against us. Like the best editors.”
And you know which newsletter author is blessed with the best editor of all? This guy.
Anyway, this post is worth your time — and it ends by making a much different point than you might expect.
So …
Which of the ideas in these posts will you put to good use immediately?
I’ll be back with a new edition next week.
Keep building.