So if I can ask you to take a few minutes and go cast your vote. There are some excellent nominees in categories such as agencies, innovation and more. Just head to woosesh.com/seshies. And if you have already cast your vote for us, thank you, thank you, thank you.
So taking this into a commentary again this week and from the title, you can guess where I am going with this.
The News
Now I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. We all know there are resources for news. For example, The WPTavern is known as a standard in the space. The Week in WordPress brings in various people weekly to chat about the news. And The WPMinute that has taken to condensing the news. Now this only covers so much of it and we know there are many sites who mix and match news and tutorials, and I mean a lot. This doesn’t include the numerous newsletters that go out. It’s a tough biz to make sustainable unless you don’t care about money.
In fact, I have it from a source that the WPMinute is already starting to change their focus back to WordPress professionals so check out to see what they are up to. Also, we have dabbled in news here off and on… and sometimes news is such an odd word. What it means. What is real news. What is editorial? Etc. etc. Anyway you get the point. All I can say is find the source that works for you. Myself, I use my trusty RSS feed and a few social sites to give me what I want to stay up on and often know about things before it hits the news. But hey, I’m not normal and that’s just me.
The Resources
So let’s expand out and look at resources. There is really very little boundaries when it comes to resources. WordPress and WooCommerce is swimming in resources. Resources for users. Resources for WordPress professionals. We have YouTubers keeping us updated. We have live streamers sharing their work publicly. Blogs filled with tutorials and sites that have specific resources like The WP World and WPSpeakers. Or Business Bloomer that focuses on, well, WooCommerce. Then we step out a bit with sites like Post Status that is considered a resource, but also a community of WordPress businesses. And of course there is Do the Woo. You might consider it a resource but like Post Status, we are also serving a community. Obviously there are too many to even start to mention. So I am thinking we are done here.
The Paid Exposure
Okay, this is what I want to dive into a bit deeper. And that is exposure for you or your business. Now, looking at what I talked about, yes so many of these can give you exposure. Blogs with tutorials. Videos on YouTube. Member directories and other member type sites. And podcasts. Yes, they will certainly give you exposure. There are lots of opportunities in our space for exposure, yet it’s still a struggle. With what I have mentioned, you need to pursue those unless they pursue you. But get to know the podcast or site. Get to know who runs it. Build a relationship and then see if they can help you get the word out. Nothing is as simple as “hey, write about me”.
Which leads me into paying for exposure. Now I am not going to argue with you about paid placed content. You may get endless emails asking for insertions of links, link sharing, guest posts, whatever. Those are simply noise in most cases and is a strategy that if they send enough out, they will get a few hits to make it worth their time. If this is the route you have gone or considering doing, all I can say is good luck. You won’t get in my graces with such an approach or many of establish sites.
Same with news, as I mentioned before. If done right you can use those to help with your own business news to get the word out. But remember, they are getting tons of stuff all the time. It may be newsworthy, it may be not.
So where am I going with this. All this exposure that appears to be at your finger tips. But the truth is we all need to make money and we all need to spend money. I know how many small WordPress businesses struggle and have limited funds. But unfortunately that is part of being in business. And when I mentioned paid promotion, yes, it can be done right. I had a lot of businesses pay me in the past for writing posts about their products. So I know it works. But it’s not an easy path for even those people who do the. But I would like to share a few options here with you for some paid promotions.
There are several sites with directories, and typically a listing in a directory comes a couple of ways. For example, at Post Status you are part of their directory but it also comes with some other membership benefits. Now at The WP World, it is a great resource with some unique angles, like their WordPressers in the world that is free to add yourself to, but Marcus does have a stand-alone directory that you can be listed on for a price. Also, Ben at LayerWP has a directory as well, included in his resources of blog posts. I’m sure there are others out there but they are escaping my mind right now or I just don’t know about them
As far as paid content on sites, I know there are a lot of various options spread out there, but recently Eric from the WPMinute has launch WP Product Writeup. In a nutshell, they are offering to Give Your WordPress Product an Edge. You can get quality, easy-to-understand, white-label content for your WordPress theme, plugin, or SaaS. So that might be worth considering.
The folks over on WPMayor have over time moved away from so much paid content to offer services for product marketing.
My friend Adam Weeks, who has been a great sounding board for some of my ideas and thoughts here at Do the Woo, launched Cirrus Influence, which focuses on WordPress Public Relations. PR is a spot that is often overlooked in our space. When I talked about getting on podcasts, knowing where to publish content, or get your news out, this is what they will do so you can pay attention to what you need to do on your business.
And last but not least, sponsorships. There is no shortage of opportunities for you to find sponsorships for a lot of the services and resources I have shared. Finding that right audience. And this leads me into the fact that we are always looking for sponsors here. We have some niche topic shows already in the mix here with more being added. So I have to slyly get a work edgewise here for us here at Do the Woo.
Welcome Two New Sponsors
And speaking of sponsors, we have two new sponsors joining Do the Woo and supporting this community on board this month. First we have Omnisend, an email and SMS solution for yourself or your clients, or both. And also The Dot Store, where you will find free and premium plugins for WooCommerce, with focus on scalability, performance and security. I will be sharing more about these sponsors in upcoming shows, but do take a moment to check them out at omnisend.com and thedotsore.com. The team and myself genuinely that them and all our sponsors for stepping up and supporting our community of builders.
Before I go, do check out our two shows from this last week. On Woo BizChat, we had quite the conversation with Jason representing WordCamp Europe and Jon repping WordCamp Asia share with us insights from the side of the sponsor organizing team at these flagship WordCamps. Also, on Woo DevChat Milana and Aleksandar shared details about the Contributor Orientation Tool on WordPress.org and how it is helping new contributors find their place on the right teams. A very interesting conversation.
And please, if you are a WordPress business, consider sponsoring one of our shows to hit your perfect audience. And if that isn’t the right fit for you, consider becoming a Global Community Friend to support our efforts worldwide. With that all said, reach out if you ever want to chat, contact us if you would like to be on a show or just say hi wherever you can find me. Until the next time, be good to each other.
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