It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole of researching what the best marketing strategies are, how to implement them in your WordPress site and ultimately how to measure their success. This session will help you understand which channels are best for what and how you can implement these into your own website to start generating revenue from your website.
Wrestling with the Internal Imposter
Many freelancers, developers, and website managers will eventually run into a feeling of being an “imposter” and fear that others will discover that we are not good enough. In this session, we will look at the “imposter syndrome” and how we are not alone in this adventure. Learn also how to overcome and conquer this roadblock and how not to let this fear of not being good enough stop you from developing into the person you want.
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Automation via WordPress
This talk will be about the automatization of offline business processes through custom plugin development and deployment.
THIS TALK WAS CANCELLED.
WordPress Pros and Cons
WordPress is just the right tool for the right job like any other CMS or development framework. Through my software developer career it is very pleasant to see how WordPress CMS helps small businesses grow exponentially and heartbreaking when it is used improperly for jobs that it is simply not designed for. In this topic I would like to share few stories of successful and not really WordPress projects that might help beginners to understand WordPress pros and cons.
Top 9 Lessons from Daily Blogging for over 900 Days & Still Counting
If you have ever found yourself staring at a blank screen to come up with blog topics this session: “Top 9 Lessons from daily blogging for over 900 days & still counting” with Helen Rittersporn will be of help. It is a continuation from last year’s WordCamp Wilmington 2016 where Helen presented “Lessons from daily blogging for over 600 days & still counting”.
Join Helen as she shares Lessons Learned from blogging over 900 daily blog posts (& still counting!). Her blog, Anchored Scraps, encourages old-style correspondence letter writing. Items will include Time Management of writing and posting daily blog posts; benefits of blogging daily; and insights using WordPress to blog daily.
Helen’s Milestone 1000th daily blog post will be on November 21, 2017, since launching AnchoredScraps on February 26, 2015! Whether you are new or a returning WordCamp Wilmington alumni this presentation will help inspire you to increase your blogging frequency and with confidence!
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How to Grow your Business with Clients in Niche Professions!
If you’re like many freelancers, especially early in your career or in between gigs, your ears perk up at every opportunity to take on new work. Your clients are scattered across a number of verticals with more than a few friends and family projects that pay little or no money. In our talk, Jonathan Fashbaugh and Holly Cruz will talk about how Jonathan went from a one-man show that subsisted on his 401K to a thriving business that will do nearly $1M this year all by working exclusively dentists. You can grow your freelancing business into a highly profitable company by being an expert in serving niche industry professionals such as surgeons, lawyers, and dentists.
Topics to be covered will include:
– business growth and client acquisition (handling gatekeepers, the benefits of specialization, and how to leverage contracts (or not), and raising your prices).
– setting goals and expectations for new leads (dispelling marketing myths, and adding SEO to the mix)
– building a relationship with people who may- on paper at least- be much smarter than you (climb up on the pedestal with that MD!, communication tips, and adding a personal touch to the working relationship)
– client retention techniques (build a stream of recurring revenue, expanded all-inclusive services, staying small intentionally and avoiding rapid growth, proactivity that can bring in extra cash, and the power of “thank you”s)
We will laugh. We will get you excited and inspired. We will make plans to implement on Monday morning!
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Selling solutions built on WordPress
While WordPress can service the needs of both your clients and your internal organization, it is critical to focus your strategies and execution on providing solutions to business challenges. Comprehensive plans ensure successful projects, and over time, help sustain successful businesses. This talk will include approaches for defining the scope of projects centered around WordPress, and a case study of a complex project developed for an enterprise client to illustrate potential opportunities.
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A, P Why? Review of the WP REST API and see What it is Making
It’s here, what can I do with it now? A couple case studies on how to use the API and code samples to get you started. It allows us to further separate the data from the code. Use WordPress as a CMS and then via the API easily access or update that data to power whatever we like. We’ll touch how to set it up and a handful of examples and then explore an iOS app pulling all it’s data and assets from a WordPress site via this API.
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How to Start a WordPress Meetup in Your Town (and Why You Should)
Details from my experience in running two successful WP Meetup groups. I chose the developers group as the audience, but this talk would be perfect for any of the groups.
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Using Varnish Cache with WordPress
Make your WordPress site fly with this one weird trick…except it’s more than one trick, and it’s only weird until you learn how it works. Varnish Cache can speed up information delivery by a factor of several hundred and earn you the coveted “A” in the TTFB column. This talk will provide an overview of Varnish Cache, what it is and how it works. Then we’ll explore setup and the ways you can integrate Varnish with simple WordPress sites before discussing more complex implementations, strategies for handling state, Edge Side Includes and other neat things Varnish does. HTTPS? Glad you asked. We’ll talk about that too.