Top 3 Things You Should Do After WordCamp Miami

Top 3 Things You Should Do After WordCamp Miami

Another WordCamp Miami in the books. It was a great weekend, with so much information that it was hard to sleep last night. If you’re a designer or developer like us; and have a good two and a half hour drive back to Orlando, you’ve got plenty of time to reflect on the entire weekend. And that’s a good thing. However if you were part of what seemed to be over 50% in attendance as a first time WordCamper, I am sure you’re overwhelmed with ideas, notes, business cards, and of course swag that you may not know how to start your week.

One of the main reasons I enjoy attending and at times volunteering my time at WordCamps is because of the atmosphere. It really is a chill environment; meaning that you can actually walk up to a speaker or sponsor and ask them questions. The whole point of them being there is to give back and also to be of service to all the attendees. We’ve attended many WordCamps over the past five or six years and below are the best things you should do within your first few days after attending.

Follow Up With People You’ve Met

During the weekend you’re going to sit next to new people you’ve never meet before, and they’re going to be from all over the world. This weekend in-particular I meet a group of developers and designers from Costa Rica. I ended up talking to them for a good 30 minutes about what it’s like living there and also what it’s like working there while using their talents in WordPress.

You’ll also see people you may have met online and through social media. There’s been plenty of times where we’ve talked with people for months on various topics but never met in person. WordCamps are a great opportunity to actually meet and put a live face and voice to all the threads, messages, and tweets you have shared over time.

Oh and don’t forget to follow-up with people who you swapped business cards and contact information with. You may strike up alliances, partnerships, and other working relationships with some creative and talented people who you may not have otherwise met had it not been for this conference.

Take Action on The Notes You Took

Like any good conference, everyone will have out their laptops, notebooks, tablets, recording devices, and anything else to capture their own experience for each of the sessions. Keep in mind that most WC’s feature LiveStream and are recorded and posted to WordPress.tv still it’s great to have your own tidbits of information to work off of.

Most of the speakers will have links to download their slides and presentations. The best time to review those slides is within the first few days after the event so that you can remember the key points that impacted you the most. Then take action! You won’t be able to tackle all of the ideas you written down, so make yourself a plan and set these up to handle over the next few days, weeks, and months.

Share Your Experience With People Who Didn’t Attend

This is mainly for those where this was their first WC, you’re probably going to be really hype for a few days. This is great! Share that excitement with as many people as you can and encourage them to get more familiar with the community. If you took pictures, selfies, video, and other media be sure to share them online as well. That’s what drives this community awareness is people talking about it and sharing.

We initially found out about WordPress through a local MeetUp years ago. And because of that group and the people who attend I learned a lot, networked with some amazing and talented, and even gave some presentations. Check out your home town and see if there are any organized WordPress Groups having regular meetings. If there isn’t, start one!

That’s my top three list, thanks for reading! If you had a great experience that you’d like to share hit me up on Twitter.

WordPress Orlando MeetUp Notes – “WordPress in Business”

This morning at Ideas Orlando, the WordPress Orlando Meetup held a talk and called it “WordPress in Business”. In this talk there were a few talking points that were mentioned that I notated below. I was unable to post all of these on the MeetUp page as the text exceeded the comment limits so I created this post for the notes. Please feel free to share where needed.
Hosting Provider Suggestions
  • Host Gator
  • Digital Ocean (cloud based)
  • SiteCore
  • SiteGround (inexpensive shared hosting for starter users)
  • Pagely (high volume of traffic)
  • GoDaddy (WordPress specific hosting)
Food for Thought:
A good idea to note is that hosting providers do not make changes or updates to your website. When you get to a point of making money with your business/website consider hiring an agency that will monitor and maintain your hosting services for your websites.
Plugin Suggestions
  • Pretty Links
    Shrink, beautify, track, manage and share any URL on or off of your WordPress website. Create links that look how you want using your own domain name!
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/
  • Gravity Forms
    Advanced Forms for WordPress Websites Just Don’t Get Any Easier than Gravity Forms
    http://www.gravityforms.com/
  • Member Mouse
    MemberMouse is an easy to use WordPress membership plugin that allows you to sell products, subscriptions and memberships, setup a password protected member’s area, offer 1-click upsells and downsells, manage customers, automate customer service, track critical retention metrics and more. No matter where you’re starting from, MemberMouse has the power you need to maximize revenue and get your business running like a well-oiled machine.
    http://membermouse.com/
  • WooCommerce
    WooCommerce is a free, powerful WordPress eCommerce plugin. With the extendability of a huge catalog of commercial themes and extensions we have all the tools you might need to get your shop running.
    http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/
  • Shopify
    Online shopping cart software
    http://www.shopify.com/
  • Sharesale
    ShareASale has been in business for 15 years, exclusively as an Affiliate Marketing Network. Our technology receives accolades for speed, efficiency, and accuracy – and our reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the industry. We encourage you to browse around our website and learn more, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
    http://www.shareasale.com/
  • Commission Junction
    Affiliate Marketing
    http://www.cj.com/
  • Click Bank
    Entrepreneurs everywhere use our powerful online and mobile e-commerce platform to build a vibrant business across popular lifestyle categories. We believe in cultivating a new generation of digital entrepreneurs and helping them transform their passion and expertise into top-selling digital products and affiliate marketing programs to achieve financial happiness. Our solutions, combined with top-rated client support, help you grow and maintain every part of your business. Making money online has never been easier.
    http://www.clickbank.com/
Tips and Ideas
  • Amazon has tips and reports about website speed and why it is important to your website conversion rate and more.
  • Look into CDN options like CloudFlare or JetPack. (Content Delivery Network) This will make your website load much faster by utilizing distributed content processing.
  • For video hosting you can use Amazon S3 hosting, YouTube, or Amazon. http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
  • To check your web page load times check http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ or try
  • Google Page Speed Test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
  • Set up email filters (Gmail)
  • Hire a virtual assistant for your repetitive tasks and saving more time each day to dedicate more to yourself or to the core parts of your business
  • Advertising on Facebook is really the most effective once you start paying for ads. Even at a small daily rate.
Suggested Reads:
Great source for asking questions or finding answers about WordPress:

Photo Friday: The Business of Blogging [Pictures]

A few weeks ago David Laietta hosted the monthly MeetUp of WordPress Orlando that featured the title “The Business of Blogging“. There is a large community here in Central Florida that are bloggers and use WordPress so this particular MeetUp was anticipated not just for the topic but for the guest speakers.

The speakers were Bess Auer, Angel Yard, and Gloria Rand. While I won’t get too much into what they talked about, I would rather point you to the MeetUp website and see for yourself here. For now, check out some of the photos I shot from the event.

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