If you’re a regular visitor to this blog you deserve a medal. Not only isn’t it updated very often, but the content I do update it with is mundane at best.

It wasn’t always like this. In the early days of blogging I published tutorials, reviews and general WordPress stuff at least once a week. This type of ‘trust blogging’ didn’t bring me much in the way of traffic but it did give prospective clients an insight to the way I work, leading to a steady number of sales leads.

And then Twitter came along

Granted, Twitter had been in the background for a year or 2 already, but it wasn’t until I went into freelancing full-time (and had nobody to talk to) that Twitter became my main outlet for publishing. Compared to blogging, Twitter appears to have 2 really cool benefits:

1. Real-time responses. For someone who thrives on instant gratification, Twitter is the perfect outlet. Within 30 seconds of tweeting something good, I was getting replies and retweets galore. Lovely!
2. 140 characters. Compared to 500-800 words, 140 characters is a non-writer’s dream! I could think up a tweet in less time than it took to open WordPress.

But along with the benefits, I truly believe that Twitter killed my blog (and to a large extent, my source of quality sales leads). Here are a few things I’ve learned about Twitter in the past year.

Twitter doesn’t have staying power

When you tweet something good, it has a lifespan of less than 8 hours. Of course you could tweet the same stuff every hour, but I call that spam. Nothing puts me off more than a Twitter stream laced with repeats. If I want repeats I’ll watch TV.

By comparison, blog posts have an infinite lifespan. I published a post on backing up a website about 3 years ago, and it still gets over 1000 visitors a month (and earns me about $100 in affiliate commissions every month). On Twitter that content would have disappeared ages ago.

Your Twitter friends do not equal your blog visitors

This may be different for some people, but my Twitter stream is filled with 4 types of people:

1. People who I consider equals (about 40%). They’re either web designers/developers in the trenches, or small businesses who deal in WordPress themes, plugins and random web based services.
2. People who I look up to (about 40%). These are the A-list bloggers, designers, developers and celebrities (ok, only Charlie Sheen and Stephen Fry) who supposedly have their fingers on the pulse.
3. My existing customers and prospects I’m targeting (about 5%). These are the people I actually care about. It helps me to know what they’re up to, where they are and why they aren’t answering my emails . Of course, they’re also watching me and waiting for their projects to get finished, which is why I don’t tweet about going for a bike ride at 11am on a Tuesday.
4. Spammers (about 15%). These are the men who have avatars of gorgeous half-naked women. I’ll never understand why they think it’ll work, but sadly my Twitter stream contains a lot of their noise.

On Twitter, everyone’s in it for the money

When Twitter first launched it was a geek haven. No advertising, so spam. Just a bunch of like-minded people who wanted to share information.

Sadly this is no longer true. Everyone has an agenda now. They have ‘Twitter Strategies’ and use software like Buffer to get the most bang for their tweets, even when they’re asleep.

On Twitter, everyone’s in it for the money, even me.

Farewell Twitter

I’ve decided to stay off Twitter for the month of February and focus on writing 4 blog posts (trust me, that’s a lot of work for me) that will help DIYers, prospects and existing clients do stuff online.

Yes, I’m still in it for the money, but I believe blog posts are more helpful, more insightful and potentially, more profitable than tweets. I’ll keep you posted.

image credit

Update (01-01-2012): Clean Elements has been taken out of circulation for the time being so I can re-release it as a premium theme/skin. I’ll let you all know when it’s available again. Thanks for your interest.

As WordPress theme frameworks go, Thesis’ SEO and typography are second-to-none, but out of the box it doesn’t look like much.

So to take advantage of Thesis’ features AND have a professional looking website, your choices are:

1. Buy a skin to completely change the way it looks, but be prepared to install it and customise it to suit your branding — and that doesn’t always turn out the way you imagined.
2. Hire a designer, pay them thousands and get a professional looking site. For startups and small businesses, this isn’t always viable.

So what you need is something in between a custom theme design costing thousands, and a cheap skin that looks like a cheap skin.

Well, now you can have it

Theme Store is a simple concept. I make a new Thesis skin every month. If you like the design, send me your logo, your colour ideas and changes you’d like made to the design. Within 7 days I’ll convert the skin into a custom site that looks like it was made just for you. I’ll also launch the site on your hosting, give you Gravity Forms and other premium plugins, and offer free technical support for 30 days.

So what does it cost?

My first theme is called Clean Elements and costs just $147. I designed it with small businesses in mind and have already customised it for a signage company, a plumber and a legal firm, so it’s pretty versatile.

When you buy Clean Elements, here’s what you get:

• A custom home page design
• A home page slider using the Nivo Slider plugin
• Page and blog templates
• A dynamic sitemap template
• Header and footer menus
• Gravity Forms for contact forms, newsletter forms, anything forms
• 1 hour of my time to tweak your design and add your logo
• Installation on your hosting
• 30 days free support

What about Thesis 2.0?

Because we don’t know what Thesis 2.0 will look like or how it will work, I can only guarantee that Clean Elements will work on it, but may need an upgrade first (which I’ll do at no extra charge).

Sound interesting?

Take a look at the Theme Store page, view the Clean Elements demo and when you’re ready, order Clean Elements for your site.

Other than Amazon’s 1-click service, I can’t think of a single ecommerce platform that makes it REALLY easy to buy online. Clearly I’m not the only one.

Last night Steve Jobs, a real-life Tony Stark, passed away.

I’m not naive enough to believe that he was solely responsible for the iMac that pays my bills at the end of the month, or that he hand-built each element of my iPhone. I’d like to think that my iPad was touched by him in the manufacturing process, but it wasn’t. And my 5 year old MacBook Pro, while it’s great, didn’t arrive with a little ‘Built by Steve’ sticker on the box.

But without Steve Jobs’ singleminded approach to better, sexier, user-friendly products & services, I would be a PC user. And for sparing me that agony, I will be eternally grateful to the only business leader I’ve ever truly admired.

Thanks Steve.

This weekend I got stuck into The Referral Engine, John Jantsch’s follow up book to Duct Tape Marketing.

I’m always immediately disheartened by books that (correctly) promote offline networking as a referral tool, because I hate networking in the real world. But as John points out:

“Get out from behind the computer and go out there in your customer’s world and get a better understanding of what they are going through, and you may just discover an entirely new view of your customers and how you can engage them more fully.”

So, why should you read it?

For small businesses this is a powerful read because the strategies recommended don’t cost anything except time.

My top take-aways from the book

1. Online marketing works for some companies, offline marketing for others, but convergent online/offline strategies are goldmines for any type of business.
2. Every business needs a blog, and it has to be updated with good stuff regularly. Jim Connolly gets this. He posts to his blog every day and often comes up with some great ideas and highly referable content.
3. Social media is a lot easier to manage when you go into it with a solid plan. Think of the number of Twitter accounts out there with 3-4 tweets on day 1, then nothing. These are the people who believe Twitter ‘just won’t work for my business’. In the book John outlines how he uses social media on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, and it’s obvious that this is a guy who has a lot to do and needs to optimise the time he spends on Twitter/RSS feeds/Facebook.
4. High quality content really is king in the world of marketing (both online and offline), and it isn’t just about blog posts. Think of sites like Hubspot and Unbounce. These companies churn out dozens of high quality content pieces every year, from blog posts to infographics to eBooks to webinars, it’s all there. And it’s always top quality & free.
5. Making yourself more referable needs to be part of your core business philosophy. My local pub fails miserably at this because the landlady is the first to go on the offensive when something goes wrong. The result? All her staff follow her lead and very few people refer her business (and it’s a pity because the beer is cold and the food is usually great).
6. The easier you make it for customers to refer you, the more likely they are to do it. It’s all about friction: if you give your customers the tools they need to refer you and the incentive to do so, they will.
7. If you aren’t following up every sale (even one-off sales) with some form of ongoing communication, you are far less likely to be referred. On page 154 of The Referral Engine John talks about the “Owners Manual”, and shows how a simple transaction can lead to a string of non-spammy follow up communications almost guaranteed to get you more business. This page alone is worth buying the book for.
8. Yes, we all have businesses to run and work to do that pays the bills, and this marketing stuff takes a lot of time. But the book also talks about repurposing a lot of content for blog posts, eBooks, webinars, real-world presentations, whitepapers, case studies and more, which makes a lot of sense.

You can read The Referral Engine from cover to cover in a weekend, but I think you’ll need to set aside a few hours to plan how best to put John’s ideas into action.

In summary

I don’t know if it’s because I am where I am with my business right now, but I found The Referral Engine to be one of the best business books I’ve ever read, simply because it’s written buy a guy who understands and works with small business every day, not a career writer who simply watches from the sidelines.

Have you read it? What did you implement? Let me know in the comments.

If you’re anything like me, you have clients. Demanding clients with deadlines which are often more important than blog posts. So you skip a post or 2, and before you know it you haven’t blogged for 6 months. Sound familiar? Good, then you’ll accept my apology and we can move on.

Here’s what’s been happening

Since I last blogged I’ve:

I launched 36.5 WordPress sites for new and existing clients (Hi clients! Love you!)

mmm, Coda. Sorry PC users, no nice code editors for you.

Started learning ExpressionEngine and Perch

See WordPress, it really isn't difficult...

Streamlined thinkdave.com

My shiny new support system - now in BETA

Oh, and last week I helped an old lady cross the street. She didn’t buy a website but I’m holding thumbs.

Started Devsquared

Devsquared - complete with 'Hot Purple' branding

Freelance Five

Freelance Five. Inspiring freelancer interviews – five questions at a time

Project X

I’ve also tentatively started building a new product/service thing for website owners who need help with marketing. It’s all in my head at the moment but I’m confident millions of people will buy it…

With all that going on, I haven’t had a moment to write (by the way, I also use this excuse for not writing to my grandmother).

So, what have you been up to lately?

Let me know in the comments (unless you’re that guy from the IMF. We ALL KNOW what you’ve been up to.)