3 Blogging Secrets for Success

My love/hate relationship with George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels started with “The Game of Thrones” I love being so shocked and scared that I almost can’t continue reading and I love how his words set my imagination on fire. I hate his books because once I start, I can’t put them down. I’m like a woman possessed until I finish and then I hate that it’s ended.

Even though blogging isn’t anything like writing a book… I’d like my posts to be just as compelling as George Martin’s novels and to have as loyal and committed a following as he has. Someone who has built up a very loyal blog following in just over a year is Kimberly Gauthier of Keep the Tail Wagging, a blog about her three dogs, herself and her fiancée.

Kimberly was one of the guest speakers at the July 2013 Seattle WordPress Meetup. She talked about her blogging journey and learning through trial and error. She showed us how she developed her blogging voice and her community of intensely loyal and committed readers.

3 Reasons to Love Visual Website Optimizer for A/B Testing

Why do people buy Bayer Aspirin when you can buy the CVS generic or the Kirkland generic at about 1/3 of the cost? It’s the identical product – identical dosage, identical ingredients. What gives?

It seems that once we trust a product, we just don’t look further. Maybe it’s habit. Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s because we trust brand advertising. Whatever the reason, once satisfied we tend be reluctant to try alternative products.

A little over a year ago we started working with a client who was using Visual Website Optimizer. Up until then all of our testing had been on the Google platform – first Website Optimizer, and more recently Experiments. I’d read about alternative testing platforms,and even checked out their websites, but just never got around to trying them out.

This client wanted to continue to use VWO, and we were forced to learn a new system. We scrambled around, ran a few tests and learned the platform. And surprise, surprise… we’ve never looked back.