Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for February 28th

Happy Friday! We’re back again with a quick update on this week’s interesting articles on WordPress, SEO, social media, and usability.

What I love about this week’s content is the ongoing presence of Sucuri and WP Engine. I’m a fan of both of these companies, but not for their solid product and service offering. These companies and their respective teams take a genuine interest in our WordPress community and they consistently play an active role on social media and in person at conferences. They are a wonderful example of doing the right thing, staying in front of their users, and just being wonderful assets to developers and users alike.

Web Design and WordPress

This week WordPress.com made a big announcement with it’s entrance into e-commerce. Another good article is one from my friend Mika. She makes some wonderful (and also frank) comments on WordPress plugin usage and troubleshooting.

• The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
• Mastering WordPress Meta Data: Querying Posts and Users by Meta Data
• WPWeekly: Dre Armeda and Tony Perez of Sucuri Security – We’re big fans of Dre and Tony and Sucuri.
• Is This Plugin Bad?
• How to Deactivate WordPress Multisite Properly
• Genesis Column Class Generator
• Jetpack 2.9 Introduces Multisite Support and Related Posts Module
• 8 Killer Tips and Tricks To Skyrocket Your Productivity in WordPress
• WordPress.com Business Users: eCommerce Has Arrived!

Internet Marketing, SEO and Social Media

Of interest this week is another great video from Matt Cutts. In the video he provides valuable insight for those interested in Google’s view of SEO. Another interesting read is the WP Engine SEO article, although the comments here should also be taken into consideration as there is some interesting feedback and counterpoints from SEO experts like Yoast.

• Mapping Twitter Topic Networks: From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters
• 29 free Internet tools to improve your marketing starting today
• Matt Cutts Video: Should I focus on clarity or jargon when writing content?
• Facebook News Feed Now Shows Content From Pages That Tag Pages You Follow
• Google Offers Local Media a Helping Hand with Private Ad Exchange
• 3 Steps to Identify Blog Topics that are Relevant to Your Audience
• The Year of the Social Small Business
• Twitter Adds Promoted Accounts to Search Results
• 6 Steps to Compiling an Integrated Online Marketing Strategy
• How WP Engine Is Failboating Your SEO and Leaking Your Information – Please read all reader comments for article rebuttal from well known experts such as Yoast.
• Mobile Advertising: How To Outperform Your Competition

Entrepreneurship, Business and Plain Old Fashion Goodness

This month Chris Lema started a new business series called the 40 Mantras. If you’re a business owner, executive, or manager, this series is a great no nonsense read. Visit 40 Mantras ->

Upcoming WordPress Events

• WordCamp St. Louis – March 1 – Our friend Carrie Dils is the keynote for this WordCamp, which means attendees are in for a great presentation.
• WordCamp Lancaster – March 1
• WordCamp Dayton – March 7-8
• WordCamp Atlanta – March 14-15
• WordCamp Charleston – May 17
• WordCamp Minneapolis – April 26-25
• WordCamp Austin – April 26-27
• WordCamp North Canton – May 2-3
• WordCamp Connecticut – May 10
• WordCamp Miami – May 10-11 – We are a sponsor and I will be a presenter.

As always, this is not an exhaustive list. If you know of any posts related to web design, WordPress or SEO then by all means do share! Post a comment below and let us and our readers know what we may have missed.

Many thanks to those of you who have emailed me with suggestions!