Implementation Day 30 – The end .. The mother load!

Posted by Damian on Nov 24, 2011 | 1 comment

Straight to it ..

New Product, Market testing phase
So, in my effort to get the ‘test’ up and running, here’s what I did today:

• Competitor research
• Set up new WordPress website
• Chose nice WordPress Theme (from Elegant Themes)
• Cut and pasted content for the copy of the new site
• Roughly formatted the copy to make it attractive on screen

Prep for new Gingermagic website
My targeted magic websites (www.christmaspartymagician.co.uk and www.magic-weddings.com look quite nice (especially the weddings one), but my main magic site is very dated.

Never fear though, the ‘Month of Implementation’ is here! The www.gingermagic.com site will be having a complete redesign very soon now! Here’s the list of steps I’ve taken today:

• Set up photo shoot next week for new website (this is huge .. I hate things like this and have been putting off having another photo shoot for about 3 years!)
• Competitor research for magicians (keywords, SEO, content that puts the top ones at the top etc)
• Set up temporary wordpress site (to work on the new site while the old one is still up and running)
• Chosen a theme for the new site which has a lot of scope for expansion (I’ll need this with the new magic project I have planned for the new year)
• Started to set up a site map of the pages needed for the new gingermagic website

Wikipedia Page
I’ve had ‘setting up a Wikipedia page’ on a list for longer than I care to remember. Noticing that most the magicians who do well at SEO also have Wikipedia pages was the kick up the arse I needed to sign up to Wikipedia and make a page for myself. There’s hardly anything on the page at the moment, but it’s much easier to add to something and to edit it than it is to start it.
Update .. My Wikipedia page has been deleted for being ‘Autobiographical’. That was a short lived achievement! Neet to get someone else to write about me!

iPhone development
I’ve had a long session in our iPhone app design and marketing document today too. It’s all shaping up very nicely. I think we just need a couple of deadlines setting now to keep it on track and ‘get it done’

Checked on Adwords banner retargeting
And it is all set up properly 🙂 The adds aren’t showing yet because the retargeting ‘audience’ number isn’t high enough. It only has to get to 100 though (used to be 500, which is what was putting me off yesterday), so that shouldn’t take long.

WordPress Automated Backup
Set up backups for all of my WordPress websites that automatically copy all of the files and databases into my Dropbox account. It’s been hard to find a good WordPress backup plugin that is SIMPLE and creates a backup of both the database and the files. Others that are highly regarded were just too geeky. This one, EZPY OCB is fantastic!

Admin
I’ve been pretty much ignoring admin today, but did respond to all of the enquiries that came in and produced a detailed proposal for a big client.

Well, that’s about it. The month is over, that’s ya’ lot!

What to do now? Duno .. rest first! I am going to a ‘summery of the month’ post tomorrow just to see everything in it’s place. Not sure if this blog is going to exist after that or not. I’ve never really wanted a blog. It just seemed like a good idea for this project. Now that it’s over, it would just seem incredibly self indulgent to write about myself every day. Who cares what I did or didn’t do!? I never expected anyone to be bothered about this. It was just my way of creating a commitment. It’s often hard to do X by Y o’clock when you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck telling you that it’s got to be done.

Anyway, what next? Answers on a postcard … or in the comments area would probably be a more appropriate place.