What is an Affiliated Woothemes Wooworker?

Becoming an affiliated wooworker means that Woothemes has recognized all of the great Woothemes WordPress website theme customization and design work we have put together over the past two years. We are excited to be included with some great design agencies from all over the world in the affiliated wooworkers directory on the woothemes website. Read more »

My job here at FirstTracks Marketing presents me with the opportunity to build WordPress and Joomla CMS websites for many diverse clients in industries such as Education, Assisted Living, Health Care, High Tech, and many more. But want to know the one thing that is the same with almost all of these websites and clients? The lack of resource planning and understanding of what it will take to work with their new, easy to use Content Management System (CMS). Based on my experience developing, designing and training so many different users in Joomla and WordPress there are a few things that a new user will need to know in order to make the CMS experience successful and fun. Read more »

The way we build our websites is cool and all but it’s not about HOW we do things it’s about the WHY….

At FirstTracks Marketing we are business people who also happen to be very good at website design and development. Our process for developing a website solution for your business is built on exactly that…YOUR BUSINESS. This might sound extremely obvious to some but we see it all the time in our line of work. People get way too bogged down with the technology side of web development and lose site of why the site is being built in the first place. We start with “why” you need an effective online presence and stay focused on your business strategies. Read more »

For every single website we create using WordPress we have a set suite of plugins that we always use. Since we started developing with WordPress over 3 years ago there have been lots of plugins that we tested and used in our site and our client’s sites. Over the past three years we have continued to hone our plugin selections down the very best of the best which we now always use in EVERY WordPress website we build. Read more »

I like listening and that’s interesting coming from someone who also loves to talk. Still working on the listening thing and being in a profession (marketing & business strategy) that has more than it’s share of talkers, I can say we all have a lot of work to do.

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2012 was the craziest, busiest and most exciting year yet for FirstTracks Marketing Group. We have had the opportunity to work with some excellent businesses of all shapes and sizes. One of the exciting additions to our agency this year was being included as an official “woo worker” (recognition of all the excellent theme customizations we have built using their framework) by WooThemes. It was through this association and listing that we were able to connect with Fisher’s Tudor House, a large restaurant and catering facility located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In November of 2012 we were charged with the task of setting them up with WordPress Ecommerce by integrating Woocommerce with their current Genesis Theme Framework website. Read more »

The most direct email headline ever…

“Don’t Buy” and this was on Cyber Monday from a consumer products company in the height of the buying palooza frenzy that drives the US and world economies. What was Patagonia doing? Why weren’t they pushing deals and enticing me to buy, buy, buy. Isn’t that want everyone expects? Read more »

With the help of a new extension developed for the Stripe Payment Gateway that works with Gravity Forms, FirstTracks can now process online payment with all major credit cards for any of our services. This is an exciting addition to the FirstTracks website as it opens the door for current and future clients to pay any way they like. If you have a credit card and you receive points and rewards, use it to pay for your printing, designs projects, next batch of website updates or a whole new website! Read more »

When working with clients on their business and marketing strategies I’m always looking for what I call the BIG 3. These are the deep bone marrow “musts” that just have be there if Business Success is to have a chance.

• A meaningful product, service or place
• A fertile market that has a real need for that product, service or place
• A willingness to take advantage of the combination of the first 2 Read more »

Who’s Talking About You and What Are They Saying?

When discussing marketing and brand strategy with clients we usually get around to discussing the integration of several social media tactics and sometimes we get the “Oh no I don’t want all that Facebook and Twitter stuff in my business. It’s all boring chatter and I certainly don’t want my employees with access to a company Facebook account!” Read more »

This past week I came across an article by Hubspot titled “Why I Fired My Marketing Agency” which turned out to be an interesting piece that details what you should NOT be looking for from your marketing agency. I think the quote from the article the resonated with me the most was:

“Three months later and a grand total of $70,000 poorer, it was time to say goodbye. The agency just never produced the results we cared about. And probably worse, they felt like they did but could never produce a report to prove it to us”.

This got me thinking about the work we do at FirstTracks and how we are different from many traditional marketing agencies. We do deliver results that our clients care about. Read more »

What a weekend! WordCamp Boston 2012 is in the books and overall it was a very good conference once again. There were 600 attendees this year from all over New England, the biggest WordCamp yet! Personally this was my third WordCamp Boston (if you want you can check out my thoughts on the 2010 WordCamp Boston and 2011 WordCamp Boston) and if I were to sum up the experience this year in a word it would be validation. Read more »

“If anything, our brand is almost all about storytelling.”

I came across this from Doug Wood, President of Tommy Bahama. A reputable company with good brand recognition. We’ve all heard of them and we know what they do. But why? They use fabrics like so many others. They can sew, advertise and distribute. They have designers that are good but so do many clothing labels. So why do we “get” them? Mr. Wood goes on to say that which made me salute; “The purpose of our company is to enable the world to relax.” Read more »

Wait, what the heck is Pinterest exactly and why should I care?

A valid question, one I found myself asking a few weeks back, it seems like there is always another “hot” social media site springing up somewhere that is going to suck even more time and effort out of your day. I am here to say that giving Pinterest a chance is actually worth it both from a personal and professional standpoint in this online marketer’s opinion. Read more »

Is this where the Brand Plan says we should be?

Amazon is planning on going all brick and mortar on us in a west coast test market. I think an oh so overused word applies here, REALLY!? As a brand planner I’d like to think that someone at this master of the online universe might be screaming. Read more »

This week I (Interactive Director – Matthew Nelson) gave a quick 30 minute presentation up at this month’s New England Adobe User’s Group about why I use Fireworks for the majority of my website design and mock up work. Now we all know that Photoshop is the the industry standard, and I use it almost every day, but not as much as I use Fireworks. Fireworks has been around for a long time and I have been using it for years. From time to time I find myself getting into the Photoshop vs. Fireworks debate I felt it was finally time to put it out there and explain why I still think that Fireworks is still a web designers best friend even today in 2012. Read more »