Showcase Saturday: Greener Side

Can you smell that? Spring is right around the corner and you may already be able to smell some of the fresh blooming flowers in your area. If you love nature and want to express this appreciation for the great outdoors via your WordPress blog, a new theme has been developed that lets the outside in.

Appropriately enough, it’s called the Greener Side theme and it features the look of freshly cut grass. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of green in this theme, but it’s also nice to see that the overall layout is quite clean as well. The simple navigation is located near the top and there is a single sidebar to the right of the main content.

A search field is embedded above the main content area to the right, making it easier for your readers to find what they want on your blog. The designer also mentions that the theme is compliant with current CSS and HTML standards, offering the “perfect balance between an awesome design and clutter free content.”

Go to the Free Themes Directory on WordPress.org for more information, a live preview, and the download link for Greener Side.

In the Sphere: Lessons, Jobs, and Ramen

The great thing about the blogosphere is the sheer variety of posts that these bloggers can write. No matter what your area of interest, someone is writing about it. Here are some of the best from the past week.

Dumb Little Man starts us off with some amazing life lessons from one Albert Einstein. There is so much more to this great mind than the theory of relativity. For instance, he reminds us of the importance of kissing a pretty girl with the full and undivided attention. Oh, what a romantic.

Hummingbird 604, better known as Raul Pacheco in most circles, loves trying out new and interesting places to eat all around town. In one of his most recent journeys, Raul made his way to The Foundation Lounge on Main Street. The service was prompt and the “BLT-ish” sandwich is a really good deal at just seven bucks, including a side salad.

Starving College Girl Lesley Chang has figured out that one way to avoid starvation is to get a job. She can’t apply for them all, so she has started a new Twitter account dedicated to finding some of the best jobs in Vancouver related to marketing, communications, public relations, writing, and design. Follow @bestjobsinvan on Twitter.

The Urban Muse Susan Johnston takes a moment to consider a very important question: how do you de-stress? It’s important to chase your dreams and achieve your goals, but you also need to take some “me” time to unwind. What do you do to relax? Do you read a book? Play video games? Go for a walk?

Tiny Bites foodie Karen Hamilton made her way down to Downtown Vancouver to try Hokkaido Ramen Santouka. This is a Japanese franchise that recently opened up on Robson Street, competing directly against the likes of Motomachi, Kintaro, and Benkei. All in all, Karen sounds quite pleased with the bowl of noodles she received.

Marketing 101: Free is the New Economy

What is the best way to attract new customers into your fold? It can be a challenge convincing customers to open up their wallets, so one of the most effective strategies to employ is to give it away for free. This has quickly become one of the most popular business models in the last couple of years.

If Facebook or Twitter charged for the basic service, neither site would have become anywhere near as big as they are today. In like manner, can you imagine if you had to pay for YouTube or Gmail? It would be much more difficult for those sites to get to their current level of popularity.

Going forward, more and more businesses are adopting a similar model, looking for monetization and revenue for alternate sources. Even where the conventional model still applies, companies are using free giveaways as a great marketing tactic. You can download Peggle Nights for free from Popcap Games if you sign up for an account. From there, you might be swayed to purchase more games from Popcap. Similarly, classic Command & Conquer games are now available as a free download. The hope is that you will buy the new game when it comes out.

Going to the mobile platform, the same is holding true too. The most popular apps on the iPhone are the free ones. For a mobile coupon app, the download for the consumer is free; the revenue comes by charging the advertisers to host their coupons in the app. By making the app free, more people are likely to download and try it.

Have you tried using something for free as part of your marketing plans? Did it work?

WordPress Wednesday: Easily Navigate Pages

The great thing about WordPress is that while it makes a fantastic blog platform, it is also versatile enough to tackle other applications as well. There are many people who use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for a seemingly static website, largely because it is so good at managing all of that content.

For instance, you will notice that my freelance writing site is actually powered by WordPress, even though it is not a blog. I don’t have too many pages on there, so managing the different pages is a relatively straightforward process. However, this isn’t the case if you have a website with lots of pages in a multi-tier hierarchal configuration. How can you better manage those pages?

A simple WordPress plugin has been designed that allows you to easily navigate pages from within the WordPress dashboard system. This plugin will insert a widget in your dashboard that lets you navigate through your pages as if it were a Windows Explorer. This maintains the hierarchal structure, not unlike the folder system you have on your PC.

For more information and to download the free plugin, head on over to the official WordPress plugin directory.

Business 101: Expanding Your Brand

When your name is your brand and you’ve come to be known for one or more specific projects, it can be difficult to reach a little outside of this niche and expand your brand. HGTV is a television channel that focuses on all sorts of home-related matters, from buying houses to renovating them. Peter Fallico is one of the more popular on-screen personalities.

He is the current host of Home to Stay, a television show where a homeowner needs some help with renovations and home decor. They may have lived in their current house for a few years, thinking that they would move on sooner rather than later, but they have later decided to make it a forever home. As such, they turn to Peter and his team to make it a home to stay.

This is the branding that Peter Fallico has attached to his name, so what can he do when he wants to expand this brand? Well, over at HGTV, they are launching a new television show called Home to Flip and, yes, Peter is the host. This plays off the name of his other show and it tackles similar subject matter, but it is an entirely different show.

Rather than renovating a house so the homeowner can live there for years to come, Home to Flip aims to renovate a home so that it can attract the most money on the open market. This is a different mentality, but Peter Fallico and his team can still capitalize on their existing skillset.

If you have a business of your own and you’re looking to expand, consider how you can take advantage of your current branding and expertise.

Great Gadgets: Western Digital WD TV Mini

Being able to play your range of media files on your television can be a very liberating experience, especially since so many of us consume our content through digital downloads these days. You don’t need to have a DVD, because you can just have a movie file on a USB flash drive.

Catering to this market are a new generation of media players that connect directly to your HDTV, but many of these are $100 or more. While Western Digital already has the WD TV and WD TV Live, the hard drive manufacturer is also looking at the more entry-level end of the market with the Western Digital WD TV Mini Media Player. As you can imagine, this is smaller and cheaper.

There are some features missing from the WD TV Mini, but it still has the main function of playing a wide range of video, music, and picture files on your HDTV. There is only one USB port and it does not have the Internet connectivity of the WD TV Live, but the WD TV Mini is still a solid choice for people who want to share video files simply and easily.

For more information and to purchase, direct your browsers over to Amazon.ca where the WD TV Mini is currently listed at just $70.10 with free shipping. That represents a 42% savings over the regular price.