x. (old) Publishing WordPress Wednesday

Why?

Each week we publish an email newsletter called WordPress Wednesday which goes out to our entire database of email subscribers. We regularly receive testimonials and great feedback on this newsletter and it is an important part of our mission to help WordPress consultants with their business.

What You Will Need

You will need access to

• the WP Wednesday folder in Google Drive
• the email builder in WordPress (logins are in the vault)
• Infusionsoft

If you do not have access to these resources, please contact Troy or Gin to request access.

Log into WPE website at:

http://email.vumwpe.com/wp-admin/

The logins will be in the 1Password Vault.

Go to Newsletter > Add New then on email types tick WP Wednesday. (NB. Be sure to choose the correct template. There is another one called WordPress Wednesday and that's the wrong one).

Enter the date of the edition in the Title field using this format: May 18, 2016

Select the date when the wp Wednesday newsletter is due to go out. The reason for having this specific field is you might be preparing this newsletter ahead of its due date and you want to make sure that the date appears correctly.

Open the Google Drive folder WP Elevation > WordPress Wednesday.

In this folder, there will be a subfolder with the date that will match the edition you are working on. If in doubt, click on the Last modified column to sort the folders in date order.

In the subfolder you will find a Google Document named WP Wednesday Articles YEAR MONTH DAY, where YEAR MONTH DAY should match the date fo the edition you are working on.

This document contains the articles for the WordPress Wednesday newsletter.

Open the document and you will find the Title, Description, Link and Image Credit for each article. If the Image Credit is Unknown or missing then just ignore it.

Cropping Images

Download the images to your desktop (or make sure you can access them through Google Drive) and get ready to crop them to the required size.

• Open the newly saved image using Preview on the Mac.
• Click "Tools" then "Adjust Size".
• Crop the images to 260 pixels x 185 pixels.
• Repeat above steps for each image in the newsletter.
• The image for the very first article should be cropped to 600 pixels x 300 pixels as this is the featured article.

Additional Reading

This is an excellent article on web image best practices and will help you produce better-looking images.

http://blog.jimdo.com/web-graphics-for-beginners-a-best-practices-handbook/

Add the articles in the same order that they appear in the Google Drive document.

Featured Article

The first article in the Google Document will be the featured article and should be added first.

Add the following for the Featured Article

• add the image - image size should be 600px x 300px
• add the title
• add the excerpt
• add the author
• add the photo credit (if applicable)
• add the URL

The WordPress Wednesday newsletter contains two (2) articles underneath the featured article and before the advertisement.

These are called the Top articles.

Click the Add Article button to add the following for the next two articles from the Google document.

• add image
• add title
• add excerpt
• add author
• add photo credit (if applicable)
• add URL

Next, add the articles that will appear below the advertisement in the newsletter.

Click the Add Article button to add the following for the rest of the articles from the Google document (except the Timeless Reads)

• add image
• add title
• add excerpt
• add author
• add photo credit (if applicable)
• add URL

Add the articles for the Timeless Reads in the same order that they appear in the Google Drive document.

NB: There are no images for Timeless Reads articles.

• add the title
• add the excerpt
• add the author
• add the URL

To add more Timeless Reads click the Add Article button.

Once you are happy with your newsletter, it is time to publish it.

Click Publish to publish the newsletter, and then click view post, and make a note of the URL of the page.

Login to Infusionsoft. Details should be in the 1Password Vault.

Go the Main Nav at the top and choose Marketing > Email and Broadcasts

Click the Get Started button.

Click "Actions" button on the upper right side of the screen and choose "Create HTML Emails"

In the From field, click on the pencil icon to edit.

Click on the drop down menu, then scroll to the bottom.

Choose Other. Then in the Name field enter WP Elevation.

Then, for Email type in support@wpelevation.com.

Now hit Save.

In the "Recipients" field type in "Broadcast List" it will appear below as you type it. Click Broadcast List as it appears.

Enter the subject line in this format with the correct issue number:

EG: WordPress Wednesday Issue #153

Make sure the issue number is one greater than the email that was sent the week before.

Click on the arrow to hide/reveal "from, recipient and subject line"

Go back to the WordPress Wednesday Newsletter in your browser, right-click and choose View Page Source to view the code.

Highlight all of the code on the page and copy it to your clipboard.

Go back to Infusionsoft and paste the HTML code on the left panel of the screen.

Highlight all the default HTML code and delete it.

Paste the code on the left panel of the screen.

You'll know if you've done this correctly because the preview on the right side of the screen will match the design of the newsletter in WordPress.

Click Test button type in your email address to send test to yourself

Repeat the process to send a test email to Gin or Brian

Click "Schedule or Send" button to choose the recipients you want to send the email to.

Double-check the following:

• From
• Recipients
• Subject

Once you get the all clear from Gin or Brian that the email is good to go you can tick Schedule to Send Later and fill up the following field:

• On This Day: (WEDNESDAY)
• At This Time: 1 AM
• and it should indicate (GMT -08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) at the bottom

the email will be released at 1am on Wednesday morning in Pacific Time (US & Canada). This means that our American subscribers will have it when they wake up, the Australians receive it approx. 6pm Wednesday night and the UK subscribers get it at 9am Wednesday morning.

Log into Sprout Social at:

https://app.sproutsocial.com/login

Logins will be in the 1Password Vault.

Click the Compose button

Compose Message

• Choose Twitter and Facebook accounts
• Enter description of article and shorten links (entire message needs to be less than 140 characters)
• Make sure image to share is interesting
• User the pencil icons to edit any fields to make them compelling

Click the Queue icon to add your post to the queue, choose Queue Last and then click the green Queue Button.

Repeat these steps for each article in the WordPress Wednesday newsletter.

You will know this process is complete when the email has arrived in your inbox and the social media messages are scheduled in the Sprout Social Queue.

Tick this final step off and stand up and stretch.