Jetpack is well known for its image CDN, backup features, and stats, but did you know it also offers more than 30 other ways to customize your website? With a modular approach — no features are automatically enabled, and you choose which items to turn on individually — it adds features without loading unnecessary code, so your website runs efficiently.
Continue reading → How to Customize a WordPress Site with Jetpack
If you’re a musician, you probably agree that having a fresh, informative band website is important for promoting your songs and updating fans with your latest tour information and releases. Even if you’re already posting this information on social media, you can use your website as the hub for your online activity: a one-stop shop for listeners to connect with you.
Today, we’ll explore how you can use Jetpack tools to design your band’s site, promote your concerts, showcase photos and videos, and connect with fans over social media.
Among many others, bands like Dada Life and Tritonal use WordPress themes designed to amplify music websites.
To make your band’s website stand out from the crowd, consider using one of Jetpack’s many musician-friendly themes. For example, the recently launched Twenty Nineteen is a great choice for band websites, as it allows you to highlight your band’s logo and add widgets that display upcoming concert dates.
If you’re a Professional plan user, you’ll have access to more than 100 free themes (available with all plans), plus 200 premium themes to choose from. You can upload any theme you choose to your WordPress site, but Jetpack themes come with many built-in selections for a faster, streamlined setup.
Want to share your tour dates online or let fans know about album release parties, pop-up shows, or other appearances? You can use the Upcoming Events widget and shortcode to display events directly from your Google calendar.
Here’s an example of what the Events shortcode looks like, placed inside a shortcode block within the WordPress Editor. Note the calendar link and the number of events to be displayed — in this case, three.
After you publish your post, the shortcode automatically turns into an event listing.
The beauty of syncing with your Google calendar is that after you set up the shortcode (or widget) to display events on your band’s website, you won’t need to update it again. Your Upcoming Events will automatically refresh to show the events on your Google calendar.
Fans love seeing exclusive band photos. In addition to promotional album shoots and live concert images, listeners want to see what goes on behind the scenes. On your band’s website, you might want to share candid shots from recording sessions, goofy poses after late-night practices, and even the chaos taking place just before showtime. It’s these peek-behind-the-curtain moments that deepen the emotional connection fans have with your music.
With Jetpack, you can add captivating galleries to your band website. Go to a post or page, add a gallery block, and select the images that you want to include.
You can create as many galleries as you want, and edit existing ones as well.
Not everyone can make it to your live shows, but you can still share videos from your concerts online so that anyone, anywhere, can experience them from wherever they are.
With Jetpack, you have the ability to upload and display videos from your media library, YouTube, and a variety of other video hosting services directly on your site. You can also embed a live video or entire YouTube playlists. There’s no extra coding knowledge required; in most cases, you’ll just need to insert the web address of the video into a post or page or select them from your existing videos.
You’re most likely using at least one social media platform to promote your band online. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or another channel, you can connect your social accounts back to your website using the Social Icons Widget. This tool adds icons that link directly to your social pages. That way, visitors of your band website can easily find you across their favorite social platforms, and are more likely to share your music with new fans.
If you’re already investing time and energy into posting content to your social channels, you might as well get extra mileage out of your efforts. In many themes, you can display social media feeds directly on your website — for example, integrate your Twitter feed into your sidebar with the Twitter Timeline Widget.
Social feeds let you post content published elsewhere directly on your band website. Alternatively, you have the ability to share content from your website straight to your social channels with Publicize and automated social sharing.
Whenever you publish a new post, you can automatically share it across your configured social media channels. This will keep every one of your channels updated, allowing for followers and fans to stay in the know about album release dates, public appearances, and impromptu concerts.
If you have a Premium or Professional plan, you’ll also have the option to re-share previously published content to your social platforms. This comes in handy on days when you want to revisit a particularly successful song, or reminisce about your very first concert.
Whether you want to share videos, embed music files, publish tour dates, or otherwise connect with your fans, Jetpack tools can empower your WordPress site to do so.
It’s no secret that access to a larger audience will also provide you with more opportunities to grow your business. However, figuring out how to increase your social media followers is a challenge that even professional social media marketers still haven’t mastered.
Let’s review some basic social media principles, and strategies for attracting more followers to your social accounts and business website without needing to spend any extra money on marketing or advertising efforts.
Continue reading → How to Increase Your Social Media Followers
Jetpack 6.3.3 is now available for download. This point fix addresses an important change to our Publicize feature, which will limit your ability to share content to a Facebook Profile.
We’ve broken this post down into a few sections to help you understand the change, how it may impact your site, and how you can share your feedback with Facebook, so please read carefully.
Starting August 1, 2018, a change to Facebook’s API means that third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Publicize, our feature that connects your site to major social media platforms like Facebook.
As a result, this release includes both the change to the Publicize feature, and a notice that is designed to help you with next steps:
We understand that you probably have some questions about this update, so here’s a little more information that will help you after you navigate this change easily.
It depends. If you’ve connected a Facebook Profile to your site, then yes: Publicize will no longer be able to share your posts to Facebook.
On the other hand, nothing will change if you keep a Facebook Page connected to your site — all your content should still appear directly on Facebook via Publicize.
If you’re not sure what the difference is between a Page and a Profile, here’s Facebook’s explanation.
If you still want your Facebook followers to see your new posts from your Jetpack-connected site, you have two options:
Facebook says that they’re updating their API to improve their platform and prevent the misuse of personal profiles. But we know that this might cause a disruption in the way you schedule and promote content, especially if you schedule promotions of your content on Facebook far in advance.
If you’d like to share your concerns on this change with Facebook, you can head to their Help Community and let them know your thoughts.
If you’re having trouble managing your connections to a Facebook Profile or Page after updating to 6.3.3, our experts are always available to answer questions and troubleshoot Publicize connections with you via our support channels. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if we can lend a hand.
If you’re looking for more details on this update, as always, the full changelog has what you need.
Thanks for your understanding, and please let us know if there are any further questions we can answer for you about this release, Publicize, or changes to the Facebook API.
Note: Publicize is now auto-share and is part of Jetpack Social.
Online sales are a great way to draw customers to your online store and encourage them to make purchases. However, holding a sale doesn’t really benefit your business if no one knows about it.
Website promotions should be shared with your audience, and one of the best ways to get the word out is through social media. Today, we’ll discuss how to promote sales with social media using Jetpack.
Continue reading → Create Successful Ecommerce Promotions with Social Sharing
Note: Publicize is now auto-share and is part of Jetpack Social.
Whether you want more followers, brand awareness, or increased sales, you need to strengthen your social media presence.
Social media is the bread and butter of small business advertising and blog promotion. It helps you connect to and interact with others on a personal level by sharing posts and starting conversations.
Because of social media’s increasingly important role, Jetpack offers various tools to help you reach more people across those social networks. From sharing buttons, to social media widgets that can be directly inserted into headers or sidebars, these features — along with a smart social media strategy — will attract new customers, and keep your existing fans coming back for more.
Want to learn how to grow your social presence with Jetpack? Keep reading!
