Posts Tagged ‘New Ideas’
August 16th, 2010 | 
Author: One of the things I love most about blogs and social networking is how seamless it can all be. You create an article in WordPress, publish it and it automatically can go out to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter with no extra work on your part. There are many different tricks and tools you can use but in this blog post I will walk you through how to find a plugin, install it and set it up to start auto tweeting your blog posts!
First things first, you need to find the plugin. Go to the Plugins section from the navigation on the left. Click on Add New. From there, the following screen will appear. Type in Twitter Tools into the search box and click Search Plugins.
You will see a list of Plugins appear. Go to the one that says Twitter Tools (should be the first one in the list). Click on Install Now directly underneath the Plugin.
You will be asked to confirm that you do indeed wish to install the plug in. Once it’s installed, click on Activate Plugin.
Once you have done this, you should be a link at the top of the page that prompts you to update your Twitter Tools settings, or you can go to the Settings section near the bottom of the left navigation in your admin portal. Finally, you will want to add your user name and password to connect with your Twitter account. Unless you want all of your tweets to be published in a blog post (not advisable) then select No for that option. That’s it! Just update at the bottom of the screen. Next time you publish a post, it will go out to Twitter!
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Have you ever wondered how websites get that image next to the website address (url)? It’s known as a fav or favorites icon and is pretty easy to create. This article will teach you how to create it and then add it to your website. Having a fav icon will help set you apart from other sites and make it instantly recognizable when in their bookmarked favorites. Think of the red Y of Yahoo, or the G of Google.
First select an image that you wish to use for your favorites icon. Many people use their own logo and produce a smaller version of it. Or, you could use a single letter to represent the name of your company. Pick something that will still be recognizable even when reduced in size. For our fav icon, we have the Purple Star from our logo:
The favorites icon is a file type called .ico. You don’t need any fancy software or a tool to generate the icon file. There are many sites out there that will do the work for you. One good one is by Dynamic Drive. Their FavIcon Generator can be found here: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com
Simply click the Browse button to find the image on your machine. The file should be in one of the following formats: .gif, .jpg, .bmp or .png. Once you have the file, click the Create Icon button.
You will be shown a preview of how your favicon would look once added to your site. If you are happy with this, click the Download FavIcon button. This will download it to your computer.
Once you have the file on your machine, you will need to transfer it to your web server to the route directory, or top level of your site. If you do not have access to the web server, or don’t know how to do this, be sure to contact your web designer, or find one to help you out with this. Finally, you will need to add the following code to the <head> section of your index.html or main.html page. (again, if you are not sure, check with your web designer).
<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”favicon.ico”>
The href will need to be the path to where you uploaded your favicon file. You should be able to get away with just adding this to the home page of your website. However, if you are not sure, you can add it to all of the pages. Some browsers will need to have their cache refreshed in order to see the new icon next to the url in the browser. Good luck! You can always post your questions below if you are not sure.
Found a new site today which I wanted to share. When posting an article to your blog it’s great if you get some reader participation with comments at the bottom. However, there may be times when you wish to encourage readers to share links of a specific type. For example, I may be interested in knowing the blogs of my readers (which I am!). In this case, it would be better to have all links compiled together in one place for me, and other readers to see, rather than scrolling all the way to the end of the post. This is where Simply Linked can help! Really really easy, and free to set up.
Go to their site and sign up for a free account. It’s a Beta site (still in testing) so there could be a cost introduced in the future, but hopefully that would come along with additional features. Once you are signed in, click the link to create a new list:
Enter in the name of your list. There is the option to select from either a standard type, or from a recurring theme. There are no instructions so I take the theme to be a way to group lists together and categorize them. You can either select from one you have already created, or create a new one easily.
Once your list is created, you will see the code displayed for your list. Copy it and then you can paste that into a web page or blog post:
When someone visits your site or blog post, they can easily add a link to the list. See the example below in this post. Once links are added, you will be able to review them from your Simply Linked account. Could be useful for follow up and review on your topic.
So, feel free! Give me the link to your blog, I would love to pay you a visit, and maybe others will too! I started the list going, so join in.
When you set up a Twitter account, you can pick the colors you want for your background and text and sidebars. However, it doesn’t allow for too much creativity. One service that is out there you can use is www.freetwitterdesigner.com. Below is a screenshot of my Twitter account showing the background I created using this service.
When you get to the site, it will prompt you to sign in with Twitter. Once signed in and authenticated, it will take you back to the website. From here, the first screen has you select the canvas you want for your background. Going with the plain white one will allow you to pick a different color if you wish. The next screen gives you all kinds of options to add text, shapes and images. You can also pick the colors for your sidebar, links and text. Play around, drag things around and move them where you want to see them. It shows your Twitter profile in the middle so you get an immediate idea of how this will look.
When you are done, simply click on Generate Image. The image can then be saved, or exported directly to Twitter. It’s easier just to export it directly to Twitter. Once you click the button, that’s it! It’s all taken care of for you. How easy is that!
So, you have created your own Facebook Fan Page and you have people taking a look and hoping to find out more about your business. Give them something to read when the land on your page. Although the wall can be full of great information you have been posting, it could also be full of comments and posts from your fans that you don’t have as much control over. Send them to the info tab instead!
You have four main sections on the info tab. The websites section can hold more than just one url. Put one on each line and add links for Twitter, LinkedIn, Kudzu and anywhere else you would like people to visit. Use the Company Overview, Mission and Products section to add more information and let people know about who you are as a company.
Not sure how to do this? Log into your account and go to your page. Click on the Edit Page link that shows up underneath your page image. From the next page, click on Edit from the Wall settings. From here you can determine default landing page. You can also determine the default view for the wall and which posts will show (only your Page posts, Just Fans, or both Fans and Page posts).
Feel free to share a link to your Facebook Page below. How do you have your Facebook Page set up to encourage peiople to become a fan?
