The lesson for me and something that I am going to implement right away. I am going to update all my clients domains and add them as the owners of their domain and me as a webmaster. This is just in case something happens to me and they need to get to their domains.

2) Click the export button.Here it is important to note!

1. keep the export location in mind, you are going to need this when you upload the smaller images to your site.
2. Image Size: Resize the images to 800px
3. You can add a watermark if you want

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3) Click Export and let it do its magic.

4) Click the firefox icon (make sure it is firefox, that way you can do bulk uploads) and surf over to your website administration http://www.sheermagic.co.za/newsite/administrator/index.php

5) Add your username and password and login (this was sent to you by the system) and login

6) When you are logged in click the “add a new article” button

7) Add your Title “African Deco” for example
Pick a Category “Showcase” for now

9) ignore the rest and scroll down until you see the “Article Text” window.

10) There is a lot of little icons, on the 4th row down and 14th across you will see and icon that looks like a little picture

11) Hover over it and it will say “Insert/Edit image”  Click it.

12) It will open a pop up window, scroll down until you see file browser.

13) Just below the word “file browser” you will see “Root”. Note it is always important to start in root. Below that you will see a list of all your folders.

14) To the right of “Root” you will see 3 icons, if you over over them it will tell you what they do. 1st one “New Folder”, 2nd one “Upload” and 3rd on is “Help”

15) Click on “New Folder” type in the name of the folder you want. Note: No spaces between words and keep it all lower case.

16) Click Ok, you will be taken back to the list of your folders.

17) In the middle column click on the folder you just made. Now you will be in that folder and can upload your pictures.

18) Click on the “Upload” icon. A pop-up will open and it will say “Drop files here”.

19) This is where you need to remember where you exported your images to.

20) Open your finder window and find all the pictures you exported in the beginning. Select them all and drop them onto the “Drop files here” pop-up.

21) You will then see a list of all the files you are going to upload. Click “Upload”

22) Once the upload is complete the popup window will close and you will see all your images inside the middle column.

23) Scroll down and click cancel. This will close the image pop-up window.

24)In the “Article Text” box write the following {gallery}foldername{/gallery} replace the foldername with the name of the folder where you uploaded your images.

25) Scroll to the top and click “Save & Close”

26) Thats it, you are done!

Just a note, this process is just for all your showcase gallery pictures. There is another system for each stock item and I suppose another manual

Have a look at your handy work by going to your website http://www.sheermagic.co.za/newsite/ and clicking on “Showcase”

To add more pictures repeat the process.

Image via CrunchBase

This is a great bit of software that I use all the time. Yes I know how to use Photoshop but that is not in everybody’s budget and learning curve. I have download Picasa from Google and that is what I use. My kids also use it, as they love to check out all the pictures from when they where babies or the latest something something we just had. Picasa is ideal for a blogger or a person that wants to update there own website. I use it for more then that also. The best part is it is FREE!!

So here is what you can do with Picasa from Google.

• Download pictures directly from your camera.
• You can re-size your pictures, ideal for upload to your website or blog. You can do it in bulk.
• You can do some basic cropping. Ideal if you need that panoramic picture for the header of your blog.
• Perfect to just keep your pictures all in one place and organized.
• You can add a text watermark, ideal if you want to copyright your pictures.

I think the best way to get started and see the fun in some of your old pictures is to download Picasa from google install it and see the magic.

I want to know that if you wanted a website, what kind of features or benefits would you like. Think of it this way, you have unlimted budget, creativity and time what would your site have and what could it do.  I think I would sitting on a kayak and taking people on kayak tours in Croatia. I would update my website via email with photos, and video of the latest trip I have just done. So that the next people that want to come on the trip could not wait. I don’t want to have to worry about all this html, css and strange language the developers talk.

So let me know what you would like from your website.

Just need to think of a site I can use this for.

Two things. Firstly I’ve launched a new website for destination curators and peripatetic scribes called travelwrites … please check it out at www.travelwrite.co.za and subscribe, “like” it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/travelwrite and pse follow my blog on networked blogs http://networkedblogs.com/blog/travelwrite.co.za/, which incidentally is a great free social media tool as it automatically posts new updates to twitter and facebook – a huge time saver.

Secondly, none of this would have been possible for a Luddite like me, if it were not for the constant patience and hand-holding of Lantz Mattinson, based in Joburg who builds websites, and better still, teaches you how to work  in word press, load google ads, and ja, all the stuff you need to know. So if you need help building or upgrading your site or starting a blog or any sort of web-related trouble shooting, Lantz is your man. His email address is lantz@afromedia.co.za. His website is http://www.afromedia.co.za/ and his phone number is 0836819281

Cheers
Caroline

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Social Media is a great place to get your word out there fast. The trick is you do need people to be listening to you. In facebook the listening is called “like” so if somebody likes you they are listening to you.  In twitter it is called “followers” so if you have followers they are listening to you. The challenge is to get followers and likes and yes we can ask and maybe even beg people. I personally think the best way to get likes and followers is to provide good quality content. I ask new clients who their target market is and most of the time they say everybody. Well social media will prove you so wrong. I am not sure of the number of pages that facebook has but there are lots and lots. Not only facebook, what about websites and new social media platforms and who knows what. Just have a look at this http://namechk.com/ and you will just see a drop in the ocean. Almost a day does not go by and I get requests to join this and that and I have had to just stop. I am sticking to a few social media sites and my good old trusty email.

Ok so lets see what we can do to get some social media love.
Well for a start admit that your target market is now everybody. The powerful part of the internet is the niche. You now like never before have access to your niche market, and if you share that same passion they will love you and they will follow you. So start by checking if people are already chatting about your kind of product or service. Don’t just dive right in and make another page on facebook. Become involved with the people. Social media is the braai and at a braai you interact you don’t just tell people your stuff all the time.

Make a twitter page and then do 3 things. The first thing is make sure your profile is 100% correct and you have a picture. Write some interesting tweets and interesting shares. The last step is to find some people to follow. Then repeat steps 2 and 3 every day. And soon enough you have have people finding you and following you.

Take it slow and just keep building it every day and before you know it you will be so liked and have lots of followers. I think you will also pick up lots of tips as you go.

Keep it fun.

So here are a few case studies.

Image via Wikipedia

Penguin Promises: I was asked to setup a campaign where  a few people wanted to make a lot of people aware the plight of the African Penguins. They wanted to hook up the social media with the website being the center of the whole thing. So posterous to the rescue, we even hooked up the domain http://penguinpromises.com/ So I signed them up to facebook twitter etc and got the ball rolling. They where super excited that they could just update via email. The Ladies doing the campaign had blackberries so it worked like a charm and they hooked up the facebook so they could also interact with the comments. This campaign is ongoing and the facebook friends keeps climbing.

Fishing Encounters: I am a bit of a mad keen fisherman, not the kind that sits on the bank and waits. I tried but it was just not for me. I am the one the loves lure fishing and fishing off my fishingski out in the ocean or bass fishing on my kayak, looking in every nook and cranny in a dam for that BIG bass. So I wanted a place to share my stories and again posterous was it. I have also 3 other plans that I am testing for this site, adwords, adsense and selling of a Hunterski fishing Kayak. So I go through my photos and pick a few and write a story about them, it is amazing how the photos make the story writing juices flow. I have hooked up facebook page and a twitter, every other day I hook into my twitter and find a few new followers, taking it slow and easy. I have hooked up a blogger account for the adsense, still tweaking it, but if I get traffic maybe I can get a few buck back on the clicks. Here is the blogger website, very plain and simple http://fishingencounters.blogspot.com/ I have also hooked up a fishing encounters facebook. Ok the adwords part. I won a R500 adwords voucher, so I am using that to drive people to my website to purchase a kayak, I know that a kayak is not impulse purchase so I am also allowing people to get a discount coupon, time will tell if this is going to work. I am adding it to the learning curve and will keep doing experiments with this project.

John Colours: Last one for now, still work in progress but I got Johan a site up and running for his roof painting and waterproofing business. We are still in the early stages and still need to hook up a few of the social media sites, the nice part for Johan is he can update his website by just sending an email. So we he goes to a job site he can take some before and after pictures and pop a mail to his site and it is updated with fresh content. We will be hooking up his John Colours Facebook page soon.

Here are a few more sites I have setup with posterous. Nice and easy and for different reasons.

http://skitravelsa.posterous.com/ they update there galley via email http://www.champagneholidays.com/gallery.html no need to know how to re-size pictures
http://animalkeepertraining.posterous.com/ a central hub for collecting data, later to be used to make courses
http://rethinkthebag.org/ something is busy happening

I am starting off with Google Translate, http://translate.google.com/

I have played with Google Translate and it is so cool. I while back my daughter got a mail from a swiss person because he was looking for a person with the same name as my daughter. It was in Swedish and My wife and daughter did not know what he was saying. So off they went to Google Translate and pasted the email in there and translated it to English. Walaha all sorted and they responded. Later on I came across a website that hase translation options and I could see that it used google somehow. Well it was one of those things that sticks in the back of your mind. The other day I had a meeting with a citizen and he was discussing his training idea and the need for it in Africa and that got me to thinking about translate. So I want to the site and saw that you could just pop a web address in the translate box and it would translate a website. Well that was fantastic and I was super impressed so I sent it off to the citizen. He was also super excited and asked if I could do it for his website. Well I was sure I could, so off I went to the joomla extensions and found it soon enough. Installed it and it was up and running in no time. Check it out here AKAAfrica it is on the left just below the donate block. That is the nice part of joomla CMS for me is that it can be flexible and expandable.

I am able to translate the clients’ needs into a workable solution on the Internet and have patience.

I see the Internet as a place full of business opportunities, and some fun, not only for myself but also for my employer and their clients.

I am open to ideas, enjoy brainstorming and turning some of the ideas into reality, no matter what the challenge.

I have good people skills and would like to be able to interact with clients to determine what Internet business solutions or social media solutions we can give them.

I enjoy working as a member of a team.

Sharing is caring and that is what I believe.

Because the internet is changing at such a quick speed, I constantly keep unto date with what is going down on the interweb.

For me this is not just a job, the web is part of my lifestyle.

I love all the web 2.0 stuff and am a big user of open source applications like Joomla, WordPress, to name just a few.

I feel I am rather good at Joomla, WordPress and figuring things out.