How to link social networks together to minimize the amount of time spent there and yet still be able to engage all of my social communities.

Step 1

• Have Facebook, Twitter and a website.

• Website must have a blog with a working feed.  The feed is the orange radar button. This button points to the url of the feed.

Twitterfeed

A) Twitterfeed is the tool that links social media.

• Create an account or sign in.

• Sign in will take you to this page:   http://twitterfeed.com/feed/newuser

• What is your feed name?

• What is your blog feed or url? Copy that from your RSS feed page.

• Click test RSS feed to see if it’s active.

• The feed parsed– it’s working.

B)  Advanced settings.

I want to encourage you to use the “shorten through Bitly”; the Bitly settings. Now in order to do that you have to be signed up for Bitly. We’re going to come back to this in another video.  But, I want to make sure that you do use Bitly.

• For “content” use “title and description”

• post prefix or post suffix

• Continue to step 2

Step 2

A) Available services.

• Add in available service by clicking on the name of the service.
• Twitter– sign in and authenticate.

• Create service.

B) Add Facebook.

• Connect and authenticate.

• Go back and sign in with your personal name.
• Connected as your name– choose a page.

• Create service.

Facebook and Twitter are active.  Add LinkedIn, Heletext or Statusnet. Or choose all done.

Congratulations! It’s complete.

a) Go to the dashboard to test it.

Remember we’re saying that when we build a blog we want that blog to auto populate to our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

• Let’s log-in and write the new post “We Are Testing Twitterfeed” and then “This is a test” and let’s publish that into our blog.

• “We are testing Twitterfeed” shows that the blog posted.

b) Back to Twitterfeed –check now.

c) Check now goes to the RSS feed.  The post “We are testing Twitterfeed” shows in the feed.

d) Refresh Twitter.com to see if it fed here. Click on “1 new tweet: to see “We are testing Twitterfeed. This is a test by bitly”.

e) Refresh Facebook to see “We are testing Twitterfeed”.

So now we’ve shown you how easy it is for you to link these three social networks together.  When you post a blog Twitterfeed will take over, populating your Facebook and Twitter.  Now you’ve hit 3 social networks with one action.

I love this Word Press plugin! It is simply awesome.

I recently saw this question on a forum and so I decided to answer it here. The question is

The Piecemaker rotator apparently has a fixed duration for each panel (perhaps 10 sec) and no way to alter it. This is much too long for my application and I know it can be set as a variable, because I have that capability for Piecemaker in another ThemeForest theme. Can we get this fixed?

Here are the steps to change the timing of each tumble transition.

1. Goto Dashboard and click on the Piecemaker tab. Click the Piecemakers button
   
2. Click on the Piecemakers Properties button seen here
   
3. Change the Number here for your speed.

The undisputed champion is Shashin. It is perfect for both a sidebar widget, and as a page or post photo population plugin. As a sidebar widget, you can choose one specific photo, random photos, or feature an album.  As an album display page, just enter a simple short code onto one of your pages and Shashin does  the rest ( see an example here http://mibridgemi.com/photo-albums).  One of my favorite features is that it has a built in way to reorder / organize by dates in reverse. Now you no longer need to tell your visitors, “the new pictures are at the bottom.” This feature is not built into Picasa Web Albums and is a topic of much concern in the forums there. Anyone who has tried to sort by reverse order in web albums knows the frustration, but will soon come to know the freedom thanks to Shashin! Check out the random shuffle sidebar widget at http://mibridgemi.com.
There is a slight learning curve, but with just a little trial and error, you are up and running! It is really easy to set up. The only real setback is that there is not currently support, and inevitably you will have special requests and may have difficulty getting assistance.

#1 Choice
Shashin
• All pro!
• Fix bug
o Warning: strpos() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in \wp-admin\includes\media.php on line 310
o Read this article

Other plugins I like:
For quick simple installs where you do not want to mess with customization, I use Picasa Photos to show random pictures from all of my Albums on my home page, and contact page. Then I like to use Picasa for WordPress to add short slideshows from one Album to specific pages like about us, events, or locations.

Picasa Photos

This is specifically a sidebar widget. This shows any number of pictures from your Picasa Vertically in the Widget Side Bar. Tested in WordPress 3.0.1
Pros:
• Can choose random from all albums, a specific album, or multiple albums
• Can customize widget uniquely for each page or post (using Widget Logic)
• User can easily customize .php to get it to disable link back to Picasa, or to redirect to custom URL, or to open in theme #popup, lightbox, etc. (line 68)

Picasa for WordPress

This is specifically a sidebar widget. This creates a slide show from a Picasa Album in the Widget Side Bar. Tested in WordPress 3.0.1

Pros:
• Automated Slide show of any album, or slideshow

Cons:
• Cannot show pictures in Random order. If you have a lot of pictures in an Album, your visitors might not see them all. It starts from the beginning every time you refresh your browser.

Looking to move your website’s search listing up on Google, Yahoo! and Bing yet don’t know where to start? Gregg Murray, online marketing and website consultant and author of Website Blueprint, shares his five basic tips to help you hit the ground running in your search engine optimization efforts.

If you want your website to rank higher and more often in Google (or any other search engine), it’s essential that you know a handful of techniques regarding SEO (search engine optimization). When you optimize your web pages so Google can more easily find you, you’re sure to be found much more often when prospects are searching for your products or services while searching online. If you can take advantage of the five tips that follow, your web pages will receive more traffic from the people you really want to find you…potential clients and customers.

The most important word to remember through each of these tips is, “keywords.” Think of keywords as search engine magnets. The more relevant keywords you have, in the right places on your pages, the more energy you are giving Google to find your website and have it appear in search results.

Tip #1: The Power of Links
Each tip that follows is something you can do to your actual web pages that can improve your Google visibility, but this one doesn’t. My first tip is for you to get as many links as you can to your website, from other websites. These are called, “inbound links,” and Google loves them. When other websites have a link to your website, Google is more likely to see your website as authoritative and more important. This means everything else you do on your web pages when it comes to SEO will be more valuable. However, not all inbound links are created equal. The bigger the website you can get to link to you, the more impressed Google will be. Start with your Chamber of Commerce website, and keep it going from there.

Bonus Tip – Remember, “keywords” still matter in links. A link to your site (or even within your site) that is hyperlinked as a keyword is much (MUCH) more valuable than just a hyperlink that says, “click here” or “www.yourwebsiteaddress.com.”

Tip #2: Page Titles
Page titles appear as the headline in Google search results. You should have page titles that are both relevant to what’s on that specific page, as well as keyword rich. Google allows you to use up to 70 characters in your page title, so maximize that real estate wisely. A perfect headline example for an accountant in Raleigh, NC may be: “Raleigh, NC Accounting Services | Acme Accounting and Bookkeeping.” That took up 65-characters and contained several keywords that may be used when someone is looking for an accountant in Raleigh, NC. See how easy this is?

Bonus Tip: Here’s a link to a free SEO character counter. By the way, did you see how the link we just mentioned used keywords as the hyperlink? This is what I was talking about in Tip #1.

Tip #3: Page Descriptions
When you’re looking at any search result in Google, the non-bold text under the page title is a “page description.” Google allows you to utilize 155 characters for your page description. Use the same rules as the page titles tip, but also think of these 155 characters as a mini-ad for the content that’s on the specific page your optimizing. To follow up on the Raleigh, NC accountant example above, your page description may be: “Acme Accounting and Bookkeeping is a local Raleigh, NC firm specializing in accounting, write up, bookkeeping, payroll and tax preparation services.” That’s 148 characters that contains both a perfect description of your home page, which is also keyword rich.

Again, use the free SEO character counter to help you maximize the perfect page description.

Tip #4: Maximizing Page Content
The power of keywords also extends to the content on your web pages. Although your page copy doesn’t appear in the Google search results, Google will index this content to make sure it matches up with your page title and page description. You’re going to want at least 300 words on each of your pages for Google to index (500 is even better). Be sure your keywords are mentioned close to 3-5% of the page content. This means in our example, that the words, “Raleigh, NC Accounting” should be mentioned in some form at least 15 times in a 500 word page. But remember, you don’t want to make your keywords feel “stuffed” into your page. Spread them out, so they feel natural, and not forced.

Tip #5: More Pages = More Juice
The more pages you feed Google, the more juice you have on your site to be found by Google. The best way to do this is by having a blog as part of your website. A blog is a simple way to produce weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly articles, posts, or company information that can be picked up by Google. Not only do more pages give Google more information to find you (and display you in more search results), it also keeps your site fresh with content, which is another thing that Google loves.

About the Author:
Gregg Murray is an online marketing manager, website consultant, and certified SEO. He is the author of Website Blueprint: The Beginners Guide for Small Business Owners. Visit now to download a free 75-page preview of his new book, along with his Small Business Website Checklist and Top 20 Website Essentials.