Blog

It was a busy summer….here are a few of the Full Custom sites we launched in recent months. More on the new product ‘WordPress Theme and Technical Installation‘ in another post. (We’ve been cranking those out!)

• LVCounseling.com
• On-Target.com
• GRCKnows.com
• MillFac.com (with partner FirstAid Computers)

Automatically update your LinkedIn profile with posts from your WordPress site (or blog).

If you are using the blogging function of your WordPress site, you can automate the syndication of your blog posts to your various social profiles such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In this article, we go over how to connect your blog to LinkedIn so that your posts will automatically appear on your LinkedIn profile after being published on your blog.

(To feed your blog posts to Facebook and Twitter, we recommend using the free Twitterfeed service about which we don’t go into detail here. It’s free and easy. Try it, you’ll like it.)

1. From your LinkedIn profile, navigate to “More” and then click on “Get More Applications…”.

2. From the applications page, scroll down until you see the WordPress application. Click on the icon to start the installation.

3. On the installation page, check the boxes to display the blog on both your LinkedIn homepage and on your LinkedIn profile. Click the “Add Application” button to install the application.

4. The next page is where you will enter the URL to your WordPress site.

It’s not necessary to enter the link to your RSS feed if you don’t know it, LinkedIn will detect your RSS feed from the main URL of the site. Select whether you want to display all recent posts or only the recent posts that are tagged with ‘linkedin’.

You may want to specifically control the posts that are allowed to post to LinkedIn by choosing to only allow posts that are tagged with the LinkedIn-specific tag of ‘linkedin‘. When composing posts on your site, if you would like them to post to your LinkedIn profile, then just be sure to tag them with ‘linkedin‘.

5. Verify the blog posts are feeding to your LinkedIn profile.

Go to your profile and your posts should be appearing underneath the summary of your information. That’s it. Done.

Uninstalling the application

If you ever need to stop the blog posts from posting to your LinkedIn profile, the application is easily uninstalled. All you need to do is:

1. Go to More, Get More Applications
2. Scroll to find the WordPress icon and click on it
3. Click on the Remove button in the bottom right next to the Update Settings button

Formerly Preferred Telephone of Baton Rouge, Preferred Data | Voice | Networks updates their web presence.

We are pleased and proud to announce the launch of the redesigned site for Preferred – Data | Voice | Networks, formerly Preferred Telephone of Baton Rouge. This website was engineered in conjunction with our partner, Baton Rouge web design company aeTechnology. We originally designed the Preferred Telephone site back in 2007, and it was a privilege to be given the opportunity to grow with Preferred as they expanded their product offering and began operating under a new name.

Preferred designs innovative communication options for customers to reduce costs and increase productivity. They have built a team of knowledgeable and highly trained personnel, focusing on customer needs for today and into the future.

Our latest WordPress website gives our customer control over their content, allowing them to present timely information to their customers. The blog functionality was implemented for the Company News page.

For any of you who manage a Facebook fan page, you may have been greeted recently by a notification to preview or upgrade to the new fan page style. I recently took the preview tour of the page. Here is a summary of the changes that are coming soon to all fan pages. These changes will become mandatory on all pages starting March 10, 2011.

Showcase Your Latest Photos

Showcase Your Latest Photos

• The most recent photos that you post to your Wall or photos that you tag your Page in will appear at the top of the page exactly as they do in the new personal profiles. This area will not include any photos posted by your fans.
• To hide a photo, roll over it and click X.

For good or bad, the new fan page style is being made to resemble a personal profile by putting things where the user expects them to be on a personal profile. The photos across the top of the profile can be really great if you have relevant photos to post, such as for a portfolio, but for some businesses, featuring photos at the top of the page might not make sense. The good news is that you have complete control over what images appear there, so no spammy images allowed.

Navigation is now on the left as in personal profiles

Navigation Where People Expect It

Navigation links are now on the left, just like on people’s profiles.

This may be the toughest change to get used to because it means there are no longer going to be the familiar ‘tabs’ to which we are so accustomed. The top of the page was a prime location for the navigation, so it will take some adjustment and will be interesting to see if traffic to the tabs decreases.

As with individual profiles, there is no longer an “info box” displayed below the profile picture.

Wall Filters

Show the Top Posts on Your Wall

• You now have two Wall filters. You can show posts by your page and top posts from Everyone, a new way for people to see the most interesting stories first. As an admin, you’ll have additional filters for viewing posts on your page.
• To set a default filter for your Wall, go to Edit Page.

As an admin needing to manage the page, you can select the ‘Admin View’ and still see the posts in chronological order. This makes it harder for spam to go unnoticed at the bottom of the page.

Use Facebook as a Page

Use Facebook as Your Page

• You now have the flexibility to interact with the other areas of Facebook as a page.
• Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
• See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
• Like other pages and feature them on your page
• Make comments as your page on other pages
• To try this new feature, you can go to Account above and select Use Facebook as Page.

Previously, the only way to interact as the fan page was on the fan page itself through comments and posts, etc. Now, it is possible to interact on Facebook AS the fan page.

While you still can’t post to personal Facebook profiles as a Page, you can post to other Pages as a Page. This can be useful, but should be used scrupulously so as not to confuse matters. Always make sure that before you post to a Page that you are in the proper mode (human or fan page). Potential scenarios where using this functionality would be very appropriate might be when running cross-promotions with other businesses, sponsoring an event or supporting a charity.

New Settings

New settings

• You can set defaults for your email notifications and how you post to your page – as yourself or your page. You can also select which featured pages appear in the left column.
• To manage your settings for email and posting preferences, go to Edit Page and Your Settings. To select which pages appear in Likes, go to Edit Page and Featured.

These changes will become mandatory on all pages starting March 10, 2011. Learn more about the upgraded pages here.

Thank you all for a wonderful year!

We’ve been unbelievably busy working on lots of new sites and adding/maintaining our current customers’ sites. We are working hard and getting creative to keep up with the growth. Thank you to all of our clients — we truly appreciate your business and continued support.

We recently finished websites for High Capacity Leaders, Kelly Kakes, CBI Sunbelt Business Sales – Mergers and Acquisitions, and Redwood Wealth Management.

Facebook is no longer supporting Application Tabs on Personal or Business Profiles. Facebook Fan Pages are not affected. Our clients will not be affected by this change for the most part, but contact us if you are not sure.

Facebook has stopped supporting adding Application Tabs to Facebook Profiles as of October 13th. They’ve also announced that as of November 3rd, 2010, they will begin deleting existing application tabs from all Profiles.

If you have installed the Constant Contact “Join My List”  Tab on your personal Facebook Profile, this Tab will likely be removed by Facebook soon, so we encourage you to create a Facebook Fan Page instead and install it there.

If you need help adding the “Join My List” tab to your new Facebook Fan Page, read the Constant Contact FAQ, or give them a call. They will be happy to help you through the process. Or, contact us if you would like to have us help you with your social media initiatives.

Constant Contact has updated their Facebook Application with customization features!

We’re excited to announce a great update to the Constant Contact Facebook Application – the ability to include a company logo and your own message on the “Join My List” form. You can read about this update on the Constant Contact Labs Blog.

Customize your “mini thumbnail”

You can customize what section of your larger profile image appears as the “mini thumbnail” by clicking on “Edit Your Profile Picture” and then selecting “Edit Thumbnail.

Custom Facebook Business Page Profile Graphic

Create a custom graphic for your business profile

Did you know that your Facebook profile graphic can be up to 200 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall? Businesses can take advantage of this extra space to include contact information, taglines and slogans.

We recently created this Facebook profile image for our client BodiFresh™ which includes their logo, product image, tagline and contact information.

Secure a Vanity Username

If your page has at least 25 fans, you can secure a custom ‘vanity username’ for your Facebook page. This means your Facebook  business page can have a URL like www. facebook.com/sangfroidweb instead of www.facebook.com/pages/SangFroid-Web-Design/106051112765235.

If you are an administrator of a Facebook Page, you can choose your username at www.facebook.com/username just like a user selecting a username for their profile. On this page, there is a link to “Set a username for your Pages” underneath where you set your own personal username.

For more information on Facebook business pages, visit the Facebook Help Center page concerning business pages.

Add Custom Tabs

Businesses can use custom Facebook tabs to communicate additional information to their customers. Examples of this include highlighting special offers, listing store locations, or offering an email list sign up to name just a few.

Next week, Facebook will be implementing some changes to the general Facebook business page layout to include:

1. Boxes are going away, including the Boxes tab; and
2. All custom tabs will be narrowed to 520 pixels. If you have a custom tab, we recommend you visit your tab now for a preview of how your content fits in the new layout — please make adjustments as needed. The rest of Facebook will see the old tab width until August 23.

If you have an existing Facebook business page with custom tabs, review your tabs in the new layout to be sure the information will still look acceptable.

Happy Facebooking!

We are pleased and proud to announce the launch of the redesigned site for Target Dental Marketing.

Target Dental Marketing helps dentists build successful dentistry businesses, through  targeted, precision marketing.

Our latest WordPress website takes advantage of the superior Search Engine Optimization capabilities that WordPress provides giving our client control over the keyword-rich URLs.

• Do you want to be able to update your own content?
• Do you want good search engine optimization (SEO) without knowing the first thing about it?
• Do you want awesome valid semantic code without even trying hard?

We’ve been using WordPress for years to build business websites. Years ago, in our quest to find a simple-to-use, open-source content management system for our small business clients, we tried just about every platform out there. Everything we tried (I’m not naming names, but you know who you are) was OVERKILL (meaning confusing and overwrought) for our clients who just wanted to be able to update their own pages and keep a blog for events and news items. In addition, many of the other CMS programs we tried produced the most heinous code, full of table tags and in many cases, code that would not validate without a major overhaul.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms on the web.  But what many people don’t know is that it is also a powerful, user-friendly, FREE Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for much more than just blogging. With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both.

By using WordPress for your small to medium business website, you also get the following:

• Search Engine Optimization – WordPress provides REALLY good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box.
• Control of your content -  It is easy for non-technical users to update content on a WordPress website without knowing HTML. Do you have to wait for your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
• Did we mention it’s FREE? – WordPress is an open-source platform, which means you don’t have to shell out big bucks for a license to use it for your website.  It’s ideal for small to medium size businesses who don’t have a huge web budget.

WordPress 3.0 launched June 17th and we are very excited about the new features. Look for an upcoming post with highlights about the new version and how they can be leveraged by business websites.

Did you know that expired coupons, up to six months old, can be sent overseas for military families to use at the commissary?

Don’t throw them out!!

Mail them to the Qpon Qutie: 1720 Mars Hill Rd. Ste 8 #335 Acworth, GA 30101

Let me tell you about Qpon Qutie….We were contacted a few weeks ago to do some back-end automation programming for QponQutie.com, and we think what she’s doing on her site is really cool, so we wanted to share!

I’ve seen lots of coupon sites/blogs where it seems so complicated, I can’t even imagine starting. Qpon Qutie, breaks everything down for you and even teaches a class on how to get started stacking and doubling coupons with the best of them.

If you live in the Atlanta area, she primarily focuses on stores and offers in our area (Publix, Target, Kroger, CVS) but the principles behind really maximizing using coupons can be applied anywhere.

Check out her Getting Started page and Qpon Dictionary for quick insight on how to start doing this for yourself. You can also hear tips and tricks from her every Friday morning on KIX 101.5FM for the duration of the summer.