Web Design and more

Using the Socialize Me Wordpress Plugin

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I am using the Socialize Me wordpress plugin. What this plugin does is it displays a banner like the image above to visitors when they come to my site from sites such as twitter, facebook, digg, mybloglog, linkedin, ryze, and many more that I don’t use. It gives visitors a chance to interact with me on the platform that they just came from, say on StumbleUpon. It is a great way to use social networking to connect with the visitors of your site. Click the image above to me taken to the authors page for the plugin.

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Add a Footer to Your Blogs RSS Feed

I recently found this plugin for wordpress that adds ten areas for a blogger to add items to their feed. Bloggers can add in copyright information, text, even images. I am using it to promote other blogs and also for some advertising to see how that works over time. Previous posts do not get information added to their footer, only posts done after the plugin has been activated and configured. This is the first post with the feed activated so it will have an advertisement at the bottom of the feed.

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Simple Status Update in Twitter Using PHP

Here is a sample PHP snippet that will let a twitter user update their status using PHP code. I have it simply saying hello today is and the date. I’m thinking about running it from a cron script in an automated fashion in conjunction with another site that I run. To see the code I used click the more button unless you’re luckily enough to be sent to this post directly.

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Find What Other Cincinnati and NKY People are Tweeting About

Twitter is a “micro blogging” platform. Users can send updates of what they’re doing, cool stuff they find online, and many other uses. Now twitter users in Cincinnati and Northern KY can use this feed I created over at twitterlocal.net. They let you create a feed of what’s being “tweeted” withing so many miles of a certain zip code! This is the feed I have created for Cincinnati and NKY tweets. Please check it out and subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader. The chicklet below will show the number of subscribers. Oh yeah, I could not resist “burning” this feed to track it over at FeedBurner.

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Cincinnati AMA SIG Meeting at NKY Chamber

This morning I attended a B2B SIG meeting of the Cincinnati AMA chapter. The topic presented was “Social Networking for B2B Companies” and was presented by Rob Bunting. This is the second meeting of the SIG group group that I have attended that was at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Rob spoke about the various social networks such as facebook, linkedin, twitter, digg, del.icio.us, and more. There was a good attendance also they said 15 registered and I believe over 20 showed up. That is a great attendance especially for a free event. Many free events that I have been to have more register than show up. One fellow Rob was talking to came in from Columbus, Ohio just for the event! Rob is a great speaker and it shows that business in the Cincinnati and NKY area are interested in learning more about social networking.

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Networking With My Networks Network

Tonight I had a great experience: a client of mine invited me to a get together with them and members of their network. They only invited people they knew and trusted so I was in the midst of great company. It’s kind of like a “meetup” where the group of peoples interest is my one client. Business cards were exchanged and I met a bunch of great new people. The clients company is a concierge service. A concierge is a company that will bring you a “twinkie at 2:00 AM” as they put it. What they do is anything from personal shopping to dog walking, pet sitting, line waiting, anything else their clients need that is not against the law. You can see by the list of services they provide that they need a large network of businesses they trust to call upon to be the goto man. Has anyone else done this? Setup a networking event with their clients for the purpose of introductions and business card exchange? I believe it is a great idea.

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Five Social Networks You Need to Belong To

Recently I have been exploring more and more “social networking” sites. These are sites that let users connect to each other and some even provide a “live chat” type of experience. Social networks allow users to see who others in their network know. I have used this feature to find past colleagues and co-workers. What are my top 5 sites? Here they are..

1. Twitter I use the thwirl client and have it constantly running so I can receive updates from people I am following. PS - Follow me and more than likely I will in return follow you.
2. Facebook - I used to think that this service was mainly for college students but have learned that over 1/2 of the registered users are 25 or over. I have alot of exploring left to do on there to figure out all of the ins and outs.
3. Linked In - I use this site to connect with past co-workers and employers. You can also join groups on here just like facebook. You can also ask questions and answer questions to be known as an authority on LinkedIn.
4. stumbleupon I use this site to share cool or unique sites I come across while surfing. Stumbleupon creates a toolbar on my browser that has a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” that I can click on when I am on a site. If I am the first to “stumble” a site I get a popup window to describe the site or article and also tag it. If I am bored I can also click the “Stumble” icon to find sites that are similar in the interests I selected in my profile.
5. del.icio.us is a bookmarking site. Del.icio.us adds two new buttons to my browser one of which is “Tag” which lets me bookmark a site to del.icio.us and add a description and tags for the entry. The other button is to view my bookmarks. In firefox this button opens up my bookmarks in a sidebar on the left. I can see all of my bookmarks and also search them. I can also “not share” a bookmark making it private for me only. I can also send out a bookmark to my network on del.icio.us. Right now my network is small on there please feel free to join del.icio.us and join my network.

That is it for the ones I use daily. There are others such as myspace and squidoo. I am looking for comments on any sites I am missing that you feel are important. What sites do you use and have you been able to build your brand using these site or make any business deals? Please share your experiences.

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Today is Tax Day

April 15, 2008 has almost came and gone now. I hope everyone got their taxes done and postmarked by midnight. There are several post offices in the Northern Kentucky area that are open until midnight tonight. The dreaded tax day! I hope it’s not too frustrating on everyone!

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SEO For Firefox Causes Users To See Red

Looking for a nice tool to find “nofollow” links when using Firefox? Check out the SEO for Firefox extension. When installed a small SEO logo will appear in the lower right of your browser that looks like the image below when active:

When inactive the extension turns grey. To toggle status click on the image. When the extension is active links that are “nofollowed” will be outlined in red like the image below:

Technically a link is nofollowed when the following code is added to the a href tag:

rel="nofollow"

What the nofollow tag does is it tells search engine robots not to follow that link. This is used in google’s case to keep a sites page rank without passing it on to a linked site. The nofollow tag can also be used on links within a site to keep the page rank on important pages. Wikipedia definition of nofollow.

Click here for more information on the SEO for Firefox tool.

Those with the extension installed will notice a couple of red links in this post.

Another handy feature is that the extension will display more information in your google or yahoo searches. The more information you can get with a single click is the page rank, site age, DMOZ listings, and more. See the link above for pictures of this feature.

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