TJantunen.com

If you haven’t been following the tech news scene lately Google made two announcements that all bloggers and website owners should pay attention to.

The first one is called +1, and it’s basically a button you use to recommend stuff around the web. Google says that “the +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.”

The button appears both on pages inside websites as well as directly in the search results. Why you should pay attention to this? Because clicks on +1 buttons are going to start influencing search results, so might start playing a role in your search engine optimization. If you want to add it to your site here’s the page to get the code.

The second announcement is called Google+ (I know, they need to hire someone to come up with better names…). This one is Google’s attempt to start a real social network around its services and online properties. I recommend reading Search Engine Land’s coverage of the topic if you want to know more about it.

Here’s a quotation:

What about the product itself? Google dubs Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing it’s part of making Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network to take on Facebook.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president who oversees Google’s social products.

I’ll keep you guys updated as I find more about those two new products/projects.

from Daily Blog Tips

Starting a fan page on Facebook is easy, but how do you get it to grow and become successful? It’s much harder than many people realize; this is why you often see dead and abandoned fan pages. Establishing your brand on Facebook and creating a successful fan page actually takes some time, dedication and hard work. If you’re not ready for the long haul, then you may need to put it on the back burner until you are ready. However, if you’re ready to do what it takes, here are some tasks that you’ll need to complete in order to get it done.

Do Your Research

There are some things that you will need to know beforehand like who your target audience will be, what your audience wants to read, who your competitors are, etc. You also should be keeping up with the latest buzz so that you can provide the type of information that your audience wants to read. Also, if you’re not targeting the right audience and demographics, then you definitely will not get the results you’re looking for. Your intended audience needs to be able to find you so that they can “like” you.

A tool like CheckFacebook can give you in-depth demographics, statistics and reports about Facebook. Knowing this kind of information will help you setup your page for success.

Get Organized

There is so much to include here. Before you even get started, you should have a some kind of plan and strategy mapped out. Set goals for your page as far as what you want to accomplish. Create task lists so that you can complete everything in a timely order. Get help from colleagues and even friends if needed. Trust me, your fans will be able to tell if your page is unorganized and if it’s not, they won’t be fans for long.

You will then need to figure out the specific products or content you’ll be targeted and know exactly how you’ll use your page. Some companies choose to use their Facebook fan page as a customer service center, while other are used as a resource of information and discussion board. Doing both can get messy and confusing so it’s a good idea to stick to just one.

A good marketing strategy is also important. How will you promote your page? What methods will you use to continuously bring in new fans? How will you integrate your page into your other social media profiles? Will you have frequently contests and giveaways? How will you measure the effectiveness of your efforts? These are all important questions that you need to answer so that you can be sure that all of your hard work won’t be in vain.

Spice It Up

A dull looking page is sure to be a dead page. All Facebook fan pages come in the same default design and layout. Many companies choose to leave theirs in default mode, but if you really want to stand out then you have to spice it up. Be creative and do something different with your page. Add more tabs and interactivity to make your fans want to get involved. Find some applications for contests and giveaways and see what other kinds of Facebook apps your fans might enjoy. A nice touch is to change the landing tab of your page; when visitors first arrive, show them a stylish welcome tab instead of just having them go directly to your page’s wall.

Get Social
Lastly, you have to make sure that you are constantly publishing quality wall posts, sharing relevant links and engaging with your fans. Don’t just have your company’s RSS feed automatically imported into you’re wall. While this is a good starting point, you need some personal interaction and fresh content mixed in there as well. People are less likely to join a page that is dead: without interaction or quality content.

Also be sure to integrate some Facebook social plugins into your website so that your customers can interact with your page right from your site. Also be sure to remind your friends and the fans of your page to “like” and share your content. A simple “please be sure to share this with your friends” can help spread the word quickly. Also, using Facebook’s tagging system is a great way to promote your page on your own personal profile.

While most of these tasks are ongoing, you still need to complete them a first time in order get your brand properly established on Facebook. While you may want to rush so that you can have your fan page up as quick as possible, you should really take your time to complete each task. In the end, you’ll see much better results and progress using a slow but steady process, rather than with a rush job.

This was a post by Lior Levin who works for iAdvize and also acts as a marketing consultant to a neon signs store that sells neon signs and led signs.

photo credit: Photospin

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3. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the Facebook Basket While Facebook may be a hot marketing tool right now,…
4. How Small and Local Businesses Can Use Facebook If there’s one aspect of social media that mainstream press…
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Tasks to Help You Establish Your Brand on Facebook

from Michael Gray – Graywolf SEO Blog

Microsoft has applied for a patent on technology that may let its user secretly intercept Voice over IP communications, amend the content and store it. The application was filed in December 2009 and was recently made public. The technology could allow the monitoring of conversations, voice messages and video conferences over a variety of devices, including smartphones, laptops and gaming devices. This technology may have been developed with an eye to selling it to government agencies.
from TechNewsWorld

T-Mobile has at long last, announced their latest myTouch 4G Slide smartphone which will be part of T-Mobile’s exclusive line of myTouch devices. The myTouch 4G Slide is said to deliver the most advanced camera of any smartphone with zero shutter lag – now this is something that is surprising since Android-powered smartphones tend to fall behind the iPhone when it comes to camera technology.

Having said that, you can’t just waltz into any T-Mobile store at the moment to bring home a myTouch 4G Slide since it is expected to be available only in July – now, now, that isn’t too far away, is it? It is already the end of June, and you can sniff July out around the corner. The naming convention of the myTouch 4G Slide also gives the game away when it comes to 4G connectivity support, so you know what you’re getting with this smartphone right from the get go.

It is said that the myTouch 4G Slide will be accompanied by an 8-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash, coupled with a bunch of other advanced digital camera features such as improved low-light performance, zero shutter lag, SweepShot that lets you capture panoramic shots by sweeping across an entire scene in a single motion, ClearShot HDR to shoot objects in bright settings without being affected by high-contrast lighting, BurstShot to capture multiple photos in a quick burst, support for America’s largest 4G network, and a dedicated dedicated camera button and one-touch access amongst others.

Heck, you can even shoot full HD video if you want to, while all your videos can be edited straight from the device without having to hook up to a computer prior to that. This is a device that will roll off HTC’s production lines, sporting a 3.7″ WVGA super LCD touch-screen display, a slide-out full-QWERTY keyboard if a Swype-enhanced virtual keyboard is not your cup of tea, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and HTC Sense 3.0. A 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor will run proceedings from within in the myTouch 4G Slide.

You can choose from black and khaki colors for the T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide when it finally arrives. Any takers?

Press Release

Related Posts:

• T-Mobile announces impending myTouch 3G
• T-Mobile myTouch 3G with Google unveiled
• T-Mobile releases limited edition myTouch 3G Fender phone
• Transparent slide mobile encyclopedia
• T-Mobile announces new myTouch smartphone

from Coolest Gadgets

Why is AC so expensive? Well, it’s because our power is now entirely generated by thousand-year-old unicorns running on golden treadmills. (Isn’t that more interesting than the usual whining about expensive utilities?)

• Lower Your Electric Bill
• Recipes to Cool You Off

from About Today

Welcome to WordPress Wednesday! Each week we’ll be answering as many of your questions about the blogging platform WordPress as possible. If you have questions you’d like answered that aren’t covered here, feel free to drop them in the comment form below. Covering topics such as WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugins, popular tutorials, current WordPress promotion codes, and more – be sure to jump in with your questions and comments.

I’d like to use something other than my recent posts as my home page. Is that possible within WordPress?

Note: This has been tested to work in WordPress 3.0 and above.

It’s not only possible it’s relatively easy. The first step is to create a page to serve as your new home page. For the purpose of this example, we’ll call it “My New Home Page.”

1. In your WP control panel, select the Pages tab.
2. Click on Add New.
3. Give the page a title, “My New Home Page.”
4. Create the content for your home page just as you would a blog post.
5. Click the Publish button.

While you’re still in the Write Page subpanel, create a second page:

1. Title this one “Recent Posts” (or whatever you want to call the page that your recent posts will appear on).
2. You don’t need to have any Page Content for this one.
3. Click the Publish button.

Now you’re ready tell WP to use your new page as the home page:

1. In the Settings panel on the left navigation select Reading.
2. At the top of the Reading Options subpanel you’ll see:
3. To change the front page to your new home page, select “A static page” for Front page displays.
4. Select “My New Home Page” from the Front page drop down menu.
5. Finally, be sure to tell WP which page to use to display your recent posts. From the Posts page menu select the “Recent Posts” page you created earlier.
6. Click Save Changes.

View your site. “My New Home Page” should now be your home page.

Note: Any Page Content you have entered for the page you designate as your Posts Page will be overwritten by the listing of your recent posts.

See also the WordPress Codex page: Reading Options Subpanel

Modifying your Pages menu

If your theme is set to display a list of your pages, the list should now contain links to both My New Home Page and Recent Posts. In the case of the Blogging Experiment Theme, this causes a bit of a problem since our menu is designed to display a “Home” link along with the page links.

Here’s the code from our old menubar.php theme file:

<div class=”TopMenu”><a name=”top” id=”top”></a><ul><li><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”>Home </a></li><?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’ . __(”) . ” ); ?></ul></div>

To remove the (now redundant) Home link, simply delete:

<li><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”>Home </a></li>

There’s one more problem, right now our page links are in alphabetical order. Fortunately the sort_column parameter of the wp_list_pages function in our code is set to menu_order. That means we can adjust the menu order by editing the Page Order setting for our pages:

1. Locate the page you want to change the Page Order setting for in the Manage>Pages subpanel and click Edit
2. The Page Order setting is at the bottom of the right-hand column.
3. If necessary click the + icon to expand the edit box and reveal the Page Order text box.
4. Type a number into the Page Order text box. For our example we’ll order the pages:
   1. My New Home Page
   2. Recent Posts
   3. About

Pages with lower Page Order appear first in the menu. Pages with the same Page Order are sorted alphabetically. Our menu should now look like this:

By default, newly created pages have a Page Order of zero which will put them at the front of your menu if you forget to change it.

For more about the wp_list_pages WordPress template tag, see http://codex.wordpress.org/wp_list_pages

If you have a question you’d like me to address or (better yet) if you have a WordPress tip, trick or tutorial you’d like to share let us know!

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from Blogging Experiment