Jon Bishop » Social Media

Socialize Goes 1.0

Jon Bishop — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:35:13 +0000

It has been a long time since I last updated the socialize plugin. I made small updates here and there to fix some of the more common problems people were having but I never got around to making all the enhancements that had been requested. Well here it is, I’ve addressed every issue presented to me in the comments of the plugin page. I am very excited about this update as it basically brings the plugin back to stage 1 and I can build up from here. I also thought it was suitable considering the release of WordPress 3.0 to get these changes out the door so we can innovate on this new and improved platform.

How much different is this version than the last? Well here is a complete list of the latest changes:

Commented out javascript
Added security to page meta box
Added Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz buttons
Removed custom Facebook button and replaced with official Facebook Share button
Created Delicious button with save count
Provided options to float in-content buttons to right or left
Provided options to display buttons on different pages
Added option to hide alert box on specific pages
Fixed CSS
Plugin now updates upon activation and keeps record of version
Buttons can now be displayed in feeds

Highlights

New Buttons

I’ve added Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz due to popular demand. I also went ahead and changed the old Facebook image I was using and replaced it with the official Facebook Share Button.

My favorite addition is the new delicious button. It was the only button without an official or nice looking share button with a save count. So I made my own, hope you like it.

New Position Settings

You can control whether buttons are displayed on posts, pages, archives, search pages and even your feed. You can also control if the buttons are displayed on the left or right side of the content.

Fixed JavaScript and CSS Problems

I took care or several problems where JavaScript was being displayed on pages and buttons weren’t positioning correctly.

What Is Socialize?

The idea was to create an easy to use plugin that allowed bloggers to selectively add social bookmarks to their post. Furthermore I wanted to only use actionable buttons with counters because I believe displaying a posts social activity gives it positive social proof and can lead to more shares and more views.

This plugin also includes what I like to call an ‘alert box’ that is selectively displayed below posts and pages to encourage comments and sharing. You can also insert buttons into this post to increase the sharing potential.

The plugin is designed to make it easy for readers to share your content and give you full control of what is displayed where.

Download Socialize

So go check out the plugin page and try it out.

Remember if you are upgrading, be sure to deactivate the plugin first and reactivate it once you have uploaded the files.

9 Free Ning Alternatives And Some Open Source Solutions

Jon Bishop — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Many people have started communities on the popular network creation site Ning since its inception. On April 15th they announced they would no longer offer their free services. Realize this isn’t the end of Ning as they point out

The tens of thousands of you who already use our paid service represent over 75% of our traffic

So I imagine most of the popular networks you belong to on Ning will remain in place.

However, for the other 25% that might navigate elsewhere you have several options. I’ve yet to see a good breakdown of some of the better free Ning alternatives out there so I thought I would give it a shot. I found most of these sites in the comments and blog posts of other despaired Ning network creators. I’ve also tried to track down these other networks reactions to Ning’s announcement. Hopefully this will help you with your own transition.

Hosted Solutions

Spruz

Spruz seems to be the network of choice for most ex-ningers. I’ve read several reports of great up time and quality service. Spruz seems to have everything Ning has and a few extras that make it somewhat unique. I’ve seen users specifically boast about its file sharing capabilities.

[Post from Spruz welcoming Ning users]

Webs

Webs gets 30 times the traffic of Spruz and any other network on this list falling short only to Ning at two-thirds its traffic. Webs promises to always be free and shares several of the main features that made Ning popular including forums, member profiles and blogs.

[Post from Webs welcoming Ning users]

WackWall

I guess being in beta it wouldn’t be fair to compare their traffic to some of the other sites on the list. However, WackWall looks very promising. They are backed by a software company and don’t rely on investments which is why, they say, they will always remain free.

[Post from WackWall welcoming Ning users]

Grou.ps

Grou.ps is another great choice based on open source software. It seems to have everything Ning has and a very reasonable pricing plan to help scale your network. They also prefer to be called a social operating system. Looks very powerful.

[Post from Grou.ps welcoming Ning users]

Grouply

Grouply looks a lot like Ning on the front end and already has FAQs on importing members from other services. Matter of fact I’ve mistaken grouply groups for Ning groups a few times. One does have to wonder why their traffic has been dropping only to be revived by Ning’s latest news.

[Post from grouply welcoming Ning users]

BigTent

BigTent may be one of the babies of the bunch but it provides all of the same services in an “integrated” approach. Users claim the support is tremendous making it worth their switch. BigTent looks like a very simple solution, maybe a little too simple for some.

[Post from BigTent welcoming Ning users]

Zerista

Still trying to wrap my brain around this one but it looks VERY cool. Imagine FourSquare meets Ning and has little mobile babies. With tons of cool features to integrate the social experience, maybe its about time you take your network to the next level and go mobile?

[Post from Zerista welcoming Ning users]

Groupsite

Groupsite (formerly known as CollectiveX) looks like an awesome network solution with some excellent features. It does seem like they find ways to lure you into buying their premium services, like limiting subgroups to 5 but overall another good solution on the free side.

SocialGo

SocialGo, like the rest has a very impressive feature list and is just as popular as Spruz traffic-wise. The site seems to have a pretty satisfied user-base as I’ve seen several people recommend the site across different blogs and networks. Definitely worth putting on the list.

Open Source Solutions

Maybe the phasing out of Ning’s free service is what it takes to get you to take ownership of your community and move to a self hosted solution. The following are all free and trusted solutions in the industry. I personally would go with BuddyPress but to each his own.

BuddyPress – [Message from Buddypress]

Elgg - [Message from Elgg]

Astrospaces

Conclusion

I wan’t to hear your thoughts. If you know of any other free hosted social network creation services, please share them in the comments. Also feel free to give feedback on any of the networks listed if you are currently a user or have used one in the past.

- Photo by Samuel Stroube

Christmas Survival Guide for Twitter

Jon Bishop — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:58:37 +0000

So you would like to celebrate Christmas and the holidays on Twitter? Well so do I so I’m putting together this little post to gather my thoughts. Here are some things you can do to help get into the Christmas spirit with your Twitter account.

Decorate Your Twitter Photo

Turn your Twitter Photo into an elf or Santa and even add some snow with Twixenate or add a Santa hat with Twibbon.com ( Other Christmas twibbons).

Change Your Twitter Background

You can always decorate your current background with some snow in Photoshop or use one of these templates:

Help People In Need

The holidays are a time to give and help where you can. On Twitter you can join a cause like the #twismas movement to raise money for a child or follow some popular charities on Twitter like:

Also be sure to check out TwitCause.

View Christmas Pictures

Using TweetGrid you can see all photos being posted to Twitter about Christmas in one place … and you don’t even have to update the page.

Track and Tweet With Santa

Norad has a special website and a Twitter account dedicated to helping you track Santa on his busiest day of the year. Also be sure to check what I believe to be the real Santa Claus on Twitter. Also, don’t forget to keep up with his blog.

- Photo by Steve took it

Comparing Twitter Retweet Data Services

Jon Bishop — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:02:55 +0000

I mainly use BackTweets but am always looking for better solutions. I actually switched from TweetMeme to BackTweets once I learned about BackTweet’s advanced functionality and Google Analytics integration. But now I feel it’s time to take a look back and see where the world of Retweet counts, buttons and stats are really at.

Let’s start off with my current favorite. BackType is a conversational search engine that scans the web for comments about your posts not necessarily on your posts. Where their original intent was to connect blog comments from one blog to another, one can see why they eventually got into the Twitter game. Using their existing technology they expanded their offerings to a site called BackTweets which became one of my favorite sites in an instant.

BackTweets keeps a fairly up to date list of all mentions of your blog. You can search for all links back to your blog or for specific posts. The data isn’t much different than Topsy’s and TweetMeme’s, I just feel like it’s the fastest and cleanest, but that’s just my personal opinion.

I think BackTweets really shines with their TweetCount widget which lets you customize everything from the color and source to weather or not you want it to be RT or “via”. Oh, and they automatically add Google Analytic parameters complements of Awe.sm. Doesn’t get much better than that. Thanks BackType!

Now on to the grandfather of Retweet tracking and indexing. TweetMeme is still my favorite Digg style Tweet aggregator for instant notification on hot topics and trends. Their RT button is probably the most used because of the websites popularity and is almost as dynamic as the BackTweet TweetCount button but falls short at color customization and Google Analytics integration. However, to compensate for the lack of GA integration, they have developed their own analytics that can track the viral nature of Retweets as they spread throughout Twitter. While I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit, I prefer integrated analytics where available and prefer the BackTweets button for this reason.

I had heard of Topsy but never really learned what they are about. Topsy is basically a Twitter search engine that ranks links being shared based on relevance and influence of those sharing the links. They offer a Retweet Count button as well as a list of all tweets linking back to your posts. What really struck me was that they also displayed which shortened URLs were used as well as all tags and authors involved in the process. This could become my new favorite dashboard for viewing Twitter activity around a specific link but it will take a bit more before I switch over to their Retweet button.

Some Things Worth Mentioning

Bit.ly uses BackType’s data to display conversations relevant to your shortened links

TweetMeme has a site very similar to it called Retweet.com however it is pretty much just a ripoff of TweetMeme and TweetMeme seems to work much better

Sometimes, BackType’s data will differ from TweetMeme and Topsy however the BackType TweetCount widget seems to display correct data

Be sure to check out this post from SEOptimise for a nice break down of the Retweet buttons mentioned in this post.

- Photo by Steve took it

Get More ReTweets Out Of Your ReTweet Button

Jon Bishop — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:38:30 +0000

Most of the time when talking about RTs, we discuss the best times to post to Twitter and the number of characters you should be using and so on and so forth. But let’s step back a second and talk about how people RT from our blogs.

Do you know how many people are RTing your content from your blog vs on Twitter?

A lot of bloggers don’t even realize that they are potentially preventing their readers from RTing their content by not having functional RT buttons. I see a lot of buttons that do any one of the following:

Post to Twitter with only an unshortened link (example)
Post to Twitter with no link and only a title (example)

Both of which a lot of people might just abandon and you’ve lost out on a RT.

And then there are people who get very close but miss in the end by doing one of the following:

Post to Twitter with an unshortened link and a title (example)
Post to Twitter with a shortened link and a title with a default source (example)

Why do we all tout the same advice on Twitter about RTs and somehow we don’t take that same advice to our blogs.

Some Things Your RT Button Should Do

Shorten Your Link

URL shortening is important for a few reasons:

Allows potential for measurement
Creates more space when RTing

It’s also important to use the right URL shortener. For example I know of people, myself included, who prefer clicking on bitly links over owly links because of the way they go about opening content. I have recently become a huge fan of the URL shortening service Awe.sm because of their Google Analytics integration and ease of use.

Use ReTweetable Titles

Most, if not all, RT buttons will just use the page title as the title to be tweeted. This causes a problem with most blogs as most themes automatically generate a title that usually includes the blog name along with some nifty symbols to separate the name and the title. You eventually end up with something like:

Jon Bishops Blog // This Is My Post // Awesome Blog Stuff http://bit.ly/1JrOCZ

It just doesn’t look all that pretty and at first glance in the public timeline on Twitter could be interpreted as spam.

Give You Credit

If you are using a popular RT button like TweetMeme or BackTypes, be sure to change the default source to your own Twitter name. Wouldn’t you rather see a bunch of RTs with your name in it rather than @tweetmeme or @backtype. This one always surprises me and then I have to go and hunt down the bloggers Twitter name to give the proper credit.

Make It Simple

Don’t create extra steps for your readers willing to share your content. Use buttons that send them straight to Twitter, no middle man. I’ve never been a fan of http://twitthis.com/ for that very reason. It creates an extra step between me and retweeting a post when all I want is a shortened URL to share. I also don’t like allowing 3rd party sites because, well, I don’t trust anyone these days.

Easiest Solutions

I’ve compared a few of these services in further detail in a previous post but the easiest way to make sure you are using the best RT button is to use the TweetMeme Button or BackType’s TweetCount widget. Also be sure to properly configure it so that your title’s make sense and it’s not using the default source.

Click my RT button at the top of this post to see how it’s done ;)

WordPress As a CMS

Jon Bishop — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:30:35 +0000

Rather than reinvent the wheel here I’m going to share some articles I both agree with and have found helpful in the past. WordPress is extremely powerful in it’s simplicity but is made more powerful by it’s loyal users. The future of this platform is very exciting as we stretch the possibilities of traditional websites.

First off, we have an excellent article by Devlounge which poses some great questions:

Things To Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS

Next we have a series of articles from Noupe convering some excellent WordPress as a CMS plugins, techniques and unique uses:

Now WordPress isn’t the perfect CMS solution right out of the box, so NoScope.com discusses it’s shortcomings and some possible improvements:

10 Changes To WordPress That Would Make It A Killer CMS

It would also be nice if you took the time to keep your WordPress CMS somewhat user friendly so we’ll turn to Stylizedweb for that:

10 Steps to a Client Friendly WordPress CMS

And finally, a few lists of plugins that can help you successfully turn your WordPress blog into a fully functional content management system:

Tailoring Your Blog To Your Readers

Jon Bishop — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:00:45 +0000

Ever stop to think about who is reading your blog? No one knows your readers better than you, so what are you doing about it?

Your blog should really evolve right along side you. A few things to consider as you learn more about your readers are:

Is it easy for readers to contact you? Can you make it easier?
Is it easy for readers to find you on other networks, like on Twitter?
Is it easy for you readers to find some of your more popular articles?
Do you offer anything worth promoting to your sidebar or home page?
Are people using your search and are they finding what they’re looking for?
Can people easily subscribe to your RSS feed?

Keeping your content fresh can go beyond just posting regularly. Keeping your blog fresh as a whole is an easy way to keep people interested. Just remember not to go overboard.

How Have I Put This Into Action?

First of all I acknowledged the fact that certain posts perform better on some days than others due to trending topics on Twitter and in social media. So I added a ‘Popular Posts’ section in my sidebar that shows the most popular posts over the past 2 days. This is just an easy way to take advantage of the spikes of traffic I get from social media by taking full advantage of a topics popularity within a time frame.

I also added buttons that link directly to the WordPress plugins I created from the sidebar because I recognize that this is one of the main reasons people visit my site and I want an easy way for them to find what they’re looking for.

Speaking of my plugins, my Socialize plugin allows me to selectively add social bookmarking buttons to my posts. After awhile it’s pretty easy to see which button are being used more than others and with my plugin I can easily go in and remove unneeded buttons. This is just to increase the overall user experience as well as to encourage more shares on the services that are already doing well.

And finally, I use the feedback of my readers through comments and on Twitter to come up with new topic ideas. It’s probably my main source of inspiration aside from my spontaneous brain bursts.

How Can You Put This Into Action?

Ask you readers! Seriously. If you can’t figure out what needs to be done through previous interactions with your reader base why not formulate a post asking for ideas and direction. Don’t just let your blog become a place to spill your thoughts, let your readers milk your brain for all it’s worth … maybe that’s where the gold is.

- Photo by Diogo Martins.

Creating A Video Section On Your WordPress Blog

Jon Bishop — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:40:35 +0000

Awhile back I decided to start posting videos on my blog. Once I had a few videos up I began to rethink my approach. Ultimately I wanted to prevent videos from showing up where normal posts are displayed and instead display my most recent video in the sidebar.

To do this, I would need to:

Suppress all video posts from being displayed with other posts
Create an archive of all video posts
Resize and place my most recent video in the sidebar

The first step was pretty easy. I just created a new category called “Video Post” and assigned it to all of my video posts. This would become a fairly intuitive list of videos people could access at their will.

Next I wanted to remove all video posts from being displayed among other posts on the home page. However, I still wanted my videos to be displayed in RSS feeds as well as archives and search pages. To do this, I just modified the default WordPress query used to pull the most recent posts by placing the following code before “The Loop”.

//Hide a category from the home page

global $wp_query;
query_posts(
array_merge(
array('cat' => -66),
$wp_query->query
)
);

Be sure to change ‘-66′ to the id of whatever category you are trying to hide. How do I find the category IDs?

Also, if you are not sure where the WordPress Loop begins, it is usually located inside of index.php in your theme folder and starts with:

//Beginning of the WordPress Loop located in index.php of theme

if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

The last step is to display my most recent video in the sidebar. To do this I decided my best course of action was to save the embed code of my videos into a custom field as well as within the content of the post. This would allow me to easily pull the embed code and I would still be able to add text along with my video within the content.

In the example below I used the custom field ‘embed’ in my posts. Just paste this code in your sidebar where you would like your video to be displayed.

//Display resized most recent video along with link to previous video

ID, $key, true);
if ($custom_field) {
// Set values
$width = 'width="'.$width.'"';
$height = 'height="'.$height.'"';
$custom_field = preg_replace( '/width="[^"]+"/' , $width , $custom_field );
$custom_field = preg_replace( '/height="[^"]+"/' , $height , $custom_field );
echo '

Videos

<ul>

<li style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="<?=get_permalink(); ?>">ID); ?>a>strong>

<ul>

<li>Next Video: <a href="<?=get_permalink(); ?>">ID); ?>a>li>

ul>

li>

ul>

li>

You will notice I also included a link to my last video however you can remove this or replace it with a link to your video archive. This code should work with most video embed codes. Be sure to change the width and height so everything fits nicely into your sidebar.

And that’s it. Now all you need to do when adding a new video post is:

Assign the post to your video category
Paste your embed code into the content and your ‘embed’ custom field
And Publish Your Post!

Why Should College Students Care About Twitter?

Jon Bishop — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:33:34 +0000

Facebook seems to be the king of social media for college students. One could easily argue that the demographics of the service support this. So why should they also care about Twitter?

Twitter and Facebook seem to fit the mold of Private vs Public. Facebook is a great means of keeping up with friends and family while sharing links, photos and seemingly random thoughts. The hump most new Twitterers (aka Tweeps) have to get over is

Why should I care about the seemingly random thoughts of complete strangers?

To me, its the same reason why you would go out to a bar over staying home with friends … you are interested in meeting new people. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media sites out there and is the best medium for conversing with new like minded individuals. This mentality coincides with one of Twitter’s most useful functions. Tapping into the buzz of things that interest us. Twitter’s search capabilities in collaboration with it’s complete simplicity make it the perfect platform for crowd sourcing thoughts, ideas, questions and answers.

For example: If one were interested in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) they could follow the most popular MMA tweeps or even the MMA tweeps with the most interesting things to say. You could also set up a Twitter search for all mentions of MMA so you can jump in on the discussions and get the latest MMA news in REAL TIME.

You see, it’s not about the random thoughts of others but the thoughts of others that are relevant to you.

So what kinds of things should you be Tweeting?

That is completely up to you but the best way to learn is to watch others you enjoy reading. The most resourceful way to use Twitter is to reply and communicate with others. Some people like to use Twitter to show off their own accomplishments (like the completion of a new blog post or the creation of a new piece of art). Others use Twitter to support their business by proving their expertise through helping others in need. I myself use it mostly to talk with others I’ve met through Twitter … simple enough. Here is a list of 25 Twitter tips for college students.

Twitter is whatever you make of it and can be extremely powerful despite its apparent simplicity. The best way to learn about it is to just dive in. It’s always nice to know someone too, so feel free to reach out to me (@jondbishop ) and I’ll do my best to guide you in the right direction to be sure you get the most out of it.

- Photo by tanakawho

Why Is Thesis Such A Great Premium WordPress Theme?

Jon Bishop — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:25:28 +0000

There are 3 main reasons I love Thesis and why I use it for my blog;

SEO
Awesome Layout
It’s constantly being optimized

I guess what originally hooked me was the fact that most of the blogs I was reading by professionals within my industry were already on the Thesis theme. You’ve got Chris Brogan (who wrote about it here), Darren Rowse (who wrote about it here), Brian Clark (who wrote about i here), Matt Cutts and more.

So now a little about what makes it so great.

Matt Cutts recently spoke at WordCamp San Francisco 2009 where he discussed WordPress’s ability to satisfy 90% of your websites SEO. WordPress itself takes care of the obvious things like pretty URLs, syndication, interlinking pages, hiding duplicate content, etc. However, one thing WordPress does not control is the layout of the theme you are using. This is where Thesis comes in and satisfies several immediate needs:

Cleanly laid out HTML for easy indexing by search engines
Extra fields that allow editing of header meta on a page to page basis
Clean, easy to read typography

But if everyone had the same theme, wouldn’t that get kind of dull?

Sure, if everyone was using the same settings. Thesis comes with two new settings pages under the appearance tab of your admin panel. You can move sidebars around, change major content area, and control all your fonts across the entire site.

Now while every other theme out there may eventually become outdated, I know I’m safe with Thesis because they are consistently releasing new versions. Their unique method for customizing the theme allows for easy upgrades and a lot more control. They have even added several new wordpress hooks that developers have already begun integrating into their plugins for easy one-step setup.

But I like it for the cutting edge look and feel

This was probably the culprit for the themes instant appeal in my eyes. Out of the box, the home page of the theme allows you to display excerpts in a slick boxlike fashion. You also get a dynamic content area in your sidebar that you can change on a post to post basis, great for promoting services relevant to the content your readers are viewing. Finally, they’ve added options to your posts and pages that allow you to display images in your posts that are automatically resized for the excerpts on the home page.

I’ve never promoted a product on my blog because I feel money can dilute an honest review by making it slightly more biased in any one direction. However, with Thesis I will make an exception. Ever since I’ve started using it I’ve been able to focus a lot more on content creation and less about SEO and blog maintenance. I very much look forward to future releases and hope you can too.

Disclaimer: All links to Thesis from this blog are an affiliate link. If you purchase the theme through one of these links I will receive a percentage as commission. This is the first (and probably only) product I would ever endorse for money.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Jon Bishop — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:45:12 +0000

You can save me 200 bucks? Prove it.

You can design awesome WordPress themes? Where’s your portfolio?

You know a lot about social media? Who have you helped?

It’s not about what you say you can do, it’s about doing it. Stop saying you can help people with their problems and start helping them. There are people begging for WordPress help on Twitter right now, why don’t you track them down and lend them a hand Mr WordPress expert. Social Media is not about broadcasting your capabilities but rather an excellent platform for displaying them.

There are tons of people creating real relationships in social media because they are communicating. They help and recommend each other. You need to create some sort or tangible social proof. The problem is numbers are a a dying (dead) form of social proof. Your Twitter followers and blog subscriber numbers can both be manipulated. That leaves your actions and thoughts, and the more conversation the better.

So put up a portfolio that proves your artistic capabilities. Reach out to others regularly to both learn and educate. Interaction and communication is your key to developing tangible social proof.

- Photo by Aidan Jones

Battle of the ReTweet Buttons

Jon Bishop — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:20:11 +0000

ReTweet buttons have taken social media by storm and are an easy way to encourage the sharing of your content on Twitter. There are dozens of solutions similar to the 3 buttons listed below, but these seem to be the most promising and include a “Tweet Count” on the buttons themselves.

I’m often surprised at how many great blogs aren’t using these buttons yet when it seems like a no-brainer. The only reason I could see not having one of these buttons on your site is if you don’t want social proof of your blogs failure. In other words, you don’t want the rest of the world seeing how many people are not sharing your posts. But then again, if that’s the case, maybe adding one of these buttons to your site is the first step to getting a solid new following.

TweetMeme retweet button

TweetMeme’s retweet button wasn’t the first of it’s kind, but it definitely sparked the trend that eventually led to this post. This button is probably the most recognizable throughout the blogosphere because of it’s unparalleled support and cutting edge website. Past attempts at aggregating retweets into a “Digg style” website fell short due to shortcomings in functionality and bandwidth.

My only quarrel with the TweetMeme button was the fact that it automatically added “RT @tweetmeme” to your tweet unless you had some sort of high level clearance to get it customized. However, it seems they have fixed this and you can now customize it, as you should be able to. This was an especially smart move considering the launch of BackType’s retweet widget that allowed you to customize itself to your heart’s content.

Backtype Tweetcount Widget

This is the retweet button I am currently using because, at the time, TweetMeme wasn’t allowing me to customize my tweets. The main difference between BackType’s widget and TweetMeme’s is that BackType counts all Tweets pointing to a post where TweetMeme only counts each tweet once. You can also change the color of the widget to match your website’s theme. I’ll probably stick with this one for awhile.

Real Retweet Button

This guy popped up just the other day. Besides being a TweetMeme ripoff … well it’s a TweetMeme ripoff. The only reason I would even consider using this button is if I wanted to try something different.

So which RT button do you use?

How To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

Jon Bishop — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:00:06 +0000

A WordPress blog is an easy way to establish a dynamic online presence however it’s also very easy to get trigger happy with plugins and themes that ultimately slow down your websites loading time. Here’s a quick little checklist to help improve your blogs performance.

1) Test your blogs speed first and get it primed

Use tools like iWebTool’s Speed Test and Pingdom’s Full Page test to visually see your blogs weaknesses and identify any key areas to focus on.

You should also be sure that your HTML adheres to W3C guidelines by validating your website and fixing any problems.

2) Make sure you have reliable hosting

Choose a reliable host that has the most recent versions of PHP and MYsql installed as well as enough space/bandwidth to handle large loads. WordPress has it’s own list of recommended hosts.

Here are a few others worth checking out:

3) Handle your images properly

Images can put a huge strain on your server’s load time if not managed properly. Your images don’t need to be any higher than 72 DPI and should be resized before being inserted into your post. Resizing images with HTML can distort the image and increase it’s loading time.

It also might be a good idea to disable hotlinking so no one outside of your website is using up your resources. All you have to do is navigate to your .htaccess file and insert the following code. (Note: If you are unfamiliar with how htaccess works, you may want to skip this step or contact a web developer for help)

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|ico)$ – [F,L]

It also wouldn’t hurt to cache your commenter’s gravatar images if you are currently displaying them on your site.

4) Easy with the javscript calls

Calls to 3rd party javascripts seem to be the main culprit in slowing down WordPress blogs. Between all the analytics packages available and social media enhancements you can make, their are tons of ways to slow down your blog. It really comes down to just choosing wisely. Do you really need that nifty little MyBlogLog widget? Is Google friend connect that important to your blogs strategy?

Two easy ways to cut down on the amount of time is takes to load whatever scripts you deem are necessary is to:

Move javascript to an external file so browsers can cache the scripts.
Move any remaining scripts to your WordPress’s footer.php

5) Don’t load too many videos at once

Too many flash videos on one page is a sure way to use up all of someones memory trying to load your page. I worked around this problem by assigning all video posts to the same category and not displaying any posts from that category on the home page. I just placed the following code above my “WordPress loop”:

query_posts('cat=-3');

Another easy fix would be to use the tag above your code that embeds the video in your post. This would only prevent the video itself from displaying on your home page.

6) Control your plugins

Only make calls to plugins when you need them by only calling them on the pages they will be used on.

if (is_page('archives')) {
// function code here
}

This code only displays “function code here” when you are viewing the “archives” page. A full list of all the conditional tags can be found here.

Also be careful not to install too many plugins in general and disable and remove any plugins that are not being used.

7) Cache Your Pages

The WP Super Cache plugin is probably the easiest way to seemingly increase your blogs loading time. It saves a copy of your website to a file on your server so WordPress only need to call that file rather than all the SQL and PHP it normally has to run. It comes in very useful when you have traffic spikes from certain social media sites.

8) Reduce SQL queries and PHP calls

Yoast has a great post that can help significantly reduce the number of calls your blog makes to your database. It also wouldn’t hurt to clean up your database either manually or with a plugin like WP DB Manager.

Another thing you can do that might speed up your database is to disable post revisions.

I hope someone finds this useful. Are there anymore tips you would recommend for speeding up a WordPress blog’s loading time?

- Photo by kevindean

A Day In The Life Of A Social Media Geek

Jon Bishop — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:23:09 +0000

Everyone probably has their own little routine they go through but I just thought I would throw mine out there. Every day is a little different, but if I had to describe my average day, this would be it.

Wake Up

I don’t have an alarm clock. I’ve been using my cell phone as my alarm for the last 8 years. That has nothing to do with social media, just thought it was kind of interesting.

Once I am finally up, I sit at my computer to take a quick glance at my TweetGrid. I don’t usually respond to anything at this time, I just like knowing what’s going on.

Morning At Work

When I get to work I check my email and review all new Twitter friend requests. All my Twitter requests go to their own folder so I can easily run through them all and follow/ignore/block as i need to. Then I look over the TweetGrid I made for my company Magicomm to see what’s popping in the industry.

Lunch

For some reason, I’ll still check Yelp every day before lunch yet I somehow end up at the same places. Yelp plays a major role in my real world social life as it’s an excellent means of finding new places to go out at night and locating the best food in the area.

During my lunch break I try and get in as much blog reading as I can. I try to get in a good mix of topics that personally interest me and posts relevant to my job. At this point I’ve probably already tweeted about my coffee and am starting to have some real conversation on Twitter. I also like to check my Facebook at lunch too. I basically use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with real world friends and family and spare them all the techy geek talk.

Afternoon At Work

In between doing actual work and talking with my coworkers, I regularly monitor Twitter and TweetGrid at random times during the day, chiming in wherever I feel is appropriate. Magicomm has also adopted a social media strategy where I spend an hour of my day commenting, tweeting and sharing on behalf of Magicomm. This is when I usually throw around blog topic ideas for the Magicomm blog and maybe post some social media tips on the Magicomm Twitter account.

After Work

After work I’ll send out a DM to some of my buddies to see what they’re up to and update my BrightKite location once I know where I’m going. BrightKite makes it easy to update my twitter status with a photo as well as upload that same photo to Flickr and Facebook automatically. Then I’ll usually take another look at Yelp if I plan on going out or I’ll jump in to one of my more favorite communities, Steam. Steam is a platform for gaming and networking with other gamers interested in the same games. It’s just another easy way to have fun on the web with some of my friends.

Before Bed

Every night before bed I like to play with my blog a bit. It’s a great way to relieve some stress after a long day and be sure that everything is working properly. And if I couldn’t be any more suggestive, sometimes I’ll even squeeze out a post or two.

I guess what I am trying to get across with this post is that I am not forcing any of these routines. I do them because I am genuinely interested in the relationships or the information I am taking in. I read blogs instead of newspapers and I use Twitter instead of yelling at people in the streets. Facebook has replaced my text messaging and Yelp is the collective thoughts of a million different reviewers. I am a social media geek and so can you.

Everything You Need To Know About Twitter Replies and Mentions

Jon Bishop — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:59:38 +0000

Replies set the cornerstone of Twitter’s communication capabilities. We use them every day in hopes of making new friends or keeping up with old ones.

A few months ago, Twitter made some changes to their @reply system that prevented people from seeing conversations out of context. Everyone freaked out and Twitter clarified on their changes. I personally like the changes Twitter made.

Now I just wanted to give everyone a quick refresher on the current status of how @replies work. I feel like I regularly come across other Tweeps having trouble following conversations on Twitter.

The Basics

Twitter’s @replies still follow a lot of their originally proposed functionality. One of the main things a lot of people forget is that when you click Twitter’s “swoosh” button, your reply is now directly associated with that tweet.

If you ever receive a reply that seems out of the blue, check Twitter for the “in reply to ..” text and click to see what the Tweet was a response to. Most popular Twitter apps also display the “in reply to ..” text as well. Remember that Twitter can only associate your replies to Tweets when you use the “swoosh” button. Once again, most of the more popular Twitter apps have also embraced this functionality so there are no excuses.

Replying to people in this manner will prevent your reply from showing up in other people’s timelines when they are not following the person you are replying to. This becomes especially useful if you find yourself replying to people all the time and you are worried about posting too often. In short, it is an easy way to filter out the noise.

However, just because you won’t see conversations out of context in your friend stream, doesn’t mean you can’t hop over to Twitter search and view all public conversations taking place. In fact, Twitter Search can even thread your replies to help organize your conversations. If you are looking to see threaded conversations in a normal Twitter-like environment you should check out TweeTree which also displays videos and unshortens links.

Mentions

Mentions were adopted by Twitter when people started using @replies to reference other Tweeps in their tweets. The difference between replies and mentions is that when you mention someone you might not be talking directly to them. In this case, all of your followers would see your Tweet regardless of whether they are following the person you are mentioning or not.

Mentions won’t have the “in reply to ..” text because they are not necessarily directed at anyone.

Advanced Tweeting

You will regularly see people adding a . (period) before their @replies or placing some other text before the @reply to prevent it from becoming a semi-private conversation. It’s not always needed however there are times when you may wish to reply to someone and you want ALL of your followers to see the conversation taking place.

Remember that in the end, you can use Twitter however you damn please.

- Photo by db*photography

Tools and Tips for Answering Questions on Twitter

Jon Bishop — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:43:41 +0000

Probably one of the easiest ways to network on Twitter is to answer questions asked by your followers. It is also a great way to find new people to follow as well. There is a solid list of sites that help facilitate Q&A on Twitter outside of who you are following. By reaching outside your network, you are exposing yourself to a new audience and in turn increase your chances of getting more like-minded followers.

Now I still prefer the old fashioned method of finding questions on Twitter by just using the standard Twitter Search. All you need to do is include a question mark and your topic. I also include an operator that removes all links as I find they are usually just titles of blog posts and not real questions.

There is also a growing list of sites you can use that might make finding and answering questions a bit easier. I sometimes find these sites to be a bit limited in what they offer simply because they restrict their Twitter Search API calls to phrases like “Does anyone know” and “why does” rather than scanning for all legitimate questions. However, I will leave judgements about quality up to you.

I hope I have successfully overwhelmed you with Twitter Q&A sites. Each site works a little differently, whether it is just the look and feel or the functionality altogether. I’m not convinced yet that Twitter could replace Yahoo Answer or LinkedIn Answers, but Twitter seems to be in a league of it’s own, delivering unparalleled real time results. This especially holds true when asking questions via Twitter at an event.

Nevertheless, continue to provide value to your community and watch your relationships grow stronger in time.

- Post header photo by Jilligan86

Social Media Monitoring and Measurement Tools

Jon Bishop — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:10:16 +0000

It’s extremely important to monitor and measure your influence in social media however some of the premium tools out there might be a little beyond your financial reach. Good thing there are plenty of free tools you can mix and match to meet your own personal goals.

First off, check the availability of your brand name, user name or vanity URL on 120 popular Social Media sites with http://knowem.com. This is just an easy way to see if anyone has squatted on your brand name.

Now some of these tools are better at monitoring while others are better at measurement. I leave it up to you.

Social Media

SocialMention.com allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

KeoTag.com searches some of the most popular social media sites for tags that match your search term.

BackType is a “conversational search engine”. They index conversations scattered across the web to make following comments on a post or article a lot easier to manage.

CoComment is a service for managing, powering and researching conversations online. When using coComment, you can keep track of your comments across any site, share them with friends, and get notified when you get a response.

YackTrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources or other blogs that talk about your content.

Blog Flux is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr galleries, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, i.e a new follow-up, Commentful notifies you instantly.

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet.

Twitter

Twitter Search helps you filter all the real-time information coursing through the Twittersphere.

Backtweets finds all Tweets linking back to an article or blog post. Site does a good job of archiving older tweets where tweetmeme only shows more recent tweets.

Twitrratr helps you distinguish negative from positive tweets surrounding a brand, product, person or topic.

Tweetmeme is similar to Backtweets except it only shows tweets that link to a post from the last 7 days.

Facebook

Facebook Lexicon lets you compare up to five different words or two-word phrases and see how many people talked about that term on Facebook each day.

Discussion Boards and Forums

BoardReader was developed to address the shortcomings of current search engine technology to accurately find and display information contained on the Web’s forums and message boards.

BoardTracker is a search engine that only displays information from their extensive database of forum threads.

Blogs

Blog Search is a Google search technology focused on blogs. You can do a lot of the normal advanced Google search commands to get optimal results.

BlogPulse is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere

Trendpedia finds the articles online that talk about your topics. It organizes the articles in a trendline that shows the popularity of the topic over time up to three months ago up to today.

A Little Something Extra

I’ve been using the free version of FiltrBoxG2 which has been amazing. It’s very slick and easy to use. I highly recommend checking it out, you’ve got nothing to lose.

- Photo by adactio

Are “Social Mentions” And “Twitter Trackbacks” Just Taking Up Space?

Jon Bishop — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:03:45 +0000

You may have seen some of the following solutions installed on some of your favorite blogs:

The idea is to bring all comments about your posts into the posts themselves in an effort to centralize the conversation. This seems like a great idea until you put it into practice.

The main problem with most, if not all, of these solutions is that Twitter tends to overpower the rest. What we need is an effective means of filtering Twitter for quality comments, otherwise they should not be pulled into the post at all.

Are people seriously going through the “Social Media Comments” of the comments section and scanning through them for quality input? Good luck finding any quality input from Twitter. Just for kicks, go to this mashable post and count the number of quality comments from Twitter about that post. You more than likely saw the ridiculous number of trackbacks and didn’t even bother counting.

But what if, for the time being, we just excluded Twitter from this count. I mean, what benefit, if any, are they providing to the discussion. The only tweets worth including in comments are usually the comments that were sent to Twitter using Disqus, IntenseDebate or CommenTwitter.

However, there are sites that do provide quality comments worth importing into your posts, like StumbleUpon and Digg. These sites separate the promotion of the content (Digging/linking) from the commentary. ReTweeting is like Digging something. You wouldn’t display each individual Digg on your site below the comments, but you might use the Digg widget to represent the total number of Diggs received and then display any comments about the Digg in the comments of your post. This is how we should handle ReTweets. Use a site like TweetMeme to display your total RT count and then leave the ReTweets out of the comments.

As the filtering and organization of commentary across the web becomes more centralized we will hopefully see great improvements in the way we go about displaying them on our blogs. Until then, let’s just be smart about it.

-Photo by victoriapeckham

Do We Even Need FeedBurner Anymore?

Jon Bishop — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:32:53 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about FeedBurner’s new changes where it includes FriendFeed subscribers in its total subscriber count. Unless FeedBurner removes this new feature, subscriber stats may be flawed forever. I don’t want to bore you with all the reasons why this is a bad idea, so instead I’m just going to say I agree with David Spinks, Rob Diana, and Dave Fleet.

This is just the icing on the cake as ProBlogger had already pointed out a few issues with FeedBurner prior to this new change. He brings up some valid points that ultimately led to me writing this post.

So now the question becomes, why do we even need FeedBurner anymore?

FeedBurner was originally created as a means of resyndicating your content in multiple XML formats to suit the needs of different RSS readers. At least that was the pitch that originally got me on board. Now it seems as if the main reasons people are using FeedBurner is to:

Track RSS Subscriptions
Allow people to subscribe to RSS via email
Post process feeds with additional content (sharing links, custom footers, etc)

But now that RSS is reaching maturity, is there any need for this 3rd party service to control our feeds? I mean the whole point of RSS was to create a standardized XML file format that allowed information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The truth is that most if not all RSS readers can handle the shottiest RSS feeds (I’ve created some pretty shotty feeds in the past).

So what about all the stats, email and flair? Well if you have a wordpress blog and do not mind the extra load on your server, why not just manage your feed yourself with a couple new plugins. A quick Google search brought up this little gem: “How to assemble a Feedburner alternative using WordPress plugins“. The post is a bit old but still very relevant. There are also 200+ RSS plugins in the WordPress plugin directory that are sure to meet whatever needs you can come up with. Now it’s on us to push the development of these and new plugins to give us more control of our RSS feeds.

I left out a lot of my emotions concerning the new changes that have been made to FeedBurner because I didn’t want to just echo the cries of others and instead wanted to propose a possible solution. Long story short, the FeedBurner RSS chicklet used to be an easy way to gauge a blogs popularity. Now that it can be manipulated it has lost its usefulness.

- Photo by striatic

27 Excellent Free Social Media Icons Sets

Jon Bishop — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:00:04 +0000

In a previous post I talked about how to increase the viral potential of your content with more actionable bookmarking and sharing buttons. Now here is a list of cool custom bookmarking and sharing buttons you can use on your blog that are sure to attract more bookmarks and shares.