Four main resources of WordPress

Four main resources of WordPress

Four main resources

There are four main reasons to consider using WordPress for a new website:
1.WordPress designs are based on “Themes”. Themes are composed of images and cascading style sheet (CSS) webpage layouts, and this makes it very easy for us to customize the look and feel of a WordPress site using a pre-existing Theme and a new page layout created in Photoshop (or a layout imported into Photoshop from a QuarkXPress PDF, an Acrobat PDF, InDesign PDF, etc.). On the low-end of the design scale, you can basically drop a company’s logo into the top corner of the page and you are good to go!

2.WordPress software allows anyone to create and edit new web pages and blog “posts” using only a web browser. No knowledge of HTML or other code is required. The WordPress editing interface is very easy to use. It works a lot like simple word-processing software. And, the site administrator can grant various levels of access to others, allowing them to contribute to the website/blog. Because the interface is web-based, creating and editing pages can be done from anywhere with an Internet connection.

3.The blogging features in WordPress allow you to update your website/blog frequently, to receive and respond to comments from your readers, and to allow others to subscribe to your site content using RSS. This is great for your human customers and potential customers. It is also great for search engines, because search engines love fresh content.

4.There are many more features of a WordPress website or blog that make it much, much better than a traditional “static”, “brochure-style” website (i.e., built once and never updated after that) when it comes to search engine optimization and social media. And many of these features are taken care of automatically, requiring little or no effort (or programming skill) on your part

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Marketing has always been a crucial part of a business. Good companies have become great on the sheer basis of effective marketing strategies. In the era of huge competition, organizations are going great length to advertise and promote their products and earn valuable customer loyalty. The concept of marketing has kept evolving with the passage of time. Companies are forced to adopt new changes in their marketing strategies to remain relevant. If there is one factor that has really affected the way marketing plans are being defined then it must be technology.

The concept of social media marketing basically refers to the process of promoting business or websites through social media channels. It is a powerful marketing medium that is defining the way people are communicating. It is one of the significantly low-cost promotional methods that provide businesses large numbers of links and huge amount of traffic. Companies manage to get massive attention and that really works in favor of the business. Social media marketing is a potent method applied by progressive companies for selling their products/services or for just publishing content for ad revenue.

Social media is an extremely useful tool using which companies can get their information, product descriptions, promotions all ingrained in the chain of networking world. Considering the newness of this marketing method, organizations are coming up with innovative ways to develop their marketing plans. New platforms are being created to approach potential clients. A large number of business organizations are allocating budget for online business development using social media marketing. It is a booming sector which is going to redefine the way marketing strategies are being formed and promoted.

WordPress Features

WordPress Features

WordPress Features:-

WordPress is a powerful personal publishing platform, and it comes with a great set of features designed to make your experience as a publisher on the Internet as easy, pleasant and appealing as possible. We are proud to offer you a freely distributed, standards-compliant, fast, light and free personal publishing platform, with sensible default settings and features, and an extremely customizable core.

License and Platform:-
License : WordPress is licensed under the GPL.
Platform : PHP (4.3 or newer) and MySQL (4.1.2 or newer) are required.

Managing and Administering

Locally Install:-
WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, or shared hosting account, which gives you complete control over the weblog. Unlike third-party hosted services, you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your weblog, in case you need to. This also means that you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet.

Portable Core:-
You can choose to have the tree of wordpress related files, which form the back-end of your publicly displayed weblog, be in the same directory as the weblog or in a different directory. For example, if you want your weblog at http://example.com (public_html - the public "root" of your webserver or hosting account) and you want to store the wordpress related files and directory tree in http://example.com/wordpress (public_html/wordpress), you can!

UTC friendly :-
WordPress allows you to define your time as an offset from Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), so that all the time-related elements stored in the database are stored as GMT values, which is a universal standard. Among other things, this helps you display the correct time on your weblog, even if your host server is located in a different time zone.

User management :-
WordPress uses user-levels to control user-access to different features, so you can restrict the ability of individual users to create or modify content in your weblog, by changing their user-level.

User profiles:-
Each user on your weblog can define a profile, with details such as their email address, instant messaging aliases etc, if they want to. Users can also control the way in which their details are displayed on the weblog.

Easy installation and upgrade :-
WordPress' famous 5 minute install can't be beaten for simplicity and ease of use. Upgrading your weblog to the latest version of WordPress is easy, too, and it should take less time than the installation!

Dynamic page generation :-
No rebuilding of all your pages each time you update your weblog, or any aspect of it. All pages are generated using the database and the templates each time a page from your weblog is requested by a viewer. This means that updating your weblog, or its design is as fast as possible, and required server storage space usage is minimal.

Internationalization and Localization :-
You can now create a weblog that is localized to your choice, and delivered in a language of your choice. The gettext method is used to translate and localize WordPress to the fullest extent.

Publicizing Your Work:-
Feeds:-
The RSS 1.0 (aka RDF), RSS 2.0 and ATOM specifications are fully supported by WordPress, and what's more, just about any page on your weblog has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to - there's a feed for the latest posts, for categories, comments, well, like we said earlier, for anything you want. The more options your readers have to keep track of different sections of your weblog, the easier it is for you to spread the word around the world. WordPress also fully supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so adding mp3 files (such as podcasts) to your RSS feeds is a snap.

Cruft-free Permalinks :-
The URLs for all the pages in your weblog can be made to conform to a standard, cruft-free system, and all the links are structured, sensible, and understandable to human and machines, and that includes search engines. Clean URLs are essential for search engine optimization and an improved user experience.

Inter-blog Communication :-
In an increasingly connected world, WordPress comes ready for PingBack and TrackBack, two very useful ways of connecting to other weblogs, and to enable them to do the same.

Customizing the Design:-
Template Driven Design :-
WordPress uses templates to generate the pages dynamically. You can control the presentation of content by editing the templates using the Template Editor tool and the Template Tags

Template and File Editor:-
Every installation of WordPress comes with a file editor you can use to edit your templates and other WordPress related files, right in your browser without having to worry about downloading and uploading the files in order to edit them.

Template Tags :-
Template tags make it easier to design the content and information displayed on your weblog. You don't need to be a PHP whiz to design your weblog.

Themes:-
You can skin your weblog using readily available themes, or styles. You can also create and share your own themes.

Plugins :-
Plugins extend the core functionality of your weblog. A large number of user-developed plugins are already available and can be used to do virtually anything you want to, with your blog.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Marketing has always been a crucial part of a business. Good companies have become great on the sheer basis of effective marketing strategies. In the era of huge competition, organizations are going great length to advertise and promote their products and earn valuable customer loyalty. The concept of marketing has kept evolving with the passage of time. Companies are forced to adopt new changes in their marketing strategies to remain relevant. If there is one factor that has really affected the way marketing plans are being defined then it must be technology.

The concept of social media marketing basically refers to the process of promoting business or websites through social media channels. It is a powerful marketing medium that is defining the way people are communicating. It is one of the significantly low-cost promotional methods that provide businesses large numbers of links and huge amount of traffic. Companies manage to get massive attention and that really works in favor of the business. Social media marketing is a potent method applied by progressive companies for selling their products/services or for just publishing content for ad revenue.

Social media is an extremely useful tool using which companies can get their information, product descriptions, promotions all ingrained in the chain of networking world. Considering the newness of this marketing method, organizations are coming up with innovative ways to develop their marketing plans. New platforms are being created to approach potential clients. A large number of business organizations are allocating budget for online business development using social media marketing. It is a booming sector which is going to redefine the way marketing strategies are being formed and promoted.

Social Media Marketing and and Platform's

Social Media Marketing and and Platform's

Social media marketing is a recent addition to organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix;advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.
Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.




Platforms

Social media marketing which is known as SMO Social Media Optimization benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of the foundation on which it is built. A strong foundation serves as a stand or platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as article and press release publications.
The most popular platforms include:
Blogs
Delicious
Facebook
Flickr
Hi5
LinkedIn
MySpace
Reddit
Tagged
Twitter
YouTube

Social Media Tools

Social Media Tools

Social Media Tools:-

There are a wide range of social media tools businesses can use to get more interactive — to communicate and exchange information with customers.  Businesses are increasingly using these tools because they offer more cost-effective ways to achieve their goals.

In this article, we present links to basic information explaining these tools.  In later articles, we’ll provide advice and resources to help businesses get started in using these tools effectively. Click on the Social Media tool category below to get a basic understand of each:

Blogs 101

Microblogging 101

RSS 101

Photo Sharing 101

Podcasts 101

Social News and Bookmarking 101

Social Networking 101

Video Sharing 101

Wikis 101

Social Media Tools:-

There are a wide range of social media tools businesses can use to get more interactive — to communicate and exchange information with customers.  Businesses are increasingly using these tools because they offer more cost-effective ways to achieve their goals.

In this article, we present links to basic information explaining these tools.  In later articles, we’ll provide advice and resources to help businesses get started in using these tools effectively. Click on the Social Media tool category below to get a basic understand of each:

Blogs 101:-A blog is a website where entries or posts are listed in chronological order.  Blogs commonly allow for readers to provide comments which are posted along with the original entry.

Microblogging 101:-Microblogging is a form of blogging where users provide brief period updates (often on a frequent basis throughout the day) and publish them on microblogging platforms.  You’ve probably heard of Twitter, which is a Microblogging tool.  Microbloggers can submit their updates via the web itself or via text messages, instant message, or even email.

RSS 101:-RSS is a syndication format that allows websites and blogs to distribute their updated, dynamic content as feeds to users.  Instead of having to visit the website, users can sign up for the feed provided by the website or blog and using an RSS reader or aggregator (like Google Reader explained below), access the feed.  Users can sign up for as many feeds from different websites as desired and then access and manage those feeds all at once using their RSS reader.

Photo Sharing 101:-Photo sharing tools allow users to upload and post their photographs online to share them with other users.

Podcasts 101:-A Podcast is a digital audio that is distributed via the Internet for playback on a user’s computer or portable media device – a mp3 player such as an iPod.

Social News and Bookmarking 101:-Social bookmarking allows web users to save, organize and share their bookmarks of web pages on the Internet (vs. their own computers).  Social news sites allow users to submit web pages and articles and have other users vote on them with the # of votes determining which articles are presented on the social news site.

Social Networking 101:-Social networking services – Facebook and MySpace being the most well-known- are websites that allow online users to connect and share information with other online users.

Video Sharing 101:-Video sharing allows users to upload and share videos to video sharing website such as Youtube.  Other users can watch the videos, comment on them, share them with other users and even embed them on their own websites and blogs.

Wikis 101:-A wiki is a collaborative website that allows users to contribute to and edit the content on the website. Wikipedia is a well-known wiki.  Wikifarms host multiple wikis and provide tools for users to create their own wikis.

Five Social Media Management Tools

Five Social Media Management Tools

Here are five social media management tools that can make your life easier. What do you use to keep track of multiple social accounts? Let us in the comments below.

1. One Person, Many Networks


TweetDeck is your best (and free) bet if you’re looking to manage all your personal social media profiles. TweetDeck allows you to connect across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz. You can update all or just a few with the same status at one time.

The design is clean, user friendly and even makes some networks more fun. For example, it integrates Google Maps into your Foursquare feed, visualizing your friends’ checkins. You can also view photos and videos from within the tool.

As you might have guessed from the name, TweetDeck is best at managing Twitter accounts. It makes the experience more customizable by organizing feeds, mentions, messages and searches across columns.

TweetDeck is probably best when dealing with four or five accounts at a time (whether that be all Twitter accounts or a mix of the other networks it supports). Though the dashboard is generally easy to use, it can get bogged down if your streams have a lot of activity, making it difficult to keep up with updates and engagement.

Also worth checking out: Seesmic

2. Personalize Business Replies


CoTweet is an excellent tool for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer-service approach to engagement.

Like many SMM services, CoTweet allows updates and follow-up messages to be assigned to specific social media managers. This can make responses more relevant as team members with certain knowledge bases can handle appropriate questions and comments from followers. The responder’s initials are included at the end of the tweet, letting the follower know there’s a person behind the handle.

What’s different about CoTweet is its OnDuty status, which notes who is responsible for social streams at a certain time. Aside from organizing your SMM schedule, it allows for more passive monitoring. The person on duty can receive e-mails when something needs to be acted on, freeing him or her up to go to meetings or take calls while remaining aware of social media activity.

CoTweet supports Twitter and Facebook and recently launched an iPhone app. The Standard edition is free and allows up to six Twitter accounts. The Enterprise version costs $1,500 a month but you can request a free demo.

Also worth checking out: Postling

3. All Monitoring, All the Time


Small to medium-sized businesses that have one or two dedicated social media managers should try HootSuite. Its free version allows you to add five networks and supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, PingFm and WordPress.

HootSuite is best for actively-managed accounts because its design focuses on streams, which are housed in customizable tabs. You have the flexibility to organize tabs by account, network or content, making it easier to monitor a specific type of feed more closely.

One of the greatest benefits of social media is finding out more about your audience. HootSuite takes this to the next level by providing a follower’s bio and Klout score along with links to his or her social media profiles. You can also create lists of followers you want to keep a closer eye on and increase engagement with.

Stats in the free version don’t give you much information, but paid subscriptions offer Google Analytics integration and unlimited insights. Pricing starts at $5.99 a month and maxes out at $1,998.99 a month for the Enterprise package plus vanity URL service.

Also worth checking out: Scroon, Buddy Media

Disclosure: Mashable is a Hootsuite Pro Partner

4. Analyze That


For agencies managing social media for several companies with high ROI demands, SpredFast has everything you need.

Its biggest advantage over other SMM tools is analytics. Measurement is determined by the amount of content distributed, how many people were reached and whether the intended audience was engaged. Spredfast integrates analytics from clicks by tracking bit.ly links as well as data from each social network. This information is formatted in presentation-ready graphs, which is ideal for agencies bringing clients up to speed on outreach progress.

Most useful is Spredfast’s benchmarking feature. Managers can compare social campaigns to other strategies in the industry or to the same type of campaign as it was run in another industry. As businesses continue to experiment with social media as an outreach tool, this context answers key questions about how to best leverage each network.

These first class analytics come with a hefty price tag; Plans range from $12,000 to $1 million a year.

Spredfast began as an in-house tool and went public in January 2010, then made a name for itself at Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW. The latest version launched on Friday. Though the Austin, Texas startup has some big endorsements, it’s always good to be wary of the risks that come with investing in a newer company.

Also worth checking out: Radian 6, Objective Marketer

5. Big Business Made Easy


Franchise companies looking to maintain consistent messaging while giving local branches a hand in social media strategy should give Engage121 a shot. Though its competitors are few, Engage121 is best in its class at encompassing monitoring, broadcasting and engagement.

The tool is incredibly customizable and can support just about any site with a social presence. Corporate managers can create a company-wide promotion message and use mail merge to broadcast it with a local store’s name and address. Permissions may be set to allow a branch to approve a message from corporate before it is distributed to area followers, maintaining a local voice and brand consistency at the same time.