With the seemingly constant buzz over social networking, some people may wonder what all the fuss is about. How could these cleverly-named contrivances ever be relevant to your personal or professional life? The answer lies in people power. Millions of people use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and daily deal sites like Groupon on a regular basis. Each of these social media outlets offers ways to connect with customers and generate growth for your business. This includes opportunities in marketing, networking, and advertising. As an added bonus, they’re all free.

LinkedIn

Why it’s useful: LinkedIn’s 135 million users are focused on professional networking. Whether you are staying in touch with colleagues, seeking to fill a position at your company, searching for a potential vendor, or keeping updated on the latest industry news, LinkedIn is all business all the time.

Get started: Creating a LinkedIn account is simple – it only requires your name and email. To get the most return for your efforts, fill out your profile as thoroughly as possible. At minimum this information includes your current job, past jobs, education, honors & awards, and groups (service, industry, alumni, etc.) Next, start searching for and linking with colleagues, former co-workers, old classmates, and any business connections you may have. You can also create a company profile to keep your business connected with current clients, searching for potential customers, and up to date on the competition.

LinkedIn is a great way to follow up with business contacts you have recently met. A quick “Nice to meet you,” message can go a long way in establishing and maintaining a business relationship. As with Facebook and Twitter, always include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your email signature, website, etc.

GROUPON (and other daily deal/group buying sites)

Why it’s useful: An estimated 85 million people subscribe to daily deal sites and there are literally hundreds to choose from; Groupon, Living Social, Google Offers, Yelp Deals, Amazon Local, and BuyWithMe are just a few. The appeal of these sites is advertising exposure to a huge, targeted (i.e. local) audience, which could potentially generate a massive amount of sales and new customers.

Get started: Each of these sites work generally the same way: the merchant (that’s you) contacts a group buying site and arranges to offer a particular product or service at a great discount, usually 50% or greater, if and only if the site can generate a specified amount of sales. Carefully calculate how much this deal may be worth to your business. After factoring in the actual discount as well as the cut for the group buying site, you may make about 25% of what you would on a normal sale. If you think that sounds like a terrible business decision, consider this: 97% of merchants featured on Groupon request to be featured again. The effectiveness of the advertising and the enormous influx of new customers are worth the potential short-term drop in profit. If this viral advertising technique seems like a good fit for your business, go online and fill out a form on any daily deal website to find out more.

Social media offers powerful opportunities for mass advertising, connecting with customers, and industry communication. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Groupon are highly effective tools for your marketing and advertising arsenal. Equipped with these tips (and SOCIAL MEDIA 101), you can step confidently into the world of social media to boost your business and grow your customer base. Happy networking!

Though it is a useful resource, if you don’t know how to configure your email settings on your Ipad or Iphone, then that leaves you without a very valuable weapon in your business arsenal.

Fortunately for you,  WEBii offer both video and screen shot tutorials for how to configure your Idevices to receive emails from your WEBii email accounts.

You can check out our Ipad tutorial video, as well as our other webtutorials by clicking here.

Our support page also offers screen shots to go along with the video tutorial and you can view them here.

We hope that this helps, and if you need further assistance, we are always happy to help.

This can be done with a little bit of template editing and some unique pages.  The suggestions below will help you establish an alternative navigation menu, display an alternative header, and create content with a unique template.  All of these steps are supported with the latest WordPress (3.x) so no plugin necessary!

Create some new pages.

Testing your new section will be much easier if you have some pages to populate the menu first.  Create at least one page in your language.  Be careful not to use accents or other special characters in the url (if you have one in the title you will need to edit the url).  The url structure should be basic letters and dashes to prevent breaking the ability to view that page.  You can Publish these new pages, assuming you did not include them in the menu of your live website (English version) – so they are still behind the scenes for now.

Make a new menu.

Under Appearance > Menus, you should have a listing of your current menus.  Click on the “add” tab (a plus sign) to create a new menu for your language section.  In my case, I will call it menu Spanish.

Add the pages you created earlier to this menu and Save the changes.

Now, we need to find out the menu id number. An easy way to do this is to click the tab for your menu and notice the url in the top, which will end in an id number like this:

wp-admin/nav-menus.php?action=edit&menu=71

So, my menu id is 71.  Jot this number down for reference.

Create a new header file.

In your wp-content folder, you should have a standard file header.php. I am assuming you have a basic understanding of the file structure of a typical WordPress website.  Make a copy of this file named appropriately for your section, such as header-spanish.php. Now make some small edits to the file to replace English words with your language (maybe a slogan or other text displayed in this header).

Toward the end of this file, there is probably a reference to your navigation menu.  For example it might look like this:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘container’ => ”,’menu_id’=>’suckerfishnav’, ‘menu_class’ => ‘sf-menu sf-js-enabled’, ‘menu’ => ‘menu’,  ) ); ?>

This one is a little more elaborate because I added some dropdown menus and classes.  At the end, notice it just has ‘menu’ as the identifier.  WordPress looks for the first, default menu.  Change this value to your id number instead.  So my line in the new header file becomes:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘container’ => ”,’menu_id’=>’suckerfishnav’, ‘menu_class’ => ‘sf-menu sf-js-enabled’, ‘menu’ => ’71′,  ) ); ?>

Save and upload your header file to the server.

Create a page template.

Make a copy of your default page.php file.  Put a template name in the heading of this file.

In the top of this file, you should notice a line to include the default header. The parenthesis within it are blank.  Include the name of your new header file, enclosed in single quotes inside this parenthesis, such as:

<? get_header(‘spanish’);?>

You might decide to change other things in your page template, but this will at least include your custom header (along with the custom menu) into this layout.

Assign your template to the page.

Now go back and edit your pages for this special language section, and update the Template to your new custom template.  You should see the name of it in the dropdown choices.  Update/Publish the page to reflect this change.  The next time you preview the page, you should see your updated header information and your translated menu loading instead of the default.

And lastly, once all your pages and menu items are complete and your new section is satisfactory, add some links to it on your main index page or your default menu so your visitors will be able to locate it.

Situation:

Solution: You don’t need to be a PHP expert – just some comfort with the WordPress structure can help you accomplish this in a few easy steps.

1. Make a new sidebar file.
2. Add the sidebar to your functions.
3. Create a new template file.
4. Edit the template to include your new sidebar.
5. Add widgets to your new sidebar.
6. Assign a Page to your Template.

Step 1: Make a new sidebar file. There should be a file called sidebar.php or maybe leftbar.php in your theme folder.  Make a copy of this file and name it something intuitive, such as sidebar-about.php.  You should revise the code reflect a suitable name for the sidebar, for example:

!dynamic_sidebar('About Sidebar')

Step 2: Add the sidebar to your functions. Locate your theme folder’s functions.php file.  Below your existing sidebars, you need to add something to recognize your new sidebar.  Such as:

register_sidebar(array('name'=>'About Sidebar',
 'before_widget' => '<div>',
 'after_widget' => '</div>',
 'after_title' => '</div>', '<h3>',
 'after_title' => '</h3>',
 ));

Step 3:  Create a new template file. When creating a new layout for a Page in WordPress, start with making a copy of your default page.php file and naming it to something intuitive, such as page-about.php. Next you need to notate the name of this template in the top description comments of the file:

* Template Name: About
*/

Step 4: Edit the template to include your new sidebar. You should reference your new sidebar for this page so it will be included:

<? include('leftbar-about.php'); ?>

You might completely replace the default sidebar with this new one, or you might just append this so you have more than one set of widgets showing up on this Page layout.  Upload your final template file to the server so it is ready to use.

Step 5: Add widgets to your new sidebar. Login to your WordPress Admin interface and visit Appearance > Widgets.  Your new sidebar should appear in the options at the far right.  Drag widgets you desire into this new sidebar and save any changes you make to them.  In the case of a sub-menu, you might use the Custom Menu widget to insert a Menu you created.

Step 6: Assign a Page to the Template. So now your sidebar is ready but nothing is displaying it.  Visit a page that you want to use the new template variation you created, with this new sidebar, in my case the About page.  At the right side under the Parent navigation settings, you will see a Template dropdown option.  Select the new template name (eg: About) and Update (publish).

And finally – visit your website and refresh the browser to check out the new layout.  My customized About page now sports a completely different sidebar than other pages in my website or blog.

Incorporating an interview into your blog post is a great way to create a unique, entertaining and informative article. It is ok if you are at a loss for words – just get somebody else to do the talking!

Are you planning on attending a conference related to your business or industry? This is a great opportunity to speak with professionals in your field who can offer their opinions and advice. If you have access to a list of attendees or speakers, take a look through it and pick out several professionals you are interested in speaking with. If you want to secure your interview, try contacting the people you would like to talk to in advance. This way, you can introduce yourself and let them know the nature of the questions you are interested in asking them. You might ask them to meet you for coffee after the event, or meet you between seminars and workshops. If you do not have access to a list of attendees, you are sure to meet some interesting people while you are there, and most professionals are happy to sit down for a quick interview – especially if they know it is going to be featured on a blog. In addition to bringing your pen and paper, bring a small tape recorder with you, so you can capture your interview and review it later. Recording the interview makes it easier for you to engage in the interview, and you won’t have to scribble notes while trying to talk.

You don’t have to go to a conference to meet people to interview. In fact, you most likely already know many interesting professionals in your industry. Consider requesting an interview from your boss, perhaps your readers would like to hear from someone in an executive seat. You could request an interview from your co-worker, perhaps he or she recently completed an interesting project and you could tell his or her story in your blog post. You can even go through your rolodex and contact people you have met and worked with who may have interesting insight into the future of your industry. You can even interview someone outside of your field, someone in a different specialty – you can always find a way to make the information relevant to your readers.

If you have a topic in mind to write about that you are very interested in, but know little about, you can conduct a panel style interview. Do some initial research on the subject of interest. Formulate some questions you would like answered by those who know the subject best. Also consider questions you think would elicit informative answers for your readers. Then, contact people you would consider experts in the subject. Maybe it is a professor at a local college, a government official, or a small business owner – you can ask each individual the same questions and compare and contrast their responses. This type of investigative interviewing lends itself to a very comprehensive blog post.

So, the next time you have a case of blogger’s block, get out your tape recorder. Your interview is likely to inspire an interesting and informative new post.

The css is usually applied to the style id created for the drop down div.  Perhaps it is something like #subnav or #subnav li (which is the list item inside the div).  Just remember if you start making list items transparent, they may look a bit fuzzy.  So you might need to use darker text like black to remain legible.

Opacity is recognized as part of the whole number 1. 1 stands for 100% solid color.  You can really choose any color as the base background, but you made need to experiment with it as you change the opacity.  So if you decide to create a 70% opaque menu, just add this as your line in the css style:

opacity: 0.7;

But wait, it looks lovely in Firefox yet nothing seems to have happened in Internet Explorer.  Still another bit to add:

filter: alpha(opacity=70);

With these 2 lines you have covered most of the commonly used modern browsers, your menu still works, and you have added a little something nifty to the design.

Instead of including your javascript directly on the web page, link to it as a source.

In the head of the page, create the script tag, but instead of including the script code within the container of the script tags, link to an external javascript file.  For best organization, store your javascript file in a /js folder (or /scripts or something similar).  Your linked tag will appear in this format:

<script language=”javascript” src=”js/filename.js” /></script>

Now, as your page code is read, this is referenced on one line and the search engines (or other resources) do not need to wade through a long javascript to get to the important meat of your website – the content.

The above example shows the Search Engine Result for the Google Translate page. Notice that they included a relevant description of the page in the title as well as a brief description of what the page offers.

The key with these META tags is to think of them as your billboard on the Search Engine Results Page. The META Title is the headline that grabs peoples attention and the META Description is the short summary that draws them in.

Here are a few tips for working with your own META title and META description tags:

META Title:

• Give each page a unique title
• Make sure the title is relevant to the content on the page
• For maximum compatibility with all search engine make sure your META title is no more than 65 characters
• Think of this as the heading to your “billboard” on the Search Engine Results Page. Try to make the title enticing to the searcher.

META Description:

• Give each page a unique description
• Make sure your META description is relevant to the page and is enticing to searchers
• For maximum compatibility with all search engine make sure your META title is no more than 155 characters
• Think of this as a short advertisement. Engage the searcher with action words.

• Donate your services to a good cause or have an event that will draw media attention.  Remember to take lots of pictures and video for posting on social media outlets!
• Write expert articles for an industry newsletter as a guest writer or even become a regular columnist.
• Run a comprehensive search of mentions of your company on the web and if you are not linked, ask for one!
• If you’ve received sincere thanks and praise from a client, ask them to post a link to your site on their personal website or profile.
• Be sure you are linked in the directories of all chambers or business organizations you’re a member of.
• Exchange links with business partners and referral partners.  Make sure you are “fans” of one another.

You may have even seen little Twitter “badges” on people’s websites. These are little modular paces of code that will display your latest tweet right on your own webpage. It’s a pretty neat widget to have if you have a personal page, or own a business and want to keep your customers updated on your latest specials, but don’t want them to navigate away from your web page.

Putting a Twitter badge on your website is actually really easy, because all the hard stuff is done for you already. After you’ve setup your twitter account , visit this website: TwitStamp.com

Once you’ve customized and fiddled with your shiny new Twitter badge and you deem it satisfactory, simply scroll to the bottom where it says “Use it”. Click the first field that says “HTML”, copy the code, and paste the code, exactly as it is, into your website’s HTML page.

The next time you reload your page, you’ll have a widget displayed, just like it is now, after I inserted the HTML into this blog post.

As you can see, there are a variety of ways in which you can customize your badge, so have fun with it, keep it relevant, and Tweet on!