WordPress Gets a New Media Manager
Wow, if you haven’t updated your WordPress install to 3.5 you are really missing out. They have streamlined their Media Manager to give users a better experience when uploaded files to add to your pages and posts.
WordPress Streamlines Media Manager
WordPress has also given a facelift to their galery function. Create picturesque image galleries faster with drag and drop reordering, inline caption editing, and simplified controls for layout.
Other updates to WordPress 3.5 are:
Retina Ready
So Sharp You Can’t See the Pixels
The WordPress dashboard now looks beautiful on high-resolution screens like those found on the iPad, Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 10, and MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Icons and other visual elements are crystal clear and full of detail.
Smoother Experience
Better Accessibility
WordPress supports more usage modes than ever before. Screenreaders, touch devices, and mouseless workflows all have improved ease of use and accessibility.
More Polish
A number of screens and controls have been refined. For example, a new color picker makes it easier for you to choose that perfect shade of blue.
Core Zero Creative works exclusively in the WordPress platform for building custom WordPress themes that make your business shine on the internet. Check out our portfolio and then Call us! 207-212-2432
Meet the New LinkedIn Profile: A Better Way to Connect and Build Relationships
Today we’re supposed be getting the new LinkedIn profile, which has a simplified design, provides deeper insights, and provides new ways to connect and build relationships. If you’d like to be one of the first to preview a new way to showcase rich content on your profile — like presentations, videos, documents, and more, then head over here to request an invitation. Also from HQ,
We’re excited to share that They’ve just launched the next generation LinkedIn Profile, making it easier for our 175 million members to tell their professional stories, be found for opportunities, and build relationships through meaningful interactions. Over the next few months, all LinkedIn members will start to see their profiles in the new look and feel. Now there are more ways than ever to tell your professional story on LinkedIn, and we’re excited for you to try them out. As we roll out these changes, we’ll also be streamlining our app offerings, so the following LinkedIn apps will no longer be supported on the homepage or profile as of December 11: LinkedIn Events.
With this brand new profile experience, it’s easier for you to do three things:
- Tell your professional story: The new visual design helps you make a powerful first impression and showcase your skills and accomplishments. They’ve also provided tools such as inline editing, making it a snap to create a complete, up-to-date profile.
- Discover people and opportunities: Have you ever wondered how many of your connections already work for your dream company? Or what you have in common with the sales prospect you’re trying to reach? The new profile shows you rich and visual insights on the people and companies in your network. These insights also make it simpler to discover people outside your network and quickly establish common ground to make more meaningful connections.
- Engage with your network: They’ve also made it easier to see what your network is up to and to engage with them. Recent activity is now on the top of the profile, allowing you to stay current with what your network has been sharing and doing.
Did you notice they said 175 million members?!! LinkedIn has been experiencing an incredible growth curve and as I always say, “LinkedIn is the quintessential business professional network. If you’re in business, you need to be there.”
Again, if you’d like to be one of the first ones to get the new profile, you can sign up here. Also, if you missed the press event this morning where we demoed the new Profile for the first time, you can check out the recording of the live stream.
To Your Success!
Eric
PS: Give us a call if you’d like to have an optimized Linked profile so you show up more often in LinkedIn search results for your preferred search terms. Internet Marketing: It’s what we do.
The New LinkedIn Profile
Jeff and Vaden are Building Tribes and Bridging the Social Media Gap
“Social Media Tribe” has become a popular social media marketing term that just hints at a deeper human experience.
A look at Native American tribal characteristics reveals substantive practices that build stronger, more fulfilling and highly committed online communities. Seth Godin’s definition of tribe is about leadership. Read about start-up tribes and it’s all about archetype. It’s still valuable but if you are a part of or leading a community and thinking about multi-generational loyalty, then it’s not about archetypes and leadership. It’s easy to distill out examples from Native American tribes but it’s really about core human needs. Deadheads and bikers, for example, are not Native American tribes but as a community, they have the similarities of a multi-generation tribe.
Jeff and Vaden are creating stories and adventure when it comes to building your social media tribe and brand. They are a social media/branding agency that focuses on assisting businesses and entrepreneurs to leverage social media platforms in order to build an engaged community of advocates who are passionate about their brand.
Core Zero Creative received graphics from Jeff and Vaden and brought them to life on the web. We created a snappy slider for their opening page complete with click throughs to other pages and an opt-in to build their mailing list. The navigation was created using graphics and hover graphics. Each page is just a little different whether it be different background images or a slightly different layout. We created a couple of custom forms to capture detailed information from visitors needing their services. Working with Jeff and Vaden is a pleasure! These two are very creative and meticulously detailed. They don’t miss a thing! See what they’ve done with the Fuzebox brand.
The coding of the website was built with responsive design in mind. The website can be viewed and navigated comfortably from any iPad or Tablet.
Phase II of Jeff and Vaden’s social media tribe building adventure will be the Academy. You will be able to sign up and subscribe to receive their BOLD, in-your-face style of videos teaching you how to build YOUR social media tribe.
Fuzebox: Giving Your Business Freedom from the Office
Fuzebox makes HD online meetings and video conferencing possible from any device!
The mission of Fuzebox is to make online meetings and video conferencing insanely easy to access and operate thereby removing all barriers to successfully launching, hosting, and participating in them.
Core Zero Creative worked with Jeff and Vaden and Fuzebox to create graphics for their social media presence. Together we collaborated on a Facebook Cover, Twitter Background, YouTube Background and a couple of custom Facebook Apps.
Core Zero Creative created custom branded graphics and a Facebook Tab for their FREE 30 Day Trial. The tab had a reveal that only showed after the page was liked. It had a video embedded to appear as if it was playing on the iPad. Very cool!
FuzeBox transforms how companies communicate and more importantly, collaborate. Their internet and mobile-based communications solutions make it possible for today’s mobile professionals to work together from anywhere and from any device.
We also created the graphics for another tab using the North Social Sweepstakes program. This program facilitated all contest entries with contest rules, reveals while building a list and prompting to share the contest with the entrants friends.
Fuzebox: Business freedom at your fingertips.
Facebook Page Admins Spread Messages in Attempt to Bypass EdgeRank and Sponsored Posts
Have you been wondering how to get around the algorithms of Facebook Edgerank? Currently, there are messages being posted by Facebook page administrators encouraging fans to take certain actions so they will continue to receive their updates, and these happen to be factual. Recent reports indicate that only 10% of a Facebook page’s fans may actually see their posts. Also, the introduction of sponsored posts is causing panic, annoyance and desperation from some page owners. Many believe that Facebook purposefully reduces the visibility of page updates to increase the utilization and revenue generated from sponsored posts.
Here are a couple of examples of the posts being circulated:
ATTENTION fans of [Facebook Page Name] !
Since FB has begun to ask page administrators to pay to promote their pages, only 10% of page fans receive the updates we post here. To receive ALL of our posts, you must do the following:
1) Go to our page.
2) Hover your mouse over where it says “LIKED” and click on “Add to Interests Lists”
By doing this, you will continue to receive ALL of our posts and our page will not be “removed” by Facebook from what shows up in your feed!
And another:
ATTENTION loyal [Facebook Page Name] Fans. Since FB has begun to ask page administrators to pay to promote their pages, only 10% of page fans receive the updates we post here. To receive ALL of our posts, you must do the following:
1) Go to our page.
2) Hover your mouse over where it says “LIKED” and click on “Add to Interests Lists”
3) It’s also a good idea to comment or click “like” on our page every once in a while. This will keep us on your Newsfeed.
By doing these steps, you should continue to receive ALL of our posts and our page will not be “removed” by FB from what shows up in your feed! Thanks!
What most people don’t realize that an algorithm determines Facebook EdgeRank to determine what populates a user’s news feed. Just liking a page doesn’t guarantee that their updates will show up for you, even if you click the ‘Show In News Feed’ option. The actions recommended by the messages shown above are intended to raise the Facebook EdgeRank score for the page. The more you like, share or comment on a page’s content, the more likely that page’s updates are to show up in your News Feed.
We recommended that our users use custom lists, and adding a page to a list totally bypasses Facebook EdgeRank.
Personally, I have a list called “All” that I have put all of my friends and pages on. When I login to Facebook, I simply click that list to get updates from everyone, and not just the friends and pages Facebook wants me to see.
Throwing some ‘like’ love to your favorite pages will help you both and keep these facts in mind as you browse around Facebook and consider your Facebook Edgrank. Don’t forget to add us to your Interest Lists!
Welcome to WordPress 3.4
WordPress 3.4 is here!
What’s the big deal? Well, the new version of WordPress brings many improvements, including custom backgrounds and headers, a live theme customizer, revamped XML-RPC, better support for internationalization, as well as the expected bug-fixes and other enhancements.
In case you don’t know, WordPress is a platform for building custom websites which include Blogs. A Blog is a website with a collection of articles called Posts. Each one is a separate article, ranging from a few sentences to possibly a few screens-full of content including text, video, and photos. The entries appear in reverse chronological order, from newest to oldest. The idea of Blogging is to communicate relevant, useful, helpful information to clients, customers, and prospects. You’re actually being “Blogged” right now in that sense, though we don’t usually use that term as such!
The term “Blog” is short for “web-log”. When Blogs first appeared several years ago people used them as web diaries, or web logs. Yes, I did say “a few years ago” and if you don’t have a Blog integrated into your website you are a hurting unit. That is to say, you’re behind the times, showing your age, and missing out on huge amount of web traffic and relationship building that you could be taking advantage of.
We interchange the words “Blog” and “Website” frequently. Not all Websites have Blogs, but all Blogs are technically Websites. At Core Zero Creative we design Websites & Blogs in WordPress, which is in essence, a database-driven content management system (CMS) that allows our clients to easily create, update, and manage the content of their websites using any web browser from any location. This means no lines and no waiting for changes to your website, and best of all–no additional fees! You can add and remove content such as photos, updates, events, and specials as needed. No additional software needs to be downloaded, purchased, or installed. Multiple users can each have their own login and be assigned permission to manage various parts of the website’s content with very little technical expertise needed.
That being said let’s take a look at what’s new!
Live Theme Previews
Try on New Themes
Gone are the days of rushing to update your header, background, and the like as soon as you activate a new theme. You can now customize these options before activating a new theme. Note: this feature is available for installed themes only.
Customize Current Theme
Satisfy your curiosity and try on a fresh coat of paint — you can also use the live preview mode to customize your current theme. Look for the Customize link on the Themes screen.
Custom Headers
Flexible Sizes
You can decide for yourself how tall or wide your custom header image should be. From now on, themes will provide a recommended image size for custom headers rather than a fixed requirement. Note: this feature requires theme support.
Choose from Media Library
Tired of re-uploading the same custom header image every time you check out a new theme? Now you can choose header images from your media library for easier customization.
Twitter Embeds
Share Tweets with Style
You can now embed individual tweets in posts. It includes action links that allow readers to reply to, retweet, and favorite the tweet without leaving your site. Just paste a tweet URL on its own line.
This works with URLs from some other sites, too. For more, see the Codex article on Embeds.
Better Captions
HTML Support
Basic HTML support has been added to the caption field in the image uploader. This allows you to add links — great for photo credits or licensing details — and basic formatting such as bold and italicized text.
So That’s a Wrap!
Tanks for reading this Blog Post! Be sure to Like & Share it, the think of Core Zero as your WordPress Resource. By the way, have you heard about the new WordPress Facebook Plugin? Check it out, it’s really cool.
Over and out!
Eric Bryant
Internet & Social Media Marketing Strategy & Consulting
Custom WordPress Website Design & Blogs
Social Media Design & Apps
WordPress 3.4 is here! Check it out!
The Official Facebook WordPress Plugin!
Facebook WordPress Plugin Integrates
Facebook & WordPress for Massive Social Action!
WordPress Blog users can now easily integrate Facebook commenting, tagging, and other social features with the new official “Facebook WordPress Plugin“. The new plugin will allow users to cross-publish content from their WordPress sites directly to their Facebook Timelines and/or Facebook Pages.
The plugin was built by Facebook engineers in collaboration with open source partners, and makes it simple for anyone to make their WordPress site a lot more social – and no coding is required. The plugin works on mobile and supports internationalization.
Social Publishing
Once the plugin is installed, you can cross-post content published to WordPress to your Facebook Timeline and the Facebook Pages you manage. You can also mention the names of Pages and Friends as you post to further distribute your content.
WordPress Widgets
The new Facebook WordPress Plugin supports following social plugins are available as WordPress widgets:
- Activity Feed: Shows readers their Friends’ activity on the site, such as likes and comments.
- Recommendations: Gives readers personalized suggestions for Pages on your site they might like, as well as a Recommendations Bar option to give users the option to add content to their Timeline as they read.
- Customizable Like, Subscribe and Send buttons.
- Recent Activity
- Comments Box: Makes it easy for people to comment on your site and post back to Facebook, and includes moderation tools.
- The plugin also features automatic SEO support for Facebook comments, so search engines can index them to improve your site’s visibility.
Core Zero Creative, TechCrunch, Buzz Media, and The Next Web are already using the new Facebook WordPress Plugin to connect with their audiences while providing users with more engaging and personalized experiences.
According to Facebook, “WordPress powers 16.6 percent of the web, from The New York Times to People Magazine, and attracts more than 600 million unique visitors each month. We hope the plugin makes it possible for WordPress content to be shared even more widely among people.”
Social Publishing and Mentions
When a Post or Page is published, it can be distributed to Facebook in a number of ways. Here’s a walk-through.
The author can choose to mention Facebook Friends or Pages. They can also specify a message that will be posted with the content. Once published, the content of the post of Page will show up on all of the Friends and Pages’ Facebook Timelines, resulting in more distribution for your WordPress Blog site. Depending on your settings, it will also appear on Facebook Timelines including:
- The author’s Facebook Timeline as an Open Graph action
- Any Facebook Friends or Pages’ Timelines mentioned as part of the post
- A Facebook Page of your choosing, where all of your site’s content is published once it’s live
Social Plugins on WordPress Posts and Pages
Many social plugins are offered and can be easily enabled on the settings page.
- Like, Send, and Subscribe buttons
- Comments, including SEO support (so that search engines can index the comments)
- Recommendations Bar, which allows users to click to start getting recommendations, Like content, and add what they’re reading to Timeline as they go
Core Zero approves of this plugin! What an amazing internet-enabled social media free advertising world we live in. This is a FANTASTIC opportunity to get your Blog & Facebook intimate with each other and really increase the social media reach of your Blog’s content. Click here to download the Facebook WordPress Plugin or…
Operators are now standing by to help you get this new Facebook WordPress Plugin installed and up and running on your WordPress Blog. Really. They are.
Call 1-207-212-2432 for more information.
Facebook WordPress Plugin Version 1.0 Integrates
Facebook & WordPress for Massive Social Action!
Get It While It’s Hot!
Facebook Scheduled & Promoted Posts
Facebook Scheduled Posts & Promoted Posts
Here’s another Emmy Award-winning video for you on Facebook Scheduled Posts… OK, helpful… a helpful video showing you how to time-delay, or schedule your Facebook posts, and a new feature recently added called Promoted posts, enabling you to promote your Facebook posts. Promote means “buy ads for”. But that’s a good thing. You can increase the social media reach of your posts by doing this.
Scheduled Posts: To create scheduled posts simply click the little clock icon at the lower left corner when post on your Facebook Page. 
You won’t see it until you’ve clicked into the box to write. Once you click the clock you’ll be able to set the year, month, day, hour and minutes for your post. If you set it in the past, it will appear at the appropriate spot on your Timeline. Once you schedule a post, you can’t modify or edit the content, only the time. When you schedule a post, a window pops up that allows you to view your Activity Log, which is essentially a list of all activity on your page. In order to manage scheduled posts at any other time, simply go to your Page Admin Panel, click the drop-down arrow on Edit Page (or Manage) and select Use Activity Log. Once there you’ll see a section for Scheduled Posts. A small arrow will appear and disappear when you hover your mouse over each post, which you need to click if you want to cancel the post or modify its time.
Promoted Posts: Also at the bottom of the post box, you’ll see a drop-down list called Promote. This allows you to pay for the post you’re writing to be seen by more, if not all, of your fans. Pricing increments by $5 and you are shown the estimated reach at each level. The length of the promotion is 3 days, and any post less than 3 days old can be promoted.
According to Facebook, “When you post on your page, it currently may only reach a limited amount of the people that Like your page each week. Promoted posts help increase the people you reach for any eligible post. It’s an easy and fast way to reach more of the people that Like your page and your friends. Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who Like your Page than would normally see it, and it will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post.”
So then, promoting a post gives it better placement in the News Feeds of your Fans, and more of their Friends will see it when they interact with your Page (specifically the promoted post). You can target posts based on location and language get stats on how many people saw it. Promoted posts show up labeled as “Sponsored” in the news feed.
According to Facebook, “When you post on your page, it currently may only reach a limited amount of the people that Like your page each week. Promoted posts help increase the people you reach for any eligible post. It’s an easy and fast way to reach more of the people that Like your page and your friends. Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who Like your Page than would normally see it, and it will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post.”
So then, promoting a post gives it better placement in the News Feeds of your Fans, and more of their Friends will see it when they interact with your Page (specifically the promoted post). You can target posts based on location and language get stats on how many people saw it. Promoted posts show up labeled as “Sponsored” in the news feed.
Watch the video for a run through of how it works.
Here’s To Your Success!
Eric
The New Version of Google Analytics
Have you heard the news? Google has updated Google Analytics! What is Google Analytics? It’s a free tool from Google that gives you statistics on your website’s traffic. Who visited from where, when, what page they came in on, what pages they looked at, average time on site, average pages viewed per visitor, bounce rate, what search terms brought them to your site, what country or state or city they are in, their credit card numbers (kidding–but only about that last one!)
To me, the biggest improvement is real-time analytics. In the past, your stats would be updated on average every 2 to 3 days, behind real time. Now they are in real-time. Using link tracking codes, you can get even deeper information about your traffic. If you’re running Facebook Ads or Google Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) paid ads, add a tracking code so you know how much traffic comes in from that add to your specific landing page for it.
Here’s a concise explanation from Webopedia
Web Analytics
Web analytics is a generic term meaning the study of the impact of a website on its users. Ecommerce companies and other website publishers often use Web analytics software to measure such concrete details as how many people visited their site, how many of those visitors were unique visitors, how they came to the site (i.e., if they followed a link to get to the site or came there directly), what keywords they searched with on the site’s search engine, how long they stayed on a given page or on the entire site and what links they clicked on and when they left the site.
Web analytic software can also be used to monitor whether or not a site’s pages are working properly. With this information, Web site administrators can determine which areas of the site are popular and which areas of the site do not get traffic. Web analytics provides these site administrators and publishers with data that can be used to streamline a website to create a better user experience.
There is so much to this program that I could barely scratch the surface of what a powerful tool it is here in this post. If you do not have Google Analytics set up on your website–do it today! If you need help with that, call Core Zero at 207-212-2432.
OK, now on to some more juicy info about the new Google Analytics!
From Google
Our new version of Analytics provides three significant enhancements:
- A redesigned Google Analytics platform to enable major new functionality
- A streamlined interface to make it easier to get to the information you want
- Improved report performance for faster reports
Currently, we are showcasing the following features in the new version of Analytics
- A completely redesigned, faster interface/
- Multiple dashboards—build a custom dashboard for each department.
- Event Goals! Track your PDF downloads as goals with events, or configure 2 minutes play time on a video as a goal.
- More powerful custom reports—you can pre-filter reports and build additional data views (read more).
- New Term Cloud visualization.
- Linking a new AdWords or AdSense account
- In-Page Analytics
- Migrating a custom report from the current Analytics version to the new version
Soon to Arrive…
- Exporting reports to PDF
- Emailing reports
Check out this killer outline from Mashable, and follow the link below for the full article. If that doesn’t get you going, well, analytics just isn’t for you. And if that’s the case… I hope you don’t depend on your website for any income or cash flow!
If you don’t know what some of these terms mean or why they are important to measure, then by all means, go check out the Mashable article for full descriptions.
- Dashboards
- Keyword Clouds
- Real-Time Data
- Site Speed
- Search Simplifies Navigation
- Webmaster Tools
- Social Engagement
- Visitor Flow & Goal Flow Visualization
- Event Tracking
- Multi-Channel Funnels
Again, this is just a taste. If you don’t have Google Analytics set up on your website and you want it, call us at 207-212-2432.
To Your Success!
Eric Bryant
Get Real-Time LIVE Interactive Facebook Exposure To 1,000′s Of People!
Here is a great tactic for massive live, real-time exposure on Facebook. Get on webinars that are in your niche, or related to your niche where you will find qualified leads, and/or which are about Facebook, Facebook training, or where the presenters are at least interacting on or about Facebook in their Facebook groups–or better–on their Facebook Page(s). Continue reading