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In this video I take the viewer through the process of configuring Facebook Groups to either mail you just what people on your Friends list are commenting on that group, or to stop the Facebook Group from emailing you AT ALL.

Do you have questions about how to do something on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or on your WordPress blog? I’d love to hear from you!

RM Insight and WebGrrl Enterprises are internet development and consulting firms with a special preference for WordPress websites, and we’re based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Today we’re looking at an RM Insight client site, The Caboto Center here in Winnipeg.

The Caboto centre contacted RM Insight asking for help setting up a way to display their “Preferred Vendors” within the Banquet & Conference section of their WordPress website.

It was important to be able to add a graphic logo and a link to the vendor websites, and to be able to write a short description about the vendor, too.

Because the Caboto Centre maintains their own site for the most part, they’ve asked us to help them plan how to do it, while letting them actually handle the input work.

RM Insight suggested we use a NextGen Photo gallery for the Preferred Vendors list, and help the Caboto Centre learn how to better use the Gallery’s built-in functions to get the job done.

By the end of this video, you’ll know how to:

1. Turn your NextGen Gallery photos into Preferred Vendor pages
2. Add HTML to your Preferred Vendor details without needing to **know** HTML

by Jill Lampi
of WebGrrl Enterprises
http://Facebook.com/WebGrrl.Enterprises

Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Facebook Insights and all that jazz, they’re intensely interesting to me.

Good thing, too – with Social Media marketing it’s difficult to connect all the incremental efforts to a “bottom line”, but with statistics and analytics, at least we can see what people are interested in, what people interact with, and what things fall completely flat in terms of interaction or interest.

I like to make analytics/report/statistic videos for my clients, and I’m grateful that the majority of them are comfortable with me sharing their results and statistics with the public.

I’ve decided to start a weekly blog event where I summarize the reports and statistics I created in the past week.

If you’re looking for help building your Social Media presence in a way that connects with your best and happiest clients, to allow them to help market your company FOR you, contact Jill from WebGrrl Enterprises for a free consult and let’s see what we can do!

Facebook Insight Social Media Results

December 29, 2011:  Charleswood Karate IKD Shotokan, 2 weeks after taking over the main administrative duties on the page.  This is the “baseline” video about where we were at the very beginning of my initiation into the project.

January 12, 2011:  Charleswood Karate IKD Shotokan, a month in.  It’s neat to see what types of contributions to the page got the most viral sharing and interaction.

Constant Contact Email Marketing Results

Karate Manitoba made its first use of this software with the mail out of a Happy Holidays greeting for 2011 that was sent out on Christmas Day of 2011. With a modest list of members to start with, Karate Manitoba witnessed excellent results in the stats, and got some friendly feedback from members as well.  Watch the video here.

Here’s another one where I’m taking an analytics tour through two email campaigns sent out through ConstantContact.com, sharing the early-open rates for the email campaigns sent approximately 36 hours earlier, and the click-through stats on the email as well.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

When I first accessed the Charleswood Karate site, it didn’t have any analytics installed, so when I launched the new version I made sure that they were installed.  A week or so later I made a baseline video to show what the stats were at the start, especially since I found that there’s a way to get some stats from BEFORE analytics were installed.  Check out the video which was made on January 4, 2012.

The experience was a simple one – I need to get a passport after having had let it expire, and part of getting the passport means I need to get my birth certificate re-issued, because I have no idea where THAT is right now, either. 

Ordering A Birth Certificate Online

These days, I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  While I was looking at the passport information page, it had a link on it for where to go to get your birth certificate renewed, and of course it took me to the Manitoba birth certificates page.  I noticed, before remembering I was actually born in Ontario and would need to go there, that Manitoba didn’t have an online method of requesting a re-issue of your birth certificate.  “Due to privacy restrictions…” it said.  Fill in this form, mail it in or drop it off (downtown, in the shitty parking area).

Imagine my surprise when I headed over to the Ontario government site and found that there were NO PROBLEMS in requesting a birth certificate renew online, and within 10 minutes of landing on the page, and after having answered a mess of questions about my family and birth, I had paid for my birth certificate re-issue and it was set to deliver to me within 5 business days.

Introducing The “3AM Jammy Test”

Those of you who have talked to me in person might have already heard about this concept I call the “3 AM Jammy Test”.  It’s a big part of what I think about when I give clients advice about what content to put onto their site when they’re expanding or looking for ideas.

Simply put, the 3 AM Jammy Test puts the following question to your site:  “If it were 3AM and I were in front of my computer in my pajamas, could I use your website to get the information I need, buy the product I’m looking for, or order the service I’m interested in, all without needing to get a hold of you to accomplish my task?“

Clearly, the Manitoba government’s site, when it comes to re-issuing birth certificates, FAILS the 3 AM Jammy Test.  Clearly, the Ontario government’s site PASSES the 3 AM Jammy Test.

Does YOUR site pass the 3 AM Jammy Test?

PS: I’m glad I was born in Ontario!

I love Social Media!

Screenr support staff are pretty awesome, too.

Social Media = Answers, Quick.

Two hours ago I posted about about how my Screenr.com Business/Pro Trial account had vanished into thin air this morning, while I was using it and preparing to publish a Screencast to my YouTube channel. 

I checked my email to make sure I hadn’t gotten a notification message as to why, I tweeted something out about it, sent an email to my account rep Justin, then I posted a blog post, which tweeted out to Twitter and pinged @Screenr (who I’ve had interactions with before, kudos to them for actively watching their Twitter account so well!) a second time with the link to my blog post.

While in some contexts these multiple pings of contact could be construed as “annoying”, from the customer end, the fact that I had email contact as well as Twitter contact, and the fact that I have a business and a blog allowed me to get immediate contact with the Screenr support people to find out what was going on.

Why My Screenr Trial Account Has Vanished

Apparently I’m not the only one experiencing troubles.  Support is flooded with requests from people having the same problems as me.

Justin created a trouble ticket for me using my email report, and now I’ve been contacted by a support person who is fixing things as we speak.

Kudos to Screenr and Social Media

I’m impressed with how Screenr is making use of the Social Media tools at their disposal to connect with their clients and help get problems corrected when they crop up.

It’s important to me, as a Social Media consultant, to find vendors that embody the qualities that I’d like my clients to see and consider for their own companies.  I’m happy to say that when problems arose, Screenr passed the test with flying colors.

My Screenr History

I’ve been using the free version of Screenr.com for at least a year now because it’s an excellent tool for communicating information to clients, and because it’s an easy way to make a video that goes with a script, but doesn’t require me to comb my hair or get the lighting “just right”.

Just recently I decided to bite the bullet and try out their Pro feature.  I was willing to put in my credit card number and pay that day to try it out for a month because I had been so happy with it as a free version of software.

Lo and behold, there’s a 15 day free trial, and they don’t even ACCEPT your credit card details.  Cool, I like trials, even when I’m 99% sure I’m going to buy the software.  It would give me a chance to really test out the Pro version and see how I could use it to augment my company offerings.

Pro Account, First Hitch

The first thing I noticed about the Pro account was that I couldn’t publish to YouTube like I could with the free version.  That sucked, I thought, but I could download the MP4 and upload it to YouTube so I did it that way instead.

Why upload to YouTube? Other than the fact that the rest of my video presence is over there?  Well, because the entry-level Screenr Pro account doesn’t have analytics for its videos.  I’m an analytics junkie (in fact, many of my Screenrs have me going over analytics), so YouTube won, hands down.  My videos don’t get thousands of views in a month, but analytics are still important to me.

Reached Out To Screenr

I’m hoping that I haven’t run into an impasse, because I’m a HUGE HUGE fan of Screenr and I tell all my clients what software I use, and I encourage them to use Screenr, even just the free version, themselves as a way to communicate with me about their site or questions.

I am someone who is working with people using this new technology, exposing them to it when they wouldn’t have known it existed.  I am sure some of the people I recommend to use the free version also buy the Pro version because it works so well for them.

I’d like to keep hawking Screenr to everyone I know.

I emailed my Screenr business rep, and Tweeted out to @Screenr a wee bit, just to see if I can find out what happened, if I did something I shouldn’t have and got suspended, for example.  If so, it’s the first use violation suspension my business has faced!

I’ll keep y’all updated!

Simple WordPress To Do List Widget

Do you know what?

I really enjoy upgrading sites from PHP or flat HTML, and into WordPress.

(I’ve got room for a few new clients, contact me about getting your site upgraded to WordPress)

The whole process of setting up the navigation structure in a whirlwind of action, then transferring the old content into the new pages… splitting out the blog posts from the “pages” content… integrating a photo gallery for the images… it’s all a great lot of fun to me.  So many little “achievements” as the hours melt away and the new site comes to life. 

Managing The To Do List

Keeping track of the “To Do” list was a challenge in a recent project.  Launch details moved more quickly in the project than originally expected and there was a flurry of email messages, where important requests got lost in general updates.

That lead me to looking around for a different solution, and I found something that I’m going to use on all my client sites from now on:   “To-Dos” by Swedish Boy Productions.

What This WordPress Plugin Does

It’s a WordPress plugin that helps you add, complete and maintain a checklist-style To Do list in the back end of your WordPress site.

This list is visible to all of your administrators.

Why It’s Special

1. It’s simple and specifically aimed towards the creation of a checklist-style To Do list.
2. It’s also designed to be used strictly in the back end of the WordPress site (where your fellow administrators would also see it), and
3. It allows for a small amount of HTML to help further with visual priority cues according to your own strategies and use.

How It’s Helping My Projects

As a WordPress consultant working with small business owners who are very hands-on with their websites, when sites are undergoing overhauls, there are a lot of “to do’s” for both the client and myself to handle.  Important requests quickly get lost amongst the status reports in Email.

A checklist-style To Do list in a highly visible place within the project itself is the simplest way for us to communicate what is going on, what has been done, and what remains to be done.

Where You Can Get It

“To-Dos” by Swedish Boy Productions.

Do You Know Of A Better Plugin?

I’m always on the lookout for excellent WordPress productivity plugins.  Do you know of any I should check out?  Let me know!

I figured I’d start out with the fact that I updated my Gravatar profile today via WordPress.com and thought that might be a little tiny thing to share that others might also care about.

What Is Gravatar

Gravatar is a Globally-Recognizable Avatar, mainly used on blogs, but sometimes used on other Social Media sites.

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Why Use Gravatar

If you use WordPress, it’s a super easy way to have a consistent and cool Avatar image on all of your sites.

If you have websites, it’s a super easy way to make links back to your sites from a popular site online, thereby theoretically giving Google more places to crawl you from and because more people link to you from important sites, your sites become slightly more important as well.

How To Use Gravatar

If you’re not a blogger and you’re just a reader who leaves comments, go to the Gravatar website and check out their info about how to get signed up.

For Site Owners, setting up Gravatars on your site is easy; you don’t even need an account! Plugins are available for leading blog software and content management systems, and our tutorials will have you running Gravatars in no time.

This video is a bit of a “teaser” about a VIP Launch Party I was recently invited to via a contact I had only met in a business context online.

In it, I’m talking about how I’m looking forward to this launch party I was invited to, but I haven’t talked about how I was contacted, or the process we went through to “warm me up” to taking part in their idea. This warming up process was REALLY important, because without it, there’s NO WAY I would have either received nor accepted the invite to get the word out about their business. A future video will cover this important part.

So, sit back and find out more about how WagJagWinnipeg has me looking FORWARD to their local launch party here in the city.

You’ll see some of this content in future videos again, but the next videos will include a lot more info, like how WagJagWinnipeg got onto my good side via social networking in the first place, BEFORE they extended their invite to something designed to hawk their wares and get the word out, and a more in-depth examination of the strategy itself, including how it works to allow members and fans to spread the word FOR the company in an IdeaVirus kind of way :)

I’m hoping I was chosen because I appear to be an influencer of others (powerful sneezer), but that’s one of those things that’s hard to judge from my standpoint, so I just do what I’m inspired to do, like this video that you’re watching now.

:)

Jill