If you are looking to buy a new showjumper, Jackie and Alice Hamilton from Weiti Station Sport Horses brought home 20 horses 3 weeks ago  from Bruce and Tony Holden’s Ngahiwi stock sale – very nice jumping lines there! Better get in quick though

Rachael Berry from Visual Projects is a very talented photographer and signwriter based on the North Shore. Have  a look at her website and give her a call today!

Both websites are built using WordPress (of course) so that the website owners can update as they wish.

I used the Share on Facebook plugin on Weiti Station’s website and from the Google Analytics stats this has proved to be a good move – Facebook is the top referring site at the moment so website visitors are obviously using this plugin to share Weiti’s horses with their friends.

Both sites use NextGEN gallery and I am so very impressed with the options and flexibility of this plugin, thank you so much to the creators for sharing this.

Google Analyticator connects with Google Analytics and a neat little feature which shows a summary of the report on the Dashboard – top pages, referrers, number of hits etc. Very tidy.

Smart Youtube is the easiest way to embed You Tube videos into your website, no mucking about with skins, just copy the URL into your post or page, add a v after the http and viola, your movie is ready to go!

Enjoy the websites!

As someone who signed up for Twitter a year ago, looked blankly at the screen a couple of times, then promptly forgot about it till a month or so ago, it was all good to hear what it is exactly and what you do with it! Disclaimer:  I scribbled my notes from the meeting on a piece of paper and my writing is shocking,  so hopefully I can decipher all the important bits

Anthony Gardiner, the young, enthusiastic (and single!) Media Specialist and web content editor at NZ Army, suggests that Twitter is not a social network at all, but an information network. So Twitter isn’t just like blogging where you can share a whole bunch of your opinions with whoever cares to read your blog (thanks for reading mine!), and it’s not Facebook where you can tell your friends and family you are in a bad mood and post pictures of your dog. It is more like the online version of the office water cooler, a place where numerous formal and informal conversations are held.

 You don’t have to go onto the internet to send a tweet (twitterspeak for a twitter post), you can send one from any mobile, no need for iPhone or Blackberry. Which is handy, because in my firm, like many other corporates, the Twitter website is blocked. Andrew states that Twitter itself is not the website – it is a service that can be accessed through tools such as Tweetdeck and mobiles. Only 20% of tweets are sent by users actually logging on to Twitter itself!

Personally, I have used Twitter to follow grabaseat and get the latest cheap flights sent to my phone while planning a trip to Napier. It saved me having to logon to the website every morning, especially if no cheap Napier seats were listed.

Facebook has 3 millions users. Twitter has 50 million. Who knows what they are talking about! Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/) is Andrew’s favourite tool and is used to filter these conversations and see what is being said about NZ Army. It is a great way to monitor feedback about your brand, good or bad, through these online opinions. As membership to Twitter is also anonymous, negative feedback can be brutally honest.

Some of Andrew’s dos and donts:

• add a bit of humour to your tweets, as this helps give your company a bit of personality and makes them seem more human
• don’t let your ad agency tweet for you, do it yourself, internally (agency can provide strategy)
• don’t use an automated system to tweet
• don’t drop 10 tweets at once (Twitter spamming)
• don’t send anyone direct mail through Twitter
• do respond to negative feedback
• do tweet random things, just for fun
• do be honest, its ok to make mistakes and it makes the company human
• do follow the people who follow you
• do respond to conversations – just like you would at the water cooler

Next up was Duncan Bair, Head of Brand and Comms at Orcon – also young and enthusiastic (not sure if he is single, sorry girls!). Duncan says Orcon has three rules:

1. engage early
2. engage often
3. engage honestly and transparently

In practise they have found their tweets fall into one of five categories:

1. customer support
2. sharing information found on the web
3. informal feedback – asking their followers questions
4. the fun,random, not so serious stuff
5. promotional – sales stuff generally kept to a minimum

I did have some issues with Orcon a few months ago when I first got set up, wish I had known about their Twitter account and the fact they monitor it for negative feedback. I am sure i would have got a faster resolution then I did via email and their phone system. Duncan discussed a number of case studies that showed how Twitter helped alleviate some ugly situations and also brought on a new customer.
 
To get going with Twitter is low cost in technology, but high cost in terms of people time. Duncan spends about 30% of his time on social media activities such as Twitter, forums, Facebook etc. And getting executive buy in to get started on Twitter? Duncan just did it and told them later. My day job is at a large corporate law firm, so not too sure how it will come across if I just start tweeting on their behalf. I will probably have to have one of THOSE meetings in a little quiet room with my manager afterwards. And bring a large cardboard box. So it would definitely depend on the culture of the company.
 
Duncan can be found online at http://twitter.com/Orcon, http://twitter.com/phixx and www.version3.co.nz
Thank you very much guys for your time, it was a good practical session. About to download Tweetdeck now.

Happy tweeting everyone!

“Futurists, or futurologists, are those who speculate about the future.”

Craig didn’t tell us too much about the future, but spoke about current trends and technology to improve productivity.  I really liked what Google have implemented which are power naps (good old Winston Churchill won a war with these).  A website called Pzizz.com offers mp3 downloads of soundtracks that guide you through these naps.

There is research out there which proves that having a 15 minute power nap in the day can improve productivity by 30%. 30% is a huge amount, and Google thinks so too, so now Google workers can plug into Pziss downloads, get the mp3 they want and nap in these specially built “power nap pods” that look like giant eggs.

I have downloaded the two free 15 minute mp3’s from the Pzizz.com website, one is for a quick energizer nap, the other you play before you go to sleep. Both are excellent. I can’t say if my productivity has improved as yet (don’t judge it by my blog posts!) but I do feel pretty good when I use them. They are like a guided meditation.

 News story about pods here – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-557752/Business-giants-install-power-nap-pods-boost-productivity-workforce.html

http://www.masdepanis.fr

He already has more posts and comments then me so best I get blogging!

I love WordPress.

To sign up for Twitter go here.

I decided I wanted to display my last few tweets in the side bar and to see how updating it from my Blackberry would look. I tried installing a few through the Add new Plugin fetaure in WordPress but found none that really did what I required, just a simple list of my latest tweets.

I then found this website with the 10 Best Twitter Tools for Wordpress so have popped number one on their list in. It is simple and easy to configure!

It is called Wickett Twitter Widget and displays the tweets from a Twitter account in your sidebar. Once you have activated the plugin, you can access it as a widget via the Appearance tab in your administration area.

Here is their website http://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz.

I have enjoyed their advertising campaign with comedian Rhys Darby Jones – he is very funny, has a great sense of timing! He was excellent in Flight of the Conchords as their manager.

For the geeks amongst you (I know you are out there!) I have used Wordpress to manage the content. Website here. What, WordPress I hear you say! But that is for BLOGS! Well, originally yes, but what I like about WordPress is that it is not just for blogs, it is a complete online publishing platform, so can offer you easy management of pages, content and images as well as all the cool things blogging tools come with, like free plugins and free themes.

I am a big, big fan of WordPress ever since I “discovered” it 4 years ago and since then have spent quite a bit of time learning how to install, configure, update, edit and transform. It’s a bit like playing with lego.  This website is based on the latest version of WordPress, 2.8.4, and is using a theme designed by Bright Cherry in the UK. I have added the following WordPress plugins so far:

• Ultimate Google Analytics
  • Google Analytics is a rich product developed by our Google friends which allows you to really analyze your website traffic. It’s a bit addictive, so I recommend limiting your visits!
• MailChimp
  • MailChimp is what I have used to add the subscribe form on the right. It handles new subscriptions, unsubscribes, campaigns, lists, templates, all the things you need for successful email campaigns. Go on, subscribe and try it, not only will you get to see how MailChimp works, but you get to receive my latest web news and views. You can unsubscribe anytime!
• WordPress BackUp
  • This automatically backs up all my content on a  regular basis so should anything happen, I can get it back. It’s like insurance, so hopefully I will never, ever need it.
• LightBox Gallery
  • This plugin is what gives the cool hover effect with image galleries – see my Portfolio page.

As I quite like WordPress plugins, I tend to add quite a few, just to see what they do, which is why I need my automatic back up! In the next few weeks I am going to look at Twitter plugins to link my Twitter account with my blog posts and also at new Email to Blog plugins. I have had great success with one in the past as it makes it so easy to update your blog without logging into the control panel each time. You just send an email to the blog address, and it is automatically published. Great feature from your mobile phone.

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