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How to customize the Admin Panel on WordPress 2.7

kuanhoong — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:40:31 +0000

If you are using the latest version of WordPress 2.7, you might want to know that now it is possible to customize the appearance of the Admin Panel.

Here are some of the ways to customize the appearance of the admin panel.

1. Minimize the windows.

2. Use the “screen options” tab.

3. Modify the left sidebar.

4. Go with one column.

5. Move the windows around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPod6UNR3o [via]

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How to customize the Admin Panel on WordPress 2.7

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The Big Dummy’s Guide To Viral Marketing

kuanhoong — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:53:57 +0000

Nowadays it is common to hear people mention about Viral Marketing. With the current explosion usage of the Internet, it is possible to market something and affect the mass audience in the shortest period of time. It doesn’t matter whether your initial aim is to create “buzz” about a product or idea, with viral marketing it is possible to spread the idea widely and quickly with great effect. So what is Viral Marketing?. How can you create your own viral marketing for your blog/site/product/idea?. What are the techniques involved to create a successful viral marketing?. Let’s find out yourself from this dummy’s guide to viral marketing.

How it works?

Generally, viral marketing describes any marketing strategy that use pre-existing social networks that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure, brand awareness and influence. The effect of self-replicating viral processes of viral marketing is similar to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. With viral marketing, it has become much easier for marketers to get big fast.

Certain viral marketing campaigns which are worth mentioning include Microsoft?s Origami Project campaign, Carlton Draught?s Big Ad campaign, Gmail, Ford Motor Company?s Evil Twin campaign, Heinz?s Ketchup Against Tomato Cruelty campaign, Jamie Kane?s BBC sponsored online game, etc.

Good recent examples of viral marketing are like the followings:

Diet Coke + Mentos

Dove Evolution

Will It Blend : iPhone

Benefits of Viral Marketing

In a nutshell, the basic concept of viral marketing is that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. The content can be certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with is associated with a company/site brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company/site or its product. The main benefits of viral marketing are the followings:

Immediate effect.
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site in a short period of time.
Viral Marketing is inexpensive to setup.
A well-planned viral marketing is relatively easy and cheap to setup. It primarily involves some investment of time for planning, developing and promoting your content.
It is something fresh and interesting
A good marketing plan is something that gets people’s attention. Viral marketing offers something that it is refreshing as compared to mass marketing and advertising.
Good linkbait.
A good viral marketing content is also a good linkbait content. Viral marketing’s tactics focuses on both content and links by promoting unique content that propagates virally through social news, blogs and network sites is also common tactics for linkbaiting. (refer to my previous post : “Everything you need to know about Linkbait : The Comprehensive Guide“)

Make your own viral marketing

Now you know what is viral marketing and the benefits of viral marketing, it is time to make your own viral marketing content. Here are some dummy’s guides on how to start your own viral marketing today.

Be Creative
Unleash your creativity to create content that is appeal to the mass audience. It is said that the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
Do something out of the ordinary
Users love that you have the resources and guts to do things that are out of the ordinary because this is what takes for the best viral marketing campaigns.
Create something controversial
There is no question that a bold marketing strategy for viral marketing is to create something that is controversial. Something that everyone would loke to talk about. That’s what is needed to power a viral marketing campaign. However, there is always risky side to it. Finding a good balance is something that requires years of experience. (Example of a controversial viral marketing : Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign gone wrong)
Offer something that is free
There are a number of mistakes that are often made when establishing a business plan that includes viral marketing. The classic mistake is to charge a fee for service when the benefits are not easily identified. In order to create hype or buzz for your marketing plan, it relies on large user base. The best way of doing so is to offer something that is free. Profit should only be introduced once the product has established a large user base, and the fee should be attached to added features and not the basic product.
It is all about sharing, downloading and embedding
In order for something to succeed virally, sharing/downloading/embedding is the most important component. In other words, you should able to provide the followings to your readers:
- Downloadable content. This is applicable to pictures, videos, ebooks, widgets, icons etc.
- Sharable content. Provide links where users can send and share easily with friends.
- Embeddable content. Allowing your users to be easily embed the content on their own sites.
- Submit content to social networking sites. Allowing your content to be easily submit it to varies social networks – Digg, Reddit, Netscape, del.icio.us, facebook etc.
Offer an incentive
Viral marketing works best when a valuable and tangible incentive is offered, encouraging individuals to forward an email message to their friends. One good example of an incentive is by offering an incentive of like 20 percent off referrers’ next purchase or coupon if they forward the message to five friends.
Create a parody
A parody is a subviral marketing technique. It involves creating parodies or tangential take offs of a famous viral marketing campaign and distributing them over the Internet to create a buzz regarding your product/service. Parody thrives on the creation of spoofs or irreverent takes on one’s brand that is already established out there. (Example of creative parodies are : Apple Switch Parody, Apple PC vs MAC, and many more.)
Create sequel
If you have a viral marketing campaign that is very successful, then you should leverage on that and create a sequel viral marketing campaign. When you got people’s attention then you need to act, and one the best ways of doing that is to give them more. Sequels are your best options. (Example of sequels are : sequel to movies, sequel to TV ads, and many more)

I guess that is all the Dummy’s Guide that you need to know about viral marketing. If you have any comments, please share them with me.

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The Big Dummy’s Guide To Viral Marketing

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Twitterfeed : Post your blog to twitter

kuanhoong — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:30:34 +0000

After my last post entitled “5 simple steps to drive traffics to your blog from Twitter” , I found out there is an easier way to post your blog post to twitter. By using Twitterfeed, all your latest post feeds will be periodically sent as new twits on Twitter. It takes only three steps to get your blog (or any other RSS or Atom feed) twittering.

1. Create a new twitter user at twitter.com (or use your existing one)

For the most obvious reason, you got to have a twitter account in order to send your post to twitter. If you don’t have a twitter account, you can sign up one free account for yourself. Those that already possessed an account, all your blog feeds will be posted to this account. Twitterfeed needs to know your chosen twitter username and password so it can post your blog updates to your twitter account.

2. Login to Twitterfeed using your OpenID

The next step is to login to Twitterfeed by using OpenID. If you don’t have an OpenID, you can create one for free. If you are wondering what is an OpenID, here is what I found on the net

OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.

Besides OpenID, you can sign-in to Twitterfeed by using these logins too:

Yahoo! users: read how to use your Yahoo! account with idproxy.net
Livejournal users: you can login as [yourname].livejournal.com [more info]
Vox users: you can login as [yourname].vox.com (your Vox blog URL)
Wordpress.com users: you can login as [yourname].wordpress.com [more info]

3. Provide the URL for your blog’s RSS feed, and how often it should be posted to twitter

The final step is to add your blog’s RSS feed to Twitterfeed. Besides your blog’s RSS feed, you can also add other feeds like your Flickr feeds or any other services.

In the configuration page, you can set the Update Frequency. This setting describes how often Twitterfeed will check your feed for new posts. For the very first time, Twitterfeed will post the most recent entry only, and after that, any new entries since the last time new post is created.

Nice isn’t it?. Now with Twitterfeed, you can twit as many times as possible without even typing a new twit. Have fun twitting! .

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Top 5 Simple Gmail shortcuts

kuanhoong — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:02:13 +0000

Gmail is the free email account from Google is the only email that I use. It was released by Google on 1st April 2004 with the initial storage of 1GB. Back then, everyone thought it was a April’s fool hoax from Google. Now Gmail offers practically unlimited storage space for everyone. Gmail’s storage will increase with 145 MB a year (equating to almost 0.4 MB per day. There are plenty of shortcuts in Gmail. Some are very useful too. Here’re the top 5 simple Gmail shortcuts that I think every Gmail user should know.

1. Delete Mails. Even though Gmail’s storage is increasing day by day, sometimes we still want to delete some of the unwanted mails from our mailbox. If you are reading a message in GMail, press the # key (Shift+3) and that message will instantly move to Trash.

2. Mute conversation. The conversation view groups related messages in a linear stack that can be expanded and collapsed. There is no option to differentiate messages that branch off from the original thread. This can occur when mail is sent to multiple recipients who respond individually, or when someone changes the subject line of a message he or she is responding to. To disable never-ending email threads, just mute the conversation with the Gmail keyboard shortcut “m” – The message is immediately removed from the Inbox view and all future messages.

3. Report Spam. Everyone hates spam. To mark a message as spam and removes it from your conversation list, just press shift+1, or the exclamation mark, “!”.

4. Archive your mails. By pressing “y”, Gmail will automatically removes the message or conversation from your current view to archive.

From ‘Inbox,’ ‘y’ means Archive
From ‘Starred,’ ‘y’ means Unstar
From any label, ‘y’ means Remove the label

5. Give your mail a Star. By pressing “s”, you can add or remove a star to a message or conversation. Stars allow you to give a message or conversation a special status and your mail can be easily accessible later.

To know more about all the gmail shortcut keys, you can view it at Gmail Help Center, or get yourself a copy of printable gmail cheatsheet.

Here’re other good tips to maximize your Gmail.

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