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tools & techniques

Grab Your Social Username

by Tim Elliott on September 30, 2008

Even if you are not quite ready to dive into the social media waters it’s a good idea to get your username at the services you will be using. Usually this is the name of your winery or brand.

A good tool to use to see if your username is available is at usernamecheck.com Just enter your username and it will generate a list of numerous social media sites and if your username is still available. So take a few minutes and at least sign up for the Big 5 sites: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious and Friendfeed. You’ll be glad you did next year when you need them.

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How To Track Twitter Conversations

by Tim Elliott on September 9, 2008

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

As I start wineries on the social media path, one of the most common questions is how to use Twitter. It’s probably because the micro-blogging service is sort of like a lot of things that came before — blogs, instant messaging, SMS, social networks — but how it’s being used is not like anything that came before. Since Twitter has a bare-bones feature set, there is not an easy way to track ongoing conversations in the standard web interface.

But Twitter’s secret sauce is it’s API which gives outside developers access into the service and provides a way for new and interesting applications to be built. One of the most useful of these applications is Quotably which adds discussion threads to Twitter conversations. So when you come into the middle of a conversation and can’t figure out that is going on, just put the Twitter address into Quotably and these threads will be generated.

But organization can also be a good tool to understand Twitter discussions. Enter TweetDeck, another Twitter API application that gives the user the tools to organize all those tweets into something that makes sense. For example, you could have a column for wine bloggers, another for customers and a third for real world friends. I also recommend you add the replies view as this is probably the easiest way to interact with a Twitter conversation.

Another good tool is the search feature now built into Twitter. This began life as a 3rd party application called Summize but was recently acquired and integrated into Twitter. The ability to search by keyword (winery name or variety, for example) makes it easy to find people posting about your wines or winery. Another search tool is Monitter which gives you the ability to organize keywords into columns the way TweetDeck organizes Twitter friends. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds from Monitter which provides another good way to listen to what people are saying about your wine brand.

Whatever tools used, remember that we are just making up the rules of Twitter right now. So experiment and have some fun!

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Build A Website With Wordpress, Part 4

by Tim Elliott on July 11, 2008

Wordpress logoLast week we completed our discussion of plugins and we are nearly ready to start to create great content and launch our Wordpress website. But there is one major consideration left to deal with; look and feel.

Luckily, there are plenty of free themes available for download that can be further modified to meet your needs. The best place to start is at the Wordpress themes directory.

Another alternative is to start with blank theme templates and match the look and feel to an existing website. While this requires some knowledge of CSS, it is not too difficult once you understand how to change elements. I use a Mac application called CSSEdit to work with the existing website CSS file and TextEdit to edit the blank template file. You can check out my handiwork at the new Israeli Wine Direct blog.

The last option is to purchase a commercial theme. There are many sources for these but the only two I’ve worked with are Brian Gardner Media and Solostream. Both offer great looking themes with extended features for $50-80. Brian also has several very nice free themes like my current favorite “Revolution Blog.” Once you have your theme in place, you are ready to create your page and blog content.

Next week I’ll cover categories and tags which determines your site’s taxonomy.

Related Links

Part 1 of this series

Part 2 of this series

Part 3 of this series

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Build A Website With Wordpress, Part 3

by Tim Elliott on July 3, 2008

Wordpress logoWhen I left off last week, we had just covered my “must-have” Wordpress plugins and I promised a list of favorites for adding more functionality to your website.

The following are presented in alphabetical order as I look at what is installed on this site but I’ll add a few niche plugins at the end for special circumstances.

Easy Gravatars – Ever wonder how you get those little avatars by your blog comments? They are Gravatars and this plug-in is the easiest way to add them. For more advanced users, the classic Gravatars plugin from Automatic might be more your speed. I’ve used them both and they work great.

Event Calendar – Have events that you want to post to your blog? This is the best of what is out there for integration although I’ve been embedding Google Calendars directly into some blogs for those who have more than just a couple events. Since the current version requires a hack to work properly in Wordpress 2.5, I’ve posted an archive here to save you the work of extracting from SVN.

Executable PHP widget – There are times when you will want to run PHP scripts on your sidebar. This adds a widget that will let you do so.

iWPhone – One of the first themes for iPhone formatting is still the best from my experience. All it does is turns your blog into an iPhone web application.

My Category Order – The first of three handy plugins for controlling the order of categories in your sidebar.

My Link Order – This one controls the order of your blogroll links. Handy if you don’t want alphabetical order.

My Page Order – This plugin controls the order of your pages. I use this all the time to reorder site navigation.

Page Links To – Ever want to link a menu item to someplace outside your Wordpress installation? This handy plugin lets you do this on any page.

PHP Speedy WP – A performance tweaking plugin that I only use when necessary. A bit geeky to setup but improves blog performance quite a bit.

Postalicious – This plugin allows me to post my del.icio.us links every so often very quickly here. I recommend you set this to post to drafts so you can make sure everything looks OK before posting live. Also posts links from Google Reader, ma.gnolia, Reddit and Yahoo! Pipes.

Redirection – After blogging for a number of years you will probably have several redirected links to deal with. Instead of wrangling with your .htaccess file, just use this plugin to manage redirects.

Search Regex – Adds search and replace across your Wordpress posts, pages, comments and meta-data. Very handy for making global changes quickly.

Subscribe To Comments – Gives your readers email notification of new comments since they posted theirs. One of the best ways to encourage reader engagement in your comments.

Viper’s Video Quicktags – Although the standard tools built into Wordpress are pretty good for handling media, I still use this plug-in for embedding YouTube and Google Video files. Just click on the icon in the post toolbar and add your link to embed.

WeatherIcon – Want to put your weather on your blog? This is the plugin to use to add this but make sure you click over to the version 3 beta.

Wordpress.com Stats – Adds basic stats to your Wordpress dashboard. Requires a Wordpress API key but you already got one when you activated Akismet.

WPhone – A lightweight interface built for smartphones like Apple’s iPhone. Also works with other mobile browsers to allow for blog access on the go.

Plugins for Special Occasions

BDP RSS Aggregator – There are times when you will want to aggregate RSS feeds on your sidebar. This plugin is the best for such when you want more than what the standard RSS widget offers.

Democracy – Handy for posting simple polls to your blog sidebar or in a post.

Global Translator – Is your blog of interest to those who don’t speak English? Then add language translation via this plugin.

Members Only – Want to protect parts of your site? This plugin will let you lock down pages, posts and even your RSS feed requiring a user login to view.

NextGEN Gallery – The easiest and best photo gallery for Wordpress integration I’ve found.

podPress – If you have a podcast, you’ll want to use this plugin. Handles Flash players in posts and all your iTunes tags in your feed.

Video commenting plugin | powered by Viddler – If you want to take your comments to the next level, this is the plugin for you. Allows for readers to leave video comments but I’d suggest you moderate all of them before they appear on your blog.

Next week I’ll cover Wordpress themes to control your site’s look and feel.

Related Links

Part 1 of this series

Part 2 of this series

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Listening, The Essence of Social Media

by Tim Elliott on June 30, 2008

Since I’ll be on a panel about Wine 2.0 next month at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) my antennae were raised by this post about what questions not to ask panelists about social media. Since much of Wine 2.0 is based on social marketing, I expect several of these questions to be raised, such as the one about measurement. But what stood out to me in this somewhat tongue-in-cheek list was near the end:

8 ) What’s the best thing about social media?

Listening.

I think listening is the essence of social media. Social media enables wineries to connect with customers directly but much of the value is learned via listening to what is said. Like all good listeners, wineries should understand where the writer is coming from and acknowledge their comment before responding, particularly if it’s provocative.

Wineries who are dialed into the online discussion about their product and brand can learn a lot about what makes their customers happy…. and not so happy. Through this listening process, wineries can make the changes that will turn customers into fans and fans into zealots.

A good place to start listening is your listing at Yelp.

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Using HelloTxt to Update Your Social Networks

by Tim Elliott on June 27, 2008

The other day I posted seven social networking sites for wineries to use to share their content. Even with this somewhat short list, there is work involved to keep them updated. And with Twitter continuing to show serious growing pains, some are exploring other micro-blogging services like Pownce and Plurk. But as you add these new services your time commitment to monitor and maintain them expands.

HelloTxt logoGenevieve from Iridesse Winery asked me via Pownce if there was a way to integrate the maintenance of these sites and I’m guessing other wineries are looking for the same thing. And, of course, there is a solution; it’s called HelloTxt.

Basically, this site allows you to setup your social networks into one place and blast your updates to all of them at once. The service currently supports 20 social sites including Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook and Plurk making this a one-stop update tool for all these social networks. They even let you track all these services in a feed much like Twitter does so you can respond to any of them right from HelloTxt. In my testing this evening, it seems to work very well making this another recommended service.

Check it out.

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Build A Website With Wordpress, Part 2

June 25, 2008

When I left off on my first post about building a website with Wordpress, I had just installed and slightly configured the software. The next consideration is what features you will need which are extended using plug-ins. Wordpress ships with two plug-ins, the must-have SPAM filtering solution Akismet and the frivolous Hello Dolly (which posts [...]

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Choosing Social Sites

June 24, 2008

During my seminars in Napa and Sonoma last April I covered a number of social sites but really didn’t make recommendations on which of these wineries should choose for their online activities. In setting up a couple of new clients recently I’ve looked at the long list of sites I’ve used and pared it down [...]

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