Sunday, December 12, 2010

Social Media Startup - Awesome Note Taking Extension on Google Chrome

Have you ever had so many thoughts that you need to write them down on a piece of paper? What if that paper got lost later, what happens then? A good way to gather your thoughts and write down task while you are surfing the Internet is to use any note taking app available. Sure, you can use Windows widget or Mac OS widget. However, they sometimes do slow down your computer and makes your desktop looks more populated with things.

Why not try out this awesome note taking extension on Google Chrome. It's call Quick Note.  You can download this extension here and have it open as pinned tab when you clicked on its settings button. It doesn't take up much resources and it's pretty user friendly with a nice layout.

With just a few clicks and you have a notepad on your browser for you to express or note down all your thoughts without worrying that you will forget about them. It's good for those who are venturing as a Social Media Startup as most of the time, you will think of something which you want to update fan page wall or your twitter. So it's best to note them down before you forget. :)

Social Media StartupSocial Media AdvertisingBIG Vision Social Media

Friday, December 3, 2010

Soical Media Startup - Plugins for your WordPress

We would firstly like to apologise for the late update ever since the last post. We were caught up with quite a number of things for the past few weeks and did not have time to post up on our blog.

As promised, we will list down some of the great plugin tools for your WordPress site. These are great Social Media Startup tools which can help your new site.

  1. Akismet - This plugin is one of the most important tool to have as it will protect you against spam comments as there are many bots around spamming blogs.
  2. 1-click Retweet/Share/Like is a great plugin for users to share/like your post on Facebook or to retweet about your post. This will help you to gain publicity on the Internet. An essential tool for Social Media startup marketers.
  3. Facebook Like Box - This will put up your Facebook fan page box on your website/blog's sidebar. Like our site, check out our BIG Vision Social Media facebook box which shows our latest Facebook post as well as the number of fans we have.
  4. Facebook Comments for WordPress - This plugin goes hand in hand with the Facebook Like Box plugin. As Facebook users are growing in numbers, this is a great tool to have for visitors to comment on your post using their account. Why is that so? Well, if they comment with their account, this will give you extra publicity on Facebook as it will appear on their friends' news feed.
  5. Twitter Widget - Let's you show your latest tweets on your website/blog. It's essential to have this now as Twitter is growing and users can start follow you on Twitter and see your latest tweets. They can then assess how great your tweets are, whether or not it provides value to them.
  6. Fast Secure Contact Form - A decent and simple easy to use contact form. The back end configuration is pretty easy for this.

You can do a search for all these widgets in your Wordpress Dashboard. Press on the plugins button on the left and then click on Add New. After that, do a search for all the plugins listed above and then just click install. It's just that simple.

We really hope that this post is beneficial to all of you, especially those Social Media startup bloggers/marketers. Cheers.

Social Media Startup, Social Media Advertising, BIG Vision Social Media

Social Media Startup - Creating a Wordpress Account

How was your weekend? Did you receive a call/e-mail from HostGator which asked you to verify your email? If you have not receive any of that, I would recommend you to contact them by using their Live Chat Function which can be found on the top right hand corner of their website.

I'm sure you are excited to learn how to setup a Wordpress account. After linking your webhosting to domain last week, you are now just a few clicks away from getting your blog ready.

First, I need you to  login to the cPanel of your website. You can do so by typing website URL and followed by /cpanel (example: yourdomain.com/cpanel). This will save you time from remembering the URL  which was sent by HostGator. Key in your username and password when prompted. If you forgot your username and password, please check your e-mail. If you deleted that e-mail, then please use the Live Chat function on their website.

Now you will see your control panel with lots of icons. Don't get confused or dizzy. Just scroll down until you see a smiley face button called "Fantastico De Luxe". Click on that, and you will see a page which has a lot of words on the left (as shown below).

Now click on Wordpress (under the blog category). As you can see, in the installation location, your domain is already chosen. If you have multiple domains on the same webhosting, then please choose the appropriate one. You will then have an option on whether to put your blog in a specific directory. What does this mean? For example, our BIG Vision blog on www.bigvisionsocialmedia.com by default because we did not specify a directory. You can key in blog as the directory and your Wordpress blog will appear at yourdomain.com/blog.

Next, key in your preferred username and  password in the Admin Access Data section. You can also opt to specify an admin nickname for yourself so that when you write every blog post, the name of the author will follow your nickname. You can also choose to use a different e-mail address for Wordpress. Go ahead and fill in the description field if you have any special description you want to write about your blog.

After that, click on the Install Wordpress button and you are done!  Please allow a couple of minutes to a few hours for your blog to appear.  You can login to your Wordpress sytem via yourdomain.com/wp-login.php. Key in your username and password, and you will see the Wordpress Dashboard.

Our next article will teach you what configurations you can do with your blog before you get started. Till then, have fun exploring around.....

 

Social Media StartupSocial Media AdvertisingBIG Vision Social Media

Social Media Startup - Linking Domain and Webhosting

Thanks for following us until this tutorial. Here you will learn how to link your domain to your webhosting and get it started. Many people do not understand what does it mean by linking a domain to a webhosting. Well, it's pretty simple, imagine a domain is a license plate number and a webhosting is a car. If you buy a license plate number, you will have to put it on a car in order to use the car, hence the linking.

Now, you need to log in to your Namecheap account. If you have not purchase a domain name, please do so there. First, click on the "Manage Domains" button on the top bar.

After that, you can see your domain name. Click on it and click on "Transfer DNS to your webhost" button on the left bar. Now, open up your email and look for the receipt which was sent by HostGator. Remember the 2 nameservers given in the email? Now you have to put the nameservers in NS1 into field 1, while the NS2 into field 2. Then press save changes.

That's it. It's pretty simple. Please allow 24-48 hours till your domain goes online and you can see access it from your Control Panel. Next week, we will guide you on how to install Wordpress onto your website. See you.

Social Media Startup, Social Media Advertising, BIG Vision Social Media

Social Media Startup

Today, we will teach you how to purchase a webhosting service for your website. In the previous tutorial, we have taught you how to purchase a domain name for your business website. Have you gotten yours yet? If you haven't, please head to namecheap and get one right now for your website :)

Before we teach you how to purchase a webhosting service, we will tell you why we recommend HostGator. Note: We are not a sales person of HostGator. Firstly, what really "wow" us is their live chat support staffs which are really friendly, patient and professional. We really have to give credit to them as they have helped us with our problems on several occasions. Also, their Control Panel is really user friendly and they offer a free site builder feature as well. We are very satisfied with their service and their support staffs are just superb, hence the recommendation.

Now, we will show you how to purchase your webhosting. Head to HostGator and you can see that there are several type of webhosting plans. In this tutorial, we will guide you on setting up the cheapest most basic webhosting plan which starts from $4.95 a month, depending on your subscription period.

Click on the button "View Webhosting Plan" and you will see the Hatchling Plan. Choose the appropriate subscription period depending on your budget. We would suggest you to go for the 1 year period. Then, click "Order Now" and you are required to insert your domain name on the right hand side of the form. After that, key in your necessary personal information and your credit card information to complete the process.

Once it's done, you will receive an email stating about your login information for your cPanel and billing system. You will also see 2 nameservers below with NS1 and NS2. These 2 nameservers are needed later on when you have to link your domain to your webhosting. Also, you will receive a call from HostGator staff requesting you to validate your information with them. So you may have to be available to take the call once you have purchased the webhosting. If you do not hear from them after 30 mins, then please expect an email from them which will request you to contact them.

After your validation process, you will then need to link your webhosting to your domain and this will be covered in the next article....

Social Media Advertising, Social Media Startup, BIG Vision Social Media

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Social Media Startup - Buy a Domain on Namecheap

Are you thinking of starting a website but do not know where to start? Well, then you come to the right place. We will be guiding you on how to start your website with a few simple tutorials. Tune in with us over the next few weeks and you will have your site up and running after reading the guides.

Before you start to think about what your website design should be like, think of a name for your website. It can be your company name, or the name of your product or even your own name. But most importantly, you have to check if your name is available. So head on to Namecheap and check if what you want is available.

Key in the name that you which to purchase. It is always advisable to get .com for your website, as it is the most commonly used. If the name you want to purchase is not available on .com, then you can either opt for .net/.org/.biz or you can tweak your name a little bit. What do we mean by tweaking? It just means that if you want to purchase bigvision but it is already taken, then you can either put big-vision or bigvisionsocialmedia. This way, you still can use your company name as part of your domain.

After checking the availability of your name, then you can purchase it with just a few clicks of a button. Key in your credit card details and you will have the chosen domain for 1 year. It's just that simple. So what are you waiting for? Head to Namecheap and purchase your domain right now.

After purchasing, you may wonder why my domain does not work. This is because you have not link your domain to any webhosting. We will be guiding you in the next article on how to purchase a webhosting for your domain. Stay tuned....

Social Media Advertising, BIG Vision Social Media