young adults taking selfie for snapchat

How to Use Snapchat

Snapchat is one of the most perplexing social media networks for those who have never used it. For those who use it everyday, it is beloved and irreplaceable – nice try Instagram. If you’re ready to give Snapchat a go (again) and want this try to be different than all the others, you’re ready to read this perfectly understandable and down-to-earth guide for how to use Snapchat.

Why You Should Delete Nearly Every Social Media Profile

Mark Shaw had over 40k followers on Periscope and his shows averaged easily over 100 viewers… usually it was nearly 200. As a matter of fact, there were many broadcasts that wouldn’t allow new commenters because it was already packed with people sharing and engaging.

In summer of 2016 Mark deleted Periscope, along with nearly every other social media profile he had created, washing away years of work as well as, presumably, hundreds of thousands of potential connections.

Why?

That’s the subject of this conversation wth Mark Shaw.

Mark Shaw jumped on Twitter, Day 1, and has become a go-to for many who want to unlock the power of Twitter as well as learn about the inner relational workings of social media. With over 30k followers on Twitter, when Mark moves, people listen and as a result he built several highly successful social media platforms, engineering a strong community of like-minded people.

In this conversation I talk with Mark about the thought process behind deleting nearly every social media profile he had created (in the conversation he mentions he now only uses Facebook Messenger and Twitter) and we discuss many of the objections one would have before doing the exact same thing.

You can find Mark on Twitter as well as read his work on his website, markshaw.biz.

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Social Media for Business – 3 Must-Use Criteria for Choosing Your Networks

Social media for business is tricky and you don’t have the luxury of showing up whenever you feel like it – like you do with your personal social media. You must choose networks that make the most sense for your business so you can maximize your time on social media and do the most for your business. Knowing which networks those are is the most challenging part.

In this article you will discover 3 must-use criteria when deciding on which social media networks you will use for your business as well as an exercise to help you make the right choice for where you are today.

Social Warfare: The #1 Social Share Button Plugin for WordPress

UPDATED AUGUST 27, 2016 – Social Warfare released the 2.0 version of the plugin and it is packed full of new features, updated options and faster than ever. This is a demonstration of version 2.0.


Are you using a WordPress website? Are you looking for a social media plugin that gives you a gorgeous social share button that lets you pick which social networks to display and shows how many times your article has been shared?

Have you downloaded and deleted multiple social share button plugins, always frustrated by the hideous appearance, lack of options, limited customizations and clunky code that slows down your website?

In this article you will learn about the Social Warfare 2.0 Plugin for WordPress, the options it provides each user, the many customizations available and how you can integrate this gorgeous social share button plugin into your website immediately.

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The Visual Appeal of the Social Warfare Social Share Button

If you use self-hosted WordPress, the Social Warfare 2.0 Plugin allows you to control how your social sharing options appear on your website and how your website content appears on individual social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Social Warfare is designed with your brand in mind, giving you visual customizations once made only available to companies with big web development budgets who could create their own code to generate a social share button that suits their specific tastes.

Social Warfare Social Share Button Shape Options

Part of the problem you have encountered with other social sharing buttons is they are ugly. Whoever developed the buttons had someone other than you in mind. Social Warfare gives you a core rectangular design with six variations of that core shape.

social share button gif displaying the six different variations of the social warfare social share button design

Social Warfare 2.0 for WordPress gives you six variations of the core rectangular design.

Social Warfare Social Share Button Color Options

I finished developing a website for a client, installed a social share button plugin and received an email back stating, “These buttons are hideous! Can’t they look more like my website?”

Spend any time trying to find social share buttons and you’ll either find one of two options (never both). You’ll find a button shape, size and style you like without the ability to brand them with your colors or you’ll find one that you can brand with your colors but are unable to control the shape, size and style.

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As we saw above, you have control over the variations of the core rectangular design. Social Warfare also gives you the ability to change the colors of the individual buttons.

a screen capture of the color options for social share button through social warfare

The only item not demonstrated in the gif above is the custom colors. If the none of the preloaded options suit your taste, you can style the buttons with a color that matches your website or your brand. Check out the gif below.

gif of the social share button color options from social warfare

Social Warfare gives you the ability to create your own custom color social share button

The Comprehensive Feature Set of the Social Warfare Social Share Button Plugin

A beautiful social share button is important but you also will want a wide variety of networks integrated into the button. The team behind Social Warfare gets it and they have added a share button for every major social network you could want – and some you’ve probably never heard of.

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At the time of this writing Social Warfare gives you a selection of 15 different networks and setting your default set of buttons and then ordering them in the order you want them to appear is easier than ever. It’s a drag and drop action that will be familiar for anyone. Check out the gif below.

Gif showing social warfare social share button configuration

With 15 sharing networks to choose from and a simple drag and drop interface, you can set your network sharing buttons in a matter of seconds.

There are plenty of other social share button plugins that will give you the same variety of sharing option and along with it a clunky and time consuming configuration process. Not only can you easily choose and order your default set of buttons, you can create custom configurations for a specific page.

Say you’re doing an invitation to a webinar and you want to use social warfare buttons – but you only want the Facebook and Twitter share buttons available. Social Warfare allows you to use the visual editor on any page or post to add this special configuration. Check out the screen shot below.

screen shot of the special configuration mode for the social warfare social share button

You can type the name of the individual networks separated by comma.

Once you’ve added this special shortcode, you proceed down to the Social Warfare Custom Options and turn off the default placement and the only buttons that will now appear on this page are the ones in your special configuration.

Screen shot of social share button social warfare

You can turn off the Social Warfare buttons on any page, regardless of your master settings.

The best way to become acquainted with the display options in Social Warfare is to actually interact with them. There are additional display options including share counts, built-in Pinterest button (which I turn off, I don’t like it) along with the option to turn on Twitter Cards.

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A quick note on Twitter Cards. These confused me for quite a while. Eventually I learned how to program my own Twitter Cards using the code Twitter provide. Here is a screen shot of what I was adding to the header code of each blog post:

screen shot of twitter card with large image and summary meta code

When Twitter Cards launched the only way to get them to appear for your website was to configure this code on every page. It wasn’t fun.

Social Warfare has the code for Twitter Cards built right into the software and the same meta descriptions that you write for Facebook will be used for Twitter as well. From someone who was doing everything manually, this is awesome!

The Social Media Title and Social Media Description fields (referenced in the previous paragraph) allow you to control what text appears when you share your content on social media. Look at the graphic below.

Twitter and Facecbook social sharing preview

You can designate what text you want to appear in the social media generated preview using the Social Warfare Plugin.

In addition to title and description, Social Warfare gives you a place to upload the image you want to associated with your shared link. You can see this one with a picture of me and Mark Shaw and our video interview about deleting your social media accounts.

Additional Amazing Features in the Social Warfare Social Share Button Plugin

There are several other amazing features in Social Warfare and those additional features are covered in the video available at the top of the article. That video below covers other features such as Bit.ly integration, frame buster, analytic tracking through UTM, share recovery and social media profile integration. Each of these additional features is the icing on top of this perfect social sharing plugin and the advanced functionality not found in any other plugin.

Social Warfare is available to buy, download and install on any self-hosted WordPress blog and you can purchase your license by clicking here.

If you are getting caught up on the fact that Social Warfare is not free allow me to help put the cost of the license into perspective for you. Consider how much your time is worth. Would you spend $116 for a social sharing plugin? Most likely not however, that’s exactly what you do when you spend 3-4 hours searching, downloading, configuring, deleting and searching for another social share button plugin.

I know this to be true because it has been my experience. Since purchasing Social Warfare nearly two years ago I haven’t even looked at any additional social share button plugins because there is no need.

Get your copy of Social Warfare, put an end to the endless cycle of searching for new social share button plugins and outfit your blog with a pro social share button that will satisfy your every requirement.

Get Social Warfare for WordPress by clicking here.

*Links provided are affiliate links which, at no additional cost to you, provides me a small commission when you make a purchase. That said, I would promote this plugin commission or not and I use it on my websites and recommend it for nearly all of my clients.

facebook for business featured image with keyboard and mouse

Facebook Images – Creating Images for Your Facebook Posts

You do not have time to design new graphics every day. Whether you are a graphic designer or someone who just loves making graphics, taking time to create new designs for every image you need will steal precious moments away from creating truly quality content that increases your organic reach.

If you want more time to truly invest in Facebook for business create one design for all your posts and use it over and over. Listen to the SoundCloud clip to discover more on creating post images to use with Facebook for business.

Woman on computer using Facebook for business

Facebook for Business – How to Increase Your Organic Reach

Facebook for business is a whole different world when compared to using Facebook for pleasure. Rather than sharing pictures or thoughts with friends and family who love you and are interested in you, you battle to have your content even seen by others on Facebook – much less actually gain engagement.

In this post you’ll discover how Facebook reach works in concept and how to steadily increase your organic reach over time along with several tips that you can implement immediately.

Creating a Custom Branded Short URL Featured Image

Custom Short URL – Creating Your Own Branded Short URL

URL shorteners take ugly links and make them short and pretty. You’ve seen bit.ly, goo.gl, buff.ly and other popular URL shorteners and you’ve probably seen individuals on social media using short URLs branded for them.

This step-by-step post will demonstrate how you can setup your very own custom short url for the cost of one domain address. When you’re done you will have the same powerful brand tool representing every post you share online just like the big bloggers and major tech companies use for themselves.

Shortcomings of Edgar and Thoughts on CoSchedule

In this conversation between myself and Ryan Bilello we talk about several social media scheduling tools including Edgar, Buffer and CoSchedule. Discover the functionality, benefits and shortcomings of Edgar and how it compares to Buffer. Our conversation also dives into CoSchedule, which is a WordPress plugin with corresponding monthly service for scheduling social media, analytic curation as well as other features.