marketing for small business – Page 6

November 24, 2011

Free WordPress Plugin: podPress Audio Player for Podcasts

podPress is a free WordPress Plugin that enables you to install an audio player in your blog post. Visitors to your blog are then able to play the podcast directly on your blog.

The key thing is that you have control over where the audio player is located so that you can ensure it is near a relevant comment or resource. All you have to do is insert a simple piece of code in your post where you want the media player to display and podPress does the rest.

podPress does a range of things that are particularly useful for small business marketing:

acts as an automatic media player for videos as well as audios
allows listeners to control the player
facilitates download of the podcast
provides stats on downloads (including graphs)
generates RSS (and ATOM) feed and submits feed to iTunes (on publication).

So this free WordPress plugin enables you to readily display a media player for your audios or videos as illustrated below:

[display_podcast]

When someone clicks on the play button, the audio player image expands to show the progress of the podcast and to enable the listener to pause the player:

How to create your audio player with podPress

Once you have installed the free WordPress Plugin, you need to advise the podPress plugin of the location and details of your podcast file. Some of these details can be completed by using the “auto detect” button provided against the relevant field, others are completed automatically by the plugin. The screenshot below shows the fields that need to be completed either by yourself or automatically by the plugin:

podPress also provides a number of fields so that you can specify the relevant details for inclusion of your podcast in iTunes. However, you can override this option if you have some other method of syndicating your podcast.

podpress is a solid free WordPress Plugin that enables you to stream audio or video on your site and simultaneously broadcast your podcast to iTunes.

November 23, 2011

iTunes: How to Avoid a Green Screen in Your Video

For the last few weeks I have been frustrated by a green screen showing on iTunes when I attempt to view a high quality video. I have been getting audio but no picture apart from an annoying green screen.

I searched the Internet and found many other people were having a similar problem. Most of the responses to the question, “How do I remove the green screen when I play my videos on iTunes?”, were highly technical. On one particular site, the technical experts were arguing amongst themselves about what was the best method or who had the best solution. I found most of the responses somewhat bewildering and confusing.

Green screen on iTunes – a question of codecs?

A codec is the software that video players use to create (compress) a video or play (decompress) the video. Some video players (such as iTunes) have both kinds of codecs – for creating and playing videos.

It seems that one of the fundamental problems is that the codecs that have been developed for creating videos are outpacing the codecs incorporated in iTunes. As video creation becomes more and more sophisticated and higher quality, sites that provide video players have to decide how advanced they should make their video players and what level of codecs to employ [the parallel in computing is, “Do you move to Windows 7 or do you stick with Windows XP and put up with conversion problems?].

Some experts in the field suggest you work out the codec you require and download it. Microsoft itself discourages this practice and warns against the the dangers of this action:

Warning

Use caution when installing codecs that you find on the Internet, particularly some of the free codec packs that claim to include codecs from a wide variety of companies or organizations. Incompatibilities are known to exist with some of the components in these codec packs that can cause serious playback issues in the Player and other players, lead to system corruption, and make it difficult for Microsoft Support to diagnose and troubleshoot playback issues.

So what should you do to get rid of the green screen in iTunes videos?

The solution: AVS Video Converter

Finally, after weeks of searching and reading, I have found a simple solution that serves multiple purposes – the AVS Video Converter. What this effectively does is take a video that uses one set of codecs (such as MP4, usually playable on iTunes) and converts it to a video that uses a different set of codecs (such as WMV, playable on Windows Media Player).

The besuty of this software, AVS Video Converter, is that you get to choose the final output from a range of options provided.

AVS Video Converter Contol Panel

The software is very easy to operate and very reasonably priced. Here’s a screen capture of the control panel:

You can see across the top, the options for the output (e.g. AVI, DVD, MP4, MPEG, WMV, etc). All you have to do is highlight the video output type you want, browse your computer to select your video file and specify the folder for the converted video. The AVS Video Converter retains the high quality of the original video.

You are able to monitor the planned conversion (before pressing the “CONVERT” button) by pressing the “Advanced” button and the resultant display will show full details of the input and output files (with the relevant video codec identified).

You can monitor the quality of the video as it is being produced by clicking on the arrows beside the “Advanced” button. You will be able to see “Elapsed” (time taken so far to convert the video), “Remaining” (time required to complete the conversion) and “Overall Progress” (percentage of video conversion). The blue bar shows visually where the video conversion is up to. The monitoring screen will also display the image relevant to the location in the video conversion:

Well, the AVS Video Converter solved all my problems with the green screen on iTunes and I converted six videos the day after I purchased the software.

AVS Video Converter: 70% off Sale until 30 November 2011

The award-winning AVS4YOU software, including the AVS video converter, is normally offered on an annual fee basis for the whole suite of 18 programs (listed below). For the month of November 2011, this whole suite of 18 programs is being offered at 70% off for unlimited access (and download) – Price $59.

AVS – Unlimited Access to 18 Software Programs

This offer includes free updates and free support. Here are the 18 software programs in this unbelievabe offer:

If you want to remove the green screen from videos on iTunes then the AVS Video Converter is the answer – but why not take advantage of the great offer for unlimited access to the whole suite of AVS software programs (while it is on offer in November)?

November 22, 2011

Watch the Visitors to Your Website!

A new WordPress Plugin, WPClicks, enables you to watch your website traffic. You can literally see where your visitors go on your site and in what order they visit your web pages.

This very clever and useful WordPress Plugin even produces a video so you can visually track what pages your visitors viewed and in what sequence.

WP Clicks also provides web traffic stats in terms of direct, referred and search traffic. You can see the visitors who came to your site directly (entered your web address in their browser) or were referred from some other site or found your site through a search engine. It identifies referring sites so that you can investigate where your referral traffic is coming from.

This intelligence enables you to edit your website to remove blockages, dead-ends and repetition. It also gives you insight into what pages are of interest to visitors, so that you can adapt your pages accordingly.

Now small business marketers will be able to track the behaviour of their web traffic, improve their website design and enhance their conversion rates through the new WordPress Plugin, WPClicks.

November 20, 2011November 20, 2011

How to Install a WordPress Plugin

A WordPress Plugin is software that extends the functions of the basic WordPress program. Plugins enable you to import or export information, increase the security of your blog, enhance search engine optimisation (SEO) and undertake an endless range of tasks designed to improve the functionality of your WordPress blog. When I last looked there were over 17,00 plugins in the WordPress Directory (with over 235 Million downloads).

Installing a WordPress Plugin

WordPress makes it very easy to install plugins. There are a series of steps you can follow which are guaranteed to work 95% of the time, so have a go without fear. I will list out the steps here, so you can follow easily.

Step 1: Download the WordPress Plugin to your computer

To locate a WordPress Plugin, you can visit the WordPress Directory, search available plugins from within the admin area of your blog or undertake a Google search for the specific WordPress Plugin you are looking for. Many WordPress Plugins are free but some of the more sophisticated ones have a fee. Important Note: For most plugins you will download a zip file which you should place in a designated folder on your computer (I call mine “WordPress Plugins”).

Step 2: Upload the WordPress Plugin to your blog

There is a Plugin Section in the Admin menu (yourblogURL/wp-admin) of your WordPress blog. As the following image shows, the options available under this menu section are “Installed Plugins”, “Add New”, “Editor” and “Akismet Configuration”. Akismet is one of the installed plugins that comes with your basic WordPress blog and is designed to handle comment spam.

You need to click on the “Add New” option and the following image will display. Here I have subsequently clicked on “upload” (bolded) to start the upload process:

You then use the “browse” button to locate the zip file for the WordPress Plugin on your computer. Once you have highlighted the file in the relevant folder on your computer, you press the “INSTALL NOW” button. Note: WordPress Plugins are usually uploaded as zipped files (do not unzip the file unless specifically instructed to do so by the developer).

Step 3: Activate the WordPress Plugin

You need to make sure you click the “activate” button once you see that the Plugin has been successfully uploaded. This activate button effectively integrates the Plugin with the WordPress Program. Once a plugin has been uploaded, it is added to the Installed Plugins list.

Step 4: Read the WordPress Plugin instructions carefully

Each Plugin comes with its own set of instructions re setup and operation. In most cases, you will need to complete some data fields to specify what options you want. For example, in the installed plugin listing for the All in One SEO Plugin you will see this set of instructions/options:

“Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist”

A WordPress Plugin can open up a whole new world of functionality for your WordPress blog and enable you to automate many tasks associated with blog post and comment management, marketing of your small business online and presentation of information to readers and the search engines.

November 18, 2011November 18, 2011

Auto-Post with Posterous: Leverage Your Hard Work

Posterous enables you to broadcast your Posterous blog post (whether or not it was created by email, screen capture or onsite blogging). You can also specify a target for a specific email post, e.g. twitter@posterous.com.

You can set up the specific accounts in the “autopost” area of your Posterous site to advise where to broadcast your blog post. The above image lists the social media sites that you can auto-post to with Posterous.

Posterous, through email and screen capture blogging, gives you the power to leverage your online content (blog posts, articles, Squidoo lenses, Hub pages, videos. podcasts). The autopost facility allows you to levrage your hard work in creating online content by simultaneous broadcast to other social networking sites.

At the time of writing, I have set up my site to post my Posterous blog posts (however created) to my Affiliate Marketing Coach blog (Blogger.com) and to my Facebook site. So you can set up a sequence of auto-posting that suits your style of operating and fits with your small business marketing strategy.

Here is an example of where Posterous has created an autopost to my Affiliate Marketing Coach blog from a Posterous screen capture post I created from this Small Business Odyssey blog:

The original blog post on Small Business Odyssey was posted to my Posterous blog via the screen capture bookmarklet. I have added a comment and a link to my target URL (automatically hyperlinked) and Posterous has auto-posted the Posterous blog entry to my Blogger.com blog.

You have the option of letting Posterous post directly to each site you nominate or have it feed into one of your sites that is set up to auto-generate other posts.

You are limited only by your imagination with respect to the range of content that you can capture, and the means of achieving leverage. In this example, my AudioBoo podcast is automatically posted to my Posterous account which in turn posts to my blog, Twitter and Facebook:

So there are a number of options for using the autopost feature of Posterous. Here are three of them:

Allow Posterous to autopost directly to your selected social media sites
Allow Posterous to autopost to another site (e.g. Twitter) which in turn is set up to autopost to other sites (such as Facebook)
Allow another site (e.g. AudioBoo) to autopost to your Posterous blog and setup the latter to autopost to selected sites.

The autopost option is located under “Manage Spaces” – you need to click on the down arrow as highlighted in the image below so that the menu displays with the autopost option:

Posterous through its email blogging and screen capture blogging supports an array of options for auto-posting and creating leverage for your online content as part of your small business marketing.