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How can you get the most out of your CMS plus stay on top of the opportunities to engage prospects on social networks? Well one tool I really recommend — Hootsuite — is busily combining all the major social networks on one dashboard, plus blogging on WordPress.com.  This collision creates a mashup that points to where we’re headed in the next five years, I think.  If you’re still asking, “is social media a business tool,” you’re missing the train. And our CMS of choice, WordPress, has added even more great Content Management features in version 3.0, due out in a couple of wees, so we’ll take a look at those.

Social Media Tip: Now, use Google to find out what people are chatting about in your city. Go there and type in “location *portland” (substitute your city). On the left choose “Discussions”, then “past week.” Note that you can also choose “blogs.” You can also choose further search refinements at left. Click here to see what I found.

A Social Suite to the Max

Hootsuite is taking the word “suite” seriously.  In the last few months they’ve added up and coming social network FourSquare, the ability to reach Fan Pages on Facebook (standard Facebook was already built in), LinkedIN, plus greatly extended the networks you can reach by adding Ping.FM, itself a network aggregator that reaches another 30 or so second tier media sites.  They’ve created an iPhone application.  They’ve beefed up team collaboration features — great for corporate MarCom departments.  Kudos to Hootsuite.

From one dashboard, I can now handle all the essental social media tasks — and automate a number of them.  In order to stay on top of all of this for our clients, I am attending “Hootsuite University” — several hours of training and testing on using Hootsuite, and best practices at the major social networks.  I’ll report on that in upcoming posts.  Contact us for Social Media training and campaign options.

Above, you see the tool to add a Social Network in HootSuite, with Ping.fm showing.  TIP:  Ping.fm is a stealth tool that extends your reach greatly via 30 networks, mobile messaging, chat, and a growing number of 3rd party applications. It seems like a lot to come up on, but with our help you can set it all up once, automate 80% of the work, and greatly increase visibility for your strategic Marketing Communication.

WordPress 3.0 adds Great CMS Features

Here are some top new features to be thinking about using in the forthcoming update of WordPress to version 3.0:

• Control of Menus: Called “Menu Management” in WP 3.0, this new feature gives you a simple drag and drop interface to add links to categories, posts, external sites… plus package “custom menus” as sidebar widgets where your theme allows.  Wow — Kudos to the WordPress core team.  Note that WebFadds builds custom themes for CMS solutions with 13 widget-ready areas, and these menus could be available in any of them.
  Above – the new Menu Manager in WordPress 3.0 is powerful, but easy to use.
• Custom Post Types:  Right now you may only choose between a post and a page, but in WordPress 3.0, you can define your own post types and select attributes.  Think Directory.  For example, you could set-up a business directory, a set of photo galleries or portfolio pages, a set for case studies, etc.  Then you can assign special tags and categories just for this post type.  Then, modify your theme design so the user interface helps your visitors navigate through your new sections.
• Multiple Customized Blogs: We have been using customized categories to set up more than one blog for larger clients.  This works ok because each category has its own RSS feed in WordPress, and its index page may be styled uniquely.  But now, the WordPress team has combined “WordPress MU” (Multi-user), formerly a separate project and download, into the core WordPress program.  So, you may now host a collection of separate blogs, each with their own custom theme, from one hosting plan and WordPress administration area.  This should be great for universities, companies with satellite offices, news organizations — any group with the need for “departments” with their own identity.

Your themes will require modifications to accommodate these new features — contact us for details.