Ginga WordPress Design Development. Sydney, Australia, Boston, USA

For some time now Google+ has been building quite a following. My prediction is that within a year Google+ will be bigger marketing and communication tool than Facebook is for businesses. Why? Because businesses already have a deep relationship with Google, whether it be with Google Analytics, Google Places, Google Webmaster Tools or with the largest amount of Smart Phones on the planet through the Google Android Ecosystem.

So in this tutorial I am going to show you how to create a Google+ Event in minutes, be able to duplicate the event, add a header image and finally add the Yakadanda Google+ Hangout Events WordPress plugin to display all your public events on your WordPress website through shortcodes and widgets.

Google+ have now released Google+ Communities and I have a quick Guide on how you can setup your own Community. The premise is quite simple. You login to your Google+ Account and you will notice a new “Community” icon on left hand side (it started rolling out today) You then create a Community, add a logo, a description, location and then invite people from your circles. You can choose to make it a private community or a public community. The idea is simple, to collectively get around an idea, a general topic or industry. Share photos, videos, events, hangouts!

Click here to join our Google+ Community

Here are some notes from Google

Create private communities: Gather real-world groups of people like your basketball buddies, fellow classmates and family. If you find yourself sharing regularly with the same core group of people, communities are a fast and fun way to stay in touch.

Join public communities: No matter what you’re into, there are people on Google+ you can talk with about it. Search for public communities around the topics you’re passionate about and join the conversation. You’ll be learning new things and making friends in no time.

Share how you want, when you want: There are lots of way to share with your communities. Get home welding tips from your DIY pals in a hangout, share restaurant reviews with fellow foodies, or use Google+ Events to plan your next block party. You can share with communities from anywhere you find Google+: on YouTube, Google Maps, or through the +1 button on sites across the web.

Browse some communities here!

In the past week we have seen Instagram now offer profiles and also Pinterest offer business pages. Instagram is an overwhelming popular app that allows – via mobile devices like iPhone and Android, the user the ability to take average photos and make them look a whole lot better and Pinterest is a social media website where you can share photos and videos of things you like from fashion, devices to applications to architecture.

These are both applications of a sort, Pinterest Web based and Instagram a standalone application. I think most business individuals should indulge in these, if only to showcase your understanding and a more human side to the industry you participate in. Just be relevant and try to stay away from ideologies and of course the juicer side of life!

As an example my personal Pinterest page is now our International business page and I changed my name to Yakadanda (front for Agentpoint USA) and share all of my WordPress Help Videos on one particular board (including the one above)

In the video above I explain some recent updates to Social Media Pages that maybe of importance to your business. I explain these a little further below.

Facebook Pages

As some of you maybe aware, your weekly page stats might have gone down. The reason for this? The sceptic in me tells us that Facebook is trying to monetize all business pages on their site and instead of all followers of your page now receiving all of your updates via their newsfeed, they now only see these if they actually like, share or comment on others in your feed from time to time. This is monitored by Facebook over a period of time. This means if you have a ‘liker’ they will only continually receive your updates if they connect in some way with what you are delivering. Facebook is now telling you that for others to get this, you might be interested in handing over some of your hard earned cash! So it is a little bit of both, it does make sense to do this, but there is a revenue side of the story also.

The panacea? Well, now more than ever, keep it relevant and interesting! Which to me means, stop putting up quotes from philosophers and the like, as just about everyone does this and unless it is a real beauty, it is useless and eye-rollingly boring! Think about things that others will most likely share, ask questions others might want to answer and keep it relevant to the industry and market you are in.

Pinterest

Pinterest now allows you to convert your profile into a business profile and also offers some goodies to add to your website, like a variety of widgets and sharing buttons. If you are primarily using this as a business anyway, I think you should do this.

Instagram

Instagram now has profiles, which showcase your profile and images. This is rather minor but it is important. Just login to Instagram and click on your profile at right and you will see it in all its glory!

Over 10 years of www.business2.com.au they have tried their best to bring their Real Estate Agent audience the best experience possible for getting information about news and information technology related to their real estate business. Business2.com.au have had some terrible designs (I cannot even look back on some of them) and we have had some good ones. Over the past 3 or 4 years we have tired to simplify the offering and if you look out our website now and took away the content, you would be left just a logo, some advertising and a lot of white space. This is deliberate. Creating a news and information technology website it is all about the reader experience and in this instance content is king. Give business2.com.au a try on your mobile devices and just see how it works!

Responsive Design

To the untrained eye not much has changed, but the infrastructure behind this is a responsive framework – and you will be hearing a lot more about this in coming months and years. A responsive framework allows you the reader to experience the website on any modern mobile device. The content scales to fit the users device. This eradicates the need for a separate site layout for detecting mobile phones and tablet devices. Everything scales down to fit the user device.

Wikipedia Explanation

Responsive Web Design (RWD) essentially indicates that a web site is crafted to use Cascading Style Sheets 3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule, with fluid proportion-based grids (which use percentages and EMs instead of pixels), to adapt the layout to the viewing environment, and probably also use flexible images. As a result, users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling.

Costs

The costs can vary greatly and it is best to do this on your next website upgrade.If you are in the planning stage of a new website, talk to your web developer about Responsive Design. If you are getting a personal blog for real estate professionals, then you should insist on it being Responsive.

The Video Above is a Quick Little Intro from http://www.upanupstudios.com

It doesn’t really matter what your audience is, whether it be real estate, fitness or social services – if you are going to make an informative video and publish it on your blog, there are a few little secrets to success. Do it well and do it often!

A Great Intro/Exit Screen

Invest in great intro/exit screens from a professional media designer and stay away from anything you think looks good. Supply your high resolution logo and tell them you want a clean modern font. More than likely what you like is the Comic Sans font and a picture of a dancing baby, so leave it to a professional and stay out the way! A great intro/exit screen screams professionalism and once you have this and a great font you can create the rest yourself.

Act Like a Pro

Even if you are a one person shop or a small team you can still shoot a video like a pro, you can even make it look like you have a whole production unit in play. Shooting it in a style that looks like you are being interviewed makes you look important, it gives you a certain gravitas! So ditch the webcam mode and act like a pro

Natural Lighting

Who really cares how many awards you have won (except maybe yourself) and no one looks good in front of a wall. So get yourself positioned beside a window with great natural light flowing in, maybe some plants or flowers behind you. Even better outdoors in a park, but that is more difficult with sound.

Keep it short

Keep each video under 3 minutes, right about the maximum attention span of your audience! Create a series of videos each with its own topic and go over in your head what you would like to say. No looking at notes, remember we want this to look like you are being interviewed and giving advice.

Corcoran Group Video New York

This group do it well, notice natural light/colors in the background, notice how it looks like she is being interviewed? (most likely by no-one) and notice how it is short and sweet.

What you need to get this right in Production

• Easel
• HD Camera (FlipHD or similar will do)
• Quiet Setting
• 30 minutes a week!

What you need to get this right in Post Production

• Computer or Laptop
• iMovie or Windows Movie Maker
• Photoshop Elements (For Screen Edits)

As is their ways WordPress has released the latest version of the WordPress CMS and named it after a legendary musician saxophonist Sonny Stitt.

WordPress.org claims that “in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports”

Below is a list of new features and updates lifted from the WordPress.org Website

For Users

Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.

For Developers

There is a ton of candy for developers as well. I’d recommend starting your exploration with the new editor API, new jQuery version, better ways to hook into the help screens, more performance post-slug-only permalinks, and of course the entire list of improvements on the Codex and in Trac.