Free Tool For Managing Social Accounts

May 20, 2010 By Ken Magas Leave a Comment

HootSuite is a powerful free tool for managing social accounts. FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Ping.fm. HootSuite manages multiple accounts in one interface. There’s also an iphone app for HootSuite. The full version app for iPhone costs $2.99

Powerful features such as RSS feeds to your posts, post scheduling and url shortening make this free application a must have for anyone managing multiple social accounts.

Filed Under: Social Media

Combine Facebook And Twitter Accounts

May 19, 2010 By Ken Magas Leave a Comment

Combine your Facebook and Twitter accounts to optimize your social media exposure and to save time. There is no denying that Facebook and Twitter offer graphic designers a great way to network and search for work opportunities. Build your fans and followers gradually and you will be rewarded with a valuable social team.

Here’s how to combine Facebook and Twitter accounts:

While in your Facebook account go to http://www.facebook.com/twitter/

Follow the steps and log into your Twitter account. Enter your twitter username and password in the required fields to link Facebook to your Twitter account.

You’ve combined your Facebook and Twitter accounts! Now you can make Twitter updates to show up in your Facebook account. You have options to display only certain Twitter content. Status updates, photos, links, notes and events can all be synced. You selected categories from your Twitter account will now display in your status on your Facebook account.

This simple process makes your social network more united and will drive more traffic from one account to the other. The time savings are huge in terms of saving the duplication of effort.

A great free tool for managing social accounts is HootSuite. Set up a free HootSuite account and your social media world will feel much more organized.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, Productivity, Social Media, Twitter

A Guide To WordPress Features

January 22, 2010 By Ken Magas Leave a Comment

WordPress is a wonderful content management system (CMS) for websites. It is quick to learn and there are thousands of templates, many of them are free, to get you started. The graphics in templates can be fully customized within the existing code structure. Also, many of the template parameters such as colors and fonts can easily be customized. WordPress offers many rich features that make it such an appealing platform:

  • Simplicity of WordPress – WordPress is so user friendly, it won’t take long before you learn enough to generate great looking fully operational websites.
  • The Cost of WordPress – The WordPress platform is free and many of the templates to get you started are free. So why not get started! The only cost will be setting up your hosting which can be a little as $84.00/year! Here’s the hosting company I use. They also include a FREE domain with hosting. and will walk you through the WordPress installation process. The hosting performance is spectacular.
  • WordPress Themes – There are thousands of themes to get you started. As a designer, you’re not limited to the graphics supplied in a theme. You can customize the graphics, fonts, colors, etc. to meet your needs. I’ve learned from experience that the premium WordPress themes (the one’s you pay for) as worth the small investment. They offer additional out of the box functionality and are SEO optimized. Purchase WordPress premium themes and you’ll be a many steps ahead out of the gate.
  • WordPress Plugins – WordPress developers have designed and endless number of plugins that automatically add functionality to websites.
  • WordPress Auto Ping – Automatically notifies other hubs that the site has been updated. This is a powerful promotional tool and will drive more traffic to the website.
Filed Under: WordPress

WordPress For Graphic Designers

January 15, 2010 By Ken Magas Leave a Comment

As a graphic designer, there is much opportunity for work designing websites. I started designing websites 10 years ago and quickly realized I loved the design aspect of creating a website,  however handling the code and others aspects of making it go live was a headache. I struggled through my first website working out the graphics and implementing code using Adobe GoLive (now Dreamweaver). I was frustrated with the limitation of code as it related to design. I gave up on creating turn key websites and started working with webmasters who took my layered photoshop files and created the sites for me. This worked for years, but then WordPress entered my life!

With the WordPress platform, I am easily able to create turn key, content managed sites independent of a webmaster. WordPress opened up a world of opportunity where I did not have to rely on code professionals to implement my designs. WordPress has been liberating!

I recommend that all designers with an interest in designing websites learn the WordPress platform. The basics are very easy to understand and with the help of templates to get you started, websites can be designed very quickly with custom graphics.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: Website Design, WordPress

Getting Website Traffic With Good SEO Basics

December 29, 2009 By Ken Magas Leave a Comment

Getting website traffic is the goal with any website. The more website traffic, the more revenue the website will generate. SEO is a challenge. It’s not a perfect science and the parameters are ever changing. There are several layers of SEO implemented in websites, but here are the basics  you should be doing with any website. These SEO tips will get you started in creating a website that will be optimized for search engine traffic.

  1. Choose the right URL. Keywords are the words people key into search engines to ultimately find your website. Website URL’s must be keyword rich. For instance, if you were to start a home improvement website, try to have the words homeimprovement in the url (www.besthomeimprovement.com).
  2. Title your posts in a specific way to reflect your content. Be very literal in your titles. Have them be a short summary of the article.
  3. Do not overuse graphics. This is tough for designers. You must remember that images do not count with search engines. They cannot see the text in images. Use graphics effectively and sparingly in all parts of your websites.
  4. Develop your keywords. Each page of your site should be centered around keywords. Keywords are like a table of contents for the search engines. If your page is keyword dense, the search engines will rank your page higher than pages which are not. Use keywords in your page title, page text, page alt tags and page anchor tags. Use keywords so they sound natural in your writing.
  5. Register with the Search Engines and Directories. Once your site is complete, submit it to these major search engines. AltaVista, Google, Lycos/Fast, MSN Search/Bing, Open Directory Project, Yahoo! Note that it may take several weeks for the engines to index your site, so be patient.
  6. Develop incoming and outgoing links on your site. Getting good links is critical for good search engine ranking. Sites should link to and from respectable sites that are related to your site. A great tool for analyzing links is SEO Elite.

SEO is essential for a website to be effective. Good unique content and good SEO practices will ensure your website will receive maximum visitors.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: SEO, website traffic, WordPress