Video Tutorial: How to Truncate Posts in Blogger

I'm changing things up a bit and sharing a video tutorial in today's post.  I got a new webcam and have more free time to edit and post for you. For those that prefer written instructions, please refer to the copy below.  Hope you enjoy!



Video link here for those reading by email :)

If your blog is powered by blogger, you may have wondered if there was a way to truncate posts without changing your template entirely.  Good news! There is an easy way to truncate posts (moving forward, and you can also edit previous posts to truncate those as well if you wish). 

This tutorial will be short and sweet, because it’s just that easy! Wondering why you should bother truncating posts? It decreases load time (which may help with SEO) and may increase page views – both good things.  I came across the idea of truncating via the lovely Likely Lola here.  I’m a new reader to her blog and am enjoying it.

How to Truncate Posts in Blogger

1. After you’ve composed your post, decide what place is best to truncate within your copy.  Do you want to truncate after a certain line number, or do you prefer to vary the truncation based on the flow of the entry? This method works in either case.
2. Place your cursor where you’d like to truncate.
3. Look for the truncation icon – you’ll be surprised to see it’s been in front of you! Click the truncate icon.
   
   

 Afterwards, your text (in writing/draft mode) should look like this:

4. Publish, update or schedule your post. The finished product should look like this (notice the "read more" in red?):




Laura is a marketing professional and blogger who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Five Ways to Use the New Facebook Scheduler - A Must Read!

She's smiling because she LOVES the new FB scheduler ;)

If you are a Facebook page admin, I can’t stress enough just how HUGE my last post was for the way you “do” Facebook. 

To get your creative juices flowing, I’m sharing five ways to use the new Facebook scheduler to streamline your Facebook postings, save you time and engage your audience! Remember, you can schedule these out in advance (up to 6 months from now!) and let Facebook do the work for you while you carry on with your life.  Of course, you’ll want to stay posted on comments/likes/questions via the handy Facebook mobile page manager app. 

Here goes…

Five Ways to Use the New Schedule Feature in Facebook

1. Sort through a few of your favorite photos and schedule out a status update (with accompanying photo) for each.  You could call it “Flashback Friday” or “Photo Thursday”, etc. 
2. Gather together a few testimonials/recommendations you’ve received (via LinkedIn or otherwise) and post each one as a status update over the next few months.
3. Ask a question.  Mark your calendar for the day the question will be posted, so that you’re sure to be available to respond to comments as they come in.  Remember, you can do this (respond to comments) via the pages app for your mobile device, too!
4. Share a “on this day in history” update.  What milestones do you have to share? It could be anything from “On this day, exactly one year ago, I left my full-time job to pursue my creative business dreams” to “Today is National Ice Cream Day – here is one of my favorite sundae recipes (link)”.
5. Post a link to an article you’ve found especially helpful.  Your fans enjoy reading your own content, but are just as delighted to discover what fuels your business! Share a favorite blog article, news article, DIY project, etc. with them.

I’ll be posting ideas 6 – 10 in the coming weeks as well.  In the meantime, I hope I’ve given you a few fun ideas to get you started!  Did you miss the Facebook scheduler post? It’s over here.  Best of luck.

Laura is a marketing professional and blogger who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Valuable Tweets That May Be Costing Your Business Money

If you’re an avid Twitter user, you likely scan your “mentions” and “interactions” on Twitter on a daily basis (if not more frequent than that). But, if you tweet for a business, you may be overlooking a valuable tool on twitter. 

Not to sound alarmist, but there may be conversations happening on Twitter right now about your business that you aren’t aware of.  Compliments, complaints, questions, you-name-it.  How is this possible? 

Reasons you may be missing tweets about your business:

• People often assume your Twitter name instead of looking it up.  If your business is ABC Sign, most will assume @ABCSign instead of a variation of that, like @ABC_Sign or @ABC_Sign_Co or @1ABCSign, is your Twitter handle.  

• People may not use your Twitter name (“handle”), but instead may simply type in your business name, such as “ABC Sign.”

• Others may hashtag your  business name instead of using your handle (example: #ABCSign)

How can you get involved in conversations/tweets about your business on Twitter when people are not using your Twitter handle? There is a simple solution, called the “search” (or “saved searches”) tool.  Tutorial below.

How to Create a "Saved Search" on Twitter

1. Go to https://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced.

2. Complete the “exact phrase” search field. 

Important Note: Don’t fill in the “exact phrase” and “hashtag” fields in one search.  Instead, save as separate searches.

3. Select “English” from the language if you wish.

4. Click “Search” (example below)

5. Any tweets related to your search will appear.  You may be surprised to find more than a few! Or, perhaps there aren’t any recent tweets.  Either way, you’ll want to save the search by following the next step.

6. Drop down the settings tool on the right-hand side of your results and a “save search” option will appear.  Click on it.

7. Your search is now saved, and you can easily scan this saved search by clicking on the search magnifying glass on the top right-hand side of any of your screens on Twitter to reveal your saved searches.  Highlight the search of your choice and your results will appear.

I’ll also be posting a Hootsuite tutorial on creating and saving searches if you tweet using that platform instead of directly on Twitter.

Laura is a marketing professional and blogger who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Are You Twitter Listing?

By now, you're likely tweeting away! Whether you're a twitter newbie or a veteran, Twitter lists will prove to be most helpful, especially as you grow the number of people you follow on Twitter.
Someone recently asked me how I seem to find goodness-filled tweets when I'm following 4,000 people. My answer: Twitter lists.

Thank goodness, I had enough insight when I was new on Twitter to create and use Twitter lists. Sure, it was somewhere between follower 1 and follower 1,000 that I realized how essential the lists would prove to be.  Yep, there were a few long days where I had to back-track and list each person I was following so that my streams were super-organized. 

Example: Out of 4,000 people, nearly 500 are Charleston marketing and public relations professionals.  And I have them all in their very own list.  That means at any time of the day or night, I can jump over to that list (on my computer OR phone) and see what's going on with these talented peeps.

Same goes for artists...I have close to 200 artists whom all took "Flying Lessons" with Kelly Rae Roberts in their own organized list.

Twitter gives you up to 20 lists of your very own.  Think about how your followers break down (do you tend to follow authors, inspirational folks, house and home peeps, jewelry makers, mommy bloggers, tech bloggers, etc?) - make lists and start listing! And if you're late to the list party? Trust me, it's worth adopting lists today, and even going back to list your tweeps.

Need a tutorial on how to create a Twitter list? I'm reposting a link to this updated tutorial, previously shared on this blog but still very handy.

Are we following each other? Tweet me @lauracatherineo and tell me you read this post.  I'd love to meet you!

Enjoy!

Laura is a marketing professional and blogger who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn.
 

How to Change the Number of Posts that Appear on My Blogger Blog Homepage

One of my amazing artist friends Mary Beth Volpini asked me a question today that I thought could make a neat “Tutorial Thursday” post.  Her question was about changing the number of posts that display on her blog homepage.  So, today I wanted to share the few simple steps to change this number.  If you aren't using blogger or don't need to change this setting, be sure to scroll to the end of this post to get a peek at MB's art!

How to Change the Number of Posts that Appear on My Blogger Blog Homepage

1. Login to Blogger
2. Click on “Settings”.
3. Click on the “Formatting” tab and look for the first item, which says “show at most”.
   
4. Change the number from the dropdown to the number of posts you’d like to display on your main page.
5. Be sure to click on “Save Settings” at the bottom of the page. 

You’re all set!

Be sure to visit Mary Beth’s blog.  She is an “artist, designer and mom…redesigning her life after cancer”.  Mary Beth is “Drawn to Color” and you’ll surely be touched by her beautiful mixed media artwork. I'm sharing a few of my faves below. Simply breathtaking!

Melting Colors Garden

Stand Alone

Follow Your Heart

Love

Have a great rest of your week.

Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

How to Publish Your Own Paper.li Online Newspaper

Have you visited http://Paper.liyet? According to their website,

“Paper.li is a content curation service.  It enables people to publish newspapers based on topics they like and treat their readers to fresh news, daily.” 

I came across Paper.li many months ago but have developed an increased interest in the content sharing after being featured in a Twitter friend’s own paper.li online newspaper.  @SHUEDA (Greg Shue) publishes a “#CHS #Design Daily” using paper.li, and I have been thrilled to find myself as a contributor on several occasions (example here: http://paper.li/SHUEDA/charleston-design). The best part? It’s allowed me to meet new people and has helped grow my relationship with @SHUEDA and others featured in his daily paper.  A few weeks ago another Twitter friend, @ashleytcaldwell, released her own paper.li daily newspaper, The Modern Connection Daily.

Today I’m walking you through the process of creating your own Paper.li online newspaper.

I created three of my own daily papers:
The Charleston Marketers Daily,
The Dream Big #ArtDaily, and
the Charleston Local Business Daily.

These were so much fun to make, I imagine I’ll make a few more! The best part? Your daily paper is automated, and you can set up the daily tweet to run by itself as well.  I’d encourage you to create your own daily paper, especially if you’ve created lists on your twitter account.


How to Create Your Own Paper.li Daily Online Newspaper (It’s Free!)

1.       Visit http://Paper.li.

2.       Click on “Create a Paper”.

3.       Sign in with your Twitter (or Facebook) account.  I signed in with Twitter because that’s where I’m pulling my content from.

4.       Authorize Paper.li to use your Twitter (or Facebook) account.

5.       Provide your email address and click "continue". 

6.       Important! Instead of clicking on "Create Paper", we are going to customize your paper.  This will give you more control over the content and will allow you to customize the name of your paper.   To do this, click on "show me" under "Want to create a paper based on a specific topic or list of people?"
7.      Now, Create your newspaper by entering a Title.  Try to think of something short and sweet that will come across well on Twitter.


8.       If you have Twitter lists, add the Twitter List that is in line with the desired content of your paper.  For example, I have a Charleston Marketers list on my Twitter account with 450+ people in Charleston who are in marketing/pr/design/advertising.  When I created my “Charleston Marketers Daily” paper, I added my “Charleston-Marketers” list from Twitter as the content stream that would power the content of my paper. If you don't have Twitter lists related to the content you'd like to publish, consider pulling in twitter users another way (by keyword, hashtags, etc.)

9.       Select your language and click “Publish”

10.       Now it’s time to set automatic publishing to your Twitter profile and/or Facebook wall.  To do this, go to your paper from the “my favorites” at the top right-hand side of paper.li when you’re logged in.

11.       Then, click on “paper settings” below your profile at the far top right.
12.   Select the time of day (and time zone) when you’d like your paper to be published and click “save settings”.
13.   Click over to the “promote” tab and make sure “automatically tweet to all your followers” to publish your paper to your Twitter followers (max once per day).

Congratulations! You’ve just created your very own customized online newspaper.

Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

How to Give Someone "+K" on Klout.com

Have you created your profile on Klout.com yet?  I’ve talked about Klout in this space before.  Klout is a free service that “identifies influencers on topics across the social web.”  I’ve noticed a few neat features from Klout recently. The first was Klout “perks”.  I talked about a free Klout “perk” I received over here.  Just a few weeks ago, I came across a new “+K” feature on Klout. 

So, what exactly does it mean to give someone a “+K” score?
A "+K" reminds me a little of a “recommendation” on LinkedIn, but it only takes a moment and you can tweet about it!  Klout recommends that you give someone a “+K” if that person has influenced you about a particular topic lately.  Today on “Tutorial Thursday” I’m going to walk you through the process of giving someone a “+K” on Klout.com.

How to give someone a "+K" on Klout.com:

1. Login to your personal Klout profile.  If you don’t have an account on Klout yet, you can easily create one from their homepage. 
2. In the search box on the top right-hand side of the Klout screen, type in the twitter username (“handle”) of the person you’d like to give a +K score to. 
3. This will bring up his or her profile on Klout.  Look for the area that says “influential about” on the user’s Klout summary page.  It will appear next to “influencer of” and below his/her profile. 
   
4. Click on “see all” in the “influential about” area. This will bring up the full list of topics Klout has identified as being areas this person is influential about.
5. Look for the “Give +K” button below the topic, such as “marketing” or “blogging”, etc.  Click on the “Give +K” button to give this person a “+K” for the chosen topic.
   
6. In the pop-up window, click on “tweet” or “share” to let this person know you gave him/her a “+K”.
    

Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

I'll Be Hosting a Webinar Today at 3 pm with @EtiquetteExpert

Etiquette Expert Jacqueline Whitmore

I met the lovely and talented "Etiquette Expert" Jacqueline Whitmore during an etiquette tweetup last summer.  Today (Thursday, June 23) I have the honor of leading a webinar with Jacqueline on Social Media. The topic is "10 Tips To Developing Your Brand Online".   If you're reading this post by email, I'm happy to share that the audio from the call will be available for purchase after the webinar.  Details below.

10 Tips To Developing Your Brand Online with Laura Otero:
If you've entered (or are entering) the world of social media, this conference call is for you! Have you watched as others soar in their social media efforts, while your social media presence isn't experiencing such growth? Or, are you just getting started with marketing your business online and not sure where to go or which profile to create next? Laura Otero will teach you the tips and tricks to branding yourself and your business online.

Participants will learn:
* How create and name your Facebook business page for success
* How to grow your Facebook fanbase significantly in a matter of days
* How to get started on Twitter
* Twitter basics for growing your networks
* Blogging basics and growing your community online
* How to create a YouTube channel
* Time-saving tips on maximizing your time in the social space

Date: Thursday, June 23, 2011
Time: 3:00pm - 4:15pm Eastern Time
Investment: $60.00 (includes the downloadable recording)
Buy Now (downloadable recording included for those who cannot make the call)
All expenses for continuing education taken to maintain and improve professional skills are tax deductible. Contact your accountant for details.

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Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn.

 

How to Create a Custom Screen or Tab to your Facebook Business Page

If you’re interested in adding a custom tab (no longer called a welcome screen) to your Facebook business page, I've posted the updated tutorial below (updated April 2012).  Before you jump into the tutorial, there are just a few items to talk about first!

What Graphics Program Should I Use?
Onto the graphics programs you may want to use...it helps if you can create your welcome graphics in Photoshop, but you can make do with other graphic programs on your computer if needed or look free web-based graphics programs.  Just remember to size your welcome graphic at 825 pixels wide (much larger than the 515 pixels it used to be!) for it to fit nicely in the welcome area provided by Facebook.

What if I want my Custom Tab/Screen to have Clickable Buttons?
Custom coded pages are always nice, because this allows you to make your graphics clickable to various pages/places (even outside of Facebook). That said, a nice static image can also serve you well until you can pursue a custom coded welcome page figuring it out yourself with practice and patience or hiring an expert to code it for you.

ONTO THE TUTORIAL

How to Create a Custom Tab for your Facebook Business Page
Using Wildfire’s iFrame for Pages App

1. Login to Facebook and visit http://apps.facebook.com/iframeshq/?ref=ts

2. Click on “install app”

3. From the dropdown, select the page you’d like to add your custom screen to


4. Click “add wildfire’s iframes for pages”

5. Fill out the form (name, email, company, phone), check “I agree to Wildfire’s terms and conditions” and click SUBMIT.

6. Select “custom image” if you have a jpeg image that you’d like to use as your welcome screen image OR select “custom html” if you have custom html code ready to place

7. Upload your custom image OR place your custom html

8. Check “I agree to not violate Facebook Platform Policies” and click “save and preview”
You’re all set! You’ve created your very own custom screen/tab for your Facebook business page. You can also look at a gallery of Facebook welcome screens I've created below and over on my website.

Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn.