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PRESS THIS LINK TO SEE THE YOUTUBE CLIP OF THE MAKING OF THIS PODCAST   Social Media Episode 4 We are going to look at all the other social media networks, which are not quite so popular as Facebook or Twitter; however, these networks either have a large following at the present moment, or are growing at a quite impressive rate. We are going to look at what these networks are aimed at and what WordPress plugins are available to help you get the most from them. I normally try and build an online relationship by encouraging leads to join me on multiple social media networks and also subscribe to my monthly newsletter. One of the main things I would advise anybody who is looking at a social media marketing or lead generation tool for their business is be realistic about how much time you or your staff really have to devote to social media outreach on a consistent basis. Many people in the WordPress design/development community use Twitter as a method to talk to people in their close “tribe”; for example, a small group of people they have worked with or know from meetings at industry conferences or other WordPress networking activities. However, I disagree with this limited approach. I use these social media networks as a tool to reach a much larger target audience in what I call a “layered social media strategy.” It is also ineffective to just see it as basically being the same as any other broadcasting activity as the traditional hardcore marketer might do.   Some marketers feel that it has a lower ROI because it is either free or inexpensive compared to other traditional broadcast marketing activities like radio, direct mail or television.  They really don’t understand how to transform their social media activities into a truly powerful communication and relationship building tool. I’m going to look at some of the less well-known social media networks and show you how integrate them with your WordPress-powered website. Google Plus YouTube Pinterest Instagram Snapchat Vine Meetkat LinkedIn                                                                                                                    LinkedIn: In 2014, LinkedIn reached 300 million registered users. LinkedIn is much more than a job finding social media network. Using this network effectively can be a bit confusing depending on how you integrate this network into your online marketing activities. Any business owner who is in the B-to-B service sector should be using LinkedIn and it is one of the most powerful professional lead generation tools that available. You will need to spend some time researching its use in order to accomplish anything real in business terms. So here are some of the best WordPress plugins that work with LinkedIn:  WP-LinkedIn:   This is a free WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to show various parts of your LinkedIn profile on your WordPress website.    Basic Facts:  Cost: Free   Active Installs 5000+ Rating 4.1 Last Updated 3-17-15 LinkedIn Profile Badge: I used this plugin on quite a few websites and it does a really nice job of showing your LinkedIn profile badge. It’s a basic plugin and hasn’t been updated for over 2 years.   Cost: Free   Active Installs 1000 + Last Updated 11-28-12 Leenk.me: Leenk.me is a really interesting new plugin that pushes your WordPress content on different social media networks, including LinkedIn. I going to try it out soon because its features would really add value to a site. . It’s a paid solution but offers a one-month free trial period.   Cost: $5 to $15 per YEAR!   Active Installs 2000+ Last Updated: 9-1-15

PRESS HERE TO SEE YOUTUB CLIP: THE MAKING OF WP-TONIC SOCIAL MEDIA AND WORDPRESS BY JONATHAN DENWOOD AND BILL CONRAD     Social Media and WordPress Social Media over the past couple of years has really become an important part in the lives of all types of WordPress users from online eCommerce storeowners to people who are running online courses to individuals trying to sell digital products. It’s also become one of the main ways that WordPress designers and developers market their products and themselves online. We going to show you how to set-up your WordPress website to be really social media friendly to visitors and also that allows you easily publishing your website content through social medial. We going look at a number of social media WordPress plugins that can really help you put your social media on steroids we also going to subdivide these plugins into 3 areas. 1.     Social Media Sharing 2.     Social Media Following 3.     Social Media Comments Social Media Sharing You got to get your post/article shared on social media. This is mostly done by using buttons on your website that make it easy for people to share your content on all the leading social media platforms.   We are going to look at some the best WordPress plugins that allow you to do this. However there also different ways of showing button on your website. Online Social Media Sharing Services However, you probably thinking why I should use one of these services compared to just using a WordPress plugins. The main reasons are theses. 1-    It can cut down on the number of individual social media plugins you will have to install on your website. 2-    If you have a plugin conflict and you need to keep the plugin that is conflicting with your normal social media plugin choices. 3-    Some hosting providers like WP-Engine will not allow you to install some of the most popular social media plugins because of stability and security concerns. ShareThis: are a well know service not only for WordPress powered websites but for a number of CMS (content management systems.) The nice thing is that service that is of interest connected to social media sharing is free and they also provide a nice WordPress plugin system that makes it really easy to integrate their online service. Shareaholic: is another easy to use social media button sharing online service that also totally free. They also provide a really nice WordPress plugin system. AddThis: is another great fully featured and free online service that offers a lot and I mean a lot of free functionality. They also like all the online services I’m going to talk about here offer a nice fully powered WordPress integration plugin system. I have used all three on client’s websites that either I have developed or I was maintaining for clients. I personally feel that ShareThis offered the best mixture of different button styles and core functionality.  Floating Social Floating Social media bars are popular at the present moment here some that you should look at. I’m not a totally into floating social media bars just because they do take up a lot of page restate and are really in the face of your users however there are effective.   Floating Social Bar: wpbeginner. I’ve used this plugin myself of number of clients websites and I’ve have found it one of best connected to loading times and core functionality and it also free.   Floating Social: wpmudev is another nice floating plugin however it’s not free but on the other hand $19 is not that expensive. You get a lot of adjustment functionality with this plugin that you don’t see with most of the free plugins.   Jetpack:  automatic have a floating social media bar as part of large plugin library of core functionality.   Flare: is another great looking media floating bar that also totally free. I personally have not used this plugin yet but it does seem to have all the functionality you would want with this type of plugin. It also has a very nice backend interface. You also get a lot of color and placement adjustment functionality that you don’t get with some of the other free plugins.   Here’s a nice full article on Netmediablog that goes into some more detail on floating social media plugins and gives you a list of the seven most popular at the present moment. Hybrid Semi Floating Bars SumoMe: This is a great semi free WordPress plugin that positions a set of social media icons on the normally on left side of your website. We use this on WP-Tonic.com own website.   Encourage social sharing with Social Share & Locker Pro: Is a nice with a strong stylish look price $14 One of the reason you would look at this type of paid plugin unlike SumoMe is the plugin is not sharing data that is going to be used and sold to a third parties.   Monarch: is another really nice looking plugin from ElegantThemes it the best looking of all three however it does cost $89 but you do get excess to all of Elegant Themes, themes for this price.   Social Media sharing plugins Social Sharing by Danny: This is a really nice but also lightweight social media plugin that allow you place social media links before, after al basically anyway on your pages, posts or sidebars. It has its limits when it comes to styles but it is free.   Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress: is really a great paid for social media plugin it only costs $14. It really is a very flexible and powerful. It offers a lot more options then Social Sharing by Danny.   Media Feather: is another social media icon and link building plugin which is also free. I used this on number of websites.   Here a couple detailed articles from both Bloggingwizard & Modern WP Themes that gives you more information on all the best possible social sharing plugins you have your WordPress website.   Social Media Following The more people that follow your websites and your posts or articles the more you will influence other who will push people to your website. One the best way to grow your social media following is to link to your social media profiles all over your website and make it super easy for people to join your social media properties.   Social Media Widget: I normally use this particular plugin on almost all my own and clients website it offer a lot of power but is also very flexible.   Social Icons Widget: I really also like this plugin and I use it almost as much as the Social Media Widget plugin. It has a different looks with a more Apple flat styles.   Helios Solutions Social Media Buttons: I’ve personally haven’t used this particular plugin but it looks good and it also has some floating functionality connected to allowing people to see your social media profiles.   Social Media Comments Some people have said that comments on websites were semi dead with social media properties growing in power and influence. I personally can understand this because I don’t run or normally recommend active comments on most websites that I have been involved in. However this is more to do with the active time that is need to managed a truly functioning comment section on a website.   However, on a active website a good comment area can really increase the power and usefulness of your website. One of the important areas is integrating your comments with social media so its much easier to login to a comment area.   Hosted Disqus: is very popular in the WordPress community it a hosted solution but it has some great WordPress integration plugin. It free service but like most of these free services your data is collected and used by third parties.   Livefyre: Are less popular then Disqus but it online service is impressive and you really should look at it   Self-Hosted Jetpack Comments: is a very popular solution to making the administration and posting comments on a WordPress powered website much more easier experience. However I’m not a big fan of Jetpack but if does do a great job and it developed and supported by Automatic.   Social Comments: This looks to a really interesting plugin with loads of power and flexibility and its one of two plugin commenting solutions that I’m looking at the possibility of integrating into the WP-Tonic.com website in the near future.   Postmatic: is a new comment management plugin but it has some really interesting functionality and is one of two solutions I looking at for WP-Tonic.com website.   Conclusions At the begging of this article I said that integrating social media onto your website is getting more and more important.    What I feel I have show in this piece is the power of hosting your own WordPress website because you wouldn’t get all the possible flexibility or options you have with a self hosted WordPress solution with some of the fully private hosted solution like Wix.com, Squarespace or Weebly also with the new breed of WordPress page builders like BeaverBuilder its increasingly not necessary to look at these fully hosted solutions that really tire you down to their particular technology.        

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Jonanthan and I will redo this episode. It is the first of four parts on social media.   =========================   WP-Tonic is not only a WordPress maintenance and support service, but we publish a twice weekly WordPress business podcast where we talk with some of the brightest minds in WordPress development and online marketing.  

PRESS HERE TO SEE THE UNCUT YOUTUBE VERSION OF THE INTEVIEW BY BILL CONRAD AND JONATHAN DENWOOD WITH PATRICK PAULAND FROM WOOCOMMERCE.

PRESS THIS LINK TO SEE BEHIND THE SCEENS YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE MAKING OF EPISODE 027 WITH JONATHAN DENWOOD AND BILL CONRAD   Episode 4 of WordPress and Membership Sites In this episode Jonathan  gives his recommendation to me for New Media Gold's membership plugin and it is Restrict Content Pro, a Premium Memberships for WordPress. Here our full article on all seven membership plugins! [su_button url="http://www.wp-tonic.com/7-powerful-flexible-wordpress-membership-plugins-build-successful-online-community/" background="#EE9D39"]Read More[/su_button]   Summary: which of these membership plugins is the best overall? We have a difficult decision here. You have seven really good WordPress membership plugins solutions that will all do an excellent job for you—no real dogs here! However, if you have a gateway provider that you have or want to use, you need to be careful connected to what plugin you choose. If your gateway provider is not PayPal or Strip, you need to check and make sure that your membership plugin supports this provider. There are two on our list that provide the most flexibility connected to gateway choices: Magic Members WishListMember If you are building a membership website yourself and it will have a need for some detailed functionality for upselling/downselling or concurrent accounts, but you are not in need for a particular gateway provider, I would look at these three plugins: MemberPress Magic Members iThemes Exchange/Membership If you are looking to build a simple membership site yourself and cost is a consideration, I would look at these three. Paid Membership Pro Restrict Content Pro iThemes Exchange/Membership If you are looking for membership that integrates into eCommerce, I would look at these two: iThemes Exchange/Membership: WooCommerce/Groups Overall Winners For a powerful membership plugin that has great general functionality and flexibility, you can’t really go wrong with iThemes Exchange/Membership. However it’s not cheap and you really will be committing yourself to the iThemes (i.e. you probably will get your theme and all the other additional micro plugins from them). If you’re just looking for a cheap, well coded and supported, basic membership WordPress plugin, I don’t personally feel you can go wrong with Paid Membership Pro. We Finally Know the Membership Plugin! Restrict Content Pro is a complete membership and premium content manager plugin for WordPress. It creates an unlimited number of memberships levels, including free, trial and premium. We will be able to manage members and their subscriptions, track payments, offer discounts with a complete discount code system, and provide premium, members-only content to your subscribers. Before Jonathan disclosed his choice we went over the following plugins: WishList Members Membership Press Magic Members Restrict Content Pro  New Media Gold choice by Jonathan. Digital Access Pro S2Membership  

PRESS THIS LINK TO SEE UNCUT VERSION OF THIS PODCAST ON YOUTUBE   New Media Gold Followers and Members, I am going to start putting in this blog, the RSS feeds of some of the podcast that we produce. Late Sunday night we release WP-Tonic which is a WordPress tech show hosted by Jonathan Denwood and me. You should like it and I  hope you get a lot out of it! In episode 26 is part 3 of a 5 part series on wordpress membership sites. Here is the iTune Link: 026 WP-Tonic: Membership Sites Part 3 In this episode, we dive into WooCommerce and Groups for WooCommerce and WP Courseware. For detailed show notes head on over to WP-Tonic. Jonathan has a great blog and the show notes are in more detail.  V/r Bill Thank you for following New Media Gold and WP-Tonic.