This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a LONG time…..I’m a complete geek about graphics. I have to admit, if I visit a site for the first time and it doesn’t grab me visually, I don’t stick around too long nor do I usually come back. Not saying that it’s necessarily a good thing (I’m sure I miss out on some good content), but, it is what it is!

So while I’ve been collecting sets of social media icons from other people (there are some really great sets out there- another post, a list of favorites..coming soon), I thought I would put out my own to give away & share the wealth. It’s a tribute to another love (other than WordPress I mean.. )….coffee!

Here’s a screenshot of the icons- you can download them below the image. Please feel free to Re-Tweet & share. I’d just appreciate it if you’d send people back here to download. Thanks!

Download them here! Just click the box…

So this past weekend I went to a live event in Las Vegas, “Launch Tree Live”. The event was hosted by Mike Filsaime and Anik Singal (who unfortunately couldn’t make it because he was sick…..and we missed Dan Raine too…..hope both are doing well!). I met some AMAZING people at the event (starting with the Las Vegas TweetUp the night before the event started, hosted by Eleanor Prior) and got to meet some of the Internet Marketers who have made a name for themselves in this business.

If you follow Internet Marketing at all, you probably heard about the webinar last week on “How To Make Money with Social Media”, hosted by Perry Belcher (the event made Internet history with about 9000 webinar attendees!). I had only heard a little about Perry over the past few months – the first time was part of a social media webinar series hosted by Joel Comm. If you haven’t heard Perry’s story- go over to his blog and watch his video. He’s a great guy and it just makes more sense to hear it directly from him!

ANYWHO……. In the last 9 months Perry has made a huge name for himself with social medai (all organic)- and his primary tools are twitter, facebook, youtube and WordPress!!!! WOO HOO! Of course, how could one NOT like WordPress? I’m going to go through his social media course pretty quickly here (just waiting for the info. from the event folks)- so I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. He also offered the one on one session at his house……needless to say I see a trip to Austin in the next couple of months!

While I know this post isn’t directly about WordPress- I just wanted to share about the event I attended at the great people I was fortunate enough to meet! I’ll be writing more on my personal blog soon and will keep posting pictures to share! I can’t recommend these live events enough….GREAT time!

BTW- if you haven’t see it yet- I have a free download on how to use the featured content gallery plugin…it’s a 17 page pdf. If you use StudioPress or like this plugin, it should help out if you have any questions!

Here’s another great plugin from Josh Jones at eight7teen – who, if you didn’t know is the guy who created the sexy bookmarks plugin that I love (I can’t help it, I’m a total geek when it comes to the visual stuff!).

This plugin is called EZ Twitter Links. What it does is it allows you to link to a twitter user’s profile from within your post. So, to give a quick example of this plugin in action, here’s a quick thanks for another fabulous plugin to @eight7teen . So, where in the first line of this post I manually created a link to Josh’s site, the link to his twitter profile will be automatically generated once I publish this post!

Another cool feature of this plugin is that it works for twitter hashtags too! You just use the hashtag like you would in a regular tweet # – (put the name of the tag right after the hash symbol) and it will generate an automatic link to the twitter search for that tag. Cool, huh? All links are no follow and all you have to do is install it and you’re ready to go. Nothing to configure!
Thanks for another great plugin Josh!

So this isn’t exactly just a WordPress update, but I can’t help but share this! We had our first San Francisco Tweet Up last week and it was great. Two of the people that showed up were the guys who just launched a brand new search engine for twitter called twazzup . I’ll get the correct spelling of both of their names and give them a proper shout out (I apologize guys)- but I LOVE this site! You might be wondering what’s so great about another twitter search engine, but you have to try it to see it for yourself. My first search was for ‘WordPress’ (imagine that). Once it came up I just left it open for a few minutes to watch the searches continue to drop in (kind of like tweetdeck) in REAL time! It also lists featured tweets, top trend makers, related photos and most popular links. I love this thing….maybe I need to set up a time to chat with the guys so I can create a video showing how fabulous it is!

So, before you do anything else, make sure you go check out this new twitter search engine – and spread the word. Retweet please!

http://www.twazzup.com

So in addition to this site, I’ve got a few other projects (and sites) I’m involved in, so I thought I’d share one of my recent projects with my WordPress friends!

Obviously social networking is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your site, create valuable relationships and learn TONS of great new things. And of course facebook is a big player in the social media arena. I have a group on facebook called ‘The Women of Internet Marketing’- which is where most of my facebook connections and interest in social media came from. Recently facebook has made some pretty big changes to profile pages AND pages…..and if you don’t have a facebook page for your business or brand, then you should.

So, with that being said, I’m having a free teleseminar with my friend Janet Majoulet-Foust (thewealthchick….you can see her site on my portfolio & twitter background page) on setting up your Facebook page- and WHY you need to do this now!  You can register for this telesminar on our “Lunch With the Chicks” website (we have a blogtalkradio show called ‘Lunch With the Chicks’ twice a month…that’s where the site came from….).

Here’s the link to the registration page. Hope to have you on the call:

http://lunchwiththechicks.com/build-facebook-fan-page/

One of the things that I love about twitter is the instant access to things we might not know about or have missed in an email. Today was no exception to that. I have a lot of work right now (which is good – I’m hardly complaining) and have been super sleepy this week from the time change for Daylight savings, so I decided to take nap this afternoon. I got up a little after 5pm to go pick up my niece for my sister, then got back and hopped back on to work on a few things at about 10 minutes to 6. I opened up tweetdeck and was reading through a few tweets when I saw a tweet about the Successfool’s Ustream TV show, which was starting at 6pm- so I figured, great timing!

If you haven’t heard of the Successfool,  check him out! His name is Alejandro Reyes . He’s in Sacramento (which is just about an hour from me) and I found his site sometime last year. Today was the first ime I’ve caught his show, which is a weekly show (every Wednesday at 6pm, pst). It was great- today he was talking about Twitter, what’s happening on Twitter and why it’s important to focus on building relationships- not just getting followers! I couldn’t agree more!  He also mentioned all the celebrities that are getting into twitter and how Ellen was trying to see how many followers she could get before going on Jay Leno tonight (which is so crazy because I got that tweet and followed her- as well as Jimmy Fallon, who has the founders of Digg on his show tonight…dvr time!). Twitter is blowing up right now, and everyone has something to say about it. Personally, I think it’s as simple as the old golden rule..”do unto others..”. What do you think?

So another one of the super cool things about twitter for me  is all of the fabulous links to new graphic sites, fun WordPress news and of course, WordPress plugins that get posted. And because I’m such a geek when it comes to graphics, I was totally excited when I found this site, which lead to this plugin (and hope the developer has more up his sleeve).

The plugin is called the “SexyBookmarks Plugin”, and it installs a menu of  social bookmarking sites with your posts- either above them or below them. They’re a little bigger than some of the other social plugins, but you only see half of the icon until you mouse over it, then it pops up. There are other customization options too. Obviously you can select which site icons you want to show (and if you don’t see a site you want included, you can contact Josh Jones, the developer, with the name of the site and the url and he’ll work on putting it in a future update), you can decide whether or not you want to use “nofollow” and there’s even a custom css for the div that contains the menu. And if you don’t know what that means, no worries. The plugin works great without needing to do that – just decided where you want it to show up and which sites you want to show.

If you have any problems with the plugin, you can check the FAQ on his site to see if your answer is there, if not, just drop him a note and I’m sure you’ll get some help getting it figured out. You can check out his site and download the plugin here:
http://eight7teen.com/sexy-bookmarks

Enjoy!

Being online everyday (all day) building my business, it’s no surprise that I’m aware of the storm that is ‘Twitter’….but what’s really surprising is how the rest of the world seems to be ‘tweeting’ too! Well, at least it’s making it’s way into mainstream media.

One of the simple things I enjoy doing is reading the Sumday paper, quite leisurely, with a big ol’ cup of coffee! And today was no exception. Actually, it was one of those mornings when you felt like you were SUPPOSED to be curled up on the couch with a blanket, in your jammies, with coffee and the paper. Even if the paper seems to be getting smaller and smaller every weekend. I actually think if it weren’t for the Wall Street Journal’s Sunday insert, there wouldn’t really be a business section on Sunday (but then, I guess if it weren’t for the WSJ, they’d have to come up with something else…but I digress).

So, needless to say I was quite pleased when the column ‘The Wallet” had this for a it’s article headline: “Savings and Service Sometimes a Tweet Away”.  The article was mainly about how big corporations are using their twitter accounts to ‘tweet’ customer service to their customers. On a side note, anyone know if any of the banks have ‘ Twitter’ accounts? yeah…I didn’t think so either. Just thought I’d throw in a little comic relief. Then tonight I was reading Redbook, and on the page called ‘The Mom Moment’, there was an article called ” What’s buzzing on the net: Twittermoms”. All about the twitter groups that are forming, and this one is for Web-savvy moms. It then went on to explain what Twitter is and how many people are ‘tweeting’.  While Twitter isn’t news to me, it’s clearly making it’s way into the news for everyone – regardless of why they’re ‘tweeting’.

So, whether you’re a web-savvy mom or an everyday online marketer….it’s clearly time to start ‘tweeting’!