Top Professional Photographers » My Favorite Things

The 411 on Facebook Mobile Texts and Twitter, Too!

Tammy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:41:56 +0000

Three great reasons you should be using Facebook Mobile Texts:

It’s free if you already have unlimited messaging in your cell phone plan.
Easy to stay in touch even when you are not near your computer.
It’s great free marketing if you get your clients to subscribe to receive your fan page updates via text.

Don’t assume everyone knows about this, and even if they’ve heard a little about it they may not have really checked into it, so tell your clients on your blog! They will love you for it! Plus, it could be great marketing for you if they subscribe via SMS.

It’s really quick and easy to setup, too. I recently helped someone setup their facebook and phone, and it only took a couple of minutes.

Logon to your facebook account and click here to Register for Facebook Mobile Texts. This is also where you will choose your settings.
Put this number in your phone contacts: 32665
Set your notifications. This gives you more control over what you receive.
FAQ for Facebook Mobile Texts.
Quick guide for Facebook Mobile Texts. Shows examples of using the necessary code to post what you want to post where you want it.
How to upload pictures via Facebook Mobile Texts. (Double check with your cell phone carrier to be sure this is included with your texting plan since you are actually sending to an e-mail address. We’re with AT&T, and this is included in our unlimited texting.
To subscribe to someone’s updates either go to their profile page and look in the left sidebar under their picture and click “subscribe sms” or go to your settings page and choose from your friends list. Fan pages can be subscribed to the same way.

Be sure to check with your cell phone carrier to be sure you have a texting plan. Also, please note that Mobile Facebook is not the same as Mobile Texts. Mobile Facebook requires web access and is not free unless you have that in your plan.

After you get setup, go blog about it and tell your clients to subscribe to your fan page! Maybe even have a fun contest to kick it all off!

But wait….what about Twitter? I just don’t have time to keep up with it all and need to make it easier. It’s easy. You can update your twitter status and follow a few friends through texts. Click here to read everything you need to know about Twitter, SMS, and Texts. Be sure to let your clients know about this one, too!

A New Favorite Thing: Gravatar

Tammy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:45:06 +0000

Ever see an image on a blog comment and wonder how they did that? They used a free service called Gravatar. I love how now when I comment on someone’s blog, you can see a picture with my comment…any image I want! Just another little thing to set you apart.

All you need to do is register at the link below and add your gravatar! Gravatar uses your e-mail address to associate your image with you. With one account, you can set up your gravatar to show with all of your different e-mails. You can even set different images for different e-mail addresses. With some e-mails you could assign a logo image and with others your picture.

http://en.gravatar.com/

A New Favorite Thing! You have got to see this blog template!

Tammy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:44:19 +0000

Remember, the AMAZING Wordpress blog template that I told you I had found? Well, hang on to your hats. Honestly, if I had known there was a blog template out there like this, I would have been looking for it a long time ago. I really just accidentally stumbled across it. Lucky me. And you now. Because I share.

Now, what has got me all excited about this template, you ask? Oh, where to start. First of all, it is easy. You know all that pesky code that always needs to be tweaked? It involves either going into one of the php files or the css file and trying to find something you need to changed that looks like it was written in another language. This takes hours…sometimes days, and with all the things we have to do, it takes valuable time. Well, no longer. This has the most amazing back end you ever want to see. Let me give you a break down of just a few things you can edit from the amazing theme options background:

Colors – easily edit any color on your blog (i.e. sidebars, fonts, links hovers, headers, etc.)
Header – want a rotating banner? No problem. Just put all the images you want to rotate in your header image directory, and there you go.
RSS Feeds – Choose how you want your readers to be able to easily subscribe to your blog with e-mail, rss feed, and comment icons.
Page Menu/Category Bar – Options to choose either a page menu bar or a category bar at the top of your site or you can have both if you want. Wait. It gets even better. You can even choose if you want to exclude any particular categories or pages from the bars. AND….you can even choose whatever colors you like for the fonts, links, backgrounds, hovers, etc.
Style Your Widgets – Want no border? Dashed? Solid? Set it all up here. Choose your colors, fonts. Style your header text or your body text.
Excerpts or Full Posts – You decide.

Okay, this is one of my favorite parts and is one of the reasons I think it would make a great theme for photographers. You can edit which pages you want your sidebars to be shown. This has amazing potential for photographers who want to have both a splash/intro page, and then more of a website when your readers want to see more. So, for example, you can have your home page sidebar free and easily design a custom page and use it as your static home page…with no sidebar. Then you can choose which pages or posts that you would like any sidebars on at all. Amazing potential, huh? And remember, this is all done easily through a special back end theme options area.

Now, honestly, I have just TOUCHED on what you can do. There is so much more….footer, read more, comments, etc. It can all be easily edited in this template.

Well, technically, you are. This is it. I’m still tweaking it and have been extra busy working on the Top Professional Photographers site to help bring more clients to you guys and haven’t had time to finesse it properly, but trust me the potential is there not to mention the ease at which you can edit everything. Download it and take a look, and you will see what I mean.

Here’s another working example:

Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Here are a couple of screen shots:

Check it out: Atahualpa