Steinar Knutsen » wordpress

Audio and Video: How to podcast from your iPad and publish on WordPress with AudioBoo App

Steinar — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:53:20 +0000

The iPad serves many purposes, but for me it’s about marketing and finding new and different ways to leverage mobile technology to grow my business and engage my market online. New media has been especially interesting and I’ve confirmed the iPad is great for recording audio to create podcast episodes which can translate into new WordPress blog posts.

Listen or Download

I’ve written previous posts on how to post audio directly to WordPress from iPhone, so I won’t repeat everything here.

I love using my iPhone to podcast with AudioBoo and now I can do the same with my iPad. It’s a a great free app from the Apple iTunes store that allows you to record up to 5 minutes of audio, share on Twitter and tag for use in other platforms.

Personally, I use the AudioBoo RSS feed and WP-O-Matic WordPress plugin to automatically import my audio episodes into WordPress as individual posts. It’s great when you want to get content out on the fly and don’t necessarily have time to write a post or record a video.

What do you think? Have you tried AudioBoo? Does it seem like a good fit for your audience?

What

How to properly tag your images for search engine optimization

Steinar — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:17:17 +0000

Tagging your images for search engine optimization is a great tactic to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

If your site is being indexed by Google, chances are your images will be indexed as well. I suggest you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (free) just to make sure Google know you want your images indexed.

First, I tend to only use one image per blog post, so the optimization settings are pretty simple and only take about 10 seconds.

Once you’ve inserted your image you want to set the Title, Alt and Description tags to include your keywords or at least some description that relates to the topic of your content. Some content publishing systems, like WordPress, allow you to right-click and set the tags, but you might have to look at the HTML in some cases.

For example, if I’m blogging about “homemade fishing lures”, my optimized code would look like this:

Easy right? Give it a shot and track your image related traffic in Google Analytics.

What do you think? Do you tag your images for search engine optimization?

Posting videos in your blog just got easy with WordPress version 2.9

Steinar — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:40:42 +0000

For those of you familiar with WordPress, adding a video to a post has traditionally required one if not many plugins.

With WordPress 2.9, you just simply drop in the url and publish. WordPress does the rest!

Here’s a quick video showing you how to embed video in WordPress 2.9:

The following picture says it all …

And here’s the video I embedded video with some good suggestions on podcasting.

Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

How to Start an Effective Blog for Free (Video)

Steinar — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:30:52 +0000

Blogging is a great way to create original content, engage with customers and find new prospects for your business, yet many business people still have yet to make the leap. In this video I discuss six essentials to start an effective blog for free.

The myth is that blogging is difficult and expensive when in fact it’s simple and can be done with no money at all.

I specifically discuss:

How to get over your fear of blogging (practice and finding a comfortable zone)
Mapping out your blogging strategy (why you should blog, who’s your audience, and what’s your call to action)
Picking the right blogging applications or tools (Blogger, WordPress, Weebly)
Integrating plugins and widgets to increase the usability of your blog
Syndicating your blog’s RSS feed to get the word out and attract readers
Connecting with others via social media to drive traffic and a loyal following.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you whether blogging is the right thing to do. In my opinion, the benefits far out way the alternative.

How did you get started blogging? Any additional tips you can share? What else would you like to learn about blogging?

Publish audio to WordPress post with iPhone via email (Audio)

Steinar — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:39:55 +0000

This is a follow up to my previous post in which I surface a series of questions to consider when publishing audio to your blog or website.
Publish Audio to Wordpres with iPhone

UPDATE: Here are full details on
How to post audio directly to WordPress from iPhone

In this audio post I describe how I am posting audio to WordPress with the following applications:

- VR+ iPhone application to record in MP3 format
- Posterous.com to forward the incoming audio file
- WordPress as the final posting location of my audio file

This results is a post that is both browser and mobile friendly. Time to post from start to finish takes about 2 minutes and is automatically shared via Ping.fm on Twitter and my other social media networks. Have you experimented with audio on your blog? What’s working for you?

Safari User Agent iPhone Simulator – See How Your Site Looks to Mobile Users (Video)

Steinar — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:06:02 +0000

Safari 4.0 has a great feature in Advanced Preference that let’s you activate the Developer’s menu and view websites as if you were using an iPhone or iPod Touch. This is great if you are just curious, but even better if you are working on a new theme for your site to make it more mobile user-friendly.

I am using the WPTouch plugin on my WordPress blog to create my mobile theme and its proven very simple to install and customize. I’ve also incorporate Push notification, so when anyone leaves a comment on my blog, my iPhone notifies me with a pop-up message – it’s a beautiful thing.

WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod, Android, Storm & Pre

More than just a plugin, WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple's app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.

via WPtouch: Mobile Plugin + Theme for WordPress ↔ BraveNewCode Inc..

Have you updated your site to be mobile friendly? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Blogging – Tools, Topics and Traffic (Audio)

Steinar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:07:11 +0000

In this audio post I discuss the benefits of blogging and strategies to easily get started.

001-blogging-101.mp3

Topics Discussed:

What are some of the tools I can use to get started?
What do I blog about – what should I say?
How do I drive traffic and more readers?
What are the benefits of blogging?

Tools Covered:

What are your thoughts? What tools are you using and what makes blogging easier for you?

New Mobile WordPress Theme Activated with WpTouch

Steinar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:28:17 +0000

If you use WordPress, you might be interested in WpTouch, a great plugin which creates a customizable theme of your site for mobile devices.

It’s plug-n-play out of the box, but also very simple to tweak based on your preferences.

Here’s a screenshot of my blog, which took about 10 minutes to setup on WpTouch.

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