How to Use Video

YouTube is the worlds largest video sharing community. You probably noticed that we use YouTube to host most of our videos.

Setting up a YouTube account is easy. You use your Google Account to signup for YouTube.

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How To Host, Share and Edit Your Images Online

Flickr

Flickr is the most popular online photo management and sharing application on the web. Flickr offers users a number of useful features. You can securely share photos and videos (up to 90 seconds) online and privately show content to friends and family. Users have the option to make their pictures private or public, however around 80% of the pictures on Flickr are public. No fee is required to start loading and sharing pictures. Other features include maps to track where and when photos were taken, tagging and commenting on pictures, and the ability to create postcards and other products. It’s also possible to include your photo album into your blog. [Read more...]

How To Setup a Twitter Account [Video]


Like Facebook everyone has probably heard of Twitter but may not understand it as well. In this session we will show you how to setup a Twitter account and how to start putting it to good use.

How To Setup Twitter

  1. Go to Twitter.com
  2. Click on “Sign Up” button
  3. Enter your “Full name” First and Last Name or Company Name. This name will appear on your public profile.
  4. Enter a unique “Username”. This will appear in your public profile URL: http://twitter.com/USERNAME. You want to take care here to optimize this for branding with creative use of capitalization. I would if at all possible avoid using underscores in a Twitter name but if there is no other way to get what you want then you to. I had to do this @kenneth_jackson.
  5. Enter a Password
  6. Enter your Email Address
  7. You now are presented with the option to allow or disallow Twitter users to find you by your email address. If you are doing this for promotional purposes I would leave this box checked.
  8. Check out the terms of service
  9. Click on “Create my account” button
  10. The last option is whether or not you want to receive the information emails from Twitter.

Don’t follow a whole lot of people from the start as you will probably just confuse yourself and quit using it.

To get up and running right a way, find and follow Connections Information Systems and The Team Leaders by using either the “Find People” function in Twitter or just use the links at the bottom of this page.

Find People

  1. Click on “Find People”
  2. Click on Connections Information Systems or Kenneth Jackson
  3. Click the follow button
  4. Pick a couple
  5. You will now get our messages

To message some one directly simply ad the @ symbol to the front of their twitter name like @sellitanywhere and a direct message will be sent to your Twitter Friend.

Hash Tags

Hash Tags are the mysterious “#” in tweets followed by a few characters. What do they mean? Hash Tags are the Twitter communities way of tying a tweet to an event marking certain keywords searchable to help people find tweets about a specific topic or event.

Video

Twitter Clients

Google Chrome – Chromed Bird

iPhone and iPad - Official Twitter app for iPhone and iPad

Related Resources

Click Here to Sign Up for Twitter

Click Here to Follow Kenneth Jackson

As always Connections is happy to answer questions and assist you in any way we can to get your e-business up and running over the competition. Contact us at service@ConnectionsIS.com.


How To Setup a Facebook Account and Basic Facebook Features [Video]

The Wall

“The Wall” refers to the main page on your profile where you will see your newsfeed, message notifications, recent activity, etc. The wall will show the messages that you and your friends post, and the comments that follow. The first field on your wall is the Newsfeed. This is where you can share pics, video, and links to all the people on your friends list, or just the ones you select. Keep in mind that this is a fairly public area, depending on how tight your privacy settings are. So use discretion. To send a more private message to one or a select group of friends use the “message” feature to choose just the people you want to reach.

[Read more...]

How to Manage Facebook’s Newest Privacy Settings

After much bad publicity concerning overly complicated privacy settings, Facebook has finally simplified their privacy settings so that the average user can understand them. The new system puts things in a relativity simple to use interface so you can see at a glance if you settings are in your comfort zone. To access your privacy settings choose access the “Account” menu on the right side of the blue menu bar on your Facebook homepage. Select “Privacy Settings” from the drop down menu. [Read more...]

Introducing Facebook Fan Pages and Groups [Video]

Facebook Fan Page vs. Facebook Group

Facebook has two major tools that are particularly useful for getting your business name  out: Fan Pages and Groups. These are two different types of pages with different permissions for each.

Facebook Fan Page

Fan Pages are indexed and therefore visible to people even if they don’t have a Facebook account. Fan Pages are like normal Facebook Profiles, but for companies,  brands, and organizations. Fan Pages are better for the long term relationship with your customers because it allows them the freedom to post on your wall, send messages, accept invitations, and upload pictures. Any updates you make to your Fan Page will appear in the newsfeed on the wall of anyone who has become your fan, so it is a great way to advertise an upcoming sale or promotion. It free advertising, targeted to your customers and market, making it a no-brainer for any business. [Read more...]

How to Setup a Google Account [Video]


A Google Account is your gateway to a variety of services to enhance your web presence. As a general rule each website should have its own Google Account.

  1. Go to Google.com
  2. Click on “Sign in” in the upper right hand corner.
  3. Click on “Create an account now” link.
  4. Enter the current email address that you will use for account verification.
  5. Select a password of at least eight characters. We suggest something complicated with a mix of upper and lowercase characters, numbers and non-alpha numeric characters.
  6. Choose wether or not to stay logged in all of the time. (Recommended)
  7. Choose whether or not to Enable Web History. It does improve personal search results.
  8. Choose your location.
  9. Select your birthday. This is not displayed anywhere. It is simply trying to verify legally eligible to have an account where you live.
  10. Try and decipher the Google captcha and enter what you think you see in the provided field (Good Luck).
  11. Agree to the terms of service.
  12. Click on “I Accept. Create My Account” button.
  13. You will now be asked to confirm the email associated with the account. When you receive the confirmation email click the confirm link at the top.
  14. You will be taken to a confirmation page. You can now log on to your new Google account.

Video

Related Resources

Blog Post – Why You need a Google Account

As always Connections is happy to answer questions and assist you in any way we can to get your e-business up and running over the competition. Contact us at service@ConnectionsIS.com.


Our Favorite Google Chrome SEO Extensions [Video]


You can add many new features to Google Chrome by adding extensions. Some features are useful for some people, but not for others. Extensions allow customization of Google Chrome while keeping your browser free of clutter that you don’t use. Google Chrome extensions can be found at https://chrome.google.com/extensions.

From an SEO standpoint we are interested in tools that allow us to communicate with our audience better, track our progress and check up on our competition. These are a few of our favorites tools to do just that. [Read more...]

How to Install Google Chrome [Video]

Why Do We Recommend a Browser?

  1. We are looking for the browser with the best speed and performance.
  2. We want to offer a constant look and feel throughout our demonstrations so that you experience a website the same way we do.

Recently Google added extensions to Chrome extending its usefulness for our purposes and making it a contender. [Read more...]

Introducing Magento Commerce [Video]

Magento is an easy to use, low cost, open source ecommerce application that can be used to create an online store and product database. With literally thousands of ways to customize your Magento store you are sure to find the look and function you need to make your brand competitive in the online marketplace.

Like with WordPress, Magento’s open source platform attracts developers and designers from all over the world. New themes, and extensions are coming into the market daily, allowing you to customize your store to your heart’s content and make changes as needed. You can even integrate your Magento site with your blog if you are using WordPress, or other popular blog applications. [Read more...]

Introducing WordPress [Video]


WordPress is a free online web page creation tool that is so easy to use that literally anyone can make at least a basic web site within minutes. What is most impressive about WordPress though is the enormous variety of themes, plug-ins, and add-ons that make WordPress a web publishing powerhouse.

WordPress is open-source, that means that programmers and designers are allowed to come up with new plugins, themes, ect. to use with it.  There are thousands of free and low cost themes and plug-ins available, giving the you limitless ways to customize your website to suit your needs. [Read more...]