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Tips: How to Install and Fix the New ‘ShareThis’ WordPress Plugin

August 26, 2010 By James View Comments

ShareThis recently updated their WordPress plugin to allow you to choose a bunch of great new styles and display options. However, I found out that it took a little trial and error to get it to play nicely and do what I wanted it to do.

IMPORTANT: It was my experience if you already have the ShareThis plugin installed and simply update it, your options won’t show up on your page. You need to first deactivate, then delete the plugin, then reinstall it.

Fixing the Weird Little Lines that Show up at the Bottom of the New ‘ShareThis’ Plugin in Horizontal mode

Once you have the new plugin up and running, one of the popular options seems to be “Horizontal Count”. The problem is that for some reason the default style associated with that choice gives off funky little lines under the two “share” buttons.

It’s not much but it was enough to bug me so here’s how I fixed it.

You’ll need to be able to edit your head tag and add some style code to that.

Add this code inside style tags somewhere before your /head tag:

.stButton_gradient{background-image:url('http://w.sharethis.com/images/gradient.gif');background-repeat:repeat-x;border-left:1px solid #bfbfbf;border-right:1px solid #bfbfbf;border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf;padding-left:2px;padding-right:2px;padding-top:0px !important;padding-bottom:0px !important;line-height:16px;font-size:16px;font-family:serif;}

You can see the difference between the image and the actual buttons below. For some reason, the default padding the plugin puts on those buttons causes it to break just a little bit. What the code above does is simply remove the bottom and top padding.

If you try it, post your results in the comments so we can take a look.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: css, plugins, sharethis, Social Media, style, Tips, WordPress Tips

Facebook’s Unplanned Family

July 27, 2010 By James View Comments

Since it’s inception, Facebook has been all about groups, cliques, clubs etc. When it first started it was primarily focused on college kids. You had to use your university email address when you signed up and you were automatically grouped by your college.

Next, Facebook opened up to high school kids and you were grouped by what high school you were going to. When Facebook eventually opened up to anyone over 13 people were still big on grouping themselves with something, usually their work. Once you signed up and validated your work email address you grouped with all your fellow co-workers.

As Facebook started to grow and become more mainstream we saw a natural evolution starting to take place. Facebook was so good at connecting groups of people that had something in common and allowing them to share information, photos, videos, etc with just those people, it sort of organically became the natural place for families to start connecting.

Families are the ultimate group. Suddenly, your aunts and uncles, cousins and parents, people whom with you might have updated your life separately throughout the year at different times, now they had immediate access to your daily life, you to theirs.

Facebook unintentionally became the thing that we had been looking for all along. Since the birth of the internet people realized its ability to bring people closer together. Facebook stumbled into place with just the right tools, at just the right time to become the de facto online scrapbook for families to keep in touch.

Once Facebook caught on they started making it as easy as possible to connect with your families, even creating Create a Family Group pages.

With 500 million users there are bound to be a couple million critics but say what you will Facebook has just enough features, and is easy enough to use to keep people of all ages coming back.

I live in New York with my wife and my 2-year-old daughter. I’m the only one in my family that lives here. My family is spread out in Colorado, Indiana and Michigan. I know that for me it’s been a wonderful thing that anyone in my family can log onto Facebook and share in the memories we are making with our family. My mothers and sisters can watch videos and see photos any time that is convenient for them.

It’s clear that it didn’t start out to be a family platform, but just like many unplanned families, Facebook started with a college kid and a few too many drinks. Accidents aren’t always a bad thing. 

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: facebook, family, groups, Social Media

Twitter as a Game Changer

July 20, 2010 By James View Comments

One of my favorite shows, Pardon the Interruption, hasn’t recorded on my DVR for the past two days which was pretty frustrating. It’s my go to, catch-all sports shows that I record and then watch after work while I’m winding down.

Occasionally they get bumped by a tournament or bass fishing special but, for the most part, they’re on like clockwork. After they weren’t on again today and I saw SportsNation in its place I had a mild panic attack thinking ESPN had somehow made the worst programming decision of all time.

Immediately I knew where I could get the answer without having to Google and click on links or go to ESPN.com and find the PTI site I hopped on Twitter and went to @PTIShow. 

That’s what a good Twitter feed should do. If you want to find out the latest on a company or brand you’re following this is exactly what you want to see on their Twitter feed. Part of engaging is disseminating information without sounding like a shill.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: espn, pardon the interruption, pti, Social Media, Sports, twitter

Rapportive Gmail Plugin Gives You Social and CRM Advantage

June 8, 2010 By James View Comments

I get a lot of emails from people I don’t know asking me questions or commenting on a post or looking for a problem solver. Rapportive gives me a leg up, immediately being able to see a little more about the person and who they are. Fortunately for me this makes me look a lot smarter than I am when I can email them back and drop hints about things they may not expect me to immediately know.

There are a lot of new tools out there that claim to help you aggregate your social media contacts. Most of them want you to sign up and enter the details of all the sites you want to aggregate, not too convenient really. That’s what makes Rapportive so convenient, it doesn’t rely on you entering any information, it pulls its info from the email of the person in your inbox. The best part is that Rapportive replaces the ads on the right side of your inbox with all this useful info.

Rapportive works as both a Firefox and a Chrome plugin as well as Mailplane for Macs. Go here using your browser of choice to automatically install the plugin. Believe it or not I’ve already found out some new and useful info about a few of my contacts that I may never have discovered without Rapportive.

Whenever you open an email in from someone Rapportive automatically uses their email address to lookup various social networking sites to give you an idea of who you’re talking to. The plugin also allows you to keep notes on each user, very helpful if you’re getting hundreds of emails a day and dealing with potential clients that you may or may not hear from for long periods of time.

Go ahead, install it and let us know what you think in the comments.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: crm, email, gmail, plugins, rapportive, Social Media

Student Uses Facebook to Shed Light on Towing Company’s Shady Business Practices

May 27, 2010 By James View Comments

T&J Towing decided not to actually address the disgruntled car owner’s complaint, choosing instead to file a $750,000 lawsuit against him for slander and defamation

This story epitomizes exactly what gets me so amped about social media. Anytime you hear me talk or write about social media and why I’m so passionate about it you’ll definitely get an earful about how social media gives people tools that allow them to crush it and level the playing field.

This is akin to a religious experience for me. Watching someone amplify their voice with just the right tools at just the right time resulting in someone being held accountable for their actions. In my mind I imagine it’s comparable to the Protestant Reformation when people, for the first time in modern history, began to fathom that they could have a personal relationship with God, that they no longer needed to rely on clerics to manage their relationship with God.

I know that’s an extremely dramatic comparison but I honestly believe that, the religious aspect aside, the ability for one person to be able to stand up and have their voice heard by tens of thousands of people at the push of a button is a wonderfully powerful gift. One person has the ability to call out a much larger, more powerful company with many more resources and hold them accountable for their actions. That, to me, is an amazing concept and one which I will constantly strive to make work on and evangelize as long as I have the opportunity.

Justin Kurtz, a 21-year-old Western Michigan University student, who started a group on Facebook to gripe about the company, now has more than 4,200 members.

It is my firm belief that my car was recently “broken into” but all that was stolen was my arboretums parking pass. This was an act by T&J so that they could charge me $120 to get my car out of impound. Please invite your friends to get justice against T&J!!!

“It’s not like I was making untrue claims or anything,” he said. “It’s not like I had control over anything that everyone had posted the whole time. I told everyone to be professional, don’t post any threats. Just tell your story and that’s what pretty much everyone did.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: corporate whoredom, facebook, Social Media

Kim Kardashian Gets It

May 13, 2010 By James View Comments

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Kim Kardashian. Say what you want about Kim but one thing is for sure, you don’t build a business empire as successful as hers without having something very special to offer.

Earlier today Kim tweeted this:

Which cover? Follow @JasonBinn, let him know the best cover of me @KhloeKardashian @KourtneyKardash 4 VEGAS Magazine http://ning.it/9LiPrl.

That’s it, it was so simple but in that one tweet Kim showed why she’s been such a success. Having the ability to connect with your users/fan base/clients etc. is the key to success in any industry and Kim is a master at it. There was no walled garden, no funneling people back to her own website, just a simple, authentic connection.

Kim has over 3.5 million followers on Twitter. How many of them, who may otherwise never have thought of it, are going to go out and buy that magazine as soon as it hits the stands because they felt like they were part of the decision making process?

At the end of the day when can quantify and try and hash out the ROI of what we’re doing but if you can make a legitimate connection with readers/users/clients/fan base etc. you will have earned a loyal (fill-in-the-blank) for life. Let your users know they’re more than just a statistic, a page click or a possible sell, they’re more than that. That right there is what social media is about and once you can do that you’re halfway to success already.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: kim kardashian, Media, Social Media, twitter
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