INNOV8 AZMPI

Discovering WordPress…

innov8azmpi — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:59:11 +0000

I am very excited about the WordPress Workshop taking place tomorrow evening. The last month has been so much fun for me as I have been learning and discovering this tool. Boy, have I been missing out not knowing about WordPress! I feel like I have discovered an entire world of opportunity. Watch out world!

Check out my Dave & Buster’s Virtual Event Guide on WordPress and find out how you can create one just like it!

innov8azmpi — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:13:40 +0000

D&B Virtual Event Guide: www.ambassador2fun.wordpress.com

Tues., Sept. 29 from 5:30pm-7:30pm is the WordPress Workshop. Join us as I give a general overview of this social media application and share with you some of the incredible uses for WordPress. Listed above is a link to my Virtual Event Guide. It is 95% complete, just a bit more to finalize and I will be going live with this for my office team. The great thing about the virtual guide is that it is more user friendly than the previous version and allows me to offer photos with event descriptions so guests can picture what their event will look like at D&B. WordPress will allow me to monitor the web traffic to this sight so I can see how the information is accessed.

I will be adding additional features down the road to help make this site more interactive and to drive people back regularly.

I look forward to sharing WordPress with those joining the Workshop next Tuesday. If you have a laptop please bring it as we will be walking through how to set up your WordPress account as well as review how to use common features in WordPress so you can get up to speed on this application quickly

Discovering the wonderful world of WordPress

innov8azmpi — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:49:36 +0000

I have been a busy bee learning WordPress. There is no better way to approach INNOV8 then to set up working projects within these applications. I set up a blog for my church this weekend. If you want to check it out it is: www.passageschurch.wordpress.com. I am very excited about the blog/site I am setting up for D&B Arizona. It will be much more like a website than a blog and it is far more complicated to set up due to the detail I am placing on each page. Great experience though! My next project is to set up a adoption site on WordPress for a friend of mine. One of the most amazing features about WordPress is that it can be designed to act as a website or as a blog…or both. It is very user friendly and much easier to maintain and update than a traditinal website.
I sat in on a webinar last week by Christina Hill and I plan to sit in on one this week that she is offering. I will share the links to her webinar on FB and LinkedIn so you can watch them later. Be sure to watch the YouTube videos first and begin familiarizing yourself with the features of WordPress before you watch Christina’s. Her webinars don’t teach you HOW to set up WordPress, rather she gives you an overview of what the application can do. If you are computer savy, with a little time playing around in WordPress you can figure out how to set up the features Christina shares in her webinars.
Happy Blogging!
Jen Castro

First INNOV8 Conference Call

innov8azmpi — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:20:46 +0000

I just facilitated the first INNOV8 conference call. We were small but mighty. Cathy Clifton had some great points about blogging…keep an eye out for her links on Facebook and LinkedIn. Two of the great ideas I got from Cathy this morning were adding widgets to my WordPress account from Facebook, and adding a widget from feedblitz.com that allows people to sign up by email to be notified when I create a new blog. She also indicated you can go to getwidgets.com. For $25 a year you can access a wide array of different widgets to enhance your blog. I will be spending sometime learning how to upload widgets to my WordPress account from other applications. Right now I only know how to add the widgets that are offered on WordPress already. Once I figure this out I will be sure to share.

Michelle Fulcher also joined us. She has not set up her WordPress account yet, but will do so soon. She had a great question about measuring ROI on your social media efforts. ROI will be difficult to prove on the front end, but it is like planting a field. The process will be slow, it will require diligence, commitment and lots of time, but it will eventually harvest opportunity. Cathy recommended setting aside a designated time each week/day that works well for you so you can work on social media.

Stephen Covey writes in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, habit seven is sharpening the saw regularly. You cannot harvest what you do not plant. You cannot speed up the process, and there are no shortcuts. Everyone wants to learn more about social media, but they haven’t committed the time needed to sharpen their skill set and learn how to use the applications, so they can apply their new skills and harvest new opportunities.

Have you sharpened your saw lately…?

Come sharpen your social media saw with INNOV8

On your mark, get set….bloggggg!

innov8azmpi — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:05:25 +0000

Hello My INNOV8 Friends. I have been researching WordPress and have found these resources to be the most beneficial getting started. I decided I am a big fan of the YouTube Videos. I can upload one on my laptop and take it with me around the house so I can learn and do chores at the same time…seriously. We are all super busy but if you are creative you will find was to learn about this great tool. Be sure to blog about what you learn on your new WordPress account, then paste the link to your account on this group page. Also, you will find that some tools and techniques on WordPress do not work as they should. If you encounter this, let the group know. I personally could NEVER get the QuickPress tool in WordPress to actually work. When setting some of my format features on WordPress like timezone, I could not get it to save until I came back at a later time and tried again. Also, I had trouble uploadind YouTube videos to my Blog but had success if I did google videos (weird but it worked). I will post some more links later this weekend for more sophisticated features to WordPress. Keep in mind that the videos might not be 100% accurate as WordPress does upgrade and modify their application from time to time.

Suggested Websites:
*http://mashable.com/category/wordpress-lists/
*http://www.ehow.com/search.aspx?s=wordpress&Options=0

45 min video: WordPress-Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog

8 min video: WordPress Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ImndT0fC8

This tutorial shows you how to set up a WordPress blog, change its template, add categories, password-protect a post, and add a blogroll.

51 min video – Updated WordPress.com – Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEWPnHY8D3E

Chris Abraham walks you through how to join the fastest-growing and most elegant free blogging services, WordPress.com.
Go from the simple acts of joining all the way through set up and administration. Become a blogger in less than and hour. Most folks only need the first 15 minutes to get you started. Chris is a professional blogging instructor. Enjoy! All of you have been asking me to update my step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress.com as a blogging platform — please check it out and please let me know what I have missed.

WordPress 101

innov8azmpi — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:02:48 +0000

Good Morning Everyone!

We go live with INNOV8 today. WordPress is the first application we will focus on. I am excited to learn what all this blogging is about. I don’t feel like I have much to blog about but I figure INNOV8 will get me started and from there we will see what happens. I hope you all enjoy this learning adventure as much as I am.

I look forward to reading your blogs soon!

Test Video…

innov8azmpi — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:05:03 +0000

WordPress Research for INNOV8

innov8azmpi — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:13:36 +0000

INNOV8 goes live on September 1st and WordPress is our first application. I have to say at first I thought that WordPress was a simple website where you logged your thoughts. Was I wrong! I just finished watching 2 videos today on how to use WordPress and I am super excited to put my new skills to the test. Here are some the great aspects of WordPress that I learned today:

1. I now know what a widget is!

2. Discovered you can create Pages on WordPress. They are a webpage of your own that allows you to share all types of information. I set one up today called INNOV8 MISSION to see how it works.

3. I used a widget to link my twitter feed to the INNOV8 blog. You can follow my social media tweets on INNOV8AZMPI.

4. You can set up passwords on blog posts if you desire to keep some of the posts private. This would be great if you use WordPress for personal journaling.

5. I learned the difference between the Visual and HTML tabs in WordPress. Using the HTML tabs allows you to embed YouTube.

6. I also learned that WordPress is set up very similarly to Word so you can customize and change the format of the blog as you would a document on your computer.

Well that’s it for now. I will continue playing around with the new info today and will look forward to sharing more in September.