Tutorial: Add Original Social Media Share button on Blogger

For any one who uses Blogger platform to create blog will be provided with stock old share button which would be hardly noticed by the readers. All of them are small icon which is most of them might ignore if someone do not read until end of the post.

Default Blogger Share Button At the end of Each Post

But most of us wish to have social share button which would stick at a fixed position, so that it might appeal to the reader for a share. Unlike Wordpress, Blogger is short of plugin libraries. But this fact will not going to stop us from creating our own floating Social Share Button for Blogger.

Floating Social
Share button

To create your own social share button, you do not need a expertise knowledge as a professional web designer would do. All you have to know is simple Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V technique. It would not even take 20 minutes to setup your own floating social share buttons on your new blog. All you have to do is simply follow the steps mentioned below. 

Unlike other tutorials, I am not going to instruct on how to edit Blogger Template to add Social Media Share Button.

Steps to Add floating Social Media Share Button:

Step 1: Collect code from all social media website to which you wish keep share button. This is important but tedious job as you have to collect share button code from all your desired social networking websites. But Search Engines would help you find relevant code.

Bing Search for Twitter Share button

In this instance, I made a search for Twitter share button in Bing. The first result was the official Twitter page which help you create 'share' button for twitter. 

Twitter Share Button Code

Now, copy and paste the code which is provided in the code box to a notepad or text editor which ever you wish to use.

Similarly, collect code for facebook, Tumblr, google+, etc.

Step 2: Now goto Blogger.com. Enter your credentials and open up your blog to which you wish to add Social Media share buttons. It is simple as adding a widget when it comes to blogger.

Step 3: Now Select 'Layout' from the side bar. You will see the layout of your  blog.

Select Layout

Then select 'Add a Gadget' in your layout window. And now select 'HTML/Javascript' gadget from the menu. 

HTML/Javascript Gadget

Step 4: A window will open with two text boxes. One for title and another for pasting your HTML/Javascript code.

HTML/Javascript Gadget box

Now copy and paste all the code from your notepad or text editor in the 2nd text box as shown in the figure. Next is to make it floating in your blog.

Code:

<style>
.pos_left{
float: left;
position: fixed;
left: 10px;
top: 200px;
}
</style>

This above mentioned piece of code is called CSS or Cascading Style Sheet. It is responsible for the design of you web blog. Now, it is made so that our share button floats on the left side of the screen.

Merely adding the above will not make your bar float. You have tell when the style code to get activated.
Code:
<style>
.pos_left{
float: left;
position: fixed;
left: 10px;
top: 200px;
}
</style>
<div class='pos_left'>
<a href="https://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button">Tweet</a>

<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');</script>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>(function(d, s, id) {
  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
  js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3";
  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);

}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>
<div class="fb-share-button" data-href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/" data-layout="button_count"></div>
</div>

The above sample code contains share button for twitter and facebook. If you wish to add more button for shares, you can place your code between div tags.

For novice users, you can simple copy and paste the code in HTML/Javascript Gadget box in your blogger layout.

Note: All share code is from official Twitter and Facebook web page. No editing has been done to the code except for the CSS and div tag additions.

If you like the post, please share to all your social media. And this tutorial need some knowledge of HTML, CSS and javascript. So not everybody can understand in a single go. So patience is your best friend. Trail and error might get your problems fixed. If you find any problem please report it in comment section.

Search Engine Optimization

Many people are good at creating website for business. The importance of website has been realized by many small and medium scale businesses. The internet augment the local business with providing local business information to customers. Well, how far is your business reached your targeted customers? Many business owners could not able to answer this question! Most of them whom for which I worked had little knowledge when it comes to Search Engine Optimization! Many local traders and business man think, once they publish website for them, they will be visible in internet. But they are ignorant of the fact that internet is lot more flooded with spam and duplicate websites. Even if they had some direct search of their business name, they do not have their website listed within the top 10 results of the search engine. 

A survey mentioned that any website which gets to the 1st position in the search result has 80% Click Through Rate (CTR). It means, if you business website get to the top of all the search results, then you have got 80% chance that person searching will click and visit your website. So others who appear in the 2nd to 10th position has got to share 20% CTR. The other pages may not even get a chance to get a click from the search engine result.

A sample WordPress blog on Test with Bing

Here is a sample WordPress.com blog. I used the 'Words of guru' subdomain name. When I get search for the domain I got second spot in Bing search result. So I will lose 80% CTR to the Wikipedia page which define the word 'Guru'.

Note: This blog is hosted under the domain name Words of Guru.

Well, time to end our childhood stories for now. Here we will get into the serious topic.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or simple called SEO, is a process which employ various method to affect visibility of a website or webpage in search engine's search results. SEO involves mostly with the organic search. Paid search results or ads are different story.

Law Crumb Blog domain level SEO

Well, there are many ways SEO is done. Most common of them is link building. It fetch far more result than just conventional methods of optimizing web pages for search results.

Why SEO important?

Domain name search in Bing

Now, lets take the domain name 'chennailife.tk', It is brand new web blog just had its first post today. It is just raw blog and has one post to its name. For this experiment, I didn't add any bells and whistles of SEO to chennailife.tk. Now, I did a Bing search, entered the domain name in the search box. The result would be startling. You may find surprised that search engine worked as if such a domain was not in existence. To play it fair, I did this search 2 hours after getting that blog live. I guess it is fair time enough to know about a domain. If not, may be after a week it may appear. But the point is most of the local business are in dark inside internet. A little basic SEO like submitting a site to search engine would have yielded some result. It is always good to have something better than nothing. Yet, you can find many other methods to SEO your business.

If proper SEO has been done, then search engine would bring up your website or web page within top 10 results. To have online visibility SEO is the key. Your presence depends on how good the person do the SEO job.

To more about SEO, follow our blog, subscribe through Email to know updates on SEO.

How Budget Smartphone can make you sick

Budget Smartphones

Smartphones, a great utility at present era. A man without smartphone is not good for business. It may be iPhone, Android, Firefox, Symbian, whatever you know. Without smartphone, individual is lost. Even it may result in identity crisis! With increasing smartphone market, especially, in developing countries have raised few questions yet to be answered.

Though the matter of questing the use, adaptability, social condition are out of our control. Now the real point for consideration is how for the budget smartphone made us sick!

It is better to switch our time machine back to early 2000's where smartphones are only for business people who type a lot on the go. Busy with emails and organizing teams to get the job done! With Blackberry took the guardian role when it comes to business relying on smartphone to make executives keep in touch with it workers. Smartphone made the life simple and making the work a touch away.

But with Android and iOS, the theory on smartphone took a twist. It spread like a wildfire among the public. The smartphone usage among the public outrun the top executive who had the monopoly to carry a smartphone.

The smartphone did come with its own effect. The price of the smartphone were too high which made it beyond the reach of majority. Even it took toll on one month pay for an individual. Yet, business is business. None can refute it. The Smartphone makers had other plans to reach masses with budgetary phones. For those, affordability matters, hardware makers produced stripped down version of high end smartphone so everyone could carry one without distinction.

See also: Is your website mobile-friendly? 

But such product has its own wises. 

Strip Down Processing Power: Most prominent point when it comes to budget smartphone is strip down processing power. You won't get as much power as you do when compared to main stream high-end models. The sad part is it is obviously true. When a high-end model comes with new kind of processor, the budget smartphone will come equipped with processor of old high-end model. 

Limited RAM and Multi-tasking: Next crucial aspect for smartphones are Random Access Memory, also simply known as RAM. With limited RAM, apps find very space to linger. Cramped RAM will force close applications and kill background processes which we won't notice at most times. Have you felt delayed notifications for messaging services like Whatsapp, Viber, Hike, etc? When you open those apps, you receive notification that some one has sent you a message! 

And Multi-tasking, with limited RAM, applications find no place to run when you switch to other application. It virtually kills your multi-tasking abilities. Unless the apps provide to saving application state, applications will tend to close when you switch to other app.

Low Internal memory: Flash memory are costlier than SD card memory. To cut cost, budget smartphones will provide limited internal memory space for applications. Virtually, it will constrain the user to very few apps to use. Consider, 1 GB of Internal memory in a budget smartphone. Not more than 10 to 15 apps could be installed provided each app is 30-40 MB of size and occupy some space for App data. Apart from the apps you install, Google updates will start filling up your internal memory. Further, some apps disable the capacity to move apps to internal storage. So if you are kind of person who install apps which don't support SD card storage, you will be constrained to limit your choice of apps. Simply, you have to sacrifice your wish for usability of the smartphone.

And most people who use budget smartphone would have encountered often 'The device has insufficient space' when updating a app from store. Limited internal memory? Then No more app installation and insufficient space to update applications.

Lagging Games: Here comes the interesting part, avid gamers, kiss good bye to your gaming. Budget smartphone will not handle all resource hungry games. If you do manage to install some, the game lags or skip frames and make the game play awkward. Not all smartphone will result in lagging games or force closing the game apps. But some factors play important role. With limited processing power, RAM, it will throttle your gaming experience. If you are avid gamer, who wish to do some fun gaming, better look out for standard model of handsets. Consider yourself as buying PSP or portable gaming device which would cost you more than your smartphone.

Substandard Handset maker: With smartphone market expanding at rapid pace, many handset makers came to play in the market. To cut cost, to improve affordability, some handset makers prefer sub-standard materials. Not all, but some of them. The life of the budget smartphone getting shorter than ever. The low quality materials shorten the life span of mobile handsets. Remember the days of Nokia handset? Rock-solid durable handset which could even survive a fall from 1st floor of the building. Actually, it did. But contemporary smartphone would not able to survive accidental fall to floor.

If you find any missing point that need to be addressed, comment them. Share or tweet if you like the post.

Who Really Uses Whatsapp Marketing

WhatsApp! A cool messaging service with more than 5 million users. Wouldn't that sound great if you are in marketing? 5 Million users to spam with ads! I am not kidding. With whatsapp you got some real users to your audience list. As it uses personal phone numbers to identify individuals, no bot could have an account but for a marketer who wants a schedule post periodically at rhythmic intervals. All right now Who really uses WhatsApp marketing? I am not talking about business which are curious to send out broadcast messages but about people who actually manage those Whatsapp broadcast messages stead of those businesses who don't want their hands wet.

I really wonder who really uses the Whatsapp Marketing? With few incidents in this week, I feel some kind of new comers who failed marketing exams took up the job for the business. Really laughed out loud at the manner in which they did WhatsApp marketing.

See Also: Whatsapp Marketing Strategy

I really fought my dilemma either to freak out or laugh at those WhatsApp Marketers! Some kind of stupid thing which no marketing strategist would have preferred for any product! 

To my fellow marketer who use WhatsApp as a platform to get things done. Take this, never do what was done by this amateur Whatsapp marketers. Never!

To be make it clear, even the dummies involved in the marketing wouldn't have preferred this method. All right, now show time for the blunder which I witness myself in my Whatsapp account.

WhatsApp Marketing

Creating Group For Marketing: The dumbest idea followed by the marketer was to 'Create a Whatsapp group for particular localities'. By adding all the known numbers to the group, he has made mocked himself in public. 

First rule of marketing, never embarrass yourself. The reason is simple, there are others to embarrass you in public. So at least avoid embarrassing yourself my doing such a blunder.

The fellow who started this 'WhatsApp Marketing 5040TN' was not selling any product but making ads for himself and his business of Whatsapp Marketing. But you may wonder, he may not be the first to start such a business in your locality! Yet, this entity is the first to start a separate group for marketing. Really wonder what made them to try this trick!

Welcome Message: Awful to watch that! The one started the group posted a welcome message. It was too much revealing. Remember, a car buyer need to know only about accelerator, clutch, brake and gears. The buyer really do not care about the internal workings. But this marketer has reveal what this group comprised of. But stating the telecom company name in the welcome message, he has made clear that some one in the telecom company is involved in making the numbers public.

Though, the agreement between the telecom companies and individual users might allow telecom operators to divulge information to third parties, it will be considered unethical and unprofessional to do so. Not to the blame the telecoms for making the numbers public. It might have been some insider job to get the work done. For corruption has breached the corporate firewalls? I guess so.

To add insult to the injury, the marketer is ready to negotiate a deal over the personal information collected from the telecos. By stating the telecom companies name, the Whatsapp marketer appears like the one who has authority to trade on information.

See also: Flipkart quits Airtel Zero

Privacy Matters?

Right To Privacy: Even WhatsApp desist from marketing or advertisement as policy document states so. But with increasing penetration of smartphones and tablets, the user base of WhatsApp increases exponentially until last man on the Earth on day will have Smartphone with WhatsApp installed. 

Does this type of messages hurts privacy? This would be debate without an end. So starting it right now will not end this blog post. But as a personal opinion this hurts WhatsApp user privacy. As marketer, we don't own licence to stalk at someone's home. So the personal device!

By creating a WhatsApp group, the marketer not only showed up all the mobile numbers which he had but would have created a bad impression on about his marketing co. I left the group within 2 minutes of creation. By then, 21 other users have left the group. Most positively with bad impression upon the marketer who created the group. As most users feel insecure in a group where most of them are completely strangers to each other. This is one of the important factor play the game of marketing messages in groups.

Note: I did not black out the marketer number. If anybody feel to block this market can do at there own wish. I do not recommend any action to done right now. In other words, your account, your wish.

Setting WhatsApp Marketing Right: Now, not only to this particular marketer, but to all, it would be always wise to use 'Broadcast messages' than the group messages. For the broadcast messages would appear personal than a public announcement in groups. Whatsapp or not, as long as internet lives, spammers live. So to be look like a genuine marketer, create 'broadcast list' than groups where everybody would run away. 

Moreover, people, who are not interested in your advertisement, will ignore simply if it look as a personal message. I am not totally against Marketing but against marketer who lack strategy to market. Marketing is not stalking with products or services. It is novel thing getting users and products/service personal. Building relationship between the product/service and consumer never should be irritant to both the business and consumers.

Comment your opinions on WhatsApp marketing. Found interesting, share on facebook or

Review: Reliance Reconnect mouse

Well, it is a perfect day for a review. The product which is under consideration is plane and normal USB compatible Optical Mouse from +Reliance Digital. For anybody who wants to know about this optical mouse in single sentence review, I would say "Go, buy it". But in the interest of people who are eager to know more about Reconnect optical mouse, I have applied a little effort to bring you the features.

Reliance Digital Reconnect USB Optical Mouse

Let's jump to basic of +Reliance Digital USB optical mouse:

Product: USB Optical mouse

Model:    RAUMG1003

Design:  Ambidextrous design

Mode:    Plug & Play

or connectivity

Price: Rs. 249 (< $5)

The description is clear. If you use some old computers with ps2 connectivity, this mouse is not for you but for the ps2 to USB converters. The design was so good. It was aimed to fit both hands. Especially thumb gets to the right place and provide enough space for fingers. As for as mode of operation, it is just plug and play. No software drivers or complex setup needed to use this mouse. I just plugged it into my laptop and the three button mouse started working without any problem. 

Ambidextrous Design

And next thing, far more important than any specification on the product box is the price. For the built and quality, the price is perfect. Though, Maximum Retail Price (MRP) states Rs. 299, the store sold it for Rs. 249 (< $5). Yet, it is good piece for the price. Any one with low budget could have Reconnect USB optical mouse as an option. It deserves to be. If you find Reliance shop in your locality, you should consider it for sure.

Along with it we got following features with this little one:

Resolution: 1000 DPI

Frame Rate: 3500 FPS

along with 3D navigation capacity

The specifications are good. I tested the mouse for 2 days and found no flaw yet. 1000 DPI make the pointer fly from one end of the screen to other end. With amazing frame rate you would not observe frame skip.

1000 DPI, 3500 FPS with Plug & Play

Performance: Everything is fine so far, now, lets get with the performance. The clicks are feel responsive and the scroll wheel are not that snappy unlike other USB Optical mouses. Scroll wheel feels smooth and do not over shoot. Without resistance, the scroll wheel seems to be accurate.

With accurate tracking it worked in almost all surfaces. The official specification states that it works with Windows and Mac. But it also work fine with Linux. It is a Linux compatible mouse. All buttons worked fine in Ubuntu 14.04. 

Gaming with Reconnect USB optical mouse: Though it seems too accurate, it is not advisable to consider it for serious gaming purpose. Yet, casual gamer could find it useful under budget. But for serious gaming, you need to invest in some other gaming mouse. More over, it lacks DPI switch which is prominent feature in most gaming mouse. With no DPI switch you will get stuck at the stock 1000 DPI, while pro gamer would prefer DPI values from 400-1800. 

Ergonomics: Ambidextrous design fits both hands well. But the mouse is very short. For people with long hands, you need to consider other mouse variants. If you are the one who works with the mouse alot then you need to look out for proper ergonomics that fit your hands. For ergonomics, individual judgement stands good than others advice. 

But for casual programmers, writers, bloggers, internet geeks, I highly recommend the Reconnect USB optical mouse. 

Pros: Price! It is well within the budget. You could afford the product without second thought. 

Fast and accurate! In this price range, the Reconnect USB optical mouse surprise us with its accuracy.

Ergonomics! It fits both the hands with ease. Though some might feel uncomfortable, it is a good bet at this price range. Comparing other optical mouses, Reconnect seems to fit good than the rest.

Cons: One thing which made me write this section is 'Loud Mouse Click'. The click are too loud. If you work at night alone, you could feel the loudness too high. 

Next thing is the cord of the optical mouse. It is not a functional cons. Yet, this mouse lacks unbraided cord which makes cord tangle occasionally. 

Overall, Reliance Digital Reconnect USB Optical mouse is good buy. A value for money. 

Visit: www.reliancedigital.in