Orbit Research

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

The Orbit research website came about because of one of John’s past lives as a Project Manager for a medical imaging company. Orbit were part of the team that were responsible for getting medical images from the mobile MRI and CT trucks around Birmingham via satellite to Budapest and then back to Birmingham and Cardiff. Orbit provided the mobile satellite equipment and the satellite infrastructure. John did stuff like crawl around on the back of unfinished MRI trucks with network cables and set up 12 servers in a week as well train Radiologists in Budapest and Birmingham.

Anyway. Orbit wanted a new website and were referred to Godjira from John’s old employer Pukka-j. Gavin at Orbit wanted more than just a website that sat there and was interested in the marketing methodology that goes with a news driven site.

We have provided Orbit with a WordPress driven site that lets them edit and add as much content as they want. We also split their main product offerings down to three target areas presented on the front splash screen with a bit of funky JavaScript driven image swapping.

Being WordPress, the site is Google focussed and does clever stuff like feed an RSS feed out to populate a Facebook fanpage. We also included the LiveZilla live support software, so now if you want to know anything about Satellite Internet solutions, you can chat live with a genuine bona fide expert in Gavin Foster. We also set up a mailing list based on the RSS feed using FeedBurner.

We really liked working with Orbit. Gavin has some great expressions for common computer issues. Such as user error being “Finger Trouble” and VOIP phones being “scramblers”. We hope to continue the relationship and look forward to helping Orbit with their online marketing for years to come.

How to import your blog in to your Facebook Fan Page

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Setting up a fan page in Facebook is fairly easy, but keeping it populated and up-to-date can be time consuming. If you are already writing articles in your blog or news page and are using a modern CMS system like WordPress, then you can cross-post using your blogs RSS feed and import that in to Facebook.

Step 1: Find the notes application

The notes application is usually hidden off the end of the tab bar. Facebook keeps changing its UI so, you might have to hunt for it!

Step 2:  Find the import a blog link

Aha! Now here comes the trickery. The”import a blog” link is elusive and doesn’t immediately show up. You need to click the “write a new note” button and then cancel it, then it will appear. Probably writing a new note will do the same thing, but the import button isn’t always there first time.

Step 3: Get your RSS feed address

In WordPress and on most good browsers, the RSS feed is underneath the little orange button in the address bar at the top of your browser. Clicking it will display a formatted version of the feed and also give you the link to the feed. In this case http://www.ngbowen.com/feed

Step 4: Import the feed

Go back to Facebook. Fill in the box, and tick the box that says you are entitled to use this feed. You are aren’t you? Then click on “Start Importing”.

Step 5: Confirm The Import

Click the button. Nuff Said.

Step 6:  Relax and Enjoy

Now every time you post a new blog article that will also get fed through to your Facebook Business Page.

If you’ve got more than one blog, you can join the feeds up using Yahoo Pipes, you can also take a look at stats and set up a mailing list using Feedburner. While you are in the RSS feed take a look at Twitterfeed to push your blog out to Twitter as well.