Computer Tips and Tricks for Cool Social Media Moves

During a recent ‘work session’ with a client, an important discovery was made. Many people do not use their computers as efficiently as they could. Really.

Today’s blog may be a bit passé for some of you and you’re welcome to join us back on another day. Thanks for stopping by (you’re still allowed to peak –just in case there may be a tip that you don’t already know). BUT for the group that feels like they’re ‘quickly getting nowhere’ when they work on the computer, welcome! Let’s get into some tips that may help you out of that rut. After all, it’s hard to stay in the social media game when you’re working twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up. These are important ergonomic techniques, the science that helps reduce RSI (repetitive stress injuries) like carpal tunnel syndrome. Use them to more easily build a better blog or engage with your community.

It’s all about the shortcut keys

Simply hold down your Control key (Command key for the Mac) and the corresponding letter to perform these often repeated functions.

CTRL+z –undo

CTRL+x –cut

CTRL+c –copy

CTRL+v –paste

CTRL+b –bold

CTRL+y –redo

CTRL+a –select all

CTRL+s –save

CTRL+p –print

CTRL+t –new tab in browser

Notice that the MOST repeated shortcuts are all placed at the easiest to reach place on your keyboard and line up all in a row: z,x,c,v,b.

Simple mouse tricks

• Shift key and mouse click. Many text editors and programs allow you to highlight all or portions of text using the Shift key and the mouse. For example, place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph, hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the paragraph to highlight the full paragraph.
• In Internet Explorer or Firefox you can hold the CTRL key down on your keyboard and move your scroll wheel to adjust the text size you want to view.
• Hold the CTRL key down when clicking your mouse on a link and it will open in a new tab in Internet Explorer 7.

Embrace the power of the right-click mouse

There are many actions that can be made easier with a right-click mouse. When you’re stumped try, just try, clicking with your right mouse button. Viola, all is revealed! You will usually have an option presented to you that will show you what you were looking for but didn’t know how to find quite often. You can do this on the desktop, in a program, in a browser –anywhere. Below are a few more things you can try:

• While in a browser pressing and holding Ctrl while clicking on any link will open that link in a new tab.
• You can right click on an image on the internet and choose to save the picture.
• You can right click on any file to copy it. Then right click in another folder in the blank space and choose paste.
• Customize the toolbars. You can adjust your toolbars to your liking. Right click on any toolbar, and select ‘Customize’. While this dialogue is up, you can move buttons around on your toolbars by click-and-drag to the new location. The window that pops up when you do this is a holding area for unused icons. You can drag any item from it onto your toolbars to have it made available, and you can drag any icon from your toolbars onto this box to hide that icon completely. Some toolbar items, such as the Location bar, will expand to take up all available space. You can fit the Menu Bar, Personal Toolbar, Location bar, Back and Forward buttons, etc, all to one single row if you really want to maximize web pages’ viewable area.

What is a scroll wheel on a mouse?

A scroll wheel is a small wheel located between the left and right mouse buttons. This allows you to smoothly scroll up and down a page instead of clicking at least 100 times.

Hope these little tips helped. If not for you, then maybe for that boss or co-worker that seems to ask these questions all the time. Let me know what worked best for you or add a few of your own. I firmly believe “Knowledge is not power, shared knowledge is power” -unknown.

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