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Can My Small Business Have a Wikipedia Page?
Wikipedia links contain little in the way of search engine value, as they all contain the “nofollow” attribute and thus do no pass on PageRank, but having a highly respected site with a lot of traffic link to your isn’t a bad thing. But it can be more difficult than you think. Getting Your Own Wikipedia Page The Wikipedia FAQ is pretty clear: you can’t use Wikipedia to promote your business. Read through the detailed rules, but essentially, you shouldn’t be creating a page for your own business. Do people do it anyway? Yes, and typically the articles are quickly deleted–and the users are often banned from Wikipedia. Are there some...
Read MoreWhat You Need to Know When Choosing an Email Service
There are many mistakes people make when choosing what email provider to use. It’s very easy to get something good, so there’s no reason to suffer through the lower-quality options. Here are some tips on choosing what’s best for your email. Individual Email Accounts Many people use a “family” email account, or share an email account between two people. Please, please get separate email accounts. This makes life easier for everyone. If people want to talk to both of you, then they can address the email to both your addresses. Having combined accounts leads to confusion. Someone who networks with a Susan may be surprised to get an email from...
Read MoreRSS Graffiti Facebook App
Crosspost Your Blog Posts to Facebook The RSS Graffiti Facebook app is a great tool for any web designer–or even ordinary person–to have blog updates pushed out to your Facebook wall. In fact, you could have wall updates from any RSS feed… for example, you could have updates from a trusted source of industry news posted to your wall–but I believe the most common use would be to save you the effort of manually posting an update in multiple places. Instructions Go to the RSS Graffiti app (you can also search for the name of the application in Facebook). You’ll need to add RSS Graffiti to your Facebook profile, like any other Facebook app. But...
Read MoreWhy Can’t I Edit My Business Fan Page?
Have you ever searched for your business name on Facebook, found a fan page with no information and a generic image of a suitcase instead of a logo, and discovered you could not change “your” fan page? If you see “Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.” then this is not a true fan page at all. It is a Facebook community page If what you are seeing is the real fan page for your business, you are logged in, and you are unable to edit the fan page, then you had better hope someone else has access to edit the fan page! The best cure is prevention. Make sure multiple people are set as admins...
Read MoreCan my Business Use Vimeo?
The Vimeo Business Use Controversy Vimeo states on their home page (when you are not logged in) that Vimeo is not for commercial use. What exactly this does and does not allow is unclear, however. A vimeo staffer apparently stated that videos by a business are ok, as long as they don’t seem like commercials: Commercial videos are fine, as long as they’re not being used to *actively* sell or promote a product or service. On the other hand, if you try to contact Vimeo support and select “Commercial use on Vimeo,” then you see a pretty stark statement. The page asks you to answer four questions, the first of which is “Am I a business?”...
Read MoreFiltering Mailing List Messages with Gmail
If you’re on any mailing lists, you realize they can fill your inbox quickly and distract you. Creating filters in Gmail is easy. Here are some ideas on how you may want to use them. Targeting a Mailing List Often, mailing list messages will always come from–or be going to–a mailing list address. You can set the filter to be active for any email from (or to) that special email address. But what if there is no special address? What if someone from a group you visited once in another state emails you and 50 other people by individual emails on a regular basis? Hopefully they make sure to include the name of the group in the subject line or body of the...
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