Every so often I write about topics to help the small business owners of the US understand this crazy biz known as the web. Why? Because they represent the backbone of our nation. (and not just economically) So I try to do my part to help.

Most importantly, small biz owners, don’t be embarrassed for a second if all of this social networking business is confusing to you… (it is for everyone and the rules can change by the hour) It’s OK if you don’t yet fully understand. You’ve got a business to run and if the WEB isn’t your primary business then you just need to look around a little to find your answers. By the way, beware of those who call themselves “Social Media Experts.” (there are many out there doing this) Those who really ARE would NEVER say it. (folks like @tamar, @chrisbrogan and @viperchill) – These folks really do know what time of day it is within this medium, and are worth “following”)

Anyway, I thought I’d write a quickie post about Facebook “Pages” vs. “Accounts” — how to avoid doing it “wrong” and why.

I continue to see businesses falsely signing up for personal Facebook accounts with their business names and ultimately shooting themselves in the foot.

(bear with me)

First of all

It’s against Facebook’s Terms of Use (you can’t sign up for a personal account under a false name… including your business name.) People are social and businesses are not. And if Facebook allows it, they’re done. They don’t want to become a big billboard (and they really don’t need anymore headaches right now) ;^ )

Secondly

A Facebook “page” is different from your Facebook “account,” in that a page doesn’t require a user to become a “friend” to view the content. You don’t even have to “Like” (formerly “Fan”) it to view it. That’s important. Why? If you want someone to read what you’ve written for your business, why force them to befriend you first? They won’t take the time. AND you shouldn’t ask someone to be a friend if they aren’t. Think about that… people often get personal up there on FB (as they should… it’s a social medium) and they feel put on the spot if you ask them (as your business) to be your friend, when you’re not even giving them your name, it doesn’t come off very well. Befriend “friends.” Ask others to “Like” your page via “Suggest to friends” (left nav under your company logo on your FB page)

Thirdly

Facebook pages are made specifically made for business content (hopefully you’re business is offering free and helpful content and not just advertising) AND pages are visible to Google. (probably the most important aspect here) Personal accounts are locked out. Try it: Here’s our Facebook page (notice how you can see the content?) Now go to my personal account (Locked out, aren’t ya?) So if you sign up under your company name, (first name/lastname) all potential visitors will also be locked out. Not very helpful. By the way, you CAN sign up for a business account… but it’s almost useless since Facebook locks out so many features.

So in short, if you have a business, create a page and invite people to “Like” it. Otherwise, keep the social in social networking.

Cheers!

Oh yeah, here is a great article on tricking out your Facebook Page

Why does Facebook insist that you sign up under a personal account?

Why is it against Facebook terms to have 2 accounts? (buiness/personal)

Simply put: People are Social, Businesses are NOT.

If Facebook allows anything otherwise, it will cease to be useful and will die a quick death.

Keep the “social” in social networking… it’s not hard. Just sign up with a personal account and then create a business “page.”

Don’t try to outsmart a very smart company by using your business name as your personal name when signing up. Not only will you be breaking their terms of service, but you’ll be doing you/your company a disservice because personal accounts are password protected and can’t be indexed by the search engines… this doesn’t apply to business pages. Let Google, Yahoo and Bing find your business content.

Enough said… now go be social!

Cheers!
//Dave

Is it just me, or is it difficult to find the font you want to use while designing something? I mean not only find the perfect font, but actually FIND it on your computer!

I don’t know how long I went without finding a decent tool to actually view fonts i want to use to design. I’ve always inserted the textual content within a design in Photoshop, (or MS Word) then applied different fonts until I was happy with the result.

Well I found a really cool utility called Free&Easy Font Viewer. It’s exactly what I need. I downloaded it, installed it and it just worked.

Here’s a screenshot:

Click the thumbnail image for a detailed view

I just wanted to share. Here’s the site: (it’s not an affiliate link… just a site from which to download the app:
http://www.styopkin.com/details_free_and_easy_fonts_viewer.html

Cheers!

Another short and sweet post about a great time saving tool for social networking. TweetDeck is a very cool app to manage your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace accounts all at once, saving time and resources… and they continue to add great features all the time!

TweetDeck shows you everything in your Social Networking Space

In short, you can:

• Update your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts
• Retweet others’ Tweets
• Manage conversations with @replies and direct messages
• Record, share and watch video clips, and view YouTube videos within TweetDeck too
• Manage multiple Twitter accounts
• See what’s hot with local trends and Twitscoop
• Add, create and manage Twitter Lists
• Follow topics in real-time with saved searches, editable from within the column
• Organize and update Facebook inlcuding multiple Facebook Pages
• Preview short URLs from the comfort of TweetDeck
• View LinkedIn for your professional contacts
• See who’s following you
• Locate your friends
• Avoid Twitter spam
• Share and view photos; now with added support for Flickr, Twitgoo and mobypicture too
• View MySpace content

Now go post!
=)

Cheers!

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David has had over
17 years experience in the Internet industry, co-founded an Emmy Award Winning Music Editing Firm in Los Angeles and holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Business Administration. He lives in Auburn California with his wife and two children. He plays drums and enjoys using his general contractors license from time to time.

Among the larger clients, his company helped create and manage the goliath ticketing agency Ticketmaster.com. Ticketmaster has truly defined itself as the “Killer App for the Web.”

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Daveworks was also contracted directly by the Marciano Brothers, co-founders of Guess? Inc., to build out and manage the highly successful fashion conglomerate website Guess.com.

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The short answer is… you can’t.

The only work-around at this point is to delete the page and start over. I’m actually surprised that Facebook allows the deletion of pages – this causes 404 errors (page not found) which is a big no-no for SEO. But then again I don’t think with over 400 million users, Facebook is worried about SEO.

Technically there are many reasons why Facebook isn’t making this a gigantic priority:

- They would be creating a massive amount of work for themselves (especially driven by folks who are trying to take the social out of social networking) Then what happens if someone else wants the name?
- They would have huge numbers of 301 redirects
- Like most things that are given away, people will try to “pimp” or take advantage/exploit
- Giving users access to rename elements is dangerous at best – especially those that will write code to start renaming elements for others

In my humble opinon, users should start thinking ahead and name their pages correctly the first time. And for those of you who are complaining to FB, just remember how much your paying for this service. (just a thought)

Cheers!

Great article from By Melih Oztalay at CRM regarding Local businesses using Local Business Listings Online…

Something about which we’ve been harping on our local merchants within our Local Marketplace System

Local Business Listings, Consumer Reviews, and PR
— Local business listings have evolved to be an excellent marketing tool for the local business and small business dependent upon the local consumer for revenue. Most allow the local consumer to post their experience about your business, products and services without your knowledge or involvement. These local consumer postings have an affect on a business website ranking position. The business will need to start paying attention to these local business listings sooner rather than later.

This is just a backup post to my earlier recommendation to “Clean your text” to get better search results AND keep the formatting of your pages/posts.

Well the great news is that within WordPress there is a cool little button within the Visual tab named “Paste as Plain Text” It does the work for you.

Here’s a screen shot to show you the location:

Paste as Plain Text in WordPress Button

So the next time you MUST copy from Microsoft Word to WordPress, simply:

• Copy the text in MS Word
• Click the “Visual” Tab
• Click your cursor inside the main text field in WordPress
• Then click the “Paste as Plain Text” button
• Your done!

Clean as a whistle and now you actually have a chance to have Google come through and index your site, finding WORDS and not formatting “cr@p.”

;^ )

Cheers,
//Dave

Just a quick note about maintaining one of the most important business tools in your arsenal… your website.

What would happen if you lost it? Yes… lost your entire website. I did and it hurt… BAD! Ouch! =(

Some time ago, one of the web servers my company had leased had crashed… no biggie, right? Just restore files from the backup, right? Well, the backup crashed, too. The hard drives both failed and were inadvertently formatted. 3 years of work down the tubes. Lesson learned… We must perform our own backups and download away from the server and then archive.

What most folks don’t know is that while their hosting companies do backup, they normally do so for 2-5 day spans and then recycle the backups. Meaning they DON’T archive them. (read your terms of service)

The remedy? Use a backup utility. Many webshosting companies use CPanel as a control panel for administering websites. Within CPanel is a great backup utility named… well, Backup. Just click the Backup icon, and choose the destination for the backup to be saved. Generate the backup. When complete, the utility will email you a notification. From there, you can log back in to Cpanel, find the backup link and download the large sql file. Download it to your PC. I like to burn DVDS, label them and save them (archive) in a series of binders with DVD sleeves. If your server has an unrecoverable crash… it’ll hurt, but as least you can “restore” your site as soon as they are back up… or find another Cpanel host (and there are plenty) and restore there. We really like AceHost

So there you have it… learn from someone who has learned the hard way. If you maintain a blog, have an ecommerce site, or even just a web-based family photo album, make sure to back up and get those files off of the server.

If not, just ask yourself this question… would I be willing to recreate everything from scratch?

Cheers!