Buzz Web Tips

Over the years in this digital world your email address has become more than just a way to contact you. It’s become your unique identifier…your key to all other accounts. When you lose a password, most likely you can reset your password by having a link sent to you via email. More often than not, your email address is your user id on most web sites. You need to guard your email password because if it is hacked, the culprit has the power to change all the passwords to your account.

Not only do you have to guard your email address during it’s existence, you need to be careful about deleting it too- especially if you have accounts still linked to it.

Isn’t it scary then, that some of the most popular online email services recycle email addresses??? It’s true.

Here is what I found out about various email accounts:

Yahoo – allows an email address to be recycled in less than 6 months after it’s deleted. Here is their warning when you attempt to delete an email address:

In most cases your account will be deactivated and then deleted from our user registration database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity. Additionally, due to the limited number of names available, we may allow other users to sign up for and use your current Yahoo! ID and profile names after your account has been deleted.

Is 90 days long enough to discourage fraudulent activity??

Hotmail – recycles emails after one year.

Additionally – Hotmail may delete your account without your consent…?

This forum post from 2009 states the following:

Your Windows Live Hotmail account will be marked as inactive if you do not access it for more than 270 days. It may be permanently deleted if it remains inactive for an additional 90 days. To learn more about this, please check out a Solution Article created by MSFT Roopa S “How to close your Hotmail account”. Here is the article.  this how to article.

Gmail – Good news- Gmail does not reuse their email addresses!

Here is the message they display when you attempt to delete a gmail account:

If you delete Gmail from your Google Account, then you will no longer be able to send, receive, or access email from your account using Gmail. You’ll also be unable to reuse your Gmail username in the future.

If you are thinking of deleting an unwanted email address,  take care. It’s best to do a slow transition to a new email address, ensuring that all of your online accounts are linked to the new address. Keep the old email account open for at least a year after you’ve transferred accounts to make sure you haven’t missed any important accounts with online stores or banks.  Or better yet, don’t delete it at all…

Revised April 20, 2012

By now you’ve mastered the art of tagging your friends on Facebook so they get notified on your posts.  Are you using this same feature for your business page?  Tagging makes it easier for others to link back to your page.  When Facebook users are visiting from the phone or tablet – tagged links are far easier to use because Facebook apps support them better than a URL.

Be sure to take advantage of this feature!   

How to Tag your Facebook Business Page

The @ Symbol

On the status or comment box type the @ symbol and the first few letters of your business page name. You should see a list of business pages you have “liked”.

Create your Link

Once you see your business listed below the status/comments text box (see image above), select your business name and finish typing your message.  Submit your comment to the box and then observe as your business name becomes a clickable link.

Hover Mode!

Here is a cute feature – when someone hovers over you link, a small info window pops up displaying info about your business page.  If  they want, they can “like” your page without visiting it.  This is great when you take part in silent tagging for your business.

Stop typing out your business URL on Facebook.  Tag it! 

Taking part in Twitter chats and parties is a great way to learn about your favorite topic.  TweetChat.com is one great tool to use for this.

To take part in a twitter chat or twitter party you need to know the hashtag or twitter keyword. In this example we are using the #SMOChat (Social Media Optimization) hash tag.

TwitterChat makes taking part in following chats very easy by 1) tracking a particular hashtag and 2) adding that hashtag to all of your responses.

Here is our step by step in getting started on TweetChat.com.

Hashtags in TweetChat

Type www.tweetchat.com in your browser and type the hashtag / twitter keyword.

View the chat

After typing in the keyword, click on the “Go” button. View the tweets that use that hashtag. You can see the chat!

Join the Chat

Now it is time to join the chat – Click on the “Sign In”  button , type in your id and password and click on “Authorize app” to allow TweetChat to access your twitter account.

Type a Message

You can respond to a message or add a new one.  Type on the box at the top of the screen.

Post your message

Click on the “update” button to post your message. Notice that it automatically ads the hashtag.  Such a nice feature since the hashtag is easy to forget when you are replying.

Adjust the Speed

Click on the “Refresh Speed” to expose the speed bar so you can adjust the speed of the screen refresh.

Find a chat, join a chat! Enjoy!

Adding links to blog posts and articles is relatively easy but in this step by step, here are some little tips to customizing and fine tuning them to make them more eye catching and informative.

Click on the status text box

Paste or type the article link in the status text box – an article image, the title and description should appear below the text box.

If there are multiple images in the article – you will be able to choose which one to display. Click on the arrows to scroll through them and choose one. You can click on the “No Thumbnail” check box if you wish – For visual appeal it is best to include an image.

A little known feature is the ability to change the description – click on the article text get into “edit” mode. Change the text as desired.

You can customize the title too! Click on the title to make it editable and change the text as desired.

Finally, add a message and select the “Post” button.

Viola!

In Shareaholic’s most recent traffic referral report one interesting thing to note is that Pinterest drives more referral traffic than more established sites such as YouTube and LinkedIn – It is giving Google Plus a run for its money as well.

If you haven’t already created an account in  Pinterest, you might want to consider doing so today.  Check out our recent article Make Pinterest Work for your Business.

For more analysis on this report visit Shareaholic.

Shareaholic Traffic Share Report

Have you created a user name for your facebook page? Do you have a nice short URL like “www.facebook.com/buzzwebtips”? If not, create one today. When choosing name  - it should be short and easy to remember.  You may want to match it up with the your domain name.  Be sure to include it on your business cards, phamplet, signature in your emails and any other business literature you have.

For more information check out Facebook’s username FAQ.

Pinterest is a fast growing social media site… but unlike others, its content is solely pictures.  I like to think of it as a virtual pin-up board or a visual bookmarking site. Pinterest provides fun way of  bookmarking your favorite ideas, items or articles. From Pinterest you can follow friends or strangers who share your interests.

As a business owner you want to take advantage of this social media by having Pinterest users pin items from your website.

Create a Pinterest Account

Pinterest promotes community by remaining invitation only. So the first step is to ask a friend to invite you. If you don’t know anyone who uses Pinterest,  don’t worry… you can request an invite.  Invitations from friends are sent immediately but requests to be invited can take up to 24 hours to arrive.

Build Interesting Boards  

Within Pinterest you can categorize your “pinned” items on separate bulletin boards. Be sure to separate your ideas and pins into categories that make sense.

One temptation for business owners is to self promote all of your products or blog articles but there are many reasons to be careful with this tactic. First of all Pinterest encourages sharing of ideas and information but it discourages pure self promotion. This is stated in their etiquette page.  Secondly, your follower will lost interest if your products or articles are all you share. Definitely show off your items or articles on Pinterest, but also be sure to create boards to share links to other items (movies, books, ideas, items)  that you like.  Feel free to create boards to share information that your followers and visitors will love.

Invite your visitors to follow you in Pinterest

Pinterest does a great job of  encouraging others to follow you … They will show your Pins to others who might find your items interesting. Still you want to make sure your customers and visitors are following you. Be sure to their buttons to to your site to encourage your visitors to follow your Pinterest boards.  Of course use your other social media pages as well – Invite your fans, followers and friends from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram etc to join you on Pinterest.

Add the Pinterest links to your Website

While you want your Pinterest friends to repin your items, you also want to tap in to visitors, customers and members of your website. Invite them to Pin something from your site using Pinterest buttons thereby adding links to your items to their boards. Encourage this by adding this button on each page of your site.

Get to Know your Followers

The best way to make your boards interesting to  your followers to to follow them back and learn what they like. This way you will find out what interests you share with them, you can re-pin their pins,  post comments or create new pins that others like. Understanding your followers will give you insight for tailoring your products or articles to your customers and audience.

Also, visit your own boards and read the comments from your followers and observe which items were repinned. Again this  will tell you what appeals to the most to your visitors.

So – have fun. Join, share and Pin.. Be careful because you will get hooked!

Move over Blackberrry Messenger, iPhone has iMessage… Very slick! It works on the iPad (1 and 2) and Touch (3rd and 4th gen) as well…

For iPhone users you can send “texts” and “multi-media” messages to fellow iPhone / iPad / Touch pals for free.  Nice little perk if you are concerned about text message charges.

Here are some good tutorials on C-Net to check out:

How to install iOS 5 – you need to install iOS 5 before trying iMessage…Set aside 20 minutes to 2 hours to do this…

FAQ: What’s iMessage and how does it work?

How to get started with iMessage

Enjoy!

If you are in the business of selling products or services be sure to add the reviews app to your facebook page. This can be done in three easy steps:

The Facebook Reviews Application

 Finding this application is a bit tricky. A search of “facebook reviews” brings back a long list of apps. I find this facebook review app to be the most popular.

Step 1. Go to the Facebook Reviews App

Using the following link visit the facebook reviews application and find the Add to My Page link in the left hand side of the page.

Facebook Reviews App

Step 2. Select your Page

If you have multiple bsiness pages you will be given a choice. After clicking on the selected button, close the window.

Add to Page

Step 3. Find the Reviews on your Business Page

Find the reviews tab is on the left hand side of your business page. Easy!

Find the Reviews Tab

Note that you will not be able to post reviews on your own page but be sure to invite your customers to quickly fill it!

Facebook Reviews Sample

General Twitter ettiquete states that you should follow anyone who follows you.  There are metrics such as TFF ratio (Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio) which supposedly indicate your success and popularity in Twitter.

On my On my business twitter account I pick and choose who I follow. I could auto follow my followers but I prefer to take the time to pick and choose  my twitter friends so I don’t clutter my twitter page.

Here is my quick way of determining who to follow:

Fewer Followers. Lots Followed.

If the “following” numbers are rather low (under the hundreds), this indicates that the person is interested in Twitter for information, not necessarily for mini-blogging. I look for quality posts so I like to follow these followers.

If the numbers that the person follows are high (in the thousands) this person/business could be trying to attract followers by following others. Know that Twitter doesn’t like folks to follow too many folks. In fact they do stop you from following others when you’ve hit a high amount such as 2000. I tend to avoid these twitter pages.

Lots of Followers. Few Followed. 

 In general, whether the numbers are low or high - this does seem to indicate that the twitter is worth following.

If there is a small gap between the two numbers it probably indicates that the person is politely following those who follow him but is picking and choosing. I like following those who pick and choose (Like me!)

If the gap between follow”ees” and followers  is large it could mean that the account owner is posting more than  reading.  This might be someone worth following but there isn’t a lot of engagement.

Still don’t know if you should follow or not? Well – it’s up to you. Here is another great article which might help: 7 Indicators of Twitter Influence

Articles of interest:

7 Indicators of Twitter Influence

Relevancy, Engagement, Value – Why You Should or Shouldn’t Follow Me

How to Auto-Follow Those That Follow You on Twitter