The Cart Blog

What the heck is a Facebook Page?  And how is it different from a profile on Facebook?

There are three main differences:

• Facebook profiles may only be created for real people, and each person may only have one account.  Facebook pages may be created for businesses, groups, clubs, bands, etc.
• Facebook profiles can only be viewed by your friends; Facebook pages can be viewed by anyone.
• Facebook profiles do not get indexed by Google; Facebook pages do.

For traffic and reputation management for your business, creating a Facebook Page is really  a no-brainer.

Some helpful resources are available on the web to get you started creating your own Facebook Page.   First, a general overview is provided by social media guru Mari Smith.   Once you get through that, you’ll be ready for Facebook’s own Help Center entry on Pages and the Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide, a PDF document which describes how to use Pages.

For an example Facebook page, take a look at That Software Guy’s page on Facebook.

… shame if something were to happen to it!

Merchants are yelping about yelp.   Not surprising – this sort of service is just ripe for abuse by shakedown artists.  What’s the remedy?  I think services like RatePoint, which focus on the positive and forces complainers to authenticate themselves and enter a sincere make-good negotiation are a good start.

A recent Business Week article discusses the Twitter. Lots of interesting links. One of them was Ellen Petry Leanse’s blog (from the comments); contains loads of Twitter-tips and advice.

Social guru Chris Brogan wrote an article about how he uses LinkedIn which I thought was quite interesting. He advises being generous in connecting but restrained in recommending, which is consistent with my thoughts about best practices.

The only point of difference I have with his article is that he only briefly touches on LinkedIn’s Q&A feature (and then only to commend it as an advertising vehicle). I think that it is one of the most useful things about LinkedIn – a tremendous resource both for gathering opinions from other professionals about issues of concern to you and your business, and for demonstrating your expertise in areas your business operates. (Note that this is different from advertising; advertising is saying you’re an expert. Answering questions on LinkedIn is showing it.)

I’ve read a few interesting posts recently about reputation management – a fancy phrase for “pushing the bad stuff off the first page of Google.”

• Andy Beal (Marketing Pilgrim) here – and here too
• Site Creations.com
• Monitor This – a reputation management OPML generator; import the result into your feed reader
• The big boys worry about this stuff too – here’s Factiva on “Media Measurement” – which is really “reputation management” (free registration required).

I’ve been requesting and displaying recommendations on my Linked In profile. Does anyone else use a different mechanism (beyond simply entering them directly on your own website)?

Got a cart? You need a blog. Heck, I think you should be twittering too, but that’s just me.