Quincy Zikmund | Page 2 | A2Z Computer Services Inc

Why Your Business Needs an Online Account Management Policy

September 27, 2011 by Quincy Zikmund Leave a Comment

In today’s business world we have various policies for areas such as sales, follow ups, making contact and how our time is spent during the day when we’re in the office. Policies are important and help keep the entire company or department on the same page. Now with the growth of technology in business there’s an additional family of policies that are needed. Odds are that your business now needs an online account policy.

Why do I need a password policy?

In many cases all online usernames and passwords are left in the hands of one individual. This includes the company Facebook page, Twitter account, website and blog. At first it makes sense to leave this all to one person, especially if they’re the most “tech-savvy” in the office. If your company’s entire online presence can be managed by one person then that’s great and can save others a lot of time. However, all usernames and passwords must be recorded and kept on file. These accounts also shouldn’t be setup under your employee’s personal email address, create a company address to manage these accounts.

The fact of the matter is that although you trust your employee and he or she is a great worker, they might not work for you forever. There’s a very good chance that they will one day move on to a different job and if they leave on bad terms you could be left with a big challenge in trying to access your online accounts. As a web developer and social media marketer I have run into many situations where a project ended up taking weeks longer than it should have simply because the passwords and administration access that I needed were in control of a past employee of my client and we couldn’t contact them.

Understand the important and value of your online presence.

It’s become common knowledge by now that if you don’t use your website, blog or other social media outlets then you won’t gain much from them. Regardless of your industry, if your company is online you can benefit from it and you need to be sure that you stay in control of your online presence. Email, Facebook, Twitter and websites are an important form of communication these days. What we put out is what our customers see, the customers that have or will pay for our services and products. We protect what is important to us and our business.

Whether you’ve been using an online presence for your company for years, have just started or are considering it I encourage you to sit down with your team and develop or review your internet policies. Be sure to develop a password policy to protect your internet presence from being lost or damaged.

Has your company ever faced a situation that proved the necessity of an online account management policy?

First Look at Facebook’s Timeline

September 24, 2011 by Quincy Zikmund 1 Comment

This past Thursday, September 23, Facebook held its f8 Conference where the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced new updates and changes for the Facebook platform. This year marked the biggest announcements and changes that we have ever seen from Facebook. One of these are the new profile design that has been called Timeline, which will be rolled out to all users in the coming weeks. However, Facebook developers gained access to Timeline immediately. This morning I made the switch on my profile, which is only visible to other developers until the official launch. Today I’m going to give you a tour of the Timeline so that you will know what to expect. Let’s start from the top!

Profile Picture, Cover and About Information

The first thing you see on the new profile is a large image that spans the entire width of your profile. This image is called Cover. It’s similar to your Profile Picture in that you set it to be whatever you want and can change it as often as you’d like. The purpose of the Cover image is to introduce yourself in one quick hit. Example: You might set your profile picture as just an image of yourself and use your cover image to show off your latest family portrait. The Cover image is only seen when someone is looking at your profile. The profile picture has had some updates as well. You’ll notice that it overlays your Cover image, which gives a pretty nice effect. Your profile picture’s thumbnail is still what you’re known by around Facebook when you send out posts and comments. However, the profile picture as it shows up on your profile is now a 2″ x 2″ square.

Your basic “About” information (i.e. your job, school, location and relationship status) is now located directly under your profile picture and name. The same information is displayed as before but now it just looks much cleaner. Clicking the “About” link under your basic information takes you to a page that is the equivalent of the “Info” tab that we had before. The same information is displayed as before, only in a much cleaner format that resembles the Timeline. All of your other links that were in the left sidebar on the old profile are now directly under the Cover image and each link includes image thumbnails. By default, “Friends” and “Photos” are the first two listed. Next you see “Map” (see below for information about the Map) and “Likes”. After the first four images you see a button with a number and an arrow. When this is clicked you see all other applications that you use such as Spotify or Nike +. Your featured applications can moved around but your “Friends” link and “Photos” link must stay in the first two spots.

Your Map

The Map application is a brand new addition to the Facebook profile. You can see the Map thumbnail and link as one of my featured applications under the Cover image. When clicked you see a large map full of dots. These dots represent everywhere that you have told Facebook you’ve been. Included on the map are check-ins, life events that you have added to your Timeline and everywhere that you have lived. This is a pretty cool feature, especially if you travel a lot.When others are looking at your map they have the ability to filter the map by month and year by using the navigation links that you see to the right of the map.

Goodbye Wall, Hello Timeline

Say goodbye to your old Wall and hello to your Timeline. Your Timeline is the biggest overhaul to profiles. Rather than showing a long list of your most recent posts and activity your Timeline is divided into two columns and each post or piece of activity has its own box. At the top of your Timeline is the dialog box where you make posts and where others write on your Timeline just they like they did on the Wall.

Life Events

Life events can also be added to your Timeline from the same place that you post status updates. These life events can be anything that you have ever done such as taking a vacation, getting a new pet or buying a home. These Life Events are then placed into your Timeline on the date that you specify. When adding a Life Event you can include a photo, the story, and who you were with. Timeline essentially allows you to create your own autobiography from the day you were born through the present day. In fact, when someone scrolls to the very bottom of your Timeline they see your birthday along with a baby picture and where you were born, if you choose to include those items.

To the right of your profile is a navigation bar that includes months and years. This is how you filter through your timeline. If your friend wants to look at what you were up to in 2008 then all they have to do is click “2008” in the navigation and they will be taken to that year of your life.

Final Thoughts

Please note that this is simply an overview of the new Facebook profiles and Timeline. There is so much more to say about all of the updates and changes coming, which we will talk about in later blog posts. For now I hope that you at least have a better understanding of what to expect in the coming weeks. This new format will no doubt take time for users to adapt to.

What are your thoughts about the new Facebook profile design and Timeline? Let us know in the comments below.

10 Second PC Boot Up [VIDEO]

September 21, 2011 by Quincy Zikmund Leave a Comment

This is a PC that we recently built for a customer. This is an Intel Core i7 based computer with a Crucial 64 GB Solid State Hard Drive and a Western Digital 1TB drive for storage. The boot up time for this PC is about 10 seconds. I don’t mean just 10 seconds until you see your desktop, but 10 seconds until everything is loaded and ready for use. Most people think that only a Mac can load this fast. While Macs are great, some people are simply a PC.

The customer that we built this system for plans to use it for video editing. Aside from the large storage and fast processor, this computer is loaded with many other features for beautiful video editing.

A2Z Computer Services can build the perfect computer for all of your needs, whether it’s for home or business use. Just give us a call at (270) 830-9590 or come by our store in downtown Henderson.

Facebook Contests: Do’s and Don’ts

September 20, 2011 by Quincy Zikmund Leave a Comment

Facebook contests and giveaways are very popular these days. It’s rare to not see posts from friends who have just entered to win a gift card or an iPad. It’s just as rare to not see posts from company pages that you like promoting their latest sweepstakes and how you can win. Contests are a great way to generate buzz about your brand on the largest social network around. However, there are a few problems that many businesses run into when it comes to making Facebook contests a part of their social media strategy. Below is just the tip of the iceberg that I hope will create some conversation and get you thinking about the use of contests in your social media strategy.

You are not allowed to run contests on the Facebook platform.

According to Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines, companies are not allowed to run contests or giveaways using the Facebook platform. This means that you can’t ask a question in a post and randomly pick a winner from the comment thread. You’re also not allowed to run a contest through voting in your photo albums. Essentially, if a tool or feature is native to Facebook you’re not allowed to use it for running your contest.

So what is the right way to run a contest? Third party applications. These applications integrate with Facebook but they are not part of Facebook, they are not running on Facebook’s servers. These applications allow you to run fan generated contests, sweepstakes and other types of promotions. This is the only way that Facebook allows you to run contests. Unfortunately, many either ignore this rule or simply don’t know it exists. You’re also not allowed to announce contest winners using the Facebook platform. Winners must be contacted in private through email, phone or some other method.

It’s important to run your contests the right way so that you won’t potentially lose all that you’ve worked for in building your Facebook presence.

The contest is over. Now what?

Picture this: Today is the big day. For the past month your company has been running and promoting a sweepstakes on your Facebook page to give away an excellent prize. You check your page insights and see that your interactions, impressions and new likes have skyrocketed over the last few weeks. You’ve managed to gain hundreds, maybe even thousands of new likes on the page. You’re ecstatic. All these new people have seen your logo and shown interest in your company (or at least the contest). You draw the winner, give them their prize and thank all the entrants for participating. You go home for the weekend and relax knowing that you have succeeded on Facebook. Monday morning comes and you sign into Facebook as soon as you sit down at your desk. You pull up your company page, click the text box to begin writing a post when you suddenly stop and think “What now?”

As I said before, running contests through Facebook is an excellent way to generate buzz, gain more likes and to simply show community appreciation. I also believe that these special promotions can be a part of everyone’s social media strategy in some form or fashion. However, contests cannot be your entire social media strategy. If you do nothing but continually run contests how will your business truly benefit? You may have 10,000 likes on your Facebook page or 10,000 followers on Twitter but are those individuals truly relevant to your business? You need to provide true value to your online community or else they will leave. If they don’t care about your products or service then they will probably leave as soon as the contest is over. Give your followers a reason to stick around, give something of value.

Your business needs a social media strategy that makes education and customer service a priority. Yes, you should grow your page as time goes on with various promotions. But the true value lies in the content that you’re putting out there and the conversation that takes place around your brand daily.

Our goal at A2Z is to help businesses use social media in a way that is effective in giving value to the online community, creating awareness about your products and services and bringing you more business. Contests help but they cannot do it all.

Are contests part of your social media strategy? Based on what you read above, are you running them the right way?