MaineBusiness.com

Facebook Privacy: How to Protect Yourself on Facebook

Dear Rich,

Recently someone left an inappropriate response to something I posted on my Facebook page. This person isn't a friend of mine, but is apparently in one of my networks. I deleted it, but I didn't even realize anyone but my friends could see what I post! I'm kind  of freaked and concerned about posting anything else.

How do I block this person from my Facebook profile, and how do I better protect myself going forward?

--Creeped Out In Cranberry Isles

Is Your Web Site or Blog Discriminating Against the Disabled?

Yesterday I received an email from a reader of this blog. On a post called Five Secrets to Promoting Your Business Blog I included a recommendation to post to influential blogs in your niche.

Why didn't he just leave a comment? Read on...

The reader responded that one barrier to leaving comments on blogs is the use of CAPTCHAs--those annoying, messy boxes of alpha-numerics that are supposed to separate the people from the machines. Unfortunately, they can be an impenetrable barrier to people with disabilities. More unfortunately, MaineBusiness.com, which hosts this blog, uses CAPTCHA to prevent comment spam on their site. (So does TypePad, which powers my other blog, flyte blog: web marketing strategies for small business.)

The reader mentioned that census figures show 20% of the population are somehow disabled; obviously, not all of the would be stopped by a CAPTCHA, but why would you use a tool that stops the voice of your reader and quiets the conversation on your site?

Obviously, there's a very good reason for using CAPTCHAs. They help stem the tide of comment spam generated by computers. Spammers use computers to send out an infinite, unending stream of spam to online forms for a variety of reasons. These spams reduce the signal to noise ratio, clog the tubes of the Internet, and reduce everyone's productivity.

New CAPTCHA tools often give people alternatives to those messy alphanumerics. Sometimes there's also an audio option (the computer will read you the answer and you type it in) or a simple math problem (what is 2 + 0) that these spam bots haven't yet caught up with.

Regardless, it's an ongoing battle between keeping communication flowing while keeping noise out. In a recent post, I talked about some of the benefits I've seen by using some non-CAPTCHA tools on online forms. However, ultimately spammers will figure those out as well.

We are in an arms race with the spammers, and of course there are innocent bystanders that are getting hurt, or at least disenfranchised.

There's no right answer on how to handle the balance of reducing incoming spam and keeping the lines of communication open with any human who wants to be part of the conversation. Each company, each Web site owner, and each blogger needs to make their own decision.

What have you found that works for you?

Five Secrets to Promoting Your Business Blog

Blogs can be a powerful marketing tool, but not if they remain hidden. Here are 5 simple tricks all business bloggers should do to promote their blog and reach new customers.

1. Create keyword-rich content on a regular basis. No matter what else you do on this list, if you're not regularly posting content to your blog, it will be difficult to attract regular readers.
2. Comment on other influential blogs in your niche. Leaving comments on other blogs will create a link from their blog to yours. Leaving inane comments will get your comments deleted, and possibly get you banned. So, leave intelligent comments.
3. Link from your Web site to your blog. Especially at the beginning when your Web site has more trust built up at the search engines and your blog has none.
4. Ping the news aggregators to let them know when you've updated your blog. I use Pingoat; every time I finish a blog post I immediately go to Pingoat and ping dozens of news services in one step.
5. Link to other blogs in your niche (and click on those links.) Whether in a blogroll or in an individual post, link to other bloggers and then click on those links to, a) confirm the links are right, and b) to show up as a referrer on their traffic reports. This should get their attention and maybe they'll end up linking back to you!

There are of course dozens if not hundreds of other things you can do to leverage the power of your business blog, but if there's anything on this list you aren't doing now, I recommend starting right away.

Do you have any techniques that have gotten you more traffic at your blog?

Rich Brooks
Small Business Blogger

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