Corporations on Wikipedia

I was recently asked for advice for a company wanting to know if they should start a corporate Wikipedia profile and how that can be done. Here is my reply, I hope it's helpful to others as well:

I’d have to do more research to confirm this, but to my knowledge Wikipedia discourages corporations and individuals from creating their own Wikipedia pages unless they are “noteworthy” (i.e. worth talking about in an encyclopedia). You also have to be careful if you are going to edit any information on Wikipedia while on a corporation’s network because Wikipedia can track this and your corporation can get a bad reputation from it. (You can track changes made on Wikipedia by corporations here: http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/)

To discourage link-building using Wikipedia, the site recently made all links on the site no-follow links, so they actually no longer contribute to Page Rank . That being said, you might still get a lot of traffic from a link on Wikipedia if you manage to get a link up there. A good way to try and do this is if you have educational information on your site somewhere that you can link to as a reference. For example, an air-filter site that has a lot of information on allergies might put a link to reference the info on their site at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry about allergies.

I would say, go ahead and try to create a Wikipedia page, because there’s no harm in trying – and if it gets left there, then it could drive traffic to your site. But chances are, Wikipedia is going to take the page down quickly and it will be difficult to keep your links up there.

I would try creating a corporate profile on places that would allow it, without the “no-follow” problem – like Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, etc. and linking to the site in directories with high Page Rank, like Yahoo! Submit Basic.

Twitter Account for Sale on eBay

As a member of the "web industry" it's hard not to feel immense pressure to own a Twitter account. Why - is not certain. In fact, I wade through hundreds of articles pondering the point of Twitter a day. And yet, I own one. I have yet to determine the value of Twitter, though I find that I appreciate it most when I want to update the world on a social event in which I am taking part.

For example, I used Twitter the most I ever have at SXSW Interactive - where I could follow and tweet updates on events hundreds of like-minded individuals were attending, including the Zuckerberg fiasco. I must admit, too, that my fingers were itching for a keyboard or cell phone when I stage managed the 2008 Austin Poetry Slam Finals - eager to be the first one to announce the Finals Team members' names for Nationals.

But can Twitter aid in online marketing initiatives?And does its use have monetary value? Andrew Baron thinks so, and has put his Twitter account with 1,400 followers up for sale on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160229562828

The verdict? Well, so far it's worth US $1,550.00 to someone.

Del.icio.us Tools Galore

Here's a whole long list of tools you can use with, on, and around everyone's favorite social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

Using Google's Webmaster Tools

Google offers free webmaster tools to help you check for technical issues that may be barring your website from high natural rankings. Here's the skinny on what's available in Google's Webmaster Tools, and what you can do with them.

Note: To use all the webmaster tools available, you must have FTP/back-end access to your website. This is so you can verify your site on Google and utilize automatic diagnostic features that help you improve the indexing of your site by search robots.

1. Log into Google's Webmaster Tools with your Google Account info.

2. Type in the URL of the site you want to optimize in the Dashboard.

3. You will now see an Overview page, where you can follow instructions to verify your site by uploading a file to your server via FTP, or adding a meta-tag to the site's HTML. Verification will unlock diagnostics tools, statistics on your site, link information, and various other tools.

4. Now it's time to upload a sitemap in xml format to Google. It's easy to create your own site map online, or learn how to make one yourself using Sitemap Protocol. Once your sitemap.xml file has been created, upload it via FTP to the highest directory on your site's server. Now go to the Sitemaps section of WM Tools and click on the link to "Add a Sitemap."

5. After submitting your sitemap, go to Diagnostics > Web Crawl. This is where information is listed about errors or issues impeding Google's searchbot from crawling any page on your site. This includes any broken links, pages that time out before loading, and any restricted URLs. Using this tool to identify erroneous pages on your site will allow to pinpoint the problem to go in and repair site content.

6. I will skip Mobile Crawl as that is for websites designed for mobile devices - and since this is a fairly new invention, I'm sure this is not applicable to most of you.

7. Now go to Diagnostics > Content Analysis. This page deals with issues to do with the actual content on your site, including meta-tags and title tags. You can drill down and identify pages on your site with duplicate, long, or short meta-descriptions, or missing title tags, and any non-indexable content.

8. I'm honestly not so convinced of the value offered by the Webmaster Tools' "Statistics" section, but go ahead and poke around if you are interested in general Page Ranking on your site, what search queries are leading to your site on Google, and general info about subscribers (if you have any - though I would recommend FeedBurner for gathering those stats if you're serious about subscribers), or a list of indexed pages.

9. Ever wonder what pages on your site are being linked to externally? Check out the Links section of Webmaster Tools. You can also find out what Sitelinks appear for your site on Google's search results pages. For more information on how to get sitelinks up for your site, or what the heck sitelinks are, you can read some theories on how to get sitelinks to appear.

10. Upload a robots.txt file to your site's server if you want to prohibit Googlebots from crawling specific pages of your site. For example, block the bots from certain secure pages. Don't know what a robots.txt file is? Learn more about them here. Remember also to include a reference to the location of your sitemap in the robots.txt file.

11. You can generate and analyze your robots.txt file in the WM Tools "Tools" section.

And that about wraps up Webmaster Tools.

Tech Blog Buffet!

I just added a new link to my personal "useful links" list: Step Three Profit, a blog kept by my good friend and inspirational developer dude Brandon Wiley.

If anyone wants to recommend any more cool tech blogs, let me know. Here are some others I have been reading recently:

• Steven Hazel's Hackerdashery
• Horse.Pig.Cow
• Web Strategist
• Marketing Pilgrim

Portfolio Site

I've just started work on an updated portfolio site at ZaraSteadman.com.

It's been awhile since I sat down and coded a site from start to finish like the old days, so it's taking a while to get cross-browser fluency. Any feedback is appreciated!

New Discoveries

Here are some pretty cool sites I learned about this weekend at SXSW Interactive and thought I might share:

http://www.socialthing.com - Aggregate your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other social networking accounts into one... social... thing! It let's you keep up on what's going on with your friends in all creative spaces on the web at once. Currently in beta.

http://www.pmog.com - A game you can play, just by surfing the web in your FF browser. just install, register, and you're playing. Users set mines, leave gifts, messages, and more on pages across the web, which you (as a player) run into while randomly browsing. In retaliation or reciprocation you can set up your own surprises for other players. You gain "data points" for the length of time you spend on the web, and can even choose to play certain missions you run into and earn "badges". For example, to earn the "Indie badge," you must REFRAIN FROM USING Google FOR 24 HOURS while surfing on the web. Can you do it? In beta.

http://www.ihasahotdog.com/ - Just as charming and addictive as Icanhascheezburger.com. I think you can guess what this is about.

http://safaribooks.com/ - A great resource for tech-heads and web creatives. This is a growing modern archive of tech and development related books published by O'Reilly press that you can access from your computer, online. Check out 10 books at a time for $23 a month, or have your pick from 1000s of titles at any time for $43/month (cheaper than the YMCA!). This site has apparently been around a while.

http://www.Utterz.com - I think the concept is the same as SocialThing but from your cell phone, for people who prefer to text their updates. Or something.

http://www.bitstrips.com - Make a comic! It's fun! It's in beta though so it's kinda buggy. look: