Facebook fan page is no longer a luxury these days. Almost every company has their Facebook profile which they use to communicate with fans, share news and attract new customers. However, most Facebook page owners reduce their experience to simple status updates, video, photo or link sharing. Still Facebook is much more than this – it is number one social media platform which give access to hundreds of useful web applications from which everyone can benefit a lot. Here is the list of the most essentials ones which can really help engage Facebook fans and turn them into a loyal community.

Welcome Page

First impression is very important, therefore a landing page is a must for Facebook business accounts. It’s not only a place to say “Hi” to new fans or encourage people to click  “Like”, here you can tell about your company in the way you wish. With the Welcome Tab from Word of Social, you can easily create a custom landing page with your images, links, code or iFrame.

Facebook Notes

You may use this app to share tips and tricks related to your product or service, publish interesting facts about your company or any other information you find worth mentioning. Your fans are free leave comments and share your notes. The setup is quick and easy.

Top Fans

This app helps figure out the best contributors to your Facebook fan page. Each fan earns points for his/her posts, comments, likes and shares. Booshaka app identifies your “top fans” and ranks them in a nice leaderboard. You can motivate and reward your fans participation by small presents or special offers on your products.

GooglePlus Tab

This app allows Facebook users to stream their GooglePlus updates on a special tab. The app works for both personal and business Google+ profiles.

Tweets To Pages

If you run a Twitter account as well, you can automatically bring your tweets onto Facebook with Tweets To Pages app. This is a great way to create a crossover that expands your reach in both networks.

With this app, you can broadcast your YouTube videos in Facebook. The tab shows both uploaded videos and Favorites, plus you can specify which videos you’d like to show as featured.

Contact Me

Poll is a good way of gaining user information. If you have a large community on Facebook, this app is a great way to bring in some honest feedback from your visitors. Find a hot topic around your product and ask your fans to vote for one of the possible options.

UserVoice

Facebook fans often provide valuable ideas for your service/product. With UserVoice Facebook app, you can easily monitor and prioritize suggestions and have others to comment and vote for them. The app goes together with Feedback service, pricing plans with Facebook intergation feature start with $45/month.

Contests

This app enables companies to easily create and launch branded contests:  photo or video contests, design, logo, or review contests. Fees start with $5 per promotion.

10 Essential Facebook Apps to Engage your Fans is a post from: Technshare

Source Flickr

As a web based freelancer there are certain resources that allow us to make our jobs easier, faster and or more manageable. Everyone has a set of tools they rely on daily and recommend to others, below is a list of my top four tools and why I use them along with how you can use them too.

The tools below are all free, accessible to anyone and relatively easy to use. A simple download, registration and or sign up is all that is required to use and or access them along with a strong desire to succeed. If you use any of these and something tells me (since you’re most likely a freelancer or aspire to be one) that you might be a regular user of at least one of the tools on my list, do leave your feedback below in the comment area.

1. Google Docs – this is one of my most widely used tools and it encompasses a variety of tools under the one umbrella. Google Docs is a comprehensive web based resource for word processing and creating spreadsheets among other types of documents. It’s feature rich and just about any type of word processing can be created using this neat and 100% free resource. I use it for writing my blog posts then transferring them to my sites, writing guest articles for my clients and also to create various spreadsheets where I keep track of certain freelance activities. If my laptop should fry, freeze or otherwise not become operational I am not dependent on it for my articles. I just go to Google Docs on ANY computer or laptop and there my docs await. This can be very refreshing since I depend on my articles and my word processor to put food on the table. Amen. I switched over from a traditional computer-based word processing format to web-based about a year or so ago and haven’t looked back since.

2. WordPress – in my humble opinion, the best CMS of all the CMS systems on the block. With WordPress, I can create any type of blog or website including an e-commerce shop, a company website, a blog, a portfolio and anything else I could wish for. The software is 100% free to download, use and upgrade. There’s a slight learning curve to get started as it’s a robust and powerful system, however once you get the initial set up out of the way, it’s smooth sailing and really all CMS systems are – learn as you go. Best thing to do should you want to learn WordPress and use it to create your blog or website, is to find a blog you like, see if they use WordPress and send them an email. If the blogger has been around for close to year or longer, odds are he or she will know the system well and would be happy to guide you along. That really is your best bet for training and or help with WordPress, another blogger.

3. PayPal – how would freelancers get paid without PayPal is a mystery to me. PayPal opened up a can of awesome, when it landed across freelance desks everywhere. About 60% of my income is processed through PayPal as I am a freelance writer and the companies and or clients I work for pay me via this method. Yes there’s a fee and this stinks however PayPal makes up for it in convenience, accessibility and ease of use. Is it right for you? One way to find out is to visit the PayPal site and see how they stack up against the other options available to web based freelancers.

4. Twitter – social media is also a great tool for web based freelancers as it connects peeps from all walks of life and every corner of the globe. Twitter is great for networking, chatting, socializing, content sharing, research, jobs, leads, information, press and so much more. There are many articles on the web discussing the many ways to best take advantage of this tool and how best to get benefit from it. I would start by looking up how to get Twitter followers, how to tweet, best tools for Twitter, etc. Twitter is also great for following those you genuinely have an interest in and want to know better.

Share with us below in the comment area what are some of your must have tools as a web based freelancer? I await your responses below and see what other goodies we can discover together.

Four Cool Tools For Web Based Freelancers is a post from: Technshare

Source: Flickr

M-commerce (Mobile commerce) is rapidly becoming as heated a battle as any in the wireless world. In this case, a battle between the banks and the wireless providers is developing over which will control the new system and collect the potentially huge fees. Several major wireless carriers teamed up to form ISIS, a coalition supporting NFC-based mobile payment systems, which would be a chip in your phone allowing you to wave a phone close to a payment terminal and have payments go through automatically, much like swiping a credit card. The issue that banks have with this is that the carriers would collect the payment fees, cutting the banks out of the picture.

It is Not Nice To Fool With the Bankers

Banks are understandably not happy with that arrangement and are instead in support of a system using MicroSD cards to provide the same function, but the banks would provide and collect fees for, naturally. Banks claim the system would be more available their way because every phone and mobile computing device-except Apple devices-have SD card slots. The ISIS gang claims their system is the future of mobile commerce, saying that people will, in the near future, be using smartphones as wallets, and that they will naturally want to be able to pay with the smartphone itself. This would end the need to carry a wallet full of cards, and they would not need to occupy a valuable slot on their phones with the payment card.

Under the Isis banner, T-Mobile USA, “AT&T-Mobility,” and Verizon Wireless joined forces late last year to work with Discover Financial Services and Barclays PLC to force adoption of their NFC standards and take control of the customer. On the other side of the battle, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and US Bank are testing out one type of mobile payment based on MicroSD card functionality. The premise being that with NFC, the customer will need to by a new phone and using MicroSD functionality eliminates that need. Hooray for consumers; their assertion is that the customers are already theirs. Carriers, under the ISIS banner are simply trying to commandeer the market and take ownership of the customers and make the big loot.

Apples vs. Apples

There actually is very little difference between the two technologies since the two work with NFC and use the same frequency, the 13.56 MHz band. This is purely a barroom brawl to see which will win. What they are fighting for is control of the world’s wallets. The small fees collected for ATM cash withdrawals and Point of Sale transactions are indeed huge.

As mobile technology spreads, the smartphone could indeed become the de-facto wallet of the future replacing all but Identification cards such as Drivers Licenses. In time, even that could change; do you remember the Federal ID card? If a future government act allows such identification to become virtual, then you have to be chipped.

The real battle is which power bloc will win and own, well, you. For those who are believers in the Biblical end time’s prophecies, this is living fulfillment of the part about “none shall be able to neither buy nor sell without the mark of the beast.” The difference is that the beast is the system and the demons are battling to control the beast. There is no scenario under which the consumer will really win.

Other Players

PayPal has its own ideas as to which will rule them all. At the CTIA International, PayPal revealed its strategy for mobile payments, called “Wallet in the Cloud.” It would not depend on smartphones, but instead it would embed it into payment terminals, even electronic signs. Purchases could be executed by simply entering your PayPal ID and authentication right there. PayPal could distribute RFID cards to allow the system to work with existing terminals either as an NFC or swipe system.

The 21st century is barreling down upon us with terrifying speed and the major players are gutter fighting to take control of the world of tomorrow. Shouldn’t we be in control?

M-Commerce is Taking Over is a post from: Technshare

Source: Flickr

As anyone who’s rented an apartment will tell you, finding the perfect rental can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Many apartments are rented within days or even hours of becoming available.

Thanks to Web 2.0 technology, searching for available apartments within a certain area has become much easier. Apartment search engines, referrals through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, online apartment reviews and virtual apartment tours are a few of the ways the Internet can help apartment hunters. There are also hundreds of websites designed to help renters find a new home.

Here are five of the top websites that use Web 2.0 features to make apartment hunting easier:

1. HotPads is a map-based real estate search engine that includes home sale and rental listings for cities across the United States. Anyone who has a home or apartment to sell or rent can post a listing, and HotPads’ map search allows apartment hunters to pinpoint rentals in desired neighborhoods. Text search is also available to help hunt for apartments with specific amenities using keywords. The HotPads website provides a variety of useful tools, including a Renters Guide, a Buy vs. Rent Calculator and Google Earth search. HotPads also has mobile apps that make it easier to search on the go.
2. PadMapper takes apartment rental data from Craigslist and other apartment-listing services and displays them as pushpins on a Google Map. Apartment hunters can search different locations using standard Google Map operations and then use PadMapper’s filter feature to narrow down their search.
3. MyApartmentMap began as a website that plotted Craigslists rental ads on a map (like PadMapper) but has since expanded to include more advanced search features. Apartment hunters can jump from a 2D map to Google Streetview to take a neighborhood tour, browse interactive maps of local social spots and businesses, and compare rents to city averages.
4. Apartments.com is a well-established national apartment search website that features local maps, community information, customized searches, photos and floor plans for apartment communities, and classified listings updated daily from 120 newspapers. Apartments.com has one of the largest online pools of apartment listings, with 360-degree virtual tours included for many apartments. The website also has a Moving Center feature that provides support for renters as they move into their new apartment. The Apartments.com iPhone app works in conjunction with the phone’s GPS and allows you to see available apartment listings as you drive through different neighborhoods.
5. JumpPost is a low cost online alternative to using a property broker in New York City. Here’s how it works: An apartment renter who is about to move creates a post on JumpPost describing their current apartment. Apartment hunters can browse apartment posts and make appointments for viewing. If they like what they see and decide to rent, they pay JumpPost a brokerage fee (advertised as 50% less than the normal fee) and the current renter receives $500 or more for posting. JumpPost takes care of background and credit checks and rental paperwork. Although JumpPost apartment posts are currently limited to New York City, the website owners hope to expand it to include more cities in the near future.

 Since only 40% of the Technshare audience is from the USA, let us know in the comments below if any of the websites listed above have inspired you to try out some new Web 2.0 features on your website.

Web 2.0 for Apartment Hunters is a post from: Technshare

Source: Flickr

Does Our Email System Cultivate Email Viruses?

We all still remember, not too long ago an electronic mail as an exotic phenomenon and not too popular. About ten years ago, placing an email address on a business card was considered ahead of its time. Today a traditional computer electronic email has its rivals in social media and mobile communication. Yet, it is still the most prevalent way to communicate personally and business wise. The numbers of email addresses in existence are estimated in billions.  An original intent was to transmit text electronically, but as we all know, now we can email almost anything including graphics, photos and videos wrapped in html code with fancy colorful fonts. All the capabilities of modern email, I just mentioned opened a world to email viruses taking advantage of the additional hiding spots in the message itself. You can opt to receive just plain text and only worry about possible malicious attachments.

Did Microsoft Encouraged A Spread Of Email Virus?

Originally, almost all computer malware would spread through an email virus targeting for most part Microsoft operating systems, because of its popularity and because of many holes in all its products. A computer virus became then, a constant companion and a threat to all PC users. At first, virus creators wanted to show their programming knowledge and expose the weaknesses of the big companies’ software products. Then there was an individual consumer becoming a victim of cyber theft and a damaged computer.  Now we have a quiet but deadly full-fledged espionage digital war aimed at destroying corporate and government computer networks.

Some of us still remember the Nimba virus in September 2001, which awoke the software industry, by creating a lot of damage on the Internet. Even the computer users that were not hit by the virus, felt its effects, because some services became unavailable. I hope this little history lesson will awake many readers to take their computer security, especially email security very seriously.  Many different types of viruses, mutation abilities and a sheer volume of messages coming at an individual and a corporate user are an everyday concern. The best defense is to have very efficient software tools that have the capabilities to update their database virus definitions automatically.

Email System Basics

To have a better understanding on how to defend ourselves from malware threatening us, lets take a closer look at our email system. An electronic mail works as a client-server relationship, where the client is the email program that we are using to send and receive messages. Our computer plays a role as a local email server hosting our email mail box. There are two major protocols POP3 (Post Office Protocol Version) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). A message is sent using SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) to the mail server hosting the recipient’s email mail box or a message could go first to the relay server.

What Is A Great Email Security Tactic?

Who is responsible for email security, for protecting your computer system from incoming threats? You are.  Using common sense like not opening suspicious looking messages (define suspicious) or reading messages from unknown sources.  But following this rule you will miss some messages you want and open some you don’t.  There is one more thing, what about self executing messages, you don’t even have to open? Also, you have to be aware of very popular virus types, that use our email address books and using theses email addresses in your incoming email, tricking you to thinking, the message is from someone you know.

What I am about to suggest will make sense to you as a reader of this article, because of your understanding how the email system works.
There is many antivirus programs available to you and some of them will do a decent job, fighting the cyber enemy on your computer systems or networks, but there is a major flaw to this approach. You are fighting the computer viruses on your own turf (your computer). To ward off these demons you must fight the battle on a remote email server, away from your system before they come in contact with you.  This is secret to having an online experience where you control what personal information is shared with other – no someone else.

What programs or tools do you use to combat email viruses?  Do they work?  Let us know in the comments below.

The Dangers of Email Viruses is a post from: Technshare

This is a guest post by MARK ASELSTINE. If you’re interested in getting yourself in front of the readers of Technshare, checkout the guidelines here.

Anyone who works for, or in, an online business knows how incredibly valuable SERPS positions are.  Being listed first in Google means you are bound to gain 55% of all available clicks while second place gains only 25% and the numbers decrease so dramatically that I’d rather be 10^th then 7^th because people sometimes click on the bottom result before moving to the second page (which they rarely do).

One thing I’ve found is that it is both difficult and tiresome to continue crafting the type of unique content that brings not only human eyes to your site, but Google bots as well.  To that end, I’ve crafted a daily routine for myself to help me stay on my prescribed pace.  Feel free to copy and work to fit it to your individual needs as I enjoy writing and can generally complete these tasks in about 4 hours.

Article Marketing: 4 articles written and submitted to top quality sites such as ezine articles.

Forum Profiles: I find and create 25 forum profiles each day (this is the closest to spam that I’m willing to go).

Forum Posts: I post 10 messages on different forums each and every day.

Press Release: I write 3 press releases per week and submit to a few different free directories.  One of the best link juice to effort ratios available

Video: I craft 2 videos each and every week.

Podcast: I try and Podcast twice weekly although this often seems to fall by the waste side due to other projects.

Yahoo Answers: I answer 3 questions daily, this helps with SEO and also drives some decent traffic.

I socially bookmark 5 pages of my site each and every day on a different site such as Digg or Stumbleupon.

I request 1 link exchange per week and work to create 3 new pages on my website each and every day.

I write my own blog daily that consists of a mix of personal information, business information and information about my preferred niche (wine). I also try and write 1 guest blog for an authority site each and every day.

I hope you find this useful as the end result for my business has been fairly consistent movement in SERPS.  We currently sit on the 1^st page for a few of our highly competitive searches and expect to be in the top 3 within 3 months time.

Building an SEO Daily Schedule is a post from: Technshare

If you have started new movie or video related site and don’t know how to promote your new website then you’re at the right article! Out of all these 15 ways, I can assure you that most of them will work for your new website.

#1. Submit to social bookmarking sites Digg.com, Video Bomb, Flurl, StumbleVideo, Twitter – all these sites have the potential to send a lot of viewers if enough people vote for your site.

#2. Good Design You website must have a good design and layout. So it will easily catches the eyes of Visitors.

#3. Tag and describe your videos It is important to put the keywords that describe your video in the associated tags and description so search engines know what your video is about.

#4. Submit your video to the busiest video sharing sites YouTube is busier, but so is Daily Motion, MetaCafe, and many others. If you want people to visit your website write your website in the description and also show it within the video.

#5. Comments on other Blogs Commenting on other blogs get more traffic to your site. Find websites related to your niche. such as
www.wolf-howl.com

#6. Submit your site to directories :
Their are Many Directories Free and Paid. This will not get much traffic but it helps to increase Google ranking. Here is the list of free directories with high PR.

#7. Signup on Yahoo Answers You will not believe 10% of my site traffic is come from Yahoo answers. So start helping other peoples and answer the questions and link the blog posts as the source.

#8. Article Marketing Write a eye catching article and submit to article directories. Here are some places where you can submit your article -
GoArticles.com
AssociatedContent.com
Article City.com
ArticleDashboard.com
ArticlesBase.com
EzineArticles.com

#9. Forum Marketing Give the valuable ideas can encourage people to click on your signature. Depends on the niche of website. such as
www.worldwebmasterforum.com

http://www.movie-list.com/forum/

http://www.themovieforum.org/

http://www.talk-movies.com/

#10. Do something Unique Do something original and unique.Come up with new concept that no one else has done. You will Receive lot of traffic.

#11. Get help from your friends Get your friends to help by adding you to their MySpace, bookmarking your video on social bookmarking sites, adding your video as a favorite on YouTube, posting about your video on their site etc.

#12. Link Exchange Link exchange is great source of Traffic. Do Link Exchange with all types of Blogs.

#13. Rss Submission RSS is a group of web feeds used for publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, News headlines.

#14. Adwords or other PPC You pay only when a visitor clicks on your Ad, it is not a Free way, but really works!

# 15. Choose the right thumbnail When ever you decide to watch a video it is heavily influenced by the thumbnail (the little picture of the video clip) that you see first. If you can choose the thumbnail do so and make it sharp, clear, eye catching and relevant to your video.

##Now Over to your

I hope this post was interesting to you. Please do share your thoughts and do not forget to bookmark this post. If you know any other way please let us know through comment!!

Happy Promoting!!

15 ways to Promote your Online Movie or Video site is a post from: Technshare

What is No follow tag?

In simple words, search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN crawl the web periodically to locate and index new pages to include in keyword search results. Each link on a web page is followed during the indexing process.

It’s probably built into your blog or website without you even knowing about it.

Here are number of ways why I  stopped using Nofolllow and you should too stop using nofollow tag.

#1. Foundation for Nofollow - Google Page Rank

Page Rank is a 1 through 10 numerical indicator that Google assigns to web pages to note how important that page is. Page rank is then used as a factor in determining where a page should be listed in Google’s search engine . Pages with a page rank of 10 will usually get listed above sites with low page ranks.

Although Google uses dozens of factors when determining page rank, the number one factor is that it uses inbound links.

#2. Google no longer treats them the same way

As Sketch101 has sad that google will no longer treats them same way.

The page rank is now divided up among all the links on the page and is only passed on to the followable links. That probably sounds confusing so let me try to make it a bit more simple.

Imagine a page with a Google page rank of 8. This page has 4 outbound links and 2 of those links having the nofollow tag. The page’s rank of 8 will be divided among all 4 sites so that each page would receive 2 page rank. However, the nofollow links will receive nothing and the others will still only receive 2. This effectively wastes half of the page rank that could be shared.

It will no longer concentrate extra page rank to the other links. It will just throw away the extra rank

#3. There are many anti spam plugiuns or spam filters available now.

Most people are using nofollow tags, so spammers have less incentives to leave rediculous comments on your blog or site. If spammers not get page rank bank to their sites then what’s the use of spamming on your site.

Many of blogging platforms are having excellent plugins to stop spam comments.

#4. It will Reward your commentors or readers.

By removing the nofollow tags from your outbound links you are effectively rewarding your commenters or readers with page rank back to their sites.

Conclusion

I removed the nofollow tags from Site to give my readers this same incentive. So come on and leave a comment and get some page rank headed back your way!!!!!!!

Why I Stopped using Nofollow Tag!! is a post from: Technshare