On December 1, 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new disclosure guidelines for bloggers and affiliates went into effect. The best
Blog Disclosure Policy Generator is at the http://disclosurepolicy.org site. If you receive any free stuff or compensation or affiliate income for your blog, you should review the new FTC requirements.

Blog Disclosure Statement Resources

• FTC Guidelines
• Blog Disclosure Policy Generator
• How to Write a Blog Disclosure Policy
• Examples of Blog Disclosure Statements

Do you have a Facebook Page for your local business, brand, product or organization yet? Are you an Artist, Band or Public Figure that doesn’t have a Facebook Page yet. Here are steps to creating one.

Step 1 - Sign on to Facebook and go to the following link.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

You will need to select the category of your business from the lists below. Selecting the right category is extremely important since you cannot change it once you select one. In addition, selecting the right category is important for your to match your branding. You should browse (see step 2) some of the other Facebook pages first to find your competitors to ensure you are in the right category.

Facebook Local Page Categories
Automotive, Automotive Dealer / Vehicle Service, Banking and Financial, Bar, Cafe, Club, Convention Center and Sports Complex, Education, Event Planning Service, Grocery, Health and Beauty, Home Service, Hotel/Lodging, Libray / Public Building, Medical Service, Museum / Attraction, Park, Pets, Professional Service, Real Estate, Religious Center, Restaurant, Store, Technology and Communication Service, Travel Service.

Facebook Brand, Product, or Organizations Categories
Airline / Ship / Train Station, Communications, Consumer Product, Fashion, Film, Financial Service, Food and Beverage, Game, Government, Home Living, Hotel / Lodging, Non-Profit, Online Store, Pharmaceutical, Professional Service, Religious Organization, Rental Cars, Retail, Sports / Athletics, TV Show, Technology Product / Service, Travel, Website.

Faceboook Artist, Band, or Public Figure Categories
Other Public Figure, Actor, Athlete, Band, Comedian, Critic, Government Official, Model, Musician, Politician, Sports Team, Visual Artist, Writer

Facebook Browse Pages by Type or Keyword Search

Step 2 - Browse Other Facebook Pages

In the example to the right, I typed “Mansion Nightclub” a popular Miami night club that was listed under Local Page Categories - Club. Ogawa Design Agency is listed under Local Page Categories - Professional Service. A note that there are a few categories such as Politician that changes the default “Become a Fan” to “Become a Supporter”.  Again, there is no Facebook feature yet to change your Facebook Category so don’t skip this step.

Step 3 - Create New Facebook Page

Return to Create new Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and:

• Select your category
• Name of Page (limited to 75 characters and spaces, you can use spaces rather than hyphens “-” or underlines “_”. )
• Check Do not make Page publicly visible at this time if you want to publish it later.

Remember to read the disclaimer about creating unauthorized pages. If you violate the terms of service, you can be removed as an Administrator or even have your Facebook account disabled.

Step 4.

Your Facebook Page was sucessfully completed.

You should receive the page at the right if your page was successfully created.

You can go ahead and start adding content just like you add content to your current Facebook page.

Here are some general notes on Facebook Pages:

• You can assign more than one Admin for every Facebook Page you create so it doesn’t matter which Facebook user originally creates the page.  You can assign a Facebook Admin to your Facebook friend or if you are not friends, then by email address.
• You can administrate more than one Facebook page with your Facebook account. As a webmaster, I manage several Facebook pages using the website address: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage


Customize your Facebook Business Page

• To Edit or page settings, in the left navigation click Edit Page.
• There are a number of options to customize your Facebook Page. The main options that I have used are: 1) Discussion Boards - the options to remove the Discussion Boards for clients that did not want any open discussions on their pages which also removes the item from your Facebook Page tabs; 2) The feature to Add Admins; 3) The Events Application for my client’s with Business Events.

Step 5.

Don’t forget to Publish your Page if you selected the option in Step 3 to not make it publicly visible.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at http://www.ogawadesign.com/ or at 786-220-1295.

American Airlines Twitter

If you are a business owner that has resisted getting on Twitter.com, here’s the first really good reason to get a Twitter Account. The airlines are one of the very first companies to provide customer service on Twitter. If your flight is delayed or there is a long line at the airport and you need to urgently contact an airline customer service representative which is part of the traveling experience today, you can “patiently” take out your iPhone or Blackberry and tweet a customer service rep. You may be surprised that you are actually contacted by an Airlines Customer Service Representative.

The other day I flew from Los Angeles to Miami and I waited over 45 minutes in the Miami baggage claim area with the hundred or so passengers on the plane for our luggage. In frustration, I twittered @AAirwaves. In less than 15 minutes, the baggage from our finally started rolling onto the carousel and guess whos bag was the third bag…MY BAG! It may not have had anything to do with my tweet but it sure felt good as I grabbed my bag among the large crowd of passengers and headed for the empty taxi line.

Here’s the list of Airlines with Twitter Accounts.

@AirFranceUS - Air France Twitter account
@AlaskaAir - Alaska Airlines Twitter account
@AAirwaves - American Twitter account
@BritishAirways - American Twitter account
@Continental - Continental Twitter account
@DeltaAirlines - Delta Twitter account
@flyfrontier - Frontier Airlines (Denver, CO)
@JetBlue - JetBlue Twitter Account
@FlyHawaiian - Hawaiian Arilines
@SouthwestAir - Southwest Airlines
@SpiritAirlines - Spirit Airlines
@UnitedAirlines - United Airlines Twitter account
@USAirways - USAirways Twitter account
@VirginAmerica - Virgin Airlines
@VirginAtlantic - Virgin Atlatnic

Finally, remember that in order to send a Direct Message on Twitter, the Twitter member must be following you. So before you go on your trip, you should follow these accounts. Otherwise you can post a tweet and wait for your response.

Also, here a list of other Twitter Airlines accounts including International Airlines.

@AerArann
@_Aeroflot_
@aegeanairlines
@aerosvit
@AirAsiaDotCom
@air_baltic
@airberlin_DE
@airberlin_US
@airescolombia
@Air_France
@AirFranceUK
@airnzuk
@AIRNZUSA
@AirSouthwest
@allegiantair
@AllNipponAirUSA
@AsianaAirlines
@ASIANA_SF
@AtlanticAir
@Austrian_NL
@AustrianSrbija
@bmibaby_com
@British_Airways
@Cathay_Pacific
@cathaypacificUK
@cathaypacificUS
@Cirrus_Airlines
@clickair (Bracelona)
@Corendon
@CzechAirlines
@EasternAirways (UK)
@easyJet
@easyJet_DE
@easyjet_promos
@easyJetCare
@easyjetspain
@easyjetuk
@elal_airlines
@Estonian_Air
@Eurofly
@Eurofly_Air
@flyairnorth
@flyairnz
@FlyAustrian
@flybe
@FlyEmirate
@flykingfisher
@flymepegasus
@flyniki
@fly_pacificblue
@FLYSAS_com
@flyseair
@FrontierStorm
@GarudaIndonesia
@germanwings_com
@GoAirlines
@horizonair
@IberiaAirlines
@Icelandair37
@icelandexpress
@iflygo
@Jet2com
@jet4you
@JetstarAirways
@kenyaairways
@klm
@KLM_UK
@KoreanAir_KE
@last_seat
@LOTpolish
@Lufthansa_DE
@Lufthansa_USA
@MAS
@Meridiana_Air
@mexicana_com
@MokuleleAir
@OfficialGulfAir
@philippineair
@piedmontair
@QantasUSA
@QFTravelInsider
@qatarairways
@SAS_Norge
@SASGroup
@SeaPortAir
@skyeurope
@Skywest_Airline
@southwestair
@spanair
@SQairlines
@SrilankanUK
@SunCountryAir
@sunwingairlines
@SwissAirLines
@TAMAirlines
@TAMLinhasAereas
@tapnews
@ThaiAirwaysAust
@themonarchbeach
@tigerairways
@TigerAirwaysAU
@transaviacom
@TUIflycom
@turkishairlines
@ucurbenipegasus
@USA3000Airlines
@usairways
@VAustralia
@viajaVolaris
@virginblue
@vivaaerobus
@vueling
@westjet
@wizzair

@JetBlueCheeps - JetBlue.com promotions on Twitter.

Every Facebook user who posts family or personal pictures to their Facebook Album should consider setting up their Facebook Album Privacy. This would be especially important if you don’t want some of your children’s pictures to be displayed to the entire Facebook community or your Facebook Network. Here are some recommended steps.

Step 2 - Facebook Album Privacy Settings . settings. Here are instructions for doing so.

1. Step 1 - Assign each Facebook friend to a Facebook Friends List. From the Facebook main menu, click Friends, All Friends. I then created the following lists: a) Family, b) Close Friends, c) High School, d) College e) Family f) Business. The Limited Profile is automatically created for you. I only had a couple hundred friends but in my case, it took less than 15 minutes. You should note that your friends can belong to more than one list such as College and Close Friend. You should also note that Facebook considers everyone not in your Network a Friend.
2. Step 2 - Go to your Facebook Privacy Photos. From the Facebook Home page, click Profile, then in the left Navigation under Photos, click See All. Under Your Photos, click Album Privacy. You can also go directly to this page by going to: http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos For each album, you will need to to select Who can see each album. The default settings are: a) Everyone b) My Network and Friends c) Friends of Friends and d) Only Friends.
3. Sep 3 - For each Album you want to make private, click Edit Custom Settings. Then under Edit Photo Album Privacy, click Some Friends. If you click the + icon, you will see your the lists you created in Step 1 Above: a) Family b) Close Friends  c) High School d) College e) Family f) Business. Select one or more for each album or to keep your Album Public, select Everyone, My Network and Friends, Friends of Friends or Only Friends.


Facebook Edit Album Privacy settings - Some Friends

4. Step 4 - Test Your Settings - You will need a second Facebook account to test your settings. If you have a son or a daughter on Facebook that you have access to, then that would be a good account to use. Also, if you don’t have access to your son or daughter’s Facebook account and they are under age, this would be an excellent time to ask them for access rights. You can also use this opportunity to help them make the Album secure.
5. Step 5 - Test Your Wall - From the Facebook main menu, Click Profile and make sure with your test account you correctly test your Wall to see if your privacy photo album correctly displayed. You should also click on the Photos tab and scroll to your list of Albums and see if they are correctly displayed. If you make a Family Album Private for your Family List, the Album name will not be displayed to your other Friends.

The process of setting your Facebook Albums using this method make take more than a few minutes, but it is well worth the time!  You will also be able to keep selected Albums Public which may be important to your business.

Even if you don’t have aspirations to become an elite member of the world-wide Twitter community or the Twitterati such as Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk, it is important that you protect your beachhead in your local community or industry Twittersphere. For example, WeFollow.com provides a ranking of by city such as http://www.wefollow.com/twitter/miami. I noticed my profile, http://www.twitter.com/martinog appears in the top 25. On a handful of the myriad of Twitter ranking sites, some that worked and others that didn’t, I checked my ranking. There are some sites that rated me on a scale of 1 to 10 similar to the Google Page Rank and others that provided a Reach rating similar to Comscore or Quantcast. A number of the sites also give you a custom profile such as www.Twinfluence.com/?u=martinog.

There were also some sites that required a credit card to check your ranking or offered a free trial. Those sites were not included in my top 10.

So here’s my list of Top Twitter Ranking sites.

1. Wefollow.com
2. Twitterholic.com
3. Twinfluence.com
4. Twitter-friends.com
5. Twitterscore.net
6. Twitrank.me
7. Twitterank.com
8. Twitteranlayzer.com
9. Topfollowfriday.com
10. Twitalyzer.com

For a complete list go to the SocialMedialists.com Wiki Top Twitter Raking Tools.

If you are a power phone user or have a business without a phone number, you may consider signing up for Google Voice since it’s now available to the public. It’s also free except for out-bound International callling (alternative to Skype). Here are some benefits:

• Free Local DID Number - You get a free local number in your area code.
• Call Routing - You could forward your direct office or home phone number to Goolge Voice to give you more control over forwarding. You can configure Google Voice to ring at an unlimited number of destinations.
• Cell Phone Number Privacy - If you don’t want to give out your cell phone number, you can give your Google voice number out and forward it to your cell phone.
• Blocking - One of the most powerful featues, you can block specififed phone numbers including 800 numbers. The current Telcos don’t allow you to block 800 number so if you’re getting an annyoying 800 number that you want to block, forward it to Google Voice for a few weeks and your problem will be solved.
• Text Messaging with Voice Mail Transcription - If you get a voice mail message, you can configure Google Voice to send you a SMS message with the text transcription of the voice mail. This is very cool!

Here’s the Google Voice signup page.

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/

If you have a Facebook account and you have a common name such as John Smith and you want the website address http://www.facebook.com/johnsmith for your profile rather than http://www.facebook.com/john.smith or jsmith or jsmith99999, then at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, June 12, 2009 you need to log on to Faceboook.com and grab your profile name. Yes, it’s on a first-come, first-serve basis just like you are buying online tickets to a concert or a sporting event! See the info below from Facebook.com.

Good luck!

From Facebook.com
Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

It appears that Google Profiles could be the new Global Telphone Directory or Global White Pages. Today I created my Google Profiles entry and in less than a 30 minutes, when I searched on my name it showed up in the Google Search Results with the other Martin’s in the world.

When you search on a person’s name and scroll to the 11th search result, Google will now display a special “onebox” that shows links to people with that particular name and links to their Google profile.

It took me about 30 minutes to enter my Google Profile information. Before you start entering your “public” profile information I would suggest the following:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/profiles and browse the example profile pages such as the profile of Felicia Day. You should try and get a general idea of wht type of information about yourself that you want to show such as your company, your blog, your personal contact information etc. Google profile allows you to store your personal contact information such as your Instant Messaging Accounts, emails, phone numbers and decide who can view this information. You can even let your Medical Contacts / doctors from Google Health could have access to your mobile phone and email address, if they were members of Google Health.

2. Get your list of all your Social Media Profile accounts such as your Twitter, LinkedIn. If you don’t have a list, now is a good time to create one. 

3. Get the picture your will be using for your Google profile.

4. If you have don’t have a Picasa or Flickr photo account, now would be a good time to sign up for and upload eight public photos to display under your profile. If you already have one of these photo accounts with a Public Galley, then you should review any public photos before linking your public Picasa or Flickr galleries. The issue is that the Google Profile Photo widget is mandatory and if you don’t want a big white space of blank photos on your profile page, you’ll need to upload at least eight of them. In my case, I uploaded eight scenery photos of Miami.

4.   So go to http://google.com/profiles to sign-up for your Google Profiles account today. My profile page is http://google.com/profiles/martinog

I have an iPhone with a Twitter client so I never felt there was a reason to enable the SMS messages from Twitter. However, I recently enabled the SMS service to see if I could configure it to receive direct messages only and was surprised when it worked perfectly, even for users that don’t have unlimited SMS service phone contracts. When I enabled the service, my phone didn’t start continuously shaking from the flood of SMS messages from the Twitter members I am following. You can opt-in to any Twitter user you would like to receive SMS updates using the Twitter SMS command On username. So here are the instructions I used to setup my Twitter SMS service and the Twitter SMS commands you need to know.

1. From your Twitter Account, Click Settings, Devices. Enter your Mobile Phone Number and select the checkbox for Twitter to Send Text Messages to your phone.  

2. Twitter will send you a verfication code. Using your phone, send a text message to 40404 (United States) with that code. You will receive a SMS message back from Twitter that your device and sms alerts are enabled.  

3. You should use the Twitter SMS command “ON” to enable your phone notifications texting it to 40404. Your Phone is now enabled to receive Direct Twitter messages only. To test this, have a friend send you a direct Twitter message. Here are other useful commands:

• ON
• OFF
• STOP, QUIT
• ON username
• OFF username
• FOLLOW username
• LEAVE username

4. Here are commands for sending a message and other commands.

• @username +message
• D username +message
• WHOIS username
• GET username
• NUDGE username
• FAV username
• STATS
• INVITE phonenumber

A link to all the Twitter site listing these command is at: http://help.twitter.com/portal

5. Finally, Twitter has a Device Setting that allows you to turn on and off your updates via the web and to stop them at night. 

Your should consider your social media links to sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn like stickers on a football helmet such as in the picture above. Are you promoting your profile so that you can increase your company or your personal brand awareness? Here is a list of places you should promote your social media profiles: 

• Email Footer -Do you have them links in your email footer? See an example below.
• Business Card - Do your business cards contain your social media profiles? see an example below
• Blog - Does your blog contain links to your social media sites?
• Twitter.com - My Profile Page - You can have one website link.
• LinkedIn.com - You can enter 3 website links on your LinkedIn profile page.
• Facebook.com - Facebook allows ou to put your websites in our contact information as well as your work website. In addition, when you write a Facebook message, if you put your website link in your message footer, FB will import an image with an automatically generated image of your company logo, hopefully the correct one.

Email Footer Example

Business Card Front

Ogawa Design Business Card Front

Business Card Back

Ogawa Design Business Card Back