Jenn Mears Web Design

Getting Your Company Listed with Bing.com

Bing.com is a new search engine that is being touted as the next big thing, at least that’s what Microsoft is hoping. They’ve pumped metric tons of money into marketing it as Google’s new competitor, but the jury still seems to be deliberating about that. Still, as Bing buzz builds, it couldn’t hurt to get listed on their local listings right?

I’ve talked a few clients through the process of registering their business with Google and, based on that experience, the idea of talking someone through the same process on Bing is a little more daunting, but doable. Here’s a comparison of the user experience for each site:

Google’s Home Page:

The process:

Step 1. Get a Google Account, if you don’t have one already.
Step 2. Go to Google.com and click on “Business Solutions” below the search terms window.
Step 3. On the next page, click on “Local Business Center” in the bottom half of the page.

Now you are all set to start listing your business with Google. One precaution: Make sure you are near your business phone so you can verify your listing with Google’s automated call to your business phone. They will call with a PIN that you will need to verify that this is actually your business.

Bing.com’s Home Page:

The Process:

Step 1: If you haven’t already, sign up for a Windows Live account (click on “Windows Live” in the top left corner of the page to get started)
Step 2: With your Windows Live email and password on hand, go to Bing’s home page and select “Maps” from the search options listed under the main search field.
Step 3: In the Maps page search field, enter either your business name or your location and business category.

Step 4: In the listing of search results, scroll all the way down until you see the words “local listing center” in page gray and click on that to get started with your listing.

Now for the real way to do this.
Go to: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
-and sign up from there.
I only listed these steps out to illustrate the fact that Bing’s method is; 4 (non-intuitive) steps as opposed to Google’s 2 somewhat obvious ones and that trying to explain this to a client over the phone is not high on my list of fun and easy activities. The only bright spot in all this is that, at the end of the sign-up process, Bing.com promises to send you a letter for verification about your listing as opposed to a phone call that can take some people by surprise.

How To Put A Link In A Facebook Note

Here’s an example of a link embedded in a Facebook Note

1. Create your note on your Facebook profile. Then, in another window on your browser, find the page you want to link to. Select that page’s url and copy it.

2. Go back to your note and find the text you want to transform into a link. Place your cursor in front of the first letter and type in these characters:

3. Now, after the first set of quote marks, paste in the url you just copied and then put another set of quotation marks followed by a bracket after it like so:

4. Next, go to the last character in the string of text you want to link to and after it type:

There’s actually a pretty good range of html markup you can add to a note. Facebook has a good guide to using HTML tags here.

Which CMS Is Right For Me?

Web Designer Depot posted a well-written article on choosing a CMS platform that can be a good read with your afternoon coffee.

Google Hack! Copying a webmail signature into a gmail message

To be honest, there’s a real workaround out there that you can install with the Greasemonkey Firefox extension, but this is a quick trick if you are on the go, or don’t have the time to deal with the install just yet. I found this down and dirty method when I wanted to reply to a client’s email with some links to show them some examples of social networking in action.

Step 1: In your Webmail account, go to your Settings folder and select Compose. Then,create your webmail signature with interactive links in the compose window and save the changes.

Tip: Make those links as user-friendly as possible. Luckily my Doteasy webmail GUI lets me include tooltips in a link. That way people will have some idea of what they are going to see when they click the link.
Step 2: Go to your webmail mailbox and send a message to your Gmail account with that new signature.
Step 3: Go to your Gmail account and open up the message you just sent and give it a test drive.
Step 4: Now you can keep that message handy and copy and paste your signature from there when you want to include it in a Gmail message. When you want to include that signature, simply view that message with your signature, highlight the signature and then copy and paste it into the new message.
Please Note: This only works if you launch Gmail in its own window. (top left corner of inbox window;”Launch Full Gmail”)
Easy!