Favicons Explained
Favicon = Favorite(s) Icon
A favicon is an icon associated with a particular website or web page. Nowadays, most web browsers make use of them. These browsers display them in the URL bar (Firefox), next to the site’s name in lists of bookmarks (IE), and next to the page’s title in a tabbed page interface (Firefox again). Additionally, Windows uses the favicon for internet shortcuts to sites that you save on your local machine.
Favicons help you to create a more customized appearance within your visitor’s browser. Often, it reflects the look and feel of your web site or your brand/logo.
You can use the ICO, PNG and (animated) GIF formats to create your favicon. However, the latter two aren’t supported by ALL browsers.
Ideally, the favicon image should be placed in the root directory of your website so that all sub-directories and files have access to it.
In order to add a favicon to your website or blog, you would need to add the following two lines of code between the <head> & </head> tags of your header/index file:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="icon" href="http://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
Here’s a few links from where you can create your very own favicons:
- Image Generation: Favicons
- Favicon.ico Generator
- FavIcon from Pics (my personal favorite)
Facebook Privacy Guide
If you’re on Facebook and do a Google search on your name, chances are you’ll find your facebook page with your basic information. This page is accessible to everyone on the internet. Yes, everyone!
Now, not everyone is endowed with stalkers so let’s restrict ourselves to people that could use/misuse your readily available information. The usual suspects include your co-workes, boss, ex’s, relatives, colleagues, etc.
If you’ve always wanted to master Facebook’s privacy settings, then The unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide is the answer to your prayers!
This guide outlines a variety of things regarding Facebook privacy, starting from how to make sure a comment meant for your friends isn’t seen by co-workers to keeping your Facebook information off Google’s search results and blocking unwanted users. Plus a few things you probably didn’t even know you wanted to know.
This guide outlines a variety of things regarding Facebook privacy, including:
- Making sure a comment meant for your friends isn’t seen by co-workers
- Understanding what it means to upload content to Facebook
- Control whether others can check you in to certain locations
- Keeping your Facebook page off Google’s search results
- Blocking unwanted users from seeing your page
- Deleting your Facebook page completely, if it’s all just too much
The best part is – if you don’t have the time to read each of the 52 pages on the doc, you can simply check the images in the document and make changes to your Facebook profile!
You can also download the .pdf version from here. (direct link to pdf)
PS: You can find interesting infographics on Facebook here.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, Orkut and YouTube.
Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and huge amounts of traffic.
SMM conceptually differs from traditional marketing based on the fact that in SMM, you’re not actually trying to sell your product directly to your customers. Instead, energies are focussed on creating brand awareness and creating better and bigger channels of communication between a company and its customers. In other words, hardcore selling takes a backseat.
The underlying logic behind this is that when someone logs into a social network, they’re there to socialize and catch up on friends and not to buy products and services. However, if people see that a huge chunk of their friends are buying a particular product and have nothing but good words to say about it, these people might get ‘influenced’ into buying their products.
Thus, Social Media Marketing is based around online conversations. It is not controlled by the organization implementing it. Instead, it encourages user participation and dialogue. A badly designed social media marketing campaign can potentially backfire on the organization that created it. To be successful, SMM campaigns must fully engage and respect the users.
Any company that caters to a mass market can implement a SMM strategy to create more brand awareness. ROI on every startegy can be calcuated using the various online tools (such as Google Analytics) so profitability is ensured.
The biggest hindrance in implementing a social media strategy is the old-world school of thought that does not see the internet as the next big frontier in Marketing. Take for example Facebook: It has 222 million registered users. If Facebook was a country, it would be the fourth largest country in the world today.
Now, imagine if you placed an ad on Facebook. You would instantly be reaching out to 222 million leads!
Major corporations like Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, etc. have already created strong and staunch SMM marketing strategies that allow them to interact with their customers on a grander scale.
Using social networks as a communication platform also allows companies to save on resources spent on marketing, sales, PR, and support activities. Leads can directly contact the company to find out its products. Customers can give feedback, resolve issues, etc. using social networks.
Social media marketing is not difficult at all. It is something every one can do with some effort and knowledge. It isn’t some secret art form that only experts can master. Unlike other skills, social media has a remarkably low barrier of entry. Everyone is invited to the party. No one is excluded.