Over the past month we have enhanced three areas on our website and will help you update your FoundLocally.com listing and increase your visibility to your potential customer base. Over the past six months, our traffic has doubled: are you taking advantage?
We have improved these three features:
Updated Login Security
We recently conducted a security review of the passwords a used by Registered Contacts. Many were under 10 characters, some were using poor passwords like “qwerty”, “123456”, “password”, or “foundlocally”, which leave our system vulnerable for ALL users. We now require better security, and recommend that you reset and update your passwords.
During our review, we also noticed a lot of Registered Contacts did not use their name and job function or title. Instead, these fields were cluttered with full business names, or web marketing tags. In such cases, we shortened the fields to just the first word of what was entered. You will see the current info in the salutation of this e-mail (above).
Updating Login/Password
If, when logging-in to update your listing (#1 above), you see a message, like “your password is too short” or are told that your password does not work, click on the red Forgot Password button (#2 above) to receive a password reset email sent to your e-mail address (the one used to set up your Registered Contact). Any new password (or pass-phrase) entered must match our current rules.
Our rules require at you combine at least 3 of upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers , and punctuation (spaces and underscores are allowed) and be at least 12 characters long. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND a multi-word pass-phrase you can remember, like: ”I like Gone With The Wind 1939”.
You may also want to update your name & title (See #1 option below, to the right).
Use the powerful What To Do? menu
The most common tasks you’ll do are included in red What To Do? menu, in the white stripe.
Upgraded Events Calendar
Our Events Calendar now showcases a broader range of events. Our calendar includes everything from farmers markets, major league baseball games, football games, and soccer games, as well as corporate events. Click on the EVENTS in the black stripe.
Once you add your free listing, use the Post NEW Event option in the red What To Do? menu.
Posting Events (#3)
Do not use events to post your regular /daily business hours (which is why some Farmers Markets that are open every day – like a normal retail store – are not listed in our Events calendar). Realtors can post their open houses (but home builders may not include their always-open show homes as “Events”).
Theatrical groups may post their entire season of performances up front. Musicians on tour can post events from their one “home” listing, including performances in other communities across Canada. Create one Event, and CLONE it to the appropriate community, changing the date, venue, and ticket purchase link—but using the same description, categories, and photo/logo/poster image. Quick and easy!
Upgrade Flyers/ Coupons/Sales
In time for Canada Post disruptions, we have expanded our Coupons/Flyers/Sales to include links to your own (or third-party (or your own) flyer sites.
Posting Flyers (#2)
Once you add your free listing, use the Post COUPON/Flyer option in the red What To Do? menu.
Only include a URL for flyers posted on your or a third-party website. We do not permit PDFs and other files to be uploaded to our servers: they are YOUR flyers and they should be part of your website. Only web links (URLs) are permitted.
For coupons, you can craft your coupon’s wording on our site using the Post COUPON/Flyer form: post a offer summary (headline), the offer (what savings, up to 250 characters), and any conditions/limitations ( up to 250 characters). We have pop-up help, containing some typical conditions & limitation phrases. Cut & Paste only those that apply. These coupons are numbered sequentially each time they are displayed or printed, so you can track views as well as redemptions.
You can post a sale notice, a coupon, or link to a flyer on your own website (or a third party’s website), and LOCAL flyers show up on the Coupons/Flyers page ahead of the national chains’ flyers. We ARE FoundLocally, after all!
The post Better Security, Calendar, and Coupons/Flyers appeared first on TransCanada FoundLocally Online Marketing Experts, since 1999.