Best practices to achieve shared understanding in virtual communication

Hooked from The any where office about Virtual Assistant Services guideline. The six list of  best practices to achieve shared understanding in virtual communication. Here’s a favorite:

"Avoid sloppy e-mailing. A new status symbol in today’s generally more egalitarian business environment has arisen: sloppy e-mails. One provocative study found that many executives have write terse e-mails with half-sentences, bad grammar, and atrocious spelling. The underlying message is that those individuals are far too busy to be bothered with writing perfectly polished text. Unfortunately, sloppy e-mails at best require wasting time trying to decipher them, and at worse cause workplace misunderstandings and costly errors. For offenders who claim they simply don’t have time to write better emails, researcher Jaclyn Kostner doesn’t mince words: “I tell them you have to find the time; otherwise, you’re not fit for the job and somebody else should be doing it. Or maybe you need to offload some responsibilities because there’s no excuse for sending people cryptic emails.”

Importance usage of submitting your links in Directories

Directories have proven an important source for links. These links should ideally be optimized for the keywords that we want our site ranked for in the search engines. Usually directories allow the submission of just one page (generally home page), so the keywords have to be relevant to that page. Make sure that you have researched your keywords well and chosen those that are minimally competed for but adequately searched.  (Keyword research can be done using tools like KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker).

Unlike other methods of link building like reciprocal linking where you can just request the webmaster to include specific keywords in your link, with directory submissions you have to convince the editor to include the anchor text of your choice – you need to make sure of not over-stuffing the anchor text with keywords if you want to stand a chance of approval. You would also need to make sure your title is not too promotional.

It is also a smart idea to vary your anchor text as search engines have techniques to control anchor text spamming. Too many links with the same anchor text may be unacceptable, so consider a few options which you can use for different directories.

Most directories also require a description of the website. Make sure it does not read like an ad text. Include a few relevant keywords without overdoing it. Avoid exaggerated descriptive words like ‘leaders’, ‘largest’ etc. This will not only make the editor frown, they are also not required. Avoid repetition of words and exclamation marks when punctuating.

Another factor to be considered is the category you submit under. Sometimes choosing the wrong category may be the key to the rejection of your submission. The right category will define your website more appropriately and it will aid the search engine when locating a site like yours. It's important you take the time to go through the directory's category list and select the most appropriate category.

Make the best of directories by carefully submitting your links in the first place. Once your site has been accepted, it may be extremely difficult to change any of the matter submitted. So make sure that you optimize your directory submissions.

To summarize the important points:

• The links should ideally be optimized for the keywords that you want your site ranked for.
• You should have researched your keywords well and chosen those that are minimally competed for but adequately searched.
• You should vary your anchor text
• Don't overstuff the anchor text (to avoid your submission being rejected)
• Selecting the most relevant category for your site
• Don't make your title and description sound too promotional (again, to avoid your submission from being rejected) 

Yahoo buys image search startup IQ Engines - Times of India

Times of India : Yahoo has confirmed that it has bought image search specialty startup IQ Engines to add the company's technology to its Flickr photo service.

"IQ Engines is joining the Flickr team at Yahoo," the startup said in a message at its website.

"As longtime Flickr fans and fellow photography enthusiasts, we look forward to working on improving photo organization and search for the community."

Facebook Introduces More Business-Friendly Promotions Policy

Facebook unveiled a new promotions policy on Tuesday, updating guidelines for businesses that run contests and sweepstakes.

The update is designed to help business create and manage promotions on Facebook. Among the amendments: The social-network giant no longer requires promotions to be exclusively administered through apps; now, they're allowed to be administered on Pages, as well.

Google Apps release new managing calendar

Google introduced new apps calendar. Managing apps for your users is getting even easier with the new Google Admin console. Click events on the calendar for details about a new update, release, training resource or webinar. Exactly when features become available to your users depends on your  release track.