Right after you upload the photos, you can add tags and comments. But you can’t rotate them.

The tools to rotate Facebook photos are NOT where you might expect: they are NOT in page you see when you finish uploading your photos.  They are also NOT on the page you see when you click “Edit Photo Album” in Facebook.

Instead, use the photo browser on your Wall.

Go back to the Wall.  You should see your new photo album at the top of the timeline.  Now click on the album to view it.  Advance to the photo you want to fix.

See the little cog icon at the top right?  Click that, and you have options to rotate your photo.

You don’t even need to save your work.  It is automatically fixed.

You can see a full demo in this 30-second video tutorial right here:

How to Rotate Facebook Photos:  Video Tutorial

Happy rotating.

However, there are a few basic jobs any WordPress website needs to do. Blocking spammers and promoting friendly sharing are two top jobs. Here are two plugins I recommend for these activities when you’re just setting up your site.

Akismet

The Akismet plugin blocks spammers from posting to your blog. You want to take an active role in blocking spam comments because they waste your time in needless review. Plus these comments may link your site to low quality, spammy sites which is bad for your own rankings.

Akismet comes already installed in your self-hosted WordPress program.  You just have to activate it – the steps are coming up shortly in this article.

Jetpack

Jetpack also comes pre-installed with the latest version of WordPress.  There are many plugins in the Jetpack bundle that are worth using. You should be judicious in which ones you activate, because you want your site to perform with optimal speed. (You want to avoid needless interaction with the server, which may increase as you turn on more plugins.)

Two plugins in Jetpack to on for your blog are found under these labels:

• Sharing
• WordPress.com Stats

The Sharing plugin is the easiest safest way I know to enable your visitors to share, print or email your content with a click. WordPress.com Stats show you at a glance what traffic you are getting – and what content is doing the best at bringing it in. All from your own dashboard – no need to visit another site or wait for a weekly report.

How to activate Jetpack and Akismet

Jetpack Activation
In order to get Jetpack working, you need to set up a WordPress.com account. Set up just a username – you don’t need a blog there.

The option to do this appears in the small print next to the form to start a blog:

You create a username and password to set up your WordPress.com account. This username and password allows you to activate the Jetpack plugin on your site. Go to Dashboard > Plugins > Installed Plugins to see Jetpack, which is automatically installed with the current version of WordPress.

Once you have Jetpack running, you’ll want to set up the Sharing plugin to make it easy for people to socialize about your content. A free tutorial about setting up sharing is a topic for another post.

Akisment Activation
Wordpress.com no longer provides free API keys for Akismet. You get the API key from Akismet.com, for $5/month for business sites and free for personal ones. You need the API key to activate the Akismet spam blocker. You can get your key at https://akismet.com/signup/

These are just two of the recommended plugins for just about every WordPress website you run yourself. Other important tasks include backing up your data and your design. At this point you may be wondering what tasks you can accomplish with Plugins.

(Photo credit: “Power Plug 6″ by dhester on sxc.hu)

Got a question about plugins that you didn’t get answered here? I believe every honest business deserves a powerful engaging website. Please share your question in the comments:

You want to respond carefully.  Studies show that online reviews are very influential when customers are making up their minds about who to hire.

First of all, this certainly feels bad. I am sorry if this has happened to you.  There is an important opportunity here. There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to deal with negative reviews.

First, Why is This One Bad Review So Visible?

Google can make a low rating in Google Places or Yelp distressingly high.  Google’s goal is to serve up all information – good and bad – relevant to a buying decision.

Here’s the opportunity: Your answer is highly visible too.

Negative reviews are opportunities to showcase your honesty and integrity. Stand tall.  Apologize, regardless of who you believe is at fault.  Show your intent to improve your business and to earn the respect of your future customers.  That’s it.

There IS a Wrong Way to Respond to a Negative Review

In a nutshell, anything rude, insulting, or that puts down the customer will work against you.  This is not the place to try to argue or change the customer’s mind.  If totally mishandled, a bungled response can blow up and doom your career, and even force your business to close.

Case One:  You may have heard of the widespread public outrage that flared from the insulting remarks made in December 2011 by customer service rep Paul Christofo, President of what was once Ocean Marketing.  In brief, when a customer typed a message to respectfully inquire about a missed delivery date, Christoforo’s uninformative answers sunk to progressively more insulting lows after each customer request.  (You can read the whole account at the Penny-arcade.com, and one industry reaction at Digital-Trends.)

N-Controller, which hired Christoforo and Ocean Marketing for customer service, fired him.   But damage to both sides continued.  The thread is still making rounds on the Internet. Adweek severed its relationship with Ocean Marketing.  The N-Controller product received 1-star ratings on Amazon.com from hundreds of outraged reviewers retaliating against Christoforo.

Responding negatively to customer criticism will hurt you the most in the end.

Case two: Judith Griggs closed Cooks Source magazine after a food blogger privately accused her of reprinting her recipe without permission. Griggs’s less-than-cooperative replies were published and re-published, forcing the magazine to close after two weeks of the controversy.

The Right Way to Respond to Negative Online Review

An ideal response to a public complaint is to be 100% polite and accept that you see room to improve your business.

Search Engine Land has published a model response to a negative one-star (low) review on R.J. Hidson’s Google Places page.   To paraphrase the complaint,  a woman vented her disappointment to hear reports of his lack of courtesy while taking wedding photographs.

This excerpt shows how well he avoids blaming his customer in his redeeming reply:

Hello Joy, I  apologize if my attitude came across the wrong way at Joel and Esmeralda’s wedding….  There were over thirty people in the wedding party, and getting them to do things was a challenge…. Possibly because of the size of the group.  During the shoot there were people (who were not in the wedding party) stepping into the frame of my shots, and, unfortunately, to capture moments I had to act fast.  Maybe I was too assertive with these people and they complained about that… However, going forward I’ll certainly keep in mind the experience I had on that day and learn what I can from it.

Hidson shows how to avoid publicly correcting the customer. Don’t fault your customer.  Don’t argue why they are unfair or wrong.  This is like dousing a fire with propane. Boom!  It is only natural for a person who feels repeatedly wounded to become enraged.  Rage is viral.

Your response needs to completely avoid judging or faulting your customer.  Your next customer doesn’t care if you’re right. They care about whether you’re honest enough to admit a problem, and if you’re professional enough to calm things down.

In his research on influence, Dr. Robert CIaldini’s reports a finding that the #1 trait people look for when deciding whether to view another person favorably is honesty.

Your response needs to affirm that you are an honest person, especially when it appears you were involved when things got messed up.

A Template for Responding to a Negative Review

Respond to a negative review as directly as you can, in the same place where it appears.

Here is a rough outline to help draft your public response to negative review:

1. Thank the person by name for taking the time to post.
2. Because there is hurt, apologize.  For example: “I am sorry you are unhappy over what happened during our work together.”   You may  explain your side of the story professionally, but without fault-finding.  Put in your own words what your customer saw as a problem.  Show you can see it without any attempt to argue it away.
3. Say how you’ve learned something – and especially if you see a way to improve your work in the future.

People want to avoid open public conflict.  If you can cool down a hot, angry situation in public, you are showing a rare and needed skill.  Your reply can work in your favor if you show you can face a difficult situation with tact and integrity.  Not everyone can.

Your future customers want to work with a stable, cool professional.  When you’re calm under fire, you show a strength your competitors can’t show if they have nothing but complementary reviews.

Finally, once you have given your response, go out and request additional reviews from happier clients.

If you steer clear of pitfalls, you can recover from negative online remarks and your business will come out the better and stronger for it.

P.S.  Google Places (also called Google Maps) is not publishing or allowing business owner replies as of this writing (Feb 10, 2011.)  IF you can’t reply to a review in Google, others have found and reported this problem too: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-maps-reviews-response-12809.html

Customer comments online help your business succeed and grow in several ways:

1. Reviews play a huge role in helping people decide if a business is a good business. 71% of US consumers look at online reviews to determine if a business is a good one, according to a Brightlocal.com survey.
2. Customer feedback is independent proof that your work has real value. This is very persuasive and convincing to people looking to buy.
3. Online reviews are highly trusted. When prospective customers see the good reports from others, it increases their interest in buying as much as a personal recommendation, says Brightlocal.com.
4. Reviews, especially in Google (Google Places, specifically), increase the visibility of your business in search results, according to search optimization experts. A review creates its own listing in a search result; the more places you’re reviewed, the more opportunity you have to show up in a results list.
5. Customer feedback that is genuine will be unique, making your business stand apart from your competition.

You don’t even need to have a website for customer reviews to help you build a reputation and reach more prospects. Google Places does not require a website for you to create a listing that puts you on the map. Google and other sites host reviews for all kinds of businesses, even those without websites of their own.

So, how do you get online reviews?

Important: First, make sure you’re listed! If you’re not listed in the top local business directories, now’s a great time to do it. Here are 3 leading local business listing services where you can enter your listing for free:

• Yahoo Local: Search for your business on their Local Listings home page. To add yourself, go to their signup page and create your free local listings account.
• Google Places: This service puts you on Google Maps. Your business listing can include photos, video and even coupons. Go to maps.google.com to sign up. Be sure to go through the process of claiming your listing so you own it.
• Yelp: This local business directory functions as a review-sharing center and a search engine. It is increasingly popular and people do use it when shopping for services and products. Check for comments at yelp.com. If you’re logged into Facebook, Yelp can use your profile to speed up the signup process on their signup page.

Getting a review involves asking directly and politely

Ask your customers for reviews. Also, make it very easy for your customers to get to the page where they enter a review.

Here is how to make it easy for your customer to give you a review:

1) Look at the email address you have for each customer. If the customer’s address shows @yahoo.com, this person already has a Yahoo account. Ask this person for a review in Yahoo — they will not have the extra step of setting up an account, which makes it more likely you’ll get a review. Likewise, customers with @gmail.com addresses are good ones to ask for a review in Google.

2) Send your request in writing. Use email. Include a link to your listing, so all your customer needs to do is click the link. If this is not easy for you, explain briefly how to look up your company name at yahoo.com or maps.google.com for an easy way to find your listing and add a review.

3) Writing is hard for just about everybody. It takes work. Make sure you give your customer an idea what you need them to write about. Don’t put words in their mouths — of course you don’t want to tell them what to say. But you can suggest they focus on what problem they were dealing with when they called you, and what you did to improve things.

You are likely to be very glad for the time you spend getting feedback and reviews from your customers. Comments of all kinds help you improve your business. Plus, research shows that online reviews from strangers count almost as much as recommendations from friends when people are looking to buy.

Reviews have a very strong influence on converting shoppers to buyers. They serve you best when undoctored and free of influence from favors or payments. Customer reviews build trust in your business like nothing else can.

Please like or or share the article you’ve been reading on your favorite social network.

Coke wants you to pursue your happiness with their drink.  So they tie happy feelings to their soda by using the same words over and over.  The feeling is like the sugar that gets the message in.

The Danger of Going too Far with Your Favorite Phrase

When you launch your own product, you may want to accomplish the same thing. Say you have an information product on how to create banner ads.  You want people to feel confident they can create banner ads that sell, using your system.  Let’s call the hypothetical information product the Banner Ads Confidence System.

Then you describe your guide.  Every time you refer to your product, you call it the Confidence System.

What is wrong with that?

The danger is you risk making your web page much harder to find.  People search for help with an astounding variety of words.  There are probably hundreds of ways to phrase the question: “how do I make banner ads that people want to click on?”

If you rely on your catchphrase instead of a variety of terms, your page will rank poorly in search results for every search that uses other words.  People look for help using their own terms.

Choose Words to Help People Discover You First

Maybe you already know it’s important to use a variety of words in any page you want people to find by searching.

What you may not know is how wide a variety of terms people use to search.

People Use an Astounding Variety of Words for the Same Thing

Quick story.

I was helping a client create a first-time campaign using Google AdWords Express.  This is a super-simple version of AdWords.  You provide a budget, and a business area, and Google determines the words it will use to serve the ad.

The business area is floor refinishing.

So how many ways can you say: refinish hardwood floors?

I wrote down about 10 or 12.

When I looked at the report a week later, Google found and suggested dozens of possible terms.

And when I look at how people found this site online, which is optimized for installing and refinishing floors, I found 90 different search terms.  These are from real people who were searching for floor refinishing 90 different ways

Get Discovered, Sweeten with Familiar Words, Then Add Branding

Summary:  Of course you want to choose your own words to describe your work. Working in words with the right emotion, energy and tone is half the fun of writing about your offerings.

But don’t limit the help that plain words give you by replacing everyday terms with your preferred ones.

The first job your writing must do is lead people to your page. Second, they must spark the interest to read it.  After you’ve gotten eyeballs and interest, then you can start branding.