A Business Account is one of several types of 'Organizational Profiles' you can create at Cagora. Others including: No Profit Organizations, Community Groups, Schools, eCommunities, Musicians, Artists and Authors.
You can create an Organization account only after first registering for a personal account. You can either immediately create the account by clicking on the link on the Welcome page after regsitering for a personal account OR you can login and create it as a 'linked account' by clicking on the Linked Accounts link in the righthand note book menu in the My Account area.
The Organization Account will have the same referrer as your personal account. You will need to choose a different username and a different email address when registering as all accounts require a unique username and email. We recommend Google's gmail.com for creating additional email accounts due to their anti-spam controls, the search capability and the large storage volume they provide for free.
When registering choose Business from the pulldown list of Organizations. The registration is a two part process (as is the Personal registration). Upon completion you will receive a confirmation email and can then edit the various fields of the profile.
Adding the data to your Profile
Refer to http://cagora.com/communities/cagora as a sample
Contact Information
(this information may have been provided during the initial registration)
Telephone
Fax
Address
City , State
Postal Code (or Zipcode)
Country
P.O. Box (number)
City, State: This can be different to the street address
Postal Code (or Zipcode) of the P.O. Box
Email address: Initially this is still viewable to everyone including potentially email harvesting software.
Website: This opens a new window
Cagora has provided an interface to three recommended Free third party servies by Evoca, Jaxtr and Feedburner that provide you the opportunity to add Audio, Toll Free Phoning and Email subscription to your blog newsletter ( a service Cagora provides for free)
Audio Greeting
You can add up to a 15 minute audio greeting at no cost to yoru Profile Listing. This is why we refer to the Profiles as 'Talking Yellow Page meets Social Networking'. It has been found that in particular people are more likely to want to do business with a company that adds voice to their website as it builds credibility and trust.
It's just like a radio commercial but delivered on the Internet for FREE
One of the key advantages that Small Business has is the 'people' behind the business and Cagora makes it easy for you to do this. You don't even need a web microphone.
You can either record your greeting by:
Phoning a toll free number in the USA or local numbers in many other countries
Phoning on Skype (handy if you want more than one person talking)
Recording by microphone on the web
Uplaod an mp3 file
This audio recording and hosting service is provided free by Evoca and should you want to extend beyond 15 minutes of recording time (and unlimited plays) they offer up to 180 minutes for only $29.95 a year.
Register for a free Evoca Express account at http://www.evoca.com
You will be asked for a 10 digit number which can either be your phone number (if you are in the USA and have a 10 digit number) or can be any other 10 digit account number. You will also be asked for a 4 digit PIN code to provide the security for your account and its recordings.
After recording your greeting you will find it added to 'My Recordings'. By clicking on the titel for the recordingf it will take you to a page where you will find it has a unique number (probably a 6 or 7 digit number like the 130980 number in the link below).
http://www.evoca.com/everyone_recording.jsp?rid=130980
It is this 6 or 7 digit code that you will need to add to the Audio ID field to publish your Audio Greeting to your profile.
Jaxtr Toll Free Phone Call
If you would like to receive phone calls or voicemail messages by email from potential customers outside of yoru neighbourhood, then you should consider adding the Jaxtr Toll Free Phone to your site. If visitors click on this and they already have a Jaxtr account they will be connected to you at no cost for the first call to you. If they do not have a Jaxtr accountg they will still be able to phone you for the cost of a local call.
You have full control as to whether you want to receive a phone call and to which phone you want these calls diverted (it can even be to your Mobile / Cell Phone). You receive 100 free incoming minutes a month and after that you can receive unlimited free voicemail messages sent to your email.
It is a good way of shielding your phone number if you would rather it was not public.
All you need to do is:
Register at http://jaxtr.com by selecting a username
Choose the phone number you'd like calls diverted to or whether you'd prefer voicemail.
You may want to invite friends as Jaxtr are offering additional "Jax" minutes beyond the 100 a month to reward people for inviting others. If yopu have friends living overseas, Jaxtr will issue you with a local dedicated number for each of your friends to call them for the cost of a local call (they can provide you free local numbers in about 50 leading countries)
Enter your Jaxtr username into the field for the Jaxtr ID to publish the link so people can phone you toll free by clicking on the link on your profile.
Feedburner News Blog Subscription
With this third party service (provided by Feeddburner a subsidiary of Google) you can have people subscribe both by RSS and by email to the free blog we provide you at Cagora.
This not only will enable you to reach people interested in news about your business (including special offers and promotions), but it is also a way to build an optin list of email addresses that you can export and contact people outside of the Feedburner system (although given that Feedburner does this all for you automatically we recommend just communicating through your blog).
To enable your blog you first need to create a Blog entry by clicking on the Blog tab and then making a post.
This will then enable a link on your blog with a direct link for people to subscribe just to the RSS (Real Simple Syndication which is the technology that delivers blogs and podcasts to your subscribers through there RSS Reader , thereby bypassing the need for email).
e.g. http://cagora.com/blog/XXXXX/feed where the XXXXX is your user id number.
You can obtain your free account at http://feedburner.com
A feed is where your blog posts will 'feed' into the RSS readers
Once you create your account:
'Burn your feed' to produce it so others can subscribe
Choose all of the options including the Pro features (which are all free) and select Feedburner as the mailing service
Click on the 'Publicize' Tab
Click Headline Animator to activate the service. This provides a snippet of code that rotates the headlines of your blogs so you can to promote it Free
Select Email Subscription in the left menu to activate it
Take note if the Feed Id which is a 7 digit number in your URL address bar and also in the embedded code section 'Preview Subscription Link'
Enter this link into your Cagora Profile as the 7 digit number to publish the Subscription link via email
(The Subscriber Management option is where you will see the number of people who subscribe to your RSS feed and the number of people who subscribe by email. This is also where you can view and export the email addresses of your subscribers)
Click "PingShot' to activate the free promotion of your blog automatically to the leading Blog services
The next optional sections will be hidden if you do not add data
Established: Enter the year your business started
Organization ID: Add your official company registration number (normally issued by the Government)
Employees: State the number of employees (you can select this as a range)
Awards / Accreditaions: If your business is a member of an Association or has awards then promote them here
Payments Accepted: Check the boxes to select ,payment methods accepted
Open Hours: For each day select the start, finish hours, or at the bottom you can split the day if you are closed in the middle. You can also select whether your busienss is closed or Open by Appointment by selecting the checkbox
Text Information Fields (right hand side)
Business Title: Edit the Business Name displayed
About: Make this a short one sentence introduction
About Us(More) A more detailed version
Keywords: Add keywords that define your busienss. These should include your Products and Services
Worlds:
If your Business is a Community Partner it will be listed here.
Select your LocalWorld (by zooming in using the pulldown menus)
You can add other LocalWorlds and Worlds Of Interest by visiting these communities and click on the Join Link. (these under under the Community Tab as well as at the bottom of the /overview/intro page). Please Note Join is different from registering for a free account
Special Offers:
Add any special offers here. You may want to only make these available to peole who add themselves as a Fan or people who leave a testimonial or guestbook entry
