We’ve all run into error pages in our travels through the internet – some good, some bad. What made the good ones good and the bad ones bad? Many sites simply tell you the page your requested isn’t found and they’re sorry. Sure, that gets the point across, but what about being nice to users?

It’s easy to customize 404 error pages on your site, and you should! Here are some approaches to take and why they’re good:

• Humor: post a graphic or joke to keep the mistake lighthearted and turn a bad thing into a fun time
• Features: give the user a list of current features on the site, or other pages you think they should visit
• Search: with a little coding, you can get the title of the link that brought them to the page. Use that to search your site and try to provide them with links to relevant articles

There are countless other things you could do with them. Feel free to post ideas and screen shots below!

In my last post, I told you about LinkedIn – a professional social network. But what if you want to combine your professional and personal profiles & networks? LinkedIn won’t do that for you. Facebook and Twitter won’t do that for you. Google+, however is posed to be the new hybrid! They have a lot of the same features as Facebook, plus hangouts (mass video calls), and a great way to setup a business profile too!

We all know about social networks like Facebook, Twitter, & MySpace, but it’s evident these are not business-focused. Sure you can use them to network with people to a point, and you can definitely advertise your business on them, but… what if you don’t know who to look for? What if you want to create a digital resume that is searchable?

You can’t do that.

Or can you? LinkedIn is a professional social network on which you can create a profile, update it with job, education, and skill information, and potential employers and employees can find you with a quick easy search! If you don’t have one already, I suggest you jump on it!

So you have a new business idea, and you want to take it online – awesome. The first thing you have to do is RESEARCH. Not just researching your target market, the resources you’ll need, or startup costs…. you need to heavily research to find out if anyone is already providing a similar or identical service. If someone is, and chances are there’s AT LEAST one, before launching come up with your differentiating factor. It could be something as simple as price/quality, or perhaps adding a new service to create a unique multi-solution. Competition will be tough, so come ready to stand apart from the pack!

Once I made the mistake of playing with my friends rather than study my spelling words, and after getting an F on a history test, I then tried to convince my dad that made the “mistake” of bad time management. He did buy it.  Mistakes are looked down upon when we are all children, but in a business is a good thing. It’s even true that if one is not making enough mistakes something might be wrong. Check out this video from Fast Company.

As he explains in the video, taking risks in business is vital. A few days ago I heard a lecture from and very successful Israeli VC and he was explaining that Israel had been experiencing unprecedented national growth because, he believes, society doesn’t look down on mistakes. Taking risk is not looked down on but encouraged. Kids in high school are encouraged to take risk and are subsequently starting successful business in their teen years. The key to risk taking is when you make a mistake , recognizing and correcting it. If one can develop that skill, they will be a successful entrepreneur even after a few failures.

If you have a small/local business, you know how hard it may be to create a viable presence online.  However, there are a number of tools available to you which can be used to boost the online performance of your business.  This article on entrepreneur.com outlines their top fifteen sites to promote such a business.  Refer to these tips and you will quickly build a respectable online presence.

Remember that to grow a presence takes more than just being there.  You must also act on various SEO tactics on each one of these sites.