What's going on, Albuquerque?

Guidelines for Businesses and Nonprofits - Updated

Local businesses and nonprofits are welcome to become members of the Duke City Fix. But in order to keep the site a fun, free-flowing discussion of life in Albuquerque, the guidelines for business and nonprofit activity on the Fix are less free than those for individuals.

Please take some time to become familiar with these guidelines, and don't hesitate to get in touch through the Administrivia and How-To section of the Forum with any questions.

UPDATE: The FTC now requires bloggers to disclose any financial relationship with the subject of their posts. See this post for more info.

Do

Create a profile for your business, including photos, contact info, web links and a description
Set up separate accounts for your business and yourself - but keep them separate: The business account is for business purposes, the personal account isn't
Add photos, websites, descriptions, etc, to your profile page
Learn how to use the site's functions, including adding hyperlinks, photos and files
Add calendar listings to our Events section. (How to add an event)
Spread the word in the Announcements section of the Forum
Participate in those Groups that are appropriate to your business. Businesses should not form their own groups.
Use the What Brings You Here? status update box on your page, but sparingly - a long stream of updates all at once will be removed.
Respond to questions about your business in the Forum, Groups, or Blog sections
Arrange a giveaway promotion through the DCF admins
Take conversations about your business off the site by providing interested members ONLY with your contact info and a suggestion to talk offline or via email

Don't (this stuff will be deleted, and you could be banned from the site)

Post information in the wrong place:

- Blog posts are for first-person narratives, and are not an appropriate forum for your business or nonprofit to post (it's fine to leave comments, though!)
- Events are for actual events that are open to the public, not month-long sales, "virtual" events, or calls to entry
- Announcements are for news: New businesses, Albuquerque events, press releases, business announcements, jobs, etc. But if you only put your event here and not in the Events section, readers will have forgotten by the time the date rolls around!
Add unnecessary comments to your Announcements or Events for the purpose of keeping them on the front page
Add multiple announcements to different sections or on the same news item. If you're extending a sale, for instance, update your original announcement rather than adding a new one.
Cross-post without permission from other sites or blogs (including your own). This also includes posting entire articles written by others on our site. It's better to copy and paste a sentence or two and then include a link.
Engage in self promotion in the comments section of other members' pages or through the DCF email system
Post your press releases word for word, including date, city and media contact info
Use ALL CAPS in the headers or body of your posts
Interrupt unrelated conversations with product, sales or business website information
Post information pertaining to areas outside of the greater Albuquerque area

These lists may evolve, so we encourage you to check back periodically to see if anything's changed. In some cases, we may allow a particular business to do more than is listed here. If you've got an idea or have a question, just ask!

Advertising on the Fix
Businesses may wish to participate in the Google Adwords program, which places advertisements on the Fix. We do not administer this program, but Google has a complete set of instructions available online.

Further helpful reading:
Read this first
Our moderation policy
How to get featured on the homepage
About Duke City Fix
Instructions & how-to info

1 member likes this

Comment by SCA Contemporary on December 9, 2008 at 4:26pm: Thanks for the down low on the DCF. Hope I didn't blunder on the exhibition posts! That's all of it until February! Thanks for the incredible site!

Comment by Donna Barney on March 10, 2009 at 3:35pm: I am excited about networking with other Albuquerque business people. Thank you for this great site.

Comment by Elizabeth Sandoval on April 22, 2009 at 11:48am: Thanks for the information! This site sounds like fun, and I look forward to learning more.
Happy Earth Day, everyone!!

Comment by OFFCenter Community Arts Project on August 5, 2009 at 8:13pm: Thanks! A coupla questions --

We have recently been using our blog here as a nice place to post a pretty photo or two (along w/text about events). Should these all go on the Announcements forum? Or are photo-rich posts not supposed to go on the Forum?

I am also wondering -- do blog posts show up in other places besides on our My Page area? And if so, is this why blog posts are supposed to be from personal accounts only?

There is only one place to post an Announcement, correct? And that is on the Forum? Kitson, I'm a little confused about that.

OFFCenter just started on here so I want to be sure and get this right! 8-) Thanks! Mary T. for OFFCenter.

Comment by OFFCenter Community Arts Project on August 5, 2009 at 8:18pm: Oh dear, another question -- where would be the appropriate place for calls for entry into our Exhibits (which are non-juried and open to the public)? Should they also go in Announcements on the Forum?

Comment by begina on August 6, 2009 at 5:03am: iam so happy to being with you in this site good luck for everybody

Comment by Kelly on August 6, 2009 at 8:34am: Question: Is it inappropriate for me, as a person, to post a link to an event in the comments of another person's blog post, assuming that the event link it relevant to the blog post? I'm thinking specifically of me posting a link to the Arts Alliance mayoral candidate forum on the arts announcement to a post that was about Richard Romero and his mayoral campaign. Would it have been better/worse for the Arts Alliance to have done that themselves? Full disclosure, I'm on the board of the Arts Alliance.

Comment by Chroma Studios on August 6, 2009 at 10:12am: I'm also confused about the blog posts. If I have a separate account for my business (which I have always had), shouldn't I be able to post blogs that pertain to my business on my business profile? Isn't that the purpose of my blog? I understand that there have been businesses that abuse their profiles here, but as a community site, shouldn't businesses be allowed to post to their profile just like individuals do? As long as it's all about ABQ isn't that what DCF is all about?

Paula :)

Comment by sophie on August 6, 2009 at 12:06pm

Whew! Look at the crazy formatting on that post! Memo to self: must fix. But not today.

Thanks for all the great questions! I'll take them in order and hope that I'm clear.

OFFCenter:

The very best place for photos is actually the DCF Flickr feed. Plus, adding your images on Flickr has the extra benefit of spreading them beyond the Fix and out into the wider world of search engine happiness. Here's the link to the DCF pool. I would not post photos in this way in Announcements.
A blog post from a business or nonprofit will pretty much never show up on the front page (there are some exceptions, up to the moderators). And as I mention above, we will be deleting commercial/promotional blog posts in the future. Here's info on how individuals' blog posts can get featured on the front page.
Announcements only belong on the Forum. Some people will post an announcement in Announcements, and then also add the same thing to General Discussion, New to Albuquerque, etc. Those people usually get banned from the site.
Calls for entry totally belong in Announcements!

Thanks, Mary!
Kelly:

I think I understand what you're asking -- can you add a link to an event in the comments to another person's blog post? If, as you've said, it's relevant to the discussion, yes! I think that you as an individual or Arts Alliance as a nonprofit would be okay doing this.

To go one step further with something you both sort of touch on -- if you, as an individual, go to an event for a local nonprofit or have an experience that touches on a local business or nonprofit, it's totally cool to write and post about it as you. Kelly has done something really important in her comment above -- she's disclosed her relationship to the org, which is a must!

That said, if you become a one-person shill for a particular business or nonprofit, we're going to figure out that you're playing us and you will get your ears boxed and be tossed out into the street without a reference (as they say in A Little Princess).

Comment by sophie on August 6, 2009 at 12:13pm: Paula: No. This is a change in our policies, based on abuse we've seen on the part of some businesses and nonprofits. Unlike the Roberts court, we do not believe that businesses have the same free speech rights as individuals. If you wish to write, as yourself, about your experience as a business owner in ABQ, that's fine. See also above re one-person shill.

You don't need to go back and delete your old Chroma posts, though.

Comment