MarCom Professional

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes MarCom Professional different from, say, LinkedIn or Facebook?
LinkedIn is great at what it does, but it is ultimately a low-content business network. Anyone in the world may join, find and establish contacts, reference others and get references. MarCom Professional is a high-content social professional network for the marketing communications profession. Facebook is a generic social network.

In which languages can you post?
The site is designed for English language use currently. Whilst anyone can obviously write a post in French or German, we haven't yet introduced a method to flag this so that things like tag clouds don't end up a hotchpotch of languages.

Can I get paid to post content?
No.

How do I post?
Click here for a great post on how to post.

I've invited others to join. Can I see who I've invited and whether they have yet?
You can't see who you've invited at the moment, although this is a good idea and we're going to add this soon. However, you do know when they've joined as they appear on your own pages as friends or colleagues (the latter if they work at the same organisation as you).

How long does it take to verify that I’m a marcom professional?
You may be verified instantly, for example if your confirmed email address matches that of a marcom agency already on MarCom Professional. Otherwise, if it takes more than 90 minutes it's because you applied just as the football was starting.

Why verify registrations to the site? Isn’t a diverse and active community the thing that’ll make this site a success?
We want a diverse marketing communications community. Verifying applicants means we keep out strange people who work in other professions, but primarily sploggers (spam bloggers) and headhunters.

Why does my organisation's name appear in the navigation when I'm logged in? / What is MarCom Professional's Private Social Network feature?

Private Social Networks is a service that allows every MarCom Professional member affiliated with an organisation to get immediate access to that organisation's private social network by clicking on their company's name in the main menu. This takes you to a page that only your colleagues (members employed by / associated with the same organisation as you) can see and no-one else. When you write a new post, you can select for that post to appear only in your Private Social Network if you so wish.

Click here for more information on our Private Social Networks. 

What is an alter ego and what purpose does it serve on the site?
You can create an alter ego to add polemic or commentary you might not want to post under your real name. You cannot have an alter ego without having a professional identity on MarCom Professional first. You can then switch easily between your professional identity and alter ego by clicking the option to switch at the top of the page and entering your password when prompted. Publishing under your alter ego does not immunise you from adhering to our terms as we can trace the alter ego back to your main profile if we have to!.. although no-one else can. Also, we suggest that you don't set your browser to remember your password.

Can freelancers register and if so, how do you verify them as a genuine marcom professional?
They register as freelance, putting forward an existing member as referee.

How do you add links to posts?
Highlight the text you want to be a hyperlink and click the link icon (looks like a link in an iron chain). Paste in the URL or simply browse to another post on MarCom Professional.

How do you add pictures and video?
Start a new post and then click one of the two icons top right of the editor. You can hover your mouse over icons to see a description of what they do. Alternatively, you can also press CTRL-G to insert a picture / graphic, and CRTL-M to insert a movie.

If I want to report inappropriate content, how do I do this?
If you believe someone has breached our terms and associated code of conduct, please email conduct@marcomprofessional.com.

Is the site moderated? If so, by whom?
We're moderating the homepage at first, but we'll soon be introducing features to transfer some of this power to the community. Watch this space. Posts assigned categories (look to the right of the editor when writing and editing your posts) are automatically added to the category pages in reverse chronological order.

Which are the key markets for MarCom Professional?
The key markets correspond to our "Discipline Categories", which are listed on the homepage before you've logged in. You can also see all the categories with posts made to them by clicking on the "Categories" link at the top of the page. Lastly, there's also a list on the "About" page.

Not only can members comment on my posts, I can allow members to edit them too. Why's that?
The network combines the best of blogging with the best of wikis, what some refer to as a bliki! It should all be intuitive, else Wikipedia explains blikis here. Choose not to allow others to edit if you want to treat the post like a blog, else allow others to edit if you want to work on the post with them collaboratively. You can easily access all past versions, and compare any version of a post to another.

How do I refback or pingback a post on MarCom Professional from a separate blog?
Simply go to the post you want to reference (the full post, not the summary), and click "Cite or link to this post" and you'll find all the information you need.

What's the difference between "Import blog" and "Follow my blog?"
Blogging on MarCom Professional will secure you more readers because, well, this is the social professional network for your readership. Your blog will also benefit from better search engine optimisation than you could achieve on a standalone blog as you'll reap the compound effect of all MarCom Professional blogs. So you won't be surprised to hear that we'd recommend importing your current blog, and then maintaining it here :-)

However, you may also decide to make your posts to both your standalone blog and your MarCom Professional blog. For your convenience, therefore, the "Follow my blog" feature pulls in the posts you make to your standalone blog automatically.

If your standalone blog platform gives you the choice, you might like to set its feed to full length rather than excerpt or short-form, so that the whole of your posts with any embedded images and video come over to MarCom Professional.

Also, you might like to tag and categorise any posts that we follow, and categorise any posts that you import, as we won't get this information otherwise. This is, of course, entirely optional.

How can I publicise my MarCom professional membership elsewhere on the web?

You can use one of our specially designed blog buttons to link to the site from your personal homepage, blog, or social networking profile.  See our blog buttons page for more info.