Dear CEO,

We are a domain name registrar centre in HongKong which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally, we have an important issue to confirm with you.

1. On the July 14,We received a formal application from a company named ” Honor Overseas, Inc. ” who are applying to register ” netsolutionsna” as domain names and Internet keyword.

2. During our preliminary investigation, we found that these Domain Names’ keyword is identical with your Trade Mark, this is why we inform you.

3. I wonder whether did you consigned ” Honor Overseas, Inc.” to register these Domain Names and Internet Keyword with us? Or is “Honor Overseas, Inc.” your business partner?

4. If you do not have any relationship with this applicant, we assume that they have other purposes to obtain these Domain Names and Internet Keyword.

Currently, we have already postponed this company’s application temporarily. Pls let the relevant principal make a confirmation with me ASAP.

Thanks & Regards,

JoJo Wang

If you get something like this, don’t respond, just trash it. It is a scam. More info on relevant scams can be seen on this blog- http://www.cyveillanceblog.com/domains-icann/domain-registration-scam-picks-up-in-volume

Search engines and the “Logic” that runs them – search algorithms, constantly change and “evolve”. They do (and have to do) this, to keep up with the ever changing standards of the World Wide Web and also to stay ahead of black hat SEO techniques. Hence, what “makes perfect SEO sense” today, something that worked last year, last month, or even last week may no longer yield  results after some time as the search engine algorithms will most likely have changed.

SEO Myths are the modern day extensions to historical myths. Some are born when today’s storytellers – SEO Webmasters and SEO Gurus, blog about SEO Best practices which are recommendations applicable to a specific time frame and the people who read and follow these blog articles, try to apply the techniques long after they are outdated.  Other SEO Myths are knowingly and willingly propagated by certain SEO firms.  These firms do not want any person or company that owns a website to optimize it themselves as this would mean that these professional SEO firms would eventually run out of business. But a majority of SEO myths are, quite simply put, misunderstood or outdated SEO techniques. The clueless and pseudo experts often spread their misinformation to other unsuspecting newbies on forums and blogs, which in turn creates new SEO myths.

How do we tell which SEO techniques are still valid from those that are outdated? And which ones are the “latest”? Is there a real “expiry date” for every SEO technique discussed in the web?

Well, one way to find out is to keep up with the ever changing SEO world. Read as much as possible, ask the experts – the SEO MythBusters, validate your facts. Search for and read about SEO myths and outdated SEO tricks and techniques.  And most importantly follow your intuition, do not believe every blog post you read on SEO as assumption is parent to all failures. You would be surprised at the number of SEO myths, misinformation and outdated techniques that exist out there that are being followed.  It is interesting and sometimes plain funny, to see how people are so willing to believe anything they have read or heard without ever checking it out for themselves.

Or you could hire professional SEO services.

Unfortunately, all did not go well. And one the Windows Apps server did not reboot. Technicians are working on the problem but I do not yet have an ETA for the servers to be back on line. The contingency plan is to install a new server but that will take time to bring on line as all of the sites will need to be restored from backup.

We will let you know as soon as we figure out the failure point.

Sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you.

Please check back here as I will be posting as more information is available.

So we went to Nashville, we made our pitch, and now we are in the follow up stage. We do have some competition in this marketplace. A little company called Adobe has a product that they call “Business Catalyst”. They were also at the Summit pitching their reseller program to the CPrinters. After speaking directly with over 50 of the CPrinters, and outlining all the Pros and Cons of both programs, it appears that the biggest difference between the two products in the resellers minds is that we (ProFusion) offer telephone support, while Adobe does not. Now trust me, there are many other major differences between the two applications, however, this seems to be the biggest pain point with the resellers. They want to know that if they have a problem or needs some sales advice that we are just a phone call away. Seems simple enough, but phone support is one place that a lot of companies cut out when their budget gets tight.

I was doing a little research to see if phone support was a big deal in other industries and came across this website http://gethuman.com. It is a site dedicated to telling consumers how to reach a live person when calling some of the major corporations out there. I think this is awesome. If a little company like Net Solutions can provide phone support for their customers, why can’t the big guys? Furthermore, why do we tolerate the big companies not having phone support? My customers would raise hell if I said that we are operating on email support only, however, the larger corporations get away with it all the time.

That’s my rant for the day. Call me if you want to discuss it 360.738.8188

I wondered if anyone cared about this anymore? If all things were equal and you were making a purchase, would you opt to go with the product that was manufactured by the Family Owned and Operated Company? Does family owned and operated somehow equate to good service and tangible value? I’m not sure it does.

I think the 5 seconds wasted on saying “family owned and operated” could have been better spent on making an actual claim on why you are better/different from your competition. Lean economic times means business owners need to get smarter and their advertising messages need to hit their consumer right in the pain points. Telling me that you are family owned and operated does not help me make a buying decision.

If you disagree with me, and doing business with a family owned and operated company is #1 on your list, then you will be happy to know that Net Solutions is a family owned and operated business.

Similar to XML Sitemaps,  a video sitemap gives the search engines, specifically Google, more information about the video content in your web pages. By submitting this video-specific sitemap in addition to your standard XML Sitemaps, you can specify all the video files in your web pages, along with relevant metadata – information about your videos. Your video sitemap will need to include the following minimum information for each video: title, description, playpage URL, thumbnail URL and the raw video URL or URL to Flash video player. Without these five pieces of information, Google cannot surface your videos in results.

Guidelines for Video Sitemaps

• A Video Sitemap should contain only URLs that refer to video content. Video content includes web pages which embed video, URLs to players for video, or the URLs of raw video content hosted on your site.
• Create one video:video entry for each video. If you have multiple videos embedded on the same HTML page, use separate <video:video> entries for them with different <video:player_loc> or provide <video:content_loc> information. It’s fine to have duplicate videos in your Sitemap, but it is recommend that you don’t host the same video at two different URLs.
• You must include either the <video:player_loc> or <video:content_loc> tag, or both. Google needs this information to verify that there is actually a live video on your landing page. Note that for Flash objects pointed to by <video:content_loc>, it’s okay for different video pages to use the same Flash player, provided each page uses Flash parameters as a mechanism to show unique videos.
• Each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 video items. If you have more than 50,000 videos, you can submit multiple Sitemaps and a Sitemap index file. Video Sitemaps does not support nesting.
• Google can crawl the following video file types: mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv, .swf. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported. 
• Make sure that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking any of the URLs included in the Sitemap.
• Google web crawlers will verify that the information you include in the <video:title> and <video:description> fields matches your live site. You should view your play pages in a text-only browser such as Lynx, or a more conventional browser where you’ve confirmed that Flash and JavaScript are enabled.
• If you have multiple websites, you can simplify the process of creating and submitting Sitemaps by creating one or more Sitemaps that includes URLs for all your verified sites, and saving the Sitemap(s) to a single location. All websites must be verified in Google webmaster Tools.

You can either hand code the video sitemap or use free Google Sitemap Generator Tools  to create the video sitemap. Once you have created your video Sitemap, you can submit it to Google using Webmaster Tools.

1.  Log into Google webmaster tools with your Google Account.
2.  Click ‘Add a Sitemap’ next to your site.
3.  Select ‘Video Sitemap’.
4.  Put in the URL of your Video Sitemap. (Be sure to include http://)
5.  Click ‘Add Video Sitemap’.
6.  Wait for the ‘Pending’ status to change to ‘OK’. This may be several hours so don’t worry.

If you receive an error take a look at the descriptions. Not all of the errors will stop the processing of your Video Sitemap and may only be informational as in an unrecognized tag due to a typo, etc. 

That’s it. You’re done. You now have successfully added a Video Sitemap to your site and Google should start indexing all of the included video content.

We get asked these question and ones like it all the time. And the simple fact is that hosting appears to be a commodity until you have a problem. Recently one of the Industry giants was attacked by a virus infecting thousands of WordPress Blogs. Then re-attacked infecting several other open source applications like Joomla and simple HTML sites. According to Eddie Schwartz, chief security officer with NetWitness, hacks like that of [Network Solutions] are all too common. “We see these sorts of attacks – they are basically a very common occurrence. The fact is that there’s a vibrant community of people downloading COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] versions of Zeus and other malware kits, looking for legitimate Websites where they can install iFrame exploits.”

Whether the first and second attacks are related is not clear and information from Network Solutions is not forthcoming for fear of helping the perpetrators. And attacks like these can also cause issues with hosted email system due to “irregular network traffic” according to Network Solutions Twitter feed. Read more about server hacks on Network Solutions.

At Net Solutions North America, LLC we made the decision 6 years ago to build our own proprietary closed system application rather than build websites using one of the many open source applications. Open source means that anyone can get the entire source code of the application for free. Having access to the line by line code of an application is like gold to a hacker wishing to infect a large quantity of sites. WordPress blog is one of the most popular open source applications being commonly used today. In fact, we recommend it to our clients who need and want a blog application.

But we do something that few hosting companies do. We restrict access whenever possible. We place similar products on different servers so that we can identify problems and isolate issues faster. We use both Linux and Windows servers and have various functions and required applications segregated to help insulate a single site attack from infecting others on the same server. We operate our database application for our products on different servers from the applications. We separate our mail server from our applications servers. We have separate servers for our email marketing applications. All this means a significant increase in infrastructure costs and in management costs and systems to manage and maintain all of these servers. But what it also means is a much more secure hosting environment and lower likelihood that a successful attack of one server will spread to other servers.

Because we have had sites that have been successfully attacked in the past, and because we know that our sites are under constant attack we have implemented a number of security functions that some of our users do not like – i.e. locking admin functions after a number of wrong attempts. We will continue to do whatever is feasible to protect our client’s information and the security of their site. Rest assured we understand that there is a fine line between being annoying and providing the security our customers need.

So if you read that Net Solutions sites have been hacked or our systems and applications have been compromised, please make sure that you understand that they are not likely referring to us, but our much larger similar namesake hosting providers using open source applications and advertising low price hosting. But when it comes to hosting, it is hard to tell the difference until your site has been hacked and you are desperate to retrieve your data and minimize disruption to your website, blogs, and email.

A case in point, recently I read a Linked In recommendation from a client of ours who posted a reference for a former employee. When I first read it, my initial reaction was good for the former employee for getting the reference. But the reference included many tasks that were outside the scope of this person’s specific job requirements and abilities. In this case that employee was being lauded for his ability to do things that were done by other employees of the company. And because these employees did not interact directly with the client, they received no credit for the work they had done.

As I pondered, I thought that is really unfair. But unfair or not, that is the way things are. In our marketing efforts, we promote our President as the company spokesperson. And she does a fine job of promoting the company through her involvement in various organizations and community outreach programs. But she is not the company either. People who are the face of the company tend to get credit for the collective work of the employees of the company. Individual rewards are left to the company themselves to dole out to its employees. And this is the way it goes when a company serves it clients well. One or a handful of public facing employees get the lion’s share of the credit.

But what happens when things don’t go right? Then, all of a sudden the person who you deal with is no longer the company. You escalate your issues up the ladder. You demand resolution from the company. You expect the company to step in to make it right. No longer is the individual the center of your attention. That person who in a different situation gets all the credit now takes a backseat to the company’s infrastructure and policies and people. And the funny thing is that the person who gets all the credit when things go well, rarely gets all the blame when things do not go as planned. Why is that?

The reality is that we are humans. Employees are human. Companies are not. We can relate one to one with another human but we cannot relate one to one with a company. In most cases a company is not one. It is many. Doing different things to make sure the company can provide the products and services that warrant a customer’s praise and hopefully, loyalty.

Smart companies empower their employees to make decisions. The more power you give an employee the more human they become and the more a customer can relate to them and identify less with the company. However satisfying this is for the customer, it is a two-edged sword for the company. Empowering employees to keep customers happy is good for immediate business but it may lead to a false sense of security for the customer. In most cases they do not think “Wow! What a great company I am dealing with that cares so much about my well being they allow their employees to make decisions to keep me happy.” But that is really what is happening. What they think is: “Employee X is such a good employee that he goes the extra mile for his clients looking out for their best interests.” Employee X could not do any of these things without the proper company attitude, training and foresight to enable the employee to help in the first place.

When a valued, trusted, empowered employee leaves for whatever reason, customers can become very nervous, in many cases to the point of paranoia. I think that is because as companies, no matter how good we are, fail to communicate all the things the company does to ensure the relationship between the customer and the company remains strong.

In our case few clients know about our Project Management System, our support ticket application, our forum or even our blogs. Most do know how to get in touch with us during business hours on the phone. But many of the issues our clients experience are after normal business hours. So they use the tools they know. They email their primary contact. And then if that goes unanswered for any period of time they phone the next business day. This is a communication problem. A failure of the company to help the client understand all of the support functions it may have instigated to help the client in time of need.

In our case, the same company that has empowered an employee to take care of their clients spends thousands of dollars each year on additional support functions and personnel to monitor these tools – which were put in place not to make life more difficult for our customers but to enhance their relationship and to allow us to improve our ability to serve them better.

An email sent to an employee is read by that employee when s/he gets around to it. No one else has access to that private email. S/he then must decide what to do with it and whom to send the request to if they cannot resolve the issue. Frequently this will entail opening a support ticket on behalf of the customer and assigning the ticket to the appropriate support person to rectify the issue. This can cause delays. Particularly over a weekend or after hours when so many of our clients actually have time to work on their web strategies.

The following scenario is not uncommon: Saturday morning Client “A” gets up to work on their website, email marketing application or blog. They encounter an issue – whether it is a question or an application problem. The pick up the phone and call only to find no one answers. They leave a message to call them back. Then they email their primary contact. Now they are experiencing some frustration as the time they set aside to work on a task has to be put off until they get their question answered. The employee contact is not the company. S/he is an employee who may or may not feel the need to check email on the weekend or while they are away from the office. A couple of days may go by before the employee responds. In some cases, client A cannot even recall what they were working on that they had a question on and by the time we get back to them they no longer have time to work on the task they intended to work on.

So how does Net Solutions North America – the company respond? We have a Project Management System for back-and-forth communications on projects that have not yet gone live. We have a support ticket application that is monitored 24/7 where any number of experts for that particular issue may be assigned the task to respond. And we have a Forum.

Posting a support ticket vs. sending an email means that your problem is likely to be addressed faster. And the issue is captured so that we can monitor whether or not this issue is a problem that needs to be addressed with the application or training or both.
Our Forum can be read by not only NSNA employees but also by users of the Forum. Here you have a chance to review other people’s posts to see if anyone else has had this same issue and how it was resolved. If you do not find your issue you can post it and your chances of getting a response from either a NSNA employee or a knowledgeable user is greatly increased. If you are a visual learner, we have training videos that go over most of the basic functions of our application to answer most questions. And the Ultra IS application has built in Flash video that help users perform tasks that are not done frequently.

Using any or all of these tools will significantly help most of our customers to get quick responses to issues they encounter and will reduce the frustration level of setting time aside to work on a task only to have to set it aside because you cannot get your questions answered.

The point I am trying to make is that our customers are Net Solutions North America customers and not individual employee of Net Solutions customers. It is the company that will support them long after an employee may leave. We should cherish the friendships that employees of companies provide to us, but we should remain aware that it is the company that we actually have the business relationship with. It is the company that will help us solve our problems and resolve our issues. The company is the sum of all of the employees and not just the ones that deal with the public. The company can be rated good or bad based on how it empowers its employees to make decisions that are in its customer’s best interest. Companies are not bad or good. It is the management philosophy, policies and people in the companies that determine whether a company is worth doing business with. If you have had a bad experience with a company, we invite you to give us a try and see what a difference empowered employees and enlightened management can do when coupled with great products.

1. PixResizer (http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm) easily allows you to resize one or multiple images. Please, please use this or http://profusionproducts.com/resizer/ to resize your images before you load them onto your website.

2. TweetDeck – I manage a few Twitter and FaceBook accounts and TweetDeck makes this simple from one interface

3. Pixie – (http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php) ever wonder what the hex, RGB, or CMYK value of the color on your favorite website is? Well wonder no more, Pixie is a great little tool that will tell you the codes for any color on any website, document or image.

4. PowerPoint – I am a PowerPoint junkie. I don’t just use it for presentations, I use it to do rough schematics and rough mock-ups. I can do amazing things in PowerPoint. Many website designs have started with me and a client sitting down and mocking something up it PowerPoint. I am sure other web designers will laugh, but this works and my clients are happy.

5. I had been using GoTo Webinar for our online training sessions and have been relatively happy with them. They are somewhat pricey ($99/mo). My biggest complaint is that the recordings are not very high quality. I have posted many of them on the NSNA website and they are hard to read. I have been trying out Camtasia and Screencast.com for a couple quick responses to clients (see http://www.screencast.com/t/YTIwZDMzMTkt as an example) but I have not used it enough to make a full review. I’ll let you know.

6. We use IM (instant messenger) like crazy to communicate quickly. Call me lazy, but there are many times I will IM the CEO of our company even if he is sitting in the office right next to me. For me, I like having a written answer to my question. If gives me something to go back and read if I ever forget the answer (which I do a lot… prego brain). I still have two accounts, Yahoo and MSN, and use both messengers. I know there are tools that allow you to consolidate to one IM, but I like having both. Sue me.

7. CutePDF – again, PC users need a free way to make PDFs too. See my earlier post on how to do this.

8. Pandora.com – For me, I work much better with good tunes. Since I can’t hire DJ Maynard to spin in my office all day, I listen to Pandora.

What am I missing? What can’t you live/work without?

Now, for those of you who do not know me directly, I am not short on confidence. My parents told me I could do anything, and I believed them. So when given the opportunity to start a company selling web solutions, I said why not and jumped in with both feet. Unfortunately, the first few meetings I had with potential clients were disasters. I wasn’t prepared to answer their questions, I didn’t know what I was selling, and I couldn’t provide them with any value. I was shell shocked. I had just invested over $60,000 into a business that I didn’t know the first thing about.

My initial reaction… RETREAT, FULL RETREAT! Hide your head in the sand until this passes and then pop back up as a blond and hope no one noticed. Unfortunately that strategy didn’t work. I had to get back on the horse, I had to make my investment work. So then I took on the attitude that I had to learn everything there was about web technologies and websites. The next meeting I went into, I was going to be the biggest web nerd in the room. I started reading books and other websites that I could find. I tried to devour as much information as I could.

But what was happening to my sales and leads while I was doing all this learning? Nothing. I had no sales, I had no income, I had nothing in my pipeline. That was even scarier than being laughed out of a meeting. So I knew I had to find a healthy balance of learning and selling. I took on the attitude that I have now… I may not know everything about technology, but I know we (NSNA) can do just about anything any client wants on the web.

And more importantly, I realized that my potential clients don’t care if I know everything about the web or not. They care about what I know about their business. They care about how I can help them make more money, spend less time at work, manage their own site, learn a new skill, etc. That is the value I provided them. My clients enjoy the fact that I do not speak geek. They like that they are speaking with another business owner that understands that making payroll can be a bitch sometimes and that sometimes at the end of the month there are a lot more bills than cash.

So now the important skill that I bring to the table when meeting a client is that I listen. I listen to what they want, I balance that with what I know works and how our products work, and the result usually is a happy client with a new web solution. The point is, don’t let your fear of not knowing paralyze you into not selling. If you are a ProFusion Dealer, spend time building your website on the tools you were given when you first signed up. Show your clients what you are doing, show them how you can add pictures to your website with a few mouse clicks. Show them how you can turn a boring business website into an Italian Restaurant site in less than an hour. Show them how you can make your new product dance, and I guarantee they will want to do business with you and they will tell their friends about you.

So stop waiting, start selling!

I think all business owners intend to do this. Every January at NSNA we swear to write a weekly email to send out to our current customers. We intend to segment the list by industry and send them targeted messages, but somehow we never seem to get past the first mailing. I know we are not alone in our failure to launch a well intended, good idea.

So what do we do about it now? Start small. With the form tool on the ProFusion Ultra Internet Solution, you can send auto-responders. An auto-responder is an automated email that is sent to someone once they have filled out a form on your website. The autoresponder can be unique for each form on your site. I just went through the NSNA site and only one of our forms was using an active auto-responder. Shame on us! So this weekend, I am partially implementing the hopper with a small step. I will be writing unique auto-responders for each one of our forms. My next step will be to put together a series of responses and send them out on an automated schedule via the mailer… but that may be too much for one weekend. I’ll let you know how step 1 goes.

Dollar for dollar when you consider any other advertising money you spend, an effective website will return more on your investment, but you have to have a web strategy in order to achieve this return. We (NSNA) can help you develop and manage that strategy.

The web is the only marketing vehicle that does not cost you more for additional air time, or large content, or adding color. It is the only truly interactive marketing vehicle available and your existing and new prospects are using the web to do their initial research. You need to be visible on the web. Today a company without an effective website is similar to a guy that 10 years ago just scribbled his name and phone number on a scratch paper, because he thought business cards were too expensive. If he was not willing to invest in business cards then how serious is he about being in business, really?

The web is even more critical for small companies with limited marketing budgets than it is for large ones. You sell a technical product in a rapidly evolving marketplace that businesses do not purchase every day. As such, it is even more important that you been seen as “the source” for information on how to buy the products and services you sell.

{deleted proposal specific content} …yet there are few differentiators being discussed when I go to your website vs your competitor’s sites. There must be some compelling reason for me, as a business owner, to want to deal with you rather than a competitor. But I do not see that discussed anywhere on your site. There is nothing to help educate me about the changes in your market.

Take a look at your website… does it give me specific reasons why I should do business with you and not your competition? Is it up to date? Does it stand up against the 8 reasons why most websites fail?

Here are 10 tips we’ve picked up from attending a lot of shows, not only as vendors but participants as well. They may be basic but the best tips usually are pretty basic.

1. Set clear goals of what you want to achieve at the show. Do you expect to sell products, launch a new product or promotion, or possibly meet suppliers? You can set more than one goal but be clear and focused on what your participation will involve. In our business (selling web solutions) we don’t expect to sell a site on the spot. What we do look for is hot leads. At each trade show we attempt to identify 3 – 5 hot leads. We do this by gathering business cards from participants. When someone hands me their card, I quickly look for a web address. I then ask them one of two simple questions. If they don’t have a site listed on their card, I ask why? If they do have a site listed on their card, I ask them how happy they are with the performance of their website. Based on their response, I quickly note on the back of their card how “hot” they are. If they expressed some sort of displeasure or unsatisfaction with their website, I mark them as “hot” and follow up with them right after the show is over.

2. Find out everything you can about your space in advance. There’s nothing more frustrating than showing up to a show only to find that your booth is too big or too small to fit the space. Finding out the location of your booth in advance prevents you lugging around boxes and products in search of the right spot. Finding out everything that is included (table, table cloth, electricity, etc) in advance is a big time and headache saver.

3. Have everything you need, like extension cords; tape etc with you when you arrive to set up your booth. It prevents last minute searching for items needed to set up your booth which, if you’re in a strange town can quickly turn into a nightmare. We have a trade show box that stays with our booth that contains a hammer, thumb tacks, pens, rubber bands, notepads, band aids, extension cords, replacement light bulbs, tape, breath mints and much more in it. It has been used at every trade show we’ve been to and always comes in handy.

4. Make sure your display is appropriate for the group you are targeting. Who is your target market with your trade show display? Different audiences go to trade shows differently and have different needs.

5. Advertise in advance of the show. Let the public know that you are participating in a particular trade show. Invite your clients, customers, suppliers and be sure and give them your booth number. Advertise your attendance to the trade show on your website as well.

6. Stand out! Don’t just be another booth and vendor at the show – find something different and unique and use that to draw visitors to your booth. Arrange your booth strategically so that everything can be seen quickly by visitors. Put larger items in the rear and shorter items up front. A table runner on top of the table cloth is an effective way of making your table stand out. Be creative with your booth, include pictures if possible and be sure your company name and logo are more than obvious.

7. Should you give something away? Most people who attend trade shows are expecting some giveaways and food is always popular. Make sure you package your food in a way that allows you to have your company information on it. Gift Certificates for some of your services are another great Trade Show giveaway – there’s nothing better than getting a deal on your services. And when they redeem their certificate, they will learn how great your services are and come back for more. Offer a drawing for a prize that complements your business and appeals to everyone. Have visitors and guests sign a guestbook, fill out a form or drop their business card in a bowl. You can then use this information later to make a follow up contact. We gave away a Wii last year at a trade show and we were one of the most popular booths at the event! We collected over 300 business cards and have closed 7 deals from that show alone.

8. Arrive early enough to the trade show and make sure everything is set up correctly and that everything works. Wear comfortable clothing and shoes – you’re going to be on your feet!

9. During the show, never turn your back to the crowd and don’t sit down unless you’re having a conversation with a guest and you both are sitting. Stand in front of your booth, if possible, saying “Hi” to those that turn and look toward your or your booth. Have your elevator speech ready. More importantly, is being ready to listen to what your guests have to say, you may learn a lot about them and be able to fill a need that they have.

10. A portfolio or display of your work should be on hand for visitors to see. A digital photo frame is an excellent way of showing your work or placing a Power Point® presentation on a laptop – your visitors will find this visually appealing and it will draw their attention. Offering a brochure with your best work for them to take with them will serve as a reminder once the show is over.

These 10 basic steps to Trade Show exhibiting will make your booth stand out, draw visitors so you can gather their contact information, save you time, money and stress. The most important thing about a trade show is to have fun!

1. Open the document that you want to turn into a PDF

2. Go to File > Print

3. From the printer drop down, instead of printing to your default printer, you will want to print to CutePDF instead.

4. Select where you want to save the PDF, name it and you are all done!

The Favicon appears as a mini-icon next to your web address in most browsers. It also appears next to the website name in your favorites list.

Sure there are more tests than you can shake a stick at, but give this one a shot.

• Is your facebook status updated?
• Have you tweeted today?
• Can you “Google” yourself?
• Can Ya “Digg” it?
• Viral means disease or success?

Chances are you if can answer one or more of those questions, you know a little something about social media. Which leads to the question, is their really such a thing as an un-googleable person? Furthermore, if and when there is…would you trust them?

Most business people today meet a new client, investor, partner, provider, etc. and as soon as they get back to their office they Google that person to see what more they can learn about that person. Often times they can find pieces of your history online, and learn more about you. Depending on your online profile, people can gather a positive or negative impression, but one thing they know for sure is that you are who you say you are.

How did you feel the last time you Googled someone and did not find anything about them? Did you trust them? Did you wonder what rock they just crawled out from under? I personally have more trust for a business that has a website, and a person who has an online profile. Both show me they are at least valid and not a fly by night company.

Welcome to 2010! The time is right for Social Media

So what if you are a business, and you do not have an online profile? What if you failed the Social Media test? Well there is still hope for you, but the time to act is now! The first thing I would suggest is getting a website, which will help validate your business. Many web development companies have low cost, entry level websites that can get you started. Typically by putting up a website, doing some basic search engine optimization, and populating your site with relevant, unique, high quality content, you can put your business on the map. Now when people search for your business name, or your online profile, your website will come up first, validating your business.

Once the website is up and running, you can evaluate if you need to branch even further by using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Each of those tools should be considered only once you have a successful website.

The time to act is now, make sure you are not the un-googleable man, women or business.

Social Media Self Test #2

How many of the Social Media Icons below can you identify? Furthermore, how many of them is your business listed on?

Don’t assume anything, you don’t know their bank account balance or their budget, so don’t assume they can’t afford much because they have holes in their jeans or old cowboy boots on. (I’m speaking from experience!)

When it comes to web design assuming that the client has your taste in design and only sending them designs that YOU like will more than likely bite you in the butt if you haven’t taken the time to listen to what they want or learn their story. Think about what you learn as well when you listen to a client’s story – you may walk away with a golden nugget.

Thinking that a person has nothing important to say and not listening to them is not also only a huge mistake but rude and it’s easy for the person speaking to tell that you’re not paying attention.

Focus on the person speaking and listen to what they are saying – you can show the person you’re paying attention by keeping your eyes on them and keeping open body language. Lean forward a bit and don’t cross your arms or legs. Let them finish their speaking before you begin to speak.

I’m not saying anything new here – it’s just common sense and sometimes we forget that we aren’t the most important person in our client’s lives and we need to give them space and time and respect. They will return the favor!

Step #1 – Upload your video to YouTube. I will not bore you with the details of this task, if you do not know how to upload your video here is a simple video guide on how to upload a video to YouTube.

Step #2 – Once your video is uploaded, you need to retrieve the code for the video from YouTube. As you can see in the screen shot below, you need to click on “< Embed >” button first. Continued after screen shot…

Step #2 (Con’t)
Once you have clicked on the “< Embed >” button, several new options become available. You can select the size, border color, and other display options. Once you have configured your options, you need to copy (CTRL + C) the code so you can add it to your website.

Step #3 – Login to your ProFusion Products Website, and navigate to the page you want to add the video to. Once there, click on the < X > button. Continued below screen shot…

Step #3 (Con’t) – Clicking the < X > button opens a small window, this is actually the code of your website page. In this example there is no other content on the page, but if this page had text already you would see code displayed here.

Step #4 – Paste (CTRL + P) your code into the new window. Then click the “Apply” button and then the “OK” button. Continued below screen shot…

Step #4 (Con’t) – Once the code is inserted into the page you will NOT see the video. You will simply be shown a dotted outline of where the video will display along with a red x. This is fine, it is simply a placeholder for the video.

Step #5 – Save the page, and then go to the frontend of the website and view your video. That is it! You are all set to start showing the video to friends, relatives, colleges, and clients!

Why most websites don’t work…

The Internet is a huge opportunity for small and medium sized businesses for many reasons.

1. The Internet does not recognize size. If you are a small 2 person accounting firm, the Internet won’t know that, you can compete online with the larger firms and have a better chance of winning the business online.

2. The Internet is flexible. You do not have to pay big bucks each time you want to add a new service offering to your website. You can update information, add promotions, and add full color pictures (ink isn’t extra online) and images for no additional charge.

3. The Internet can extend your geographic reach. If you have a product that is not limited to the immediate Bellingham area, the Internet can help you sell in all other markets.

4. The Internet is cost effective. Having a professional website with necessary functionality does not cost tens of thousands of dollars anymore. In most cases you can see an immediate return on investment by adding information your sales people can refer potential clients to, having an time-saving informative FAQ section to free up your customer service reps, with appointment setting functionality, e-commerce and more.

This opportunity often goes untouched by business owners, even if they have a website. Too often businesses will put up a website with the following problems:

1. The website has no clear objective: when putting up a website you need to question everything. What would a website achieve for my company? Who is my company targeting and why would they visit our site? How will a website impact offline business? Start with a solid marketing objective and strategy.

2. The website is technology focused: Website development is often delegated to IT people. This does not ensure a superior web presence for your company. Your site will likely lose its marketing focus and may not be using technology that is user friendly. Develop a culture of designing customer focused online solutions.

3. The website is poorly written: Online, the written word builds relationships. Writing for the web is different, “corporate” or formal writing can come across stuffy or pompous on the web. Be flexible, but don’t be unprofessional. Always check and re-check your spelling and grammar. Bells and whistles may grab a customer’s attention, but words make the sale.

4. The website has a poor design: The design of a website can make or break a website. CyberAtlas reports that “65% of Internet users surveyed won’t patronize a poorly designed site – even that of a favorite brand.” Take a look at your website, is it easy to navigate (rule of thumb to use here is that no matter where a person is on your site, they can always make it back to the homepage within 2 clicks), are the colors appropriate, does it load quickly?

5. The website has no clear call for action: Do your visitors know what to do on your website? Have you given them a good reason to do it?

6. The website is invisible: 85% of Internet users start their search online with a search engine. If your website is not listed under the appropriate keywords for your industry your website is essentially invisible on the web. Having no traffic on your website is a huge missed opportunity.

7. The website doesn’t work: Choose your hosting environment carefully and test everything. Get other people to check it. Ask your hosting company for site logs to find pages that have errors, and check all of your links and forms regularly. Your reputation is at stake, demonstrate attention to detail.

8. The website has poor maintenance: Does your website say “Last updated September 2001?” Is it filled with under construction and coming soon pages? Your website should reflect your changing business. Update it often.

Having an Online presence is a necessity for any business that wants to be a major player in their industry. There are many ways to market your business online. Through Search Engine Optimization, email newsletters, high-touch relationship marketing and Search Engine Marketing you can make your website an investment that pays you dividends.

Use the 8 common problems above and evaluate your website. If you were a customer of your business, how would you answer the questions? If you are happy with your answers, congratulations, you are maximizing your investment on the web. If not, it might be time to revisit your website to make sure it is working for you and not against you.

After the site went live, she indicated that she did not like the flow of the PayPal system and requested that I change it. I tactfully informed her that I could not change PayPal’s processes even if I wanted to. I am not convinced she believed me. She never did anything with her website, nothing ever changed. After several months she pulled all the products off her site and now she’s canceled her site and her domain name. I feel like I let her down because her site wasn’t as successful as she wanted it to be.

One thought led to another and I thought about many of my clients and the misconception that a lot of small business owners seem to share, “I have a website, where are my customers?”

A website, especially one that’s as easy to use and maintain as a ProFusion Ultra IS website, is a fantastic marketing tool and when used correctly, can bring in new customers to your business, helping it grow and thrive. Unlike a phone book or print ad you can add all the color you want at no additional cost. Add additional pages, video, forms, photos – things to make the website easier for your visitors to interact with your business easily, quickly and often – with no waiting for publication dates.

It doesn’t end there however, to be an effective marketing tool a website must be kept sharp, up to date and fresh. It’s like a garden, it’s never done. Ignore it at your own peril and like this customer did weeds will grow and choke the life out of it. It will languish with the millions of other websites, never found because no time was taken to keep it fresh and updated – no reason for search engines or humans to visit or ever come back. This is the main reason why Search Engine Optimization is so important for your website – it keeps your site from becoming just another pretty face among the millions of other pretty faces in Cyberspace. Use your website like the tool it was designed to be, keep your site sharp and up to date so you can reap the rewards it can offer you for years to come.

Even though I can rationalize why my client canceled her domain and took down her site, I still hate losing her as a customer.

Many of you know that this company was founded by a couple of Psychology majors turned marketing professionals frustrated with not being able to manage our own website and those of our clients without costly and time consuming assistance from our web developers. We spec’d out, and had built our very own Content Management System to add and modify page content using tools similar to what we were already familiar with – Microsoft Word. We did this way before Content Management Systems were all the rage.

In fact, we got a lot of resistance from our early adoption of database drive website architecture from the web development world initially. Now of course, every popular website platform is database driven. And yes, there are still some dinosaurs who continue to build websites using traditional tools, hard coding their way to a finished product that forces their clients to learn difficult and confusing applications like Dreamweaver and FrontPage or be reliant on the web developer to make changes for them. But our clients have clearly indicated a preference for our strategy of being able to make quick changes to their websites themselves.

And small search companies like Google, Yahoo! and Bing have confirmed that websites that have are being upgraded with new relevant content are the ones that they feel are most relevant to search terms.

So now is your chance to tell us what you really think about our strategies and products and let us know how you want them improved. Clearly we will not be able to implement every idea – at least not right off the bat, but your ideas and comments may spark that innovative concept that revolutionizes how future versions of our application will work.

Please keep in mind that the goal of the Ultra Internet Solution has been as a tool for business people and non-technical users to create, manage and maintain great websites. And as such, many of the tools that developers would like us to incorporate may not be possible. It is hard to serve two masters. There are a number of website builder tools specifically geared toward the developer community – much too complex for most business users. This is not our primary market. Our market is small and medium sized businesses who have more hats to wear and more things to get done in a day than there are hours to get them done. Our tools are well suited for creative folks, like designers and graphic artists who can visualize and create interesting designs, but do not have the necessary developer skills to create dynamic database driven websites. But equally at home with a business owner who wants to be able to create a well designed, attractive site without outside assistance.

Take a moment to think about the times when you’re working on your website and have been challenged or frustrated because the application did not do what you wanted it to the way you wanted it to work and post your ideas and comments.

How do (did) you do it? How would you improve it? Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you thought, “Oh, this would be so much easier if the Ultra IS could…….!

Well, it’s that missing ….. at the end of the last sentence that we would really like to hear about from everyone.

Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below. Doesn’t matter how crazy or out-there the ideas might be – we want to hear them!

Thanks a lot. Really!
Bob

Most Blogs can be described in terms of things that used to be common but have mostly been replaced: Journals and/or Diaries. Journals and Diaries were used by people to record their thoughts and ideas. Personal Journals were traditionally used to record daily experiences and observations. Professional Journals, were geared toward a particular subject matter – i.e medical journal, law journal, and local journals or newspapers geared toward a specific region or location, etc.

Blogs are today’s Journals. They allow a site owner to post a comment (idea or thought) and allow others to view these posts and make comments of their own thereby expanding the communication thread. Most of the successful Blogs have a relatively narrowly defined focus reflecting the interests or knowledge levels of their authors. But the very nature of Blogs allows for expertise and incoherent ramblings to be intertwined at the whims of the Blog owner.

The favor or Blogs over websites was primarily the design of a few popular Blogs applications that allowed non-technical users the ability to post their thoughts using nothing but a tool similar to a stripped down word processor. While most websites required a much higher technical knowledge of things like HTML, Dream Weaver, Cascading Style Sheets, File Transport Protocol (FTP) and design because the typical website had no pre-defined form or constraints. The lack of form and constraints gave a web designer a blank canvas with which to create anything they could envision. The same lack of form and constraint made it very difficult for a typical site owner to manage and maintain their own website.

Over the years, companies like ours have worked hard to create applications that required no technical knowledge other than a basic understanding of typical word processor functions in order to manage and maintain their website: create new pages, add or change content, add images, audio and video files and even change the look of their websites by arranging basic building blocks.

Today, when you search blog vs website for which is best for a particular company or individual you will find lots of articles touting the ease of use of Blogs vs traditional websites. Most Blog proponents tout ease-of-use as the primary reason for using a Blog today. And though this can be true, it is not a universal truth. Products like our ProFusion brands provide the best of both worlds: A product a business owner can use simply by changing colors and uploading images or a designer can start with the blank canvas and create most any design and upon integration of that design to our ProFusion Ultra Internet Solutions, the site owner can easily manage and maintain the site with no technical knowledge.

What we have found is that a company that is serious about promoting its business needs both a website and a Blog. A Blog that is not updated is no better than a static (never changing) website. But a website that is dynamic (constantly changing) and a Blogger capable of writing interesting and valuable Blog content on a consistent basic can rise to the top of the search engines and provide real value to customers and prospects looking to buy or educate themselves about how to buy.

As a consumer of your company’s products or services, I do not want to wade through a seemingly un-organized series of ramblings to find out specific information about your products or services. I do want to quickly be able to determine if you can solve my immediate problems with your solutions. Once I can answer that question, then I want to know a bit more about your company, and how your clients feel about you. Depending on the product or services you are providing I may then want to read more about why I should do business with you. What value do you provide? What makes you better or more knowledgeable than your competitors?

An exceptionally well designed Blog may be able to provide a business with all of that information in a very short manner, but more often than not, a traditional website’s structure will provide all of the quick confirming information and the Blog will be like the icing on the cake. If you sell a technical product or provide services that, as a consumer, I may need but do not buy on a regular basis then I may need more information and hand holding before I am comfortable with knowing how to buy what you are selling. And to get a Blog application that was originally designed to present journal information easily, to now function as both a Blog and a traditional website, may not be so easy to manage and maintain when trying to be all things to today’s more sophisticated Internet users and what they have come to expect.

A combination of a easy to use and maintain website along with an easy to use and manage web log may in fact be the very best of both worlds when it comes to helping a consumer understand what you sell and why are the best choice and value.

So when it comes to a new website or a Blog, maybe the answer is not one or the other, but what is best for your customers? What will help you, as a business owner, best get your message across to your customers and prospects. What web strategy will help serve your customers best?

Just as you are unlikely to take the advice of a friend or neighbor when you have a serious tooth ache or you need medical attention, if you are serious about solving your web related business problems, you may want to discuss these issues with the professionals whose livelihood depends on providing the right solutions to their clients. Discuss your strategy with a professional web applications development company who can advise you on the merits of both a Blog and a dynamically generated web content using today’s web application tools.

Lucky for all of us, there are numerous websites that make finding images just a little bit easier. When I am writing a blog post, I am often thinking about what type of images I can use to complete my exhaustive vocabulary (sarcasm), after all a picture is worth a 1000 words. After my text is complete, and I have considered what type of images I am looking for, I visit a few stock image websites that have plenty of royalty free images to choose from.

Below is my review of the Stock Image websites I use most often.

1. Google Image Search – Rating 2 out of 5

   This is a quick hit or miss, there are often not a lot of images to choose from that you can manipulate for your website. For those of you familiar with Google’s Image Search you will know that with every search typically 1000’s of results are returned. However, just because an image displays does not mean you can use it. What you need to find are images that artists have indicated can be used for commercial reproduction and manipulation. In order to do this, you need to change your search filters to exclude images that you cannot use. To make this change you first conduct a Google Image search, and then click on “Advanced Search.” This will bring up a new page where you can define certain search parameters. One of the last options on the page is usage rights, I change this value to “labeled for commercial reuse with modification.” This indicates to Google that you only want images that you can manipulate and reuse on your website. Results of this type typically return less than 100 images. Sometimes you get lucky, most of the time you move onto the next option.

2. iStockphoto – Rating 4.5 out of 5

   This is in my opinion the most cost affective, quality image search location on the web. Their photos are high quality, relevant and there is a large selection to choose from. Most images that you would use on a website or blog cost $1, if you are trying to use them for printing, they will run $5-$20 which are all very reasonable prices considering the other options available to you. iStockphoto also has a feature called “Lightboxes” which allow you to gather a group of images together, and then you can email them to other people for review. So often, when I am trying to narrow down to the final image to use on a website, I will create a Lightbox with a few images in it, and then email it to decision makes of the website. Allowing them to view the images, and voice their opinion on which images is the best.
   
   To create a Lightbox on iStockphoto.com is pretty easy, simply sign-up for an account via the link in the top right corner of the iStockphoto.com website. After your account is set-up, each image you search for will have an option to “Add to Lightbox” if you have not created a lightbox, or want to create a new one you will be prompted to do so.

3. Big Stock – Rating 3.5 out of 5

   While Big Stock is not as popular as iStock or Google images, it still packs a powerful punch. The images are roughly the same price as iStock, and there is a little less variety, but overall it is a nice tertiary option when you cannot find the type of image you are looking for on the other two sites. One thing I notice about Big Stock is when you need a high quality image for printing you can get them a little cheaper at Big Stock. You need to purchase one of their larger credit packages to get the price lower, but when starting a business, $189 which gets you 140 credits goes a long way towards building out a quality website, along with a few print brochures.

By using the resources above you should be able to find the right image for each and everyone of your blog posts or website pages. Do not forget that a picture can tell a thousand words, so what are you missing out on by not including any images or the wrong image?