Use easy URLs to track your marketing efforts for events, books, products, campaigns.
How do you know if your marketing dollars are leading to revenue unless you can track it? Even small businesses that have one or two events a year need to be tracking how their efforts pay off. Sometimes we pay for ads in directories, sponsor events, sponsor a local team of kids, put an ad in the church bulletin, boost our listings in the Chamber of Commerce or [...]
All things passwords
This PICNIC episode welcomes Joy Beland, President at Pink Hat Technology Management. Here, she will discuss: • How to create and remember a strong password? • How Password management software can store our passwords in an encrypted format for us on every device? • How to monitor whether your password have been stolen and are for sale on the Dark Web? • Why it is important to rotate [...]
Be cautious whom you give admin rights to
Who has admin rights for your business on Google? If your mail runs through your Google Business and they have access, did you know they can set it up that all email accounts in your business can send a copy of back and forth conversations to any email address of their choosing? It's deep in the Google admin panel, but it's there. I just set it up for [...]
The unexpected grabs their attention.
When we are contacting the same people, appearing at the same events, posting to the same venues, we need to shake it up - do something UNEXPECTED. This makes us memorable, relate-able and shareable. Recently a friend's dad died. He's been posting lessons from his dad on LinkedIn. I already have a few in my bio from my own dad, but he reminded me of some lighter moments [...]
You have multiple locations, but are they REAL locations?
Google wants to know if they are legitimate locations with a door and all. This past month I've been going through a location verification process with a client for 26 offices. We want to make sure that he appears correctly in all directories with a local, VERIFIED location. You would think this would be easy. He has a lease at all locations. There is an address, a suite [...]
Are crutch words losing your audience?
When I hear people say them, I cringe. 95% of the time they are not necessary and serve as fill, lazy transitions, and crutches. I find myself visually seeing their words over their heads and putting a red line through what they are saying to drill down to the necessary words. It's typically about half of what they said, if that much. Those of us who write for [...]
Create a Succession Plan
Silver Tsunami Ahead: Create a Succession Plan - Here's a little excerpt from Exit Power Strategies. An article that ran in the Washington Post on May 9, 2017 discussed the “Silver Tsunami” once again. An excerpt that really struck me reads, “According to Project Equity, many small business owners do not have succession plans–and because of this they’re putting their employees at risk.” As a small business owner [...]
Test Your Subscriber’s Journey
Those of you with websites and links to contact: link to a FORM, not just an email. If they are on your site, don't distract them by sending them to their email service to contact you. They will get distracted. AND on phones, it means opening a different app. Just give them a simple form that SAVES to a database and emails at least one person. As a [...]
A simple way to hide content in case you need it again later.
Here's an idea to tuck away seasonal content. In this article about advertising promotional products, some of the items in a heavily visited page are very seasonal. Here's how you do it in the TEXT or CODE/HTML view - add a "comment" around what you want to hide for now and show later: <!-- is the beginning of the part you want to hide. --> is how you [...]
https and SSL checklist – it’s not as simple as you may hope.
I need to update my own site. I know this; AND the bulk of you need to get https:// SSL compliant on your sites. That means purchasing the proper SSL certificate for your precise domain - www vs. no www, subdomains, etc. THEN, you have to get it installed. Your site needs to update all paths to images, internal links and more to https:// vs. http://. With WordPress, there [...]
High Quality Video Images Using PPT and Photoshop
I hope you enjoy this video: Creating high quality video images using PPT and Photoshop. I've been doing a lot of voiceover lately for clients. They've been giving me a PowerPoint presentation, I help them select and purchase the images - yes - PURCHASE with a license - even low-budget royalty free ones. Then, I help them create a video for use on their YouTube channels, as webinars, [...]
Gather and select resources before you create your site.
We all know we need websites. What we do with them varies - some are very interactive, some are more like static brochures that you have to hit yourself in the head to add content to regularly. Some are eCommerce based to generate income. The variations are endless. The part that doesn't change is the prep work way before you start designing a website or having someone design [...]