Is this for you or your business?

It’s great hooking up with old friends from years past and keeping up with your current friends, after all they call it social media don’t they? They don’t call it business media. So if you take your business seriously, and I’m sure that you do, you need to identify business forums where your offering is looked at for evaluation not as just spam.

It is SPAM.

Just when you thought you had your email humming perfectly, now all of the sudden you are deluged with friend requests and invites to things you are not interested in. By joining all these social outlets you have just pierced your corporate email veil. Now the marketers parade right into your inbox. Actually they are more like multi-level marketers. Annoying isn’t it?

Sure, you can adjust your notification settings if you enjoy micro managing every little thing that comes across your desk. Now is the time to re-evaluate social media. Remember who is pushing this stuff on you, they are pseudo marketers. I call them pseudo because they are hunting for your money and confusing you with a bunch of nonsense. Yes this is the new snake oil of the 21st century.

Don’t Drink It!

It is also the new Koolaid, because everyone is forcing this down your throat. Why do they do this? Because nobody wants to be left out of the group. Notice how the tv and radio news try to validate themselves by mentioning that you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook. Really? You have that much time on your hands. These talking heads are really that interesting? That is the Koolaid I am talking about. It’s a weak ploy to be in the “IN” crowd. Of course everyone is doing it…

We are constantly selling things that have absolutely no value. The time to jump off this train is now before it consumes you to the bone. Be unique. Be anti-social.

Brand Association

Your associations do count. If you feel that you need credibility by twittering and face-booking, all you are doing is jumping on the same bandwagon as everyone else. Where is your uniqueness? What about an association that means something, like a business chamber or charity?

Blog My Brother!

And here is the biggest tragedy of them all, the time and money that is wasted on social media would be much better spent on adding new content to the company blog or web pages. The action is the same, but companies are wasting it on the social media noise box. The best way to use social media is to pull people away from it and bring them closer to your company and brand. Let us not forget that Google is where everyone still goes first for information.

Google should not have included Facebook and Twitter on the search algorithm. All it did was kludge up the search results with more garbage.

Join the revolt and unplug from social. Take back control of your life, your time and your money. Don’t let them fool you. These pseudo marketers are looking for idiots.

However, no company can be good at everything. So, while they are a great digital partner for your domain name needs, they lack proficiency with other common web services.

Web Hosting at GoDaddy

For many years most businesses had only needed simple websites based on static html web pages. GoDaddy provides very inexpensive web hosting with lots of bells and whistles. This is great for the bottom line for the small business.

These days even small business are requiring web sites that run with content stored on a database. This is due to the emergence of Content Management Systems that allow the web site owner to interact with their website to edit and add page content. Wordpress and Joomla are both very popular systems to base your database driven website.

Unfortunately, database driven web sites put a lot of demand on servers. With so many thousands of web sites being upgraded from static pages to dynamic systems with blogs, forums and photo galleries, the load drives down performance. This means that pages load slower on the browser and editing content becomes very frustrating when have to wait for the server.

We are not bashing GoDaddy here. We love the company and we are quite aware of all the negative posts all across the web about service and performance. Most are unfounded. Our point is that business is business. As a business owner, knowing where and why to spend dollars is crucial to your web site expectancy.

Unfortunately there is too much server load on the GoDaddy servers for database driven sites. I invite anyone to prove me wrong because as a veteran web developer for over 12 years, I publish sites on a variety of web hosting servers and the difference is very apparent.

Google will also penalize you if your pages load slowly. So, if search engine traffic matters to you then you might want to consider using GoDaddy for domain registration (which they are very good at) and using a different web host for your web site that is not overloaded and can render your web pages quickly. You can easily point your domains to serve up pages on a different server. In this way you have the best of both worlds.

Email on GoDaddy

When you host a web site on a server and you want to use domain oriented emails, these are emails like this: bob@mydomainname.com, the hosting server also hosts the email account.

This can be changed via MX records. This is short for Mail Exchange. Here is an example: When you have your domain registered at GoDaddy and you have your web site hosted on a server outside of GoDaddy, but you want to have GoDaddy host the email account, you can point to the mail server on GoDaddy via MX from your web host server.

GoDaddy email is wonderful and can be combined with file storage and online fax services with little cost. However, I get a lot of calls from my clients saying their email is down and that they can’t get their email. There maybe other 3rd parties involved which could be contributing to the problem. For example: an Internet Service Provider like Cox.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about that. We build web sites, we do not control the flow of email. A good rule of thumb is this: if your email worked yesterday and you have made no changes to your email account or your computer, all things being equal, it is probably a temporary situation.

From my experiences, email services at GoDaddy are down quite often. There are many factors involved, but my experience as been much better with other web host servers. Which is too bad because GoDaddy does have a great web mail product.

This is another reason why many people prefer to use 3rd party email programs like AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail.

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Use a variety of internet venders for precisely what they do best.

It happens every now and then that a web site owner loses their web site only because they forgot their web hosting or domain registration account. More online services rely on email to communicate with you to save on printing and mailing costs. So it is important that you keep track of login data.

It seems unfair that the world is moving faster and the burden of remembering is getting worse. Plus we want to keep our digital assets secure. I am referring to domain names and web hosting, but this would apply to any online accounts like your bank account.

One way to do this is to visit your accounts on a monthly basis whether you need to maintain them or not. This way you can test if that login still works. Once in, it is typical to find administrative messages that might inform you of changes. Sound like a lot of extra busy work? Well, perhaps you need only do this with your most important online accounts.

I admit, I am spreading myself thin on the internet and I have a lot of personal digital assets to keep up with. I suspect many are not far behind me either with all the social media they have to sign up for. I keep detailed notes on every project and keep it in a folder and I date any changes.

Make sure that you keep your account information in a safe place. Use strong passwords with letters and numbers. Avoid using words in your passwords.

Your email may be the weakest link because important account information is sent to you through it. While every website handles the account information differently. Your email account is an important link. Make sure that you have proper anti virus software. Transfer important information off of your computer to paper or somewhere else for safety. Have you ever had to search old emails for important login information?

The problem with email is that some people start a new account and stop using the old one. When this happens, important renewal information gets missed if the old email account is not being monitored. You can do all sorts of things to solve this. Simply forward the old email to your new account. Or better yet, go to the account and update the email address so that you won’t miss important messages.

This is why visiting your online accounts once a month is a good practice. It is a different kind of ownership than many are used to. You can’t always touch your digital assets. Visiting your online accounts often gives you the opportunity to update credit card information, change passwords and to stay up to date with upgrades and policy changes.

It is a big responsibility and it usually isn’t appreciated until something gets lost. What do you think?

Add payroll fees, taxes and unemployment insurance and the possibility of government mandated health insurance and for the very small business, hiring help is virtually impossible.

Some of you might be saying, well this a management issue and that you need to make employees work in order for the business to be profitable. To a degree this is true, but I don’t think any business no matter what size can afford to shadow every employee to get the return on investment. I think the attitude of the job seeker needs to change to be inline with the small business. It is not enough to just show up at a job, you need to work.

Everyone I speak to says virtually the same thing. They post a job offering and get flooded with bogus resumes and inquires. Even the best candidates are a considerable risk. So what can we do?

For the job seeker, I suggest that you target a business that you truly want to work for and do your homework. Study the history of the business, their products and services. Talk to the employees and managers if possible and get familiar with who is who.

Pretend that you already have the job. What can you do to help the company be more profitable? By all means do not tell them how to run their business. Remember, this is about how you can add value. Be a team player not a bench warmer.

For the business owner looking to hire, don’t bother looking at resumes, remember they are bogus anyways. Consider designing a test to reveal who the job candidates are, their work ethic and character. This will really help you weed out riffraff. Most companies have a 6 month probation period before committing permanent employment.

We have had decades of wasteful employment practices from large companies and the small business job market has to deal with this fallout.

Am I being to harsh?

I spend half my time replying to emails with “Could you be more specific”. No one can perform a task or answer a question for you without specifics. Think before you type. That is the Key. Same goes for voice mail. Have you ever gotten a message from someone who didn’t bother to leave their number? Or their name? Not much you can do with that is there.

Time is a commodity. Whether you hire a lawyer or a web designer, the better you are at communicating what you want the quicker things get done. There are exceptions of course, but I find that most projects stall because of communication problems.

• First, don’t assume that the person you are communicating with knows what you are talking about.
• Second, don’t leave out important details like “What”, “Who”, “Where”, or “When”. Sometimes you might need to throw in a “Why”.
• Third, re-read your statements to see if they make sense.

This applies to both email and voice mail. The written and the audible pieces of communication that you send out. In most cases you may not be able to review a voice mail message, but if you keep you message clear and concise with only the important information chances are you will get a response.

Communication is vitally important in business and unfortunately I find that many small business entrepreneurs lack this ability. If lawyers charge by the minute don’t you think it would make sense to be understood in the least amount of time possible?

Just take the time to be clear.