If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, it’s about time you did. This social media platform hosts the biggest business network in the world — an astounding 85 million members in 200 countries. It shows phenomenal growth, adding one new member every second.

Read my column in: Durham Business Times –

Building business relationships today involves more than a handshake and a business card. It often continues, or even begins, with social media. Instead of a one-off encounter, like-minded folks connect — and stay connected — using  Facebook and other social media platforms.

Read the entire article via: Durham Business Times

“Social media allows your organization to communicate with a large number of people very effectively.” Faster than a speeding e-mail. More powerful than a single website. Able to reach tens of millions in a single post.  Look! Up in the sky! It’s a blog. It’s a tweet. It’s social media!

Read the entire article via: Durham Business Times

The iPhone has an app for everything. So does WordPress. Check out these top ten plugins to make your WordPress website work harder for you. Best of all – they’re free!

1. Google Analytics (Plugin: Google Analyticator)
   This free tool measures the success of your marketing efforts by providing detailed information and statistics on visitors to your site, traffic patterns, etc.
2. Email Forms (Plugin: cformsII or Contact Form 7)
   Email forms have two major advantages. First, they hide your email address, making it harder for spammers to harvest it. Second, they prompt visitors for the information you need, like their contact details and how they heard about you.
3. Comment/Submission Spam Protection (Plugin: Akismet)
   Spammers exploit email forms and blog comments. This tool blocks the majority of spammers, saving you review time.
4. Search Engine Optimization (Plugin: All in One SEO Pack)
   The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to boost your website higher in search engine results so visitors find you before they find your competitor.
5. Subscription Tool (Plugin: G-Lock Double Opt-in Manager)
   Asking visitors to provide their email address (with a double opt-in check to confirm their interest) lets you to contact them directly, rather than hoping they come back to you. For happy subscribers, indicate the frequency of your mailings, include value and avoid oversaturating them.
6. Social Media Presence (Plugin: Social Profilr)
   Social media icons on your site tell your visitors that you keep up with the times, and that your company is evolving. Include icons for social media platforms that welcome visitor participation.
7. Sharing Buttons (Plugin: AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget)
   Adding sharing buttons on your site encourages your visitors to let their friends know about you, using their favourite social networking tools. It’s the power of word-of-mouth, spread virtually.
8. Intuitive Navigation (Plugin: PixoPoint Menu Plugin)
   This plugin organizes multipage websites using drop-down menus. It helps visitors navigate quickly and effectively.
9. Regular Updates (Plugin: Future Dashboard Widget)
   Posting fresh content on a regular basis drives traffic to your site. This widget informs visitors when and how often they should return for updates.
10. Favicons (Plugin: Favicon Generator)
    Favicons are the small images that “decorate” a URL on a web browser. These distinctive icons, often a tiny company logo, accentuate and personalize your brand on browser tabs and favourites lists.

What’s your favourite WordPress Plugin?

With over 500 million potential customers, Facebook offers a staggeringly powerful marketing tool for your business. But what about your personal profile? The openness of Facebook is a double-edged sword and if you aren’t careful you can reveal far more about yourself to the public than you might prefer to share, like the fact that you are away from your home for two weeks, or your home phone number.

This issue was brought under a powerful spotlight when a security consultant named Ron Bowes was able to download the names and web addresses of over 171 million Facebook profiles. How did he do this? Simply by using Facebook’s public directory of searchable profiles – the torrent is completely legal to create and download, because it contains information made publicly available by Facebook.

If you do not modify any privacy settings in your personal account, visitors from the Net can by default view your picture, your friends, information about yourself that you’ve entered into your profile, and some of your activities.

How can you protect yourself?

Log into your Facebook account, and in the top right corner there is a link that says ‘Account’ with a down arrow. Click on this, and then select ‘Privacy Settings’. You will be shown a chart outlining what information about yourself is accessible by whom. Clicking on ‘Customize Settings’ will allow you to set options to be viewable only by your friends, or only by you to make them 100% private.

Got a large friends list? You can filter your friends into categories so that only the ones you specify can access your profile.

Don’t forget to click on ‘View Settings’ under ‘Basic Directory Information’ to view your options for locking that down as well. This is how the security consultant was able to download so much profile information.

Lastly, be sure to click ‘Edit your Settings’ under ‘Applications, Games and Websites’ near the bottom to control what information your apps can access and share about you, and what your friends can share. Be careful – even if you disallow applications to share about you, this may not stop your friends’ applications from sharing information about you! Fortunately, you can lock down both options, even though you must do so separately.

Stay safe and happy surfing!

Every year, your business pays for hosting. Just another routine service charge, right? Wrong! You’re paying for a safe home patrolled by a security guard to protect your website, your brand and your corporate identity.

Does your website live in a safe neighbourhood? Websites reside, not in cyberspace, but in a physical location, on a computer called a server — think of it as an apartment building for websites. Your website rents space to store the coding, data, files and images that visitors see as your website. The quality, service and security that that server delivers can be as different as a shabby tenement flat and a high-class penthouse suite. It all depends on the integrity of the server and its caretaker.

How competent is your caretaker? Just like apartment buildings, servers get old and rundown. Doesn’t your website deserve a safe, modern server that loads your site quickly and reliably? A good caretaker replaces old servers, updates and patches the software, and backs up the server regularly to prevent loss of data.

How safe is your server? A safe server helps you keep out the “bad guys,” monitoring for problems like a hacker’s hostile attack. Your server also protects your reputation by refusing to host bad neighbours; websites that share a server with spammers risk getting their e-mail blacklisted. The best servers also implement the latest in anti-spam technology. Without it, many businesses spend costly hours sifting important e-mails from the hundreds — or thousands — of spam messages they receive every day.

What if trouble strikes? Since the Internet is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, your caretaker should be, too. If something does go wrong, you’ll sleep easier knowing that friendly service and expert repairs are available around the clock, 365 days a year.

Should I shop by size or price? Neither size nor price guarantees the best service. One-man web shops may lack the experience and human resources to deal with problems; they often simply resell large company solutions. With large companies, you’re often just a number. You’ll seldom get the same voice in the service department. And when they have a problem, it’s a huge problem that takes time to correct. There’s a real advantage to choosing a mid-sized hosting company with a manageable network. They usually offer the best blend of experience, stability, custom packages and personalized service to keep your website up and running. Remember — hosting is not a commodity. Find out what your hosting fee buys.

Think Facebook is just the latest computer fad for teens? Think again. Fast, free and friendly, Facebook is revolutionizing the way smart organizations market their products, services and events. In today’s marketplace, relationship-building is proving more effective than hard-sell marketing. And relationship-building is the name of the game with Facebook.

This number one Internet hangout was designed to facilitate social networking, but it adapts beautifully to business networking. Facebook’s forte – friend-finding – makes it perfect for finding, connecting with, and organizing business prospects. Imagine — over 175 million active users who can spread your message through their networks of friends.

Facebook’s broad e-community invites you to introduce yourself to others and provides intuitive tools that suggest mutual friends and people you’d like to meet. Businesspeople can easily create and sort a virtual rolodex of “faces.” In fact, the site’s search function will sift through the millions of user profiles to target your preferred mix of age, sex, occupation, and other demographic factors.

It takes only a few minutes of clicking through menus to set up an account and develop a profile that advertises your website, your service or product and your friendly, smiling face. Rather than sharing an individual’s preferences, a commercial Facebook profile paints a vivid portrait of an organization’s passions, its goals and its character – in essence, a public yet personal face that visitors can explore, and an excellent complement to the firm’s formal website.

A well-written profile can stimulate and reinforce brand awareness, solicit feedback, drive website traffic and announce news. The conversations you engage in can build your reputation as an innovator, a leader and an expert resource. Facebook’s transparent and viral nature means your message gets read and passed around like the old Clairol commercial: “And they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on…” Best of all, it’s virtually cost-free.

At a time when the “R” word prompts worried frowns and fiscal restraint, Facebook is escalating into a promising — and economical — business tool to reach a burgeoning client base. So drop by, shake some hands, make some friends. And let’s do business.

WANT TO FAST TRACK YOUR FACEBOOK SUCCESS?

Keeping the thread offers many benefits and saves everyone time and money, and yet so many people don’t know why or how. Thus this article.

‘Keeping The Thread’ ensures:

• all threads on the topic are contained in one email
• older emails with that same subject line can be ignored/deleted
• people don’t waste time sifting through multiple messages trying to find out what they need
  things don’t get lost in the fray

7 Things to Remember When Responding To An E-mail Message

• Reply to all (so everyone is in the loop)
• Respond on the latest email with that subject (so correspondence is not lost)
• Retain subject line (keeps all threads on same topic together)
• Stay on topic (subject line)
• Create new email for new/unrelated topics that arise (so subject lines are )
• Keep conversations to the topic described in the subject line
• Create a new email for new topics (ensures subject line describes content)

4 Tips For Creating A New E-mail Message:

• Ensure there’s not already an open email on this topic (multiple emails on same topic make it very hard to follow the thread and risk things being missed)
• Use subject lines that describes the topic succinctly (for all involved)
• Include keyword e.g. your domain name in subject line (for filtering /filing purposes)
• Email to only those who need to be involved (time is money)

I think that covers everything, but if I have I missed something, please feel free to add your comment below…

If you phone a company you’ve dealt with (or considered dealing with) and the phone number is “out of service”, you might hunt for their new number. But time is money. You might contact the person you met at yesterday’s breakfast meeting instead. Whether the business moved or changed phone numbers, your call represents a lost prospect.

If your company’s e-mail address is owned by your internet service provider (ISP), e.g. you@yourISPname.com, you risk the same problem. Should you leave your ISP because of high prices or poor service, or should the ISP go out of business, your e-mail address goes “out of business”, too. Every business card you’ve handed out, every Yellow Pages ad, every directory, every flyer leads your clients and prospects to a dead end.

Each e-mail equals a potential sale; can you afford to miss one? Smart business owners control their prime contact channels–phone numbers, faxes, and now in the 21st century, e-mail and e-mail addresses.

Take control of your e-mail. Create and promote your own branded e-mail (e.g. you@yourDOMAINname.com). You’ll own a secure e-mail address that won’t change.

As an extra benefit, you advertise your business with every e-mail. You wouldn’t advertise another business on your flyer; why advertise your ISP in your e-mail address? Branded e-mails are memorable—as good as handing out a business card.

Your new e-mail address can redirect mail to your old e-mail address. E-mails you send can display your new address by making a simple change to your e-mail configuration’s “return address” or “reply address”. Your promotional materials can be updated at your convenience, as you reorder, providing an inexpensive and seamless transition.

The switch isn’t costly. The benefit to your business, however, could be priceless.

E-Mail is quick, convenient and economical. But like any form of business communication, e-mail follows a few common rules of courtesy:

1. SUBJECT LINE–Always use this field and make it as descriptive as possible. A descriptive subject says, “open me”. It also makes your message easy to find again.
2. CAPS–Refrain from typing in ALL CAPS because on the Internet, ALL CAPS is used to convey that the writer is shouting.
3. BCC–If you’re sending to a large group, use “blind copies” (unless there’s an awfully good reason to have everyone see the e-addresses of all 215 recipients). Your message appears more private and personal.
4. REPLY TO ALL–If you’re responding to a group e-mail, hit REPLY rather than REPLY TO ALL unless you really think the whole group wants to see your reply. REPLY TO ALL facilitates voting and discussion among a group of people.

Fast, free and far less formal, e-mail is a great advantage to today’s organizations. Learn to use it professionally.