Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Recently I read Ann Smarty’s article, How to Identify Email Hoaxes and Scams. I have done a lot of work to identify and prevent receiving mail through tweaking my own inbox. Spam Assassin is a great program, but because of people being clever enough to put together programs to mass spam and how they word their emails, sometimes it is nearly impossible to identify them.

Here are 5 major key factors that an email is spam.

1. Sender’s name. The dumbest spammers or the ones that are trying to not use as many dubious ways to contact you may have a funny looking sender’s name. Or if it is written like a letter, it might not even coordinate with the name signed at the bottom of the email.
2. Email Address. Although email addresses can be masked these days, email addresses are a big key factor in knowing if an email message is spam.
3. Subject. This can be tricky, but because of widespread computer viruses in the past that have taken advantage of many people over the past years if you are getting any email that says “hi, “Hello”, or has your name in it… it is possible it is spam. In fact, I have found that it is more than likely to be the case.
4. Content. Skim the article. If it is asking you to do something, even if someone used your contact form, it could be spam. I get loads of people contacting me for sites in my network offering to do some type of service to enhance the site. A lot of times, there is no reference to their professional site.
5. Links. If an email seems legitimate, but you are not sure, and there are links, hover over the link and see if it coordinates with the site being advertised. PayPal, Bank of America, Chase, and many more have had people create phishing scams that the email looks so cleverly legit until you hover over the link.

Attachments may or may not be important, however some spammers are using graphics on products or services they are trying to advertise. They could also potentially be a virus. This is not always the case, but it should be mentioned at least.

In general, it is important to not open email you do not recognize. Those who are lucky enough to have Spam Assassin or another anti-spam program can attest to the fact that you will get email that will come through. It is important to either delete or mark it as spam immediately. Use your inbox filter for any persistent spam to put email in the trash so you can guard yourself from even viruses.

What other advice do you have for people needing help identifying spam or hoaxes?

I recently re-activated my sign up form for MailChimp (by the way, please sign up… it is in my sidebar.) This was after being asked more times than I can count on where to sign up.

Feedburner is nice, but it is not a substitute for Mailing Lists. For some, you might be hesitant to try your hand at starting an email marketing campaign. You might think you have nothing to sell, but as I have said in the past, you are selling something, even if it is free advice.

You want to attract people back to your site and email lists can do that. A weekly list is nice and unobtrusive. You can include recent posts, a few featured posts, product information, and some extra tidbits of information.

People who are really interested in your site will subscribe and keep returning to see what goodies you have. However, if you have nothing to remind them… well, they are just going to eventually forget. It is just something that happens and that is not always your fault, no matter how memorable you have made your brand to be. People need reminding.

Some of the mailing lists out there may be a bit daunting price-wise, especially for beginners. I use MailChimp, which is pretty nice considering your first 500 subscribers are free. There are others like Aweber and GetResponse. Hopefully in the future I can get a post out that compares each auto-responder side-by-side.

Do you use an auto-responder or mailing list? If so, what advice do you have for newbies?

Web Hosting is one of the first thing you should care about, it’s the foundation. Foundation should be strong and healthy in order to get long term benefits. During selecting web host companies, one should always remember that buying hosting is the first step that will determine your blog/website popularity. A good web hosting company will give you secure blog and weak hosting will give you weak blog.

1. Price

Price is the first thing you should care about. Newbies can’t afford expensive web hosting plans.  If the web hosting company you are going to select is providing limited features as compare to price, then don’t go for it. Search the web for all web hosting features and prices and then decide to select your hosting company.

Currently I am using HostGator because of its superb features and reasonable prices.

2. Support

As a newbie, you must select a web hosting company that provides Live Chat and 24 hours customer services. In case of any problem (example: blog hacked, crashed, log-in info lost, etc..) instant customer service is needed. During selecting web host don’t forget about this.

3. Promotions

Check previous promotional offers offered by the web hosting company. If one is good in term of Prices and Support + Offering Promos, then go for it. Promotion offers are normally related to renewing your existing package, free domains, free IP, free email clients, free software etc…

4. Reputation

Well it may be possible that a web hosting company will have all the above qualities, but still you can’t decide whether to choose or not. You will have to check if the company has its own blog, uses social media,  optimized for search engine, created official profiles etc. Such factors will tell you that the company has good reputation and people trust on their service.

The above tips will help you to decide if a web hosting company is good for you or not. Think strategically and go for things that give you benefits for long terms. Hope these tips will help you in deciding a better web hosting company.

For those who have been with web hosts for a while, what other tips do you have for newbies?

There are many tools online that business and blog owners can benefit from using. However, I have decided to share at least 12 basic tools online that you should be aware of.

WordPress

If it were not for WordPress, there would probably be not as many creative sites. Why? Because WordPress has shown itself to be quite flexible, easy to customize, and quite user-friendly. It is also something free to download and use to your own advantage. There are other content management systems and blog platforms, but WordPress has shown itself to be even an affordable method to building a site for even business owners.

Google Webmaster Tools

This free service has been a great way for helping webmasters build a good foundation for their website. It allows the user to look at how Google looks at a website and ranks it. It also allows the webmaster to know when something is seriously missing from a site.

VistaPrint

I think this is a great service because it is cheap and for bloggers who attend social events like conferences, a business card really becomes necessary. I walk away with dozens of cards from business owners, and bloggers alike every time I go to a conference.

Google Analytics

This allows you to monitor your site traffic for free. All the answers to making sure you are retaining your visitors or successfully directing them to where you want them to go can be found. In using Google Analytics you can even fill the need for those missing places that people are trying to search for on your website that might not be anywhere else online.

Alexa Rank

Although Alexa is not in depth with producing statistics, it is free and does a great job of telling you how your site is doing in a numerical ranking system. The smaller the number, the better your site is doing. You can even get bounce rate, traffic stats, and some general information on what type of people are visiting and what they are looking for on your site.

Aweber
This is a newsletter software system that people are using to help market their websites and businesses. It is not free to use, but there are many people who have successfully built great marketing campaigns.

MailChimp

MailChimp, like Aweber is also a newsletter software system. They do have a free plan that allows up to 500 subscribers, so for those starting out, this might be a nice starting point before investing further into email marketing campaigns.

CrazyEgg

This is a premium traffic tracking system for site owners who need the nitty gritty details on what exactly their visitors are doing on their website. The details are so precise that they even provide a “heatmap” for each page you monitor. This heatmap allows you to see where exactly your visitors have been. Check out the CrazyEgg overview for more details.

Woopra

No, this is not some strange shoutout to Oprah. Wooprah is a traffic analytic system that delivers real-time stats. There is a free program up to 30,000 visitors. After that, the member should upgrade their package.

Freelancer.com

Got a project? Your site needs a new look? There are a lot of freelancers eager to do the job at Freelancer.com. A lot of the jobs are affordable and you are a little more protected when using their Escrow system for payment.

If you are a freelancer yourself, it is free to join and only costs when you accept a job. The fee is very minimal too.

Google Feedburner

There are a lot of people finding it more convenient to read your site through RSS. No site should be without the option of signing up for an RSS feed.

Remember the Milk

Have a long to-do list? Remember the Milk actually can be an easy way to put a list together online… even from your phone. The task manager integrates with apps for the iPhone and Android. It also integrates with Gears, Google Calendar, Gmail, Twitter, and Blackberry!

What other tools do you recommend?

Facebook: Profiles, Groups & Pages

Getting started as a business on Facebook can be confusing!

For an individual to get started on Facebook is really pretty straightforward, but businesses are often left scratching their heads at what solutions are available to them.

Facebook has three basic functional units: Profiles (for individuals), Groups (for community and interest groups) and Pages (for businesses and intellectual property)

Facebook Profiles

For a “personal”, non-business entity Profiles are the simple easy answer. They are the default method of operation on Facebook and it is just short of impossible to do anything without a profile. Many things that you can create or do (such as these Pages and Groups) are tied to and linked to your profile as well. (You can create a Page without a Profile but be prepared to jump through many hoops.) While it may be tempting to do business from here that is a huge no-no in Facebook’s eyes (and a violation of the Terms of Service (TOS)).

Creating a profile for a business, creating more than one profile for an individual, posting any direct advertising on a profile page, running a contest from a profile, as well as anything that can be even SLIGHTLY considered spammish such as adding too many friends in one day or replying in the same way too too many invites at once… are all grounds for your profile to be banned (which then takes associated Groups/Page access with it).

This does not mean however that Profiles are not an ideal way to network, make friends and connect with other like minded individuals and further business relationships. Because a Page or Group can not have a “friend”, a profile is your only ticket to getting access to another individuals profile wall and thus current status updates. For an example of these you can find my & Nile’s profiles here, however keep reading to understand why we both make more use of our pages than our profiles for early networking.

Facebook Groups

Groups used to be the primary point for interaction among like minded communities on Facebook. They also used to be the most likely opportunity to build some buzz around your area of expertise. While groups based just on a brand did not often fair too well without preexisting name recognition, groups built around areas of interest such as “social media” could often allow a small business to develop a loyal community that they could serve with value and carefully use as a market.

All of that said, you note the “used to” expressions here I’m sure. That’s because Groups have been on (non-official) non-development status for a long time now. They have received no love and do not have access to many of the resources, utilities, features (including no access to Facebook Applications) that they should have. Messages posted on a Group wall do NOT post in the members News Feeds and because of this members will usually join Groups and never return.

So why do I mention them? Because they are the only way on Facebook to form an interest community that you then have access to directly EMAIL (okay, Facebook Inbox email) the individuals “blast style” all at once time. While there is no scheduling of email messages, the ability to send emails directly to the Facebook Inbox of members can be a critical part of some marketing campaigns. However, it must be noted that all marketing done in Groups has traditionally been soft sell, attraction-marketing style because the TOS is incredibly vague as to whether doing business from a Group is permissible. Big businesses shied away from Groups for this reason, and Facebook sought to appease the needs of these businesses by creating….

Facebook Pages

The late-coming to the Facebook Game, Facebook “Fan Pages” were designed with businesses in mind. Their policies are permissive on advertising, marketing, member engagement (except contests which is a sticky problem) and more. Fan Pages are the sexy, younger, high-maintenance sibling with all the neat toys!

This is where a business can get in and develop both their brand and an interactive fan base. The best pages are those that foster brand involvement are are open for members to post on and interact with the business, however businesses can chose to keep all of the postings on the wall as strictly their own too.

Facebook Applications help take a rather sterile looking Facebook platform and bring it to life with color, HTML (technically FBML), javascript, video and social media integration (such as RSS Feeds).  Since Nile (her page) and I (my page) both appear to currently have our FBML Welcome/Landing tabs under development again (to comply with some upcoming changes), I’d like to point you to have a look at Mari Smith’s fan page. Now if you are not already a fan of Mari, when you clicked that link you were redirected to Mari’s Welcome/Landing tab and you can see the high rate of customization as well as the call to action to “Like” the page. In case you were already a fan but wanted to look again at what I’m talking about, here is the direct link. Applications like “Static FBML”, “NetworkedBlogs” and “RSSGraffiti” let you bring pages to life.

There are some downsides though and that is that Pages can not have “friends” and so can not access a individual’s profile directly (although their status updates do appear in the fan’s News Feed), can not post replies off of their own wall (on another Page for example) as the business (only as their own personal profile), and can only send “Updates” to the members which do not go to the members actual Inbox. Also because of the inability to (ever) change a page’s name, it is highly suggested to have a personally branded page even if you chose to make a second business branded one. Think with the end in mind and realize that if your business name ever changes you can not rename the page.

Regardless of the limitations, Pages are essential to building businesses today on Facebook. They are the cornerstone of presenting your business in a professional light, have good SEO, are inviting to the public and their ability to be customized is helpful.

Hopefully this helps you understand the opportunities and tools available to a business on Facebook. While initially it can all feel confusing, once you get used to it there is some method to the madness! Likely over time, as Pages continue to be actively developed on, the few downsides that they presently present will be eliminated. Questions? Thoughts? I look forward to seeing them here and also getting to know you on my page. Drop by and tell me a about you and feel free to share a link to your own Page!

Kimberly

A lot of people like to debate on which is better – Blogger or WordPress? For those not familiar with these two, you can skip the first part as I will give a little background on each.

Background of Blogger
Blogger started in 1999. In 2003, Google acquired Blogger. Most Blogger users are typically found on the Blogspot.com domain. This is a service that is totally online and done through Google. There are no free downloads to install.

Background of WordPress
WordPress started in 2003 and was forked off from b2/ cafelog as an open source software. In those days, it was merely called a blog platform, which some people today are still getting over the fact it is now a whole content management system. Users could download the full script and install it to their own web host. In 2005, WordPress also opened it doors at WordPress.com to mass hosting anyone that wanted their own website.

Side by side comparison chart for WordPress.com and Blogger users

Summary
Although I have my own self-hosted install and find it very comfortable, I did try out both WordPress.com and Blogger.com. I found Blogger not as user-friendly as WordPress.com. Of course, I was already familiar with the WordPress admin panel, but it was annoying to have to feel like I was going the long way to do something.

I have an issue with Google gobbling up so many different products and smashing them together to work. I think better integration of Picasa would be nice.

My main worry is the fact that if Blogger goes down, that means even those who have full domains will suffer this issue. For those who are using it for their business, this would be a problem. It might be better to get away from Blogger and get hosting elsewhere.

The choices in templates are quite limiting and not as mature as a lot of WordPress templates out there that are available. In fact, a lot of Blogger websites I have seen have a lot of issues with coding. I have found a lot of widgets that did not work. It took 5 different tries to get a Twitter widget on Blogger to work.

I am annoyed that with WordPress.com does not allow you to include outside codes for tracking or some javascript codes in the widgets.

I like that you can import a lot of different places to WordPress.com. This is feature is also available to those who self-host their blogs.

I am a WordPress fan girl, so of course I am going to root for WordPress all the way, but because I wanted to honestly review these two services side by side, I had to look pretty deep. In the end, I found WordPress far more user-friendly. I am not totally ruling out Blogger. It is a pretty good tool, but it is kind of a damper that it can only be access by signing up. Perhaps Google might open source it? Maybe not… who knows.

What are your thoughts on Blogger and WordPress? Which one do you think is a better system for bloggers, and why?

Why should you guard your email address? Most people know when you see an email address that the text is blue and underlined, you can simply click it and your default email program (like Outlook Express, Yahoo, or Thunderbird) will open up with a way for you to immediately write that person. When you display your email address to the public that way, you are welcoming a lot of trouble, like being spammed.

Every day there are computers designed to scan the Internet for information. Many are for good, and others for bad. Some that are good do not discriminate on the information retrieved by the computer robots/ spiders / programs. This information can be many things like people, things, amounts, and much more, but even more so, a lot of computers are designed to acquire email addresses.

This is called email harvesting. It is much like companies who pay good money to get people to gather phone numbers so telemarketing companies can call you in the most inconvenient times at their most opportune time. When these computers have harvested emails each day, they are sent automatically to a program that has a template email pre-made from the company behind that computer, sometimes even several, or several hundred different templates. They plug the emails in two different ways. They either plug it in individually- again the computer does this so this whole process has nothing to do with humans emailing you. The other way is mass email. This is spamming. Well, both ways are as the simple definition accepted for the term “spam” is unwanted, off topic, solicited material.

So, when you sign up for some items, your email might be sent out to third party computers/ companies. In return, your email goes from getting the one email that you wanted to several emails that you did not want. Some individuals will open their email inbox and find hundreds of emails they never wanted.

The even more pathetic thing is that if some of those emails offer you a way to sign up to get off their mailing list, you will be taken off theirs, BUT you will find that you have sadly gotten sucked even further into the spam system. Despite the Spam Act of 2002, which was suppose to protect users online from this horrendous and seemingly unending cycle, people are still having problems with being spammed.

Some of the spam emails are quite tricky. Some include your name in the subject, making you, the user think that these people somehow either know you or they trick you to think that there really is a real person out their emailing. There are real people that do get paid to send mass email, but because of the easy email harvesting, that is even becoming obsolete.

Here are some suggestions in trying to prevent from your information being harvested, even your email.

1. Do not hyperlink your email address. If you must, put NO SPAM within your actual email address or type out the AT and the DOT in your email address. This makes it a little tougher for spammers to filch your email address from your web site.

2. It is far more recommended to not reveal your email address at all. Use a secure contact email form or one that has captcha. For WordPress users there are plenty. I actually use Dagon Design Formmailer (they even have a stand alone php version) for my contact forms because they have captcha.

3. Do not sign up for things that ask you to sign up just to get something back, even if it seems fun. It will not be fun when you keep getting email because you signed up for hundreds of things because it was free. Free should should mean without expecting anything in return.

4. Do not reply to spam mail. Block it or report it if you can.

5. Use a spam filter for your email inbox. Most filters allow you to put in keywords that you usually see in spam so you can reduce it. This will not eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce what you see coming into your email inbox.

6. Sign up for some type of email security that will not deliver mail unless the sender has to verify that they are a real person. There are plenty out there that are free.

7. Do not open emails that you do not recognize. It is either spam or it could even be a virus. Viruses can be attached through the code in email as well as any attachments.

8. If you do open spam mail, do not click on the link to take yourself off their mailing list. As mentioned, you will not succeed, and only make the problem worse.

9. If you do sign up for something, make sure that the site says that they do not share your information with third parties. This would be like a visual contract and the company could be reported easily.

10. Always, if you are not sure of something, simply do not even open the email, or even the site in question.

11. Remind your usual email friends to remember to put a valid subject. This will prevent their email from being thrown into the spam or junk mail.

12. Make sure your password is not easy to figure out. You might have to write it down somewhere, but it is better to do that then risk being hacked.

Have any other advice? What services do you recommend for people wanting to prevent spam?

There are so many ways you can monitor your site. Google Analytics, Quantcast, Woopra, and much more. But with all these bars, graphs, and numbers – what do they mean? This article will discuss how you can analyze your site stats.

The Terms
Visits – This is pretty much self-explanatory.

Average Time on Site – This is how long your visitors stay on your site. You want them to stay on your site as long as possible. This means you have to provide interesting, relatable, and valuable content.

Bounce Rate -Google explains bounce rate as:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

Conversion Rate – This is the percentage of how many people you have gotten to do something other than just visit and leave your main page. It might be an e-commerce shop, a script, an e-book, or something. This is something that attracts people to the nifty parts of your site that you wanted people to see.

How To Make These Work For You
Applying these tools usually takes inserting a snippet of code somewhere in your theme. The site will track and you can go in daily or weekly to see your site’s progress.

In order to see progress, you have to create content that will attract readers – no matter what niche you might be in. And yes, even if you just have a journal site to document your family life, as long as you are striving to reach a certain audience, you too also have to watch your stats.

Focus on what people are looking for on your site, what pages they are visiting, where they entered from, where they left your site from, and even what time they are visiting. You can blog anytime you want, but if your regular visitors come around a certain time, aim to publish before they might come by.

You might have to venture into search engine optimization and make sure your articles are effectively being seen. So, if your keywords are not what they should be… you might want to go back and check things out.

If you have a site that has several major products (whether it be a free product or one for purchase), you can focus on each. When you do, check your stats to see what methods are successful and what are not. If people are visiting the page, but nothing is happening, you might want to check out the content on the page and see why it is not bringing the results you want.

A few outside related resources in Web Analytics that you might like to read when you are done here:
Web Analytics 101 -Learn Which Data You Should Be Using
Annotations of Google Analytics..How To Successfully Track What’s Working

What other suggestions do you have for anyone looking to make the most of their site stats? Any questions?