To make a long story short, it will save you a lot of time and money. If you don’t believe me, I urge you to read on and find out a simple solution that helps you hedge against any malicious activity towards one of your businesses most valuable assets—your website.
Erik called me up and told me one of our clients had a big problem. The client went to their website to find a lot of some type of foreign language, and links going to some website based out of Ukraine. Their site had been hacked.
Let’s start with their site getting hacked.
The odds of having your site hacked is low. But, if you have login credentials with a password that say, is, “password”, you are really falling asleep at the wheel. Even if you think you have a secure login credentials, you’re never really 100% out of the woods. Nearly everything is hackable. Actually, according to this TED talk, there has never been a completely secure system. These hackers essentially create a program that automatically attempts to login in to all types of websites with auto-generated credentials. That is what happened in this case.
We have established the site has been hacked. Sites getting hacked is bad. So what do we do if a site is hacked?
There are really only three things to do:
1.) Accept defeat, do nothing, and write it off as a loss. (The pathetic man option)
2.) Having not backed up the site, recreate all of the content that has been tampered with. Either very expensive, time-consuming, or both. But you can get the site back to how it was. (The unprepared man option)
3.) Having been prepared, with a backup of your site, simply install the backup of your site and move on with your life and business. It’s really that simple. (The prepared man option)
If you are now compelled to routinely backup your site, please contact us and we can talk in detail about a plan that works for you. Think of it as insurance for something valuable to your business. You insure everything else valuable in your life, why not insure one of your businesses most important assets?
Right now, Google’s “local” results are a great opportunity for small businesses. It’s the fastest and most attainable way to rank on the first page of Google for the keywords you would like to be found under.
It is a possibility this approach isn’t for you, but you should definitely gauge what kind of search volume is on the table for your business before you come to any conclusions.
I am going to give and example with a modestly sized marketplace—Kalamazoo, Michigan. Kalamazoo has 74,743 residents (per Google’s public data circa 2012). Kalamazoo is very similar to many American cities right now. Times are better than two years ago (Kalamazoo had over 15% unemployment), but unemployment is still above the national average and businesses are still faced with many challenges.
Considering all of those bleak circumstances, there are still nearly 10,000 searches a month on Google for “Kalamazoo restaurants” or “Restaurants in Kalamazoo”. The best part about this is the first page of Google’s results is not dominated by enormous national companies and brands websites. Sure, Urbanspoon is there as well as Trip Advisor. But after that, it’s up for the taking. Those restaurants in Kalamazoo who are making the effort to be found, if they do so wisely, are going to get their chunk of those 10,000 monthly searches.
Below is a screenshot of the search query “Kalamazoo restaurants”. You’ll notice the rankings in this order:
There is one advertiser
Urbanspoon holds down the #1 organic (The first position to be displayed that was not paid for)
Trip Advisor holds down the #2 organic spot.
A website dedicated to downtown Kalamazoo dining and entertainment holds the #3 organic spot
Google’s “local” results show up at the #4 organic spot
We can see that it is worth a Kalamazoo restaurants time to try to break into the local results for search terms like “Kalamazoo restaurants”. But how do we find these stats? How do you know if it’s worth your time?
Enter, Google Keyword Tool.
How to find the search volume for your keywords
There are a lot of ways to accomplish this, but the best way to get an idea on search volume is through Google’s Keyword Tool. This tool allows you to to type in queries and see what kind of search volume there is and the tool also gives estimates on how much pay-per-click advertising will cost. See the video below for a quick tour of the Google Keyword Tool. This tool is also free.
What to do once high search volumes are confirmed
There are basically 3 options:
Do nothing
Do SEO and other online marketing tasks yourself
Pay a company like GGS to help you get a ROI
A look at our 3 options
The first option—do nothing. Self explanatory and a very simple task to execute.
The second option—the DIY approach. This is definitely attainable. It really comes down to your current knowledge of search engines and how much time you have. If you have a lot of time, you can most definitely learn a lot and most likely see a return on your investment of time. However, if you do not have much time, this option will be challenging.
If you do have the time and are willing to give this an effort, check out some of these free resources below to learn SEO. Also, feel free to contact us or call us @ 1-888-851-6669. We’re willing to give you some guidance, and, you never know, maybe you’ll need us to build you a great website you drive all of that traffic to.
Free SEO resources
SEO MOZ: Seo Moz has all types of free and premium resources to learn and execute SEO tasks and objectives. They have a great blog with the latest SEO news and an awesome beginners guide to SEO.
Google Keyword Tool: A free tool that allows you to find the search volume and advertising costs for particular keywords as well as find related keywords to your industry/niche.
Option 3, paying a company like GGS to do this work for you.
In all honesty, this route is a very simple one. We’ll have an in-depth conversation about your business, your goals, and the impact on your business with spiked web traffic. We’ll calculate what type of ROI we can attain, and if it makes sense for your business, we partner up and move forward.
That wraps up an overview of Google’s local search, and what you can do to help your business. If you have any further questions on the topic, please comment below or contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
As I’ve mentioned before, Jing is a powerful (and free!) tool you can use to communicate directions and provide feedback. Showing real examples is much easier than explaining. Below is an example of a Jing screenshot I sent to a client today to get some final feedback before we develop the site.
You could have sent that email, made that call, approached that person. But you didn’t. You were afraid of being told no, proved wrong, or something else based on some type of fear. Maybe you even made an excuse, something like; “oh, well, I guess she looked kind of busy. I’ll be at this expo next year. Maybe next year will be my year”. That fear caused shyness, and with everything at stake (the success of your business), that pretty much makes you a coward. You’re not alone. This is something every entrepreneur deals with.
Here’s the weird thing..
You do care about your business. You even took out a massive loan, or quit that job, or just moonlighted to make it happen. You really, really, really care. I do too. I care about my business a lot. Some would say an unhealthy amount.
Maybe, maybe we care so much that at times we’re are afraid to admit we could do even more.
It happens, it’s ok. But, it’s extremely important to acknowledge and to confront. We can’t convince ourselves that it is ok. That is just an excuse. @Erikpaquet and I exemplified this type of de-facto cowardice I speak of. We had a side-project targeted at major universities, but we could never pull the trigger to ask for that meeting and showcase our hard work. We look back and almost marvel at how big of cowards we were. We honestly waited 8 months until we had the courage to ask for that meeting. Within one week of asking for that meeting, we got that meeting, and that meeting went very well.
I guess the moral of the story is, it is a tough pill to swallow that maybe you didn’t do everything you could. But, by acknowledging the lack of effort, outreach, or hustle, you can change course and correct it in the future. And that is much more than most people do.
So… what is a “like” or “follower” worth? Well, that depends, because it’s worth exactly what that specific follower or “liker” is worth. If they are a qualified lead, brilliant, they are valuable, and now you have the opportunity to create some type of dialogue. If not, they are just an arbitrary social media metric that brings nothing to your bottom line.
If you have decided social media is worth you while, your first focus should be not just on followers and likes, but qualified followers and likes. And by qualified, I mean people that matter to your business. A relevant audience.
So how do we find and connect with this relative audience?
Here is a simple way for them to come to you (this is mainly for twitter).
Step 1: Find someone, some brand, a company much bigger than yours that you respect. They must also have a following you are envious of. Their audience is what you would like yours to be.
Step 2: Feature this person, brand, or company in some way shape or form. An easy one that comes to mind is a blog post.
Step 3: Tweet to them how you respect what they do and let them know you’ve deemed them worthy to share with your audience.
Here’s how it works…There is a very high probability your tweet will be re-tweeted to their entire audience of 10,000+ or however many people it is. It creates social equity for their brand. It re-assures their following how great they are. Out of those thousands of qualified leads/followers/audience, a lot of them will check you out. A portion of those that check you out will follow you. Now you have more relevant people willing to hear your story about what your small business does.
Happy Friday,
P.S. If you’d like us to help you optimize your web presence, or do general technology consulting work, get in touch. We’d love to help.
P.P.S. Sign up for our monthly promotions that include discounts on apple products, IT hardware, and the services provided by Green Growth Solutions. Sign up now.
Do not be scared by free things. Right now, there are a lot of tremendous free tools that can greatly help your small business in regards to communication and organization. This post just touches on the tip of the iceberg. If you’re interested in using these tools and many more like them to take your business to the next level, contact us to hear about our consulting. If you’re a client of ours, don’t forget about the 30 minutes/month of free consulting we offer you.
Communication
Skype: Video chat, screen-sharing, calling. We use Skype quite a bit, but that’s most likely because a lot of people we interact with are on the web a lot. if you do have clients or team members around the globe, Skype is a no-brainer to cut down expensive calls.
Example: We have a client that has two main points of contact for me. One is in San Francisco and the other is in London, England. San Francisco, no big deal. But if there is ever a chat to be had with my point of contact in London, we both prefer to use Skype.
Jing: Free screen casting and easy-to-edit screenshots. Expressing desired website modifications can be very challenging to articulate. Showing desired website modifications can be very easy (thanks to Jing). See this example below of a screencast we used to give feedback in regards to a site’s web logo.
Organization
Dropbox: Dropbox is a free online storage solution that gives you access to all of your important files through any internet connection. If you have ever emailed yourself a file, dropbox is for you. They also have an app for iphone and an app for android, so you can have all the files you could possibly need within reach.
If you want dropbox, go to dropbox.com and create a free account. The free version of Dropbox includes 2GB of online storage. Dropbox lets you earn more free space by referring your friends. If you’re still a student or are hanging on to that email address that ends in .edu, you can earn up to 16GB of free online storage.
Gmail: This is just personal preference. Conventional business is hooked up outlook, but if you have the choice, gmail is worth looking into. I also prefer gmail because I use google apps a lot like: drive (same as google docs), chat, and google calendar. It’s also very easy to manage multiple email accounts in one spot.
Google Docs/drive: Create documents, spreadsheets, signup forms, and presentations (just like powerpoint). The kicker is that you can share these documents with whoever you please and can collaborate on them at the same time (if you wish to do so). You can also grant/restrict access however you please to these docs. They can be public, private (only those who you choose to share them with can see), and you can grant access via a link google provides you. Here is the google docs homepage. Below are example of “dummy” docs I created to give you an idea of what the docs, spreadsheets, and presentations look like.
Milebug: Having an actual mile log is a pain. This app makes keeping mileage easy enough for me to actually do it.
Cheers!
A.J.
P.S. If you’d like us to help you optimize your web presence, or do general technology consulting work, get in touch. We’d love to help.
P.P.S. Sign up for our monthly promotions that include discounts on apple products, IT hardware, and the services provided by Green Growth Solutions. Sign up now.
We live in the age of finding information whenever we please. The age of curiosity. “Google it!” we’ve all said. We have higher expectations than ever of finding those answers, quicker, quicker than ever. When we find this information, it usually comes with a story. Because of this, the story matters more than ever.
The athletes we cheer for, the music we listen to, the businesses we support and the products we buy. All of their stories matter. A story can ingrain irrationality in the consumer – for better and worse. When I saw what Kanye West did to Taylor Swift, in my mind, my pre-conceived notion of him being an doofus was brought to life. An extremely talented individual will not win my purchase – not because his music sucks (which you may think, and that’s fine) but just out of not wanting to support a jerk.
On an opposite note – Drew Brees (sans current controversy). When I saw the youtube video of Drew Brees drinking beer, taking shots, and enjoying himself with every day New Orleans residents after their Super Bowl victory… “wow, what a cool and down to earth guy” I thought to myself. This guy is worth cheering for. Later on, I found out he lived downtown New Orleans – not in a gated community he could more than afford. What a story – he won my ovation. Not to mention, he was not recruited by the big schools in his home state and he had to go all the way to Purdue, to have a shot at playing college football. Who doesn’t like the underdog?
Be someone, a business, an organization that people cheer for. Include the human element.
Some people may not agree with this approach, and that’s fine. When you try to speak to everyone, you touch no one. Focus on your niche, your target market, and forget what everyone else says, because these people do not matter.
When you’ve done things, things that create a story worth telling, you have a chance. People will always go to the Wal-Marts of the world, accept it. But not everyone. Some people care. Some people will be inspired by your story, and become a patron. This company, GGS, has won bids from firms ten times our size that have been in business ten times longer than us because of this. Remember, we don’t need everyone to like us, just a small, very small, percentage. Stop trying to appeal to everyone.
What’s your story? Now go tell it.
Cheers!
A.J.
P.S. If you’d like us to help you optimize your web presence, or do general technology consulting work, get in touch. We’d love to help.
P.P.S. Sign up for our monthly promotions that include discounts on apple products, IT hardware, and the services provided by Green Growth Solutions. Sign up now.
There is a lot of pressure to be on all of these sites. Most likely, the pressure is unwarranted.
Some Quick Advice on Social Media (for the small biz owner)…
It seems like new social networks are popping up all over the place. People in PR and marketing won’t stop urging you to get up to speed. “You need to be active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, pinterest , google + and blah blah blah” he will say. Here is a new idea before you join the social media arms race… Let’s ask a few simple questions:
Does it make sense?
Who is my current customer?
Who are my potential customers?
Who influences my industry?
Do the previously listed people utilize social media?
Will I have any ROI from social?
Will a focus on social take away from other important aspects of my business?
Now, before we go any further, I need to explain something. Social media can be so very powerful (like many things). But it can be a huge drain on time if you don’t have a clear vision and time/resources allocated to it. PR and marketing pundits telling you social media can be great for your business is like a dietitian telling you that the right diet and workout plan will help you lose weight. It’s kind of a “no shit” thing.
This article is geared towards the small business owner or small business that wants to “get in” on social media and leverage it for their business. My simple advice: If you do not have that clear vision and the time/resources, save social media for a later day. If you’re not ready to follow the diet and workout, you won’t lose any weight and will most likely end up in a worse spot both mentally and physically. Let’s not treat ourselves like that.
Discouraged? No worries, in the near future I will provide a post on how to have that vision and allocate some resources to social when you feel you are ready to go for it. When you are ready to commit to it.
I’m not preaching that I know how to run your business. I’m just trying to re-assure you that you are correct in your focus—your core product. After that product or service is amazing and will continue to be so, then go all out with social media (and let us help you! Wink wink). I know there is a strong opposition to this school of thought, but to each their own.
Back to the main discussion…. does it make sense for your business?
Here are a couple scenarios where social media (specifically Facebook and twitter) should play a heavy role in your business.
1.) Your company has a blog or you are constantly updating content to the web. Whether it be new blog posts, pictures, or videos, social media is a great outlet to get some more exposure for that content.
2.) Your business has a lot of news. Do you constantly launch new products/services, change pricing, locations, and so on? If so, you’ll find your customers would prefer that information to be available in as many places as possible.
If one of those two scenarios does not apply to your business, then congrats. You are spared from the social media arms race.
In most cases, it honestly does not make sense. Yes, there are a lot of people on Facebook. But your business doesn’t need to be extremely active on Facebook. It’s a no-brainer to create a business page on the largest social network in the world, but that doesn’t mean you have to be advertising and constantly monitoring and managing your businesses Facebook profile.
As of now, I have not spent a penny on Facebook. I have not acted on one advertisement, and I don’t know a whole lot of people that have. Have you? Probably not. Not to mention, General Motors just stopped advertising on Facebook because they don’t think they are really getting a return on their investment. Not trying to be a jerk, but why do you think with the limited resources you have, that you could run a more successful FB advertising campaign than a hyper-funded company like General Motors? This doesn’t mean GM is a better company than yours, just means FB ads may not be a game worth trying to win.
You may be asking yourself “Why is this guys banging on social media so much? I found his article through social media.” I use social media because the answers to my previously listed questions is….yes. To every one of them. All of my clients have an online presence or are soon to have an online presence because I’ll build them a website. I also have somewhat of a responsibility to be “up to speed” on social, because I owe it to my clients to give them great answers and info on the topic.
The super quick summary
Most likely, social media is a waste of time for you. It can take more time than you think to manage all of your companies social media pages. I’m with a web agency, so it obviously makes more sense for me (and it’s a necessity to be “in the know”). But even us, as a web agency, don’t go social media crazy. Because there are other things we can be hustling with like improving products/services, offering better customer service, reaching out to industry experts, and other things that actually get us closer to creating a product/service worth talking about. Isn’t the ever elusive referral the best thing for a business?
The moral
Social media can be amazing. It can be. But for most small biz owners, it’s a distraction. Is the general contractor wasting her time worrying about social media? Most likely. Let’s be honest, most of us use google to find businesses and FB to find/connect with people. Will this change? I think possibly in the future. But that’s a trillion dollar question for a later day.
Cheers!
A.J.
P.S. If you’d like us to help you optimize your web presence, or do general technology consulting work, get in touch. We’d love to help.
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