Assorted Technical News for Small Business Owners

Posted on May 16, 2012 by delos

One thing that small business owners tend to overlook is that the web doesn’t work like they expect. Business owners successfully deal with customers every day and they know what to do (and what results they want to see.) Unfortunately, the web is like the stock market – it makes you money indirectly, you have to do some extra work and appeal to people in order to maximize your returns. Further, things are always changing and you have to be smart about where you invest.

But how can you apply these lessons to your business and it’s web presence?

Unfortunately, you can’t always go directly to a sale on the web. People on the web expect some wining and dining before the hard sell. Some are just looking for something interesting. Some are just looking for specific information about the topic that your business deals with. How can use you use this tendency to your advantage?

That’s why small businesses with websites are encouraged to cover not only the topics that directly deal with their business but also ancillary topics. If you sell shoes but you have a blog post about the best brands of moccassins (which you don’t sell) – well guess what the customer is going to remember about you?

That’s right. They will recall that you are the one to go see when they want any shoes. Even if you don’t sell them, you are a valuable resource within your business. And if you understand that, surely you can see how related but indirect website content can bring people to your business and you’ll see your sales increase.

This is what Google and all the big internet companies do, as well. Google makes its big money off search ads but has lots of other ways (Google News, Google Docs, Google +, Google Images, etc.) to get you on their website. And that’s why Google and Facebook are always buying smaller companies to add to what they offer you – for free, to boot.

Things are in a state of change. Video game companies will eventually have to abandon the computer and console. It will all be on your phone and your home entertainment center – except it will be called something else. Your entertainment center will feed all your TV screens with cable or satellite stations, video games on demand and subscription, your music and your social media, email and all your other computer functions, automatically translated and driven by voice command instead of a keyboard. Naturally, you will be able to access all of this on your phone/PDA/tablet/iPad and whatever other gadget they invent in the meantime. The question is – how will this affect your particular business?

Things change really fast. Some ask if Google and Facebook will even be around in five years. Do you depend on Google to send you traffic? The only way not to be dependent on search engines is to make sure your website is a resource. Promote yourself and your business judiciously and expect to be in it all for the long haul.

They say you have to be a long term investor to make the best use of the stock market. You have to put the work into your website as well. Anyone who tells you different isn’t concerned about your long term results.

SWIFT Privacy

Posted on May 10, 2012 by delos

Have you heard about this new nonprofit, global cooperative called SWIFT? It stands for the Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication and it aims to let web surfers manage what data they have.

So instead of Facebook automatically keeping track of every link you click and every post you make, you can decide if it’s worth it to you if you share your data with Facebook (and other websites.)

Now, exactly how you would keep control over your digital history is still being worked out and the big internet companies like Facebook will fight this as this is how they make all their money.

You can read more about this in an article in the January 10, 2012 issue of Bloomberg Business magazine.

What Web Design Customers Need To Know

Posted on April 17, 2012 by delos

If you’ve ever wanted a website or web work done for you, then you may not know enough about it to even know what you’re asking for. A good web person will ask what you’re trying to accomplish, suggest a few options and their costs and benefits and finally, offer a strategic assessment of the best use of the client’s efforts.

This was a job description posted to the Elance website, where you can hire freelance web people to do web work for you. What should this customer have known?

“Elance: I am a network marketer and need a facebook fan page created with SEO because I intend to use ppc. I would also someone to maintain those pages. We will discuss in greater detail via phone. – avg bid $200″

To translate all this into simpler terms:
1. Create a Facebook page and maintain it.
2. It should then rank well in internet searches.
3. The customer intends to use paid internet advertising.
4. They want to pay roughly $200.

To simplify it even further, you can’t do all that at once. It’s not a bad idea to do all these things but this must have been a network marketer who is new to Facebook and Search Engine Optimization. Let’s address a few things you should know if you were this customer.

1. Creating a Facebook page is free and easy. Maintaining it is going to be an ongoing project. A Facebook page should be updated 2-3 times per day AND you would need to chat with customers. As the business owner, if you pay someone else to do this it will cost a lot more than $200. The first week might cost you $200 alone.

2. A Facebook page is not going to rank well in internet searches. Facebook doesn’t get along with Google, who will probably be sending you the most visitors.

Even more than that, Facebook isn’t set up for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) It doesn’t matter what you post on your Facebook page, the search engines will never see it and send people to it.

By all means, have a Facebook page – it’s just not that valuable for SEO.

3. PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is what you see when you do a search and all those ads appear on the top or right side of your search results page.

PPC can be a valuable way to bring people to a web page. It can be expensive, depending on what you are bidding on. Each click can be $1 or more… at best, $200 might buy 200-500 visitors and you pay for them even if they don’t buy anything from your website.

Also, PPC is a totally separate thing from SEO. It can help somewhat, but the value of PPC is bringing primed leads to your webpage to buy something.

4. $200 is not going to buy you very much SEO. SEO is an ongoing process and should be revamped monthly, doing more of what works well for your business.

Much depends on what industry you are in, how competitive it is in your location and how wide a reach you want.

Some companies will charge you thousands of dollars per month for this – just for your local area. It’s not unreasonable if you want bigger success – it takes time, research and manpower on an ongoing basis.

Still other companies would take your $200, make a Facebook page for you and then tell you that you are fully optimized and to expect great results.

Again, this customer didn’t want anything crazy. They wanted to have a Facebook page that performs well. However, they just didn’t have an idea what they were asking for and how much it would cost in full.

Facebook Is Being Sued Again and More

Posted on April 8, 2012 by delos

It should come as no surprise that Facebook is being sued. But this lawsuit is because Facebook is stealing more from Yahoo than Yahoo is taking from Facebook.

What is this all about? According to the April 9, 2012 issue of Fortune, Facebook is using more technology that Yahoo has patented than Yahoo is using of Facebook’s. And Facebook is using 5 times more of Amazon’s patents than the reverse, so look for another lawsuit on that later. Usually, this ratio between all these companies is 1:1, ensuring that everyone uses each other’s technology with impunity. So where will this all end up? Nowhere. They’ll all trade a little money and get right back to stealing from each other again.

But there’s more Facebook news. Their new Timeline push is getting them in hot water, too. And that’s besides them crying foul on clickjackers while they plan to make even more money off their users. Helpfully, though, you can now be served legal notices via Facebook. Wait… that’s not really helpful, is it?

And then there was that whole fiasco with businesses asking for potential employee’s Facebook passwords. First of all, no. Second, even Facebook didn’t like that idea – no doubt they’ll have some kind of premium business search which will let Facebook charge businesses to see who is complaining about them.

Do you recall GoWalla? Facebook bought them to get into the location sharing market, more or less. In the end, Facebook couldn’t make that technology work financially.

On the upside, Facebook predicts they will top a billion users by August 2012 and Google + is not far behind with 800 million. Wonder why Google and Facebook don’t like each other? It’s all about competition.