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Resolutions! Do we or don’t we? That is the Question.

DSC42612-200x220Many of us start the year with decicions to work out more.  Get to Yoga everyday.  Get to the gym,  show our loved ones more lovingkindness.  But then the world gets in the way and something happens to stop us from achiving our goals.

This year I am going to not make any resolutions.  I am going to continue to get to yoga everyday and work to make sure that my clients are happy and successful.  We should do everything with the more gusto.  Life is too short to spend out time spinning our wheels.

Along with excersie and good food.  We also more work our brians and get those creative jusies flowing.  Look to our buisnesses.  This is where we always have too much to do and not enough time.  We can get help with almost every aspect of our companies life.  There are consultants here in the Berkshires that will help you create a business plan,  a marketing plan.  Then there are others that can help you carry it out.  You can do it.  You can make a difference in your buisness and create an enviorment that will build a strong company.

Start the new year.  Get help with your company, get help with keeping yourself healthy.  It dose work.  I know  this. I am proof it does work.  If you are not here and need help call 413 528-6386 and I will help you or guide you to the right kind of advice.

Have a very happy profitable New Year.

Bob

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10 things you should know about your Facebook Post.

The way you write your Facebook posts is the number one key to engaging with your audience. And with the latest change in the newsfeed algorithm, more engagement means more reach. And the more people you reach, the more you are likely to get likes, comments and shares which will in turn bring even more reach. See why you need to write effective Facebook posts?

The most important thing you should keep in mind is if anyone would want to share or recommend the specific post to their family and friends. If the answer is no, don’t post it.

Once you know what you want to write about, follow these 10 tips which will help you write copy that will boost engagement on your post:

  • 1. Be natural – Facebook is a fun and relaxed environment. People come on Facebook to have a good time so keep your writing natural, nice and drop out the too formal approach. Nobody wants to read boring posts.
  • 2. Be topical, timely and relevant – Your posts should be written for immediate action – write your posts so they can be read and engaged with right now.
  • 3. Be visual –  Images are the most engaging on Facebook.  Adding a good image will attract readers.
  • 4. Keep it short – The shorter, the better. Posts of 80 characters or less are the most engaging. Learn to edit your posts so that they make sense in less words.
  • 5. Be Emotional – Emotions sell and encourage readers to share. The most shared posts sway and persuade. They are invitations to discussion and interchange. Try to write posts that scream for reaction. Create posts for commentary.
  • 6. Ask questions – Questions are a great way to get comments. But only ask questions that are easy to answer. If you can, place questions at the end of your post.
  • 7. Post quotes – Inspirational quotes work very well across social media. Try also to post quotes within images.
  • 8. Don’t game the distribution – Many are tempted to ask people to like their posts. In fact,  Facebook is not a fan of call-to-actions to like or share and the algorithm may penalize these types of posts.
  • 9. Post Full links – Use only full URLs when posting a link to an external website. Shortened URLs get as much as 3 times less engagement than  full-length URL instead.
  • 10. Be yourself – The most important is to be and speak as yourself. Your fans love you or your brand. They expect you to write in your usual tone of voice and make them feel like you talk to them directly, not as a corporation.

Out thanks to Wearesocialmedia.gr    For the great InfoGraphic
Read more: 10 Tips to Write Engaging Facebook Posts [infographic] | WeRSM | We Are Social Media http://wearesocialmedia.gr/10-tips-to-write-engaging-facebook-posts/#ixzz3IgHyMhnx

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An Overview of Social Media!

I am always being asked about social media?

This is a good overview in a nice infographic by Leverage Media.  It will show you what the focus, audience, users, and other information that is good to know.   With all of your use of the social medias to get the word out.  You need to understand what it is all about.
Use this to see where you fit.  Where does your company belong?  Where does your client hang out?

Check it out.

SocialMediaexplane

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How to find out about your Online Reputation.

Everyday people are putting up reviews, good, bad and just plain lies.

  • Where are you or your company listed?
  • Where can the public put reviews?
  • Can we answer the bad reviews?
  • How can you stop bad reviews messing with you and your business?
  • How often do you need to check your reputation?
  • How can imagewe protect our selfs’s

Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able  to post a dog to protect us online?  There are things we can do!

With a simple search you can find most of the companies that you are listed on. You could go one by one and correct, claim and post on each listing.  That can be a real time suck.  So what is one to do?

You can find someone to help. Yes we are here for you and all of our clients.
We can help you find you and your company, correct the listings with the correct address, phone, hours, etc.  Then we will help you get some reviews up on these sites.  There are ways todo it where the reviews will be seen by the public.  It seems that every time there is a bad review it goes up right away and  just starts coming up in the search listings.  This can effect you and your company.  Waiting until you have a bad review that effecting you is late to this process.  Yes it can be corrected but it takes more time, money and damage to your companies reputation.

Saying, that when i get a bad review I will deal with it then by getting a lot of my happy clients to put up reviews that will fix it.  Not always.  On some of the directory sites like Yelp.com has an algorithm that decides what reviews to put on your listing and which ones are fake.   This goes for any review.  It you have never had any reviews and then get a bad one.  I am talking about Yelp as an example.

The computer decides that the bad review was legit and the others that were put up in the last few days all 10 of them are not real reviews because it did not follow your pattern of reviews.  So it lists most of your good reviews deep in the site where they are hard to find.   Now to the computers credit if you string them out make them more like a normal review posting it will let them up on your front page and the will have an impact to your listing.

That is just one example that happened to one of my clients.  All these directories can and are good things.  We must be diligent and make sure that we take care of our reputation online as much as we do in our daily lives.

There are few good web sites that lay it out and give you some more examples of what I was talking about above.

Three things you need to do to protect your companies reputation

 

Protect your reputation.  This site was created by high school students.  We can learn from our youth. 

Some good common sense things to learn to protect ourselves, from the mouths of babes.

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Yelp is only one of the directories put there…

yelpangieslistSocial directories, a place you go to find local restaurants, hardware stores, Lawyers, Accountants, etc. Companies get listed in these directories by just being listed in the phone book. How do we know that our information is correct or not? All of these directories allow users of this directory to add a review to your business listing. That can be a good thing for consumers and our companies when the reviews are legit. We have our clients add reviews. You find  our quickly that most of the time you need to be a member of that directory to be able to leave a review. So you go through the process to get the reviews up. This is all well and good until it is not. I am going to tell you about two stories, both of these stories happen to deal with Yelp but it could be any directory.

First story is about a small local company here in the Berkshires. They are a good little company that has been around for a long time and up to this point got all of its new work by referrals. Things were going well. Then one day they had a client as we all do, that was not being reasonable. They did what they could do to please her but she just would not be pleased. They finished the job and moved on. Hoping not to have that experience again. Then the owner got a call from an old client that told him he needs to look up his web site right away. He did that and when he did he saw this listing right under his web site listing. It was from a company call YELP. This was a listing for his company and the description on the listing there was a bad review. The first two lines said ” These guys did not do what they said and they are on drugs…” Then if you click on the review and read the entire review of about 4 paragraphs. Ranting and raving about how bad these guys are. The more you read the more you realized that the woman that wrote the review had an alternate world view. Ok it shows you she was crazy. In most cases the new user will just read the description and move on to the next company. This was hurting his business and it was getting into the busy season for them. He did what anyone would do he call 10 clients and got them to go on YELP and add good reviews. Yelp saw that as packing reviews and disallowed all but two of the reviews and it left the bad review as first in the list so it showed up in his Google Listing. That is when he came to us. We worked with him over the next few months to add good reviews and get the disallowed one to show up. Then we looked at his web presences and started to get good reviews on GooglePlus, Angie’s list, Yellow book, and a few others. Over time the review went away and was replaced by a good review. Consumers read reviews. Those were a tough few months for his company but all is fine now and he has good reviews on all the services that have him listed.

 

This next story is about a Lawyer in California,  His story is similar.  In his case he was paying Yelp to advertise on their site and to allow him to come up more when people are using yelp.  This worked great to get him some clients.  He was paying YELP $500 per month to get the clients to call.  It was working so well in the beginning that he told all of his friends they started to use yelp everything was great.  Until it wasn’t!  One of there clients didn’t like the way that he treated her and wrote a bad review.  This review went something like this  “this is a lawyer I will not recommend.  He is rude and doesn’t know what he is doing…” He called yelp and they told him that he wanted the review removed.  He was told that they do not do that and that they have no control over the reviews on your YELP listing.  In his case too if you read the review you would see that the person was not working with a full deck.  Never the less the yelp listing came up on the front page of the Google listing when you search for this Lawyer. His solution was to stop paying YELP.  So now he doesn’t have any clients coming through his advertising and he still has a bad review just under his web site listing.  Just because you are not paying them does not mean they are going to take you out of the directory.  We are starting to work to help him now with his issue.

 

As in both of these true stories they did not look to protect themselves by getting good reviews in all the directories they are listed in before a bad review showed up.  I know this is a lot of work and you don’t have time to do it.  That is why we are here to help through the process    Call us today to help with your Web Presence.  413 528-4402

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Computer Therapy 8.8.2014

Computer Therapy is a weekly radio show for everyone that just wants to know what is going on with the tech they use every day.  We talk about the current news and they talk about the web.

In this show I talk about you are your web presence.  How does it help or hurt your business.

Depending on your connection it might take a little while to start.  Check it out let me know what you think.

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Computer Therapy 8.15.2014

Computer Therapy is a weekly radio show for everyone that just wants to know what is going on with the tech they use every day.  We talk about the current news and they talk about the web.

In this show I talk about you are your web presence.  How does it help or hurt your business.

Depending on your connection it might take a little while to start.  Check it out let me know what you think.

Security, My web Marketing…

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A start at understanding Google Analytics

I always get the question “Why do I need Google Analytics and what can I learn?”  This video from Google does explain what you can do with Google Analytics (GA).  After you get does with this short video if you have question email or call and ask.  That is what we are here for. call us at 413 528-4402

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Top 14 Most Popular Vendor of IT Certifications

serversWith companies fighting for the top spot, it’s certainly very difficult to choose, which one can help a student get through the exam and get him a certification that he actually desires. We have made it pretty much simple for you by reducing your finding work to a fickle, just the top 14 most popular vendors of IT certifications, along with the certifications they give u access to, so that you can choose to join whichever interests you. This list will not only narrow down your choices but also give you clues as to which companies are reportedly performing over others along with what they offer, that makes them the best of the best for the particular task. With easy training and hands on practical usage guaranteed by some, getting a global certification is an easy task, if you get it from any of the vendors given below.Yes, all vendors make promises, but which ones do really keep it? They get money, they are happy, technically some don’t care, but the one’s we have in the list provide such intense study material that doubting them would be a big mistake. For example, take Microsoft, take Cisco, they have some certifications that can’t be matched up with value by any certification. The Microsoft Certified Expert, the CCNA certified personnel, these certificates have some of the highest values in the job market and these are what will actually matter, when you present yourself somewhere in an interview. We recommend following this list strictly. All the best!
Presenting Top 14 Most Popular Vendor of IT Certifications:
1. Oracle.com
The world leader and also the creator of the brilliant database language SQL, which can be found anywhere in the world (games, websites) provides excellent global certifications such as the position of ATG developers which is certainly something BIG and a position to be proud of.
2. Hp.com
Hewlett has been recruiting and handing out pretty well sort out and reputed certifications to the deserving such as the ATA Certifications. Also, it’s ExpertOne certification that was bought about, is pretty good and running with success.
3. Test-king.com
The vendor is famous for providing study stuff and guides with a promise of short and concise material. Dump guides are full of short and meaningful answers that help people pass exams of different certifications, than providing certification itself as a whole.
4. Microsoft.com
Working at Microsoft, is a pleasure enjoyed only by the most talented, and unbelievably, Microsoft itself trains you for it. With their certifications like MCE and MCP, your status quo in the market increases dramatically.
5. Braindumps.com
Braindumps, the site famous for helping students get their certifications is continuing to be, and in our predictions, will continue to be in the top 14, if it keeps on providing with excellent papers and solutions to aspirants. Certification exams of all famous vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco are available at ease with braindumps. It provides dumps, such as the ccna dumps, cissp dumps and braindumps a+.
6. Pega.com
Pega.com, the short name for pega systems has gone from providing business solutions to providing global internships, certifications to interested candidates and has some high-level exams for recruitment such as the CPBA exam.
7. Pass4sure.co.uk
Pass4sure assures a wide majority of candidates with the confidence of passing in exams as well. The website guarantees the success rate, and since we don’t just go on guarantees, our professionals tested the products, in person and surprisingly, the website does what it says. Answers to exams of the hardest certification programs, easy tuts, this vendor is a must-go-for.
8. Adobe.com
With certifications such as the ACP and more, adobe is currently, nothing less than ruling the certification industry, adding to the fact that it invented the pdf systems as well.
9. Oracle.com
Just in sql? Naah, this company has gone from creating the best database software to some of the best certification programs such as the ring easy positions in all leading companies.
10. Exin.com
Exin.com provides ITIL foundation certification that falls under the category of global certification has the facility of viewing the certificate online with the brilliant certificate wizard portal on their main website.
11. Riverbed.com
The riverbed institution provides various certifications and for the certifications it provides online study material as well. One of its well-known certification is the RCSP (Riverbed Certified Solutions Professionals), it trains the candidates as well for it’s certifications in well known programs such as the RCSA-W red education program and the RCSG study guides as well.
12. Magentocommerce.com
Magento provides the finest degrees amongst the lines of IT, even though the title may read commerce. Some of them are the Magento Developer Certification and the Magento Solution Specialist
13. Avaya.com
Avaya deals with certifications along the lines of collab of innovatia and aims at providing with technical training to all its candidates and nourished the necessary skills in them to get Avaya certifications.
14. Zend.com
Zend technologies is a World Wide Web software infrastructure company which provides PHP certification that ensures a person is fully qualified to develop PHP web applications

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The Reports are in: Hacked Websites are a Big Problem

Written by Chris Weltzien .

Websense2014Report

The big boys have weighed in and both the Cisco’s 2014 Security Report  and the Websense 2014 Threat Report have identified a major contributor to cyber-crime: hacked legitimate websites.  The Cisco report accurately refers to these attacks as High Efficiency Infection Strategies because as the image below illustrates, a single website can attack a variety of devices. Websense re-affirms the popularity of this attack method by pointing out that 85% of malicious links are hosted on hacked legitimate websites.

Websites can launch attacks upon multiple device types 's (image from Cisco's 2014 Security Report)

 

 

This article came from our friends at 6scan.  They work with us to threat scan your site every day if you want it.

To read the entire article go to 6scan.com click here 

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Hacking is on an up swing.

Have you seen this on your site?  What can you do?  Call us ASAP 413.528.4402

Malwaresign

Since January 2014 there has been a lot of hacking.  The most common hack has been an injection hack.  This is where the hacker exploits a vulnerability in your site.  It could be a page that allows comments or a contact form.  Because of this we have started offering a Daily Scanning service.  This will scan your site daily and if we find any vulnerabilities we will close them.  If we find that someone has hacked your site we will inform you unless we have a standing order from you to clean the site. The site cleaning will be a $40 change.

Also check this link.  So your site has been hacked!

There are some links and a video from Google about hacking and what we can do about.
This video will tell you about:

  • How and why sites are hacked
  • Process to recover a site and remove the user-facing warning label
  • Time-to-recovery depends on extent of damage and technical skill of administrator
  • Two options:
  • Do it yourself
  • Get help from specialists

 

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Greener Office: Less Paper

Graymatter’s Guide To Greener Business Practices
Part Three

Don’t Be A Paper Pusher.

  1. Digitize
    It does seem a bit strange that in the .digital age. we still consume enormous amounts of mashed up, bleached tree pulp, most of which gets used once or twice and then tossed or recycled (.downcycled,. as McDonough and Braungart would call it). The greenest paper is no paper at all, so keep things digital and dematerialized whenever possible. The more you do online, the less you need paper. Keep files on computers instead of in file cabinets (this also makes it easier to make offsite backup copies or take them with you when you move to a new office). Review documents onscreen rather than printing them out. Send emails instead of paper letters. New software like Greenprint helps eliminate blank pages from documents before printing and can also convert to PDF for paperless document sharing.
  2. Don.t Be a Paper Pusher
    When buying printer paper, look for recycled paper with a high percentage of post-consumer content and the minimum of chlorine bleaching. Even recycled paper gobbles up a great deal of energy, water, and chemical resources in its processing (toxic pulp slurry is the paper recycling industry.s dirty secret). When using the real stuff, print on both sides of the page when appropriate and use misprints as notepaper. Try to choose printers and photocopiers that do double-sided printing. If your office ships packages, reuse boxes and use shredded waste paper as packing material.
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Each day is a new beginning

20120724-062612.jpg Everyday we wake up. Get out of bed and face the new day. Everyday we go about our work, everyday we need to say a little about our work on a blog.
It has need a long time since I posted last. A lot has gone on. Kids, family, work. The good is that everything I did before is still there. Waiting to be built on. So done feel that you have blown it all you have done is deal with life. Get back up make it happen. Each time you begin again and start to see results the faster you will be to start again. it is just a matter of dpi g it!
So get up and do it now, don’t wait, make it work for you life and build your business today.
Blog, get the FAQs out on your site. Start now blog now. Do the SEO that you need to. Know that there are others out there that are doing the same thing in the same place.
You can do it!
Have a peaceful day.
Bob

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Is your business on an empty street?

20120629-073556.jpg You can get up each day and go to work. If no one calls or comes into you business you are not getting far. If someone in your local area is looming for you and can’t find you again no business. No life.
So each day get up with a purpose. Decide it is going to work today. In my life I worked very hard for a long time 7 years. There were times I thought it was going to work and others I just wanted to give up. It was not until a major life change that I took a step back and let it happen. Now we are on a great road work is coming and I have people to help. Sometimes we just push too hard and get in our own way.
So get out of the way, make your business what you want it to be.
Find your path, find the way to make it work for you.
Have a peaceful day. I am going to start my yoga.
Bob

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Day by day we can only do what we can do!

20120624-163555.jpgYes, it has been a while. A lot has happened, life has changed. But we must get back up on that horse.

20120624-163750.jpg
It is a balancing act!
How do I run my business and do the things I need to do to promote it. Well you just need to find the time. Sometimes it is in the morning. That worked for me for a while, other times is is sitting in a Resturant waiting for food. Create content for your web site that has the keywords you need. Oh ya the keyword density should be 1.8. No more or Google will not rate you well.
Make sure you stick to good SEO practices. There are a ton of articles online read a few of them. Remember on the Internet it is alway good to get a few opinions. You should never trust just one find the truth for you and you will be better for it.
Creating content for you website is the best way to bring traffic and establish you as an authority in your field. Make a difference in you business today. Spend sometime talking about what you know. And you will get people to listen.
Have a peaceful afternoon. I am going to eat my dinner.
Bob

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Push through the fog.

20120608-065229.jpg Some days are harder than others. Just to keep thing going.
If you are not going to keep marketing you company the at some point things are going to just stop.
Just do it as the saying goes. Check your website, read others, like posts, comment on posts where there is a good conversation going on. That will introduce you to many more real people. You must let visitors know you are there. Let them find you. I can give you tips forever but if you don’t use them, are you helping yourself?
Everyday do something, it adds up over time. But you must start.
Have a peaceful day.
Bob