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Alerts and Notifications Archives - Search Engine Marketing & Optimization
A blog for truly small businesses

Alerts and Notifications

This is IMPORTANT NEWS for small businesses and website owners

If you are spending time marketing your products on Facebook you should STOP NOW and read this!

Attention Business / Website owners: As I have said all along, FACEBOOK IS NOT YOUR FRIEND – they DO NOT WANT YOU TO BUILD TRAFFIC ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE THEY ONLY WANT YOU TO BUILD TRAFFIC FOR THEM!!!

As of September 30th 2011  you’ll no longer be able to send an update to fans using Facebook Messages. (for example, your blog posts will no longer show up as status updates).

We want you to connect with your audience in the most effective ways possible, and updates that go to Facebook Messages may end up unseen in the “Other” folder.

For those of you that say “well gee so what,it’s a free service” keep this in mind – if you focus your marketing energy

building interaction on FACEBOOK and not YOUR WEBSITE you will be providing an excellent place for your competitors to advertise!

If you do not have an interactive website then figure out how to get one – start telling your Fan Page fans to subscribe to your WEBSITE NOT YOUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.

Make it easy for them to get your website posts by email instead (see our home page).

Get updates on Search Engine Optimization and marketing in your email!

We will be dropping our pages within the next 6 months and working with our clients to do the same. As an SEO Expert I cannot, in good concience let my clients invest their hard earned marketing dollars building a place for someone else to get rich! PLEASE SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!!

As I predicted – Big Business is going to own the Facebook business

Just say no to Facebook!Here is an article that supports the warnings I’ve been trying to get out to you all  –  the only businesses that will “win” on Facebook are the ones prepared to spend a lot of money (http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/10/stores_find_friends_on_faceboo.html ). By telling your website visitors to “follow you on Facebook” you are giving them away to your larger, better funded competitors. Even if these big box stores are not your direct competitors they ARE competing for the disposable income you want spent on YOUR products! I’m not saying don’t be on Facebook or have a link to your “page” on Facebook, at this point you almost have to, but change the rules! You can use Facebook instead of continuing to let Facebook use you. It’s not too late people – tell your friends to quit following you on Facebook and call you or text you  instead! Better yet, learn how to blog and open a dialogue on your own website with your customers. Use Facebook to bring people to your website. With today’s technology if you can make a post on Facebook you can blog on your own website I promise.

I’m not saying don’t have a Facebook page, at this point you almost “have to”. What I’m saying is be smart about it – use it to get people to your own website and keep them there. Turn your own website into a social hub. Create an environment on your own website where customers can “meet” each other and share products – give them the tools to post links on Facebook back to your website – do not do what Best Buy is doing and put all of your products on Facebook … there is no free lunch! Facebook will make you pay for the traffic you get for your products one way or another – either by charging  you a percentage of your sales or by selling advertising to your competitors…

Don’t build someone else’s online business

I had a great conversation with a new client today. She called to ask me some things about Facebook and then we got into the broader conversation about search engine optimization, social media and building a sustainable online business.

We talked about having her Facebook “like” button on her website vs. just a button that links to her Facebook page. I helped her to see that your goal should not be to drive people to Facebook from your website but to drive people to your website from Facebook! When you drive people to your Facebook page you are building Facebook’s business not yours. Basically, when you tell people to be your friend on Facebook you are saying “Hey sign up at Facebook so my competitor with a lot more money than me can buy advertising on my Fan page and get you to do business with them instead of me.”

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Facebook is not there for your benefit, they are a business that needs to make money. What better way to make a buck than selling ads on your Facebook page to your competitor?

Spend the energy you would spend “posting on Facebook” posting on your own website! Instead of having your Facebook posts and Twitter tweets feeding to your website, have your website posts feed to your Facebook and Twitter pages – don’t drive people away from your website to your Facebook page, use your Facebook page to drive them to your website silly!

To leverage “social media” you need to think of your website like the “social hub” of your business. In the old days people would have events in their stores such as open houses or signing events. Do this on your website now! The greatest part is people don’t have to drive there to take part. With today’s technology it is possible to host a “virtual” event and make it just as much fun as those you used to throw at the office.

If you have a blog, post community building questions and ideas. Invite your visitors to see you as a human being – just like you would on Facebook – help them “get to know each other” by communicating on your blog. Use your website to get into your website visitors’ heads by using polls and offering a way for them to ask you questions.

If you don’t have a blog, talk to your webmaster about how you can get one or how you can have some other way to put your own voice on your website.

My Mom gets more compliments on her website http://www.joannmorgan.com than some of my larger customers – but I assure you it’s not because I designed it! I have much prettier websites in my portfolio. But Mom has made her website “personal”. She has a picture of herself and her sewing room at the top. She posts her thoughts, shares progress on her projects and has a place for frequently asked questions that she answers in a timely fashion.

This personalization combined with easy navigation is what her customers email her saying “I love your website” about.

What would make you stay on a website longer and come back to it more often?

SiteBuilder Now to become Coburn Enterprises soon!

After nearly 10 years of “helping small businesses compete on the world wide web” we have come to realize that our roll is much more than being a website builder or web design company. What we have discovered is that we are actually small business advisors.

It is not uncommon for a client to contact us for a website and, through our initial questioning process, discover they are not really ready to launch a website. This is because the market we service – the “Truly Small Business” or “TSB” – consists mostly of individuals or a small team of people that have a great idea for a product or service but limited life experience in starting or expanding a company and launching their product. Unlike the well know “Small to Medium Business” or “SMB”, a TSB is usually a self-funded, self-managed company that is not looking for venture capital and/or large start up loans. I find it ironic that I read about “small businesses” and they are companies with 50 employees generating a few million dollars a year in revenues. Whereas, a truly small business generally has less than 10 employees (if any) and often generates just enough revenue to pay their expenses – on a good day. Yet, this sector of business is what really makes up the majority of “small businesses” in our country. Thus, at Coburn Enterprises, we have decided to promote the phrase TSB – Truly Small Business – to help this market sector gain recognition in the marketplace and gain a voice in our society.

With these ideas in mind, we are relaunching our company under Coburn Enterprises. This is the name we have been using for a few years now for our EIN number, merchant services account and other critical business activities. Although we will keep the branding of SiteBuilder Now for our “do-it-yourself” product group, we feel that Coburn Enterprises is more fitting for our current services.

Coburn Enterprises helps truly small businesses compete – not just on the world wide web. As small business advisors, we help companies, and individuals hoping to start or grow a company, ask themselves critical questions and make educated business decisions. We help our clients match their short and long term goals to available products and solutions – from what type of website to start with or upgrade to, to merchant service providers. We help them understand how these decisions will effect them today and in five years. We also help our clients filter through the bombardment of opportunities that come their way as soon as they register their dba or domain name.

Depending on the type of business and where they are at in their development process, we can help them with marketing channels, finding vendors, public relations and content development. We help companies determine revenue channels, pricing structures and new marketing strategies. For our clients that are at that crossroads between “staying small” and “taking it to the next level” we help them look at the advantages and disadvantages of their choices and opportunities.

When necessary, we also help our clients find outside consultants and resources. We help them write policies, hire employees and find the best accounting solutions for their needs.

And, of course, we are experts in website marketing, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

In the coming weeks you will see some exciting announcements including an introduction to our new product set and the official launch of our new websites. CoburnEnterprises.com and BetterEverything.net (http://www.bettereverything.net) a blogging system that will be part of our web marketing solutions and SMS – Social Media Synergy concepts.

Questions? Ideas? Fears? Don’t hesitate to contact us.

Control of your domain name is the number one most important thing you need to have

Having been in the website building business for more than 10 years now I’ve seen a lot of things. In the early days, when many hosting companies were still being run out of garages, it was not uncommon for people to call me ‘desperate’ because their website was down and the hosting company had “vanished”. To my amazement many of them didn’t have personal backups, and most of them weren’t listed as the owner of their own domains – which made it extremely difficult to reclaim it and theyoften had to start from scratch.

Surprisingly, I still get those calls today. Fortunately – most of the time we can at least build a new site on their original domain name. However, a recent experience reminded me that many people, including my clients, simply trust their webmaster to manage that information for them. But you should also check this yourself. Like I tell my clients it’s my “drop dead clause – If I drop dead these are the things you need to know”.

Often, it is not your web master’s intention to put your domain under their ownership – it’s just that we have all these tools that we use to support you and if we forget to make some edits – suddenly we find that we are the owner of your domain and not you – which is all fine and dandy until something happens to the webmaster (or you get really mad at them). So, here is what you need to do – check your records – do you know where your domain is registered? Do you know who the underlying wholesale provider is – for example I sell domains to my customers for convenience. But I purchase them from a wholesaler called Enom – so if something were to happen to me, my customers could actually go out to Enom and manage their domain. As a courtesy, I provide my clients with the information they would need to access that resource should something happen to me.

To find out if you are truly the registered owner of your domain (and where it is registered) you can go to DNSStuff.com – they have a tool called “who is” type your domain name in there (just the domain.com part) and you will get something back that looks similar to what I’ve posted below (scroll down for further explanation). Unless your domain was registered with Network Solutions – in which case you will be told to go to Network Solutions to look things up – but once you find the place to look it up you should see something similar to this:

Registration Service Provided By: Coburn Enterprises dba SiteBuilder Now
Contact: *******@sitebuildernow.net
Visit: http://www.sitebuildernow.net/hostmanager

Domain name: yourdomain.com

Registrant Contact:
   
   Your Name ()
  
   Fax: 
   12345 NE 162nd Ave
   Vancouver, WA 98682
   us

Administrative Contact:
   
   Your Name*****@yourdomain.com)
   +1.608967449
   Fax: 
 12345 NE 162nd Ave
   Vancouver, WA 98682
   us

Technical Contact:
   
   Harmony Coburn *****@sitebuildernow.net)
   +1.608967449
   Fax: 
  12345 NE 162nd Ave
   Vancouver, WA 98682
   us

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
   NS1.COBURNENTERPRISES.COM
   NS2.COBURNENTERPRISES.COM
  
Creation date: 20 Nov 2004 02:27:00
Expiration date: 20 Nov 2012 02:27:00

The most important part of what you see here is the Registrant’s information – as long as you are / your company is the Registrant – you can recover management of your domain even if you don’t know how to access it – it’s work but a website consultant could help. If your webmaster or hosting company is listed as the Registrant, you have no legitimate “rights” to your domain so you need to get in touch with them and get that changed as soon as possible.

For convenience I am often listed as both the Administrative and Technical contact for my clients – that way I can manage the tasks that are required to make sure the “internet” knows where to find their website – as long as you are the Registrant you’re ok. However, you should also know where and how to access your domain so that you can change things at any time – if you get mad at your webmaster, it is best to make sure they no longer have access to your domain and that you have full control before you notify them that you are leaving them – all hosting companies and webmasters are not necessarily as ethical as one would hope.

A final thought on this subject – LEGITIMATE REGISTRARS DO NOT SEND RENEWAL NOTICES IN THE US MAIL!If you get a notice in the mail that your domain is going to expire – contact your registrar or your webmaster or your hosting company and ask them about it – do not send money. Although most registrars have a default setting of “locked” these days, which prevents the  transfer of your domain from one registrar to another without your permission, if yours was not locked, you could inadvertantly give your domain to someone who would take it over and put spam links on it or worse! In most cases, you will just be out the (ridiculous) fee they tell you to send.

As a small business advisor, specializing in helping truly small business determine the most effective use of their marketing dollars, including their website, I have helped many clients recover from unexpected losses of their website and domain. But it is difficult at best. If you don’t understand this or your have more questions feel free to contact me. I’ll be glad to help.

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