quick tips

What To Do If Your Website Suddenly Goes Down

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on December 27, 2010 - 10:00am

If you have had a website on the web for any reasonable period of time, you have probably experienced what many refer to as "downtime". You might be reviewing your website or adding content, and suddenly your website just seems to disappear. Or maybe you've received a phone call because one of your ads directed people to your website for a "special deal", but people couldn't access your site.

Here are some quick tips to help you get through what might seem like the end of the world (in that moment).

Finding Your Customers on Social Media Using Gist

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on December 10, 2010 - 9:44am

You've been including social media in your marketing plan for a while now. You just know that your customers are using social media, but you can't seem to connect with them. You have a database full of contacts, but you don't know how to leverage that.

Check Your Website's Layout in Other Browsers

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on November 19, 2010 - 9:24am

If your business didn't go with a website developer who does adequate testing, you'll probably find that your website might look very different (and possibly break) in some browsers. However, there is a really cool online tool that is available for you to use free of charge.

Maximize Your Small Business on Twitter

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on November 1, 2010 - 8:28am

For many small businesses, Twitter seems to be more difficult to use than Facebook. For the most part, Twitter forces you to say what you need to say within 140 characters. That seems to intimidate some small business owners.

But sometimes, the best way past a road block is a few ideas to act as seeds that you can grow into what works for you. So here's some ideas for you.

Get Started With Reputation Management

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on October 28, 2010 - 8:03am

How often do you Google yourself? More importantly, how often do other people Google you?

Reputation management is about controlling what shows up in the search results when someone searches for you. It's about getting content you control to dominate the first few pages of search results. This can seem like a daunting task, but in reality it's quite simple to get started. Unless the current results are dominated by negative (and perhaps false) information, there is no need in hiring one of those reputation management firms you hear about on the radio.

Multiple Store Locations? Make a Page for Each One on Your Website

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on October 18, 2010 - 8:55am

Many small businesses, especially in metro areas, have multiple storefront locations. When Google and other search engines crawl your website, they look for details such as addresses and use that information for their maps.

However, this doesn't work very well if your locations and franchises are hidden behind a form that you require the user to fill out. It works best if each location has their own separate page with a unique URL and is included in your sitemap.

How to Get All of Your Email in Gmail

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on September 15, 2010 - 3:04pm

I am often asked how I keep up with all of the email addresses that I have, especially on the go. It's pretty simple: I have my Gmail account set up to process all of my email. A bonus here is that Gmail's spam filter is superb, so I don't have to waste resources on my server running SpamAssassin.

I'm going to show you step by step how to do this. At first, I was going to do a screencast, but I decided that I really didn't feel like making sure that confidential information was censored out of every frame.

Let's start at the beginning.

How to Make More Sales This Holiday Season

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on September 2, 2010 - 8:45am

ChannelAdvisor is out with a white paper on the results of their 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits Survey, and you will love the results.

Enhance Your Gmail Productivity with Multiple Inboxes

Submitted by Brian Altenhofel on August 18, 2010 - 9:07am

If you're a fan of Inbox Zero, meaning that you try to keep your inbox as clear and non-distracting as possible through the use of filters and quick archiving, you've probably run into the issue of accidentally archiving a client's email. You don't look at the folders for a while and then realize the mistake. How can you avoid this in the future?

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