Computer Solutions in the greater brisbane area.
Marketing your business through Twitter
A short article on how to use twitter as a marketing tool for businesses and the importance of adding links to your tweets to help engage people in the twitter community.
Read the Rest...What if your ADSL goes down?
For many small businesses, losing connection to the internet is something that must be avoided; With so many business processes relying on connetivity, savvy business owners are looking for ways to minimise the risk of internet downtime and keeping their business working.
Start with a high quality ADSL connection from a reputable ISP like Internode is a very good start. But there are still things that go wrong, even mundane things like the council digging up the phone lines in the street. The good news is that there is a way you can avoid these risks.
The Billion 7402NX is an ADSL router that will also connect to a 3G service, and automatically fail over to the 3G service if your ADSL fails. When your ADSL service is restored, the router will switch back to the faster, more reliable ADSL service.
To get this benefit, you will need to sign up for a 3G service with a USB type “dongle”. We’d generally recommend Telstra for the 3G option, as you are less likely to have coverage problems, and their equipment is usually better tested. Once it’s all setup, it’s worth having the solution tested regularly so you know it’s there to keep you online if your ADSL fails.
If you’d like more information on how Shift Computer Solutions can implement a 3G failover solution in your business, just fill out the form below;
Introducing the Google +1 Button
A first look at Google’s +1 button. Google’s new feature on it’s search results. A way to share to your to friends, contacts or others anything you like or love about the net.
Read the Rest...Portrait display in Windows 7
The article shows the built-in capability of windows 7 to change display orientation from Landscape to Portrait. It also explains the difference between the two and the simple steps in changing you display settings from Landscape to Portrait.
Read the Rest...Crafting an Email Signature
Making sure your emails have a signature at the bottom with key details is one of the most important things you can do to help improve communications with your customers and suppliers.
Read the Rest...Avoid Software Licencing Traps
Something every small business owner should pay serious attention to is software licensing. Keeping track of your licensing can lead to disaster, as it’s all too easy for software providers like Microsoft, Adobe and others to get judgements against your business, and ultimately, you, that the average small business won’t survive.
There are several ways that small business owners end up falling foul of licensing issues, so with this post we hope to illuminate these trouble spots so you can make sure your business doesn’t end up being a software piracy statistic.
Unlicensed Software on New PC’s
This is still very common, although getting less so as we move away from Windows XP. If you are buying new machines, you need to make sure that the people providing them are providing you with fully legal copies of the software on the machine. In the case of Windows, thats easy, there should be a sticker on the tower, or on the underside if it’s a laptop, that proves the machine has a legal copy installed on it.
In the case of things like Office, photoshop and other business software, you should be given something with the PC. Exactly what you get depends on the software, the company making it, and the specific license you are being supplied. For example, it’s normal not to be given a disc with Microsoft Office, but you still get a little package with a licence key;
It’s up to you to make sure everything is above board, as if it’s not, you’ll end up paying twice when you have to go out and buy the software again to get legal.
Academic Licenses
This is another common problem; Microsoft and Adobe in particular provide students, and sometimes teachers, with heavily discounted licences for software. They do this so that students can learn how to use the software without having to spend the big bucks for the software, but these licences are ONLY valid if being used by a student. We recently saw a quote given to a child care centre where academic licences had been offered. If the centre agreed to use that software, they could be liable for signifant penalties, and be forced to purchase a new copy of the software with a licence for business use.
Multiple Installations
The area where business owners leave themselves with no defence is where a single license is purchased and installed on multiple machines. Most business owners are savvy enough to know this is a recipe for disaster, and with technologies like Microsoft’s activation, it’s actually quite difficult in many cases. The real problem here is where staff decide they know best, and start installing stuff themselves. This is where having your IT managed by a reputable firm (like us!) can be a benefit, as the software licenses on each machine can be logged and checked periodically, and problems avoided.
Staff Theft
It’s a good thing this isn’t common, but from time to time staff decide that it would be great to take home the software your business has paid for and install it there. Apart from being a licensing problem for your business, this can lead to all sorts of trouble down the line when you need to reinstall your software;
The obvious problem of missing installation discs and licence codes are enough of a headache, but most modern software uses activation systems, which means your licence may no longer work, as it will have been activated too many times. The amount of trouble this causes usually leads affected business owners to simply buy a new copy, but with a little preparation and vigilance, all of these costs and burdens can be avoided completely.
Have you run into licensing trouble? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!
Top Tips for Adwords Landing Pages
If you are creating landing pages that need to be optimized for the use of Google AdWords campaigns, there are some things you may want to take in consideration so you can maximize on the benefits that using Google AdWords provides. You may or may not know that even though you create a campaign using Google AdWords, the actual program scans your target page for relevancy. Once it’s finished scanning your page, it gives your page a quality or relevancy score. For this reason, building a landing page that will take advantage of the ‘relevancy score’ is vital.
These are our top tips for creating an AdWords landing page that will maximize your relevancy as well as being AdWord friendly.
1.) The file or page name should be the same as the keyword: When saving your page you’ll want to make sure the page name uses the keyword as well. This will ensure you maximize on AdWords ability to target the keyword not only in the domain but the page name too. If you are using WordPress, this is nice and easy as your page title is usually the page name as well.
2.) In-page title should also be the keyword: The title of your page should also reflect the keyword as well. This will allow the AdWords bot to recognize the domain, page name, and page title as all having the keyword, making it all relevant.
3.) Meta tag keyword placement: For some of you that use blogs this may be difficult if you’re unsure how to edit your landing page but the fact remains, your landing page should contain Meta tags. You will have keyword Meta tags that you’ll use for adding the main keyword. This will also be applied to the description Meta tags as well. All of these tags will need to be optimized using the main keyword(s) to ensure maximum exposure.
4.) The heading tag must utilize the main keyword: The heading tag will need to incorporate the keyword because Google AdWords recognizes this tag as well as the others.
5.) Maximizing your page content: For everything to come together nicely on your landing page you will need to make sure your content is relevant, as well as maximizing your keywords with at least 2-3% keyword density. Don’t just put a bunch of key words and phrases at the bottom of the page, Google will penalise your page if you do, instead, ensure you have good quality copy written for the page that includes the key phrases you are trying to target.
6.) Do not use links to products on different domains: If you are using an AdWords campaign, do not use you landing page for anything other than your own services or products.
7.) Make sure you have no broken codes: Google AdWords recognizes broken codes and this will leave you out in the cold. Your page quality will score very poorly and regardless of the work you’ve done your landing page will not receive maximum exposure.
8.) Original content: Your landing page should always have original content and not something that has been used everywhere else on the internet. Have an article writer create unique content maximizing your keywords.
9.) Test your page: Test your page before going live to make sure everything is as it should be. This will ensure you receive maximum results for the work that has been performed.
With these ten tips for creating an AdWords landing page you will be able to maximize your landing pages potential and draw in relevant visitors using your Google AdWords campaign.
Google Panda – What you need to know.
The Google Panda update has changed the internet marketing game. Make sure your business website is keeping up with the changes.
Read the Rest...Business Email
Email is a critical part of running most small businesses these days, but we are still finding business owners who aren’t aware of the benefits of setting up their email professionally.
The first mistake small businesses make is using the free email address that is provided as part of their broadband internet subscription. In many cases, this will be an @bigpond.com or similar address. Business owners should setup email accounts using a domain name they own (like shiftsolutions.com.au), to give a more professional appearance, and also so that they retain full control of the business email; Locking yourself into using your ISP for email means you will never be able to change your internet provider, which over the years could cost you thousands in higher fees or lost productivity.
Another common mistake for very small businesses is to use one address for the entire business, even when there are more than one member of staff. Even if you only advertise one address to begin with, enabling each team member to have their own, seperate email account provides greater productivity, as each team member can be responsible for their own emails. Worse, it’s often the case that the way the email is setup is such that every team member receives the same emails, so you have the problem of multiple members of the team working on the same email, thus wasting time.
Small business owners should setup generic email addresses, such as sales@ or info@, and when communicating to people outside the business, those generic email addresses should be the ones you give out; This enables you to direct those emails to different team members, as people leave and are replaced in your business, or when they take holidays and someone else needs to handle the email.
Another issue that is often overlooked is the size of the mailbox most ISP’s give you; Generally, 20 Meg is the limit, which for normal use is more than enough, but many business clients like to get their email on their computer and their phone, and this often requires a larger mailbox to store the email for longer periods of time; With your own domain hosted email, you can control how big your mailbox needs to be, but with ISP email, you have no say.
Finally, for mobile team members, or those with iPhone / iPad devices, consider a hosted exchange service; This service puts your email “in the cloud”, but with a full Microsoft Exchange Server to handle it, which enables things like calendar sharing, a great help to small business owners. It also means when you read an email on one device, it will show up as read on every device, because instead of copies of your email being saved to each device seperately, there is just the single copy, on your Exchange server. (Larger businesses with a small business server get Exchange as part of the deal)
Using email to the full will bring your small business productivity gains and make the job of running your business that much easier.
Password security
Recently this story appeared in the courier mail, focused on the woman how lost a weeks wages to online thieves.
Before I tell you how you should be setting your passwords, I’d draw attention to this quote from the victim;
“It was definitely a shock – the fact that someone was pretending to be me and could log into something that’s supposed to be secure.”
What needs to be clearly understood, is that services like Internet banking and paypal are only as secure at the person who’s using them. You need to use these services properly to avoid this happening to you,
Here are the key tips for staying secure online;
Use a different password for each website or service you sign up for
Make your passwords at least 8 characters long, 12 for banking and finance sites
Include letters, numbers and symbols in your passwords
Make sure your password is totally random gibberish
Where available, get a security token for your account
Ensure you have good quality and updated anti virus software on your computer
Follow these simple tips and your money should stay safe.
