Instant Media Services

Do you know where your visitors have been lately? We do. Well, we do if we’re managing your site. If not, you might not have a clue. Don’t think for a second that analytics are for big, Fortune 500 companies. Quite the contrary. Even if your site only has a few pages, wouldn’t you like to know how those visitors found you? What town they live in? How long they stayed and what page they were on when they left? This information could provide useful information to help you fine tune your marketing. Better yet, you can modify the content on your site to place important information on your most viewed pages.

The most important benefit though, is that your site is tied in directly to Google. Google’s web crawlers know your site inside and out before they even start scanning. This fact, combined with making sure your set text contains the correct search terms is really going to boost your ranking over time. Our advise is to make sure your webmaster has you hooked into analytics. If that’s not an option, or it’s going to require extra work on your part, it might be time to look around for a solution that can accomplish that goal. Contact Instant Media if you’d like an analytics overview, or to ask more questions.

The deal is, Facebook has introduced a new tool to help businesses promote themselves and increase their social awareness. Facebook Deals are a great way to find out exactly how well your social exposure is working for your business. In addition, as the popularity of your business grows on the social scene, you’ll be able to provide better results than the local online deal companies.

Facebook Deals work like so:

Create a Deal on your Facebook Business Page

When people are in town, they can pull up your location on their mobile device.

When they touch your business, your Deal is shown.

They can tag other friends, or just simply Check In. Once checked in, your mobile coupon is displayed, which they show to the cashier.

All done! Here’s the bigger deal. Once a user checks in, all their friends can see that activity. Your page gets a boost in Check In activity. You’ve just created a viral marketing effect for yourself.

If you’d like more information on how Instant Media can help launch your Facebook page, create Deals, manage other social media, or provide consultation and training, please fill out our contact form. We are ready to provide integration solutions that let you concentrate on what you do best. Your business.

As a small business owner, or any business owner for that matter, relies heavily on their logo for recognition. A logo is often the first point of contact a potential customer has with your business. That may happen through print advertising, a link on a website, or perhaps one of your business cards being passed along. I’m not here to lecture you on the importance of having a logo, or even making sure its design is aligned with the rest of your marketing objectives. If you’ve been in business or are going into business, I’m sure you’ve been told this a dozen times or more already.

What I am here to tell you is this, make sure you get all of the source files used in creating your logo. You paid for the work, so you are entitled to receive these files from your designer, agency, etc. These files can be a combination of files created in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, and can also include images you’ve supplied, or elements created for the inclusion for any secondary branding schemes. You can request these files be burned to a CD, or even copied to a USB drive.

You might be wondering why this is so incredibly important? The answer is simple, those files belong to you. Your designer isn’t the only entity that may need to use your logo. If you belong to a business organization that promotes and advertises for its members, chances are, they are going to need your logo. Belong to a Chamber of Commerce? They’ll be including your logo on their website as well.

So what? I can just give them the JPEG file I was given. It works for me, it’ll be fine for them, right? For many applications, this is true. Dropping your white background logo onto a printed advertisement will work. However, there are many times your logo will need to blown up, for say, inclusion on a large banner or sign. There are also other times when your logo will need to be reduced in size, perhaps for a multi-business ad. Perhaps that white background is going to look horrible against a certain background in an integrated design. If you have access to your source files, another designer can stretch, reduce, or make a background transparent, all without making your logo look grainy and pixelated.

Being able to provide source files adds a bit of professionalism to you as well. When your brand is being represented properly and clearly, it only serves to reflect your own care and thoughtfulness as a business owner. Feel free to contact us with any questions you might, or to discuss a logo make-over…source files included…

Mailchimp? What kind of a name is Mailchimp? The name alone causes a smirk on the face, and you’re probably asking yourself how you’re supposed to take a company named Mailchimp seriously. Well, perhaps the cost of their service will wipe that smirk off your face. You can gleefully send out 12,000 emails per month to a list of 2,000 recipients for the low, low cost of free. That’s correct, and if that isn’t enough to have you canceling your Constant Contact account, then keep reading.

As far as Email Marketing goes, Mailchimp does everything that Constant Contact does. List Management, Social Integration, Campaign Statistics, Archiving, Importing, Exporting, and the list goes on. Plus, the Mailchimp interface is bigger, cleaner, and spaced out to reduce confusion while navigating, and their support is top notch. If you’re the do-it-yourself kind of business owner, they have an entire section dedicated to tutorials and online manuals.

If your newsletter could use a face lift, or your list is small enough to fall within their free service, let the experts at Instant Media handle the hassle for you. Give us a call, or use our contact form, and we’ll come to the rescue!

I think I’ve discovered what the “everything” in “everything in between” means. A client we were trying to assist with a website was having trouble with her domain. She had been receiving correspondence from GoDaddy about renewing her domain. Since we were going to building out a new site for her, a decision was made to simply transfer it from GoDaddy to our registrar. Well, when those phone calls got rolling, it was discovered that GoDaddy wasn’t in control of that domain…here we go again. After quite a few phone calls to obviously brilliant support representatives, we are told that all she needs to do is fill out and fax back proof of ownership documentation. Simple, right? You bet! Unfortunately, since GoDaddy isn’t the registrar of record, filling out those documents was a waste of time. Why isn’t GoDaddy the registrar though? The account and domain were both created at the same time, on the GoDaddy website. No answers were forthcoming, no solutions were offered. Needless to say, the domain expired, and a day later a mock website was up and running. This new site’s content was appropriate to the domain name, almost as if we were being taunted.

So, here we are, one year later, and guess what? That domain is on the GoDaddy Auction site for sale. Really? A domain GoDaddy had no control over ends up only available on their auction site? Now, I’m no Particle Physicist, but I can certainly find the sum of 2 + 2. Before starting this informational campaign, I did a Google search of “godaddy lost my domain“. Take a peak, it’s very interesting.

We’re currently in the process of trying to save another domain lost by GoDaddy. Right now, the client is backtracking through all emails and billing records that could trace the origin back to them as the originating registrant. We can’t stress enough the importance of hanging onto the emails and receipts of business transactions, they may very well bail you out of a horrible situation. Until next time!

The first item up for discussion is absolutely critical to the identity of your business, and tragically, one of the easiest to lose track of. Domain names seem to be an area of myth and mystery, and yet they comprise a substantial portion of your business identity. For many unsuspecting business owners, GoDaddy has filled the airwaves with marketing gimmicks giving them an air of being hip and in-touch with young entrepreneurs. Then, with a false sense of security, you go online, register your domain, get roped into a hosting package, and leave it to the GoDaddy “experts”.

In this installment of “A Word to the Wise”, we’re going to unravel the mystery behind domain names and point you in the right direction to make sure you have control of yours. A domain name is, for the most part, what a person types into their browser to access your business online. What you may or may not know are the forces that bring that domain name to life. When someone registers a domain name with GoDaddy, they think that name is safe and sound, residing within the walls of the GoDaddy headquarters. Unfortunately for many of the clients we’ve taken on, their domain name is stuck in a thick quagmire of buck-passing, with seemingly no help to get out.

For instance, a non-profit organization “registered” a domain name with GoDaddy as part of a website hosting package. As their new site becomes closer to being finished, we begin the process of moving their domain away from GoDaddy. After poking around a bit in their account, there doesn’t appear to be any domain names associated with their hosting services. That seemed a little strange, but GoDaddy is always changing up their user interface, so perhaps a phone call would straighten things out. Well, that phone call turned out to be the first in a tell-tale drama all too frequent with domains registered through GoDaddy. The CSR on the other side of the phone can only explain that the domain is not in their control, and never has been. However, he can’t explain how it isn’t in their control when the client has a hosting package associated with the domain’s creation. I’m offered up the only information they can seem to provide, that being the domain was instead, created by a domain reseller, AttractSoft, a domain reseller based in Germany.

At this point, I know I’m in for a lesson in chasing my tail, but I bite, just for a refresher course in giving people the run-around. We give AttractSoft a call, and are met hastily with a language barrier, along with a terrible phone connection. We are told that we need our username and password we used when creating the domain through their website. I begin the explain that the domain wasn’t registered through their company, but with GoDaddy. Again, I’m told a username and password are required to make any changes to the domain. Ok, so this isn’t going anywhere. We decide to go through the registrar of record, eNom.

eNom is the true registrar of the domain. It is within their walls that the domain resides. However, they only deal with their resellers, the people you think are in control of your domain. eNom gave me the same story GoDaddy did, that the domain was registered through AttractSoft, and I’d need to work it out with them. I tried to hash through the logic of an American non-profit organization utilizing a German-based domain reseller to set up their domain only to have GoDaddy then host it. Unfortunately, logic has no place in the world of domain names, only what’s contained in the WHOIS information. What people don’t understand is that even though they created and registered domain, most resellers place themselves as the de facto owners. As the reseller, they become the Administrative and Technical contacts of the domain, so any attempts to transfer the domain will need to go through them. If the domain lapses, they end up gaining control of it, and the it ends up as part of an auction.

What you need to be aware of when registering a domain with a reseller is how much control you’ll have over the domain records. Or, chose to work with a partner, like IMS, that can reassure you that your domain is in their complete control. If you do choose to go it on your own, go directly through a registrar, like Network Solutions, or through a reseller that will relinquish control of your domains and set you up directly with their registrar, like JustHost. As with anything you’ll do for your business, make sure you do your research and ask plenty of questions along the way.

So you’ve got this great idea to get your business into the digital age, right? You need a website, newsletter, social media presence, and a top ranking in the most popular search engines. Piece of cake? You might think so with all of the money spent on advertising the top providers of overnight, digital presence providers. Unfortunately, many business owners are unprepared and fall into these traps. It’s only later that they find out they’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money setting up these do-it-yourself services, and haven’t really seen any benefits.

In this series, we’re going to unravel these decisions. We’ll go over what to avoid and give you guidance on what to look for.