The Welcome Email

This is a quick screen shot of the welcome email.

The Pages Guide

The Facebook pages guide is a fun and simple step by step guide to help you manage your page and it gives some great best practise suggestions. The guide uses a fictitious company to illustrate the points with some fun layout and illustrations.

You can access the guide using this link: Pages Guide: Building Your Business with Facebook

 Facebook Ads

Facebook provides you with a link to their Pages Manual which is actually a guide to getting started with Facebook Ads. It is an easy to understand guide with great diagrams and examples that should take the guesswork out of advertising on Facebook (or at least make things a little clearer).

The link to the Facebook Ads Guide is here: Pages Manual

So there you have it some great insight on using Facebook pages, direct from Facebook themselves. We hope this has helped you. Let us know if it has, by leaving a comment.

1: Permission

The first step before embarking on any type of email campaign is getting permission to send information/emails to the addresses in your database. Spam is defined as any unsolicited email that is sent to individuals or bulk mailing lists without their consent.

2: Relevance

If you want to keep your customers interested, you have to give them valuable and relevant information that they want to receive. The information that you send out should be in keeping with the field of your business and should add value to the reader. Most people don’t want to know that you stubbed your toe on the weekend – it isn’t that they don’t like you, they are just busy and their time is precious.

3: Timing

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Test different days and times of day for sending. This will help you determine when your target market is more receptive to your campaigns. The content of your emails and the industry you are targeting will also determine the response to your campaigns. Knowing your industry is vital.

4: Content

As always, Good Content is King and the core ingredient of every successful email campaign. It is import to ensure that your content provides valuable information to an appropriate market in a language and style they will understand.

5: Design

Unfortunately, many businesses undervalue the importance of good design in an email campaign. A badly designed email can seriously damage your professional profile. You should always utilise the opportunity to increase your brand awareness and cement your corporate image through the professional design of your email campaign.

6: Sending

Make sure that you always send your bulk email using a proper bulk email service. Sending your campaigns via Outlook or your usual mail client will only result in many of the mails ending up trapped in junkmail or spam boxes and you may be flagged as a spammer and put your domain in jeopardy.

If you want more information or have any questions about sending out bulk emails to your customers give us a call or email us we look forward to helping you stay in contact with your customers.

The best way to get your business represented on Facebook is by creating a Facebook page. Not sure how? Don’t worry, it isn’t a technical process at all and we have set up a step-by-step guide below, with screenshots to make it even easier.

STEP 1: Create your Facebook page

Go to www.facebook.com/pages to begin

Click the “+ Create Page” button on the top right of the screen

Choose the category your business falls under:

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organization or Institution
• Brand or Product
• Artist, Band or Public Figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or Community

STEP 2: Fill in your company details

Once you have chosen your category, you will be required to fill in the details of your business.

Make sure you tick the box next to “I agree to Facebook Pages Terms” and then click “Get Started.”

Congratulations, you have created your Facebook page. Now let’s make it truly yours.

STEP 3: Add a photo or tattoo

It is time to personalise your page by adding an image. It can be a logo, a photo of a store or a photo of a person — whatever makes the most sense for your business. Some people create custom graphics or tattoos specially for their Facebook page. The image below is a custom Facebook tattoo.

It is advisable to utilise as much of the space provided by Facebook to represent your brand. The maximum dimensions allowed are 180px X 540px and the file size must be smaller than 4mb.

Just bear in mind that your image will always be cropped to a square for use around Facebook, make sure that your design can account for this.

STEP 4: Get your first “likes”

The easiest way to get your first page “likes” is to suggest your new page to your friends. Click on the link on the right of your page.

Now click on the friends you would like to suggest your new page to. Once you have selected the friends you want, just click “submit” and those friends will all receive your page recommendation.

STEP 5: Add Content

Now it is time to start writing content.

When it comes to status updates, you can choose to share the post with everyone or customise it to a specific area or language. This comes in handy if your business operates in a number of different areas.

If you want to post a link to an article or website don’t just type it into your status as you won’t get the full benefit of the link.

Rather click on link and paste the URL in the space provided.

This will pull in a thumbnail as well as the page heading and give you a much better post.

STEP 6: Insight Tools

Facebook Insights is a wonderful tool that can help you run your Facebook page effectively. It can help you determine when to post and what kind of content does well based on the feedback you get from your users. Measuring the success of social media quite a complicated task. But any way you look at it, activity on your Facebook page is always good news, and you can keep tabs on all activity by clicking “Facebook Insights” on the right sidebar, just above the suggest to friends link.

So that is it, now you have your Facebook page. Did this help you? Let us know by commenting below.

Happy Creating :0)

Home Page

This is the landing page of your website and is where you will provide a summary of who you are, what you offer and why people should do business with you. This information needs to be interesting and engaging. You want to grab your visitors’ attention and make them want to read more. Keep your content relative to your business, engage your reader and make them want to read more and page through your website. Ideally you want your customer to move from your “Home” page to your “Products and services” page. Keep this in mind when you draft your text. Do not elaborate about your company or your company’s history on this page. You will have plenty of time to establish your credibility on your “About us” page.

About Us

This is your opportunity to elaborate more about the history of business, who you are and how you are different from your competitors.  Here you can establish your credibility in your field, feel free to list past and present projects and clients, keep in mind that when potential customers are reading this page they want to know more about you, who you have worked for and what experience you have.

Products and Services

This is where you elaborate on the products and services you offer. List them with a brief description and how they will benefit the visitor and solve a problem for them. If you have many products and services, consider separating them into categories with a different page for each and providing a link to these individual pages from your Products and Services page. Remember, this is your Sales Page and everything on it should entice the visitor to buy from or work with you.

Testimonials or Portfolio or Gallery Page

This is your opportunity to show the visitor how fantastic you and your business are. Testimonials increase your credibility in the eyes of potential customers and well-written testimonials leave the visitor wanting the same experience your satisfied customer had.

If you are in a creative field, including a portfolio of your work will give you an opportunity to show off your work and demonstrate to visitors just what you can do.

If you aren’t in a creative field, a gallery page with photos of your staff, premises and you busy at work helps the visitor get a clearer view of your business and the people in it.

Contact Us

This page is never optional. You need to provide the visitor with the details of all the ways that they can get hold of you. Here you should include your phone and fax numbers, email address, physical address, postal address, skype address your social media links and if you have a physical office, a map or directions. Having a contact form on this page is also a great idea to allow visitors the feeling of instant access to your company.

These pages all help you get the most out of your website and provide visitors with the information they need to make an informed decision and choose you above your competitors.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BsocSci (Hons)
Co-owner of Eze-hosting

Websites mainly fall into two categories: Static Websites and Content or Owner Managed Websites.

Static Websites are built using plain HTML, XHTML and CSS although it may have some added features through javascript, flash and php. The website information is contained within the code and HTML editing software is usually needed in order for the website to be updated or changed. These websites are usually Brochure websites where the content, for the whole remains unchanged.

Content Managed Websites involve the design and implementation of a coded framework that allows those individuals with certain privileges to add and remove content and pages on the website. Little or no coding knowledge is usually required to update the site and access is usually granted through a password protected administration area. These websites include blogs, blogsites, forums, e-commerce websites or online shops and wikis (online encyclopaedias).

So what is the best website to choose? Depending on the desired result, I will hands down always recommend a blogsite to my customers. A blogsite is a combination of a website (with pages) and a blog (with posts). It allows visitors the comfort of a typical website structure while also having access to updated information via the blog.

A blog site can easily be upgraded to an e-commerce website should your business expand in the future.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BSocSci (Hons)
Co-owner of Eze-hosting

“But, I just have a small business… I am just a one-man-band… I don’t have products to sell…” These are just a few of the hesitations I hear on a regular basis. The truth is that whether you are a local plumber with a bakkie and one employee, a scrapbooking enthusiast that sells custom made supplies on the side or a retail shop with thousands of product, you need a website.

People are searching online for your products, your services, your business and even you. With web-enabled mobile devices, netbooks, notebooks, laptops and regular desktops available on an enormous scale and the growing popularity of wi-fi hotspots, uncapped adsl and 3G, the internet is pretty much everywhere and it is quickly becoming the first resource people turn to when they are looking for information.

Need an exterminator? Google it. Looking for a restaurant? Google it. Need a holiday? Google it. Need a local doctor? Google it.

If your business isn’t online and you don’t have a professional website, you will never appear on the Google or Search Engine’s results. Potential customers may never find you, they may never know you exist and if they don’t know you exist, how can they purchase your product or service?

Having a website allows your customers access to your business 24/7. Customers don’t always buy from you when you are ready for them, they buy when they are ready. A website is like a highly capable and loyal rep that works around the clock and doesn’t ask for overtime. What could be better than that?

However, do take note, that having a badly designed website that looks like a kids school project can damage your website more than not having a website at all. What it says is that you don’t place much value on the site and thereby on your business. You need to get the right advice and build a website that you can be proud to refer your clients to.

Your website represents your brand as much as your bricks and mortar office or shop does. You need to invest as much time and energy in setting it up as you would your shop front. Not only does your website provide potential customers with information about your company and what it offers, it adds credibility to your business and helps shorten the time it takes for a potential customer to trust you. At the end of the day, people only do business with vendors they trust.

There are two things you should remember when considering whether you really need a website or not:

1. If you do not invest in the professional appearance of your business, no one else will.
2. Without a website, no one will be able to find you online. They will however, find your competitors.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BSocSci (Hons)
Co-owner of Eze-hosting

When choosing your domain extension (the part that comes after the “.”), decide on your target market. Are you targeting international companies or is your business mainly localised to South Africa. If your target audience is mainly in South Africa, a .co.za domain would best suit your business otherwise go for a .com or .net.

If the domain name you want is not available, try adding a prefix or suffix such as “my” or “the”, “for you” or “online”. To view whether your domain name is available, visit a website with a domain search (such as www.eze-hosting.co.za and search for it) if it is available order it. It costs around R100 to R200 to register your domain, depending on who you do it through and once it is done, you have that domain for at least a year when you have to option to renew it. Even if you don’t have a website yet, register your domain as soon as you can to avoid it being snatched up by someone else.

If you don’t get it 100% right the first time, it isn’t a huge train smash, you can register other domains and point them to the same website to make it easily accessible.

Here are a few interesting facts about Domain Names:

1. The Guinness Book of Records’ lists the world’s longest domain name as  http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com/ which is the name of a Welsh village. Another candidate for this honour is http://www.iamtheproudownerofthelongestlongestlongestdomainnameinthisworld.com/
2. According to the registering law domains must be a minimum of three characters long but Google recently received special permission to register www.g.cn which is now the world’s shortest domain name
3. The first domain ever to be registered was symbolics.com registered on 15^th March 1985 and is still in existence today.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BSocSci (Hons)
Co-owner of Eze-hosting

1. Browse to konsoleH (https://secure.konsoleh.co.za)
2. Login with your DOMAIN NAME and DOMAIN password
3. Select or search for a domain name in the ‘Hosting Service’ tab
4. You will now be able to view all the details of your domain, including your ftp details. The menu on the left gives you access to your file manager, statistics and mail manager.

A domain is made up of two parts, the domain name and the Top Level Domain (TLD) or extension. The TLD is the part that is found to the right of the dot (“.”). The most common TLDs are .com, .org, .net and, in South Africa .co.za. .com, .org and .net are international TLDs and .co.za is a country code or country specific TLD (such as .co.uk or .co.au) specific to South Africa.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BSocSci (Hons)
Co-Owner of Eze-hosting

The main page of the website is called the home page. This is the landing page that is reached when you type the URL into your browser. All other pages in the website are called subpages. Each page in the website is linked together so that you can navigate between them to access the information you are looking for.

Websites are written in a number of different coding languages, the most common being Hyper Text Markup Language (html) and Cascading Style Sheets (css). These languages control what information is contained within the website and instructions on how it should look. Web browsers are then able to interpret the code and display the website on your screen.

Written by Veronica Clare Ridderhof
BSocSci (Hons)
Co-owner of Eze-hosting