If your website was down for several days, what would you do?  I mean, besides scream, panic, and have anxiety attacks…

If you haven’t heard of Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, you are missing out on a great resource.  The problem is, his website has been down for the past couple of days (around the end of Feb 2013).  I’m sure there is more than just a little anxiety going on with him right now but there is only so much you can do and I’ll bet he is doing it all.  What I want to direct your attention to is how he handles visitors to a site that is down.

Most sites put up redirects, maybe even a message that says “This Site Is Under Maintenance”.  Not Pat; he shot a video.

Thinking outside the box is a cliche but in this case, I think what he did was a great idea.  If your website goes down, it sucks.  If it is down for days, it really sucks.  The worst thing is not that your site is down but that visitors have no idea why it is down, what is going on, or where you are.  Imagine how much better it has been on him since he did something as simple as put up a redirect and a YouTube video?

What can we learn from Pat?  Well, for starters, ask yourself what can you do in your business that, although unexpected, will impress your customers and visitors?  Most often, it is the little things that matter, like communication (even if it is through a video).

If you want to see your Facebook posts, you go to Facebook.

If you want to see your Pinterest pins, you go to Pinterest.

Same thing with Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.

But… what if you wanted to get a picture of your entire social media presence or strategy?  Are you stuck using a bunch of tabs in your browser, madly clicking back and forth?  Maybe not anymore, now that there is RebelMouse. [Read more…]

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. This is the 51st update for my attempt to rank first for my name, Alan Reeves.  If you missed the any of the posts, you can find the first one here, 50th Week update here (last week), and the ones in between on my Project page. Below are the results as of Sunday, 1-13-13 (click here to do your own search for Alan Reeves on Google):

• #10 – The About page on BlueCapra.com, no picture – see why in the strategies section  (up 1 place from last week at #10)
• #27 – My profile at Brand Yourself (down 4 places from last week at #23)
• #32 – My videos on Vimeo (up 1 place from last week at #33)
• #33 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Pinterest (down 2 places last week at #36)
• #55 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Google+ – Old profile that will soon be deleted (down 18 places from last week at #37)

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Searching for information has become a way of life for just about everyone.  When you need to know something, what do you do?  You “Google it”.  Performing online searches have become so common place that we hardly give it a second thought.  So, what happens when you are looking for information on a specific site?  To look at it another way, what are your visitors searching for?  If you don’t know, you are missing out on some great information. It’s time for Search Meter

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(photo by Jesse Wagstaff)

Can you tell a server from a workstation?  Do you think RAID is for bugs around the office? Information technology does not need to be a complicated mess that only your system administrator or your IT consulting company knows about.  In this series of posts, we will discuss the basics of small business IT infrastructure and why having a little knowledge in this area is important to your business.  This first post will give you a rundown of the topics that will be covered in more detail later in the series.  Let’s get started…

Small Business IT infrastructure for non-geeks

Computers

Do you need laptops for your employees, or desktops, or workstations?   [Read more…]