Imagine if you filled out a contact form on Apple’s website then the email you got back was from rebecca_1989@hotmail.com. You would no doubt be worried because it didn’t come from rebecca@apple.com, right? Your business should be no different. Fortunately, there are many remedies for this, some better than others depending on your need and budget.

Let’s compare:

Google Apps

Riding on the back of the wildly popular Gmail platform, Google Apps is the king of email solutions. Not only does each inbox come with 25GB of space and a 99.99% uptime, but has IMAP connectivity and customized layouts. Everything you never knew you needed. But it doesn’t stop there. Each user has their own Google account, which they can use to sign up for other Google services and login authorizations. And we’ve found unlimited uses from the included Google Calendar and Google Docs. There are many more features and benefits, too numerous to mention here. So if you’ve got $5.00/user/month, it’s worth the cost.

Zoho

Bothered by advertisements around your inbox? Zoho’s three packages (one of them FREE) pride themselves in being ad free, with impressively low costs. Zoho has an overwhelming suite of other products for collaboration, project management and business that all run on their infrastructure. Zoho boasts of their security and reliability, and for good reason. The setup is easy and their tech support is very helpful. And like I mentioned, they have a free package for up to 5 addresses, and the others, depending on the space you require, are $2.50 & $3.50/user/month.

Yahoo!

Some of our clients have spent their entire internet lives using Yahoo! and are most comfortable with its interface and functionality. Like Google Apps, Yahoo! has customized their system to accommodate your website’s email accounts. If you need 10 email addresses or fewer the cost is just $9.95/month, total. They even offer you free domain name registration and an ad-free inbox. These sound like wonderful benefits, but we would be silly not to mention that they only offer POP3 connectivity, which is a major downfall. Learn the difference between POP3 and IMAP.

GoDaddy

Folks seem pretty polarized on whether or not they like GoDaddy. Whatever your opinion, it’s difficult to deny them of offering a stellar, affordable business email solution. For $3.49/month (discounts available on longer terms) you get 10 email addresses on your domain name with unlimited storage. They offer IMAP connectivity, a group calendar and an online storage tool for sending larger attachments. Need more than ten email addresses? The scalable package offers incredibly reasonable prices.

Your Hosting Provider

Many website hosting providers are offering free email accounts as part of the hosting packages they offer. Bluehost, for example, offers unlimited email accounts on each hosting package of $4.95/month. MediaTemple gives their customers 1,000 email addresses on hosting packages that can support up to 100 websites! DreamHost too offers unlimited email accounts, each provider offering great uptime, security and IMAP connectivity.

Getting Your Small Business Online

The web experts of Fame Production Group have helped hundreds of clients setup thousands of email accounts on all these platforms and many more. If you have questions about which system might be best for your business, contact our team for free consultation. We are always excited to help!

With POP3, when you pull up your email account in Outlook, for example, it fetches all the emails and brings them to your computer. If you read an email there, or reply to something, or delete it in Outlook, that activity will not be shared with the email connection on your iPhone. Delete an email on your iPad and you’ll have to delete it AGAIN on your iPhone. The inbox doesn’t sync across every device or third party tool.

With IMAP, it does. IMAP is a form of “cloud” storage where, if you read a message from your Samsung Galaxy S3, within a minute it will show as read on every other platform, whether you’re checking it online or through Outlook or whatever! An IMAP connection is most preferred and will save you time and money. We don’t suggest starting an account without it.

For a more in-depth look, check out Ms. Sieber’s detailed walk through.

What it shouldn’t be, is both.

In the earlier days of the internet it was required to have the “www” at the beginning of your website. And while it is an antiquated setting, websites still use it. This may be because people are more familiar with typing the www in front of a domain name, or that, in print it helps readers recognize a domain name if it ends in .net or .us or .me or .co.

And don’t just take it from us, there are arguments for both. Like the “www”? Visit www.yes-www.org for some affirmation. And while their website < no-www.org > isn’t still standing, their Twitter account is very active.

If your domain name is longer and a bit complicated for some people, perhaps choosing to leave out the “www” is a better decision. If your website was www.wwmealswithwinchester.com – you can see how the leading “www” may be confusing for some users, right? Again, personal preference.

Whatever your choice, they should both lead to the same place. For example, if I type in nytimes.com it redirects me to www.nytimes.com – which is the same website, just listed differently. And that’s what your site should do.

We recommend using a 301 Redirect to point users to the correct page. After that, register with Google’s Webmaster Tools and set your preference there as well.

Further Reading: SEOmoz, HyperArts

Social signals are indicators taken from various social networks that show search engines such as Google the importance of a particular URL. What that means is a link that has been tweeted, liked on Facebook, or +1’d on Google+ many times will have stronger social signals than a link that has not. Also, the retweets, likes, and +1s of more popular and followed users probably count for more than those from the average social media user. Having a higher number of likes, retweets, etc. as well as those from valued users shows search engines that a link is valuable. They react accordingly, ranking it a bit higher than they would otherwise.

How much higher will your URL rank in the search engines if it has strong social signals compared to if it does not? This is the question that no one is certain about. Not wanting anyone to be able to game the system, Google and other search engines keep their algorithms secret. Many studies regarding social signals have been conducted, but the results are varied. No one has “cracked the code” yet. Still, there are some things experts say will definitely help.

You can take advantage of social signals and have your site rank higher as a result, even without knowing exactly how it works. First, make sure your site is getting out there. Post links on Facebook, twitter, and Google+ regularly. If you don’t have a blog, create one. People aren’t going to want to follow you if you post your website’s main URL everyday, and that sort of repetition won’t get you many “likes” or retweets. A blog is a good way to have new links and content to share regularly. Don’t spam people, but do try to get shares and retweets from people with a lot of followers every once in a while. Finally, use Google+ and Google Authorship for sharing your own posts. Many SEO experts have speculated that Google gives their own social network preference when ranking sites.

Does this sound like a lot? Don’t worry–we will provide more detail in future posts about SEO and social media. And, as always, we are available to advise you and carry out your social media and search engine optimization strategy. Feel free to contact us today for a free proposal and more information.

WordPress is affordable.
Wordpress itself is free and constantly being updated. Even if you hire someone to set it up for you and make customizations, the cost savings will still be passed onto you. Going with a WordPress-based site is quicker and easier for you and your developer than having something custom coded from scratch.

WordPress is easy to manage.
If you want to make a change to your website–even a seemingly major change–you can often do it yourself without learning html or having to call a web developer. The back end is extremely user-friendly and intuitive.

WordPress gives good support.
Wordpress has extensive, free online support available as well. If you search whatever question or problem you’re having, you will most likely find multiple people who have already encountered (and resolved) the same thing. You can also post to their support forum with questions and someone will usually reply within a day (at no cost).

WordPress gives a variety of options.
Because WordPress is a free, open-source platform, developers around the world are constantly creating new theme and plug-ins you can use with it. Many of these are also free. Your WordPress site could function as an ecommerce store, or as a multi-user review site depending on how you set it up.

Whether you need an entirely new website for your small business or want to upgrade one you already have, we’re here to help. We offer low-cost WordPress site development for small businesses and professionals starting at only $500. Contact us today for a free estimate.

Your web designer probably uses some crazy language you’ve never heard of. For most small business owners this is their first jump into having their own website and FPG promises to make the process as easy as possible.

Check out part one of our series and get that much closer to understanding what your web designer is talking about. Ready for a website of your own? We can help you get started!

In this video learn about the header, footer, sidebar and widgets.

On average, the width of a 15″ laptop screen is 1,024 pixels wide and 768 pixels tall. Further, the entire width of most websites is less than 1,000 pixels wide. And though that super nice digital camera you got last Christmas takes beautiful photos, they can often clock in at over 4,500 pixels wide. But why would that even matter?

Most of FPG’s clients use WordPress to manage their websites and uploading a photo that is 4,500 pixels wide by 2,530 pixels tall is not only HUGE in its file size, but means that if displayed at full size, is over four times the width of most computer monitors! Then if the public tries to pull up that page at home it would take a significantly longer time to load the page because your image is so large.

Thankfully WordPress has long had a solution for this issue. You might have noticed that the file uploader goes into a state called “Crunching” after an image upload has been successful. Crunching is the process of cutting down your uploaded image into different sizes. The sizes depend on your media settings and any additional sizes you have registered. This way you have multiple versions of the same image, all saved at smaller sizes. Instead of loading that gigantic image onto the page you can now use a smaller version, like the “medium” designation.

We recommend visiting your WordPress website’s Media Settings page under “Settings >> Media” and adjusting the default image resizing dimensions to match your website’s layout.

What is a twitter chat?
It is exactly what it sounds like–a chat on a particular topic that takes place publicly on twitter. You can read and participate in the chat by using the chat’s hashtag. The website Tweetchat makes it easy for you to view and respond to tweets in a twitter chat while that chat is going on.

How can a twitter chat benefit me and my business?
When used correctly, twitter chats can benefit you greatly. You will interact with many people and probably gain more twitter followers. You will increase your networking circle and make useful business connections. Depending on the chat topic, you might learn helpful tips to improve your business. Starting or hosting a twitter chat can benefit you by positioning you as an expert in your field.

Where do I find twitter chats to participate in?
Unfortunately, there is no universal list of active twitter chats so you’ll have to do a little digging. Take whatever topic or industry you’re most interested in and search that term plus “twitter chat.” Also, scour the web for “best twitter chats” lists. Earlier this year, Mashable listed the top social media-related twitter chats, for example. Practical Ecommerce listed the top small business twitter chats in an article this year as well. If you can’t find the twitter chat you’re looking for, go ahead and start it yourself! And then–of course–tell us about it in the comments.

We hope this post opened you up to the fun world of twitter chats. We encourage you to follow us on twitter at @afameproduction and hope to interact with you over there soon. Happy chatting!

Each day Google, and all the other search engines, are combing the internet. They send robots through millions of new websites, blog postings, updates, press releases and more.

In the past if you wanted to know if new web pages had been added about you or your business, you’d have to conduct a Google search each day and dig through the results, trying to keep track of what’s new and what isn’t in your head.

Several years in the making, Google has a free service that notifies you via email of new items that have been added to their database with your specific search term. In their own words:

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you’ll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

And we’d even add – to keep track of who is writing about you or your business. Use Google’s tools to narrow it down by the type of result, how often you’d like to receive this new information and to which email address.

It should be no surprise that we have a Google Alert setup for “Fame Production Group”. And when new pages, news stories, blog postings, videos or more are added to Google’s index, we are notified.

You can have multiple Google Alerts and make edits to them at any time. And just in case you were interested, here is a link to setup an alert for Yahoo!.

The iconic Nike swoosh.

If you take a split-second glance at the face of a person you recognize, dozens or even hundreds of thoughts and feelings immediately come to mind. By just glimpsing the person’s face you might feel happy or angry or afraid. You might have certain memories come to mind, or feel compelled to say or do certain things you wouldn’t say or do otherwise.

A logo is the “face” of a company. Oftentimes, your company’s logo will be more important than the name of your company. How many times have you met a person and then forgotten their name, but remembered their face? Humans are visual creatures. A logo has the powerful ability to quickly trigger emotions. Think of the Nike swoosh, or Apple’s apple logo. You can instantly picture them in your mind, right? And based on your thoughts of each company, you most likely feel a range of emotions, positive or negative.

A logo Fame Production Group made for our client, Yo Soy Ella.

The colors, font, size, and design involved in your logo should adequately represent the type of brand identity you’re trying to put forth. Small businesses commonly make logo mistakes in an attempt to cut costs. You want your logo to be eye-catching, representative of your brand, and in line with good design principles. That means that not only do you need a high-quality, custom logo, but also that what works for your business cards might need to be altered for your Facebook page or twitter icon.

The famous Apple logo.

As a small business owner–especially one just starting out–you have many different things concerning you. From building a client base to hiring competent staff members, there are dozens of priorities vying for your attention. Please do not forget about your logo in the midst of all of these. Fame Production Group offers graphic design services and branding consultation. We can help you determine what type of image you want to convey, and then develop a logo for you or revamp your current logo. Contact us today for a free consultation.