What do you get when you tape some wires to your face and synchronize them to music? Something hypnotic, strange, and hilarious.

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by Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF

FacebookIn my last newsletter we talked about social networking. I explained what it was and I gave you a few examples of where you could find it. So, today I would like to take one step closer to this new found beast and see if it has anything to offer in terms of using it to help your business grow.

Of course not all social networks are created equal. There are many different sites out there with very different opportunities. You must first determine what you want to achieve out of social networking online and then find the site that will give you the biggest benefits. Today we will focus on the ever popular Facebook. (more…)

Remember that clique in high school? That group of kids connected by some common interest or belief or personal characteristic? Or how about the Chamber of Commerce, your local church, the Rotary Club, or the Girl Scouts? These are all examples of social networks in our traditional world views. Now in the days of Web 2.0, we have numerous free online services that are allowing connections to be made between people and businesses and it can be hard to know where to begin or how you can use these services to promote your business. Many social networking sites are available and most target specific types of connections.

Here’s a short list of sites to explore and their intended focus: (more…)

by Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF

There is quite a bit of talk on the Internet these days about this new social media service called Twitter. So what is it? Well, basically, it’s a way to keep up to date with what people in your social circle are doing. This is what Twitter has to say about itself:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate
and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers
to one simple question: What are you doing?”

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Your success as a business person firmly rests on your ability to motivate your customers and clients to perform the actions you want. You want to change what they think, feel, believe and do. I ran across a fact-filled website, ChangingMinds.org,  describing many methods of persuasion and I’d like to share three of these by describing examples you can use to motivate your customers to buy.

(1) Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
This method of persuasion relies on a sequence of actions by you (the seller) to trigger a response in the customer and ultimately motivate them to act on your final call to action.

• Grab Their Attention -  All you need is a simple attention grabber. Let’s say you work a cosmetics counter. Your customers are likely motivated by their need for beauty. Your displays could invite them to come closer for a look with big, glossy blow-ups of their favorite celebrity using the product. (more…)

Looking to waste some time and happen to have a headshot handy? If so, then navigate over to Yearbook Yourself, choose your gender, upload a photo and start playing. Once you’ve adjusted the tilt, size, and position of your head, you can start browsing by year and see your mug pasted on a beauty from the past. Granted this all comes with some clever advertising, but that’s easy to ignore or accept.

I quickly exhausted all the options with my own head, so I tried out a picture of my dog, Blue. He’s a sweet old boy and always up for some playful creativity. I showed him these pics, but he thinks he’s prettier than any of these guys.

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I got a question today from Joyce over at Waechter’s Silk Shop asking about security for her MIVA Merchant store. She wanted to know if the host company, Hostasaurus, would notify her if her site was hacked. Since all of my MIVA Merchant clients use Hostasaurus as their hosting company, I thought it might be nice to post their answer here for all to see:

Only if a bug in software on the website was exploited remotely via a script.  If someone obtained their username and password for FTP or the store admin, we wouldn’t know that a particular successful login to the site wasn’t from an authorized person.    If they have Encryption turned on in the store admin, the only way the credit card numbers could be obtained via the website would be if that person had the Encryption passphrase, as the card numbers are stored encrypted in the raw store databases.

If there was a PC infected with a virus that was sending keystroke information to a third party, then that party could have also obtained the passphrase and the login information.  They should make sure antivirus is up to date and do a full scan of any computers that access the account.