WDTalk

Every successful business has its niche -  (a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fit). Marketing materials are carefully written to emphasize a business’s strengths and their competitor’s weaknesses. A great example that comes to mind was one brand of typesetter which was capable of producing point sizes in tenths of an inch (unique to that brand).

Another was capable of zooming horizontally independent of vertical - in one percent increments (great for Rx labels). When the time came to upgrade or renew leases, thousands of existing documents had been produced using their unique parameters. To maintain uniformity, all new bids had to confirm to those same standards – effectively locking that client into their brand. In document imaging, one brand of copier can produce banner advertisements. Another can direct print PDF documents without opening them first. My point? There is a niche unique to your industry. Have you identified your niche, and are you marketing what makes your products and services unique?

The niche doesn’t have to be technical in nature
A niche could be how fast you deliver, the quality of your work, the level of support you provide, your pre-sales advertising venues, and any number of other things – anything that sets you apart from your competition. In web hosting, most niches relate to more bang for the buck – in bandwidth, RAM, disk space, add-ons and so forth.

The Web Hosting Industry
The web hosting industry is fiercely competitive, just as in many other industries. Web hosting continues to be a mystery to most new entrepreneurs though, even as prospects are rapidly becoming more computer and Internet savvy.  My own grandchildren are extremely Internet savvy, but couldn’t tell you the difference between Linux and Windows, or ASP and PHP.  Most prospects understand the need for an online presence, but are lost when it comes to how to select a decent provider.

Branding
In terms of mass appeal, branding is paramount. Here again, an integral piece of branding is your niche.  I can think of a few web hosting providers who own their niche, not financially, but in the mindset of prospects, just as Kleenex and Xerox own their niche.  If I were to ask someone if they’ve heard of your company, would they be like, “Yeah, they’re highly recommended,” or “Never heard of them.”  Getting from Point ‘Unknown” to Point “Highly Recommended” requires more than competing with similar packages, which I see a lot of online. When prospects compare your website against all the other sites they’ve just visited, is there anything that definitively sets you apart?

I was talking to one of my friends a few weeks back - just before she was to give a business presentation about paper. I know – exciting stuff. Anyway, she was a little apprehensive, as a lot of us are just prior to addressing large groups of prospects.

This was a presentation to a local IAAP (administrative assistant professionals) meeting addressing how to keep costs down, new products, workplace wellness, and how her company could help them. I knew she’d be fine because she’s a pro.

After the presentation, she wrote, “I have to tell you, the “No matter what kind of job you have, we have the paper for it” and the toilet paper has been a big hit and icebreaker.  I’ve had to leave it for people who weren’t in – I’ve gotten phone calls from people that heard about it.  I tell them it’s the sample of the month and their smile for the day!

I don’t know if she used a story board to compile her main point of view, but she did have hand-outs that definitely broke the ice – the tension between her prospects and herself. And those hand-outs were relevant to her business.

She engaged her audience and made them part of the experience.

Involve your prospects in the process - A large part of giving successful business presentations is involving your prospects in the process – asking questions, looking for a show of hands or positive response. Get out from behind the podium and move about – be accessible, make periodic eye contact, pause for effect and emphasis – take command so that all eyes are upon you.

Pattern your presentation to resemble a conversation. Look at your audience as you would in normal conversation, pausing at the end of your points to allow your audience to process what you’ve just said.

My wife is an instructor and excellent communicator. She’s always telling me to touch my prospects senses of sight, smell, taste, feel and hearing. Appealing to their senses engages their emotions. Give your presentation so that your audience will see, smell, taste, feel and hear what you’re saying.

The presentation itself - In the body of your presentation, tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them. And know what you’re telling them – have it down cold, meaning don’t read – let your words flow naturally. And smile – be excited.

Way way back, in the ’80s, I had to give a four hour presentation to a prospect in a bid situation. I knew the content inside out, but dragged my wife into the living room the night before and rehearsed the entire presentation with her. I still believe that preparation helped me win the bid – for a whopping $152,000.00 (including service).

What to avoid - This is a touchy subject. Have you ever filmed yourself giving a presentation? You won’t believe it’s really you on the playback.

• Avoid fillers – ahs, uhs and extended silence.
• Avoid nervous habits like scratching your head.
• Avoid concentrating on one section of your audience – spread the wealth around.
• Avoid excessive hand gestures.
• And don’t turn your back on your audience.

Call to action - Every successful marketing campaign has a ‘call to action.” That could be an offer that’s exclusive to your presentation, or to a deadline set by upper management. Combining value and urgency drives sales campaigns. A  call to action can be as simple as moving the sale forward by setting up appointments, up to signing contracts for immediate discounts or freebies.

Revised Oct 21, 2011

Private versus Public Cloud Solutions
Let’s face it, there are BILLIONS of dollars invested in existing IT infrastructure. As more and more enterprise vendors step into the cloud arena, will business in general migrate to the public cloud or opt instead to keep much of their investment in legacy code and custom applications in-house via a private cloud?

The future of cloud computing is up in the air (pun intended)
At this point, we don’t really know how cloud technology is going to shake out. Even if cloud technology gets huge, there’s likely to be a split between private and public clouds for the foreseeable decade. I think as the industry matures, you’ll see commodity services migrate to the public cloud and mission-critical stuff linger in a private cloud.

OK, so what is cloud computing?
Essentially, cloud computing is simply another way of delivering computing resources to run websites and web applications. It allows clients to scale their operations, horizontally and vertically, based on the demands of their users, while ensuring that there are adequate resources to support their apps. You can think of it as technology services delivered on-demand.

Traditional web hosting services are offered in packages with set limits on disk space and data transfer, so as traffic fluctuates, data and transfer needs vary resulting in excess, unused capacity during lean times.

Who could benefit from Cloud Services?
Essentially, everyone could benefit from cloud technology. Businesses that experience seasonal spikes, especially eCommerce retailers, where 80+ percent of their business peaks during holiday seasons, are prime candidates for cloud services.Cloud computing offers those businesses enough services to meet their increased traffic demands, then the option to scale back after the holidays, aligning their operating costs with revenue.

Taking the lead from the BIG vendors
Nearly all of the BIG vendors, from Microsoft to HP and IBM to CISCO, are talking cloud, with most listing their top two priorities as virtualization and cloud computing (virtualization is a cloud enabler). Google and Amazon already host public clouds while vendors like EMC are promoting solutions that virtualize existing servers and storage (private cloud).

Types of private versus public cloud solutions
As the following graphic from Microsoft highlights, there are choices to both private and public cloud services. Of course, these are not all inclusive. In the following months, I’ll address different cloud scenarios, demystifying some of the confusion about what cloud services really offer

Keywords are words in the content of your website that are relevant to what prospects would be searching for in Google and Bing queries – leading them to your site. Long tailed keywords are three and four word keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever product or service you’re selling. I prefer to call them keywords, then keyword phrases, and finally – extended keyword phrases.

Why are long tailed keywords or extended keyword phrases important?
When prospects use extended keyword phrases in search queries, they tend to know exactly what they’re looking for, which makes it so much more likely that they’ll buy whatever you’re selling once they find your site.

An example – if your business sells exclusive hair products not found in the major chain stores, search queries for shampoo would lead prospects to millions of results – but probably none of them yours. The search query is simply too general.  And the catch here is that if that prospect is searching for shampoo, they’re probably not a good prospect for your product anyway. Using shampoo as a keyword in Google AdWords will probably cost you a ton in advertising dollars, with little return on your investment.

But if you sell Brocato hair products, a search query for Brocato Volumizing Tonic will rank much higher in the search engines, improving your visibility to the world – and in turn, increase your sales.

Taking extended keyword phrases one step further
To capture discriminating shoppers, you should be creating pages based on extended keyword phrases. If you’re a Salon, Car Repair Shop or Web Hosting Provider, there are hundreds of variations of extended keyword phrases that you could use to create unique pages. Each of these pages should have its own title, description meta tag, H1 header tag and content that emphasizes your product or service.

A word of caution
Don’t go overboard on extended keyword phrases or you may SPECIFIC yourself out of business. Of course, if you have 500 visitors to your site looking for shampoo versus 100 visitors searching for Brocato products, which would you prefer? Site analytics have to be matched to conversion ratios.

How do you know what extended keyword phrases to focus on?
The key here, really, is how to determine which extended keyword phrases have sufficient traffic for you to target. Research is paramount. Fortunately, there are tons of programs available. A recent search on Bing for Keyword Analysis Tools returned over 34 million results!

In today’s competitive global marketplace, it is essential to ensure that your customers can see you at any time, day or night. Even short outages impact your business.

System monitoring services provide everything from simple to very advanced server, network and website monitoring and reporting services with a fast, effective and automated method for checking a variety of services. Whether you are monitoring a single server or hundreds of servers distributed around the world, these packages make it easy to manage your monitoring configuration and view real-time monitoring data.

The number and types of services that monitoring packages track varies, but most offer at least three monitors that are checked in varying intervals (generally one to fifteen minutes).

These services and others should be a part of your disaster recovery and business continuity plan.

Advanced Solutions

If your business depends on your online presence, you need an advanced solution that monitors your entire online infrastructure. Today’s websites are becoming increasingly complex, incorporating dynamic content derived from multiple sources, backend web services, email, chat and other communication mechanisms.

There are lower end packages offered FREE, as well as advanced options that track your entire infrastructure.  Some of the services most commercial packages track are HTTP and HTTPS, POP and Secure POP, IMAP and Secure IMAP, SMTP and Secure SMTP, DNS, FTP, SSH, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server databases, RTSP streaming media, ICMP ping, and arbitrary TCP/IP ports.

Options

The types of options offered are generally shorter intervals between monitoring, the number of monitoring locations, alerts by email, additional monitors, web page content filtering, HTTP password protection monitoring, monthly reports, online statistics, a control panel, DNS monitoring, public statistics, ping monitoring, alert failure limit, custom time zones, error details, web server monitoring, POP3 and SMTP email server monitoring, FTP server monitoring, multiple alert contacts, XML/RSS statistics and a statistics download.

With some you can create user accounts with restricted access. With others you can follow 301 or 302 redirects and monitor the resulting web page.

How far back can monitoring statistics and reports be archived?

Free plans are typically only archived for a few months, but with most packages, detailed statistics can be archived forever.

What about failover?

With many packages, their monitoring infrastructure is architected to withstand failure of any component. If one monitoring node is inaccessible, checks begin immediately from a alternate node and continue until the original node returns to service so that your servers never go unmonitored.

Intelligent Services

Some packages can actually analyze your online presence and intelligently determine the services that need to be monitored. Even with the most basic of online businesses, there can be 15 or more critical services that can impact your business.

What is it you need to know and why?

You need to know the status of your network (network performance) and availability every single minute so you can react immediately to any service disruption. It’ s always better to know first before your clients starting calling with issues. Monitoring packages also help determine hosting company’s compliance with their Service Level Agreements.  (SLA)

False Positives

Are these packages failsafe? False positives have been a problem with some packages, but as global resources become more affordable, confirmation of service outages has become more reliable.

Other uses for monitoring packages

You can extract sales and marketing data about the quality of your infrastructure

Use the same tools to gain more knowledge about the infrastructure of your competitors.

Use as evidence with suppliers of your infrastructure.

As a manager

As a manager you may already have tools for monitoring your infrastructure from the inside, but these packages give insight to the end-user experience. You’ll not only be able to properly analyze the availability of your company’s services and estimate lost revenue, but you’ll also have the information you need to make demands on external network and service providers if they’re not living up to your expectations, or their SLAs.

What are some the packages available?

• NPG   Network Management and Monitoring
• Panopta
• Pingdom   Pingdom Web site monitoring for 100% uptime. Measure your downtime.
• AlertSite   Web Site Monitoring and Web Performance Management Solutions From AlertSite
• Internet Uptime Monitor   Internet Uptime Monitor – Monitoring Server Software for Your Website
• Hyperspin   Hyperspin Website Monitoring, Web Server Monitoring Service
• Site Uptime   SiteUptime – Website Monitoring Service
• Alertra   Alertra Website Monitoring Service
• Uptime Auditor   Uptime Auditor – Check if your website is online now!
• ezwebsitemonitoring   EZ Website Monitoring • Free Keyword Tracking & Uptime Checking
• ServerMojo   Remote server monitoring – check your dedicated or virtual server uptime and get notifications for free – servermojo.com!
• Nagios   Nagios – The Industry Standard in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
• Cacti   Cacti: The Complete RRDTool-based Graphing Solution
• Zenoss  Zenoss Open Source Server and Network Monitoring – Core and Enterprise
• PRTG   PRTG Network Monitor – intuitive network monitoring software
• MRTG   Network Admins’ favorite free tools – Scrutinizer and MRTG
• Hyperic   Systems Monitoring, Server Monitoring & Systems Management Software | Hyperic
• Webmetrics   Website Monitoring, Load Testing & Web Performance Management | Webmetrics

Is your in-house IT department prepared – for brown outs, black outs, personnel shortages, ISP issues, internal and external sabotage, equipment failures, new regulations (email retention) and a whole host of other issues?

Recently, an Internet forum with – thousands of members was hacked, and in the process the criminals deleted their backups, stole email and credit card information, then disseminated it across the Internet. Could this happen to your in-house network? Hackers are constantly on the prowl looking for openings to exploit internal networks as well. Is yours protected?

How would you as an owner know if your IT department was prepared? Do you have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place? Are they routinely reviewed and updated? Do you strategize with your IT personnel, or do they basically run the show? If they said you needed to be PCI DSS compliant, would you know what they were talking about?

Managing IT for multiple departments requires some give and take - Is your IT department empowered to make smart decisions? Not all IT geeks are business savvy, so my question to you would be, “Do your departments talk to each other?” HR certainly has unique requirements, as do Sales, Customer Support and Admin. Do they operate in a vacuum or together as a cohesive unit? An appropriate amount of give and take between departments increases awareness of your business’s core focus and mission.

Run anti-spyware and anti-malware programs, and keep them up-to-date. I’ve installed Microsoft Security Essentials on all of my systems and it works great. Don’t mix anti-virus software on your system. This is a recipe for disaster. I had Malwarebytes and MSE on my Vista desktop and it constantly locked up. Once I removed MSE, no more lock ups.

Disable file indexing. Indexing extracts data from every file on your hard drive to create a searchable keyword index. The idea is sound – it allows you to search for words or phrases inside of documents, but it’s also VERY resource intensive.

Add additional memory. Memory executes in nanoseconds, while hard drives run in milliseconds, even at 15,000 rpm. Obviously, the more fast memory you have, the less often your system will have to access your slow hard drive. The same applies to CPU cache. A larger CPU cache adds another layer of speed to your system.

Not all systems use the same configuration of RAM modules. Check your motherboard manual or specs – find out the maximum RAM you can install and in what configuration.

Run a monthly disk cleanup. Temporary files can take up Gigabytes of space if allowed to accumulate over time – so schedule a monthly disk cleanup to delete these files. And even though a debate rages over rather to defragment large hard drives, in testing this has demonstrated performance boosts.

Streamline start up programs. Eliminate any programs you don’t really need from your start up routine.

Downsize programs via the Control Panel. Use the ADD/REMOVE Programs from within the control panel to delete programs you no longer need or use. Many of them run background processes that drain your systems resources. For example, if you’re using Windows Media 10 or 11, do you really need RealPlayer?

Perform Windows Updates regularly. Pay particular attention to critical and security updates.

Miscellaneous Stuff. Do you really need drivers for printers that are no longer attached to your desktop or on your network? Erase them. And do you really need 3000 fonts? Unless you’re a graphic artist, trim down the one’s you’ll never use.