Read this great interview of Supper Solutions’ President Leanne Deister, by Mom Entrepreneur.  Supper Solutions utilizes our Live-Kitchen.com Meal Assembly Software Application to reduce operating expenses, organize client orders, manage inventory, and take payments.

Visit Supper Solutions now.

So, here’s a tip that’s so simple, many of us have forgotten it - I figured most people had already taken this precaution…but I found that not to be the case.

It is SO Simple, yet it may save you a lot of grief and lost sales. Ready?

• Create a 400 Error Redirect (through Apache or whatever web server you are using) if traffic doesn’t reach you in the manner you were expecting it to arrive.

It’s literally a precaution, in case things don’t turn out how you expected them to.  As I was researching a few blogs I clicked on an advertisement, not sure why - I was curious as to what they were selling I guess.

Here is the Ad I clicked on:

After clicking on this Ad that this company is paying for…guess what comes next?

A brilliant Sales page?

A phenomenally written blog post?

A corporate website with logos of their fancy clientelle?

NO! Here’s what I end up with

Not Found

The requested URL /jvsrc=BtoBlonline_Banners was not found on this server.

You’ve got to be kidding me….

You worked SO hard to put together your Internet Marketing campaign, you’ve got Ads rolling, you’ve got landing pages created, and in case someone ends up at a place you didn’t expect - you are going to lose that visitor because the URL got jacked up or a page was moved.

The fix is easy…so easy.  In your Apache settings or whatever Web Server you are using, you can setup a .htaccess redirect - if your web host supports it.

You can just put in a simple line like this into your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

and create a notfound.html page for users to see instead of the 404 Not Found message.  At least then you haven’t lost them and you’ve gotten a 2nd chance.  Sometimes a 2nd chance is all you need to capture a lead.

Consider it…prepare for the unknown!  I’d love to hear from others on simple ways to dodge Murphy and make the most of your Web site or blog.

Comments?

Alright, this may be a stretch in some regard but it was quite apparent and clear to me.

We are putting together our Serious Internet Marketing Dashboard and through a lot of research I’m finding that there are a lot of Internet Marketing Consultants out there. They charge anywhere from $75 - $1,000 an hour.  Seriously, $1,000 an hour.  Why would anyone pay this?

I’ll tell you why someone would pay $1,000 an hour. Because it’s an investment.  Warren Buffet did an interview last month with Charlie Rose and talked about our current economic “issues” and why they’ve occurred.  He talks about the stock market, un-real valuations, and why people still bought.

Why do people spend THOUSANDS of dollars on coaching and e-books to help them market on the Internet?  Because it’s easier than marketing in the real world, and there’s the potential for great RETURN on your investment.

But, you have to do it right…for long term growth.  Slow and steady. It’s not about a big bang to profit, it’s about growth, reputation, and building.

Buffet talks about his $3 Billion dollar investment in GE…Cash is King, but only if you use it…but before you use it, you have to earn it!

In essence this video is about not following and charting your own course…with low start up funds and almost no free time, Internet Marketing is yoru best bet to creating new revenue sources.  Think like an Investor, not like an Imitator, or an Idiot!

When Google is the front door, the side door, the hidden key under the mat, the cash register, the finder of everything we ever lost, and everything we wished we’d lost, what comes next? When everyone is a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, a radio station, a conference, a curator, an educator, a business owner, a shopkeeper, what do we have? When you and I are the creators, the consumers, and the collaborators of this media, what does this mean to us?Social media business strategy and more - chrisbrogan.com, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.

Social media provides new tools for business to interact directly with their customer base.  This may be a good thing or a bad thing - that depends on your business and how good your product is.

The fear from businesses may be that they receive some bad reviews on their product or services.  This is a fear of all businesses. In most cases you are trying to provide the best product or service possible and even though you care what your customers think, you don’t want your potential customers to view any negative feedback.

This poses a dilema, to have the best product you must solicite feedback.  You can do this privately through e-Survey software such as ratepoint.com. Social Media now provides a tool and people will use it whether or not you decide to listen.  With blogs, Facebook, and other mediums to rate your product or just chat about your product, some may already be providing useful nuggets of information; yet you aren’t listening.

I encourage you to take heed of these networks and watch your brand and your customer base, they are out there and they can provide you with valuable feedback.  Feedback that will ultimately increase the quality of your product, if you choose to listen.

Social Media allows you to interact with your customers as well.  If someone posts a negative comment, use that same medium to post any changes or updates that others reading the post may be interested in.

For example:

If someone posts a message stating that your Support department is taking too long to respond back to email, even though in your auto-responder you qualify that they will hear back within 24 hours (for example).  You could first contact that client and make sure their needs are taken care of - win them back.  And then post a message stating that you have changed the email auto-responder to give a more accurate response time (or you removed the time altogether).  In addition, you have implemented a Forum that will allow customers to post their questions, your support team to respond to their questions, and everything is archived for future users who may have the same answer.

Here is an article in regards to replacing that un-godly plastic clam-shell packaging that is almost impossible to open without scissors, and then once you have it open the edges become fatal weapons.

Listen to your customers, they are talking about your product.  Don’t fear feedback, embrace it and use the Internet to communicate with your clients.

Congratulations David Plouffe (Campaign Manager for Barack Obama’s Presidential Election Campaign)…

Your campaign was quite slick.  You utilized technology, you utilized manpower, you have created a new template for Presidential elections.  All future election campaigns will be held to a new standard and level of utilizing technology…long gone is the old way of campaigning.

Between the Obama Girl, Facebook ads, and an iPhone application, you took advantage of the Internet as a communication tool and you captured a generation and communicated with them at their level.  And yes, I know Obama Girl was not part of your campgain strategy, or was she?

People-Press.org provides the following statistics…

The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).

Moreover, the internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.

Once again, congratulations…see you on Facebook.

An added FYI - I just setup our Wordpress > Twitter plugin and it works great.  Easy too.  Took < 3 minutes.

You can see it work here:

http://twitter.com/arifgan

Social Networking can be a pain.  I mean, you have a blog, you have a twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other accounts.  There are tools out there to allow you to aggregate all of the data but what about syndication?

Well, that is the brilliance of RSS.  Here’s a quick video about RSS feeds and what they are:

Here are 2 tools that will help you tie your social networks together:

1. Wordpress just announced a LinkedIn plugin.  Now, you can link up your Wordpress blog to LinkedIn so anything you post on your Wordpress blog will automatically be syndicated to LinkedIn.

Here is a quick video:

There are also a few others tools out there to keep you connected.

2. Here is a tool for connecting Wordpress to twitter…as you post on your blog, this little plugin can automatically create a tinyurl and post it to your twitter feed. Which can then be broadcast via text messaging, etc.

Click here for a twitter plugin for wordpress with tinyurl API support.  It sounds tough to install, but it’s easy

Thanks to OpenSocial…Social Networks are merging together…but it’s also another way for Google to track you down.

A piece of interesting data so you can see how Search Engines interact with one another.

I ran across a cool tool that I wanted to share with you guys:

It’s a little button you put on your site that someone can click on and share your site with their friends and colleagues.  Pretty easy to install as well.

Basic Features:

» Easy Bookmarking & Sharing
» Spreads Your Content
» Removes Clutter
» Fast and Reliable
» Easily Customizable
» For Websites and Blogs
» Completely Free
» Customizable (with your logo, service list, colors, etc.)

Get free statistics about how your content is shared and spread by your users:

» Most Popular Content
» Where Your Content is Sent
» Trends Over Time
» Geographic Breakdown

It’s easy enough for a beginnier and flexible enough for a pro.  Try it out.

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design - Application Development - SEO SMO SEM - Email Marketing