Tips for Improving Your Social Media Presence

Before we get into tactics for improving your social media presence, it must be said that solid marketing is all about the ideas behind your product or service. These ideas need to be communicated on your website with clear messaging and visual appeal (which good creative advertising firms can help you with), as well as through a variety of channels. Social media is rapidly becoming a preferred channel for web users to communicate and share ideas, and should be a strong part of your web strategy. Here are some tips for improving your website’s presence as it relates to social media.
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What Freelancers Need to Keep in Mind When Looking for Online Backup

It’s happened to all of us. We start off with the best of intentions in creating a new habit of backing up every day, and we’re committed to sticking to it. But just like any diet or New Year’s resolution, “real life” creeps in and pulls your attention away towards more important things.

At first you only skip a day here or there. But eventually, days turn into weeks and months. This is only natural, considering the busy lifestyle that most freelancers have.

That’s why, when it comes to backing up their data, freelancers really love the automation and convenience that comes with online backup services. You just install the software once, and you never have to think about it again until something bad happens. You can just feel safe knowing that it’s there, working in the background for you.

However, there are MANY different services to choose from. And prices range from FREE to $10 per GB. With so much variety, how can you pick a solution that’s right for you? Well here are a few features that freelancers should keep in mind when looking into automating their data protection: Read more

Freelancers – The New Workforce

Founder of the Freelancers Union Sara Horowitz explains why the self-employed are a bigger factor in today’s economy. Check out this video from CNNMoney:

What is Hosted Exchange?

If you have worked in any corporate environment, most likely you were using a Microsoft Exchange powered e-mail solution. The powerful service is used in the vast majority of the businesses today, and many of these servers are administered and maintained by the company I.T. department.

Hosted Exchange is a viable option for those individuals and freelancers that want to harness the power of an Exchange server but don’t want to pay for a full server license, buy the appropriate hardware and deal with the maintenance. Much like the web hosting industry where a company bundles many customers on a single web server, Hosted Exchange is a cost-effective option for individuals. The Exchange service provider bundles many customer mailboxes on a single Exchange server for a monthly or yearly fee.
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Online Printing for Your Small Business

Even today in our virtual world of telecommuting, Skype, and home offices, freelancers still have to get professional materials printed on occasion. As an independent web publisher, I have to admit that most of my working relationships are virtual, but I still find value (and contracts) in local networking and industry events. Handing out business cards and logo-laden freebies is a tried-and-true method for leaving good impressions in face-to-face situations.

Online printing services like PSPrint.com are great for saving time and money, while maintaining quality. Their digital printing methods allow you to reduce both cost and waste with small-quantity orders. Also, those methods don’t involve as many steps as other printing processes or technologies, so less time is needed in producing your prints and the turnaround time is quicker.

Sure, you can say that many digital printers are using similar (if not the same) printing technologies. But the reason I chose PSPrint specifically, is actually the same reason why many freelancers can have lasting success. It’s due to their reputation for offering excellent and attentive customer service. In a world of comparable technologies, what better differentiator for success can a company have than to truly pay close attention to their customers’ needs?

Top 4 Ways To Apply Your Marketing Knowledge To Blogging

From the marketing perspective, a blog is not really that different from an “old-fashion” media form. Surprisingly, some people, including your typical business and marketing majors don’t know this. Sure, the medium has changed, but the same marketing principle is still valid. As marketers, we need to strike a conversation with our audience. The tools and knowledge gained from marketing classes can just as easily be adopted to be used on blogs. Below, I have compiled a list of the top 4 lessons that I believe you can take out of marketing class.

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Looking for the Right Free Web Hosting?

There are many free hosts on the web and the number increases almost on a daily basis. This is because, on the contrary to most people thought, setting up a new free web hosting company is really easy. Therefore, the chances of getting scammed are a bit high, not to mention, the other companies which aren’t reliable enough to support your website properly. Whether you are running a serious business or just a simple site to share your life with, I don’t think you would like to see your website down and offline for those who are trying to get access to it and try to visit.

This is why choosing the right host for your site is very crucial. And to actually look for a host that is free and that is reliable just makes the task even more challenging. Here’s the good news though, there really are good free web hosting providers around. You just have to be very picky to be able to point yourself on the right one.

A few basic things to consider:

1. Check if the hosting company has been around for at least a year. This is a better way to avoid yourself from signing up on a hosting company only to find out after a couple of days or so that they aren’t reachable anymore. This could definitely cause your website a big problem especially if you don’t regularly do backups for your site and other issues.

2. Look for a host that says no banner ads. Some free web hosts, in exchange for the free service that they would provide your website, put tons of ads on to your site. Often times, this really could cause irritation for your visitors.

3. Look for a host that offers free technical support to their free hosting customers. This is very helpful especially when you’re not that very technical yourself. A company that has a good support system is often a sign that they are indeed providing a good service for their customers.

4. Look for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime.. To actually know if a host is reliable is really very hard to determine.. Since usually you’ll just get to know about a host’s reliability once you have been with them. So your best shot is at least go with a host that gives high guarantees for their reliability.

Free hosting provider I recommend

So far, I’ve been with a few free web hosts and have experienced some of the worst. One free web hosting provider I highly would recommend is Doteasy.com. There are other free good web hosts too, but I have to admit, Doteasy has better offers than others.

Doteasy is a free hosting company that is well established, so that gives me an assurance that my website is safe and secured. They also strictly implement banner-free, this means no annoying ads on your website. Aside from that, I find their support team very reliable especially at times I’m having trouble on my site. I can’t be more thankful, because they still are very willing to help me even when the problem was basically caused by me. And as for their reliability, for a free host, I can say that I hit the jackpot with them. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and they have kept my website up and running all the time.

I get all of their great service for free, this is certainly a very good deal that I just can’t pass up. As of the moment, I can’t think of a better host or just even close on providing the service I get from Doteasy. And to get your own free web hosting account with them, you just need to click here to sign up and open a free account.