This is to say; each message sent on Twitter can be no larger than the previous sentence. Not an additional letter, space, period or dash can be added. These limitations have proven to be the greatest asset and the greatest challenge for people trying to use Twitter for any number of purposes.

On the advantageous side, the short messages have created an entire culture of Twitter-fluent writers. The brevity of the message stretches creative muscles, making people use every trick to get the most information into the fewest characters. On the other hand it creates a severe headache for the marketing minded, as it doesn’t leave much room to present a case. Thus the vast majority of Tweets are short little social comments or updates, and most marketing revolves around calling attention to particular links.

Of course, there are always ways around limitations, and Twitter is something that every seriously market-minded organization needs to embrace in order to see continued success on the web. In the case of short message services like Twitter, the key lies as much in the peripheral data that builds up around the message as in the content itself.

Be SEO Minded

Twitter profiles are now ranked by search engines, Google in particular. Every SEO technique you’ve learned now has a new, exciting purpose.

For example, consider the biography you’re able to construct using Twitter. This is a ripe opportunity to develop some brand recognition right away. Put the title of the brand you’re marketing in the bio, and consider including the most relevant keywords in your profile. As ever, do so in a way that respects the user’s intelligence, and gives them something worth reading. Simply stringing together a chain of keywords is not the way to go.

Include keywords in your Tweets as well, taking care not to be terribly obvious about it. The first 20-30 characters are the best place, as later words are of decreased importance in a Google ranking search.

Identify Your Audience

Each brand rises and falls on the whim of the audience, known in this case as tweeple.

There are a number of applications available to help you with the process of identifying the tweeple that you want to cultivate into an audience. Twitterholic can help you identify the movers and shakers based on their Twitter traffic and their location. If you know your field or brand well, you can use this to locate groups with similar interests and woo them to your feed. Tweepz is a similar tool, focusing on location, and Twitter itself has a ‘near this location’ feature that can be used to identify tweeple nearby your center of business.

Let’s Give Them Something to Tweet About

Yes, Twitter is an effective way to quickly distribute information. But its real power is in its ability to create conversations about something interesting.

In theory you could simply gather up a large user list of tweeple and start spamming them with links promoting your latest gig. This is a surefire way to get flagged for abuse or ignored entirely, and thus is rather counterproductive to good marketing goals.

Instead, consider using alternative methods to drum up those conversations that travel like wildfire.

For example, there is the technique of Alternate Reality Gaming. This is a phenomenon based on the idea of taking ‘real’ events and building a game out of them. Last Call Poker was an ARG that intended to drum up sales for an upcoming video game, GUN.

LCP spread out information about gatherings, online incentives, and other attractions to get people excited about the western theme of the game. Tokens such as poker chips and other goodies were given out at these events, and GUN went on to have a very successful launch. People were invited into the world of the western, and the chatter eventually included 8 million participants.

This kind of rogue advertising is tailor-made to work with Twitter. Locations and dates can easily fall within the 140 character limitation, as can short explanations. Consider creating an ARG with a short story designed to work within 140 characters, locate an audience with the assorted Twitter tools at your disposal, and plan some exciting events to promote your brand. The chance to get involved always gets people talking, and the more esoteric games can span entire continents.

There are other methods, some more appropriate to each individual brand. Perhaps a modest bicycling business isn’t suited to promote a large ARG experience. They could, however, organize a bicycling flash mob by hopping onto the local bike hobbyist twitter feed and posting a date and time. The trick is less which technique you use, and more that you do your best to make it relevant. As always, strong content and clear presentation will win out over gimmicks and sales speak.

Also, consider one last thought. The introductory statements of each section in this article are Twitter compatible, and so is this one. Good luck and happy Tweeting.

About the author

Firstly, you have to create your website. This can be outsourced to a website developer/designer or you can attempt it yourself, if you have the time, software and skills required. This task may be simplified if you have access to point-and-click software provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or web hosting company. The software I am referring to is generally called a ‘website builder’. This article is not intended to discuss website creation, however.

Secondly, once you have created your website, you have to make it available or accessible on the World Wide Web. You do this by uploading your website to a web server. This is sometimes referred to as ‘publishing your website’. The web server stores your website on its hard disc and makes it accessible to a web browser when someone types the website’s address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into the browser’s address bar. So, once you are ready to publish your website you need to consider web hosting options, i.e. which web server are you going to upload your website to?

There are four web hosting options and each have their advantages and disadvantages:

Options 1 and 2: Use the free web space provided by your ISP or use a free web hosting provider.

Advantages: Zero cost, adequate for very simple websites.

Disadvantages: You will not get all the features available from stand-alone web hosting packages, unwanted advertising, very limited disc space and bandwidth (amount of data that can be transferred per month), and you may be limited in the number of websites you can host.

Okay, these options come at zero or no extra cost. So why not make use of the free web space provided by your ISP or one of the many web hosting companies offering free hosting? Well, that all depends on the type of website you intend to put up. These options are fine if you are creating a simple personal website comprising of a few pages and you don’t mind the advertising that comes with ‘free web space’, but it would be totally unsuitable for business purposes. Basically, you get what you pay for and if you are paying nothing… well, don’t expect much! However, if you really want free web hosting and your ISP doesn’t provide it, simply Google “free web hosting” with the quotes. At the time of writing, the number of results obtained from www.google.com was 9,050,000 – so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a provider!

Option 3: Purchase a web hosting package/plan from a reputable web hosting provider.

Advantages: You will get all the bells and whistles that come with this type of package/plan, no advertising on your web pages, very generous disc space and bandwidth, you might be able to host an ‘unlimited’ number of domains and websites, you will have access to better technical support than is generally provided for free hosting from your ISP or free web hosting provider.

Disadvantages: You pay a monthly or annual fee.

If you have decided that your website(s) deserve a better web hosting environment than ‘free’, then you need to do some research to identify a suitable web hosting company that will meet your needs. You could start with a search for web hosting comparison sites. However, the information provided by such sites is often very biased, as the companies they recommend pay the site owners a nice commission for referring you to them. You would be better off searching for web hosting forums, preferably those that don’t permit the use of affiliate links. Comments made on such forums are likely to be unbiased if there is no monetary gain to be made by the forum’s posters.

Option 4: Set up a server at home or at the office.

Advantages: Total control of your web server.

Disadvantages: Need to be very technically savvy, need a permanent Internet connection, need to provide adequate security to prevent hacking, costs associated with running and maintaining the server.

This option is not really one that I would recommend. The only advantage is that you and you alone have access to your server and are able to configure it any way you like. However, you have to have the right technical knowledge to set up your server properly and ensure it remains protected from hackers. You also have to keep the server running around the clock to ensure that your website remains accessible to your visitors. Also, depending on the amount of traffic you expect your website to receive, you may have to upgrade your Internet connection at a cost far higher than what you would pay a web hosting provider. There are many technical issues that need to be taken into consideration if you choose this option, too many to discuss in this short article.

About the author

What is a Web Host?

Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server which they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity usually in a data center. A server is a unique computer where web sites are hosted, stored and makes them available to rest of the world. Web hosting clients simply upload their website files to a shared or dedicated web server which their Internet service provider or ISP maintains to ensure a steady fast connection to the Internet.

There are two types of web hosting, Free and Paid. Free web hosts generally require their own ads on your site and only allow web-based uploading and editing of your site. Most of them have very tight disk space and bandwidth limits. However, most people still start via free web hosting.

For paid web hosting, it offer great support and bandwidth but charges a monthly fee. Web hosting is a highly competitive business and a company has to provide services which are either very cheap or very good to survive. The mediocre tend to go to the wall unless they spend huge amounts of money on marketing. This simply means that most companies will be offering very good packages to get business.

Things to Consider When Choosing a Web Host

Finding the web host with the right package can be exhausting and confusing. Do not hesitate to ask them question. Comparing prices and packages are essential to get the best deal. I have engaged numerous web hosts since 2002 and I have my fair share of good and bad experiences. These experiences however make me come out with a checklist while I am comparing.

1. Prices

This is a very important factor but it also largely depends on your budget. Decide a comfortable amount you are willing to pay before looking around. Take note of the payment frequency whether it is monthly, quarterly or annual payment.

I will usually take the monthly payment when I am with a new web host for the simple reason that I can cancel anytime if the service sucks. I know they can do a refund but I prefer to keep the cash with me till the web host service and support prove to be efficient.

2. Disk Space

This is another important aspect which determines how many files or pictures you can upload to your web site. Think of this as your own computer hard disk. Say your hard disk space is 160 gigabyte; it can only store 160 gigabyte worth of stuffs.

This is the case of the more the better. Back in 2002, most web hosts provide a Disk Space of around 500 megabyte only and today my host is giving me a whopping 600 gigabyte (600,000 megabyte) which is 1200 times more!!

3. Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to the allocated amount of Web Traffic your web site can received. Web Hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 100 Gigabyte per month. When the monthly bandwidth is exceeded, additional bandwidth charges are incurred which can be expensive.

At the start, you may not need a lot of bandwidth but it will come in handy when your web site gets more popular. I tend to play safe so I have chosen a web host that offers me a 6,000 Gigabyte bandwidth.

4. Company

This is vital as we do not want to engage any fly by night company. Google about the company to get feedback or reviews before deciding. This is what I found about my current web host; was founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley and is privately owned. is a privately owned company founded in 2002 that has no debt, is very profitable, and has NO intentions of selling any time soon.

Servers are housed in four separate data centers in Dallas, Texas. They offer a guarantee of 99.9% uptime, which is achieved through daily backups that are responsible for keeping the websites online. is one of the world top 10 largest web hosting companies with more than 700,000 hosted domains. They have over 130 employees to provide you around-the-clock support. also offers tremendous uptime. Uptime means that the amount of time your websites hosted on will be operational.

This type of information makes me feel more secure to work with the company. service and support have been excellent so far which makes me a happy customer.

About the author

The basic function of the newsletter is of course to be informative. Information needs to reach a large number of people, and a newsletter is a great way of making sure people are on the same page. Yes, in theory an email can be CC’d and BCC’d to everyone on the relevant lists, but there is something psychologically distinctive about the release of a physical publication for wide review. The trick then is to make sure the information contained in the letter goes beyond the basics and into actually targeting its audience.

In short, a newsletter has to take advantage of its role as a distinct and noteworthy publication in order to create a greater sense of identity for the organization as a whole.

Option #1 – Editorialize

As we mentioned, email has effectively replaced hardcopy for general communications. It takes up less space, doesn’t create mountains of trash unless you count the spam folder, and is exponentially more efficient. With general communication taken care of, the newsletter now has room for broader subjects such as opinion and editorial.

This option can be particularly interesting for businesses with extensive connections, such as financial institutions or delivery services. Articles of this stripe can revolve around goings-on in general, or discussing the results of the latest big initiative. Upper level managers can explain some of the reasoning behind specific decisions, while frontline workers might get a chance to explain the impact a particular policy has had on work efficiency.

Of course, all editorial runs the same risk as any opinion-based piece of writing. Make sure to keep within company guidelines and civil behavior. After all, the goal is to increase company identity, not foster company conflict.

Option # 2 – Have a Laugh

Business communications frequently tend to be sterile and reserved, especially in larger organizations. Some of the most frustrating moments working for big companies stem from a perceived lack of identity. Humor is an excellent way to help break down this disconnect between work and workers. For internal company newsletters, knowing that the boss is good for a laugh now and again can help ease tensions, or promote greater cooperation between coworkers.

Predominantly this approach requires keeping the humor topical. A call center for example might host a contest for the strangest call received and list the winning story in the newsletter. A certain widespread fast food corporation might run a bit of satire complaining about the fact that they haven’t achieved complete control of the market. In either case the humor is derived from familiarity with the company, and helps foster a good-natured approach to the job.

Option #3 – Reflect and Review

As mentioned, one of the strongest merits of the newsletter format is its distinctiveness. With more people focusing on email, receiving a newsletter almost always causes at least a moment of attention, if only to ask what it is. Take advantage of this by using the newsletter as a way to call people to review past accomplishments and current goals, and release it at times that the company warrants such a review. This will help associate the newsletter with a distinct purpose, and when it arrives people will know it’s time to put on their thinking caps.

Option #4 – Fabulous Prizes

This may sound dubious, but it remains a viable option. People like contests and prizes, and if there’s something to be won in the newsletter they’re more likely to read it. For example a company newsletter could include free raffle tickets to the next big sporting event. More people are likely to respnd if they figure they can win a prize. Pick an incentive that you know is appropriate to your group, and put it in the newsletter to keep interest high.

The key here is to avoid making it a gimmick. Advertise the contest clearly, but resist the urge to splatter it across the front page in bright fonts. Use good humor and reserve, and let people get as excited as they wish.

Afterthoughts

A hardcopy newsletter is not always appropriate. Email frequently suffices, and in many cases company newsletters have shifted to email delivery. When you evaluate your organization’s newsletter, whether one you already have or one you intend to start, ask yourself what specific purpose it would serve. Newsletters can help any organization or business stay top of mind and open communication lines.

About the author

MySpace allows members to create websites where they can post personal information about themselves and allow others to view this information and post messages commenting on the website. Through these interactions users can really get to know each other better and can foster relationships. This article will take a look at how MySpace users can meet other users, begin courting and possibly eventually meet romantic partners offline.

Meeting new people on MySpace is unbelievably easy. The search feature allows anyone to search through the MySpace community to find user websites that contain the search term entered. Individuals do not have to be members to view the search results; however, some websites might be private and not viewable by the general public. Entering search terms relevant to a particular hobby or interest will generate search results of those who share this interest or hobby.
Once an individual finds a number of websites from those who share their interests they can review these websites to determine if they wish to meet any of these MySpace members.

One way to open the lines of communication with another user is to post a comment on their website. Only members of the MySpace community are allowed to post comments though so before leaving a comment users have to become members of the community. This also gives the user the opportunity to generate their own MySpace website. They can then invite those they are interested in meeting to view their website.

Flirting on MySpace. As previously, mentioned MySpace is quickly becoming a location to allow users to meet potential romantic partners. MySpace gives users the opportunity to publish photos of themselves as well as personal information making it an ideal opportunity for users to get to know each other in a safe environment. Users can also post information such as age, marital status, hobbies and interests so users can get to know each other better.

For many MySpace allows those who are normally more shy to feel confident about flirting with potential romantic partners. Those who usually don’t feel confident in crowded nightclub or bar settings may be able to express their feelings more freely through MySpace. They may also have the confidence to approach others they would not normally approach in a face to face situation.

Making Romantic Connections on MySpace. With so many opportunities to meet others through the MySpace community, it is no surprise that many of these users are making these online connections a reality by meeting their online friends in the real world. These face to face meetings can be a lot of fun but care should be taken in these situations to avoid putting yourself at risk.

It is important to remember that the Internet can allow individuals to mask their true identities. This makes it easy for harmful predators to pretend to be one person online to attract others who might be interested in meeting them offline when, in reality, they are a completely different person.

When meeting others online it is important to take precautions to safeguard personal information. Most people are aware they should not give out their address, social security number, credit card number, bank account number and other similar sensitive information but do not realize other information can also be harmful. For example seemingly innocent information such as the name of the high school attended and year of graduation can allow criminals to combine this information with other information such as a first name to determine where a person lives.

About the author

Although most people have the best of intentions of staying in contact with friends, this often does not happen. There are a number of reasons including careers, family obligations and social commitments which prevent old friends from staying in touch. Fortunately, Facebook offers a way for these old friends to reconnect. Although there are countless ways for old friends to find each other on Facebook we will describe three methods for finding old friends on Facebook which are popularly used by members of the community.

Let Them Come to You. The easiest way to reconnect with old friends on Facebook is to let them find you. Joining Facebook and creating a website profile may be all it takes for some members to find old friends within the community. If you are looking for an old friend, chances are they often wonder about you as well. If this old friend is already a member of Facebook they may occasionally search for you by name, nickname or interests throughout the community.

Facebook has a search feature which gives users a variety of options which can help them to find long lost friends.
While this may seem like a passive approach to finding old friends on Facebook it can be very effective. It is especially effective when the lost friend is already a member of the community and is actively seeking to reconnect with you as well.

Do Your Research. A more time consuming way to reconnect with an old friend on Facebook is to search for them. This process can be incredibly time consuming and possibly fruitless or it can be extremely easy and rewarding. When searching for an old friend, begin your search by entering their complete name into the search feature and using the search by name button. If your old friend is a member of Facebook and has used his full name you will find him easily.

There may be multiple results especially if your friend has a common name but you will likely recognize your friend when you come across his Facebook website. If entering your friend’s complete name does not return any useful results you can also try entering their nickname. Members who do not use their full name when registering on Facebook often use a nickname as their moniker. Even if they don’t a search of the nickname may lead you to your friend’s website if his other friends refer to him by this nickname in their comments left on his website.

Finally, you can try using keywords related to your friend’s favorite hobby in searching for an old friend. This method is likely to be the most time consuming and may return countless result of those who share the same hobby as your friend.

Make a Plea. If all else fails, in searching for an old friend on Facebook you might consider making a plea for anyone who knows him to contact you on your blog or elsewhere on your website. You may find this leads to you being contacted either by your old friend directly or by someone who knows him and can provide you with contact information.

This may sound like a farfetched search option but it is actually quite plausible. Many people enjoy the anonymity the Internet offers and are careful to avoid revealing personal details about themselves online. This may make it quite difficult for you to find an old friend on Facebook but it does not mean he is not a member. If he is a member it is likely he will find a blog posting on another website inquiring about where he is. This is because humans, by nature, can be quite narcissistic and it is not unusual for members of Facebook to routinely enter their own name into the search feature on Facebook to see if anyone is talking about them in the community.

About the author

* Introduction of family member
* Excited event in family, such as: birthday party, new baby birth, wedding, a travel, etc.
* The growth of the kid or just a few pictures we take during a walk. Your kid will enjoy going back seeing what you did a few years ago.
* Post funny jokes that we read or comment on what is going on in the world
* Just think about all the other possibilities.

So making a family web site will be a fun family project. And it really isn’t hard to create it and it doesn’t cost too much as well!

Choose a Name for Your Family Web Site

First, you will need to think about a domain for your family site, choose something that will make sense to you and your family. And try to keep it simple and easy to be remembered.

What kinds of Web Hosting You Need for a Family Web Site

Basic Requirement of Web Hosting Plan for a Family Site Basic requirement will discuss about the general feature of Family Web Hosting, such as disk space, band width, reliability, etc. Those are the basic feature you need to think about when you want to hosting a web site.

* For a family web site, a shared Linux Server web hosting plan is the best choice unless you really want to use ASP or .Net to build you site, spending more time and more money.

* About reliability, since most of the web hosting company can provide 99.5% uptime, and considering it’s not a business site, this uptime percentage is good enough for a family site. No need to spend more.

* Disk space will heavily depend on what you want to put online, only picture, or together with Video, since video become more and more common, and you might want to share the family video with your friends. So let’s do a simple calculation, one picture will 250k, and 5 minutes video will take 50M. So, if you put 2000 picture and 100 video on your family site, picture will take you 0.5g disk space, and video will need 5g, overall, you will need a space around 5.5g. About Band Width, if you plan to put a lot of picture and video online, a 10g band width is expected, if only picture, a 500M -1G should be ok.

* For Email account, unless you have a very very big family, otherwise 1 – 10 Email account should be ok, and you also can use some free email account from Yahoo, Gmail, etc. Since Family site is also shared in the friends or family group, you definitely has no need to have a Shopping Cart of SSL to do the business, and you also don’t need a Web Market Tools to attract a lot of traffic to your web site.

* What about the server location? For this question, I would like to suggest you to host your site domestic company considering most of the visitor in your country, it would be faster to access your site.

* You have no need to spend a lot to get a domain name, it’s usually take around $6.5, and in most cases, you can get it as free when purchasing a web hosting plan. And you can order Domain and Web Hosting plan from different company, and have the Web hosting company to help you host the domain in their server. You only need to submit a case, and they will handle it for you.

Advanced requirement of Web Hosting Plan for a Family Site

The advanced requirement will discuss about what additional help you need to get from web hosting company if you have some specific requirement. And the solution for it will depend on how skilled you are,

* Blog

Do you want to have a Blog in your family web site, if yes. And you know some basic PC knowledge, you will only need to you will need a web hosting plan can host MySQL database and provide Fantastico in its cPanel, you can install the blog by yourself via Fantastico (it’s pretty easy, just click through some installation process). But if you have no IT knowledge and don’t want to spend some time to learn, you will need to have Blog preinstalled by web hosting company. Another good solution for it would be you can write the Blog in some other space, such as www.blogger.com, and add a link in your web site which will lead the visitor to your blog.

* Photo Galleries

If you don’t know how to arrange the picture in the web site, you will need a Photo Galleries to help you manage the picture. But if you know about HTML, this will be something optional, you can spend some time to build a one you like most. After all, create a family site is a fun project, and DIY is part of it.

* Web Design Tools

If you have basic knowledge about HTML, and know how to use the tool like Frontpage, you will no need to have Web Design tools in your web hosting plan, otherwise, it would be good to have some basic web design tools included.

Price

No great comment for this one, just pay what you want and get what you have paid.

What’s the Best Web Hosting Plan for Family Site

There are a lot of Web Hosting Plan can host your family site, many people might want to order a plan which can host more than one domain and then they host their home small business site and family site together under different domain. This could be a choice, but I would like to suggest to host them separately and the thought here is to separate your business and private usage. Don’t let your family site impact your business, your kid might upload a lot of picture and use up your bandwidth and make your business unavailable. You can visit Web Hosting for Family Site to see which companies provide the web hosting plan for family web site.

About the author

In order to establish a web presence, one of the issues you will need to look into is getting a web hosting service for your web site. With technological progress and market competition, web hosting services are becoming more affordable, and better yet, many providers are now offering web hosting service for free. Yes, that means you don’t have to spend even half a cent to get your business online.

Other than for the obvious fact that it’s free, here are a few reasons why you should consider using free web hosting for your business:

* Test ground for your budding web skills If you are thinking of being your own webmaster and want to get your feet wet in web building, you probably won’t be ready to invest much on web hosting yet. Free web hosting services will give you the freedom to test out your skills, to see what does or does not work in your site, and can better visualize the cost and effort needed in creating and maintaining your company web site. Free web hosting also allows you to try the hosting provider’s service for an initial period; once you’re confident that the service provider is reliable enough for you, you can upgrade your company web site to the service provider’s paid package that is better and with more frills.

* Convenience of built-in features Most free hosting companies, such as Bravenet, Yahoo! Geocities and Tripod, provide easy-to-use web page builder, and tools such as guestbook, hit counter, email forms, and others that can enhance your web site. You will be able to build your company web site in just a few simple steps, while providing you with a more than decent web site in just minutes. The extra features frees you from having to hire programmers just so that you can have online applications to capture visitor feedback, setting up of polls and survey, as well as building up your subscribers for your online newsletter.

* High return on investment You get free web hosting, you design your own web site, and you have fancy tools added in your site to give it extra functionality, all without having to spend a single cent. Add these up, compare with the potential new customers that you will be getting, and you find that your ROI for establishing a web presence for your company would obviously be significant. You can now reach out to your online market and hopefully your online strategy can effectively increase your revenue.

On the other hand, the downside to using free web hosting is also numerous and comes in the form of hidden costs to your business:

* Lack of flexibility and control Be sure to read the provider’s Terms of Service before registering for your free web hosting account. Some free hosting providers restrict the use of certain file types, content, or even languages. In addition, they can also overload your web site with unneeded and irrelevant advertisements in order to support their services. When bombarded with such annoyance, visitors to your site are going to take the effort not to visit your web site ever again. You will also find that some advanced tools needed to operate a fully functional e-commerce presence are not possible with the use of free hosting, such as shopping carts, secure ordering system, and online payment gateways. You may have to upgrade or switch to a paid hosting service provider if you decide to use them, which will require not just the extra effort but also the extra cash.

* High risk of downtime and no guaranteed support To be honest, there is no such thing as a zero downtime, whether it be for free or paid web hosting. Downtime refers to the period of time or a percentage of a time span that a machine or system is offline or not functioning, making your web site inaccessible (source: Wikipedia). However, the risk of free web hosting having frequent downtime is more than likely to happen than with paid hosting. Free providers more often than not won’t provide any guarantee to their services due to the cost of maintaining them. Other than the risk of downtime, free accounts are mostly subjected to low priority bandwidth, thus affecting access to your site by making your web site load slowly. Responses to support requests can be slow or next to nothing, and you are solely responsible for backing up your own web site files. These problems cause visitors looking for information on your company feeling frustrated. Ultimately, this can jeopardize your reputation, and your current and potential clients would view your company as an unreliable provider.

* Loss of credibility Internet marketing strategists place unprecedented importance on the use of domain names for your business. A domain name (or web site address) is one of tools used to establish your company’s online branding and image. Most free web hosting providers offer subdomains as addresses for your web site. A subdomain is a web site address whereby your business name is appended onto the free host’s domain name, Seldom do you see free hosting providers that support actual domain hosting or at least not without a catch. A subdomain name as your business web address is harder for your clients to remember than a domain name. Furthermore, one serious drawback to not having your own domain name is the fact that subdomains sounds less professional. Without one, your business may be regarded as disreputable or even illegitimate, and tend to be avoided by web-savvy customers.

In the end, it’s your choice. While some sacrifices needed to be done when using free web hosting, try to look at your need for web hosting service just as you would your budding business. Start small, dream big. Weight the pros and cons of free versus paid web hosting. If you have to, begin with using a free web hosting provider. Once your needs and resources grow, you can then upgrade to a more advanced web hosting service which you can afford to pay.

So don’t worry for now, especially if you are a small business or are just starting one. No one will shoot you in the head for using free web hosting – at least I won’t.

About the author

SM sites were intended to allow people to present a profile and keep in touch with interested parties. In essence a combination of email and webpage, they exploded in popularity with the sort of overnight success prevalent on the Web. Of course users drive popularity, and where there are users, there is a captive audience – and businesses are always keen to adopt a potential audience.

Now Web writing and development resumes often need to include Social Media Networking experience, and businesses have their own Facebook pages. The Web is ever sensitive to the principles of competition and advertisement, so in the wake of this upsurge in popularity and usage come the techniques and principles of Social Media SEO.

Search engines rate all websites based on their internal criteria, and this increasingly includes Social Media pages such as Facebook. With that in mind, let’s consider five key ways you can apply SEO techniques to Facebook in order to drive interest.

Method 1 – Respect Your Audience

We’ve covered the power of individuality on the Web. While it is true the Web offers exceptional degrees of anonymity and collective activity, at the end of the day every user has his/her own judgments to make, and will make those judgments known via clicks and comments. There are websites solely devoted to expounding on peoples’ bad experiences, such as the popular Not Always Right. Rest assured that if you stick to sales pitches and infomercials, your work will be forgotten or derided quite quickly.

Instead, focus on promoting interesting, non-sales material on your Facebook page. Comment on interesting developments, or explain a personal angle from one of your employees that helps people connect with your organization. Some of the most profitable sites on the Web don’t make any major sales pitches, so take advantage of the chance to have a conversation and keep people interested.

Method 2 – Identify and Use Your Keywords

We’ve talked about keywords before, and they remain relevant still. Search engines are able to provide more precise listings based on effective keyword usage, and good placement in a search return is often dependent on how your keywords relate to user searches.

Keyword usage requires research. It isn’t a matter of simply plugging in all the buzzwords in every awkward conversation – this is a good way to get sites to blacklist or penalize you in their rankings. Take the time to really examine what key roles your business works toward, and then research the keyword usage of related activities. Pick out those keywords that seem most relevant, and then work them into your site as naturally as you can.

However, keyword use doesn’t always require focusing on the content and writing portions. Your Facebook profile includes an ‘about’ section. Putting your core keywords here is a good idea but keep it concise; more than two or three keywords risks diluting the impact of your message.

Method 3 – Remember Reciprocity

The interesting thing about your Facebook page is that your company website doesn’t host it – Facebook does. This puts your content in two distinct places on the Web, potentially doubling the coverage you can receive during Web searches. Take advantage of that by remembering to provide links from each site to the other. Your company homepage should be linked from your Facebook profile, and vice-versa. This will increase traffic to each site by bringing in visitors from the sister sites, and takes less than a minute to implement.

Method 4 – Harness Multiple Media

Broadband is common now. Perhaps it was still acceptable to lack significant video content in an online venture ten or even five years ago, but modern broadband connections cost customers less than the first dialup connections, and can channel extraordinary amounts of video and audio.

Given the social nature of Facebook, it’s an appropriate page to include ‘related’ content to your venture that isn’t strictly relevant in the normal sense. Consider a site focused on pet care and related products. Rather than tying in a sales video, post the latest adorable kitten video from one of the many cat websites on the Internet. Tag it with keywords related to your focus by all means, but the key here is to give people additional reasons to visit your site and help drive your numbers.

Method 5 – Learn From the Best

A writer once commented that every good story has already been written – what remains is for the good writer to borrow judiciously. If there is one thing the Internet is good for, it is copious amounts of free information. Take a look at popular Facebook sites and take notes on what they’re doing. You do not exist in a bubble, but rather a network of ideas and interactions. Consider adopting different approaches that others are making work, or putting your own spin on them for even more success. Creativity drives much of the Web, so feel free to experiment.

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As a general rule, it is a good idea to go for shared web hosting if you are a small business owner and cost is your major concern. But before you make your hosting decision, let us first understand what is service and what are the advantages and disadvantages.

What is shared web hosting?

Shared web hosting service is a convenient and economic way of sites if you do not require extremely high performance and high bandwidth. As its name suggests, in shared service, the server that hosting the pages are shared by many other websites. The number of websites on a shared hosting server can go up to thousands at times. Due to one large and high performance server is shared by hosting many different websites on it, companies providing shared service could offer them at an economic rates.

Even with so many websites hosted on a web server, you can be rest assured that the providers will not compromise on any kind of security and performance issues on the shared hosting servers. Moreover, shared servers are operated, monitored and maintained around the clock by IT professionals to ensure minimum server downtimes.

Technically speaking, shared hosting servers are run on Unix or other multi-user operating system and each website hosted on the server is given a separate account in the operating system. Typically, websites hosted on shared servers are given a shared IP addresses and allocated a fix amount of resources.

Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages before you consider shared service:

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting Service

Economical: As many websites are hosted on a single server, providers are able to offer low cost shared services. In general, you can expect to pay $5-10 per month for shared web hosting services. Today, due to stiff competition in the industry, you can even discover many companies offering huge space and bandwidth (as high as 1000 MB disk space and 40 GB bandwith).

Convenience: Shared servers are managed and maintained by professionals who are highly skilled with specialized knowledge of the field. As a result, you can concentrate on your business and let these professionals worry about the maintenance and uptimes.

Customization: Even though web resources are shared, web masters can manage their website using control panel or similar tools provided by the company. They are free to upload files, remove pages, add database, check statistic and etc. Also they are allowed to create domain name specific e-mails accounts.

Efficiency: Today, shared service comes with space and bandwidth that are more than sufficient for small business websites. However, you can always add more resources should you overrun the space or bandwidth usage.

Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting Service

Slower Responses: Given that a physical server is shared, websites have to accept slower server response time if compare to dedicate server hosting.

Reliability Issues: In most cases, providers may take care of the security and performance of the shared server. However, it may happen that some of websites hosted on the shared server run a malicious program or script or over-utilize the resources, can bring down the server. Your website would have to suffer downtimes and inaccessibility as a result.

Sharing Issues: Moreover, you just need one “bad” website in your to get your website banned altogether by ISP or search engine due to shared IP address (Note: you can always pay extra to get a dedicated IP address to avoid this problem).

Security Issues: Shared is more risky and opens up potential security issues as other masters having an account on the same server could hacked to your sensitive data.

Before you decide to ink a deal on shared , be sure to consider all the pros and cons of shared web hosting services above. After all, selecting a right services may be one of the most critical business decisions for your online business.

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