Protecting your identity involves protecting anything that contains your personal information. And your cell phone or smart phone contains more data about you than you may even realize. Smart phones today are basically small computers, except they often do not have anti-virus protection on them. We use these devices for surfing the internet, checking bank accounts, and even making monetary transactions. The secret service has been trying to fight against identity theft and is recommending a cell phone firewall for all cell phone users to help guard against this kind of electronic hacking. People are spending more time on their phones as they are capable of doing more things. One of the most vulnerable aspects of using your cell phone is online banking. These connections are supposed to be secure, but if you are able to access your bank account by just pressing a button on your phone, then a thief who steals your phone can do the same thing. – Read the full article
It’s great to drive traffic – online and offline – from all corners of the world. But if you’re a smart marketer, you’ll realize you don’t have to be so international – at least not when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Thanks to local search, businesses don’t have to squander resources on attracting customers and visitors that are beyond their geographic reach anyway. One can instead focus on catering to the heart of the locals. Want to find out how? Here’s a list of 17 great local SEO and local search tips, tricks, and tools to help you get started. Claim. Claim your local listing on Google Places. While you’re at it, go to Bing Local and Yahoo Local and claim your listings there, too. Apply best practices. Read our guide on Google Places to put yourself closer to the center of the map. Submit your info to the online yellow pages. Sign up in online directories and – Read the full article
Ever heard of NaNoWriMo? If you’re an aspiring novelist, it’s a safe bet that you have. The acronym stands for “National Novel Writing Month”, which is marked every November as a creative writing project encouraging participants to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month. If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, but you have plans someday of self-publishing your own book – be it a novel, short story collection, poetry, memoir, corporate souvenir, e-book, children’s book, cookbook, picture book, guide or how-to book, vampire anthology, etc. – then you might want to read on. Of course, you can always work on finding an agent and attempt to have your manuscript edited, printed, distributed, and marketed by traditional publishers. But that takes a lot of guts – and, possibly, money. (Besides, one can only take so much rejection letters.) So in case you choose to do-it-yourself, or have no choice but to do-it-yourself, below is a list of the top five – Read the full article
Forgive us? We’re feeling kind of guilty that we’ve written a number of Twitter articles that provide a lot of tips on how to use the popular social media site – without providing an equal number of examples. So let us make it up to you with these great examples of how today’s biggest brands and businesses are using Twitter. Starbucks (@Starbucks): The Seattle-based coffee giant offers “freshly brewed tweets” to a loyal following of over 1 million Twitter users. Check the brand’s profile out, and you’ll be surprised by the number of @replies/mentions they tweet in a day. That’s what engagement is all about. All too often, companies misuse Twitter by spamming their followers with relentless sales talk and ads – without caring to respond to mentions or direct messages. Sure, while Starbucks does post the occasional promo or new offer, the brand’s use of Twitter is mainly to connect intimately with fans and customers. It listens, and as – Read the full article
These days more and more people are accessing the Web through their mobile phones. They’re checking their E-mails, surfing, reading the news, and even shopping – literally “on the go”. Wouldn’t you like to make your website “pops” for mobile? Don’t think it’s an impossible task. Today tools that format your website or blog for mobile phones and smartphones are aplenty. Most of them don’t even require web design or HTML expertise! Let’s take a look at some of them. Really Sweet Tools Mippin: This is a fast and free service that can “mobilize” your website or blog, so long as it has an Atom or RSS feed. It also offers built-in content variety through a list of sites delivered in simple format for the mobile audience. While there aren’t lots of features on Mippin, you’ll still have full control of your logo and branding efforts, as well as access to your traffic and reporting stats. And, to make sure – Read the full article
So you have an idea for a business website and you’ve hired a web designer. It’s a simple enough collaboration. You’re raring to go live. If, however, you wish to encourage people to keep coming back to your site, understand that this takes more than stylish, colorfully designed pages and great Photoshop skills. After all, there are things that a web designer won’t tell you – or can’t tell you – but which you should know anyway. Here are some of them: 1. “Shiny, sparkly, and splendidly bright” doesn’t cut it. It might work as a lyric for a Michael Jackson single (“Gone Too Soon”), but not as an agenda for web design. Out of propriety, or shyness typical of people with artistic temperaments, a web designer might not tell you to keep off the electric neon-colored background, or the blinking rainbow font, or the head copy that scrolls like a snail. Keep off them anyway. You want your website – Read the full article
I was searching for a low cost option to for a phone number and came across Google’s newest acquisition GrandCentral. This free service gives you a local phone number that you can forward anywhere, voicemail you can customize based on who’s calling (friends, family, co-worker’s etc), listen to your voicemail on-line and even a website button for people to connect to you live. We will be testing on of these buttons on the green werks contact us page. The other thing that is unique is you get to keep the number for life…that means you can move change your number and don’t have to worry because you can just forward the calls to your new number. Just like most other Google services this is offered for free. I encourage you to try it out. I set my number up this week and think is is extremely valuable. Just shows where the technology is going and Google is continuing to take – Read the full article
It is super easy and think about the last time you used a phone book? Well maybe you still like to use a phone book but personally I haven’t used one in at least 4 years. I like to search on Google, only about 10 times faster and usually more accurate. But you will find most of the content has been uploaded by the business themselves. Visit google local. You can add pictures, logo, hours of store etc. So next time someone is searching for your phone number on Google, you will come up first. It can also be beneficial to add your self in different “categories.” Then when your potential customer searches for your industry, for example – contractor in your zip code, you come up. Just another free service that you can use for your business. Add your today.
