MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

A friend has begun using a PR person for his music activities. I noticed the PR guy is using a cs.com email account for his business email contact (in the “internet olden days” cs.com was a sign of distinction – it meant you had a CompuServe account. Nowadays it’s really dying out).

In the interest of helping him out I sent the following email – which has been edited to suit my purposes here.

Another of the things I do is web hosting (at http://www.midgahosting.com ) and design and online presences and such for some of my clients – and I noticed you’re using a cs email account. Just wanted to mention that you’d really get some brand boost if you had your own domain, and use that as your email “base of operations”.

I’ve got a couple of real estate people who are doing that – they’ve bought their domain and hosting (under $4/month) and they’ve never done anything with the hosting part.

In your case I’d suggest getting the domain, and then setting up a wordpress blog (which is EASY using midgahosting) – use a couple of “pages” for company info, but use your posts for the releases you send out. This would amplify the search engine affect for each release.

[What they look like depends on the template chosen for the blog, but often pages show up as tabs at the top of the blog, and posts are the main part. Over at http://www.maconmacguy.com, for instance, pages are the tabs at the tops, but posts are the entries on the right under "news".]

Just thought I’d throw this idea into your bucket! I feel strongly that receiving emails from whatever@mycompany.com is stronger than getting it from whatever@cs.com.

–

The process:  head over to http://www.midgahosting.com.
Click on the “sign up” link, at the top.
Fill out the form. Decisions to make:

1. what username you want – for logging into your control panel area
2. Which data center (I suggest California, but there isn’t much speed difference between California and London from Georgia)
3. Which plan – for your purposes I suggest the cheapest! Easily upgradeable later if needed.
4. Pre-installed script – Select wordpress here. No charge – this just saves you a step later.
5. Your desired domain…. then the usual contact and payment info

==============================================
Tom Rule
The MaconMacGuy
Computer help, training, Websites, Processes

http://www.MaconMacGuy.com

Web Hosting under $4 a month

http://www.MidGaHosting.com

==============================================

I’ve noticed several times over the last few weeks this situation:

A small business – it might be a plumbing company, printshop, whatever….. – has their website plastered on their truck / flyer / billboard / facebook ad / etc. They’ll have the company name, a phone number, maybe a phrase describing what they do – in short, it’ll look pretty good, and is probably pretty effective.

…and then I get to the contact email address.

If you are going to go to the trouble of having a website and your own domain (www.joesplumbing.com) – you really ought to use an email address from that domain as your primary contact.

Why?

Using whatever@joesplumbing.com will reinforce your website, your brand name, and make it easier for potential customers to remember you. There is also the advantage of consistency – clients only have to remember ONE domain (joesplumbing.com) – not 2 or three (Wait – was the email contact at yahoo.com? hotmail? live.com? uhhhhhhhh……)

Granted, this is ONLY an advantage if your domain makes sense for your business – but it is definitely worth doing well!

What about spam?

Most hosting plans will offer some type of spam filtering. The plans over at MidGaHosting.com all do. It is a fairly capable spam filtering system that catches the majority of the spam received, and it is easily configurable in the hosting control panel. You just make a selection for each email address on how aggressive you want the filter to be.

If you need something heavier-duty, try the hosting plans offered by the MaconMacGuy. You can add on an industrial strength spam filter for $12/year per email address that will catch virtually every piece of spam the world throws at you. It is remarkable effective – and can save you some significant time in handling email.

Another Option

Setup what is known as an “alias” email account – again, easily done in your hosting control panel. An alias account isn’t a “real” email account, but the hosting will automatically forward any emails sent to info@joesplumbing.com, for example, to Joe’s real account at Gmail or Yahoo (which then spam filters the incoming mail). The DISADVANTAGE of this approach is that your customer will email info@joesplumbing.com, but will receive a reply from joesplumbing@gmail.com – and this can be confusing. It could also possibly trigger their spam filter.

Contact the MaconMacGuy for more information and ideas for using technology in YOUR business!