How to Block Spam

SPAM has become the bane of email users throughout the world.  Unsolicited emails, often about unsavory topics and occasionally linked to viruses and spyware, are annoying and a waste of your time.

Here are some tips for reducing the amount of email spam you receive:

1. Many spammers gather email addresses from discussion forums. Avoid including your email address in any discussion forum postings.  When it is unavoidable put your address in a format that will be difficult for computers to use, for example by using an image containing your email address.  While somewhat less effective you can use a format like "yourname at gmail dot com".

2. Whenever you provide your email address to a vendor specify that you do not wish to receive any emails.

3. Any legitimate vendor who is sending you unwanted emails will honor your unsubscribe request. Just click the unsubscribe link in their email.  They should comply with your request within 10 days, as required by law.

4. Spam filters can be tricky. Almost all email services have some type of spam filter.  They usually have multiple sensitivity settings.  If too many spam emails are getting through your spam filter increase the filter sensitivity.  The downside of increasing the sensitivity of your spam filter is the possibility that it will mistake some valid emails for spam.  You will need to check your spam folder occasionally for erroneously filed emails.  Some spam filters also allow you to exclude a specific spammer's email address or exclude emails from a whole domain.  In some cases this technique can allow you to exclude all emails from specific countries.

Tenby Technologies: Internet Marketing Solutions


Other tips for decreasing email spam?  Please feel free to use the comment area below to let us know your thoughts.

Why SEO?

Is it better to have a web site that no one visits or no web site at all?

If you have a web site someone might stumble on it and then they might read it and then they might become a customer and then pigs might fly.  If you are going to spend the time, effort and money to build a web site, you should also spend the time, effort and money to attract visitors to your web site. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of "tuning" a web site to:

• make sure search engines understand the purpose of your web site
• make your web site more attractive to search engines so the site will rank higher

Building a web site without doing Search Engine Optimization is like buying a billboard on a country road that no one travels. There are hundreds of millions of web sites in the world.  The chances that many people will find your web site, especially if you have a new web site, are slim to partly cloudy.  Web sites can be expensive, so getting enough traffic to justify the cost of a web site and to support your business is important.

As Ray Charles' Mom used to say, "Do it right or don't do it at all."



Tenby Technologies: Internet Marketing Solutions

If you have suggestions or questions about SEO please feel free to use the comment area below.

Small Business Marketing Strategies

One of the problems facing many small businesses is how to market on a very limited budget.  Unlike large companies who may have extensive marketing budgets, small business may have very little money to promote themselves.  How then can a small business compete with larger companies? To paraphrase Sun Tzu in "The Art of War", you will need to play to your strengths and exploit the weaknesses of your competitors.


#1. Make use of free marketing resources. 

• Press Releases are a good way to announce changes to your business and to get the word out about new events.  Writing a professional looking press release increases the chances that a newspaper, radio station, or TV station will run your information.  By the way, after you have written the press release be sure to post it on several of the free internet press release sites. Here is a link to 12 free internet press release sites.
• Search Engine business listings: When Google presents a list of businesses in response to a query it pulls much of the information it uses from Google Places.  For example, if someone enters "plumber in belleville il" Google looks in Places for entries matching this business category and location.  Yahoo & Bing also have similar business directories.  Adding your business to these directories is completely free.
• Many online business directories will accept free business listings, among them are MerchantCircle.com, Manta.com, and Supermedia.com.  These business directory listings give your business more visibility and more opportunities for potential customers to find you.
  

#2. Referrals are free
The best lead you can get is a referral from someone you know who can introduce you to someone they know.  This situation gives you credibility with the potential client and addresses inherent trust issues.  The two best sources for referrals are your current clients and complementary businesses.  By complementary businesses we mean businesses who service the same client base, but who are not competitors.  For example, one complementary business for Real Estate agents would be a Title Company.

#3.  Social media is perfect for business
For B2C businesses Twitter and FaceBook can reach huge numbers of potential clients.  For B2B businesses LinkedIn is the place to be.  On any of these sites be sure to separate your personal postings from your business postings. Also you might want to look at a tool like HootSuite to reduce the work involved in maintaining your social media presence.

Continue to build your business network, use free marketing options whenever possible, and take an innovative mindset to promoting you business on a budget.

Tenby Technologies: Building Internet Business Solutions

Do you have other marketing strategies that are working for you and your business? If so, feel free to add them in the comments below.

Welcome

Welcome to Tenby Technologies' new blog.  In the days to come we will be posting tips, stories, tools, opinions, insights, and other miscellaneous stuff here.  We hope to make this blog a useful and interesting source of information for everyone.

Thanks,
Lynn & Dick Slackman