Understanding Google Analytics

I just happened upon some great video presentations by Google Analytics for interpreting your monthly website reports.  If you are a client of Emagine you probably receive monthly analytic reports with graphs and data that might be a little confusing.  The following short video presentations will help you understand each metric provided in the reports to better understand how much traffic you...

Wise Stamp Email Signatures

Here’s a handy tool for adding social media icons to your Email signatures if you use Gmail, Yahoo!Mail, WindowsLive Mail or AOL .  You can add inspirational quotes, your most recent blog post as well as your social media profile links for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, YouTube.com and many more!  The app is free and can be downloaded on the following browsers: Safari, Chrome and Firefox. ...

Website Check Up Time

Aloha & Happy New Year everyone!  Thank you for your continued interest in Emagine’s Small Business Marketing Blog. This is a great time of year, with resolutions fresh in mind to review your website and online marketing to make sure it is up to date.   If you don’t make it a habit to visit your website frequently, now is the time to have a look at it for outdated information,...

Using Video to Showcase Your Business

On the recommendation of my friend Debra, I started playing with an online video creation site called Animoto.com recently.  In addition to creating low-budget videos to help my clients promote their vacation properties, I also used it to celebrate my daughter’s 16th birthday.  Its super easy to use, drag and drop and you can create a video from images, video footage or a combination of...

Quick Response Codes

What is a QR Code? Have you been wondering what those funny black and white square codes are that are popping up everywhere?  They are called Quick Response codes, or QR Codes for short.  They are a type of matrix bar code that contains encoded information – that when scanned with a smart phone can instantly and automatically send a text message or email or direct you to a page on the web...

Google Sync

If you’re a Gmail user and you have an iPhone (or other mobile device) you’ll love Google Sync for keeping your email, contacts and calendars updated between your computer and your iPhone.  I like knowing that no matter where I add a new contact or calendar item that it will update across all my devices in my Google account. Check out this link for a short video on how it...

Accessible & Organized Bookmarks

Here’s an Update to an old post on bookmarks: Foxmarks is now called Xmarks and is a great way to keep track of your bookmarks across multiple computers, browsers and mobile devices now too.  I just recently upgraded to Xmarks Premium (for $12/year) and now I can access my bookmarks from my iPhone, which is super useful!   Here’s the Original Post: A few months ago I was...

Brand Your Twitter Profile

Want to customize your Twitter profile with your business branding/logo or custom image?  It’s not that difficult to do, here’s how…. Create a Custom Twitter Profile Background: Create an image that is approximately 2000 pixels wide by 1700 pixels tall, making sure to keep your Logo/text content confined to the upper left hand corner and along the left side. Your custom...

More Ways to Use Twitter

Have you ever been interested in knowing what is being said about your brand, business, industry or a certain topic on Twitter?  Here are some tools that you can use to stay informed of the latest “tweets” about things that interest you and that could give you helpful insight in how to use Twitter for your small business marketing. Twitter Alerts Use TweetBeep or Twilert to set up...

How to Read Your Google Analytics Reports

If you have a website built by Emagine, you have Google Analytics, a website statistics program already installed.   Google Analytics is a free program that can be set up on any website or blog to track how many visitors come to your site, how they found your site, which keywords they used and which pages are the most popular.  Google Analytics can even track revenue and it’s sources if...

Add Your TripAdvisor Reviews to Facebook

If your business or property is listed on TripAdvisor.com you can now share your reviews and ratings on your Facebook Business page. Here are the instructions on how to do it. To begin, you need to create a new tab on your property’s page in which to embed the widget or badge. This is called a static iFrame. Here’s how to do it: 1) Go to your TripAdvisor Owners Center and pick the widget...

Access Your Computer Files From Anywhere

As a follow up to a post I did awhile back, I’m giving DropBox a test drive as I want to be able to have access to all my important files on both my desktop, my laptop and my new iPhone.  A friend of mine who already uses DropBox sent me an invitation and an extra 500 MB of space for free on top of the 2 GB of space you get with a free account. It’s pretty simple actually, you just...

Facebook LikeBox

If you have a Facebook business page you can leverage your social media involvement by adding a Facebook LikeBox to your website and/or blog. The Like Box is a social plugin that enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website. The Like Box enables users to: - See how many users already like this Page, and which of their friends like it too - Read recent posts from...

Gmail’s Canned Responses

For those of you using Gmail….do you find yourself re-typing the same types of responses frequently?  If so, you might want to check out Gmail’s “Canned Responses”…. Under “Settings”, go to the “labs” tab and look for “Canned Responses” and enable it. The author of it, calls it the Email for the “truly lazy”, but I...

Best Free Email Subscriber List Software

So my new favorite email marketing software is MailChimp.com.  If you are still using Outlook or your own website/server to do regular email blasts its time to make the switch to a 3rd party software.  I think MailChimp is one of the best options out there and here’s why…. 1)  It’s Free. Yep.  If you have less than 2000 subscribers, and send less than 12,000 emails a month,...

Domain-Based Email with Gmail

If you have a website (www.mywebsite.com) it’s a good idea to use your domain-based email account (me@mywebsite.com) because  1) its more professional than using a free email address and 2) it helps to brand and bring awareness to your business/organizations’ domain address.  If you use an email account like me@gmail.com or me@yahoo.com you receive no benefit of your email...

Save 20% on a BOTW Directory Listing

For the month of October, Best of the Web directory (BOTW.org), the internet’s oldest and most trusted directory, is extending a 20% discount on new listings.  Sign up for a lifetime directory listing for your website and/or blog to gain added online exposure and search engine ranking benefits with this popular web directory. Be sure to use the Promo Code:  SAVE20 to get your 20%...

Turning Off Conversation View in Gmail

I love Gmail, but I gotta say I hate (I know -  it’s a strong word) but I really do – Conversation View.  Conversation View is the linking together of all emails within a string/conversation.  Since switching to Gmail last year, I’ve misplaced or inadvertently deleted email messages that I needed because of the linking structure inherent with “Conversation View”...

DropBox.com – Sync Everything…

I just heard about Dropbox and checked out their website briefly.  Anyone else heard of it or used it?  I currently use Windows Live Sync to keep important files and folders synced between my desktop and laptop but Dropbox looks like it might be another good option as well.  Here’s an article I found by Lee Matthews comparing the two products....

Gmail Signature Positioning Fix

As you may have read, I switched over to Gmail a few months ago.  And while I’ve come to prefer Gmail over Outlook as my email software,  there was one thing that was really annoying me.  The signature that I had created for my outgoing emails kept getting placed allllll the way at the bottom of the email string when replying or forwarding a message.  So I did some searching online and...

Facebook User Names

If you’d like to have your own easy to remember and brand Facebook username/URL (example:  www.facebook.com/mybusiness) for your Facebook business page, here’s a quick video tutorial from We Teach Facebook on how to do it. You must be the admin of your business page and you must have at least 25 fans before you are eligible for your own branded URL on Facebook.  Go to...

Switching to Gmail

Outlook is the only program I’ve ever used for Email.  That is until a few weeks ago.  I decided to switch to Gmail because I like the idea of having my Email, Contacts and Calendar available online – for ease of syncing with my mobile device and as a precautionary backup measure – in the event one of my computers should crash. I had helped a client awhile back set up their...

Log Me In

The other day my Dad called and asked for some help downloading and viewing a pdf file on his computer. We tried walking through it over the phone, but it soon became clear that there was some kind of program issue that was preventing him from accessing the  file.   While my Dad can figure out and troubleshoot just about anything, he’s only just recently started to use a computer so it...

Great Ways to Use Twitter for Small Business

Here are some links to some great ways to use Twitter for your small business....

Google Local Coupons

Yet another (Free) way to attract customers online.  Small businesses can use Google Local listings to promote special offers, discounts and giveaways, offering Google searchers incentive to choose your business above your competition.  By adding coupons to your listing in Google Maps, Google’s users can print your coupons and bring them to your business.  Coupons will appear alongside...