We all started blogging with a specific goal in mind. No one starts writing randomly. At least no one should. You blog because you want to achieve something. You want to promote your freelancing services. Your business, brand, cause… Or you simply want to share your thoughts and believes with the world. Whatever it is, you started blogging with a goal.
And in most cases, we need to attract visitors to our website if we want to achieve this goal. This means that before you start blogging you need a functional website. A step that often seems scary, especially for people who aren’t tech-savvy.
They usually face the first major obstacle to a functional website when picking a suitable web hosting provider. The internet is literally filled with different web hosting providers. How do you pick the best one for you if you have no idea what you’re doing? It simple, you ask the people on the internet what to do.
This is where it gets interesting since the internet is crowded with fake web hosting reviews. Web providers are paying large sums of money to people who are willing to promote their services. And these people – they call themselves marketers – will do anything to convince you to sign up with web hosting companies they’re promoting. And by anything I mean lie.
Fake reviews, especially web hosting reviews, are the plague of the internet. They do nothing but degrade our web experiences and make us deal with shady companies.
You might be thinking – surely this isn’t such a big deal. Afterall, people lie about many things. Lying about web hosting companies can’t be that bad.
Oh, how wrong you are my friend. Let me explain to you why we need to declare war on fake web hosting reviews.
Imagine you’re an active member of your society and you run a charity that’s trying to change the world for the better. You want to spread your message because you believe that the more people hear about your cause the more people will join. And that would mean a better world for both you and me.
You decide that the best way to get to people is with a website. But, you have no idea how to start one. And you’re on a tight budget which means that hiring a web developer isn’t an option. You decide you’ll just figure it out on your own. And what’s the first thing you do? You read a bunch of fake web hosting reviews and pick a shady web host that’s promoting their services with “questionable” marketing techniques.
Because they’re shady your website ends up being down most of the time. This means you can’t rank in search engines and no one hears your message. What a shame. And all because someone posted a fake review online.
Here’s the truth – good web hosting providers don’t have to use fake reviews. They have a proven track record and people are willing to give them positive reviews because they deserve them.
Companies that need fake reviews are the ones that can’t get any based on the quality of their service. Which means that picking a web host based on a fake review almost guarantees you’ll end up with a bad, unreliable host. And what do bad web hosting companies do? They slow down the internet by providing subpar services and long loading times.
And who would want a slow internet? Maybe you’re great-grandmother because she likes things slow, but that’s about it.
As if slow loading times weren’t enough, imagine you’re accessing a website and the damn thing ends up being down more than online. This is more common than you think. The shady companies don’t have reliable servers or trained teams that could make things run smoothly. That’s why they fall behind. And that’s why they have to use bad marketing to get clients.
They tie people with legally binding contracts
Imagine once again you’re the person we talked about in our first point – the one that wanted to spread the message of his charity with a website. He picked a wrong web host and now has a website that isn’t functional.
What’s even worse is that because he agreed to terms of the shady web hosting company he’s now legally obliged to pay for their services and can’t move the website to a reliable host. And do you remember we said our hero’s on a tight budget? Yep, not only does he have no website, he’s basically losing money, all because of a bad review.
I wish I could end this article with a silver lining, but I’m afraid I can’t. No matter how hard we try, there’s no way we’ll ever stop the plague that is fake web hosting reviews.
The best we can do is spread the message and make people aware of them. So, the next time you hear someone talk about starting a website, make sure you warn them about fake reviews.
The post 5 Reasons Why Fake Web Hosting Reviews Are The Plague of The Internet appeared first on Nigeria Technology Guide.
When choosing an accounting software for your business, no matter the scale of such a business, there is surely a lot of things to consider.
With the rate at which technology has advanced in the past couple of years, one of the things that you should not trade for anything is the ability of your chosen software to support online/ cloud-based services.
That is the only way to ensure your accounting data and books can be accessed from anywhere in the world, provided there is an internet connection and internet-enabled phone too.
For those that are in the market for a new accounting software, here are the best online accounting software you can look to this 2018 and beyond.
1 Sage 50 Accounting Software
The Sage 50 Accounting software is a web-based accounting solution which is targeted at small business and their owners. The platform has been around for many years and in that time, has been able to cater to no less than 3 million businesses across the globe.
They have set their foot strongly in the accounting market and are constantly innovating in a way that will help your small business grow bigger in no time.
The software manages more than just accounting tasks, going on to include invoicing and payroll management features in its overall offering. Taking on tax management and inventory tasks too, you will have more time on your hands to be productive in other things.
Available on desktops, the software can also be accessed from the comfort of your mobile devices (iOS and Android)
2 Xero Accounting Software
Servicing some 1.2 million businesses worldwide, Xero Accounting software is another online platform that you can consider getting invested in. They also offer multiple services alongside the basic accounting.
For one, the software will help you manage bank reconciliations, allowing you to import your bank statements and manage your expenses/ income from there. On top of that, the same software has been equipped with invoicing, bookkeeping and so much more.
Starting at just $9/ month, you will find the Xero dashboard and administration functionalities very impressive.
3 FreshBooks
Yet another solution for small businesses, FreshBooks literally takes a huge chunk of the work off your hands and lets you invest that time in doing other productive things for your business. With a fully automated platform, FreshBooks handles the paper trail of your business effectively.
The intuitive platform also organises all expenses according to where they should naturally fall in, tracks time and follows up your clients about invoices, ensuring you get paid faster on all fronts.
With its servers based on the cloud, you can always access your data from anywhere you are at any point in time
4 Zoho Books
Zoho Books makes the marriage of your bank account and cash flow tracking very smooth, you don’t have to worry about taking out the calculator again.
After linking the platform to your business bank account, it gives you real-time updates on how money comes into your bank and how it leaves. That allows you assign a purpose to every transaction as it happens. At the end of the month, you can then take advantage of the templated reports section for this app to generate a visual interpretation of your money’s movement.
As an added function, Zoho Books has a habit of invoicing clients on your list, categorising your bills in the same place and tracking such bills.
To cap it all off, this is the software that markets itself as an easy-to-use cloud accounting tool. So, you know your data is not only secure in the cloud but also easily accessible from anywhere
5 Quick Books
With four tiers of pricing available to the user, Quick Books promises to be one of the most flexible accounting software options for small business owners. The software has been designed to help small businesses keep their finances organised in one place making for easy referencing and decision making.
The platform also allows you connect to your bank account, making it easy to import and categorise all transactions that happen within the said account.
The mobile version of this software is not only important for checking your accounting details from anywhere. You can also use it to take photos of receipts and invoices which can then be stored on the QuickBooks Mobile app. At any time, you can generate dozens of reports which helps you determine your standing at that point in time.
Should you be interested, you can start enjoying use of this platform from as low as $5/ month.
The post Best Online Accounting Software for Businesses 2018 appeared first on Nigeria Technology Guide.
When you’re running a business using automated solutions, it’s easy to think that you can just leave everything to run and that your business, to a certain extent, will run itself. However, this is far from reality, and many businesses will be allowing certain automated marketing mistakes to operate without ever realising.
These mistakes could be costing your business. So you don’t fall into the same trap, here are seven of the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. A Lack of an End ResultProblem: You’re running an automated content marketing campaign, a social media campaign or emailing campaign but you haven’t defined the end goal of these campaigns.
Solution: Using automated marketing solutions saves you time when it comes to your day to day processes. Invest this saved time into defining your goals of what you want to achieve.
Maybe you want to generate more leads; maybe you want to grow your mailing lists, make more sales or increase your social media engagements rate. Whatever you want to do, define this as your end goal and then tailor your content to meet this goal.
It’s so important to set up your goals before you start automating your business’s processes. If not, you won’t be able to focus on what’s important or what you’re trying to achieve, which will result in your marketing campaign progressing through the motions, but not actually achieving anything.
2. Investing Too SoonMistake: You’ve invested in automation software for your business, but you currently don’t have a content strategy in place to keep it running smoothly. Either the content isn’t in place, or your mailing lists are too small.
Solution: Whatever you do, don’t buy a mailing contact list as these simply don’t work long-term. Instead, draw your focus into designed an inbound content marketing strategy that you can use. This means writing blog posts, creating customised emails and designing landing pages.
If you’re strapped for time, you can use content creation tools, such as Grammarix and Australianhelp, as recommended by HuffingtonPost article.
So, rather than jumping straight in every month and trying to spend all your budget so you can get the maximum amount of content for your business to use, take a step back and think about what you want.
After all, spending all your budget on five high-quality articles that have a purpose is far better, and much more effective for your business than 100 low-quality articles that could even result in damaging your reputation and credibility as a business.
3. Not Using Targeted EmailsProblem: You’ve grown your mailing lists, and you’ve got a steady number of contacts using automated solutions, but you’re sending out emails and getting little in return.
Solution: The problem here is that you’re not dividing your emailing lists into groups. The way that you’d market to a 50-year-old male is a lot different to how you would market to an 18-year-old female.
Using automated marketing software where you can segment your lists into groups like gender, age and location so you can create custom marketing content that will have much more of an impact.
Of course, by segmenting your lists, this means you’re going to be creating a lot more content, specialised for each segmented list that you’ve created. However, creating content in this way means that you’re not generalising your target market, but rather giving them the content that they want.
This is far more likely to increase your sales and overall revenue since you’ll be able to increase your website traffic and your customers will be far more likely to be looking at products that they are interested in, rather than just a generalised overview of what you have to offer.
4. Too Much of a Good ThingProblem: You’re not getting enough responses from your email marketing campaign, so you decide to send more emails, hoping your customers will find something they like.
Solution: “Don’t over send content to your subscribers because they’ll simply get sick of deleting your emails or you’ll end up in the spam folder” – explains Brittany Allen, a Digital Marketer at Oxessays and Huffingtonpost contributor.
One survey found a huge 78% of users unsubscribed because they were receiving too many emails. Only send emails you need that provide real value and have a takeaway for the reader. Also, use tools like Easy Word Count to make sure your emails aren’t too long.
In the event that you send far too many emails, you might even end up in the Spam folder which will consequently result in your becoming blacklisted by email providers, meaning none of your customers will be able to receive your emails.
What’s more, this can even damage the credibility of your business, since customers are not blind to spam and will think that you’re desperately trying to get custom.
Of course, the actual number of emails that you can send varies from business to business, industry to industry. While some businesses will thrive on sending an email, perhaps in the form of a newsletter, every single day, others may be successful only sending one email per month.
For you, this will most probably be a case of trial and error until you find a nice balance for you and your customers. However, you could also run a survey email, asking a question where you see exactly how many emails your customers wish to receive. Another approach would be to follow businesses in the same niche as you.
Sign up to their mailing lists, and then you can see how often they send emails to you. You can then use this information to see whether you feel like they should be emailing you more, or less, and then apply that concept to your own practice.
5. Only Using Automated EmailsProblem: Quite simply, you’re only using automated services for your email marketing campaign.
Solution: All aspects of your content marketing campaign can be automated in one way or another. Whether it’s your social media campaign, your blog content campaign, even your SMS marketing campaign, all aspects of your campaign can be automated, saving you so much time and effort in the long-term. Research what options are available to you.
For this, you can use automation tools like Via Writing and Uktopwriters to get you started.
Nowadays, content marketing is a big place, and there’s such diversity in the industry. You could try creating a podcast, creating videos, designing infographics and working on your PPC campaigns. While email marketing is a very popular and effective form of marketing, it’s not the only form, and you’ll need to conduct experiments through trial and error to find out what works best for you.
6. Restricting Data to Your Marketing TeamsProblem: All the information that you’re collecting from your automated campaigns is only being used by your marketing teams to generate more content.
Solution: This is one of the most common problems as the information you gather from your marketing campaigns, such as user demographics and topic interest can, of course, be used by your marketing teams to generate more readable content.
However, it can also be used by your sales teams and your support teams to give your customers an even better, more personalised experience that will help you to generate more sales and more happy customers. Use tools like Mywritingway or Academized to make sure that customer data is well organised for your departments.
In fact, using the analytical data from your email marketing campaign can be used by any department within your business. Even when it comes to product design or sourcing new services to sell to your customers, using your email statistics can show you what kind of content, products and services your customers are most interested in so you can then proactively set about giving them what they want, maximising your revenue and customer base.
7. The Biggest ToolboxProblem: You’re using so many automation systems and solutions that it’s hard to keep track of what software is monitoring what campaign.
Solution: When your automated marketing campaign is taking off, the best thing to do is to invest in an all-in-one automation solution. This keeps everything in one place, and it’s so much easier to manage.
You’ll also be able to match and compare data within an all-in-one solution effortlessly, so you can identify patterns and correlations with your data so you can see exactly what your customers, both old and new, want from your business; something you may have easily missed if you’re using separate automation platforms.
As you can see, there are many mistakes a business can make when it comes to using marketing automation software but, there are also many simple yet highly effective solutions to these problems. Be smart and think about the best way to address these problems for your individual business.
Author BioFreddie Tubbs is a marketing automation professional at Resumention. He is writing a Revieweal online review blog and is a guest writer at the Atlantic and Bigassignments blog.
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