This one comes from Steven Cooper (@katmatcreations) who is a fellow Technology Guru and I must admit this is one of my pet frustrations as there is no REAL reason for a business to be using a generic email account such as @hotmail, @gmail or @bigpond when they’ve got a domain name and a website set up.

Common responses I hear from potential clients are usually along the lines of “but it’s on a different system so I don’t want to mess with that, I’d rather just stick with what I know already.”

See the thing is in the digital world it’s a matter of credibility. You have to develop this consistency in your entire online message so that people feel comfortable buying from you. Having a website with a domain name yourbusiness.com and then having your email address as businessname@hotmail.com implies that you are still an amateur and afraid to commit to doing things properly in your business.

For our clients we always set up domain name email addresses such as info@business.com or name@businessname.com and then we offer our clients some options:

1. Teach clients about the webmail interface for their email addresses (just like going to hotmail/yahoo/gmail and checking their mail online)
2. Forward all emails from these official accounts to the personal generic email accounts so that they don’t have to keep checking multiple accounts
3. Update their existing email clients such as OutLook to access these official accounts and store email in separate folders.

There are no excuses anymore so get your official email addresses sorted!

ICT Guru~

Technology Coach

BLKMGK ICT

p.s. Want to avoid making this mistake? Check out BLKMGK Go-Live. We’ve spent a fair bit of time putting together this online training course that teaches you how to build and promote your own website in just 3 weeks. Subscribe to the ICT Guru email list and you’ll hear more about it. Don’t worry we hate spam just as much as you do so your info is locked down for our eyes only.

When you use traditional advertising media like radio, tv or newspapers ads you know there’s a good chance that people tuned in will see or hear your ad, but what happens on the internet? How do people tune in there?!? Well if you’ve set your advertising up right it’ll be the same people looking at your website that just saw/heard/read your ad on the radio/tv/newspaper, but you’ve got to set everything up right first.

One of the biggest mistakes I see from small business owners is forking out $$bigbucks$$ to build a great website but then they don’t spend time or effort in trying to promote the website to anyone. It’s like planning a massive birthday party for all you friends and family but forgetting to invite anyone to it!

Simple tips like including your website address on all your brochures, business cards and even your email signature goes a VERY long way to driving traffic to your website.  What about including the website address on your voice mail?

A really good technique to keep people visiting your site is to send out and an email to all of your clients or customers and ask for their feedback on the website. Even if you’ve had it up for awhile, people can go back there and have a look at what you have to offer them or they’ll tell you what they don’t like about your website and it’s up to you to fix it. Start promoting now!

Good Luck!

ICT Guru~

Technology Coach

p.s. Want to avoid making this mistake? We’ve got something very cool coming up. Subscribe to the ICT Guru email list and you’ll hear all about it. Don’t worry we hate spam just as much as you do so your info is locked down for our eyes only.