How-to

[Video] How to Create an Email Signature in Microsoft Outlook 2007

by Jay on May 1, 2010 · 0 comments

in How-to, Social Media Marketing, Tips & Tricks

I send/receive a ton of emails on a daily basis. I make sure that every email includes my name, company name, contact information and links to all my social networking profiles.

These easiest way to do this automatically is to create an email signature. Every time I create I new message or reply to one, the information is automatically added. Plus, I use the opportunity to promote my monthly email newsletter at the very bottom.

Watch the video below to learn how to create your own email signature.

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What are some of the most creative email signatures you’ve seen?

PPT Presentation: Growing Your Business with Social Media

by Jay on March 16, 2010 · 0 comments

in How-to, Social Media Marketing, Tips & Tricks

Below is a presentation that I gave last night at Social Media Club of Evansville.

Growing Your Business With Social Media – Social Media Club Evansville

View more presentations from Jay Lane.
If you’re viewing this in your RSS reader and are unable to view the embedded presentation above, please go to the full blog post.

How to Exclude Internal Company Traffic From Your Google Analytics Data

by Jay on February 26, 2010 · 0 comments

in How-to, Web Analytics & Measurement

ga_filter3_2.25.10One of the quickest ways to negatively inflate/skew your Google Analytics data is to include internal company site traffic.

Many companies have their Web site set as the home page in their Internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome). Every time an employee opens their browser to surf the Internet, the company Web site comes up.

It’s not just visits that gets skewed. Your bounce rate shoots up and your average time on site goes way down. Plus, your home page traffic is not going to be proportional to the traffic on other pages of your site.

It’s easy to filter out your internal traffic. Here are 4 simple steps:

1) Find out your network’s IP address. Depending on company size, you may have multiple IP addresses. If you have an IT person, ask him. If you don’t have someone, go to www.WhatisMyIP.com. As soon as the site pulls up, you should see “Your IP Address Is:” and a number that looks something like “72.135.156.44″ directly below it. This is your IP address.

2) Login to your Google Analytics account. At the bottom right corner of the page you should see a “Filter Manager” link. Click it.

3) Click on “+ Add Filter” in the top right corner (denoted by the red arrow below)

ga_filter_2.25.10

You’ll be taken to a “Create New Filter” page.

ga_filter2_2.25.10

Give your filter a name. I called my “Exclude company traffic.”

Since we want to exclude traffic from our IP address, select “Exclude,” “traffic from the IP addresses,” and “that are equal to” in the three dropdown menus.

Enter your IP address. Mine was “72.135.156.44.”

Select which Web sites you want to filter by clicking on the appropriate Web site profile(s) and then clicking “Add>>”

Click “Save Changes”

4) You’re done! Sit back and relax knowing that your Web site traffic activity is a little more accurate.

If you’re smart, you’ll exclude your marketing team’s IP address as well in case they want to inflate the numbers in an attempt to show how good of a job they’re doing.

Additional resources: Google Analytics has a good help page with more information about excluding internal traffic.

Learn How to Register a Web Site Address With GoDaddy.com [Video]

by Jay on August 18, 2009 · 1 comment

in How-to, Website Design & Development

Registering a Web site address (domain) is the first step in launching your new Web site or blog. There are a lot of things to think about like branding, availability and memorability.

When you register an address through a site like GoDaddy.com, it can be an overwhelming experience because they attempt to upsell you every chance they get. It is a pretty easy process to navigate once you get used to it.

This how-to video walks you through all the steps of registering your own Web site address at GoDaddy.com.

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Installing a WordPress site at Network Solutions

by Jay on July 21, 2009 · 8 comments

in How-to, Tips & Tricks, Website Design & Development

I just helped a friend set up a WordPress Web site at Network Solutions. I’ve set up a ton of WordPress sites with Site5 (the hosting company I use) and GoDaddy but never Network Solutions. I wasn’t sure if it would be a smooth installation or if I’d run into issues.

I ran into an issue.

After uploading all the files, we got a database error but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I went to Google and found a blog post with a tip on solving the problem.

The post said to enter the site’s IP address in the “DB_NAME” field (in the wp-config file) but I think he meant “DB_HOST” field. That’s what I did anyway and it fixed the database error that we were getting. The site is now working like it should.

Thanks to Andrew at Fungible Convictions for the tip. It made my life a whole lot easier.