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Writing Compelling Online And Offline Marketing Content

Working in the world of B2B communications there are a lot of rules and regulations to follow, and it is often all very serious indeed, but that doesn’t mean that all your communications have to be boring.

There are a few guidelines to remember that can give potential customers important information without putting them to sleep in the process.

The first tip is to keep the message as brief as possible and just get to the point. A short, powerful idea that has been cleverly packaged will always be better than an inordinate amount of waffle.

The more efficient you can make the message, the more likely it is to be read and to have the effect you want it to have. It is also important to make your content valuable and one of a kind.

While your topic of choice may have already been the subject of countless articles, you need to provide a different angle that will make yours stand out from the crowd and draw in consumers.

Avoid Four-Letter Words
There are some four-letter words that have no place when it comes to the world of B2B – and we’re not talking about profanity.

These are simple everyday words that the really clever stopped making use of a long time ago. Some of the most offensive?

The likes of “can’t” and “busy” as used in sentences such as “We can’t do that” or “I’ll call you back when I’m not as busy.”
Customers come to your business because they believe that you will be able to give them what they are asking for.

Even if you genuinely cannot give them that, you should always try to send them to someone who can, as they will remember your helpful behavior.

Likewise, under no circumstances should you tell a customer you’re too busy to deal with them.

No client wants to feel that they are unimportant and unappreciated, and if you do that, chances are your client will find someone else who won’t make them feel that way.

How Much Content Is Enough?
One question faced by many B2B companies is when they have created enough content to be able to answer all the questions that a prospect might conceivably have at each and every stage of the buying cycle.

The question therefore is, how can a company go about determining that? It begins with understanding who their ideal buyers really are and the kinds of concerns and issues they will have.

Creating buyer personas can actually assist with this, as they are used quite commonly in order to create an ideal customer archetype based upon what you already know in regard to your current prospects and customer base.

You need to be able to get inside your buyers’ heads and have a solid understanding of what it is that makes them tick. To do this, talk to your customers and to the personnel at your company who regularly engage with them. It will be a lot easier to craft your message.

Medical Billing And Consulting Services Dramatically Improves Efficiency And Data Security

Cheryl Wilkinson and Ann Swartout started Medical Billing and Consulting Services Inc. (MBCSI) in 1988 with a single client. Now, the company provides specialized billing services for hundreds of clients as far away as Illinois, Florida and Wyoming.

MBCSI is a leader in its field, providing critical billing services for physicians and other medical specialists, and relies heavily on it’s network of eleven workstations and several servers.

“We use our computers to bill medical claims to insurances through clearinghouses and also generate hard copy claims for insurances that don’t have electronic capabilities,” explained Cheryl. “We also do patient statements for our clients.”

Unfortunately, MBCSI recently suffered a hard drive failure on one of their older servers, presenting them with a significant work stoppage situation.

“We contacted several other companies in the area,” explained Ann. “Tech Experts was the only one that immediately responded and put our minds at ease.”

MBCSI implemented a new Lenovo Think Server, running Windows Server 2008. The server also employs several extra measures of data protection, including RAID storage.

“They were able to recover all of our old files and install them on our new server, within a short period of time,” Cheryl said.

MBCSI took advantage of Experts Total Support, which provides complete technical support, anti-virus and monitoring services for a single low, monthly service fee.

“Once we signed on with them, they came into the office and went thru each computer and cleaned up the unnecessary files and malware on them,” Ann said. “This helps them run faster and more efficiently.”

Medical Billing also signed up for Experts Total Backup, which protects their critical business data with secure, encrypted off site storage.

“We have offsite backup now,” commented Ann. “That gives us tremendous peace of mind.”

Cheryl concluded, “If a terminal goes down or there is a glitch, they’re here immediately and we suffer much less down time. The fast service and friendly staff are quick to solve any problem.”

Got Compliance? Simplifying HIPAA And PCI Requirements

By Tech Experts Staff
Many of our clients from health care providers to any business that accepts credit cards via in house applications have compliance standards they must meet.

The health care industry in particular has to be compliant with HIPAA and possibly PCI as well. So, with compliance being such an important issue what are some ways businesses can be sure they are in compliance?

At Tech Experts we offer many different services that are designed to help your business be more compliant with the strict standards in place by HIPAA and PCI.

HIPAA was established in 1996 at a time when the health care industry was starting to move away from paper and rely on computerized documentation for day to day operations. With this new technology being used brought more security risks that needed to be addressed as a whole; this is what brought about HIPAA.

While new technology is great in improving productivity businesses have to learn to adapt to the new security risks that come into play when using these production increasing technologies.

One of the first services we offer to clients is our Email Hosting services. We have various offerings with email based off of POP email and Exchange email. For compliance we offer archiving services with both one year and ten year retention policies.

We also offer solutions that are encrypted so the traffic cannot be easily captured and read which protects the information you send by email.

The second service we offer to clients needing to meet compliance standards is our offsite backup system.

Our offsite backups send your important data over encrypted connections just like the email system protecting your data from theft as it travels from your location to the safety of our datacenters.

Depending on your ability to function in the event of a disaster/outage we also offer disaster recovery options to help your business continue to function should your primary server go down.

The third service we offer is managed services. With managed services you can be sure that your computer always has an up to date, high end, antivirus installed. We monitor the antivirus that is installed on all of our managed service clients workstations and servers to ensure they are safe and secure.

While an antivirus does not guarantee you will not get an infection (because no antivirus can guarantee this) having a good one does ensure that the likelihood of being infected is greatly reduced.

With our managed services offering, we also monitor failed login attempts to see if there are any brute force attacks targeting your network. This lets us quickly address a problem before it becomes a network breach. Patch management is another feature of managed services that helps with compliance.

Patch Management ensures that your computers are kept up to date with the latest security patches.

Our managed services plans also include remote service and support. We offer a robust remote support feature that allows us to troubleshoot and correct almost any issue remotely.

The ability to offer such a comprehensive remote support tool means that we can more quickly address issues you run into without having to actually come out to your location.

Another component we offer to make your business more compliant is our server and workstation packages. Any server we offer can be programmed to make your business more compliant.

From enforcing regular password changes, account lockout policies, to hardware or software restriction policies, our servers are sure to improve your current network configuration.

With all of our services bundled a business can vastly improve their security and become more compliant than they were previously.

If your curious how compliant your business is, give us a call. We can setup a security evaluation based on the requirements for your industry. We can then offer some suggestions to improve your network’s security and compliance.

Steps To Improve Your Virus Protection

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
Many people have asked lately how their computer might get infected by viruses. There are a large number of ways that a virus can get into your PC.

So you need to be properly protected so that in the event viruses find their way onto your system they will be eradicated.

The most important part of improving virus protection is starting with good reputable antivirus software. These usually do require that a little bit of money be spent, but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

There are a lot of antivirus software providers making it difficult to choose which antivirus to purchase.

When choosing an antivirus application, you want it to protect against known threats and irregular behavior or heuristics. Heuristics is a form of “artificial intelligence” which monitors patterns of behavior similar to malware activity.

You will always need to make sure that your antivirus software is up to date.

In some software, where it is okay to fall behind on an update, here and there to maintain functionality in some proprietary software, this is not true with your antivirus software.

Each update contains another list of viruses that have been found in the wild. Antivirus software usually costs a periodic fee that must be paid to continue your subscribed service.

This subscribed service is the updates to the antivirus software, and you will want to make sure that your subscription does not run out.

Once you have an antivirus program installed, you will want to schedule it to run at a time when your computer is on but not in use. This will keep your computer clean and not slow down your work.

Another serious measure of protection is keeping all applications on your computer up to date. Windows updates all the time to fix any new security vulnerabilities that become discovered.

All of the programs that you have installed on your computer must remain up to date as well. These applications update to improve the application and to fix security vulnerabilities.

If for some reason you have to keep an outdated version of software on a computer, then is is even more important to protect that software against viruses.

Even the best antivirus software cannot protect against all viruses. This is where backups are useful. You should back up your network constantly, and your workstation weekly.

Having backups on and off site is the best way to prevent costly disaster from striking your company. You will need to monitor your backups on a regular basis in order to confirm that the process is working properly.

Without testing, your backups may be corrupt and you would have no way of knowing.

We offer managed antivirus, backups and services such as patch management. This means that for a low monthly cost we can manage all of your computer updates and backups.

We can take the hassle out of which updates you should or should not install. We can also offer a cloud based backup solution to protect you from losing data that cannot be easily replaced.

Social Media For Your Business: Three Quick Tips

Social media is all the rage – we’ve written about it here, and you’re certainly hearing about it on the news and in your email.

Here are some quick tips to get the most out of three of the most popular services.

LinkedIn Can Help Grow Your Business
LinkedIn has more than 150 million registered users, which is a lot of opportunities for those who wish to use the professional social media site to help them grow their business.

The real worth of LinkedIn for businesses is to be able to connect on a one-to-one basis with other business professionals.

Many of the connections you make on the site can end up not only introducing you to partners and business influencers but potentially also referring your business to possible new customers.

Having a personal LinkedIn profile is often viewed as a digital business card or a form of online resume.

While using it as such is a good place to start, it can be taken much further to help you build a powerful presence online in order to help encourage more business opportunities and is an excellent way of both attracting and managing your business connections.

Using Twitter
Twitter is one of the fastest and best methods of amplifying the message, product and services of a business or an individual in all the social media available in the twenty-first century.
The first thing you need before launching your business on Twitter is a strategy.

Review your marketing and business goals, and don’t make this preliminary step too complicated.

Think about how your business can benefit from social media and how the industry that you are in is using it as a whole. The great majority of the time, social media will be able to fit into your digital marketing efforts.

Some things that you need to think about include what you intend to use Twitter for. Are you using it for customer research or for branding? Are you using it in order to reach a specific segment or target, for customer support, or just to raise awareness?

Another question you need to answer is whether you will be able to come up with enough relevant content to make it worthwhile.

Optimize Your Profile on Pinterest
Your B2B business may by now have created a presence on the popular and ever-growing Pinterest.

This site has achieved incredible growth, which is very hard to overlook when it comes to the potential for B2B marketers to engage with both existing and prospective clientele.
There are some ways in which you can optimize your profile on this site, however.

The About area is the keyword description of your page as it will appear in search results, should someone search for your page.

The image you use needs to be consistent with the profile graphic or avatar you use on your firm’s other social profiles for the purpose of easy recognition, though you also need to keep in mind how the image will look on your followers’ Pinterest streams.

The Social Linking area, if done correctly, can be a great source of content for your other profiles.

Decide whether you want to manually or automatically publish your pins to your Facebook or Twitter pages.

The Hide setting should be turned off so others can find your profile and pins when searching and search engines can index your activity.

Has Your Company’s Facebook Page Converted To Timeline? Here are Some Must Know Tips

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

If you follow social media at all (and you should be!) you know that the landscape changes almost on a daily basis. One place this is very evident is Facebook.

Facebook is constantly working to “improve” your experience and now they’ve done it again with Timeline – not only for our personal pages but for our business pages as well.

Many business owners fought the changes and waited until they were forced to accept the upgrade to Timeline. Now that it’s been switched over, they’re complaining that it’s cumbersome, unattractive and difficult to navigate.

But the Facebook juggernaut is unstoppable – the new layout is here to stay. So, here are a few tips to make the most out of your company’s Facebook page, and dealing with Timeline a little easier.

• Create a cover photo: this is a great way to use Facebook to further build brand recognition.

The options are virtually endless when it comes to this image as long as you remember that you can use a brand or logo but you can’t offer a coupon or discount (no “%” off sales or coupons or similar ploys), no contact information (that’s what your “About” section is for) and no calls to action (that’s what your status updates are for).

• You can get private messages from fans through your business page: this is a new feature and very useful. Before, if your fans wanted to send a message to you through Facebook, it had to be through your personal page.

Now they can contact you directly through your business page. This one may be a little difficult getting used to, so make sure you check those messages – you don’t want to alienate a potential customer!

• Highlighted post option: you can now select a post to be highlighted (this can be those discount, sales or calls to action that you can’t put in your cover image). Highlighted posts simply means your post can take up both sides of the page.

These are just a few of the useful changes that Facebook Timeline brings to your business page. Don’t worry – the new timeline may not fit well with your thoughts about change but it’s all in our best interest. Don’t panic and go with the flow.

The Best Ways To Protect Yourself From Malware

By Tech Experts Staff
Users who bring their computers in to repair malware infections invariably ask the same question: “Why didn’t my antivirus stop me from getting viruses?”

So, you’re probably wondering, “If having antivirus software on my computer won’t protect me from viruses, what will?”

The fact of the matter is that while computer users are told they have to have antivirus on their PCs or risk getting infection, a machine can still get a virus despite antivirus software being installed.

Antivirus not foolproof
Antivirus software is designed to help prevent your system from becoming infected, but it isn’t foolproof. Antivirus software is constantly updated, but can be out of date for hours or even a day or two when a new infection is discovered.

Virus definitions are used to detect viruses and prevent them from gaining access to your computer. Automatic updates in antivirus software like Vipre download the updated definitions to protect your computer.

It’s the time period between when a new virus or malware is released, and the software companies can update the definitions, that your system is vulnerable.

How to protect from malware
Although no antivirus software, even the most expensive versions, offers guaranteed virus protection, antivirus software is a must have. We’ve seen a number of infections where clients have said that they were on legitimate sites at the time the infection hit their computer.

Even legitimate websites have the chance of malware being coded into them by hackers, causing that website to send the malware onto your computer.

So, the absolute best thing you can do is to have antivirus software installed.

The next best step is to be cautious about what you are looking for on the Internet. Many times, users looking for “free” items on the Internet don’t suspect that they might as well be searching for free viruses.

Hackers are crafty – targeting people looking for free downloads is an easy way to spread an infection.

Some of the most common risky items to search for are “screensavers,” “free games,” “work from home,” and “taxes.”

With the search terms shown here, it’s easy to see how computer users could easily be tricked into downloading a file or application that was laced with a virus.

Cautious browsing
The second step to preventing infections on your computer is a combination of common sense and caution.

While it may not be common knowledge as to what is and is not safe to click on while on the Internet, really what it comes down to is using common sense. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, even on the Internet – if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. It’s very important while browsing the Internet that you do not click on anything that just catches your eye. Many times, people have a tendency to click on ads, and because of this, ads have a high risk of containing malware. Don’t click on ads!

The second part, be cautious refers to everything you are doing that involves the connection to the Internet.

If you are using email, make sure you were expecting an email from the person sending it. Opening forwarded emails is a bad habit.Many viruses attach themselves to email accounts and send a lot of spam and forwarded messages which unsuspecting users click on and mistakenly download a virus onto their machine.

So to sum everything up, you should always have antivirus software installed on your computer and keep it up to date.

Even if you think you are a computer pro, keyloggers and many other items can get into your computer and run in the background undetected sending away your private information.

Always use common sense and extreme caution as to what you click on. Nothing is free and you don’t ever know for sure who or what is on the other end of that email you just happened to get in your inbox.

If you think you may have a virus or malware on your computer, or just want it checked for safety’s sake, give us a call or bring your computer in and we can check it out.

It is all too common to see viruses on machines but not actually see anything different on the computer other than it “running a little slow.”

Why Should You Backup Your Data?

by Jeremy Miller,Technician
Even though it’s common knowledge, I thought I’d offer a quick refresher on data backup and why it is important.

What is a data backup?
A data backup is a copy of your data stored in a different location. This can be as simple as copying a document or picture to an external drive or disk.

It could also be a copy of your entire operating system, so if your system crashes you could recover it relatively quickly. Backups are usually not stored on the same location as the primary data.

Why should you backup your data?
You should always backup your data to at least one external source. It is best practice to have at least one on-site backup and one off-site backup.

You never know when a catastrophic event will take place. There are a number of things that can corrupt your data to the point of needing recovery.

For example, you could corrupt a file from losing power, or selecting cut instead of copy when moving files and the process errors out.

If you have files that cannot be replaced such as photos or emails that you have saved, and they become corrupt, the only way to guarantee recovery would be to have backup copies of these files in a different location.

The different location is one of the most important parts of backing up data. The reason is because if the drive your original data is on fails, and your backups are stored on the same drive there is a good chance you will not be able to recover your backups either.

If you are constantly making changes or installing and removing software then taking a backup image of your PC during a known-good configuration would be a great option.

You could set up your PC with a fresh-install of your operating system of choice that is up-to-date and just the way you like it.

Then you could take an image backup of the instance that way if you want to recover to that state it will only take the effort and time to load the image. There will be no hunting for drivers or remembering settings for printers, it will be easy to just load and go.

What is the best backup option?
Choosing the right backup is based on the kind of data you need to backup and how often it needs to be protected.

You must decide if you only need to backup some files, most files, all files, or the entire operating system.

Then you must decide how much money you want to spend on your backup solution. You must also decide where you want to store your backups such as an external hard drive or using a cloud storage service.

We offer Experts Total Backup, a cloud-based off-site storage system that’s rock solid and secure. It operates entirely in the background, encrypting your files and replicating them to an off-site storage system.

In conclusion if you have data that you cannot or do not want to lose then you must backup your data. This is the only way to guarantee that you do not lose any data. Once you have these backups you must test and safeguard them.

Keep a few copies so that if one backup gets damaged you have more to fall back on. Testing your backups is a great way to know that you will be able to restore from your backed up data.

Stay Productive (And Sane) While Working From Home

More and more, working from home has become the norm for many people. Whether you’re freelancing or telecommuting from a full-time job, you really can be just as productive, if not more, than a cubicle dweller. Just remember this advice for succeeding on the home front:

• Start your day off right. You may not have to work a rigid 9-to-5 schedule when working at home, but take your job seriously: “Report” to your desk, wherever it is, at an appropriate time ready to work. Some experts recommend showering and dressing as if you’re going to the office to get into the right frame of mind.

• Understand what your organization needs. Working from home means you won’t get as much direct feedback and instruction from your boss throughout the day. Get clear expectations from your manager so you’ll be working on the right tasks and the right schedule. Set short-term and long-range goals that align with your organization’s objectives.

• Establish firm boundaries. Family members and friends should know when you’re working and realize that you can’t be interrupted for trivial reasons. Keep your door closed (if you have one), and let the answering machine pick up the phone if your spouse or child doesn’t get to it. You’ll find out about emergencies soon enough; don’t get distracted by irrelevant chitchat.

• Stay connected with people. Don’t let them forget you back at HQ. Check in frequently with emails and phone calls to let people know you’re on top of things. Visit the office when you can, and maintain your friendships with co-workers. You want to be thought of as a full member of the team, wherever you are.

• Take breaks when you need to. Don’t work yourself to exhaustion trying to prove you’re just as productive at home as you would be in a cubicle. Although you shouldn’t start a home renovation project in the middle of writing a report, there’s nothing wrong with spending a few minutes emptying the dishwasher or putting laundry away to clear your mind and relax a little.

• Evaluate your progress regularly. Keep track of your workload and your goals so you can review how much you’re getting done and whether you need to make any adjustments. As your own supervisor, you’ll need to keep an eye on what you’re accomplishing so you don’t fall behind.

Open Your Mind To Solve Problems Creatively

Everyday problems usually respond to tried-and-true solutions. But sometimes you need to go beyond the obvious. Try these tactics when you need to take a more creative approach to problem-solving:

• Do some extra research. Don’t assume you have all the facts you need. Before trying to solve the problem, dig deep into the background and the issues surrounding it. You may uncover something new that will lead to a fresh approach when nothing else has worked.

• Set up the problem correctly. In your rush to find a solution, you might treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause. Seek perspectives from other people, and keep an open mind about what’s really going on.

• Consider the impact. Who else does the problem affect? You may gain valuable insight by including others in your analysis and solution. You’ll also build support for your solution by drawing in your co-workers and other interested parties to help you implement it.

• Try a lot of solutions. Instead of zeroing in on one approach and hoping it works, experiment with as many different options as you can. Keep track of what you’re doing so you can identify what worked or combine promising aspects of different attempts.