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Hi. My name is Tamlyn Van Zyst from Tamlyn Creative, and this is Creative in a Minute.
I'd like to introduce Daniel Doherty. He's a social media, and web developer expert.
His business is called MerlinFX. Welcome Daniel.
Daniel: Good day Tam, how are you?
Tamlyn: Good, thanks. What are some of the downfalls people actually have with their
websites? Is there's any traps or . . .
Daniel: There's probably a lot of traps. One thing they really need to do is get control
of their domain name. If they don't have control over that, they don't really have control
of their website. You can have the greatest website in the world, but if someone who set
your domain up for you has left the business, you can get it back, but it's a pain in the
neck to get it back.
Another downfall people do, they just set their domain up without what is known as DNS
Hosting. Yes, you can buy a cheap domain from Crazy Domains or something like that, but,
you can only point it one way. If you pay a little bit more, you get what's called DNS
hosting. That means you can point your mail to what mail server, your website traffic
to a web server. If you've got a commerce site you can point it to Shop.mydomain.au.
Point that traffic to like an e-commerce sever as well. If a server goes down, stuff does
happen. Stuff does fail. It's not going to all fail at the same time. So you're really
creating a bit of redundancy there. Domain names, important.
Tamlyn: Domain names, that's interesting. What about from a visual perspective, especially
like the home page?
Daniel: Yeah, I mean the home page, you need to have a number of functionalities. You should
have some sort of lead generation on the page. So you're getting people to your website.
It's pointless not trying to collect some information from them. Get their first name,
get their email address, and give them something back for free, like seven tips to whatever,
or seven secrets to something. They're giving you something in return, and they're getting
something in return. Don't ask for too much information, don't ask for their last name
and telephone number, and their address and their first born. There just not going to
fill all that out.
Tamlyn: Keep it simple.
Daniel: Keep it really simple. You need a site map, you need some other things, a little
bit of content on the home page. You need to constantly be changing, so when the Google
search bot oe Search bots come back to your website, it's constantly seeing that there's
new content. So when it comes back, 'OK new content' something to index, it comes back
at the end of 30 days and there's nothing new, I'll come back in 45 days, or I'll come
back in 60 days. Over a period of time if you're not showing that you're constantly
updating your website, it doesn't seem to be as important.
Tamlyn: Okay, so then that plays with your ranking.
Daniel: Absolutely. Then you've got to bring all that together and make sure it's as per
the customer wanted in their design brief and depends on the budget. You've got do it
within their colour. The dynamics of their brand, and their logo, and that sort of thing.
So it can be a delicate mix. A mix of sort of getting that all together.
Tamlyn: Thanks, Dan, for that. Another question I have is social media. There's so many different
applications you can choose. For someone who has a business, and is time poor, what would
you recommend as maybe one or two of the most beneficial social media apps that they could
use?
Daniel: Look, Tam, it's going to all depend on what type of business they have. If they're
a restaurant, Facebook definitely. Maybe getting into Foursquare, because its location based,
they can check in and you can have vouchers and do all that kind of stuff. If you're a
mechanic, definitely Facebook, maybe Twitter.
Maybe Pinterest, it's a bit of a stretch. If you're into fixing up cars, and painting
cars, and doing different things, Pinterest is awesome. Because all you have to do is
surf the Web, find some really good car, websites, drag racing websites all that sort of stuff
and go pin it, and you just pin that photo and write a comment, and that appears on your
pin board on Pinterest. And you can get people to follow you on Pinterest as well, as they
would follow you on Facebook or Twitter.
Tamlyn: So is that fairly new, Pinterest?
Daniel: Pinterest, it is fairly new in the scheme of things in social media. It had a
bit of a, sort of appeared around 2010, and really took off last year. It's now the second
biggest social media site in the world. It's now bigger than Twitter.
Tamlyn: And is that more for business, the followers are businesses?
Daniel: At the moment it's mainly just individuals, but Pinterest has introduced Pinterest business
pages.
Tamlyn: Oh wow, that's interesting. I'll have to check that out. I want to know, even I
want to know. I don't have a clue about it. I hear the word, "Cloud". Can you give us
in a nutshell, what the cloud is about?
Daniel: My personal opinion, the cloud is the Internet. Now the cloud from a marketing
point of view, advertising point of view sounds awesome. The Internet is obviously, that word
was created by a geek somewhere. So I'm on the Internet, or I'm on the cloud, which sounds
a lot better. It's up in the cloud, or it's on the Internet, boring.
So the Internet or really the cloud is really the Internet. Having said that, the cloud
encompasses a whole lot more. So it's the way servers are built now, they're virtual.
So rather than having a physical machine in the wall, and that's your server. You'll have
multiple machines across the hard drive space and memory, and CPU, and all that.
It's like a dashboard and you're looking at this is what I've got, and I want to add more
memory, you don't turn the machine off and add more memory. You just go to your pool
of memory OK I need another 2 GB and it’s done. You can take snapshots of that virtual
server. So if the whole server falls over, you just start it again. It's a piece of software
that acts like a physical server.
That's a bit of the cloud hosting and storage that way. Cloud is also using that technology
for storage, and creating cloud services. Like AmazonS3, which is Amazon.com, so they've
got all sorts of storage. A Dropbox, Dropbox is cloud storage that uses Amazon, and you've
got loads and loads of other cloud services that work that way.
Tamlyn: Cloud services are beneficial for businesses?
Daniel: Definitely, with cloud, I started using cloud services years ago, one was called,
BillingOrchard. It was costing me $17 US dollars a month. It automatically invoices, doing
all my recurring invoices. Don't have to get a bookkeeper to do any of that. It was sending
invoices whilst I slept.
Tamlyn: That's amazing. Well, we'll have to get more on the cloud in another segment I
think. There's a lot more to cover I think. Now, I don't know whether it's a question
about gadgets or the latest apps that might be of use to people in business. Maybe there's
one that's really, really handy for someone that's on the go, has the business. What would
you recommend as the thing you've tried out lately that's pretty awesome.
Daniel: Do you want one tip, or several, what would you like?
Tamlyn: Give us a couple.
Daniel: Okay. The ones that I really use a lot. One would be Instagram, on your. With
Instagram I can connect that to my Dropbox. I can connect that to Flickr, which is like
YouTube for photos. I can connect that to Foursquare, so when I'm checking in, I can
connect that to Facebook, and I can connect that to Twitter. So if we go to a particular
event and there's a speaker up there or you're in an expo. I just take a photo, say who I'm
watching, or just record something, I hit send.
Going out and create like six to eight pieces of content to different social places. But
I'm not seeing they've been rude about it, and adding it to here, and adding it to here.
Add it once, hit send, close it, put it in my pocket, and it just goes out and replicates.
So that's Instagram, that's really cool.
Tamlyn: So it's saving you a bit of time getting it out there.
Daniel: And people have got to remember, today, content is king. Content can be what you're
doing now. So if you're an expo, or a particular event, let your followers know what you're
doing, that's interesting.
Another really cool app, and it surrounds Dropbox, is Cambox. For about $1.60 from the
App store on iTunes. I think you can get it for Android, and Windows 7, check that out.
I'm a bit of an iPhone junkie. Cambox, just really connects direct to your Dropbox. Take
a photo with that and it automatically goes to your Dropbox. You can actually bypass your
reel, so it doesn't even save it to your phone, it automatically goes to your Dropbox.
Tamlyn: That's like backing it up really. You lose your phone you lose your images.
Daniel: That's right.
Tamlyn: Fantastic. What would you maybe use that for. Photos for something you see that
you need to remember?
Daniel: What I use it for. I use a number of cloud services, so I'm using Dropbox. And
when I do my banking, I take a photo of the check, and it goes to my Cambox, in my Dropbox,
but that Dropbox is shared with my accountant.
Tamlyn: Oh wow, that's fantastic.
Daniel: And so now, when they go through and I've got zero, when they go looking through
all of my expenses, and reconciliations, stuff like that, and deposits. They don't have to
send me an e- mail saying, what's this deposit for $200.
Tamlyn: Yes, they can put it together.
Daniel: I don't have to tell them because Dropbox tells them that something appeared.
A little pop up comes up.
Tamlyn: That's amazing. You've told everyone now, so that's good. Excellent. Thanks for
that Dan. Does your business, maybe a tip that you can give other people that are in
business or starting up business that might be of help for them?
Daniel: There's probably a couple of things. Constantly try and learn new things. You're
going to have to keep learning and trying to mind changing daily, every second, and
we've just got to keep up with [all of] that. There's lots of tools out there that can help
with that, and I can talk about all that another time. The other thing that I've done that's
really worked well for me. I refuse to have meetings on Mondays.
Tamlyn: Okay, that's interesting.
Daniel: The reason I do that is, if I'm having a meeting on Monday. It means on Sunday, which
is my day off. I'm thinking about the client, and I can't do that, because I need time off.
If the meetings on a Tuesday, I'm thinking about you all of Monday. So if the meetings
on Monday, I'm thinking about you all day Sunday. That's my time off, that's my time
to recharge, relax. I'll think about other things other than the business.
Tamlyn: All right. Thank you very much, Dan. I appreciate your time.
Daniel: No worries Tam, thank you, no problem.
Tamlyn: Hopefully, we'll hear a lot more about you and your business.
Daniel: Sure. Thank you.
Tamlyn: And thank you guys for listening. If you've got any feedback, please email us,
Tamlyn@Tamlyncreative.com.au. Thank you.