Remember when the fax machine seemed like the greatest workplace invention ever? Then along came e-mail, and who would have guessed something so fast and so efficient could also be so cheap? It does make you wonder what The Next Big Thing will be – and in fact there are some who will tell you it’s here now in the social networking services popping up all over the Web.

If you think of social networking as something high school and college kids are doing on MySpace and Facebook, you’d be right, of course. But the whole social networking phenomenon has evolved and today professional folks are using these and more business-focused networks such as LinkedIn and Ryze to connect and build relationships with potential customers, clients and partners.

Many take it even further, engaging in what Joanna L. Krotz refers to as “social media marketing” to promote their expertise – and in doing so – their products and services too. In her Office Live Small Business column, Krotz discusses how this marketing trend taps into the rising influence of user-generated communities like the social networking sites – but also blogs, wikis and bookmarking sites.

So is any of this right for you?  If a key part of building your business is making connections, social media marketing may be worth exploring. It won’t cost you a lot of money, but it will take an expenditure of time to get started. Krotz’s column offers a lot of good information to help you do just that.

See you online,

Monte Enbysk

Turning away spammers, scammers and others unwanted solicitors is an ongoing fight for all of us. One of the new tactics for eluding these intruders is private domain registration. Any domain registrar selling domains today typically offers this type of registration, including the registrar for Microsoft Office Live Small Business. If you’re not familiar with private domain registration, here’s how it works.

Say you browse to a domain registrar’s Web site and order the domain name fourthcoffee.com.  As part of the registration process, you are required to provide your name, e-mail address, phone number, and mailing address. The thing to understand is that all this personal contact info is made available on the Web in something called the WHOIS (as in “who is”) database.

Numerous Web sites will let you submit a domain name to the WHOIS server. The server will promptly return the domain owner’s e-mail address, phone number, and other contact details. It’s a useful service—and pesky marketers especially love it.

With private domain registration, however, the registrar substitutes alternative contact information for yours. Solicitors mining the WHOIS database will typically find your registrar’s contact info when they submit your domain name.

It’s important to know that you don’t surrender ownership of your domain just because your contact information is obscured. The registrar’s records will still record you as the owner and maintain your actual contact information.

Registrars charge a fee for this service. If you obtained your domain through Office Live Small Business, you pay $6.95 a year for private domain registration for any .com, .net or .org domain you own. To order it, sign in to your service and from the Home page, click Add/Manage Services, Web Site and E-mail, and then the sign up link next to Private Domain Registration. Because we think private domain registration is such a good idea, private registration is now included in the cost ($8.95 per year) for any additional new domains you purchase in the future.

Will private registration solve all your problems with solicitors? Probably not. But I know that if it keeps just two dinner-interrupting telemarketers from calling me each month, it will pay for itself.

See you online,

Skip Chilcott
Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team

Have you noticed that we revamped the Reports area in Office Live Small Business? If not, log into your account and click Reports when you get a chance. We’ve added new features that may help you attract more site visitors and turn them into customers. For instance, now you can follow day-to-day trends in your Web site traffic and see results of your keyword advertising campaigns at the same time. Those are great insights to have when you’re trying to make marketing decisions.

Let’s take a quick run through Reports so you’re aware of the valuable information you can get in just a couple clicks.

Visitor Report

Information on visitors coming to your site will help you make decisions regarding the reach/attraction of your site. You’ll see statistics on:

·         New Visitors – those who came to your site for the first time ever

·         Repeat Visitors – those who returned after visiting your site previously

·         Visits – the number of times individuals came to your site

Here’s an example of how you might use this information: If you find you are attracting lots of New Visitors but not many Repeat Visitors, it may mean you need to make the content on your site more engaging.

Site Usage Report

Like a shop owner who watches what people do once they enter his shop, this information tells you what visitors do once they come to your Web site. Information varies depending on your site, but you might see:

·         Views – the number of pages visitors viewed during a given time period

·         Conversions – the number of times a specific action was taken (such as signing up for a newsletter or requesting information) during a given time period

·         Conversion rate – the ratio of conversions to the number of visits

Referring Sources Report

Here you can learn who is sending traffic to your site and the quality of these visitors. For example:

·         Source – the name of the referrer sending the traffic

·         Source type – including search engines, online ads, direct links and partner referrals

·         Visits – the number of times people came to your site through a particular source during a given time period

Keyword Reports

Whether you use our adManager tool to place keyword ads or rely on organic searches, you can get great information about the keywords people are using on search engines to find your site. Details include:

·         Keyword – the actual keyword an individual used to get to your site

·         Search engine – the name of the search engine used and if an ad listing was involved

·         Visits – the number of times people were referred by a particular keyword to your Web site

There’s even more, but now you can see why Reports is such a valuable tool – and how it will become even more useful as you grow your Web site and introduce new features.

Good luck,

Sharad Nandwani

Want some great (and free!) exposure for your Office Live Small Business Web site? If so, consider this: We're looking for a few very special success stories---in other words, small businesses that have gone from good to great using Office Live Small Business services. For example:

§   Have your sales soared since you took your Web site live?

§   Have call volumes increased significantly?

§   Has our search marketing tool attracted more prospects than you ever dreamed possible?

If you think you’ve got a compelling story to share, the first step is to send us an e-mail with a brief summary of what Office Live Small Business has helped you accomplish. If it sounds like a good fit, we’ll interview you about your experience with our services and how Office Live Small Business has changed your business for the better. Then we’ll write up your story and send it to you for review.

We’ll use these success stories on our Web site and in conversations with the media to illustrate the exciting ways customers are using Office Live Small Business to boost sales, improve communications or increase efficiency.

We like to think it’s a win-win.  We get a great story---and you get great exposure for your business, for free. So e-mail us today!

Regards,

The Office Live Small Business Team

We think you’ll be happy to know about improvements we’re making to your Office Live Small Business service—especially since many of the suggestions came from customers like you. (And we thank you for that!)
You’ll find enhancements across all three of our services—Office Live Basics, Essentials, and Premium. We’re making the tools and services easier to use, adding some great new features and functionality, and enhancing the Office Live Home and overall site navigation.
The upgrade process began January 5th and will last four to six weeks. Be sure to check out the complete list of improvements at every service level available on our Web site.
Service interruptions
While we implement new features and functions there will be periods of time when various aspects of the service will be unavailable. We are doing everything we can to minimize the impact to you, but we want you to be prepared. We hope you’ll find that the improvements we are making are well worth any inconvenience.
If you have any questions or experience any problems, please contact our Support Team at http://support.officelive.com/.
See you online …
The Office Live Small Business Team

Visit the Microsoft Office Live Small Business Web site

There’s plenty of advice out there about what items to post on your Web site, says writer Christopher Elliott. But what kinds of information should you never publish?

Posting inappropriate, confidential, or incomplete information on your site can have negative and potentially embarrassing results, Elliott says. You could lose clients, employees—even your business.

In his days as an investigative reporter, Elliott says he used to count on companies carelessly posting information that could be used in a story. His favorite: He once unearthed a confidential PowerPoint presentation on computer security that detailed how to hack into a laptop computer wirelessly. You don’t need to own a laptop to appreciate the irony in that.

Read his 12 things you should never put on your site.

Monte Enbysk