All posts by AltusHost

Marketing

5 Media Forms That are Quite Popular in the Online Environment

Leave a comment

Providing users with unique content is a must for any online website or business that wants to rise above the competition. There are hundreds of types of content you can use, but the idea is to engage the audience and expand your market. Content provides value to the customers and offers a way to get closer to the users.

However, there are so many different types of content you can use – it’s important to find the one that works best for your brand and company. Here are some of the most popular media forms used to drive growth online.

Blogs posts

Blogging is one of the oldest and most popular methods of reaching out to an audience. It has been around for as long as the internet itself. However, blogging has changed a lot over the years. New, sophisticated methods are used to help businesses engage audiences and increase revenues. 

Blogs these days must be relevant, well-written, and they have to capture the audience’s attention and interest them to find out more about a product or service. However, blogs can do so much more than just that. 

They can help build trust and healthy relationships between businesses and consumers. That leads to increased conversions and better visibility. You will need a memorable domain and a trusted host to even get started.

Blogs can be easily shared over social media, making them the perfect tool for search engine ranking. You must provide constant high-quality content with a call to action at the end of each article. Interlink the blog with partner websites, and that will give you all the authority you need. 

Using the right keywords and writing about trendy topics can help your business more than you know.

Video tutorials

Video tutorials present a perfect way of allowing your audience to better understand what you offer. They are useful in multiple ways. First, over 30% of all YouTube searches are for “How To” videos. Second, tutorial videos provide all kinds of information, so there won’t be a need for a huge customer support team. 

You will answer questions before they are even asked, which means that you won’t have to send so many emails and answer calls all the time.

Videos are also an ideal way of showcasing your products or services. You can include a detailed breakdown of all features and add a few customer reviews to back everything up. Also, the vast majority of the audience prefers watching videos rather than reading how-to guides and similar articles. 

Last but not least, videos help build trust with your audience.

Podcasts

Just like video tutorials, podcasts can help you build authority and get your audience closer to your ideas. A podcast can help you form a personal connection with your customers. They will get to see what you’re all about, what makes your business successful, and better understand your goals. 

You don’t have to invest a whole lot of money to create an excellent podcast. All you need is a camera and a few topics people will find interesting.

In some ways, podcasts are more effective than videos because people don’t have to watch the screen to get information. They can play the podcast in the background and still get all of the relevant information. They also help increase traffic generation and develop your company from the inside.

 It’s always a good idea to include podcasts into your channels as they will help you generate more leads and form a strong connection with your audience. Here is some more info on how to create the best podcast for your business.

Infographics

Infographics are a visual presentation of important information about a product or a service. They are hugely popular among businesses because they allow you to provide tons of useful information while keeping your audience engaged. People can then share the infographics via social media, increasing your visibility and traffic.

Creating the right infographic is more of an art than anything else. Providing stats and graphs won’t be nearly as effective as providing the same information in a well-designed infographic. The design has to be easy to navigate, and the content should be broken up into sections to make it easier to understand. 

The use of different colors will help guide your audience through the provided information. Just remember to keep everything as simple as possible so that anyone who sees it can understand the information provided.

Case Studies

Many businesses make the mistake of ignoring the value of using case studies when presenting their products and services. However, case studies proved to be very effective when it comes to providing value. They can help you achieve multiple things at the same time. 

First, they can help you target an audience based on a specific niche. Second, they provide a perfect method for building authority, as you’ll get to prove your claims with the correlating studies. 

Case studies revolve around providing a solution to a problem. Sure, you can do that without a case study, but including one will reassure your audience that you are the real deal. Social proof is another area where case studies help. According to this study, over 90% of online consumers check product reviews before making a purchase. Case studies can provide all of the social proof your audience needs by combining user experiences with stats and facts.

Conclusion

It takes a lot of creativity and careful planning to come up with a successful media campaign that will position your business in front of the competition. You can use many methods to accomplish that, but the ones above are the most effective. 

If you can combine all of them into the same website, you’ll generate a ton of traffic and leads with time. Think about what your audience wants and plan your content accordingly for the best results.

__________________________

About the Author: Ogi Djuraskovic is the founder of FirstSiteGuide.com. On his website, he is trying to help people build a successful online business with the right mix of skills. Besides his online tutoring, he really enjoys doing offline activities, such as mount biking and dog walking.

Marketing, Tips & Tutorials, Web Hosting

How to Build a Website?

1 Comment

Want to make a website? You have little or no programming knowledge, and you urgently need a website with no additional development costs? No problem 👌🏻

We completely understand how important it is to have a visually pleasing and professional presentation of your business online. That is why we are offering you free use of Website Builder, with all of our web hosting packages, so you can create your website in just a few clicks. You can choose from over 300 themes, which include almost all areas of business – from tourism, e-commerce, design, fashion, photography, real estate, web development, etc. With the help of more than 40 widgets, you can add images, videos, and other multimedia content and customize each page of the website.

In the next few blogs, we will guide you step by step through the Website Builder, all the way to your ideal site. Let’s start 🚀

The first thing you need to do is to log in to your cPanel account. Are you there? Great. 

From cPanel, in the Software Section choose SitePad Website Builder to access the builder.

The first page you will see looks like this: 

Of course, click on the crate a new site link, and let’s continue.

On the next page, you will see listed the first 3 steps you need to complete in order to set up your website. So click on the Get Started button.

Firstly, you need to select a theme for your website. On the left side of the screen, you have the Categories menu where you can easily find a theme that is in your field of business, or you can search for keywords by using the Search Themes option. Also, keep in mind that this is not irreversible and that you can change your website theme at any time, but more on that later in the blogs.

Before selecting a theme, you have the option to view it in Demo mode, so that you can see the design in more detail, as well as, how many pages and widgets the theme has. 

Next up are your sites Details. These details will be used to pre-fill the information for your website. Keep in mind that all Site Details fields are optional and can be edited later. After filling the desired details click on the Proceed with Install button.

Congratulations you have finished the first steps in setting up your website 🎉 Now comes the fun part – Design and Customization. After the first set up, your Control Dashboard will look like this:

When your site is fully functional and you have added all the pages and content, this is where you will have the clearest overview of the number of sites you have, the size of the content and number of pages you added, and the number of posts you have posted.

By clicking on Pages in the left Dashboard menu, you will list all the pages of your website. From here you can add new or delete current pages, edit them or simply see what they look like. 

We have just scratched the surface of the Website Builder, but not to burden you too much the first time. We are looking forward to sharing more useful information with you soon – on how to add and edit pages and widgets, create menus, and much more. Stay tuned and happy building 🤞🏻 

Marketing, Tips & Tutorials

Five Must-Have Website Pages

Leave a comment

Starting an online business and building a quality online presence has never been easier! The digitalization of the market is becoming more and more widespread, and the platforms for creating websites are adapting and enabling users without previous experience to work independently.

The first step to a successful online business is to design your website to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible for anyone who visits it. Of course, you have full freedom to experiment, but at the same time, there are a few rules that you should follow. That is why in this blog we are talking about 5 pages that every website should have.

Home Page 

The Home Page is the “gateway” to your digital space, that is why this page plays a very big role on your website. 

It must attract and retain the attention of your visitors for the first three seconds. If during that time it is not clear to your visitors what kind of site they have opened and how to navigate through it – there is a problem.

It is very important to build a Home Page so that it attracts the attention of visitors and makes them understand that they have found exactly what they are looking for. Try to create such a structure of the Home Page so that they can understand at a glance what your business is like and what problems it solves.

Items you can put on your Home Page: 

  • Your brand logo
  • Basic site navigation menu
  • Attractive visuals
  • Significant messages
  • Call-to-action buttons

The simpler the order of these elements, the faster and easier your visitors will “surf” your website and find what they are looking for. This also leads to a longer time spent on the site, and greater opportunities for your visitors to become your customers.

About Us 

This page will most often be visited by visitors who are curious to know who is behind your projects, what your business is like, and what sets you apart from the competition. 

This is the best place to tell your story, describe your motives for starting a business, and the principles that your brand adheres to. You should also point out the key elements that set you apart from the competition – and we are sure that there are a few. Always be honest and direct when presenting your goals and the way your business is developing. Transparency builds trust and respect with users!

Items you can use on the About Us page:

  • Photos of your team
  • A brief description of each team member
  • The story of the beginning and development of your brand
  • Principles on which your business is based
  • Statistics and interesting facts about your business (number of projects, clients, users of your service, solved problems, etc.)

Services/Products

This page should present your services/products in detail, in order to bring them as close as possible to potential users. The goal of this page is to turn a casual visitor into a regular and loyal customer. 

When creating this page, place more emphasis on the benefits of your service than on their functions. Ask yourself the following questions: 

What need does my product/service meet? What problem does it solve?

Answering these questions will help you understand the benefits of your business and will improve your communication with your target group. This will also ensure that your customers receive quality and reliable information they need when making a decision. Providing users with information about your business increases your credibility and shows that your relationship with clients is professional.

We recommend the following elements:

  • Photographs and/or videos of products
  • Descriptions
  • Opinions of previous clients
  • Call-to-action buttons
  • Benefits of your product/service

Blog 

Blog plays a big role in informing users, its task is to present and describe your experience, which can be very useful to your visitors.

When it comes to blog structure, you don’t have to stick to well-known frames. It is up to you to turn the blog into an independent source of news and current trends in your field.

Blog articles give you the opportunity to share quality information, answer frequently asked questions, and show your attitude towards certain situations. The higher the quality of your content, the better your chances of promoting your brand and making your customers trust you. Regular publishing of content shows your visitors that you care about your site and strive to develop it.

The elements for the Blog Page: 

  • Articles
  • Photographs / illustrations
  • Videos
  • Categories

Contact Page

The Contact Page is a tool that will help you build a more stable relationship with your customers and potential partners. The more visible this page is, the easier it will be for them to find you and decide to connect with you.

Try to separate the ways they can contact you, this will make it easier for them to choose and allow them to get in touch with you easily.

You can place on this page:

  • Your email address
  • Telephone number
  • Links to profiles on your social networks
  • Address
  • Your office address map
  • Contact form
  • Subscription form

Keep in mind that these are the basic pages essential for any successful start of an online business. Of course, you do not have to follow the exact order, name, structure, and content of these pages. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

Present your brand the way you want, and at the same time be sure to post enough information about every aspect of your business, in order to show users what, in fact, your brand is.

multisite with wordpress
Tips & Tutorials

How to build a multilingual multisite with WordPress?

Leave a comment

How important is it to have a multilingual website for your products, services, and business today? For example, Switzerland has four official languages, largely but not wholly separated by geographical divisions. Many other locations around the world commonly use more than one language. Yet most online consumers will only shop and spend money on sites that are available in their native language. How then do you go about translating your website into multiple languages and localizing your website and your marketing materials to meet a more multilingual market?

In an article posted in January this year, the Shopify website boldly proclaimed that the first and most important marketing step for e-commerce websites “Default to international! Alex O’Byrne, co-founder of Shopify Plus agency We Make Websites, believes international will be essential for any e-commerce growth strategy in 2020.”

E-commerce sales currently account for almost three-fourths of retail sales growth and are expected to reach nearly US $4,000,000,000.00 in 2020, and that is Billion with a great big capital “B”. Further examination also indicates that about 70 percent of online shoppers are willing to purchase items internationally, but mostly if they can shop, view videos, and even see product reviews or other social media promotions in their native language. 

Translation, Localization, Internationalization, and Globalization

Ask any professional marketer how to build a successful marketing campaign online, and somewhere in the answer will be speaking to the audience in a language that they understand, in a way that connects with them personally and emotionally. 

The best way to make this happen is with a means to speak to the website owner in a language they can understand and to establish a more personal connection with them. The key to a successful international marketing campaign online is to use localization, globalization, and internationalization as how to communicate in such a fashion. Localization services allow the website owner to speak to the heart of the target demographic. Globalization and internationalization expand your target demographic to allow you to attract new customers from quite literally anywhere in the world. 

For effective globalization work, incorporating both internationalization and localization services, there are multiple strands to consider for each project. These include, but are far from limited to: 

  • Language
  • Cultural, political and religious references 
  • Imagery 
  • Naming conventions
  • Pictograms and Infographics
  • Icons
  • Keyboard usage
  • Legal requirements 

The translation may be seen as little more than exchanging one word for another in a separate language, but language translation and interpretation is much more nuanced and subtle. Not only must the actual words be translated, but also the full meaning of the conversation, occasionally despite the lexicon used in the exchange of information. 

Website Translation and SEO

Website translation plugins are a common enough sight on some “international” and “multilingual” websites, but the vast majority are sadly lacking in terms of SEO. Among the better website translators are some programs that charge a monthly fee rather than a one-time, minimal cost for a proper website translation. Why is that important? 

What is the perfect translation plugin? Imagine you could post whatever content you wanted on your website and any visitor could just click a button and receive a perfect website translation. Would that help your online business to succeed? Doubtful. Why?

Google currently supports more than 100 languages, but most of the content written for the internet is in English. While the ability of website visitors to get even a meaningful translation is currently in doubt with most translation plugins, virtually none of them will be indexed by the search engines in the foreign languages. 

Having a multisite with different web pages for each language ensures that all of the digital content marketing materials will be indexed in foreign languages. Add to that the extremely limited direct competition in these foreign language markets and the benefits of a full website translation become even more readily apparent. 

Add in the opportunities to implement localization strategies to establish a direct and personal connection with the new target demographic and a multisite, multilingual website that becomes an even more powerful digital marketing tool. 

Website Translation and Website Localization

The purpose of website localization depends in large part on the scale and focus of the directly targeted market. The larger and broader the audience, the more expansive the localization. The more precisely targeted the intended demographic, the more focused the localization strategies will need to be to ensure a successful marketing campaign online. 

The website translation will, by necessity, be somewhat broad, even in terms of localization. Care should be taken not to include any information that may be construed as being offensive to the overall targeted demographic. The website translation should focus solely on the parent language and avoiding any pictures or comments that may alienate part or even all of a potential new audience. 

Website translation and localization together focus on more than just the linguistic translation of the digital marketing content on the website. Using website translation to create a multilingual multisite will allow the website owner to focus on localization strategies well beyond the comparatively simple website translation. 

In this way, pictures can be changed to more directly focus on the target audience. The pictures should be the same size and in the same locations, as should any website advertising campaigns on the translated web pages. Any references to specific geographic areas within the website content may be altered to focus on more localized areas on the foreign language website pages. 

Multilingual Social Media Marketing

Facebook currently supports 111 languages, but there are approximately 142 languages actively used on the site. Twitter supports approximately 35 languages and Google supports 100 languages. Move away from English however, and the actual base percentage of total internet content puts your competition down to single digits in regards to that percentage. 

In short, actively engaging your audience in languages other than English will greatly reduce your competition, and likely reduce your direct competition substantially more depending on which particular niche you have focused on with your digital marketing content. I do not know about you, but it seems like actively circumventing the majority of competitors is a pretty good idea. 

Still, if you do focus on a multilingual social media marketing campaign, where are you going to send your viewers if you have not established some kind of “permanent” location for them to peruse your wares as the case may be? 

Except for some YouTube video influencers whose sole product is their videos, it will be necessary to establish a multilingual multisite to have someplace for your targeted demographic to perform the desired action. This is true in virtually every niche, regardless of whether the desired response is getting someone to sign up to an email marketing campaign, click on an advertisement, or even to click the “buy now” button. 

Multi-purposing Content

Multi-purposing website content is a tried and proven effective content marketing tactic. In addition to allowing you to effectively focus your localization efforts, website translations provide you with all of the necessary tools to effectively multi-purpose all of your content in every language that has been used in the website translation. 

This should give you everything you need to expand into international marketing campaigns online in a more comprehensive and effective international marketing solution. None of this is going to happen unless you have at the very least a solid landing page in the selected language(s) of the targeted demographic. 

If you have established your multilingual multisite and engaged in an effective localization campaign in addition to the full website translation, not only will you have a greatly expanded international audience, but also the means to capture and maintain a new customer base and increased customer loyalty. 

_________________________________

About the author: Ofer Tirosh is the CEO of Tomedes, a translation company that works with people and businesses around the globe. Their focus is on business globalization through the use of language and localization.
wordpress plugins
Tips & Tutorials

WordPress plugins in 2020 according to AltusHost

Leave a comment

When it comes to WordPress plugins it is crucial not to get carried away by adding too many because there are plenty of plugins. Too many plugins could easily damage your website speed, therefore we have listed just the top 8. 

We have covered the essential areas and grouped them as follows: SEO, Backup, Performance, Useful plugins & Trending.

SEO

Yoast SEO

Given that Google is the most visited website it is without question why search engine optimization continues to be a powerful channel to increase website traffic. Statistics from 2019 show that it has been visited over 62.19 billion times that year alone. So no matter what you do people are looking for your product or service. Nonetheless, despite the high search 

91% of content gets no traffic from Google, therefore you need to put an extra effort to be listed amongst this 9%.

Attracting customers from the world’s largest search engine is the key. 

Implementing strong, quality SEO on the website and digital assets are always going to be beneficial and it is considered a ‘new age’ marketing technique. 

Yoast SEO gives you full control to rank higher in search engines. The tool offers title and meta description templating, keywords implementation, snippets, and it automatically sets canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content which makes it quality ranking. 

Backup

UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

UpdraftPlus plugin is a widely popular backup WordPress plugin on the market. It simplifies backups and restoration. It is the world’s highest-ranking plugin, with over two million currently-active installs.

It has both a free and a premium version to serve all types of users. Even with the free version of the plugin, you have backup scheduling and it supports various external cloud storage options (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), UpdraftVault, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift, and email). 

Not only that it is good for its features but it is fairly easy to use and all could be done with a single click!

Performance

Smush

The Smush plugin is like many other freemium models that have both free and premium plans. It is excellent for optimizing your images into the pages. Even if pictures have not been previously optimized and reduced in size in photoshop this plugin will do that for you. It will compress them down, make them smaller, make them load faster which is crucial for a fast website.   

Useful plugins

Contact Form 7

Both useful and essential Contact Form 7 should be present everywhere whether it is for the site’s visitors to be able to get in touch with you as contact form or newsletter form. It is fairly easy to use, it has a drag and drop interface where you could arrange it in the order that you want and then drop it on the page or post that you want. Furthermore, it enables you to include a reCAPTCHA solution on your forms to combat spam.

Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution with over 395,284 sales is another very popular plugin that’s included in many premium WordPress themes but it can be bought separately. 

The plugin helps in the site’s design by enabling amazing features, animations, graphics. It provides lots of effects such as a paintbrush effect and for those of you who like video background this slider cover with a library of objects, images, and video backgrounds. For this reason, you do not need to look elsewhere because it already has too much to offer. Besides, it has more than 200 templates to start from.

Trending

Instagram feed 

If you have an online store embedding brand’s Instagram feed onto your website is almost mandatory. Social media platforms have become a crucial element in brand-building especially if we talk about selling physical products. By including Instagram content on the website, you can considerably increase your exposure. It allows an easy way for followers to communicate with you on both platforms, and it streamlines the process on your end.

Instagram Feed is the number one best-selling premium Instagram WordPress plugin.

It provides options for how your photos are being presented (carousel mode, multiple images in one post using a slider format, the pop-up gallery just like on the Instagram website). 

The distribution of content from Instagram displayed on your site can be adjusted with the help of 60 parameters. However, there are also 10 pre-built color schemes to work with. 

Seriously Simple Podcasting

Podcasting is rapidly growing as a popular content platform for consumers, better yet now when people are not in the position of attending seminars, etc. There are now 62 million Americans listening to podcasts each week and listeners are engaging with all types of topics, from news to pottery to TV shows. This type of content is easy for people to consume in various settings. Driving a car, listening while in the gym, and numerous others. 

Seriously Simple Podcasting makes it easy to submit an RSS feed from your WordPress site to several podcast directories. Episodes are fully compliant for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

RSS feed is customizable by editing the podcast’s name, description, cover art, and category.

online grocery shopping corona
Marketing, News

Online Grocery Shopping: Temporary necessity or the future?

Leave a comment

The world has seen a significant increase in the online food industry in times of the Covid19 pandemic, but will it stay that way once it is over? To accurately examine this inclination we need to look back a bit in order to draw a meaningful conclusion. 

One of the pioneers in the online grocery consumption industry has perfectly analyzed the needs of the marker and rightfully earned no.1 position in the given market – Tesco.

Back in 2010, they analyzed in-depth the behavior of South Koreans. It turned out that Koreans are the no.2 hard-working people in the world. Having said so, grocery shopping once a week is a dreadful task for them. After analyzing all tired and busy people, Tesco or locally rebranded as Home Plus has figured out the solution to the problem. No additional stores plus a better comfort for those that shop. The idea that they came up with was – Let the store come to the people.

First marketing in that effect has been to visually mimic their store in the most visited place, the metro station. Although virtual, the displays were exactly like the actual store, yet one thing was different. They used their mobile phones to scan the provided QR codes bellow the products by which the wanted product would end up in their virtual carts. Home deliveries of goods were fast after the purchase order completion which provided people much-needed comfort after the work and on the weekends.

Following the end of the campaign, the number of new registered members rose by 76% and online sales increased 130% which made Tesco aka. Home Plus no. 1 in the online market. 

Consequently, they have anticipated the needs of the market of South Korea back in 2010-2011 but how far has the rest of the world stretched in the online consumption of grocery items? 

Six years later, according to the statistics from 2016 Asia leads the field of countries that shop groceries online – the US lags far behind. Specifically, South Korea holds 16,6% of the online grocery market share worldwide (Statista, 2017).

Nevertheless, the overall grocery market in 2018 was $632 billion and it doubled in value from 2016 to 2018. Online stores that have affordable and quick delivery are leading the way in customer conversion and add-to-cart effect. Nonetheless, customers remain hesitant about buying fresh & frozen foods and meat online up until now. 

Stay-at-home lockdowns of some kind have pushed many to turn to online shopping of groceries with two options, delivery or either pickup. 

From early March, UK supermarkets have been swamped with internet orders, mostly from buyers who would like to avoid busy and overcrowded stores. Omnichannel retailers that were already established as online retailers quite well some would say could have been prepared for a surge of new clients and increase in demand but they faced a problem because the demand skyrocketed. Websites and apps crashed multiple times and the delivery slots were constantly booked because no one expected this. 

Amongst many reasons, convenience, very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped, and the overall panic that arose amongst people it all created a shift to online. 

Apart from sales being up, the behavior of purchasing online has altered and more advanced options have been offered. Downloads of apps that allow people to hire personal shoppers to prepare and in some cases deliver their grocery orders have increased. 

Nowadays customers are trying their best to adapt the situation in hand and therefore shifting their behavior as a result. Many businesses are going through quite an adventure as well and are bearing much of the same uncertainty while trying to support consumers’ needs. 

After this is all over, we could say that customers will be continuing to order online, particularly those who, before COVID used to have that as routine. Those who have found online shopping as a solution to their busy schedules or perhaps considered shopping to be physically challenging. Notwithstanding, post-COVID-19 will present some significant economic consequences and it is probable that people are not going to be as willing to pay for the convenience. 

Countries that have higher spending power will most certainly be permanently acquired customers, whereas in the developing countries the rise of online grocery shopping will be temporary for the majority, yet not so insignificant for future growth.

How To Find Unique Domain Name For Your Blogging Site
Tips & Tutorials

How To Find Unique Domain Name For Your Blogging Site

Leave a comment

There are already 600 million blogs in the world right now, and this is no surprise that most of the catchy blog names are already taken.  

Naming your blog is just like giving a name to your child since that will ultimately be a part of their identity. Whether you’re planning to write blogs as a hobby or you are a small business owner thinking your website needs a blog, you must have to go through the pain of choosing a unique blog name. And why not, your blog name is the first thing that your audience will know about your blog and definitely will create a first impression. 

But don’t get scared. We have compiled some of the most used strategies to help you find a perfect blog name.

Tips You Can Use To Pick A Perfect Blog Name 

1. Stick With Dot Com

There are numerous new domain name extensions available like .pizza, .ninja, .blog, .photography, but we will always advise you to choose a .com domain name. Well, it is tempting for most of us to use new extensions, but .com is still the most reliable and credible domain name extension. Most users who are not tech-savvy will automatically type .com at the end of a domain without a doubt. 

2. What is your blog going to be about?

Before you start a blog in 2020, choose a niche for your blog logically. The answer to this question is straightforward if you are certain. If you are undecided, just think if you spend a huge amount of time picking a blog name and then go to a blog about something entirely unrelated, then you will have wasted your time for sure. Well, you won’t be penalized if you don’t stick to a single niche. But, the fact is most of the time your audience isn’t going to be interested in things you like.  So, it’s essential to be clear on what niche would be covered by your blog.

 

3. Be Clear About Your Audience 

Understanding the audience also influences the decision of choosing the blog name.  Blogs with a female target audience often choose names that include ‘She’, ‘Pretty’, ‘Lady’, ‘Girl’ etc. On the other hand, SPORTbible is an online community for sports lovers. As the name suggests, it frequently publishes content, including sports news, videos, and pictures.  

In simple terms, knowing your readers will help you choose an appropriate blog name.

4. Keep It Short and Easy to Pronounce 

Ditch all the names that are hard to spell and say. It should be sweet and intuitive. At the beginning of the blogging career, most people initially didn’t take much time to select a blog name and end up using a very complicated infrequent phrase. I can’t name the countless number of situations in which a long and frustrating blog name handicap bloggers. The new visitors will forget your name, and it will be harder for people to type your name to recommend it to others.

5. Try Blog Naming Formulas

Luckily, we’ve got two simple formulas to create stunningly creative name suggestions or your new blog that your readers can’t resist. The first formula is to create a portmanteau, a word that combines the sounds and meaning of two other words. You can combine two names to create a new term that speaks about your blog concept and brand values. A good example is a brunch which is derived from breakfast and lunch. The podcast comes from iPod and broadcast. The blogosphere comes from blogs and the atmosphere. 

The second formula we brought for you is even simpler to implement. You just need to attach two terms to create your blog name. The first term should be representing your topic or audience group, and the second term should be serving your end goal. For instance, if your audience is digital marketers, and the end goal is high-speed results, then you can name your blog ‘Digital Velocity’.

6. Listening to your friends and family

Asking around your trusted friends and family members if you are stuck somewhere. Tell them that you are in the process of choosing a name for your blog, and I am sure you will get thousands of ideas within the house. If you don’t feel comfortable about opening up about your blog with your friends and family, then you always have a choice to ask people in the blogging community popular on Facebook.  

7. Take Help From Blog Name Generator 

There is no harm taking help from blog name generating websites. They are plenty in numbers, and most of them are free. They’ll help you come up with unique blog names. You just need to enter a few keywords and let the site work do all the magic. You can try the following most commonly used blog name generator websites.

     a) Wordoid

This platform can be fairly used for blog and domain name ideas. You just have to enter the keyword, set the language preference and quality rating, and pick where you would like the keyword to appear, and how long it should be. 

     b) Panabee

Panabee is the coolest blog name generator in town that knows how to stand out in the crowd. You can search for plenty of domain names, app names, and company names. If you have a young audience, you must try Panabee because it gives you fresh and fun blog names based on the provided keyword.  

8. Use Thesaurus

Before looking for help, don’t forget to do your research. One of my favorite things to do is to use a thesaurus. Now definitely, you cannot rely on thesaurus compete, but you should consider it as a substitute. As a blogger, this is my most-used tool. I use it almost every day, and the reason is to make sure that my content looks different and attractive from the rest. You can also use the thesaurus for it as a source to get ideas for your blog name. You can get a long list of synonyms by entering your desired keywords.

9. Unrelated words

Under this strategy, you can choose a completely random name. Instead of using a thesaurus to find synonyms, you have to find out completely different names. Don’t get confused. We are doing this because unrelated works work great when it comes to being catchy. For instance, who would have thought of blending a smartphone with a fruit? But, this is exactly what high-tech consumer technology company Apple Inc. did. 

10. Just be yourself: Use Your Name

If you are willing to make yourself the centerpiece of your blog and write about your story, services, and what interests you, then you have a choice to use your name as your blog name. I’ve seen this trend lately in the personal branding industry, and it works successfully for plenty of lifestyle bloggers. But if you are writing a business blog, it won’t work if you are selling a product. 

11. Try Alliteration or Assonance

You can play around with words and give a natural rhythm to your blog using alliteration. It is basically the repetition of the same sound or letter at the beginning of closely connected words. In this strategy, you can use a combination of words starting with the same letter to create a catchy sound. Some great examples of alliteration are Cute Cats, Financial Freedom, Foolproof Formula, Spooky Spoon, Blazing Blogs, etc. The most satisfying thing about this fun strategy is that it is lovelier to say and can have a powerful impact on the reader. 

12. Use A Different Language

If you find a unique name in another language, don’t hesitate to use it as your blog name. We all come across words in other dialects that have very soothing to ears. Their meaning could be related to your selected niche or can be completely random, but they always set you apart. A foreign language blog will catch more eyes and evoke diverse brand perceptions. For example, The Small Café vs Le Petit Café has the same meaning, but they sound so different.

The foreign language name makes me think of baked croissants, fresh honey pancakes, and a strong cup of coffee.

13. Make a Common Saying Your Own

Many bloggers are coming up with a modified idiom or turn of phrase in a quest to give their blog a unique name. A very well-established beauty blog, ‘She’s in the Glow’  has used the phrase ‘in the know.’

Conclusion 

Now we’ve shared so many tips and tricks with you, but the thing that matters the most when deciding on a blog name is that you should love it. Changing blog name in the future is a risky task, so put in the work now and pick a fantastic blog name that you will enjoy more with every passing day.

_______________________________

Claudia Jeffrey is currently working as a Digital Marketer at Crowd Writer, an excellent “write my essay” platform in the UK. She is more than happy to help online bloggers and entrepreneurs start, market, and monetize their business ideas. Besides this, she is a geek for blog writing, all things social media.
work from home
Tips & Tutorials

Working From Home? We’ve got you 👌

Leave a comment

Happy Friday, everyone! We hope that everyone is working from home where possible. In times of change, we are grateful to be able to continue working. All our team is set to work remotely from their home offices so we wanted to share some tips and ideas from the AltusHost team and how we are managing to keep everything at float while WFH.

Remote work is the emerging face of work in the 21st century and it’s driving a steady increase in its acceptance throughout the world. However, this situation is out of ordinary and has pushed it quite rapidly for a whole lot of industries to implement sooner than anticipated. 

For this reason, we would like to share some of our know-how to help you get the best of your work from home either if you have already done some remote work in the past or you’re a newbie. 

Please note we’re not experts and these tips come from our team or their friends who are all now WFH:

Meghan: “What I do to motivate me is to get dressed up at very least like I am going to work instead of lounging at home and set a schedule of what I need to complete. That increases productivity for me.”

Daim: Other people are focusing their attention at work-from-home office design and what they claim is of an essential is: “A flat surface to work on, a comfortable desk chair, an organizer for needed supplies, a spot for a printer copier and good task lighting.”

Pierre: “Adding plants and flowers is a simple way to add a little life to your desk and home office.”

Catherine: “My days consist of drinking excessive amounts of coffee, dressing in my comfies and having quite jazz music playing in the background.” 

Caroline: “Rolling straight out of bed and having a 30min workout before turning on my computer. I work much better and focus after the morning workout.”

Amanda: “Pre-determining each day’s “must-do” items in the To-Do list.”

Joseph: “Switching back and forth between the couch and kitchen desk to mix up the environment and stay motivated.”

Maya: “I plan my lunch ahead of time and take an actual lunch break.”

Anastasia: “Putting the phone in another room.”

Willem: “The Pomodoro Technique. Set a timer for 30min and it splits work into manageable clusters.”

Jennifer: “Always get dressed and put on makeup. Have a coffee maker ready.” 

Ashlee:  “Clean workspace. A messy one is an automatic fail. Likewise, keep the pile of home papers separate from the working desk.” 

What are your tips to work from home? Share your best advice with us on our social media channels to help each other make working from home a little easier.

Sent emails are ‘returning’? What now?
Tips & Tutorials

Sent emails are ‘returning’? What now?

Leave a comment

Even though a blacklisted IP address can be troubling for your business, it seems that there is not enough buzz around that talks about ways to prevent it.

But what exactly does this mean for your website?

Besides the obvious damage in your server’s reputation, a blacklisted IP address can also cause blacklisting of the main IP address in the entire Shared Hosting server. 

And to put this mildly, it’s simply not good. 

You are not alone in the Shared Hosting server, remember? This server is “shared” with a couple of hundred other users, whose emails may be directly compromised by your blacklisted IP address. 

How to prevent a blacklisted IP 

Let’s go into a mini-analysis first…

In many cases, if your email address is blacklisted, the first thing you will notice is that the emails you send are coming back.

What’s the backend of this? In the case of a low reputation of the outgoing server, all outgoing mail is rejected by the receiving server, and in the case of blacklisting – because the server is on one of the “blacklists” of one or more RBL services.

RBL stands for Real-Time Black List and is a set of global IP addresses of ‘those who refused to stop spamming’.

RBL lists are most commonly used in the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) connection phase when your email server starts the login process to send emails to recipients.

The receiving SMTP server then checks if the transmitting server’s IP address in on one of the selected RBL lists.

If the transmitting server is blacklisted, communication is shut down even before the transmission of the e-mail starts.

But don’t panic, anyone with an SMTP server happens to be on one of the RBL lists.

In that case, it is necessary to find the cause of blacklisting, debug and retest the system. 

Resolving these issues can be fairly tricky, primarily because RBL services typically respond to IP addresses remove requests on an average of 24-48 hours after the submitted request. 

So, even after the technical support team fixes the reason the server was blacklisted in the first place, it takes a couple of days for the RBL service to respond and remove the IP address from the list.

The bad news is that while the server is blacklisted, your emails will go to the recipient’s SPAM folder. In some cases, the mail does not even reach the final recipient.

Also, depending on the hosting provider, an outgoing check is also done, i.e. proactive check of the recipient.

In that case, the IP addresses of your recipients are also checked for blacklisting, and if they are on the blacklist, you guessed it – the mail will not be delivered.

For this reason, we advise our users to keep an eye on the status of their IP address, so that similar situations exist only in theory.

transmitting server

How to check the status of your public IP address?

Copy your IP address and check the status at: https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

My address is blacklisted! Now what?

In case your public IP address is blacklisted, do not panic.

Contact your provider as soon as possible and ask technical support to assign you a new IP address or try to remove your existing IP address from the blacklist.

The safest method is to lease a dedicated IP address.

Also, check the contact forms on your site and secure them.

I am not a robot

It would be good to put some kind of security check on pages that require user interaction, in order to prevent massive inbox spamming.

CAPTCHA has proven to be the most effective method of spam prevention. This system of “I am not a robot” was created at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. The acronym CAPTCHA is based on the word capture and is derived from the term Complete Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

The idea behind the system is to create an automatically generated challenge, that it is easy for humans, and unmanageable for computers and software. The most common CAPTCHA consists of an image with distorted letters, with different colors, colorful backgrounds, or other elements that make it impossible for the software to solve the test.

captcha

This technology seems geeky and boring, but believe it or not, every time you type in letters and numbers as required by the reCAPTCHA system you help in digitization of books and other publications. Specifically, reCAPTCHA does not display random words, numbers, and punctuation, but rather content from The New York Times archive and numerous books from the Google Books project.

Sites using the reCAPTCHA system show images of scanned words that optical character recognition software could not read during the process of digitizing books and magazines. The idea is very simple but effective, and very cleverly implemented, as it relies on the global “workforce” of all Internet users.

But CAPTCHA systems, of course, are not perfect. Apart from them annoying users, they are constantly under attack.

Because of this, CAPTCHA is just one small aspect of protecting your site from spam attacks.

Why smaller companies will be in the crosshairs of cybercriminals in 2020
Security

Why Smaller Companies Will Be in The Crosshairs of Cybercriminals in 2020

Leave a comment

How often do you read news about major data breaches that have happened at multinational companies? The answer is probably a lot. This is unsurprising because data breaches (or any cyber attack) of that scale will affect countless people’s lives. As far as newsworthy goes, these attacks more than qualify.

This can lead many to assume that big companies are the only targets of malicious attacks, but this is far from the case. In truth, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are frequently under threat of cyber attack, and they are almost always less capable of defending themselves.

This has led to a state of affairs where, with advancing complexity like cyberattacks, SMBs are having to adapt to a new decade where they will find themselves the targets of cybercriminals. After all, while the potential spoils of hacking a company like Amazon are enormous, it is far easier to attack a poorly guarded SMB. 

Increasing Rate of Cyber Attacks on SMBs

Cyberattacks on SMBs aren’t just dangerous, due to limited cybersecurity budgets, they’re also increasing. In a study by the Ponemon Institute -who specializes in security research- it was shown that SMBs are facing a new challenge they need to tackle head-on. The study, labeled “The 2019 Global State of Cybersecurity in SMBs”, stated that over the last three years SMBs have seen an increase after the increase of cybersecurity attacks. 

This conclusion was drawn from a survey of over 2000 IT security practitioners across the world. It found that cybersecurity attacks against UK, US, and European businesses were growing not just in frequency, but in the sophistication of the attacks. Malicious strategies such as ransomware, malware, and DDoS have all been on the rise, and in many instances are harder to prevent than ever.

Almost half of all survey respondents stated that their business security was substandard and that they had no incident response plan in place. Cybercriminal attacks are evolving with more rapidity than ever, and more and more companies of all sizes are finding themselves in their crosshairs. Far from being limited to loss of money, the costs of many attacks extend to a significant loss of credibility, to catastrophic damage to business systems. The report also noted that rather than being isolated to a single nation, cyber-attacks are a worldwide phenomenon.

The increase in attacks is more dramatic than most would realize. Over three-quarters of all US companies surveyed were attacked in the last year; an increase of 55% from 2016’s survey. Across the world, 66% of all businesses reported being victims of an attack in the past year as well. 

Attacks that are built around deception are more popular than ever. The study noted that sophisticated phishing techniques accounted for half of all attacks, and stolen devices and credential theft accounted for a third. These were by far the most common attacks faced by SMBs across the world. The cost to businesses from such attacks was invariably data loss. 

Globally, over 60% of all businesses suffered a loss of customer or employee information in the last year. Which, given how many companies process sensitive information, when accepting online payments and other transactional details, can leave businesses at risk of hurting their customers as well as themselves.

smaller companies and cybercriminals

The Cost of Emerging Technologies

More and more, SMBs are adopting new emerging technologies to stay competitive in the marketplace. The internet of things, mobile apps and devices, and biometrics are all becoming more and more commonly used, but the security competence that is required to go with them is less so.

Across the Ponemon survey, it was shown that 50% of businesses were using mobile devices to access enormous quantities of their business-critical applications. Yet at the same time, an almost identical portion of the same businesses reported that mobile device usage left them vulnerable to a cyber attack.

Additionally, 80% of businesses report that they believe a security breach across unsecured IoT devices could destroy their business. But despite this, only 20% of them monitored their IoT devices for security risks.

More reassuring is the fact that biometrics may be becoming a mainstream technology for businesses of all sizes. If SMBs can implement biometrics to add multiple-factor authentication to their business-critical apps, this will go a long way towards securing them against attackers.

How SMBs Can Protect Themselves Against Cyberattacks

There are several steps that SMBs can take to protect themselves against cyber attacks. By far the most important among them is to educate employees at every level of the organization about the cyber attack risks they are facing, and the correct measures to ensure they are protected from small to high-level malware threats. A business that isn’t ignorant of threats around them is far less likely to fall prey than one that is.

As countless cyber-attacks begin with an unsuspecting employee opening a seemingly harmless phishing email, they must understand how to identify these threats. There are countless free training options available that can help employees to spot threats in real-time. Likewise, instructing your employees on correct procedures when working on an unsecured network can help to prevent bad agents from spying on their activity. Investing in both training and a top-line encrypted virtual private network (VPN) can help to prevent this issue.

The second most obvious solution is to recognize the need for increased cybersecurity spending. Although this may hurt total profits, it will hurt a lot less than a potential data breach or an advanced ransomware attack. Many third-party cybersecurity companies can be hired to assess your level of security and help to identify any vulnerabilities. They can then provide you with tools and real-time monitoring to protect your business before, during, and after any threats.

VPN and cybercriminals

Likewise, many companies provide software and tools that help to protect smaller businesses from cybersecurity threats. These can help to secure your entire working environment, whether it’s on macOS, Windows, iOS or others. Many of these solutions can be installed in a few minutes, and will greatly improve a business’s level of security.

Wrapping it Up

Small businesses have never been at greater risk of a cyber attack than they are now. But while this may seem like terrible news, it doesn’t mean they are powerless. By recognizing the level of threat and appreciating the need for action, small businesses can make sure their level of security is adequate for the changing decade.

_________________________________

About the author: Sam Bocetta is a freelance journalist specializing in U.S. diplomacy and national security, with emphasis on technology trends in cyberwarfare, cyberdefense, and cryptography.