Here's a couple of interesting items that recently came my way that I'd like to share with you all. The first one comes from our friends at Cybersocket, and deals with e-mail privacy, while the second piece on developing your Net presence is from a follow-up e-mail sent to me by Ash from advertising-link.com after our meeting at Internext, and concisely outlines a nice part of "the big picture."
So, Who Exactly is Reading Your Email?
You may appear to be talking to one person via e-mail, but are you completely sure no one else is being blind-copied in the conversation? That innocuous BCC: field can carry someone else’s address – someone you never intended to see your conversation.
If you’re not concerned about your email privacy, you should consider it a bit more carefully. E-mail is incredibly insecure, and yet everyone tends to use it for their most personal discussions and important business matters. Although we guard our most sensitive documents and physical data in safe places (like a safety deposit box), our e-mail (containing staggering amounts of personal data) offers little to no protection for these conversations going from private to public.
If you need to be sure, relief can be found through a (somewhat) free utility called Have They Read It Yet, that inserts a digital “postage stamp” into important messages. The “stamp” captures all the particulars, including the IP and host address of any person who opens that e-mail. Anyone who clicks on the stamp (and yes, it’s an actual image of a postal stamp) will see a web page of all the times that e-mail has been opened and read. So rest assured that the sordid details of last weekend aren’t being shared with people who just shouldn’t know.
Developing Your Net Presence
With so many web sites on the Internet today, it is no longer the person with the best product or best constructed web site that prospers through online commerce. There is only one way to prosper, and that is by getting targeted traffic.
There is much more to site promotion than just search engine submissions. The following avenues must be taken into consideration, evaluated and a decision made as to where and how to promote a site.
1. Attractive appearance of the site.
2. Is it easy to navigate?
3. Is the site optimized?
4. Has the site been submitted properly and how often?
5. Is the use of often forgotten news groups in place?
6. Is there a good link and banner exchange program in place and who manages it?
7. Is there a picture posting program in place and who manages it?
All the above and more, is the recipe that when blended properly is appealing, creates interest, desire and curiosity which creates traffic. These are the programs we offer our clients...
The folks at advertising-link.com offer a management service that takes "care of the daily mundane tasks that tie you to the computer and prevents you from taking care of other important matters." While I have not personally tried their service, it seems worthwhile – drop them an e-mail; and if you're worried about unauthorized people seeing it, you now know how to protect it! ~ Stephen
