No matter what business you’re in, data security is important to you and to your current and potential clients. For many small business owners, the fear of poor security is enough to inspire them to invest huge amounts of money in in-house data infrastructures to run their businesses. In many (if not most) cases, this level of infrastructure far exceeds what the company needs, or even what it can handle. Hiring the IT staff necessary to keep in-house technology running and up-to-date, alone, can put you out of business. And with the constant evolution of technology today, the costs are not likely to go down any time soon. On top of all that, your data security probably isn’t as solid as you think it is.

Downsize

The first step towards financial independence from your IT infrastructure is downsizing. I don’t just mean buying cheaper or less robust equipment, I mean getting rid of your equipment all together. It might seem like a bold step, but the number of world-class, secure, affordable web hosting and data storage providers out there make this step a no-brainer. Not only will you enjoy improved data security and performance, your out-of-pocket costs will plummet. Good web hosting companies can afford to have the most robust, powerful security measures available. Why not trust the experts?

Going Remote

While it will probably feel strange at first–like you’re arriving at high school without your pants–you will quickly realize how liberating it is to trust your data to a company that specializes in security. If you do your homework and sign up with a reputable company that offers guarantees (guaranteed backups, guaranteed bandwidth, etc.) you will have someone to hold accountable when things go wrong, and you will be protected by their terms of service and their public reputation. No good web hosting company is going to let your business fail because that means their business fails. In an online climate where word of mouth makes and breaks businesses every day, the small business consumer is protected like never before. Also, when your data is accessible remotely, your office suddenly becomes mobile. You can access your business website, client records, everything, via a secure remote connection. This can be a real boon for a small business, especially when that business only has a few very busy employees.

Save The Green

By outsourcing all of your IT costs, you won’t have to worry about electricity, IT staff, hardware replacements or the potential for catastrophic data loss due to fire, flood or any other natural or man-made disaster. Your business won’t be tied to one physical location. If you sign up with a company that has multiple data centers, you can opt to have your data backed-up to multiple geographic sites. This redundancy protects you, your clients and your business future.

Upgrades

One of the most compelling reasons to get your infrastructure out of your office is the possibility for on-the-fly technology upgrades. What if your business suddenly takes off? Do you want to be held back by your aging infrastructure? With a good web host, you can add server space quickly and easily. Often all you will need to do is submit an online order!

Support

If you are not particularly tech-oriented, or don’t feel entirely comfortable letting go of your hardware, find a package that includes fully managed support. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to call when things go wrong? Someone who knows the technology backwards and forwards, and who’s fee is already included in your monthly bill? Yes. Yes it would.

Provider Competence

Of course, what goes without saying here, is that you need to find a solid, reputable provider (that’s right, I said it anyway). In addition to solid guarantees and a good TOS, look for a company with a proven track record with small businesses like yours. If other business owners are happy with the service, chances are you will be too. Funnily enough, one such business pops to mind: TurnKey Internet. We specialize in small businesses! We also offer a huge collection of additional automation services to streamline every aspect of your business. Hop on live chat if you’ve got questions. We’d love to make you an offer you can’t refuse

You may have seen this happen before. I know I have. A perfectly good web hosting company– reliable, good reviews, decent services– suddenly disappears in a puff of smoke, overnight! As all of us increasingly rely on web hosting services for our businesses, personal websites and data storage, it becomes ever more important to find providers that will be there tomorrow, and the next day, ad infinitum. Of course, few companies will admit when they’re having problems, and that makes finding a reliable host difficult. Fortunately there are several warning signs to look out for when deciding who to trust with your valuable data.

But It’s Here Today!

Sure, nothing lasts forever. That’s a fact of life. But when you purchase a service from a legitimate business, you expect it to last a good long time. You expect to be able to get your site up and running and move on to bigger and better things, like running your business. Unfortunately, over the past few years a disturbing trend has emerged. Many companies, good solid-seeming companies, have simply vanished, taking the hard work, blood, sweat and tears of their customers along with them.

Who Are They?

There are more disappearing web hosts than I can list here but one prime example is Yahoo’s Geocities, Geocities was around for years and there was no effort to protect customer data when Yahoo decided to abandon that particular pet project. Some customers managed to retrieve data via third-party services, but the majority of customers were just out of luck.

Where Did They Go?

In many cases, like Geocities, the parent company decides to pull the plug. When this happens, it is the parent company’s responsibility to inform their customers. If they don’t, well, there’s not much we can do about it. In the case of many other smaller web hosts, often the company owners simply can’t afford their overhead costs. They don’t own their infrastructure to begin with (they are resellers, “re-selling” the hosting resources of another, larger company) and they can no longer keep up with the bandwidth needs of their customers (regardless of the fact that they may have promised to do so.)

Warning Signs

There are many warning signs to look out for. If the host owns other online properties that aren’t doing so well, beware. Review the company’s profit numbers. If those numbers look bad, there’s a good chance they won’t be around much longer. If financial information isn’t available, look for news coverage of the company that might hint at a growing problem. Often, when a company is going under, things will start to fray at the edges. If customer service isn’t what it used to be– tickets aren’t answered, waiting times are longer, services are sluggish–it may be time to get out while you can still retrieve your data. If there is a sudden change in their terms-of-service, this may indicate an attempt to protect themselves from potential litigation. They surely know they’re going under long before anyone else does, and they will try to mitigate the damage to themselves in any way they can.

How To Avoid the Disappearing Web Host

There are a few common-sense ways to pick a solid web host that you can trust. Look for a host that has been in business for a number of years. Choose one that owns and operates its own infrastructure. Owning a datacenter is an expensive undertaking and only a company with significant resources can afford to buy the building (including heating, cooling, etc.) and the hardware. A company that owns that kind of an infrastructure is not going under overnight. You will have much more time to make other arrangements if things start to go south, and will likely see evidence of this happening long before you lose access to your data. Last, look for customer reviews. A company with a large amount of reviews has a large amount of customers. A good customer base is like a cushion for your and your data. It’s a community of people who are just as interested in seeing the web host thrive as you are, and they will all speak up if the service starts losing its luster.

Here is where I plug TurnKey Internet We’ve got the infrastructure, the customer base and the many years of solid service under our belts. Why not give us a try next time you find yourself shopping for a reliable web host.

IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6 and it is the all new version of how computers will communicate on the Internet (some computers already speak the IPv6 protocol, as do some web sites). With the last of the IPv4 address space about to run out in late 2011, any new devices, computers or web sites connecting to the Internet after that date will now connecting via IPv6.  IPv6 has been designed to handle the growth of the internet, for 100′s of more years – and is the standard going forward that websites, and online businesses need to be ready for.

This means that new cell phones, and home computers as well as web sites will soon be be only on the IPv6 address space.  In order for these new devices to communicate and talk to the ‘old internet’ that resides on IPv4 a sort of proxy system will be created by service providers to connect their subscribers to who need to reach the ‘old’ IPv4 internet web sites of online destinations.  The problem with this is that by forcing everyone through a proxy to ‘gateway’ to the old network, will create bottlenecks and lower quality service (as well as security issues for ecommerce enabled web sites).  So to avoid this congestion on the 1-lane exit ramp between IPv6 and IPv4, what you need to do is make sure your web site or dedicated web server has both an IPv4 AND IPv6 ip address assigned to it.

If you ignore IPv6, or are with a web hosting company that doesn’t support IPv6, you are going to jeaporadize client relationships, and lost sales.  If you don’t connect your web site or dedicated web server to the IPv6 network you will force your online visitors coming from the next generation IPv6 network to go through those IPv4 proxy aggregation choke points, and force your potential and current customers into a lower quality (and less secure) experience reaching your online business.

So, is your web site ready for IPv6?  If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know”, you need to get started with IPv6.  Many of you probably still remember the countdown to Year 2000, and the great computer glitch that never came.  Well IPv6 is coming, and it will be in 2011 and 2012 that everyone will be forced into that reality, you better be ready for it.  The good news is it only takes a few minutes, and no disruption to your web site to enable it for IPv6.

To get your web site ready for IPv6 doesn’t take a lot, you need to contact your datacenter and/or web hosting provider and make sure they are IPv6 ready.  If they are not yet IPv6 ready, you have a bigger challenge ahead, as you have to wait until they get ready.   Internet providers have to upgrade their routing infrastrcuture, put in special software, and train their staff, as well as spend a lot of time configuring their network to be ready for IPv6.  If your internet provider hasn’t done this, it’s getting late in the ball game so you should call and ask when they will be ready.  If they answer “we don’t know”, its time to find another web hosting provider before 2011 hits.

If you are with  web  hosting provider that is IPv6 enabled then the next step is pretty easy, contact them and order an IPv6 ip adddress for your web site or server.  Due to the added time/configuration and labor of the new IPv6 network it’s likely the web hosting provider may charge you a small feel for the setup or small monthly fee, but then you can rest asured you are ready for the future.

Once your web site has its IPv6 address (which may looks a little strange, for instance www.turnkeyinternet.net  as the following ‘IPv6′ address:  2064:7c00::1 ) but the good news is you don’t have to remember those strange looking IPv6 addresses.  The wonderfull world of domain names and dns settings has already long since solved this since the early 1990′s when IPv6 was first concieved.  You simply need to add an “AAAA” record in your dns for your web site pointing at your new IPv6 address, and that’s it!  Your traditional web site IPv4 address already has a domin name “A” record – so by simply adding this “AAAA” record for your domain name, you now will be both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled and ready for the future.    This means that if someone types in www.yoursitename.com if they are connected to an IPv6 network, they will get your IPv6 address and route there directly.  If someone is on the old IPv4 and type in www.yoursitename.com they will get the IPv4 address and go straight there. In no way will either party have to go through a proxy or congested IPv6 to IPv4 system – and your online business will perform at it’s best no matter which network your web visitors are traveling from!

Reselling web hosting is a potentially lucrative business with many advantages. Well, most importantly, you don’t have to worry about hardware. Partnering with a reputable web hosting business that owns their own datacenter (i.e. TurnKey Internet) will allow you to provide reliable services to your clients while you receive stellar support and 100% uptime. But providing the server space is only one small part of a successful reseller business. You have to market your business too, and that’s no small task. As a very wise CEO once told me, “Products don’t make a business. Sales and marketing make a business.” So how do you effectively market your reseller business without spending all your capital on advertising? Good question, self! Allow me to elucidate…

Press Releases

Press releases are a powerful tool for marketing your company. While press releases work best for real newsworthy items, even routine product announcements and promotions can benefit from a formal press release distributed through the right channels. The best part is that press releases don’t have to cost you anything more than the time it takes to write them.

• Advantages

  Bloggers, journalists and online news outlets are always on the lookout for new content. Getting your press release listed is great for exposure, and it builds your website’s backlinks, which is great for SEO. If your release contains newsworthy information that extends beyond the web hosting arena, you could get picked up by print publications. This is an excellent way to build your company’s credibility and to reach an audience that may not be keeping tabs on industry-only news.

• Distribution

  There are several traditional (and free) methods for distributing press releases, and a few more creative non-traditional ones. First, submit your release to all of the online news outlets you can find. This can be time consuming, as many of them require you to register before you can submit news, but the effort is worthwhile. It may be onerous the first time around, but if you save your registration information, subsequent releases will be easier and faster. Second, notify your clients of your releases via your email newsletter. If you don’t have a newsletter yet, you should get on that, and fast, because they are invaluable marketing tools (more on this below). Third, submit your release to all of your local newspapers and radio stations. It might sound old school, but getting listed in print or mentioned on the radio will be a real feather in your company’s cap.

• Keywords

  Load your press release with SEO-friendly keywords and phrases. The more specific your keywords and phrases are, the better, for example: there are millions of companies using the keywords “web hosting” but not nearly as many using the keywords “New York web hosting professionals.” If you target your demographic with your keywords, you’ll maximize traffic from that demographic. And try to remember the rule: one to two keywords per 100 words.

• Paid Releases

  There are several companies that offer to distribute your press releases for a fee. Typically, the fee is $50-$250 and includes submission to all the major search engines and news outlets online. We have found paid releases to be beneficial for truly newsworthy releases, especially those that involve a new product or service that we know people will be excited about. The bottom line here is sales. If we have a release we think will bring in sales, we’re willing to spend some money to make sure our customers see it.

Blogs

What I’m doing here… right now… and here… is writing a company blog. This blog increases traffic to TurnKey Internet because it is regularly updated, searchable, indexed content that keeps us at the top of search results. The more I talk about TurnKey Internet’s top-notch web hosting products and services, the more easily we will be found by customers searching for top-notch web hosting products and services. It’s simple. It works. Try it!

Specials

Specials, sales and coupons attract attention. Everyone wants a deal. Everyone wants to pay less for something that used to cost more. You can advertise your specials via all the social networks (in which you should already have an account for your company). You can also include specials and promotions on your blog, with keyword-filled content that highlights the amazing features included in your special. If your special is really…well… special, you can write up a press release.

Email Newsletters

You have undoubtedly heard about the marketing power of email newsletters. If you haven’t started one yet, check out TurnKeyNewsletter.com, our one-stop email newsletter shop. Newsletters are ideal tools for sending out company updates, promotions, specials, etc. They are also critical tools for building customer trust and loyalty. An active company that has a lot going on is a successful company—at least in the eyes of your customers. Finding the right email newsletter software can be a real challenge. Many of the better known products out there have major bugs that will hurt your company’s image (the opposite of what you’re going for, obviously). That is why we have just released our very own, superior, incredible, action-packed email newsletter software. Check it out here: http://turnkeynewsletter.com. Also, stay tuned for a whole entire blog post dedicated to this new must-have marketing tool.

There has been a lot of controversy lately about how best to use blog comments to boost SEO. While it might seem awfully counter-intuitive, several popular bloggers have demonstrated that turning off comments can do wonders for traffic. That is, if you happen to be popular to begin with.

They theory is that, by turning off comments, you force readers to respond to your articles on their own blogs and social networking sites, linking back to your post in the process. This not only encourages linking-in but it also prevents spammers from hitting your blog with their own links. If you happen to be a blogger with a loyal readership, I can see how this method might improve your traffic. However, I can also see how it could kill your blog—and fast.

Not only are you counting on your readers to stay loyal after you ban them from discussing your post on your site (which, frankly, is kinda rude), you are also counting on them to care enough about your post to write their own. Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I think people tend to be a touch lazier than that in real life. The beauty of comments is how easy it is to leave one. You read a post, you have an opinion, you share that opinion, you go on with your life. In a perfect world, comments demonstrate to new readers how fascinating your post has been to past readers, and encourage discourse among your budding fan-base.

When you turn off comments, you turn off the discussion. Unless your readers are super bloggers with unlimited time, and your content is, like, the most compelling thing ever, you’re taking a big risk. Not only are you shutting down a pipeline of traffic, your sending an elitist message to your readers. My advice: let people comment, heavily moderate for spam, and encourage readers to blog about your blog by writing good content. It’s the best of all possible worlds.

TurnKey Internet is no rip off. The web hosting company gets consistently high marks for service, reliability and up-time.

How did you find this blog post? Did you run a search for TurnKey Internet Scam? If so, welcome! You’re my target demographic. This is part three of my SEO-fu experiment. If you haven’t read the first two posts, you can find them here (1) and here (2). Today, the focus is you, the customer, and how you browse, search and read. Understanding how you do these things will help us figure out: how to help you find us; how to appeal to you when you do; and how, as a business, to navigate this weirdo short attention-span information culture we all find ourselves living in.

Many people (myself included) don’t always take enough time to evaluate the sources of their information. We may read a review somewhere that effects our opinion of a company without ever wondering about who wrote it. Our decisions are snap, our time is valuable, and once we pick a company, we will tend to stick with it. It’s easier to stay where you are once you’re there—I think that’s a law of inertia or something. But really, market studies show, consumers demonstrate brand-loyalty online the same way they do in a supermarket or clothing store. So get those customers in the door, and you’re likelier than not to keep them.

Information is power. The trouble is: there’s too much of it out there (information AND power, but in this context I’m referring to information). Often, the first line of text that appears under the Google search result link is all a customer will read before making a decision. As a marketer, it is my job to make that text count—to curate my information into bite-sized pieces without sacrificing quality. This is extremely challenging when, say, you have like eight things to communicate and only room for four. Surely in this equation there is an inevitable sacrifice of information quality—you just can’t always cram everything you need to say into tiny spaces. In this case, language can’t keep up with progress. But there is hope! One positive thing about Google’s indexing of every word of text on the internet, is that every word counts. So you may not be searching specifically for “TurnKey Internet Quality” or “Marketing Philosophy” or “Web Hosting Masters” but goll durnit, you’ll find us! Of course, you may never know WHY you found us (unless you actually read this post) but, point is, my SEO-fu got you here, despite your 2010 attention-span.

TurnKey Internet has earned a 5-star rating from unbiased customer reviews and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.

This is an experiment. I hope you will follow our next few blog posts as I attempt to use my SEO-fu to elevate TurnKey Internet to the top of search results for otherwise undesirable (in some cases) search terms. It’s a pre-emptive SEO strike, and I, for one, am extremely curious to see how it works.

It is no surprise that everything we say and do online affects our reputation. This is as true for businesses as it is for individuals. But reputation depends as much on what you do, as on what others say, and others don’t always tell the truth. Everyone knows that positive customer reviews can go a long way, but what about when those reviews are negative? If negative reviews are an honest reflection of your customer service, you need to step up your customer service. But if negative reviews come from a bad egg—the customer with a chip on his shoulder, the gamer who abused your services and is upset he got caught, or the deadbeat who can’t believe you won’t turn over his data without payment—your company’s reputation could be unfairly and badly damaged. So what do you do? How do you protect that invaluable word-of-mouth reputation that keeps your business strong?

There are many companies out there that offer to monitor your online reputation, for a fee. But this is something I think you can do quite well on your own, for nothing. Yes, it takes some time, but keeping yourself apprised of what is being said about your company, from the perspective of your customers, is smart business. When a customer first hears about you—through word of mouth, via forums or an advertisement—she is likely to run a simple Google search for reviews. Getting into the head of that potential customer and running that search yourself will give you a good initial sense of what’s out there. If the first thing that comes up is a negative review from a forum post, you have some work to do.

My big secret is that this blog post is meta. While I describe to you how to protect your business’ online reputation, I am protecting mine. My hope is that, by seeding this blog post with SEO-friendly keywords that could otherwise bring up negative results from bad eggs, like TurnKey Internet Reviews, TurnKey Internet scam, TurnKey Internet fraud, etc., this blog post will be the first thing a potential customer finds when searching for those terms. By doing this, I take the sting out of the immature lashing-out of bad eggs, without stooping to the level of dirty search engine warfare. This is a clean search engine pre-emptive strike, and I highly recommend it for the long-term health of your business’ reputation.

Watch this space for more SEO-fu in the coming days.

The first step in driving traffic to your business website is to create a compelling  site that is logically laid out. Invest some time and money into creating a site that reflects your business philosophy and business goals. Make contacting you easy, and streamline the shopping and check-out process – the faster the process, the more sales you will make. Once you have the site ready, here are some techniques for bringing people to it:

• Brand your product and website consistently. Every time your brand makes an appearance, you are building your brand recognition. Keeping that brand simple and potent is the key to building your business. Don’t dilute the brand with multiple versions of your logo. Don’t dilute your brand with different website templates. Keep the look of your company consistent and it will get consistently recognized.

• Make your website trustable. Always make sure your content is well-written, authoritative and slick. You want to instill as much trust as possible in every single visitor you get because every visitor is a potential client. Keep your security software active and updated and let your visitors know you run a secure site. If they feel like their information is safe with you, they’ll be much more willing to spend money with you.

• Create strong business policies. Write up a solid company policy. Include return-policies, money-back guarantees, and a strong code of ethics. Display this information prominently in your website’s footer and refer to it in your advertisements. If you have a company newsletter (and you should—more on this in another blog post soon) maintain a stringent privacy policy and make it crystal clear to your subscribers how they can opt-out. Spamming is the number one absolute no-no when it comes to building consumer trust.

• Name each of your web pages with an SEO friendly keyword. Get your webmaster to title each of your pages accurately and with an eye towards the search engines. Internal navigability is critically important but in order for it to matter, people have to be able to find your website in the first place. Titling with keywords makes your website index-able and indexing equals traffic.

• Add as much value to your website as possible. There are many techniques for making your clients feel like they’re getting a whole lot out of their relationship with you. Affiliate programs achieve this while also helping you mobilize your traffic to build itself. Recommending links to other related content can also add value. Ideally, you want to cultivate repeat-traffic. If you serve as a kind of index or reference for your visitors, they’ll keep coming back for more. You can also offer e-books as a bonus for purchases, filling out surveys or joining your mailing list. There are e-books out there on pretty much every topic imaginable.

• Add a favorites or “bookmark this site” script to your pages. This one is pretty self-explanatory. If visitors can easily mark your website when they visit, they will be more likely to come back in the future. Make this as painless as possible.

• Add a “recommend this site.” Word-of-mouth is as important today as it’s ever been—maybe even more important as social networking makes us all aware of everyone else’s opinions all the time. Make it easy for visitors to recommend you to their friends and colleagues.

• Create a “what’s new” page, or a “recent news” section. This is especially important for large sites with a lot of fresh content scattered among many pages. You want to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to check out new updates. This is important for maintaining visitor interest and for maintaining visitor participation. It is well-known that traffic expands exponentially. Popularity builds on itself.

• Make your site SEO friendly. I touched on this earlier, and have written about it in several other blog posts. There are several SEO websites where you can learn all the dirty secrets for optimizing your site. Here is a brief rundown of the basics:

  • Title tags: These should be 60 characters, and include keywords.
  • Header tags: These are numbered from 1-7, and aren’t recognized for every search engine but, when they are, they’re important.
  • Keyword meta tags: Meta tags should be 15-20 words long (to avoid getting flagged for spamming) and should be as directly relevant to your site content as possible.
  • Text area key words: It is particularly important to include keywords in the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page, but keywords anywhere will be helpful.

• Submit your site to search engines. It takes a whole lot longer for search engines to find your site organically, so submit it! It can be time consuming, but submitting your site to each search engine individually will yield the best results.

• Keep on top of links and repair or delete broken ones. Dead links are a sure give-away that you’re not keeping your website up-to-date. Clean house regularly manually or with a link-checker. There are several free link-checking tools available online.

• Conduct periodic contests. Contests are an excellent way to build traffic. Everyone loves to win something, even when it isn’t worth a lot of money. The spirit of competition is a powerful thing. Make sure you keep a running tally of the rankings, visible to the public. If you run a contest over a few days or even weeks, you will keep contestants coming back again and again to check their standings. Contests that involve voting are especially effective. Voting gets people to involve their social networks. This can lead to a huge increase in traffic in a relatively short period of time.

• Keep content fresh. I know. I’m starting to sound like a broken record on this one, but I really can’t stress enough how important it is to keep your website current. Nobody is going to bother coming back to visit if there isn’t ever anything new to look at. It’s obvious. It’s true.

A new study has come out about adult use of social networks. Like with every other demographic, it’s going up. Though adults still rank well below youngsters, the late adopters are still adopting as the human race moves closer and closer to 100% virtual living. Okay, so maybe that’s a little grandiose. Just because something continues to grow now, doesn’t mean it is never going to stop. Still, there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight, according to the numbers.

89% of users still consider social networks to be primarily social, but business use is growing. The majority of social networkers have multiple accounts, some for business some for personal. Of course, younger adults have the highest percentage of use:

75% of 18-24
57% of 25-34
30% of 35-44
19% 45-54
10% 55-64
7% 65+

I was surprised to see that Myspace still ranks highest for usage, with 50% of all social network users. Facebook has 22% and LinkedIn has 6%, with 1% left over for YouTube. Among older users, privacy was of the greatest concern, but wasn’t keeping them from setting up profiles like it used to.

Yeah yeah, I know, everyone EVERWHERE is obsessed with Twitter, and for good reason. Twitter is fun, it’s easy to connect to tons of people and it’s SO hot right now. But, with the good comes the advertising. Along with being everyone’s favorite social media plaything, Twitter is also paving the way for the next generation in spamming. And, as the account holders with the most followers get wooed by the green, good people get jacked.

Help! My Tech Heroes Are Selling Out!

Every time I login to our TurnKey Internet Twitter account, I see another good tech person selling out. I know: who am I to talk? After all, I’m logging in to my COMPANY Twitter account, to SELL something. I shouldn’t really be splitting hairs here. But there is a big difference between a company account and a personal account; between a company network and a network of friends. Or there should be. There REALLY should be. Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, the line between personal and professional is woefully blurry. Drunk pirate anyone? While this might be good news for companies taking advantage of individual’s social popularity to market their products, it’s not so good for individuals taking advantage of their FRIENDS for monetary gain.

Companies are no dummies

Twitter offers an unprecedented forum for the bite-sized advertisement and tech gurus with thousands of followers offer an irresistible demographic. But I don’t follow those tech gurus to be advertised to, and I suspect you don’t either. I want my free information and I want it now! Which leads me to my next point…

Everyone’s In IT for the Money

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the problem is more systemic. We have all gotten so used to this fancy-free exchange of information. We subscribe to feeds and streams left and right and consume them without a thought for the poor sap behind the tweets, endlessly and thanklessly churning out tech tips for our enjoyment. Surely tech gurus need to eat! If only we could all keep our professional lives and our private lives separate, but with this all-access-all-the-time technology… it’s a fat chance, sister.

So what’s the upshot? The conclusion I keep coming to is that free access puts the onus on the individual. It’s up to each of us to decide what we are going to share and where we are going to share it. Each of us has to weigh our friendships against our desire to monetize. We also have to remember that our input is valuable, as diluted as we might feel by the seemingly endless input of others. And, I think, we have to start valuing quality input more highly, and by that I mean, we have to start being willing to pay for it. If we aren’t, we have no right to complain about our tech expert buddy spamming our twitter feed with advertisements. The fact remains: if we value what he has to say, we’ll tolerate his spam. Probably. If enough of us stop following him, perhaps he’ll think twice about what he’s doing. Perhaps he will offer a monthly subscription to an ad-free version of his feed. Now THAT is something I’d pay for.