This article has been updated on 11/13/2019 with the article entitled “Prep Your Website Now for Holiday Shopping."

Yes, the Christmas displays at the mall were set up already weeks ago, but now that Halloween is officially behind us the holiday shopping season begins in earnest.

The Internet can help your business rack up new sales. And it can rob you of sales, too. Are you doing what you can to attract new customers while keeping the old?

In honor of the Halloween season, we'd like to share some terrifying tales that happened to some perfectly ordinary business owners before they became our clients. Like any good horror story, the scariest part is that you've heard about frightening events like these happening to people you know. In fact, these horrible things could happen to you!

So turn down the brightness button on your monitor, huddle up with your marketing manager, and prepare to be terrified!

This article has been updated on 4/03/2019 with the article entitled “Offering Affordable Websites Today for Tomorrow’s Clients.”

But the correct business decision would be to turn these folks away and we just couldn’t. We had to find a way to help.

I would like to think that I run a fairly well organized reliable configuration for my main production machine and for the last four years things have been mostly stable.  Sure I had a blow out of my video card a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t really worried about my data then.  I run a nice Mac Pro configuration that I have updated over the years.  A 240Gb SSD boot drive that makes things nice and quick.  A 1Tb main hard drive that just held my user folder and a 250Gb time machine disk that kept my important stuff backed up.  I am a Dropbox user so all of my documents are really stored in the cloud and I use IMAP email so they are stored in the cloud as well.  Yea cloud…

So there it was the dreaded spinning beach ball…

Not just one of those made-up-for-marketing-purposes "holidays," Social Media Week is a biannual, world-wide event for everyone from beginners to experts.

Take a look at what’s scheduled here in Chicago, or see what’s happening in more than a dozen cities around the globe.  You can even listen to educational sessions live from the comfort of your own desk throughout the week.

Events like this get you educated, energized and empowered! But then next week comes and you start questioning: Is social media really worth my effort?

Attributed to Nicholas Carr five years ago, the term "digital sharecropping" has once again been a topic of discussion in recent weeks. Seems sort of appropriate since this year is the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, a time in our history when sharecropping was most prevalent.

Comparing sharecroppers of the 1860's to digital sharecroppers of today is an interesting exercise with some conclusions that may surprise you.

Advertising in the Yellow Pages used to be a no-brainer for businesses. Do you have a Yellow Pages phone book in your office or at home right now? When was the last time you used it? Here are some interesting statistics you may not have seen about the Yellow Pages.

This article was updated on 2/6/2019 with the article entitled “New to Updating online Content? Hacks to Make It Look Good!""

It’s the typical Good News / Bad News scenario.

Good News for busy small businesses or non-profits with tight budgets: With Content Management Systems, anyone can update their own website!

Bad News for busy small businesses or non-profits with tight budgets: With Content Management Systems everyone has to update their own website!

Being a DIY Webmaster can be frustrating. Here are three tips to help you easily deal with CMS quirks.

With the heat wave we've been experiencing in the Midwest it may be hard to contemplate Christmas, but now is the perfect time to plan your holiday marketing. Summer vacations often slow things down in the office which frees you up to do some creative thinking.

Regardless of whether you're a retail or a service business, you can put holiday marketing to work for you. Here's how one of our clients does it: