AVG, one of the most popular anti-virus programs, is causing confusion today by wrongly identifying iTunes files as trojans. After updating its virus definitions, the anti-virus software finds up to 181 “viruses” in iTunes: attempting to quarantine the files prevents iTunes from working. The supposed virus name is “trojan horse small.bog”.
An extensive thread in the Apple discussion forums shows that AVG is giving a false positive: there’s no risk of trojans in iTunes, and quarantining the files will break your iTunes install. You can disable the alerts by creating an exception in AVG:
1. Open AVG
2. Go to Resident Shield -> Manage Exceptions -> Add Path
3. Add C:\Program Files\iTunes and C:\Program Files\iPod
AVG will no doubt correct the issue in their next definitions update.
What should you do if you already told AVG to quarantine or heal the problem?
If you have already borked your iTunes install you MIGHT be able to reverse the problem from AVG by telling it to restore the quarantined files.
Worst case you will probably have to re-install iTunes.
Now Google LBC will be offering more features for anyone who adds their business.
Why does Google want businesses to add themselves?
Google wants more small businesses to claim their listing profiles on Google Local (which is basically listings that pop up in Google Maps and local search results).
What do you get when you add your business?
Starting tomorrow it will give local businesses in the real world with physical addresses a free dashboard akin to what Websites get for free with Google Analytics (see screenshot below). Except that it will show stats such as how many times their business comes up as a search result, how often people click through, as well as how many times people generate driving directions to their business son Google Maps and where those people come from.
How much time does it take?
It takes about as much time as setting up a new email account, maybe a little more. Google gets clean data (and, thus, better results), businesses get free analytics and an opportunity to train Google’s search engine. Right now only a few hundred thousand businesses in the U.S. have been claimed out of approximately 20 million.
What are the Benefits?
The benefit to Google is that the more that small businesses can measure the impact of search, the more likely they will be to buy search ads.
The benefit to Business Owners is the dashboard shows the top search queries that result in a business’ listing showing up. And of course your business get’s added to the local search results on a map.
What is the return for all these social networking activities I am doing? Will I see an increase in business? Will it lead to more sales? How to I find out if it did lead to sales?
What is the point then of your Facebook Page?
Your facebook page is about awareness of what you provide. This is not about providing spam about your product. It is about connecting with your customers. Making your brand personable. Providing value.
And then lastly, it is about promoting your business. If you are a restaurant you can send a message to your fans about an upcoming event, or how about a coupon.
Today I was visiting another Socal BNI chapter and the question came up again of why anyone would participate in a social network for business.
Today my answer was this:
You participate in a BNI group for networking and referrals. Joining a Social Network and then using it to meet more people leads to more Face to Face meetups leading to more people that know you eventually ending up with business.
I know this sounds simple to most people, but I still get these calls. I had one tonight.
If your wireless mouse has stopped working do this:
1. Replace the batteries
After replacing the batteries your mouse still might not work - now what?
If you are using a mouse that has a receiver plugged into the computer you will need to FIRST push
the connect button on the receiver and SECOND push the connect button on the bottom of the mouse.
Now you mouse should work.
Worst case scenario after doing the above items you still might need to reboot.
If none of the above works it is possible you need a new mouse.
This is my first video tutorial. It is a short little video, but the subject does need explaining. Many times friends, family, customers do not know where the address bar is.
The address bar is the bar at the top of your internet browser. Your internet browser can be any number of programs such as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. The address bar is where you type a URL such as www.google.com
When someone says type www.google.com in the address bar, type it in the address bar. Not the search box.
Many experts out there are telling businesses and business owners that they should be active in social networks to get all their traffic and not do anything else.
This is flat out wrong. Social Networking is only a small piece of the online marketing puzzle.
Participating in Social Networks is the same strategy of keeping in contact with your customers and friends off line. With Social Networking you are building and engaging you trusted network.
Most of these people in your network already know who you are, you don’t need to sell to them.
Their intent on connecting with you on these mediums in not to buy from you, nor should you hard sell them. Do not abuse their relationship with you by being the pushy salesperson
The place you will get the most traffic and be able to build new relationships will be through search engines. When you write content on your website(blog) you will drive traffic by answering questions for what people are searching.
Does this mean you should not participate in social networks? Of course not.
What I am advising you to do is measure all your internet marketing activities. Here is a past 30 day view from my Yorba Linda and what you will see here is that almost 50% of my traffic comes from Google. If you look close you will see that my top 5 sources of traffic has been from search results. There is a some traffic from social networking but only a smidge.
Many customers have asked: “Should I start a blog?”. Overall I think every business should have a blog, but they are exceptions.
WHY?
There are many reasons why but today’s lesson will be about Indexed Pages and Traffic
Take this example from Hubspot’s article comparing two restaurants ranking.
The first restaurant has a blog and the second does not.
The first one has more pages indexed in Google (and all the rest)
The first restaurant received more traffic that the other (more than 10 times as much)
Results
With more pages indexed by the search engines your website has a higher chance of being found by potential customers searching for what you sell.
If you want to be found in search you need to create content. The easiest way to create content is use a publishing platform, commonly referred to as a blog.
