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 As published on Oct. 16, 1998 You talked, we listenedThank you. We asked for your help in the last e-newsletter and many members contacted us to let us know they have been approached via e-mail or telephone by people trying to interfere with their Web ad service with Small-Business Showcase. We hate to sound like a broken record, but we again warn you to be wary of anyone approaching you with a service that sounds too good to be true -- because it probably is -- or anyone who tells you they are affiliated with Small-Business Showcase in any way, especially if they ask for your credit card information "for verification." Whenever someone contacts YOU and asks for your credit card, Social Security number or other personal information, a "red flag" should go up in your mind and put you on your guard immediately. Consider this: If they supposedly have the information in front of them and want to verify it, ask THEM to read the number to you and you'll let them know if it's right. We bet the next thing you hear is a "click" as the scam artist realizes you are not a gullible target and hangs up! The Web has more than its share of scam artists -- and they get slicker every day. At Small-Business Showcase, we are working as hard as we can to stomp out the scams affecting any of our valued customers and we ask for your continued help. Please alert us whenever you are approached, whether by e-mail, phone, fax or postal mail, about a "deal too good to pass up" or that "costs you nothing" with regard to your Small-Business Showcase Internet PowerPages Web ad. Thanks again to those members who let us know they were concerned. New e-mail 'help' address"Watchdog@sbshow.com" is the new e-mail address we have set-up in response to customer concerns about being approached by other companies falsely claiming to be affiliated with Small-Business Showcase. Add it to your e-mail address book now and help us fight off the scams and false promises other companies are involved with. If you are contacted via e-mail, phone, fax or postal mail by anyone claiming association with Small-Business Showcase or offering you a deal that sounds too good to be true, please contact us immediately! You may also call us via our toll-free customer service number: 1-800-492-0994. Search engine smartsSearch engine submission can be confusing, because the major search engines change their submission rules often to keep scam artists at bay. At Small-Business Showcase, we stay on top of those changes and follow all the rules the search engines set up, to better your chances of valuable search engine rankings when we automatically submit your approved page to 10 of the top search engines. Our search engine experts continually research and study search engine changes so our submission of your site gets registered as quickly as possible and at the best ranking we can achieve, in an effort to drive traffic (customers!) to your Web site. You may have seen or been approached by companies promising to resubmit your site every month or even more often -- and that is one of the biggest mistakes that can be made with a search engine! Resubmitting the same site over and over, even once a month, can backfire and get your site kicked out of that search engine completely, maybe permanently. When you think about how busy search engines are just registering NEW sites every day and how fast the Web and its traffic are growing, you can understand why search engines have set up procedures to eliminate sites that are registered multiple times. At Small-Business Showcase, we pride ourselves on being thorough, professional and courteous. We guard your reputation as we guard our own and we want to be your business service for years to come, growing with your Web needs. Bulk e-mail, a definite 'don't'Let's check through the Small-Business Showcase deleted mail file for the subject lines of e-mail messages that were deleted without anyone ever reading them:
Well, you get the picture: a bulk e-mail is a bulk e-mail is a bulk e-mail. They take up our time and e-mail space, annoy the heck out of us some days and almost always end up in the trash without being read. Before you consider jumping on the bulk e-mail bandwagon, please give your decision plenty of thought and consider the arguments contained in: "Unsolicited e-mail, junk and spamming." Bulk e-mail messages do not include targeted sales messages to your clients or those people that ask to be added to your e-mail list, or newsletters such as this one that are offered as information to existing clients. Most genuine targeted e-mailers will also provide you with their true e-mail address and remove you from their e-mail list immediately any time you request it. The story mentioned above suggests following the golden rule by doing unto others as you would have others do unto you. The companies or individuals most likely to bulk e-mail or spam are pornographic sites, get-rich-quick scams and other schemes with offers of something for nothing -- and every savvy businessperson understands you never get something for nothing in this world. E-mail "spammers" have been called the bottom-feeders of the Internet, going after the gullible and new-to-the-net crowd. In fact, one of the original Small-Business Showcase customers was adamant about his right to send bulk e-mail advertising for his Internet PowerPages Web ad through his own Internet service provider or ISP (not Small-Business Showcase directly). He did and OUR "in box" immediately began filling up with messages from people who were irate about being contacted in this manner, demanding that we take action and reporting Small-Business Showcase to our ISP as a spammer! We got the whole situation straightened out with our ISP, confronted the SBS customer and removed his site from our database immediately. After a few months, this customer called us back to ask to be reinstated as an SBS client, saying he had no idea how many people he was going to offend by spamming them and that it was the worst experience of his life. Contacting prospective customers about your business services or products is never easy, it's part of the challenge of running a business. Small-Business Showcase provides this e-newsletter, Spotlight on Marketing,every two weeks to help you find creative and helpful ways to market your business and make it known in your community and on the Internet. More sites to see for HalloweenOK ... it's Oct. 16, what will you be dressed up as for Halloween in only two weeks? You're busy, you don't have time to think about a costume, right? So we've taken the liberty of searching Small-Business Showcase for some great ideas for you! Finding materials and pulling off the right look are up to you, but this just proves there's nothing you can't find in the extensive database at Small-Business Showcase! Here are the words we searched with and the results we got back:
Remember to support your fellow Showcasers and search the SBShow database when you're in the market for something ... even a great Halloween costume idea!
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