But what about your website?  Websites tend to be "overlooked" in so many companies when it comes to advertising updates.  For the vast majority of companies, an overall site check up including every page/article, product, etc. should be performed every 30 to 60 days. 

Does the information still apply to your business? 

Is it still current/accurate?

Have you changed any policies, hours of operation, location, or contact numbers? 

Do you have new items for a portfolio or customer recommendations? 

If a site has old and out-of-date information (like past dates), a potential customer will normally move on to the next site in their search...and quickly! 

When you are updating your site content, don't forget to ensure that your contact information is on every page of your site.  You want a customer to be able to reach you easily, if they need your assistance!

As always, Web-JIVE is here to help you build your business!  Our Content Updating service is a great way for you to keep your website current without having to spend a lot of your time updating it.  Please give us a call if we can help you out!

Business cards, flyers, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, and all other forms of print media should include your URL.  Yellow page listings, billboards, and newspaper and magazine ads should too.  Be sure to include your URL on promotional items like pens, coffee mugs, and mouse pads.  The more a consumer sees your web address, the more likely they are to remember it and check it out when they are shopping for your product or service.  Another thing this exposure helps with is, word-of-mouth business, the best kind.

If your business involves a storefront operation, or offices with signage, it is critical that your URL is displayed clearly inside and outside, if possible.  Car wraps and/or magnetic signs are also valuable tools for a small business.  Your vehicle will become a rolling billboard! 

Don't forget your press releases!  These should have the URL so the journalist can refer to your website for more information.

Then there are the less obvious, but very effective, items like packing materials.  Shipping envelopes and boxes, packing tape used to seal them, and even the inside packing materials  can have your company logo and website address on it. You'd be surprised what catches a person's eye!

NEW!  Starting March 1st, Web-JIVE will be sending weekly newsletters aimed at helping you grow your business and utilize your website to it's fullest potential.  This weekly newsletter will tell you what's happening on board at Web-JIVE, announce upcoming events and training sessions,  and provide useful information about your site - your business - and your success!  We will discuss ways to market a website, Search Engine Optimization, how to use our system, and much more!

With our newsletter, there's nothing to download and we respect your privacy which means your email address will not be shared or sold to other sites or mailing lists.  These newsletters will be sent via email.

We know you will love our newsletter and the information it will provide!  Stay tuned for more information on the new offerings from Web-JIVE!

Coming in April 2010, Online  Training Videos and Classroom Training! 

Stay tuned for more information on these new services... Now Offering - Content Updating and Blogging services!

Content Updating - At Web-JIVE, we realize that most of our customers are busy managing their business and simply do not have time to stay on top of their web content.  With our new Content Updating service you can focus on what you do best...running your business, while we handle all your content update needs.

Web-JIVE can input your updates to articles, pages, photos, products, etc. in a fraction of the time it would take you or someone on your staff to do it! Web-JIVE can also perform a complete site review and recommend areas to update or change.  When a site uses a tool like our portfolio, which has examples of work completed, it really should be kept current with information on the recent work  completed or even work that is in progress.  If a site contains time sensitive information, like a calendar of events, or announcements about upcoming events, it should be updated to keep the most current and relevant information in front of it's audience.  Nowadays, most people will go online to check out a company's website and review it's products and services before they ever make contact with that company.  If that site has dated information, it implies a lack of new information to share.  This could drive that potential customer to the next link in their online search.

Blogging - A blog is usually an area on a website that is dedicated to regular, brief updates and discussions.  Some companies use a blog to discuss topics related specifically to their business or line of products.  Some use a blog to solicit feedback from followers on any number of subjects, or to discuss upcoming events.  The important thing here is that many companies use a blog as a means of communicating with their followers, and are seeing much success with it!  Web-JIVE's Blogging service is a way for you to utilize this tool without exhausting the man hours to keep it running and current.  Let Web-JIVE handle the ongoing entries, while you guide us on the content.  Our staff will write the blog, you can review it, then we post it on your site.  Give us a call today to see how your company can use this awesome tool to drive your business forward! 

One of the many keys to a sites success, is the availability of new information.  Old, out-dated information on your site will stand out and be quite obvious to new visitors, while it's so easy for you - the owner - to overlook.  Some sites require changes and updates daily, and others may only require weekly or monthly changes. 

One easy way to keep track of a site's need for changes, is to simply set a certain schedule for regular updates - based on the content of the site.  A regular routine for performing this task will help you ensure that your site has current, relevant information and will always provide what your existing and potential customers need...when they need it.

New content also helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from a search engine.  Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. 

As a Web-JIVE customer, you possess the tools that will allow you to update your site's content as often as you see fit.  Web-JIVE's Content Management System provides you with the tools required, and we are always here to assist, if you desire! 

New for 2010, Web-JIVE is offering Content Updating Service to assist our customers in keeping their sites up-to-date and at their very best!  This service allows you the freedom to do your daily business and leave the website updates to us!  Contact us today, to discuss this new service and how we can help you and your business!

Please contact the billing/support department at (501) 588-1979 as soon as possible.

Monte Enbysk is a lead editor for the Microsoft.com network and writes occasionally about technology for small businesses.

An extranet's access privileges might be restricted to a few outside partners, a project team that spans more than a dozen businesses, or to hundreds of customers worldwide. In fact, one extranet could have several "sub-Web sites," each serving a different combination of groups.

Creating such a site is no longer a high-tech task ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ companies are now offering solutions that make it easy for novices to build extranets and set preferences for information and access privileges.

As a small-business owner, you ask, isn't an extranet way too fancy and way too expensive for your needs?

If you sell directly to consumers, and have little need for information sharing or collaboration en route to preparing your product or service for sale, you probably don't have any use for an extranet.

On the other hand, if you sell to larger businesses, work in project teams, or collaborate with partners, vendors or suppliers, you owe it to yourself to check out purchasing an extranet solution. Here's why:

An extranet can streamline communication otherwise done by telephone, fax and e-mail, greatly reducing the cost of sharing information across project and work teams.

As a single, central hub for large numbers of people, an extranet can significantly reduce the lines of communications between different parties, including major customers, increasing productivity and saving time.

• An extranet can serve as a central record between collaborating parties, reducing errors in communication and decreasing the risk of costly lawsuits.
• An extranet can be equipped with Web cameras and multimedia devices, to keep everyone up to speed on, say, the most current status of a construction project.
• An extranet is increasingly considered a vital tool for B2B companies ramping up their e-business infrastructures. In fact, if you have large business customers, they may soon expect you to have an extranet.

"Any business that needs to communicate with its clients or providers would benefit from having an extranet," says Joel N. Orr, chief visionary at Cyon Research, a Chesapeake, Va., company that publishes the Extranet News weekly newsletters.

Orr calls extranets "a killer app" for industries such as architectural engineering, where architects, engineers, contractors, and builders must collaborate. He produces newsletters for both the architectural engineering and manufacturing industries. But he also sees extranets benefiting businesses in law, advertising, public relations and many other services industries, as well as government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

Michael Calder, senior business analyst for Line56, a Los Angeles-based B2B media company, calls extranets "a baby step toward setting up (the) private marketplaces" expected to predominate among many B2B companies in the future.

The differences between extranets and intranets are increasingly minimal, as solutions such as Windows SharePoint Services combine the two under a single platform and architecture, adds Toby Ward, founder and principal consultant at Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media. Also, companies are retrofitting existing intranets to offer extranet capabilities, or are adding intranet components to their extranets.

"If you know intranets, you know extranets," Ward says. "The dividing line between the two is becoming nearly indistinguishable," as companies begin to offer narrow or partial access to their internal Web sites to selected outside groups.

If you are interested in purchasing an extranet solution, Orr suggests you consider one with these eight features:

1. Document sharing, with access control.
2. Discussion areas, with access control.
3. Shared and private calendars.
4. Shared and private task lists.
5. Synchronization with personal digital assistants (PDAs) and/or personal information managers (PIMs).
6. The ability to assign people to roles and projects at will.
7. Integration with Microsoft Office.
8. Integration with project management tools.
   

"Of course, you should compile a much more complete list, one that reflects your needs more closely," he says.

Timbercon also is using Microsoft Project and has created several private Web sites using Microsoft's Windows SharePoint Services to collaborate on projects with customers. It's currently setting one up for its largest customer, Lockheed-Martin, Meslow says.

But you should not pick an extranet solution simply because you like the features it offers. You'll also need assurance that the company providing the solution is trustworthy. Orr recommends using these three checkpoints:

1. Make sure that the company offering you extranet software or services is financially viable. Many companies offering extranets today are startups, funded by venture capitalists. As private companies, they don't have to disclose their financial information to you. Ask that they do anyway, so you can make judgments on their viability. If they won't, find another provider.
2. If you are buying a free service, know your business relationship with the provider. In other words, what is the provider's obligation to a customer that pays them nothing?
3. If you are buying a hosted solution, make sure that your data will be safe. Is it backed up regularly? Is it safeguarded in case the provider experiences an earthquake, fire or bankruptcy? Who has access to your backups? And what about system hacks? What are the mechanisms and precautions that the vendor has established to protect your data? These are things you need to know.

Monte Enbysk
Monte Enbysk is a lead editor for the Microsoft.com network and writes occasionally about technology for small businesses.

Kim Komando writes about workplace technology and security issues. She's the host of the nation's largest talk-radio show about computers and the Internet, and writes a syndicated column for more than 100 Gannett newspapers and for USA Today. Find Kim's show on the radio station nearest you, and send an e-mail to subscribe to her free weekly e-mail newsletter.

But there can come a point when your business outgrows this arrangement. You need constant, reliable and secure communications with others in the company to ensure successful growth. You need an intranet.

An intranet is similar to a Web site, and it uses Internet protocols, but it's an internal network exclusive to one company. (An "extranet" also is an internal or private Web site, but access privileges are extended to designated customers, partners and/or others.)

Most large corporations use intranets. Information distribution is a huge task when you have 10,000 or more employees. Intranets can help cure that headache.

I hear you, "I don't have anywhere near 10,000 employees!" But I can give you three major reasons why your small business should invest in one. Here they are:

Even a very small company has communication issues. Most people find out what's happening while gossiping around the coffee pot. Stories change as they spread, leading to a misinformed and disgruntled staff. If you have telecommuters, off-site workers, employees who travel a lot or a "virtual" company, communication issues become even more challenging.

In order for a company to succeed, all players must understand its goals. Neither long-term nor short-term goals should be confined to upper management meetings. It's Business 101. Everyone needs to be working toward common goals.

An intranet is the perfect place to post weekly reports, memos and goals. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Toby Ward, president of the intranet consulting firm Prescient Digital Media, notes that even a company with few employees benefits from an intranet. Even if you don't have people working remotely, your sales staffers or consultants aren't always in the office.

Building an intranet can enhance communication through message boards, instant messaging and moderated chats. How?

Let's take a typical business scenario. The sales staff of five has to come up with a presentation to the president on increasing sales in the next fiscal year.

Those five people will enter a conference room, eat pizza, drink coffee and drag it out for hours. The first meeting turns into a three-hour, stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session. The second meeting starts with a review of the best ideas from the first. The participants hash out why they will or will not work. By the third or fourth meeting, the five will come up with some proposals.

Using a discussion board in the days before the meetings can streamline the experience. Ideas can be debated beforehand. Participants come into the sales meeting more focused.

Yes, this is a clich?©. But it's too valid not to use here.

An intranet allows you to post critical information for all employees to see. Even having human resources information posted is valuable. One of my employees said workers in his former office once spent 45 minutes trying to find out if the day after Thanksgiving was a paid holiday. The personnel manager was gone and no one else knew.

Posting of calendars, company policies and company benefits is a great start. They'll reduce wasted time. But an intranet can be used for more than basic information. The beauty of an intranet is its interactivity.

You can save time (and trees) with interactive forms. Vacation requests, supply orders, changes to benefits and more can be handled quickly and efficiently.

Make sure your intranet follows good design principles. You can't just throw stuff up there and hope people will find it. Organize your intranet to make it as user-friendly as possible. We're trying to save time here, not frustrate people.

You may be thinking, "Why doesn't the personnel person just e-mail the form?" Or, "I communicate well with my employees through meetings and postings on the cork board."

According to Ward, e-mailing multiple versions of the same document or presentation leads to confusion and sometimes information overload.

Let's take that same sales group we envisioned earlier. They've decided on three major ways they will increase sales. They are now working on a PowerPoint presentation.

Five people collaborating on one PowerPoint file can lead to disastrous results. I can hear the shouting now. "Who has the most revised version?" "Johnson, you gave me the wrong figures. I thought we fixed that." And so on.

By using an intranet, people can work on a shared file and have a central location for the most recent file.

This will also help save space on your server. It may sound like a tiny thing, but having versions of various files on everybody's computer takes up valuable space.

Before you set up an intranet, make sure you understand what you want it to do. Understand how employees will use it. Finally, adhere to good design principles. If it takes five or six clicks to find a vacation request form, it's too complex.

You'll also have to decide if you want to build your own solution. A consultant can build an intranet to your specifications. It will have the look and feel and design principles you specify. This route will cost you U.S. $10 to $500 per person per month.

There also are software packages such as Windows SharePoint Services that allow you to customize and design most everything yourself, using someone else's template. SharePoint runs U.S. $39.95 a month or $399 a year, no matter how many users.

Some packages, such as Instant Intranet Builder, use Microsoft Access as the core database. They incorporate linking mechanisms to create a workable intranet easily. You don't need a dedicated IT person to set up and maintain it. Depending on the company's size, the entire package can be had for as little as U.S. $5 per person per month.

Some other software products available include InfoStreet, IntraSmart and Intranet Suite. Pricing varies, depending on the number of users.

To get your intranet ready for employee use, you will need someone to develop and maintain the content. The idea is to have continually updated information available. How you delegate those tasks may depend on the size of your company. If you only have 10 people, one person may be sufficient to maintain the information.

If you have a larger company, you'll probably want to separate content updates among departments. No matter the size, you'll have to budget maintenance time into an employee's schedule. Remember, we're dealing with computers ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ nothing ever runs as smoothly as we would like.

You'll also have to invest in time for employee training. You may even have to spend time convincing old stalwarts to use the intranet. Once the system is up and running and everyone understands it, the return on investment will be significant.

Kim Komando
Kim Komando writes about workplace technology and security issues. She's the host of the nation's largest talk-radio show about computers and the Internet, and writes a syndicated column for more than 100 Gannett newspapers and for USA Today. Find Kim's show on the radio station nearest you, and send an e-mail to subscribe to her free weekly e-mail newsletter.

Steve Strauss is one of the country's leading small business experts, a columnist for USATODAY.com, and the author of the "Small Business Bible." If you would like to have Steve speak to your group, or to sign
up for his free e-newsletter Small Business Success Secrets!

visit his Web site.

Why your business needs a Web site

Hi Steve: I am thinking about starting an online business or at least having a Web site for point of contact of a local home business. I recently attended a small business seminar at my local chamber of commerce. However, they didn't give very much information on Web-based businesses. Is there some advice you could give me or perhaps some resources you could recommend?

Susan, Texarkana, Texas.

A: There was a time not long ago when a business could do without a Web site, but that time has long gone.

Should your business have a Web site, even if your business is small and sells products or services you don't think can be sold online? My answer in 1998 is the same as my answer today: Yes, if you have a business, you should have a Web site. Period. No question. Without a doubt.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays, there's very little that can't be sold over the Internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books, computers, cars, real estate, jet airplanes, natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Internet marketing research firms predict that the number of online consumers will grow at a rate of 30% to 50% over the next few years. These numbers alone should be enough to persuade you that your business should have a Web site.

Let me clarify: I'm not saying you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the Internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you should certainly be considering it. The point is that you should, at the very least, have a Web presence. This enables your customers, potential employees, business partners and, perhaps, even investors to quickly find out more about your business, and the products or services you have to offer.

That said, it's not enough that you just have a Web site. You must have a professional-looking site if you want to be taken seriously.

Since many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a bricks-and-mortar store, your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by a barrel of monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with the big boys. With a well-designed site, your little operation can project the image and professionalism of a much larger company. The inverse is also true. I've seen many big company Web sites that were so badly designed and hard to navigate around that I found myself leaving them. This is good for small business people ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ it's your turn to shine!

You also mention that yours is a small operation, but when it comes to benefiting from a Web site, size doesn't matter. I don't care if you're a one-man show or a 10,000-employee corporate giant. If you don't have a Web site, you're losing business to other businesses that do.

Here's the exception: It's actually better to have no Web site at all than to have one that makes your business look bad. Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says, "Hey, look, we take our business seriously and we've created this wonderful site for our customers!" or it screams, "Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything!"

Your Web site is an important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such.

Online profit streams

Whether you're just beginning to develop your business model or simply analyzing an existing business, your chief focus should be on how you're going to generate income. There are seven ways to generate revenue on the Web:

• Sell your own products
• Sell your own services
• Drop ship products
• Recommend affiliate products
• Sell ad space
• Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses
• Start an affiliate program

Let me explain each of these a little further:

1. Sell your own products. The main advantage to selling your own products is that you, ultimately, control how much profit you make on every sale and you, therefore, have the potential for the biggest profit margin. You know exactly what each product costs and you can try out different price points to see what works the best. People appreciate good value, and removing the middleman is a great way to provide your customers with competitive prices that keep them coming back for more.

2. Sell your own services. Whether you're a small-town dentist, a high-priced online legal consultant, a real estate agent, a tutor, a landscaper, a bed- and- breakfast owner, an auto-mechanic, a caterer, a fitness trainer or anything in between, you can profit from selling your service online. It's easy to get started selling a service online, but your revenue potential, in most cases, is limited. That's because, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand, you can only provide as many services as your time allows.

When you sell a service, you're essentially selling a relationship with yourself. And this requires is that you spend more time and effort establishing your credibility and developing rapport with your visitors than is typically required on a site merely selling a product. You not only need to establish the benefits of the service you're offering, you also need to establish the value of you providing this service.

3. Drop ship products. If you want to sell products ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ without the hassle of tracking your inventory, setting up a warehouse and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ drop-shipping may be the choice for you. Drop shipping lets you sell quality, brand-name products on your site for a hefty profit, while the drop shipper takes care of fulfilling the order. (They warehouse the stock, pack the orders and ship them out to your customers.)

4. Recommend affiliate products. Recommending affiliate products creates a "no-risk" partnership that allows you to promote another company's products or services on your site to earn a percentage of their sales. As one of the company's "affiliates" or promotion partners, you earn a commission each time someone is referred to their site and makes a purchase. To advertise their wares, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate program's site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.

5. Sell ad space. Once your site has lots of highly-targeted traffic, or a large, targeted opt-in list, you may be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are willing to buy ads when they're being directed at large numbers of their target market. Nowadays, though, advertising revenues are a lot less than they used to be, so I don't recommend you making this your sole source of income. Selling ad space can be a great additional profit stream, but it's unlikely to keep your business afloat on its own.

6. Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses. Joint ventures are all about related businesses teaming up and combining skills, products, services and resources to create new streams of income and profit. One great way to profit through joint ventures is to seek out products or services that would benefit your visitors, and then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their products or services on your site for a portion of the profits. Most companies will gladly agree to this arrangement. After all, there's no risk for them since they only pay you when you refer a paying customer.

7. Start an affiliate program. With your own affiliate program, you can recruit an army of people (your affiliates) who will recommend your product on their Web site for a percentage of any sales they refer. You have the power to exponentially increase your income as more and more affiliates sign up and you continue to teach your existing affiliates how to increase their commission checks (and your income).

How did Steve answer other questions? Read his previous columns

Steve Strauss is one of the country's leading small business experts, a columnist for USATODAY.com, and the author of the "Small Business Bible." If you would like to have Steve speak to your group, or to sign up for his free e-newsletter Small Business Success Secrets!, visit his Web site. Have a question for Steve? Send him an e-mail.