5 Tips To Slash Your Mobile Phone Cost

March 7th, 2010

5 Tips To slash Your Mobile Phone CostThese days mobile SIM cards and mobile phones are readily available at every street corner for virtually peanuts. However, the cost operating these mobile phones for most users keeps spiralling out of control. We have 7 tips to help slash your mobile phone costs:

  1. Plans / Discount Programs: Some networks offer discount programs to family members and corporate clients, whereby the all the members of your family or a company are all encouraged to use the same network and billing plan to receive discounts on their call rates. Find out from your favorite mobile phone company what discount plans are available, and signup for that
  2. Post Paid/Monthly Billing: If you really don’t need it, then its best to avoid a monthly billing plan and stick with a prepaid or “pay-as-you-go” plan, whereby you can strictly budget the amount of recharge cards you buy in a week/month.
  3. Use SMS/Text Messages: Rather than adopting the annoying practice popularly known in Nigeria as ‘flashing’ (i.e. initiating a call and terminating it shortly before the other party can answer the call, thus causing the other party to call back), you can send an SMS or text message. You could switch your handset to a model that makes it easy for you to send text messages.
  4. Use VOIP: If you make a lot of international phone calls, then we recommend you install Skype. If you have internet access and your ISP allows it, then installing skype will help you make international calls to the skype users for free! You can also use Skype to call other mobile phones/landlines provided. If you are having issues installing or using Skype, don’t worry. Its possible that your ISP has barred you from using it, because we have heard complaints from some of our clients about this. Contact your ISP and they’ll help you out.
  5. Straight To The Point: When talking on the phone, after the initial pleasantries, its best to go straight to the point. Don’t stay on the line for too long. If you realize that the phone call would take more than a phone call to settle, then its best to arrange a face-to-face meeting instead.

These are just a few tips to help you slash you phone cost. If you feel we left anything out, or you have a different opinion on anyhting we have mentioned above, please feel free to comment below.

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How To Choose The Right Hosting Service

March 2nd, 2010

Selecting a web hosting service for your online business can be a really daunting task with all the claims and offers presented to you by different hosting companies. So how can you decide which one is right for you?

Hosting Services

Hosting Services

The first thing you need to do is to decide what type of service you need. Do you want a free hosting service or a commercial hosting service? A free hosting service would be ideal if you just want to host a website for your social club, your favorite actor, a personal blog etc. But if you are thinking of hosting a website for your business, a commercial product or service, then your best bet is to go for a commercial hosting service.

Once you have considered the above the the other major considerations are:

Stability and Reliability

You must be sure that the company you intend to host your site or blog can provide you stable and reliable service. Visit their website to view to learn more about them. Look for a list of the clients or client testimonials. Are their clients credible and reliable individuals or businesses? Check out the websites of these clients, are they online or down? All these would help you form a better opinion of the company.

If they have an online chat facility on their site, try to engage their chat operator in a discussion to see if they are courteous, friendly and knowledgeable. Pick up the phone and call their support lines (preferably at night) to see if anyone picks up and if they are courteous and friendly. You never can tell when you might need tech support services at mid night! Do a search on Google to find out more about the company and if anyone has written anything positive or negative about their service. Visit web hosting forums and inquire about your desired company to see if anyone has had any bad experience with them.

Find out if they are a new company or they have been in business for many years. It’s often better to go with a company that is tried and tested. This is not to say however that there are no new companies out there offering great hosting services.

Storage Space

How much storage space do you need? Well if you’ve already designed your website you should have an idea of the total size of storage space you would need. It’s always a good idea to add 50% extra storage space to the total size of your website files, so as to accommodate the expected growth of your website.

Do not be lured by hosting service providers who claim to offer “unlimited” storage space. This is just a marketing strategy to gain more clients. Think about it: is it possible that a company can make available to you, all the servers resources in their possession to you? They know that their average client would not need more than the a few megabytes to a few gigabytes of space at most!

Bandwidth

In trying to calculate the amount of bandwidth for a website we normally multiply the total size of the site by 10 to arrive at the amount of bandwith that we feel would be suitable for the site. Here again, some companies may claim to offer you “unlimited” bandwidth. But the logic that applies to storage space is what applies here also.

Flexibility And Ease of Use

Its best to go for a company that offers you flexibility and ease of you to your hosting account. They should make available all the necessary hardware and software to enable you upload, monitor and maintain your website with relative ease. They should also have qualified tech support to help you out incase something  goes wrong.

Finally, and this is just our own moral opinion, we feel its best to go for a hosting company whose policy is not allowing adult content on their servers.

At Mauco Internet Consultants strive to follow best practices in providing all our hosting solutions. Feel free to contact us if you need robust and reliable hosting solutions. We would be glad to help!

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How To Protect Yourself From Identity Theft

February 21st, 2010
Identity Theft

Identity Theft

Identity theft has become a major concern in recent times. Identity theft is when someone, takes a piece of your personal information (with or without your knowledge) and uses it to commit fraud. This got us into thinking of all the different ways we can use to protect ourselves from identity theft. In one of our recent posts we wrote about 12 steps to protect yourself online but as a reminder, we compiled another list of ways we feel we can all protect ourselves online. This list is by no means exhaustive because as the saying goes, if you build a 10ft fence you can be sure that thieves are ready to build a 12ft ladder to scale your fence!
So here goes.

  1. Be extra cautious when using wireless connections, hotspots and bluetooth.
  2. Rather than click a link in an email, its best to copy and paste the link directly into your browser instead.
  3. If the company website you’re visiting seems as if it hasn’t been updated in months, be wary of dealing with them or disclosing personal information to them via their website.
  4. Use very hard passwords and keep them in a safe place, away from your computer and phone. Passwords like “password” “love”, etc should be avoided. A good password should be a combination of alphanumeric characters in both lower and uppercase. If possible, change your passwords regularly!
  5. Make sure you only deal with credible companies that have come highly recommended by others. There’s nothing as good as word of mouth recommendation from clients concerning the businesses they deal with.
  6. Keep your debit, credit cards, cheque books and passports, in a secure place at all times and scrutinize your statements carefully for any discrepancies.
  7. Make sure the computer you are using has an antivirus or internet security software that is regularly updated with the latest security patches. We  recommend Norton or AVG.
  8. If your website contains sensitive information that you want to restrict access to via a secure login page (the web page must start with https:// ), its paramount that you get an SSL certificate from a good SSL certificate provider like Verisign, Geotrust etc and you renew it regularly.
  9. Even if a web page starts with “https” and your browser shows a padlock icon, its best you click the padlock icon to see the security certificate for the website. The name of the site must match the name of the person/company to which it was issued.
  10. Be wary of downloading ‘free stuff’ from the internet, especially if you are not sure of the source.
  11. As much as possible, try to use your own computer. Fortunately it is quite easy to get a decent system at a good price. If you must use another computer, don’t forget to delete all your ‘temporary internet files’ or and clear the ‘history’ sections of the system. And remember to log off completely from a public system.
  12. If you are asked for information that you don’t feel comfortable providing, ask the person what they need the information for, what their privacy policies are etc. At the end of the day, go with your gut feelings… if you’re not comfortable providing any information, dont.

Do you have any particular safety tips you would love to share? We would love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment.

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Posted in Online Business, Online Security, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

5 Benefits of Twitter for your Business

February 15th, 2010
5 Benefits of Twitter for your Business

5 Benefits of Twitter for your Business

Twitter has become the rage on the internet in recent times and has grown to become a valid business application. Twitter is now the tool of choice for most online marketers due to its high ROI. So if you have been ignoring Twitter, here are five reasons why you should start considering integrating Twitter into your marketing strategy.

  1. With Twitter, businesses can extend their reach, create buzz, listen to their communities and network with customers, prospects and industry experts!
  2. with Twitter’s Lists feature, if you are able to get yourself unto relevant lists with the right audience, your tweets may appear all over the web if you can get onto lists.
  3. Twitter is a means of getting your message out to more people and since other social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn) have applications that you could use to link them to your twitter account, this means your tweets can travel to a wider audience beyond Twitter.
  4. With the aid of Twitter, you can build valuable business networks that you can learn from. Selecting the right people in your industry to follow would help keep you abreast of latest developments in your niche market
  5. With the aid of Twitter’s real-time search capability, you can find out what your customers are saying about your brand and about your competitors. This would help you identify which areas you need to improve over your competion. So if you have been having doubts about having a Twitter account, its time to put your doubts to rest. Signup for a Twitter account and claim your space on Twitter before your competitor does!

Are there other benefits of having a Twitter account that you think we have left out? Please feel free to mention them below. Your comments are welcome. You can also follow us on Twitter @mauconline .

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Posted in Articles, Branding, Business Success, Free Online Tools, Internet Business Solutions, Online Business, social media | No Comments »

How To Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business

February 6th, 2010
How To Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business Online

How To Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business Online

These past couple of weeks, we’ve been bombarded by clients asking us how they can best take advantage of LinkedIn and and other networking sites to grow their business. This has spurred us to write this post with a few tips on how to use LinkedIn to grow your business online.

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 8.5 million professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. People use LinkedIn as a tool to grow their database of contacts, find new ideas, partners, identifying the right people at as a customer or prospect  and opportunities for growing their business in their chosen industry.

So how can you use LinkedIn to grow your business:

  1. When you have significant news about changes in your business, new product/service lunchings etc, a good platform to announce such is to update your profile on LinkedIn with this information. This creates instant awareness to all persons you are connected to on LinkedIn.

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  2. You can use LinkedIn as a channel to connect with old colleagues and classmates who may now be prospects or potential customers of your products or services.

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  3. By joining specialized groups on LinkedIn, you are in a position to gain expert advice and gather a broader perspective on how others in the same industry are able to cope with different challenges in the industry and also about your competitors.

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  4. If you have a company website, you can place a link from your LinkedIn company profile to your company website and vice versa, just as we have done on our Mauco company profile on LinkedIn. This thereby helps to improve your visibility on search engines like Google. When people now search for you or your company online, they now have various channels from which get a proper understanding about you, your product and services.

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  5. By your meaningful contributions to in group and forum discussions on LinkedIn and answering questions raised by other LinkedIn users, you are able to position as a leader in your industry and hopefully by word of mouth, referrals, etc you would be able to increase your client base.

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These and many more are some of the benefits you derive from creating a profile on LinkedIn. Do you have a linkedin Profile? What other benefits have you got from having a LinkedIn profile? Feel free to comment below. You comments are welcome.

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Posted in Articles, Branding, Business Success, Internet Business Solutions, Online Business, social media | No Comments »

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