5 Easy Methods To Increase Your Business Email Security
Email security can be tricky. Occasionally clients will come to us with questions about how best to use their email system, and how to prevent security breaches. We’ve gathered some of our best email security tips below, and we hope it helps you keep your business running smoothly.
Once you have your email system ironed out and you’re ready to start building your business with email, let us know.
1. Stop Spam & Phishing Emails In Their Tracks
The best way to stop spam and phishing emails is to educate yourself and your employees on what to look for.
Phishing and spam techniques relies on getting you to trust the sender. Usually they do this by using an email domain – the @examplecompany.com portion of the email address – which looks like a reputable company. Common examples might be: @amazon-z.com, @amazon.net, @ama-zon.com, amazononline@online.com, amazon@hotmail.com etc.
They’ll usually ask you to click on a link because they need to verify information on your account. The link usually takes you to a website which is a good copy of the company you’re expecting; similar color schemes, fonts, buttons and logos. Once you’re there, they expect you to put in your user name, password and/or account or social security number.
Your best bet is to notice these email address discrepancies and don’t click on anything in the email. Once you’ve arrived at their site, they may have already downloaded malware which can further compromise your system without you having to take a single action.
Instead, train your email filter to notice these things. Select the checkbox next to the message and choose whatever option your email provider gives you to identify the message as spam. In Gmail, this would be the “Report Spam” button. This helps your email provider realize the domain is a spam sender, and it will attempt to stop those in the future.
2. Check for Confidential Content
You might be the most careful person in the world, but are your employees? Make sure you have clear expectations in place about what can be transferred via email and what can’t.
Social security numbers, account information, banking information, usernames and passwords should never be sent via email. Also make sure your employees know that you and the companies or financial institutions you work with will never ask for this information via email, or via a phone number given to them via email. Always call an institution directly to a trusted number you’ve used in the past.
3. Create An Email Security Policy
Your employees might not know how best to handle a spam email, or not to send out certain confidential emails. That’s why you want to make sure you have a detailed email security policy in place. There are many sample policies out there you can go through and customize to your own needs, like this one from Tech Donut.
4. Block Certain Senders
Sometimes, your employee might try to send an email to a bunch of recipients at once with the To:, Cc: or Bcc: field. These types of emails can expose your clients to each other, which is something they may not want.
It can also accidentally expose confidential information, such as names, email addresses and other information to a wider audience, and can be constituted as spam in certain cases. Since you don’t want to cause spam yourself, you can request that your the company which controls your email server block anyone at your company from sending emails with more than 15 recipients or something similar.
As well, you can block senders coming into your system. Emails with attachments larger than 10MB can slow down your entire network, or not be delivered at all. Set a policy at your server level to block incoming and outgoing emails with attachments larger than 10MB, and to notify the sender and provide an alternate method of sending the file, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
5. Archive Emails
Make sure that you keep a backup of your emails so if a disaster should occur you can still revert to your backup. Check if your server provides a backup, and if so how often. You can also create a backup yourself using an external hard drive and a backup schedule if you feel it’s necessary.
Hopefully these tips have helped you secure your business emails. When you’re confident enough to start advertising your business through email, contact us!
Photo by Diana Akhmetianova on Unsplash6 Best Practices For Your Email Marketing Efforts
Email marketing can seem like an extremely tricky business, even though email has been around for decades now. And how do you even begin to approach building a list to start emailing to? We’re sure you have a lot of questions, and hopefully this list helps you get started with your email marketing efforts. When […]
How To Leverage Social Media As A Blogger To Extend Your Reach
This is a guest post by Ken Rhie, CEO of Trumpia. Trumpia is a complete SMS software solution with mass SMS messaging, smart targeting and automation.
There are always new ways to alter your marketing strategy in an effort to reach a wider audience. When you are focused on growing your business, you’ll have to do some investigating.
First you have to identify who your target audience is. After you have a strong understanding of who your followers are, you have to figure out where they are hanging out. There are a number of social media platforms to use, but matching the right platform to your target demographic takes some work.
To get started, you’ll need to learn about the various social media platforms and set up accounts on each to learn what will work for your business.
Set Up Your Social Media Accounts
When you want to leverage social media, you have to get started by setting up accounts. Three popular social media sites include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Each site offers you ways to promote your business and to share news with your followers.
The younger crowd tends to be on Instagram, while the most popularly used social media website is Facebook. Set up an account on all three sites and focus on growing a following on each platform. Once you get your accounts set up, you can begin to see what works for your audience and which platform is more popular for you to use with your customers.
Evaluate What Is Working With Your Followers
Take the time to look at each social media account you have set up. Consider what your customers are reacting to. If they are commenting like crazy on your posts on Facebook, but you get no action on Instagram, it’s time to put more of your marketing efforts into Facebook.
Once you see where your customers are engaging with your business, you need to focus on that social media account for a while. Learn how to gain followers on your chosen platform, and become a master at creating engaging content. While you can continue to post to other platforms, focus on what is working now to grow your business.
Send Links to Your Favorite Posts Through Text Messages
You’ll have to create an opt-in campaign in order to build an audience for text messages.
Once this is done, you can invite customers to visit you on your social media sites by sending a marketing text message. When you have the ability to reach your customers through text messaging, you are opening up a whole new world for your marketing efforts.
You can get customers to sign up to receive text messages by sharing the information on your social media accounts, and you can get customers to visit you on social media through text messaging. The more ways you try to interact with customers, the easier it will be to discover what works.
When you have a blog that you want to share to your target demographic, you need to unleash the power of your social media presence. Through the use of text messaging and social media posts, you can get your message out to your audience.
Photo by Eric Muhr on UnsplashHow Google Grants Can Boost Your Online Presence By $10,000/Month
Google Grants for Nonprofits is an amazing program for any 501(c)3 nonprofit to take advantage of. In fact, Google will give a qualifying nonprofit $10,000/month to be used in AdWords advertising! At Cohlab, we can help you access and manage this windfall for your organization.
$10,000/month!! How?
There is a series of steps you’ll need to go through. You can sign up through the Google Grants page, but we’d be happy to help you navigate the entire process; just send us an email.
What Google Grants Does
Google Grants allows nonprofits to access a $10,000/month ad spend on Google AdWords, empowering organizations to reach out to potential volunteers, donors and employees as well as spread brand awareness to those who may need your services.
This cash can really turn the tide for nonprofit organizations, and we’ve worked with a number of nonprofits who have benefitted from this program.
What Cohlab Does
On our end, we help guide you through the signup process. We take care of as much as we physically can on our end so your staff isn’t tied up in the administrative or operations tasks of this program. We even use an on staff writer to craft your application letter to Google to better your chances of acceptance!
Once you’ve been accepted to the program, we also take care of the day-to-day management of your ad campaigns, meaning you don’t need to have someone on staff trained in AdWords, and you don’t need to waste time trying to manage $10,000 worth of ads; we take care of all of it for you.
How You Benefit
Your organization, with our assistance and Google’s generosity, will likely benefit from an uptick in visitors to your website, increased response to ads for volunteers or employees as well as donations, and all without spending a dime on the ads themselves!
If you have any questions about how to get started on this process, let us know and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.
How Google Grants Can Boost Your Online Presence By $10,000/Month
Google Grants for Nonprofits is an amazing program for any 501(c)3 nonprofit to take advantage of. In fact, Google will give a qualifying nonprofit $10,000/month to be used in AdWords advertising! At Cohlab, we can help you access and manage this windfall for your organization.
$10,000/month!! How?
There is a series of steps you’ll need to go through. You can sign up through the Google Grants page, but we’d be happy to help you navigate the entire process; just send us an email.
What Google Grants Does
Google Grants allows nonprofits to access a $10,000/month ad spend on Google AdWords, empowering organizations to reach out to potential volunteers, donors and employees as well as spread brand awareness to those who may need your services.
This cash can really turn the tide for nonprofit organizations, and we’ve worked with a number of nonprofits who have benefitted from this program.
What Cohlab Does
On our end, we help guide you through the signup process. We take care of as much as we physically can on our end so your staff isn’t tied up in the administrative or operations tasks of this program. We even use an on staff writer to craft your application letter to Google to better your chances of acceptance!
Once you’ve been accepted to the program, we also take care of the day-to-day management of your ad campaigns, meaning you don’t need to have someone on staff trained in AdWords, and you don’t need to waste time trying to manage $10,000 worth of ads; we take care of all of it for you.
How You Benefit
Your organization, with our assistance and Google’s generosity, will likely benefit from an uptick in visitors to your website, increased response to ads for volunteers or employees as well as donations, and all without spending a dime on the ads themselves!
If you have any questions about how to get started on this process, let us know and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.
Photo by sarandy westfall on Unsplash4 Ways Your Web Designer May Be Getting Images Wrong
The proper use of images – while only one facet of web design – is something that’s often overlooked until it becomes a problem. Whether it’s causing people to bounce off of your page due to unattractive image use, leading to trouble with your SEO due to poor use of alt tags or getting you into legal trouble by stealing images, it’s important to pay attention.
If you need assistance with web design or want advice on the use of images, let us know. We’d be happy to chat!
1. Organize Images On The Page
When browsing online, you might open a new page and see an image half above the bottom of your screen and half below. This means the designer didn’t take into account whether the photo made it above the fold or not. Even worse is when the photo is below the fold, because there isn’t anything visual for the website visitor to grab onto.
It’s best to make sure you have one chief image at or near the top of your page or blog post to capture attention, and it should be completely above the fold. You can check this by viewing the page on a few different screen sizes – also, with mobile devices it’s acceptable for the image to not be above the fold due to the narrowness of the screen.
Then a second image or third can be added below the fold as needed to illustrate the purpose of the page.
2. Use The Alt Tag
An alt tag is a piece of data you attach to the image. It helps search engines understand what the picture is (since they can’t see) and it’s also helpful for the blind and hard of sight as they utilize assistive technology which reads the page out loud to them. Without an alt tag, it’s as if the image isn’t there or relevant for search engines (which hurts your SEO) and for the blind and hard of sight (which eventually will be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act).
An example of an alt tag would be “young-boy-rides-horse-in-meadow”.
If you leave the original name of the file – 51381238532351.jpg – or fail to describe the photo well – “boy-horse” – then you’ve gained nothing.
3. Use The Caption
A caption is a way of further explaining an image. While not always needed, particularly complex images which aren’t stock photos may need a caption. If the photo is of staff or a particular location, it’s important to identify the people or place properly.
The caption is also used to provide documentation of where a photo is from . . .
4. Source And Link Your Photos
Lastly, be sure source and link the photo back to it’s original photographer, unless you or someone you employ took the photo for your business.
If you take a photo off of the internet, you need to be sure it’s safe to use. Most photos out there belong to someone. You wouldn’t walk out and pick up a dog off the street to take home, because 99% of those dogs aren’t strays.
Certain websites will provide you with photos which are in the public domain, which means you can use them freely. It’s still important to note the web address of the source in the caption, and link back to it to cover yourself. The same goes for photos you may buy off of a service like Adobe Stock Images. While you own the photo, it’s still nice to make sure you’re covered incase anyone ever asks.
If you have any questions about designing your website or the proper use of images, we’d love to chat.
