PSPINC Official Company Blog

Announcement: Services Back Online!

Nov

15

Today, due to a network incident, all our services were temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers.

The affected period is as follows:

*United States PST
- 11/15/2023 9:14 a.m. ~ 9:52 a.m.

*Japan Standard Time
- 2023/11/16 2:14 a.m. ~ 2:52 a.m.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #network #networkannouncement #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment

Marketing With Short-Form Videos

Nov

14

Over the past few years, short-form videos have become more popular, especially with the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook/Instagram Stories, and YouTube Shorts. As technology has continued to progress, people have become more accustomed to the conveniences it has to offer, and their attention spans have also shrunk along with it. Many social media platforms have taken notice, so short-form videos have become more valued in their algorithm when it comes to what users are more likely to see on their timelines.

8 Steps to Start

close-up photo of person holding his black headphones and video editing software open on his computer

Start with research: just like every marketing endeavor, it always starts with research. In this case, look at what your competitors are doing and see what you can use in your own strategy.
Experiment: discover which trends, themes, and overall tones work for you. Don’t be afraid of trying out different content ideas and getting creative.
Schedule your videos: find the right posting frequency that will work best for your brand.
Repurpose your content: instead of starting from scratch, see what you can reuse from the content you’ve already created and posted. Maybe it’s part of a blog post or a clip from a longer YouTube video.
Find the right blend: determine how often to post each type of content using what you learned from your research and experimenting steps.
Keep your online community in mind: create good social content by looking at what types of content your audience responds to — what kinds of content do they want to see from you?
Humanize your brand: feature your employees, show behind-the-scenes content, and lean into humor. People want to know the people behind the brand, not just what you’re selling.
Engage with your audience: interact with users in your comment section and encourage people to engage with you.

Luckily for marketers, creating short-form videos on social media is easy and will help increase brand awareness, drive engagement, and capture people’s attention. It’s also a much more cost-effective way to market your business since these videos will only be anywhere between three seconds to one minute long. Plus, you can even reuse some of the marketing content you’ve already created, which will also cut down on the time you’ll spend creating short-term videos.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #instagramreels #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #reels #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #tiktok #twitter #web #youtube #youtubeshorts

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 193 “New Marketing Packages”

Nov

9

We are thrilled to announce that we now have new marketing packages available to fit your specific business needs. From small businesses just looking to spread awareness to those who want to completely transform their digital marketing strategy, we have the right plan for you.

pspinc marketing plans

Our plans are billed monthly, without any minimum contract. However, we recommend you run your ad campaign for at least three months for the best results. Our team has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 192 “Dreamersi Email Hosting”

Nov

2

As a small business, one of the most important parts of marketing your business consists of boosting your overall credibility. Bigger brands have the advantage of being well-known and, therefore, trustworthy. So, they don’t have to work as hard to gain that trust from potential customers. An easy way to establish your business’s credibility is through your email. If your email ends with your website name, it looks much more professional as opposed to if it were a Gmail or Yahoo email address.

Right now, we are offering free email migration from your current email (excluding Microsoft 365) to our premiere email hosting service, Dreamersi. The best part of Dreamersi email hosting is that you can add as many users as you want to your email hosting plan. For just $8.25/month for an unlimited number of email accounts, you can’t get better than that. If you don’t already have your own domain name for your website, we’ve got you covered there, too! You can get a free domain included with our Dreamersi email hosting plan, or pair it with our web hosting plan! Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #ecommerce #email #emailhosting #hosting #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdevelopment #webhosting #website

How Meta's New Lawsuit Will Affect Marketing Towards Young People

Oct

31

On October 24, 2023, 41 U.S. states and the District of Columbia sued Meta, alleging their social media platforms, namely Facebook and Instagram, knowingly contributed to the youth mental health crisis. In the lawsuit, they claim Facebook and Instagram are not only addictive and harmful to young users through numerous features like copious alerts, notifications, and infinitely scrolling feeds. They also claim these features “negatively impact teens’ mental health”, specifically because they encourage social comparisons and promote body dysmorphia through likes or photo filters.

What This Means for Marketers

Ultimately, regardless of where this lawsuit goes, other social media platforms may feel inclined to add more features and/or privacy settings designed to restrict usage on younger users. With the reality of social media platforms likely enforcing more regulation through features and default privacy settings over younger users, social media ads and posts may not reach much of their younger audience. Therefore, marketers should:

Market on other social media platforms specifically designed for younger people. Ex: Snapchat, YouTube Kids, TikTok, etc.
Focus on creating engaging content - for organic social media content, engaging content performs best with younger users, so use that to your advantage. The more young people interact with your engaging organic content, the more it'll show for similar users, like others in their age group.
Partner with influencers - young people are more likely to trust recommendations from their favorite influencers and engage with their content. This can also include popular celebrities among your target demographic.
Determine where else your audience is online - social media may take up a lot of young people's time, but it isn't the only place they're spending their energy online. Find out what other websites they're browsing and advertise there instead.
Target an older audience instead - even if you usually target a younger audience, it's possible you're missing out on revenue you could be earning from older potential customers.

This concern over young kids using social media and the effects it has on their mental heath isn’t a new one. In 2021, a Facebook whistleblower who was later revealed as Frances Haugen leaked internal research, proving Meta knew the negative effects their social media platforms made on young people. In response, Instagram said they were working on features that would combat this. However, it’s hard to know what tech companies can do to improve it. Even then, this concern won't go away, so it's important that marketing professionals are proactive in how they market young people.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mentalhealth #meta #news #smallbusiness #snapchat #socialmedia #tech #technology #tiktok #web #youtube #youtubekids

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 191 “Pass Wizard Pro”

Oct

26

As a small business, we continually improve our services and products so that they’re the best they can be for our customers, which is why we’ve been hard at work doing just that for our password manager, Pass Wizard. Today, we are happy to announce that you can now sign up for Pass Wizard Pro without signing up for the free plan!

Before, users had to sign up for the free plan and upgrade to Pro, which just added more steps to the overall customer journey. So, we made it easier by letting customers get Pass Wizard Pro right at the start of the signup process. With features like unlimited password storage and management, multi-factor authentication, group management, and shared passwords, it’s never been easier to keep your data safe. Sign up for Pass Wizard Pro for just $1.67/month, making it one of the most affordable password managers on the market!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #marketing #passwizard #passwizardpro #password #passwordmanager #passwords #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website #webtools

Why Threads Hasn’t Taken Off (Yet?)

Oct

24

Back in July, Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) released Threads, their text-based social media platform after weeks of speculation that would directly compete with X (formerly Twitter). Because of how easy it was for users to sign up, ten million people joined the app within seven hours of its launch according to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO.

But now, more than three months later, Threads’ popularity has dwindled. Sensor Data reports that at its peak, 44 million daily active users were on Threads. Just a few weeks later, at the end of July, there were only eight million daily active users—an 82% drop. Many users have stopped posting and many have even forgotten about the platform altogether. Largely due to the fact that it just isn’t built out enough with the robust features that users crave on social media.

Lack of Popular Features

Every popular social media platform has its own niche, along with key features. However, Threads is still missing a lot of those features, including but not limited to a Discover page, direct message functions, and the ability to share Threads posts via Instagram direct messages, among others. It wasn’t until the end of July when Threads rolled out a Following feed and it wasn’t until August when Threads released a web version for desktop users. The other unknown thus far is whether Meta will expand their advertising network to Threads. Meta is known for being great for advertisers, but unless their daily active user count goes back up, advertisers may not be willing to spend advertising dollars on Threads.

While they’re going in the right direction in terms of working on adding more features, Threads is still missing something that will make them stand apart from their competitors. Many saw Threads as the direct competitor to X, and the fact that users’ accounts could connect to their Instagram pages and bring over their following was an attractive asset, but it wasn’t enough to keep users on the platform. Overall, many have theorized that Meta released Threads quickly when users were looking for a better alternative to X. Unfortunately, developers hadn’t really built out the program enough to really retain users on the platform. While Meta developers continue to work on adding more features to the platform, it may be a while before users will consider Threads to be a real threat to a platform like X.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #app #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #meta #mobile #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #threads #twitter #web #webdevelopment #website #x

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 190 “Norco Print”

Oct

19

Recently, we had a customer, Norco Print, who came to us needing some updates to their website. When we looked over their requests and how they’d set up their previous site, our experts realized the scope of this project would be well over their budget. Instead, we suggested we rebuild their entire site for them with one of our web packages. That way, they wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars to update their site in the way they needed it.

With WebdeXpress, our experts went to work building out the new website for Norco Print, making sure to incorporate their original change requests while doing so. Using a WebdeXpress template, we made a few design edits in addition to creating a new logo for their new website. Because of how easy it is with WebdeXpress, we also showed them how to update their site themselves moving forward.

Norco Print’s Website Before:

norco print's website before desktop and mobile view

norco print's website before desktop and mobile view

Norco Print’s Website After:

norco print's website after desktop and mobile view

WebdeXpress is a simple, user-friendly web builder that makes it easy for non-technical business owners to create a simple, professional website. Get started with one of our budget-friendly web design plans fit to meet your business needs.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #design #marketing #norcoprint #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdexpress #website

What is IMAP?

Oct

17

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is a set of protocols that allows mobile and email desktop applications to access email on an email server. POP, in contrast, stands for Post Office Protocol, which downloads email messages to your device locally before deleting them from the email server. Both are used to access emails on an email server, but they’re both done in different ways.

The Difference Between IMAP and POP

The biggest difference between the two is how each receives emails. IMAP essentially copies email messages to your email app on your mobile or desktop device by pulling from the email server. POP, however, downloads email messages onto your local device and deletes them from the server. The easiest way to think about it comes from an example from CloudFare. Think of IMAP like it’s Google Docs and POP like it’s Microsoft Word. With Google Docs, your documents and changes, from both you and whatever collaborators you might have shared it with, are instantly saved on the cloud, regardless of device. But when using Microsoft Docs, if you’re working with someone else and you make a change to the document, the other person won’t see that change because you’ll only be saving that document to your local computer. Email apps that support IMAP include:

Dreamersi – our web and email hosting option
Gmail
Yahoo mail
Mozilla Thunderbird
Outlook – with options to change to POP, if users want to change it in the settings.

Why IMAP Is Better

businessman with laptop at cafe table on street

With the rise of mobile devices, IMAP makes it easy to seamlessly transition when using phones, desktop, and tablet. Because of how users receive emails with POP, users won’t be able to access their email if they want to open their email in an app on a different device in cases of a lost, damaged, stolen, or even upgraded device. With IMAP, users can just open their email app on a new device without a problem because it’ll just redownload from the server onto the new device. So, using IMAP is a much more secure option than POP.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #gmail #google #imap #mozillathunderbird #officetips #outlook #pop #pop3 #smallbusiness #tech #technology #thunderbird #video #web #webhosting #websites #webtools #yahoo #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 189 “Physical Menu Designs”

Oct

12

You may know that we help design digital menus with ImaMenu, but did you know we also design and redesign physical menus for small businesses, too? We recently helped Ichiban PB, a Japanese restaurant in San Diego, redesign their menu. Two weeks ago, our San Diego team headed over to visit and see the menus in person.

While they were there, the server told them how much the new menus helped since our team added photos and descriptions to their menu items. Not only is it easier for customers to understand now, but it also makes it easier for servers since they no longer have to explain what each item is. So, if you’re looking to design or redesign your physical menus, reach out to our design team to get started!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.