PSPINC Official Company Blog

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

Market Online with Canva

Oct

10

Marketing online is vital in business, especially small businesses. Most small businesses know that it’s important to have an online presence, but not all of us are skilled graphic designers. With billions of people actively using the internet worldwide, it gives you that much more opportunity to increase your brand’s awareness, build your online community, and increase traffic toward your website, all while promoting your business.

One popular, easy-to-use graphic design tool among digital marketers alike is Canva. With Canva, users can easily design professional social media posts, emails, videos, websites, and more, using their drag-and-drop editor, more than 250,000 free templates, more than 100 premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics, and more.

Ways to Market with Canva

1. Website design

With one of Canva’s many professional and customizable templates, design websites one page at a time. Just drag and drop elements to create a very simple wireframe and/or mockup to give web designers an idea of what you’re looking for for your website.

2. Email marketing

Browse design ideas for email newsletters among the various newsletter templates, which makes it easy to design visually-appealing marketing emails, proven to help marketers increase open rates, click rates, and overall retention rates.

3. Social media marketing

Social media marketing design is arguably the most popular use of Canva among marketers. Browse through Canva’s large collection of social media post templates to create engaging content with 100 free images, graphics, videos, and audio tracks. Collaborate with your team with the rest of your team by easily making real-time edits, leaving comments, and assigning tasks with Canva’s Team plan. You can even create a more consistent brand by using Canva’s branding tools to your advantage, which are available with premium plans.

Get professional marketing help which includes but is not limited to social media marketing from our expert team here at PSPINC.

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 #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #canva #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #linkedin #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #threads #twitter #video #web #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 188 “Send Large Files Without Uploading to the Cloud”

Oct

5

Since the pandemic hit, so many more everyday interactions, for individuals as well as businesses, occur online. This includes sending files to each other, regardless of how large they may be. The problem with emailing a large file to another person is that many email providers set a limit on how big a file is. For files that are too big, there’s usually an option to link the photo to either your Google Drive, iCloud, or some other cloud storage platform.

But doing it that way just adds steps to the overall process on both sides. To make it easier, we created MegaMail, which lets you send or transfer large files to anyone, anywhere. After signing up, all you have to do is drop files and enter a recipient or several, a subject line, a message, and, optionally, a password, which are the same things you’d add when composing a new email. Then, all the other person has to do is click on the MegaMail link and download the file. Sign up for just $9.99/month or $24.99/month for more storage space and a larger broadcast traffic limit 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.

#applemail #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cloud #digitalmarketing #email #gmail #googledrive #icloud #megamail #officetips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webtools

The Importance of Prioritizing Customer Experiences

Oct

3

Marketing professionals have always known giving customers the best experience possible is important, and that it refers to the entire customer journey rather than ending after making the purchase. Delivering great experiences has only become that much more important. Businesses have the opportunity to maintain and strengthen relationships with customers at every step of the customer journey by building trust.

Building strong relationships between your business and your customers starts with creating exceptional customer experiences. And with so much of our interactions with brands online, customer experiences can make or break a business. According to a report from Salesforce, 79% of customers agree that the experience is just as important as the product or service a company sells. So, prioritizing customer experiences is a necessity today to stand out amongst competitors.

How to Prioritize Customer Experiences

cheerful young waitress communicating to customers

While it’s easy to say how important prioritizing customer experiences is, it’s another to put that into action. A few ways you can do that include:

Exceed expectations

When you give customers what they expect, it’ll satisfy them. It’s when things unexpectedly go wrong when they aren’t happy. But if you can give them more than they expect like adding a welcome gift, thank you card, or even just standout customer service, they’ll be thrilled. When people feel the love, they’ll return the favor by coming back for their next purchase or even recommending your brand to others.

Ask for, listen to, and act on feedback

We’ve explained before why asking for customer feedback is important, and doing so in the form of reviews or some kind of rating system makes it easy. But just asking for feedback means nothing if you don’t do anything about it.

People want to feel heard, and reviews and ratings hold a lot of weight on your business because of how heavily potential customers rely on them. From a business perspective, it’s also important to constantly try to improve your business. With these ratings and reviews being directly about your product, this is the easiest way to do so.

Reward loyalty

There’s a reason loyalty programs work: they build trust and increase customer retention. But there’s an easy way to reward customers’ loyalty as opposed to building a whole program around it. You can reward people with small things like reposting user-generated content with a thank you attached or offering exclusive discounts to show your appreciation.

Benefits of Prioritizing Customer Experiences

a woman in brown apron talking to customer with newspaper open

Prioritizing customer experiences doesn’t just build trust between your business and your customers, but it is also much more cost-effective and less time-consuming compared to trying to obtain new customers. It also results in happier customers, which will result in good customer reviews. And if they really like their experience, it’s possible they’ll become brand advocates, where they’ll market for you by recommending your business to their friends, families, and/or online followers.

So, it’s clear that businesses shouldn’t just consider customers’ experiences, but they should make it a vital part of their marketing strategy. It’s often an overlooked part of the process, but it pays off in the end to make it the best it can be. The reality is that customers are constantly interacting with the brand, even if it isn’t directly with your customer support people. They’re scrolling past ads on social media, watching an influencer promote a product on YouTube, or checking out your Instagram page. So, use that to your advantage by making sure every interaction your business has with customers will keep them coming back.

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 #customerexperience #customerfeedback #customerservice #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #experience #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 187 “New ImaMenu Features!”

Sep

28

We’re happy to announce that our easy digital menu builder, ImaMenu, now has new features! After we realized some of our customers were using it to create secret menus, we went straight to work to build out our product to better serve our customers. Now, with ImaMenu, you can:

Enable limited-time access to your menu.
Add a countdown clock.
Add a secret menu passcode and access menu.

Temporary menus are great for those running an event, chefs wanting to experiment with ingredients and/or flavors, and those looking to generate buzz for their restaurant with a secret menu. Sign up for ImaMenu for free today 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.

#business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #food #imamenu #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #menu #newsletter #pspinc #restaurant #restaurants #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #website #webtools

The Success of Secret Menus

Sep

26

If you’ve ever gone to Starbuck's, McDonalds, or In-N-Out, you’ve probably heard of secret menus before. A secret menu consists of hidden or popular customized menu items that a restaurant can make but doesn’t advertise. Most places that have secret menu items haven’t created them on their own; customers asked for different customizations, and they became popular over time. And since they’re usually created by customers themselves, they gain popularity over time and spread best through word of mouth.

For example, making regular menu items “animal-style” at In-N-Out isn’t part of the menu, but many people would think it is because of how popular it is. It’s been around for so long that no one knows where it came from, not even In-N-Out. Former In-N-Out Vice President, Carl Van Fleet says it first surfaced sometime in the early 1970s, but since the company didn’t create it themselves, they have no idea who did. Regardless, it’s stood the test of time, proving just how popular secret menu items could get.

Benefits of Secret Menu Items

The hard part of succeeding with secret menus is how to market them; you want people to know about them, but not so much that they won’t be “secret” anymore. It takes striking the right balance, being both accessible and exclusive. There isn’t a guaranteed way to get it right, unfortunately, but when it works, it works. Secret menus:

Create exclusivity – customers like feeling like insiders when they shop. Secret menus give them that sense of being “in the know”.
Generate buzz and interest – people love secret menus. It excites them; the prospect of ordering something that isn’t on the menu is exciting.
Give your chefs, baristas, bartenders, and others the opportunity to experiment with new ingredients and flavors without committing to adding them to the menu.
Let chefs, baristas, bartenders, and others take advantage of seasonal ingredients – creating a secret limited-time menu is the perfect solution.
Increase business and revenue.
Reward customers for their loyalty – those in the know receive exclusive and unique dining experiences.

While marketing a secret menu has proven to be difficult, creating one doesn’t have to be. With ImaMenu, you can do just that by enabling limited-time access, adding a countdown clock, and/or adding a menu passcode with a passcode enable message. Sign up for free 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.