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In April 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill to ban TikTok, the popular short video social media site. The bill was signed into legislation on April 23 stipulating that unless TikTok is sold to remove Chinese ownership it will no longer be available in the United States. In May, however, NPR reported that TikTok is suing the US ban in court, saying it violates the first amendment rights. This may take a long time to play out in the courts. It would be wise to look for alternatives now if you use TikTok to share video content.

TikTok, Home of the 15-Second Short Video

For those who are unfamiliar with the social media platform, TikTok favors ‘short form’ video content: short, 15-second videos. Users who watch one video find themselves drawn into more and more videos on the same topic as the platforms’ infamous algorithm serves up tailored content. What begins as a quick “let me look at this guy hammering a nail” becomes nonstop videos on DIY projects until users find themselves whiling away hours stuck like glue to the platform’s addictive interface.

TikTok Alternatives

If you have been uncomfortable with TikTok and the concerns aired by our elected officials during the discussions in the House, it may be time to find TikTok alternatives for your short video content. The following TikTok alternatives offer great places to share short videos that still share your marketing content with the right audience.

Instagram Reels

Instagram offers brands the opportunity to share photos and videos. Videos can be any length up to 90 seconds. The platform has a large and loyal base of 2.4 billion users worldwide, meaning it can reach an extraordinary number of people. Videos can also be shared across the other company owned by Meta, Facebook. This enables you to upload one video and achieve outstanding reach. The challenge, however, is that reels can sometimes be difficult to find on the platform, and they don’t have the same stickiness (ability to hold people like the TikTok algorithm) as TikTok. Still, Instagram reels offer one of the best alternatives to TikTok.

YouTube Shorts

YouTube is arguably the most popular video sharing platform in the world, attracting 2.7 billion users to 50 million videos each month. The company launched its Short feature in September 2020 to replace TikTok in India when the country banned the platform. Since then, it has expanded worldwide. Videos should be filmed vertically and may not exceed 60 seconds. They appear on a user’s home screen in a separate section based on YouTube’s recommendations. One of the benefits of using YouTube is its strong search engine features including the ability to tag videos with keywords. YouTube Shorts is another strong platform for short form video.

Snapchat Spotlight Videos

Around the same time YouTube launched Shorts in response to India’s ban of TikTok, Snapchat responded too, launching Snapchat Spotlight. Videos can be uploaded from your phone, but the platform seems to prioritize videos made with their proprietary Snapchat Camera and Creative Tools. If you market to a younger demographic, SnapChat Spotlight videos may be a great way to share short videos.

Is Video Marketing Right for Your Brand?

Many companies benefit from using videos as part of their social media marketing strategy. While you may think that video has to be about consumer products, business-to-business marketers also use video quite effectively to tell their product or brand stories. Additionally, content creators use videos to generate hits and clicks, and can make money from advertising, sponsorships, and affiliates.

From a strictly ads-based marketing strategy, Google’s videos seem to be doing well also and have easy-to-update templates to follow. They ARE video-based content for a brand, but get inserted into the addictive recommendation algorithms that the ‘social’ ads platforms enjoy.

Meta’s Facebook is ramping up to compete with TikTok. They’ve announced already that they will start using their own full screen player and vertical video will be a big part of it.

Instagram also has made some recent changes in how they are incentivising video creators, including making an attempt at protecting the original sources when videos are shared. Creator content can be monetized and is prioritized in the algorithms. It raises the bar on looking for influencer creators who can partner with your brand.

Lastly, AI will be a big part of video creation going forward. We’ll have to see how it plays out, as appropriate guardrails are not established.

If you’d like to explore videos as part of your digital marketing strategy, give Dashboard a call. Our social media strategist can give you a great plan that matches your company to the best platform – the place where your audience likes to get information.

We’re called Dashboard Internet Marketing, yet we’ve never talked to you about marketing dashboards before.

Today, we’re going to rectify that situation and show you how marketing dashboards can transform your campaign strategies.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s hop right in.

What Is a Marketing Dashboard?

A marketing dashboard is a form of data visualization for marketers. Data visualization tools transform raw data into pictures. If you work with an accounting program, for example, you may have a reports feature which enables you to output your revenue information into bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, and so on. That’s a form of data visualization.

Marketing dashboards take this to an amazing level by incorporating multiple data streams into one convenient dashboard. When we work on a digital marketing campaign for our customers, we may include multiple tactical channels: organic search, paid search advertising, social media marketing, social media advertising, email marketing, and so forth. A marketing dashboard takes in the data from all these feeds and transforms it into easy to understand, visual information.

Below are several examples of marketing dashboards and how they can be used.

Why Use Marketing Dashboards?

If you’ve ever peeked under the hood and looked at just your Google data, you know that it can feel overwhelming to find even the smallest piece of information to help you understand what’s working or what’s not to drive traffic to your site. Although Google includes plentiful data in their free reporting tools, it’s hard to understand.

Now imagine running three, four, five or more digital marketing channels at once. That’s not uncommon for most of our customers. The more complex the digital marketing campaign, the more data it generates, and the more data it generates, the hard it can be to log into each platform, extract the data, and make it into meaningful information.

One of our goals at Dashboard Internet Marketing is to ensure that business owners have meaningful information on their marketing campaigns so that they can make data-based decisions. If a campaign is generating strong ROI, we keep it going. If it’s not working, we make changes until it is. But we can’t know this without the data. And, while we can get this information from each platform separately, combining it into dashboard makes it easier to glean meaningful insights.

Do You Need a Marketing Dashboard?

Are you curious about whether marketing dashboards are a good fit for your marketing goals? Let’s talk. If you’re like us, and you rely on data to guide your business decisions, then we can help by providing you with one effective place to gather your data for marketing campaign decisions: a marketing dashboard.

Call Dashboard Interactive at 763-242-2454.

As a business owner, you’re keenly aware of many types of online scams. There’s the call from a female voice claiming your Google listing has been suspended or is incomplete – and you know for a fact that the team at Dashboard just updated it. Or the emails that pretend to be a copy of an invoice for some large purchase you didn’t make – and that conveniently include a PayPal link so you can log in and check your account (never click them – it’s a phishing scheme to steal your password). We could go on and on, but you get the idea. Scammers are everywhere, and you must stay one step ahead of them to safeguard your data, privacy, and credit information.

Here, we share details of two common scams that seem to be prevalent right now: The Facebook Copyright Violation Scam and the “Lost Dog” Scam. Once you have the facts, you should be able to avoid these scams and the damage they can do to both your business presence and your reputation.

Facebook Scam: The Facebook Copyright Violation Scam

There’s a new scam that’s appeared recently on Facebook. It’s especially prevalent on Facebook business pages and many page admins are seeing dozens a day. In this scam, someone pretending to be from Facebook or Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, messages the page administrator claiming that a post from the company “violates Meta’s copyright” or “intellectual property” and the post has been removed, your account was shut down, or both. The message goes on to say that if you do not file an appeal within 24 hours, your account will be permanently banned. A helpful link provides what looks like a legitimate web page associated with Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

What’s the Scam?

This is a credential stealing scam. The scammers are trying to trick you into disclosing your personal information, login credentials, and other information. Once disclosed, they lock you out of your own company page and hijack it for their own purposes. All the hard work you’ve put into building up your social media page is gone – and they now have access to your customers and can communicate as if they were you, to everyone following your page.

Why Do People Fall for the Facebook Copyright Scam?

Scammers use this message to tap into several subconscious pathways of the users’ brain at once. First, there is the overall (and quite true) feeling that Facebook’s automatic ‘fact checking’ bot is terrible; it flags words and phrases incorrectly as hate speech and leaves actual hate speech online, for example. Many users have had posts removed or found their accounts frozen for days at a time because a bot decided that using the words “killing” in a post meant you were an antisocial threat to society when you were just talking about killing a spider in the kitchen.

Secondly, scammers know that many small-business owners rely—to an unhealthy extent—on their Facebook pages as either their primary web presence or for communicating with their customers. The thought of losing access is painful and frightening, and the fear helps scammers bypass the logical parts of the brain that should be saying, “Wait a minute. What post? I only post pictures I take, of the things I sell, and I write my own posts, so there’s no way this can be true…”

Lastly, several telltale signs abound in the post indicating it’s a sham and a scam. The “profile” of the person messaging you has a false name: Meta Customer Support, Susan Support, Sam Support, or some variation of this is common, but also various other names – and never a photo, just an icon taken from a stock photo site of a person with a headset on or a legitimate-looking Meta logo.

And even though the link looks legit, clicking it leads to a credential-stealing website whose sole purpose is to trick you into typing in your username, password, recovery code, or two-factor authentication code so the hackers can hijack your page, lock you out, and reach the thousands of customers you’ve worked so hard to attract to your page over the years. Worse still, they can use your admin credentials for your page to begin gaining access to your personal profile on FB/IG, your ad accounts—including billing information—and begin to rack up charges on your account for ads having nothing to do with your Business Page.

The Lost Dog Scam

There’s a second Facebook scam that still shows up on every business and personal page at least once: the lost/injured dog picture, followed by a short frantic post and the request to “Bump this post” or “Share please!”

What’s the Scam?

Sharing posts is part of the fun on Facebook, and as a business owner, of course you want your customers to share your posts to magnify their reach. Scammers know this. They tap into your empathy and care by showing a sad or injured dog and an urgent message for help.

But what happens if you share the picture? Nothing for an hour or a day. Then the scammers change the original message and picture to one of their choosing. Typically, it is some type of money scam or promise of money. But it may also be an advertisement for a product.

By getting people to share the original post and then changing the original post, the scammers have magnified their reach exponentially. Now, they have thousands and thousands of people looking at their ad for a bogus government loan or overpriced knock-off watches simply by stealing a picture of a dog, claiming it is lost, and tapping into people’s natural urge to help.

Why Do People Fall for the Lost/Injured Dog Scam?

Scammers choose the saddest picture of a lost or injured dog they can find. It looks like a family pet. Immediately, your subconscious clicks into gear, making connections to your own beloved furry family member.

“If that were my dog, I’d want it found” or “If our dog ever got out of the yard and hit by a car, my kids would be inconsolable. I’d want someone to share the post, too.”

Sharing the post also takes little effort on your part. It’s a split-second decision. You’re scrolling Facebook, sipping your morning coffee, and you see the sad dog and the accompanying post, and you click “share” without a second thought. Mission accomplished – for the scammers.

How can you tell the lost or injured pooch isn’t real? First, look for the phone number and name of the person claiming they found the dog. The scam posts never list an actual name or phone number. They also list where the animal was found, the block or street and the town, and where it is currently located. If none of these are included in the listing, chances are good it is a scam.

Lastly, “Bump this post!” and “Please share!” without the information cited above is the last and most telling sign of a scam post. “Bump” means post it prominently so it’s at the top of the feed and “share” of course means to share publicly.

You shared the post because you’re a caring, decent human being who immediately thought about their own beloved pets and wanted to help. But unfortunately, you’ve just used your page or social media presence to allow scammers into the feed of your friends and customers. Now, they will post their own scam, reaching a wider audience than they could on their own. Be smart and don’t share the lost dog post (unless it’s in your neighborhood and you have contact information!)

Stay Safe on Facebook

By the time we publish this article, there will probably be three more scams and more in the pipeline. Don’t you wish crooks would use their creativity and intelligence to solve problems instead of creating them?

Stay safe on Facebook. As a business owner, make sure you have a business account set up properly and assign admins and managers from there rather than directly from the business page. Designate someone else you trust from your company as a backup person who can monitor your account. Set up two-factor authentication so that if someone tries to sign into your account but does not have access to your mobile phone, they won’t be able to get in. Change your passwords frequently, and do not reuse the password on multiple accounts.

Most importantly, don’t fall for Facebook scams. Don’t click on links in random messages, even if they look legitimate. Don’t share things without reading them thoroughly. Criminals want to steal your money, your credentials, and your customers. Be as mindful about your digital credentials as you are about your purse or wallet when you are out shopping.

Dashboard Interactive Social Media Support

Dashboard Interactive offers small- and medium-sized business owners full social media support. From planning your campaign to managing advertising, we can help you maximize Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media platforms. Call us at 763-242-2454.

Faster than you can say “fa-la-la-la-la” and deck the halls, the old year passes.

What you do now, at the end of the year, can set your business up for a successful new year, or keep you mired where you are now. There’s an old saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will always get what you have always had.” Meaning: if you like where your business is now, keep doing the same thing, but if you want growth, it’s time for positive change.

Digital Marketing Evolves Quickly

In the past year, we’ve seen enormous changes happening in the world of digital marketing. From AI to changes in Google’s algorithm, nothing stands still.

This past year, for example, we have seen:

1. Growing consumer pushback on AI generated content
2. At least four major Google updates and several minor ones that rocked many websites’ traffic patterns plus, renewed emphasis on Google’s “E-A-T” formula, which indicates that expert, authentic, and trustworthy content remains dominant
3. The iconic blue Twitter bird become a black and red X, with the social media giant now on shaky ground
4. Areas that were popular in previous years, including YouTube and video content and podcasting, remain hot (with no sign of cooling)
5. Increasing consumer reliance on trust indicators, such as reviews, to determine whether local businesses are legitimate and trustworthy (there’s that word “trustworthy” again!)

So, what’s a small business owner to do? Here are our recommendations for digital marketing resolutions for small business owners.

New Year’s Digital Marketing Resolutions

1. Avoid the use of AI-generated content. AI content continues to draw controversy, with increasingly vocal consumer backlash against all AI-generated text and images. Recently, Sports Illustrated, the venerable magazine and brand that millions love for its sports coverage and swimsuit issue, found itself in hot water after using fake author profiles, bios, and images created by AI as well as articles written by bots.

   The resulting debacle saw the company scrambling to remove content and a huge dip in confidence in the venerable brand. To avoid a similar negative effect on your own brand, avoid the temptation to use AI to generate content. It’s not worth losing the trust of your customers to save a bit of time and effort.

2. Focus on high quality, useful web content for SEO. Chasing Google algorithm updates is a fool’s race because the ‘finish line’ – first position on the SERPs – is always changing. It’s like the old Peanuts cartoons where Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown, and always snatches it away just as he goes to kick it. Google is always changing, tweaking, and refining the algorithm used to determine just where a page sits in the rankings. Gone are the days when we could use precise formulas to get pages to rank. Now, with so much AI-generated content flooding the market, it’s more important than ever for companies and brands to publish content judiciously.

Focus your website, blog posts, videos, and social media posts on perspectives that only you, as an authority on the topic, may have, or industry knowledge that you’ve gained from many years of experience. Publishing the same old, same old content won’t achieve the results you desire. Think outside of the topic box and write for people, not search engines, to court and woo both to love you. It sounds crazy, but it works.

3. Participate on social media platforms where your customers gather. Whether it’s Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or another platform, put your time, money, and effort into the platforms where your customers are most likely to seek the products or services you sell. Headline makers like CEOs behind X and Facebook are just that: headline makers. They are not the brand, and they are not a determinant of where your customers prefer to spend their leisure time. Go where your customers go online and participate on the platforms where they like to be.
4. Video and Podcasting Remain Hot: Yes, videos and podcasts continue to be in the news as exciting opportunities for content producers and advertisers. But, like all platforms, it’s only profitable if your customers listen to podcasts or watch videos. Some products or services lend themselves well to either podcasting or videos, others, not as much. This is where our experts at Dashboard can help you decide what, if any, channels you should advertise on or participate in.
5. Build Your Trust Up (and Don’t Lose It!): Trust, once lost, is hard to recover. But it is a priceless commodity in a world increasingly flooded with phony accounts, AI-generated content, and businesses that do not keep their word.
   

   So work hard on building good customer relationships and a high degree of trust with your customers. And ask for reviews. These trust indicators are priceless and excellent advertising. Positive reviews on Google, Facebook, Angie’s List, Clutch, and other review sites all help boost your business’ brand and visibility in the marketplace and shorten the time it takes for someone to move from search to lead or sale. We can help you develop simple, time-tested processes to ask for, and get, more customer reviews. Ask us about it.

Make Dashboard Part of Your New Year’s Resolutions

As far as New Year’s resolutions go, the list above is really quite do-able. It’s much easier than the resolution to wake up at 5 a.m. to go running every day, and definitely easier than giving up your daily cup of coffee in favor of something caffeine free (shudder).

We’re passionate about sharing with small business owners best practices in digital marketing. Whether it’s ensuring your social media builds your brand and generates leads or ensuring your website is secure, Dashboard Interactive Marketing resolves to be a small business’ go-to marketing partner for the new year. Happy New Year!

Call us at 763-242-2454 for a consultation or if you have any questions.

Does your business website feature a blog? When was the last time you updated it?

In the United States alone, there are over 37 million active bloggers, defined as content creators who have updated or added new posts to their blogs in the past 12 months. If that seems like a lot of content out there, you’re right – but it continues to grow because of its value to businesses to attract organic search traffic. Fully 92% of business owners say they blog because it’s a cornerstone of their digital marketing program.

Many companies begin a blog only to find themselves needing help to maintain or add to it over time. Competing priorities often divert time and resources away from the blog – and that’s a shame. The longer a blog remains dormant and untouched, the potentially lower its content sinks in the search engine ranks since Google and many other search engines place value on frequent updates. Aging, untouched content can be viewed by search engine algorithms as less relevant over time, making it harder to gain search engine rank and traffic.

Why Update Your Blog?

Blogs serve many purposes as part of a digital marketing plan.

• Search engine traffic: Blogs can attract organic search engine traffic if each post or article is optimized properly. The more people who find your website, the more opportunities you have to make a sale or generate leads.
• Useful information: A good business blog is more than generic articles. It helps establish expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, the so-called “E-A-T” formula that boosts the popularity of blogs in search engine results. The more your blog reflects your voice, authority, and perspective, the better – Google’s last few updates have rewarded content that offers original information in a compelling manner.
• Build brand: Blogs can also be used to establish a brand voice and tone in the marketplace. If the blog is written from a unique perspective or has a distinctive tone that reflects the parent company’s brand, it can serve as another essential place online to reinforce a company’s brand perspective.
• News and share-worthy content: Some blogs provide industry news. While the posts may not be evergreen, they still offer plenty of marketing opportunities because they may be shared and commented on.

But what if you do not update your blog? What if your last post was made weeks, months, or even years ago?

Old, stale blog content works against your website:

• It makes a site outdated
• It looks like you don’t care about details
• It may be ignored or even delisted by Google
• You lose opportunities for site traffic, leads, and sales

Updating Old Blog Posts – Breathing New Life Into Old Content

Although it is a good idea to add new blog posts if you haven’t done so in a while, updating older posts can also provide Google with information that your blog is active and viable.

What does it mean to update old blog posts? Here are some aspects of updating older posts:

• Revising or refreshing keyword phrases based on new data
• Updating titles to make them more appealing
• Adding new images
• Updating meta tags and descriptions
• Updating links and checking for broken links
• Updating information
• Revising the text to make it better reflect search intent

And this is only a partial list of what goes into refreshing older blog content. Much preparatory work must be done to identify where blog posts currently stand in Google’s rankings, what competitors are doing right (or wrong) to rank better or worse than your site, and so much more.

Benefits of Updating Older Blog Posts

As you can see from the previous list, updating older blog posts can be time-consuming. Yet it can more than pay for itself.

By updating older blog posts, you can:

• Improve search rank
• Increase site visitors, leads, and sales
• Provide fresh articles for social media sharing
• Reuse them for new content, such as turning a blog post into a PDF

No Time? We Do Content Updates

So don’t discount your older blog posts or a blog that’s been idle for some time. You can still get a lot of traction from it in the form of search traffic if you perform an update. But how to update it, and to what level of detail, can be challenging to navigate for the average business owner.

That’s why it is vital to work with the content and SEO experts at Dashboard Interactive Marketing. We can help you assess the current state of your blog and suggest update priorities to help you get the most bang for your marketing buck. Call us at 763-242-2454 for more information.

E-commerce is big business. According to Statista, e-commerce activity topped 4.9 trillion USD last year and is expected to continue to increase. Additionally, 58.4% of internet users buy something every week. Companies seeking to tap into this lucrative market in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales are flocking to major platforms to establish online stores.

However, just like opening a bricks and mortar store, opening an e-commerce store isn’t a quick or easy task. Think about what it was like to open a brick and mortar retail store (if you have one – if not, imagine one.) First, you must choose the location. Next, you must clean and decorate the store. Then, install counters, fixtures, and lighting. Now comes the hard part: setting up the cash register and transaction payment system. Add onto that loss prevention systems, inventory monitoring software, and payroll and time tracking software, and you’ve got a complex to-do list for sure. And that’s all before you’ve ordered product, hangers and hang tags, bags, and boxes, and stocked the shelves!

A virtual store is no less complex. Yet many business owners, lured by the promise of fast and easy setup by the software vendors, purchase systems and try to DIY their way through e-commerce store setup. Before you head down this path, we’ve listed four common mistakes companies make setting up e-commerce stores. Hopefully, this list will help you avoid these mistakes.

Four Common E-Commerce Setup Mistakes

1. Choosing the wrong e-commerce platform

Not all e-commerce platforms are the same. Some are better for business-to-business commerce and others for consumer sales. Some are intended for drop shipping companies, while others are made for direct-to-consumer sales. Each has its quirks, its pros and cons.

Working with a professional website developer or a digital agency can help you pick the best e-commerce platform for your goals and needs. Sit down with your digital agency or developer and brainstorm all the features you would like to see in your company’s new e-commerce platform. This will help them narrow down the list to the best choices.

Another consideration is how well the new e-commerce platform integrates with other software you are using. You may need your e-commerce site to integrate with both a public-facing website and a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) or cloud accounting system. Again, some e-commerce sites easily integrate with specific ERPs, but not all. Taking your time during the selection phase can help you avoid multiple headaches and costly custom programming later.

2. Poor site design and navigation.

Imagine a brick and mortar clothing store where items are jumbled on the racks. Nothing is arranged by size, color, or style. Customers would have a very difficult time shopping in such a store and would most likely leave empty-handed.

This happens all-too-frequently with e-commerce stores that have poor site design and navigation. Creating a user-friendly site design with clear, easy-to-follow navigation is imperative for an e-commerce store. Clearly marked shopping paths, in the form of logical categories, drop down menus, pages, and sections, all help customers find items quickly and easily.

The design itself must also be appealing to keep customers on the page and coming back to your e-commerce store. Just as you would clean and paint the interior of a brick and mortar store and install appealing lighting and fixtures to please the eye, so too should an e-commerce store provide eye-appeal. A professional graphic designer can keep you from falling into many of the mistakes that the untrained eye can make when creating a website, such as failing to account for various browsers resizing the page to mobile versus desktop display.

3. Not setting up shipping or taxes correctly.

Brick and mortar stores don’t have to worry about shipping costs for the most part. Unless they deliver items, like a furniture store, shipping isn’t a consideration. You take your item home with you. And taxes are simple with an in-person traction, too: you’re charged the taxation rate of the store’s locality.

But with e-commerce transactions, shipping and handling charges, as well as sales tax calculations, add unexpected complexities. Shipping may vary according to the customer’s choice, such as fast overnight shipping or slower ground shipping. And taxes can be highly complex, especially for customers in locations such as New York City, which has both a state and a local sales tax, or other areas of the country with similar taxation laws.

Setting up shipping parameters and taxation rules within an e-commerce system can be highly complex. By working with a consultant, agency, or developer who understands both the platform and the choices you’d like to give your customers, you can avoid costly mistakes that can lead to under- or over-taxation, failure to adequately report sales tax collected jurisdiction, or shipping errors.

4. Failing to consider organic search traffic during setup.

E-commerce product descriptions must accurately reflect the products being sold, but they must also do two other things: they must entice the customer by painting a vivid mental picture of the product and they must appeal to search engines. Do you have the skills to write product descriptions with limited word count and maximum search and customer appeal? Few people do, and most business owners would prefer not to work late nights writing descriptions for every item in their inventory.

Knowing not just what to do but how to do it correctly when setting up an e-commerce site for search engines is vital to the health and long-term profitability of your business. Without steady and increasing organic search traffic, you will have to spend more on paid advertising. Starting from a strong foundation of best practices for organic SEO is always the right way to proceed and less expensive long term than having to redo, revise, and fix things that aren’t done properly before a site launched.

Start Your E-Commerce Site with the Right Guidance from Dashboard

Dashboard Interactive Marketing has helped many business owners create and launch e-commerce stores. We’ve also fixed and updated quite a few over the years. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your business goals and suggest action steps to achieve them. If you are setting up a new e-commerce store or are unhappy with your store’s performance and sales, please call us at 763-242-2454 for a consultation.

Maintenance. From making sure you change the oil in your car to having your HVAC system serviced each season, it seems like everything requires routine maintenance.

The same may be said of websites, particularly WordPress websites. WordPress remains the world’s most popular website platform. It’s used by hobby bloggers and large corporations. It’s flexible, made even more so by add-on components called plugins.

Like many software platforms, WordPress plugins often issue updates. Therein lies the maintenance issue. If you’re not keeping abreast of WordPress plugin vulnerability issues, plugin updates, and other much-needed site maintenance, you could be at risk for a security breach. And if that happens, you’re in for a world of trouble, ranging from customer account and credit card data stolen, sites hijacked and held for ransom, malware and malicious code injection issues, and more.

Fortunately, there are many solutions available to business owners. These solutions include low-priced, high effort solutions as well as low-effort solutions outsourced to Dashboard. Let’s explore the issues first and then the potential solutions.

What Are WordPress Vulnerabilities?

Just like the software running on your computer that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, WordPress uses thousands of lines of computer code to display websites.

WordPress developers are only human. Often, despite their best efforts, their code can contain errors or “back doors” – something in the code that can be exploited by bad actors looking for a way into the site.

Think of your WordPress website like your home and the code like the materials used to construct your home. Your home may be a sturdy shelter that keeps you warm and dry, but if the wood used on the doors and windows is weak, or you have an all-glass front door that’s not shatterproof, that’s a vulnerability that a burglar can exploit. A single tap to the pane of glass may be all it takes to gain access to the door lock – and then to your house.

Some vulnerabilities in the code are like that single tap to the pane of glass. They enable criminals to enter through the back door. Cybercriminals may look to steal valuable data to resell on the dark web: customer names, addresses, social security numbers, credit card information, banking information. Or, they may seek to use your virtual “home” for their own nefarious purposes. In this case, they leave something behind: code. This code, called malware, often redirects visitors away from your site to a target website. Sometimes it also infects the browser of your site visitors, which in turn, infects their computers.

Close the WordPress Back Door: Update Plugins, Themes, and Cores

As these vulnerabilities become apparent, WordPress and companies developing themes and plugins for WordPress release patches. Patches fix whatever coding mistake, error, or loophole is found in the existing code.

When such patches are issued, a notice pops up in the administrator dashboard on a WordPress site prompting you to update the theme, plugin, or core.

The problem is that most business owners rarely log into their websites. Instead, they let weeks, months, or even years (!) elapse before checking the site – leaving vulnerabilities exposed.

Other issues beyond forgetting to update your site that can leave your site vulnerable include:

• Improper site setup, especially of e-commerce websites: We plan to share another article in the upcoming weeks especially for e-commerce site owners on just this topic. Setting up an e-commerce website requires more than adding a few plugins. If the site is not set up properly, many vulnerabilities may exist that give cybercriminals multiple points of entry to your site. This is where having a professional digital marketing agency build your e-commerce site helps prevent many problems later on.
• Too many plugins: Some experts believe sites shouldn’t run more than a dozen or so plugins. If your site is entirely based on plugins cobbled together to get the functionality you need, you’ve got a lot of possible vulnerabilities.
• Keeping unused plugins: Another vulnerable area are plugins that are deactivated but still in the site’s admin portal. Why keep them if you aren’t using them? Delete unused plugins if you are sure you aren’t using them or need them.
• Keeping unused themes: The same goes for keeping multiple themes in the background. You can easily re-add any WordPress theme you need. If you are sure you aren’t using a theme, delete it. Please be sure you aren’t using a theme, however. Some frameworks such as Genesis and Graphene are required to run other themes, so check with your webmaster or Dashboard before deleting things if you aren’t sure.

Other Elements of Website Maintenance: Call in the Professionals at Dashboard

Proper WordPress site maintenance is more than clicking “update” when prompted. It includes keeping abreast of vulnerability reports and checking on outdated plugins. For example, if plugins are not kept updated by the parent company, they age – and with age comes the opportunity for cybercriminals to tinker under the hood and test nefarious ways of infecting your site via the plugin.

The same goes for plugins added by developers in other countries. Some may be fine, but others may be questionable. This isn’t specific to any one country, but it can be an indication of a possible vulnerable area of your site.

Contact forms are notorious sources of infection. Email addresses are also potential entrees for cybercriminals if they can be easily scraped and used for phishing expeditions. Lastly, keeping the site free from possibly infected comments on blog posts or pages is also part of site maintenance.

Sounds like a lot? Feeling overwhelmed? Dashboard Interactive Marketing can help you build or fix aging websites that may be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Let us know how we can help you with your business or e-commerce website. Call 763-242-2454 for a free consultation to discuss your website needs.

Thirty years ago, a landmark piece of legislation was passed. The Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act ensures that people with disabilities have equal access to government-funded locations. This included things most people without disabilities take for granted: sidewalks, train stations, airports, public transportation, parking lots, bathrooms, voting places, schools and universities, and more.

But does it include websites?

When the ADA was signed in July 1990, few people had heard of the web, let alone used it. At that time, the internet was a rudimentary information distribution system. Fast-forward 30 years later and not a day goes by that most people don’t use the internet. Websites are ubiquitous. We watch our favorite movies on streaming services, listen to music via the web, read our daily news and weather, and shop from our favorite stores all with the tap of a button.

Because the internet has now become the main source of information, entertainment, and commerce for most people, many argue that yes, ADA compliance must also encompass websites, too.

Here’s what you need to know about ADA compliance and your company’s website.

Disabilities Come in Many Forms

The original Americans with Disabilities Act was primarily concerned with accommodating people with physical limitations in public settings. Such limitations may include physical impairment, coordination, motor skills, sight, or hearing impairments.

Today, the term “disability” now encompasses a much broader range of impairments. People with dyslexia, color blindness, and cognitive impairments may all come under the umbrella of disabled.

The ADA requires that all federally funded organizations, both for profit and not for profit, and companies with 15 or more employees provide ‘reasonable’ accommodations for people with disabilities. The burden of proof as to what encompasses ‘reasonable’ accommodations is on the business itself; any customer can complain (or file suit) that the business does not provide adequate accommodations. If a lawsuit is filed, it is up to the business to prove it has provided reasonable accommodations.

Aspects of Website Compliance

This notion of reasonable accommodations now encompasses website accessibility, too. During the pandemic, as people were forced to work and learn from home, it became painfully obvious that few, if any, websites are accessible by people with disabilities. Parents of special needs children, for example, found that many online learning portals did not accommodate children with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or color blindness.

Depending on the nature of an individual’s disabilities, screen readers, adaptive devices, or other equipment may be needed to make the internet accessible to the users. If a website is not coded properly to render websites for such devices, it may be considered “inaccessible.” It’s the digital equivalent of high curbs, narrow doorways too slim to allow a wheelchair through, television shows without closed captioning. Not everyone can use it. Such websites can then be deemed discriminatory against people with disabilities.

Search Engine Journal provides an excellent overview of the many aspects of website compliance that site owners must consider. Everything from forms to images and navigation must be considered to ensure that every site visitor can easily navigate and understand the information you are sharing.

Making Your Site Accessible

If you have never considered making your website accessible, it can seem like a daunting task. Where do you begin? How do you ensure that you have taken every reasonable precaution to welcome all visitors to your website?

The first step is to conduct a brief accessibility audit. Dashboard Internet Marketing can help you with this step. The audit examines both the site itself and the code underlying the site to ensure that adaptive devices can render your site properly.

Depending on the results of this audit, your site may need some major or minor tweaks. Major tweaks may require fixes to the code structure, buttons, and site hierarchy. Minor tweaks may include added alt tags or updating tags to ensure they read properly.

Remember that every aspect of your website must be compliant, not just the web pages themselves. Videos must have closed captioning available. If you offer PDF downloads, images and links in PDFs must also be accessible. Podcasts should also have closed captioning available so that hearing-impaired individuals can access transcripts.

With so many low-cost ways to render content, including video and audio files, accessible in multiple ways, it just takes a bit of time and know-how to ensure your site is accessible to all. There are plugins and other technologies to transform non-compliant sites into ADA compliant sites, as well as website themes and frameworks that are built with full accessibility in mind.

And while you may think you can shrug off ADA compliance as just another fad or tell yourself that you have only five employees and thus aren’t going to be targeted for a lawsuit, think again. Remember the stock photo lawsuits? There are attorneys who specialize in sending scary, threatening letters to business owners claiming they are using unlicensed images and thus violating copyright laws. Such letters, dubbed stock photo extortion letters, demand high fees to make the threat of a lawsuit stop. Similar letters are now arriving daily in the mailboxes of small and mid-sized business owners demanding money or face a lawsuit over website ADA-compliance issues. Do plaintiffs win in such suits? Do you want to find out firsthand? Most business owners would prefer to avoid such headaches in the first place. The way to do that is to take simple steps now to ensure your website is ADA compliant.

Not only will doing so offset the risk of a lawsuit, but it means you’re doing the right thing for people with disabilities. And in the end, that’s what counts; ensuring that all customers have equal access to information, goods, and services. It’s the right thing to do.

Dashboard Interactive Marketing is a full-service digital agency offering ADA compliance audits and fixes, website design, SEO, and SEM services, and much more. Please call us at 763-242-2454 if you have any questions or would like to request a free consultation.