How to choose hosting solutions that work for you

by JimRaffel on January 26, 2012

Image of clouds
Earlier this month, I shared The 2012 Plan and one of the cornerstones of the plan is “Automate.” In that post, I siad: “A task worth doing manually is worth automating. If it’s not, then stop doing the task entirely.” It was with that thought in mind that I began to look at the servers on which we host our websites and those of our clients. I found some real opportunities to automate the support and maintenance of the servers and sites.

Sorting the hosting by bits and bytes

We’ve hosted several servers for awhile now with slicehost, a company acquired by Rackspace last year. We’ve always been happy with the quality of service coming out of slicehost. However, it’s just a bit of a self-service shop. Once you spin up your virtual server, it’s yours to manage and keep up to date. If you need a firewall, you’ll be installing it on your own while following their expert tutorials. Today, we have four virtual servers left with slicehost and soon, they will disappear into two Rackspace-managed cloud servers.

Rackspace-managed cloud automates hosting

While it’s not the least expensive hosting option you’ll find, the managed cloud (affilate link) automates almost every aspect of hosting your own virtual private server. Once you are a subscriber, almost every aspect of hosting can be handled with a phone call or entry of a ticket into their system. Instead of worrying about the details of hosting, you can focus your efforts on producing the best web-based applications and websites. That’s what our core business is at ColorMetrix.

In addition, by hosting with such a large and reliable company, support coverage is an honest to goodness 24/7/365 operation. With monitoring software in place, they will be investigating a site that is down before you even know it’s down. So while the hosting plans are on the expensive end, you won’t need to have techs on staff to manage your servers. It will feel like the solution is only a phone call or support ticket away. Response is always, quick, professional and thorough.

ZippyKid takes the headaches out of WordPress hosting

In Humanization of Social Media, I talked about the AAA+ customer service that ZippyKid.com provides. When I wrote that post, I was just getting started with them. Since then, I have taken three sites live on their network: this one, ColorMetrix and SheHe Media. For the ColorMetrix site, I took advantage of their full-service migration services. In less then one day, they moved the site from one of our servers to theirs.

It’s about fewer headaches. I don’t have to worry if the WordPress core installations are up to date. I don’t have to worry if the hosting is configured to minimize page load times on my WordPress site. If you have questions about plugins, they will gladly answer them. You also get access to a few premium plugins, such as Gravity Forms, for no additional charge.

Best of all, ZippyKid likes you guys too and has provided me with a coupon code good for a free 30-day trial of their service. Just enter JIMRAFFEL in the coupon code area when you sign up. (Yes, I’m a proud affiliate of ZippyKid and will be compensated if you continue on with them.)

Speaking of WordPress and deals …

I just found out that Genesis, the premium WordPress theme we utilize on SheHe Media, will be increasing the price of their Pro Pack All Themes Package on Tuesday, Jan. 31. Until Monday, you can still get all 44 StudioPress (affiliate link) child themes, plus every child theme they design in the future, for only $299.95. And until Monday, you can use discount code TEN to save 10% off a Pro Plus purchase.

Back to the hosting story

Hosting and managing servers is not really that easy and while we’ve got our servers pretty well-tuned, that is not what I should be doing in 2012. By moving websites and web applications to managed and specialized services like the Rackspace managed cloud and ZippyKid, I’ll be freeing up hours of time each month to focus on growing my business interests.

What can you automate?

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Finding a great social media manager

by JimRaffel on January 26, 2012


I met her on Twitter. Okay, that’s not really fair since it’s Shelby’s line, but it’s the truth. If you’re looking for a top-shelf social media manager for your organization, start your search in the social media universe. I wasn’t looking for an expert. I was looking for a person who utilized social media the way I did – to communicate with people.

Social media is NOT social selling

When the time came to find a social media manager for ColorMetrix, the last thing I was looking for was someone who knew how to schedule broadcast tweets. If that had been what I’d wanted to do, I would have purchased ads in the few remaining print trade journals that still exist. What I was looking for was someone capable of holding conversations online with our customers and potential customers.

By conversations, I don’t mean answering questions about quality, price and delivery. I already know how to do that and most of the answers to those questions already exist on our website. No, I wanted someone who gave ColorMetrix a voice online. Sure, I had a strategy in mind; but I was looking for someone to blow holes in my strategy and thereby make it a better strategy.

We already know how to sell at ColorMetrix. What we needed help with was communicating, engaging and telling our story. That is the role of a social media manager.

Engage and tell the story

Anyone can schedule a tweet to promote products or new blog posts on your company blog. Not just anyone can track down a Twitter chat called #PrintChat and participate almost every Wednesday at 4 p.m. for a year straight. Not everyone can write a post about the 17 years she spent in the newspaper industry and spin it as a tale about the decline of color quality in that segment of the print industry.

Your social media manager will need to be on board with the company. I’m not in the camp that thinks your social media can be managed by an outside agency. Sure, Shelby is a 1099 contractor to ColorMetrix; but she does more than social media. She manages our trade show exhibits, our email marketing and even projects with some of our largest clients. She understands us and has her finger on the pulse of the company.

Clone yourself

If you’re the senior executive charged with finding a social media manager, look for someone like you. While Shelby and I don’t agree on everything (and have actually made a business out of that disagreement), we do see pretty much eye-to-eye on what a company’s social media presence should look like. You should be arguing the details – not the big picture – with your chosen individual. Also, you should be willing to trust them. I still see no value in our Facebook page, but Shelby insists it’s valuable. I’ll trust her until I have rock solid evidence to the contrary. Just as I trust my gut feelings, I need to be willing to trust hers as well.

That’s what it really comes down to: Trust your gut and then trust the gut feelings of the person you pick. You can’t do it all yourself and grow at the rate you want.

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Why Expensify is my app of the year

January 23, 2012

Up until yesterday there was something I hated almost as much as going to the dentist: Completing my monthly expense reports. I disliked it so much that each year I’d start out keeping up and by December I’d be at least six months behind. Yesterday, all that changed when I discovered Expensify. The search for [...]

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Why Blog?

January 20, 2012

I have a confession. This was not the blog post I had planned to publish today. That in itself is a good reason to blog. Yesterday morning’s events impacted me so much that I decided to capture the moment by writing about it and sharing it. A quick blog story Yesterday morning I woke up [...]

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The power of a blog post image

January 18, 2012

Today’s post on the ColorMetrix blog was repurposed from a 2007 post that first appeared here. There is one significant difference: The re-purposed post on ColorMetrix has a picture accompanying it that Shelby Sapusek spent about 30 minutes staging. She’s damn creative in the visual arts and that image (which I’ve also included with this [...]

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Why less may actually be more

January 17, 2012

Starting tomorrow, I’ll publish a new post each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. With the startup of SheHe Media, Shelby and I will publish our weekly “She Said, He Said” posts to the blog on that site. I’m also committed to write one or two posts each month for the blog on my ColorMetrix company site [...]

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Enterprise Me or Serial Entrepreneur

January 16, 2012

Lately, I’ve noticed people using words like “serial entrepreneur” or “solopreneur” to label and describe their personal brand. It’s not that I don’t like those words. I think both are quite catchy. My problem is that when I think about some of the folks using those words, I think that they’ve missed the mark and [...]

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Idea Germination – Birth of SheHe Media

January 13, 2012

What’s an idea really worth? Honestly, it’s worth two cents or less; unless you are willing to incubate the idea and give it a chance to germinate. Then if the idea still has your interest and, more importantly, the interest of others, the idea might be worth a few bucks. Now are you ready to [...]

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Why gathering meaningful customer survey results can be tricky

January 12, 2012

Businesses supposedly use surveys to improve their service and product offerings all the time. The question is just how accurate are these surveys? For example, an international hotel chain recently asked me to complete a survey about their frequent stayer program of which I am a member. Here’s an excerpt of that email request to [...]

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Humanization of Social Media – Shelby’s Experience

January 11, 2012

If you’re wondering why we are posting our “She Said, He Said” series a day early this week, it’s because we are beginning a transition that will move “She Said, He Said” to a new website under our new venture SheHe Media. We will unveil the website during #shehechat on Twitter, which will occur at [...]

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