Celebrate Halloween With These Templates for Techies!

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Show your Sierra pride with a Sierra Swoosh pumpkin.
Click here to download the template.


All programmers know that a missing semicolon can wreak havoc in a program, and that the devil really is in the details.
Click here to download the template.


Why do computer programmers confuse Halloween with Christmas? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.
Click here to download the template.


Celebrate Halloween like it’s 1998 with a vintage Microsoft Windows pumpkin.
Click here to download the template.


Now you can be the envy of all your IRL neighbors with this Minecraft pumpkin template, no hunting for an abandoned mine shaft chest required.
Click here to download the template.


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Three Key Benefits of Remote IT Support

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Remote IT support allows a technician to diagnose a problem, troubleshoot possible solutions, and verify an implemented solution has resolved the issue, all via the internet through desktop sharing. Below we’ve outlined the three key benefits that having a remote IT support team will provide for your business.

Three key benefits of remote IT support are:

1. Reduced Costs
Remote IT support can help reduce costs for the following reasons:
- When problems are able to be fixed remotely, you won’t be billed for a technician to travel to the job site.
- Desktop sharing allows the technician to see and understand the issue quicker and clearer than with a phone call.
- A full remote IT support team is available to supplement your existing IT team, reducing the number of employees your business may need to staff.

2. Increased Uptime
By having a remote IT team available to assist your business with IT matters 24/7/365, your business will experience increased uptime, less delays, and increased productivity.
Remote IT teams commonly address issues such as: - Spyware Removal
- Virus Removal
- Driver Updates and Installation
- Software Upgrades and Installation
This mean that you will be free to focus on the core of the business instead of IT infrastructure.

3. Availability
Remote IT support teams are generally available 24/7/365 and can address your IT issues as soon as they arise. Because your IT concerns will be addressed via the internet, software related issues can be resolved in real time from any location. There is no need to schedule an appointment or wait for a technician to arrive.

At Sierra w/o Wires, we specialize in remote monitoring and management of computing systems, and are dedicated to providing IT services that automate, streamline, and standardize daily IT operations.Contact us today at 412-722-0707 or Sales@SierraExperts.com to learn more about our remote IT solutions. To learn more about Sierra w/o Wires, visit www.SierraExperts.com.
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Email Marketing: What it is and why it?

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Email marketing is sending an email to a group of potential or current customers that advertises service offerings, requests business, solicits sales or donations, or just offers a news update. Sending email campaigns can help to build loyalty, trust, and brand awareness.

Some of the benefits of email marketing are:

1. It’s marketing with a wide reach that can be done for free!
Depending on your desired list size and campaign frequency, email marketing services, such as MailChimp, will allow you to send campaigns for free.

2. Email marketing tools provide valuable analytics.
Many email marketing tools offer powerful analytics that allow you to see what people from your list have expressed an interest in by providing information on link clicks.

3. It’s an unobtrusive way to build brand awareness and trust.
Sending an email campaign is much less obtrusive than inundating your customers with phone calls or direct mail. Just make sure you include an unsubscribe link to allow recipients to easily opt out of your emails and reduce the potential for customer frustration.

4. You can get your message out fast.
Many people check their email multiple times a day. Sending an email campaign, versus a mail campaign, allows people to see your message that same day from anywhere and simply click through to linked relevant content.

5. You can use your website to grow your contact list.
By adding a ‘Sign Up for Our Mailing List’ or similar form to your website, you can grow your customer reach and keep track of potential leads.

Your business can use MailChimp, Constant Contact, or another email marketing service to get started with its first email marketing campaign. At Sierra, we are fully equipped to design and develop email marketing campaigns branded to your business, as well as set up “Sign Up for Our Mailing List” forms on your business’s website. Contact us today at 412-722-0707 or Sales@SierraExperts.com to learn more about our email marketing services. To learn more about Sierra w/o Wires, visit www.SierraExperts.com.
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Improving Your Small Business’s Online Presence

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In today’s digital era, consumers often turn to the internet as their first step in making buying decisions. Below we’ve outlined three areas to focus on to help improve your small business’s online presence.

1. Social Media

Social Media is a growing trend and a great way to unobtrusively connect with your customer base. By regularly posting to a social media site, you are reminding your followers of your presence, encouraging growth of your followers through exposure, and helping your business to stand out in its field. When getting started with social media, you should ask yourself, and even your customers, where they’d like to receive news and updates about your business. Not all social media sites, their users, and their function, will be best for marketing your type of business. To invest your time wisely, you may want to limit your social media sites by making an educated decision using the list below, or use a tool such as HootSuite, which will help you manage all of your social media in one place, at one time.

Facebook: Facebook is the largest social media site, and so it’s recommended that all small businesses maintain a Facebook account. Facebook is more laidback and unprofessional than something like LinkedIn, so you can supplement your posts with funny on-topic content that is more likely to get shared and liked. Bonus Tip: Increase presence with a target demographic by using Facebook’s paid promotion tools to boost your page and specific posts.  

Google+: Google+ is also recommended for all small businesses. Although Google+ isn’t currently as popular as other social media sites, it’s likely to grow because of its benefits with Google Search. Google+ posts have the ability to show up regularly in Google’s search results.  

Instagram: If your business’s products can be turned in to many visually stimulating photographs, Instagram is a great way to show off.  
Examples: Bakery, Hair Studio, Nail Salon, Restaurant, Crafters, Artists  

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the place to connect with other professionals and employees. The professional environment that LinkedIn creates makes it a good tool for b2b (business to business) marketing.  
Examples: Tech Industry, Marketing, Sales, Recruiting  

Twitter: Use Twitter to quickly promote news, events, and specials.  
Examples: Bars, Restaurants, Non-profits, Community Organizations  

Pinterest: Similar to Instagram, if your product is visual, Pinterest is a great tool to use. With Pinterest, your posts have the potential to be pinned and seen by many users. Interest generated by Pinterest isn’t location specific, so you’ll get the most benefit if your products are available for purchase online.  
Examples: Crafters, Artists, Bloggers, Online Retail

 

2. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is all about where and when your site shows up in search engine results. The more often and higher up in the search results your site appears, the more traffic you will likely receive. While a large part of SEO is done by your website developers, there are some things you can do yourself.

SEO Checklist:

☑ My business has a blog that is connected to the website. The more content your site has and the more frequently it is updated, the better your site will look to search engines. Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field and make regular updates to your site. You can also advertise your blog updates across social media to drive even more traffic to your site.  

☑ My website has analytics set up. It’s important to have some sort of analytics done on your site, often Google Analytics, so that you can see what SEO changes are helping or hurting your traffic. By being able to monitor the results, you can analyze and respond in an informed way that will keep growing traffic to your site.  

☑ My website has fresh, on topic content. Content is king when it comes to SEO. The more content your site has, the more likely words from your site will match with a potential customer’s search query. Having fresh content added to your site on a regular basis will also give you a boost with search engines. Keep in mind that your site’s content should be pertinent and relatable to your target customer base. When writing your content, be sure to naturally use keywords that they are likely to search.

 ☑ I am regularly building links in to my site. Having other sites linking to your site signals to search engines that your website is important and reputable. You can build links in to your site by submitting your site to local business directories, such as industry related news sites or blogs. It’s also important to make sure that your site shows up within Google Map results and Yelp, to help local customers find your business. Another way to build links in to your site is through guest blogging or asking local news sites to cover your business in an article.  

☑ I am avoiding black hat SEO tactics. Black hat SEO tactics are derived to trick search engines in to ranking your website higher. This can include the overuse of keywords, garbage content, hidden keywords, and solicited link building. Oftentimes, search engines will catch on to these black hat tactics and penalize your site, making it hard for your site to show up in search results at all. It’s much better to invest the time and effort in to building your site’s presence through rich content than to risk being penalized.


3. Website

So far we’ve covered steps to improve your presence via social media and SEO, which aim to drive traffic to your website. It’s important to make sure that once consumers reach your website, they’re provided with an optimal experience. If you’re website isn’t meeting the guidelines outlined below, it’s possible that potential customers are leaving your site quickly from frustration.

Website Checklist:

☑ My website is optimized for different sized devices. Visitors will be browsing your site from a variety of devices that have different screen sizes, from a small mobile phone to a large desktop. Your website should adapt to fit these different sized devices in order to provide the best user experience. For example, on a small mobile device, this often means having a one column site with large touchable buttons.

☑ My website is optimized for different types of devices. Viewing a website on different devices can render different results in terms of functionality due to compatibility issues. Your website should be tested across modern browsers and popular devices (Ex: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE 9-11, iPhone, iPad, Windows phone, and Android phone) to make sure that the visitor will be able to use the site as intended. Whether your site is easy to read and navigate on a device plays a large role in customer’s decision to look around or try a different site.  

☑ My website loads quickly. Visitors often make the decision to stay on or leave a website within the first 5 seconds. The first step in retaining visitors is making sure that all or most of the content is loaded in that time. You can use a free online tool, such as http://tools.pingdom.com, to get an idea of the speed of your website.  

☑ My website has quality content that is relevant to my business. When visitors do reach your site, you want to make sure that they can find what they’re looking for. Evaluate your content from the customer’s perspective by asking yourself: Is my content easy for someone with limited knowledge of the industry to understand? Does the content on my site answer any potential questions the customer may have? Do I get asked reoccurring question on the phone or in person that aren’t addressed on my website?  

☑ My website is user friendly. All of the other website tips we’ve covered so far play a part in creating a user friendly site. Take some time to navigate through your site and see if there are any buried pages or frustrating actions. If you can’t make your way around your own site, a new customer won’t be able to, either.


As more and more people use the internet as a resource when making purchasing decisions, optimizing your business’s online presence is an important investment. How did your business do on the checklists above? Likely, as technology evolves at a rapid pace, there is room for improvement. At Sierra, our website design and development team can help enhance your business’s online presence. Would you like to start the conversation about what needs improvement and how to move forward? Contact us today at WebDevelopment@SierraExperts.com or 412-722-0707.

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Happy Earth Day from Sierra w/o Wires!

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A great way to keep our Earth clean is to recycle or even donate your technology. This can include CDs, cell phones, computers, inkjet cartridges, batteries, and more. By recycling or donating your electronics you can prevent lead, mercury, cadmium, and other toxic materials that are present in electronics to leak from landfills and then go into the ground and water. This can cause health and environmental hazards. According to the EPA, in 2010, 1,790,000 tons or 310,000,000 units were trashed and put into our landfills. There are a couple of ways to prevent this and here are some ways:

1) Find a recycler in your area.
Check out Earth911 and on the left hand side, type what material you want to recycle and your zip code. When you search that item, a list of recycling companies with the material you want to recycle will come up. Additionally, you can do a quick search, and you can select even more items you want to recycle based on different categories.

 2) Donate your electronics.
If your product can be reused think about donating it to a reputable reuse organization. Make sure the product is still fully functional and include any manuals, monitors, keyboards, connection cables, software, etc. Some great places to donate would be World Computer Exchange, Reconnect, StRut, Komputers 4 Kids, eBay Giving Works, and much more.

Before you donate or recycle your electronics make sure you clean it by clearing any data or clearing out the hard drive. Try KillDisk to destroy all data on hard disks, USB drives and floppy disks. Here is a link for cleaning out your Mac http://www.wikihow.com/Wipe-a-Mac-Clean.

By recycling or donating your electronic devices you are making a positive impact on the environment. Share these tips and make the Earth a cleaner place. 
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World Wide Web Easter Eggs

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With Easter just passing can you think of a symbol that kids recognize during Easter? How about Easter Eggs? Easter Eggs aren’t just something children recognize or have fun with but programmers and developers have fun with them as well. Easter eggs however, have a different meaning to developers and programmers, they are unexpected hidden secrets that they imbed into a website for users to find and make them smile. The web is full of these little hidden “Easter eggs” and here are some that we have taken notice of.

1) The Konami Code
The Konami code was used as a cheat code in many Konami video games. Developers and Programmers have now put them into some websites as a joke. Don’t know the code, we do! Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. Try it on these websites below: http://www.vogue.co.uk/
http://soundclick.com 

2) Google
It’s no surprise Googles programmers and developers add hidden Easter eggs. Here are some that we found:
- Search for “do a barrel roll” and “zerg rush”
- Go to Google Images and search “Arari Breakout”
- Google Earth flight simulator. Download Google Earth and press Ctrl + Alt + A to activate the flight simulator and fly your F-16 across the world. 

3) Youtube
- Search “Beam me up, Scotty,” “Do the Harlem shake,” and “doge meme”
- If your video is taking forever to load, you will notice the buffering symbol in the middle (a whirring circle), if you press the left arrow on your key board it will turn into the game of Snake
- Right-click on a video and you’ll see the option “Stats for Nerd.” It will give you a rundown of statistics of the video you’re watching.

4) Go to http://producten.hema.nl/ and hover over the cup item. 

Tell us about any “Easter eggs” you have come across on the web!

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Security Update for Windows 8.1 & RT 8.1

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Since Microsoft wants to ensure that customers benefit from the best support and servicing experience and to coordinate and simplify servicing across both Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 RT and Windows 8.1, this update will be considered a new servicing/support baseline.

What this means is those users who have elected to install updates manually will have 30 days to install Windows 8.1 Update on Windows 8.1 devices. After this 30-day window and beginning with the May Patch Tuesday (Microsoft releases security patches on the second Tuesday of each month), Windows 8.1 user's devices without the update installed will no longer receive security updates.

 This means that Windows 8.1 users - starting patch Tuesday in May 2014 and beyond - will require this update to be installed.  If the Windows 8.1 Update is not installed, those newer updates will be considered “not applicable.”

 Open up the link below to learn more about the Windows update.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/whats-new
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