Acronym of the Month

Greetings, %%Facility name%%. Welcome to eNews issue #19. This issue, we delve into the nuts & bolts of building a web presence for your business and take a look at some important factors to think about when it comes to picking website names (aka domain names) for your business. In fact, if your competition also uses StorMan, you had better read our article on this topic before your competition does!

We'll also keep you up to date with a number of new blog posts from various staff & guest writers, including Timm and his ever-popular tales (yes, Timm's back). And finally, amongst our regulars, we will take you on a guided tour of the United Kingdom's recent Movers & Storers tradeshow.

As usual, if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions, just get in touch with me via andy@storman.com. Until next time, happy surfing! :-)

Regards,
Andy & the StorMan Software Team

On Monday the 15th of February, the Self Storage Association of Australasia (SSAA) held its second web chat for members, with this month's topic being "Tech Issues". Our resident internet guru, Andy, attended the web chat as a representative of StorMan and was soon assisting members with their questions about Google AdWords, Online Reservations for Self Storage facilities and the importance of having multiple domain names.

Thanks to the SSAA, we have been permitted to republish a transcript of the web chat on our website, which you can find linked below. We look forward to taking part in the SSAA's next web chats, scheduled with topics "Legal Issues" and "Marketing", in the coming months.

These are four parts to building an online presence for your website... the first of which, is register a website name (aka domain name). A domain name is the name attached to your website - for example, storman.com is one of our domain names.

As you can register as many of these as you like (they are relatively cheap), we highly recommend that you spend some time with us, looking into some of the options available to you - not only if your business is new to the internet, but also if you've had a website for many years.

While your current website address is probably your business name (eg: xyzstorage.com), we also highly recommend registering a name that's made up of what you do, and where you do it. For example, selfstoragesydney.com.au or selfstorageinsydney.com.au or sydneyselfstorage.com.au. Actually, since they're so cheap, we would strongly recommend that you register all of these names, if this is your region.

You may also like to think about getting just storageinsydney.com.au (without the word 'self') and a few other variations. Additionally, if your business name is hard to spell (or can be spelt numerous ways), we recommend registering domain names for each of the possible spellings - for example, Kasey Anne Storage Centre may be spelt Casey Anne Storage Centre, or Casey Ann Storage or even Kasey Ann Storage. See where I'm going with this? Don't immediately dismiss this idea either - read this important post of mine (from 2007) to find out why.

Okay, so now you're probably asking if having so many names is going to cost a lot of money. But it won't. Not when you think about the benefits. Firstly, realise that each domain name is generally paid either annually or bi-annually and the price isn't even triple-figures (around $90 for two years in Australia, but it depends on your region and the type of name you wish to register). A measly $0.12 (yes, 12 cents) per day is nothing in your business, am I right? Good.

Secondly, if you have some nearby competition, there's nothing stopping them from registering a domain name similar to yours - for example, if you only register selfstorageinsydney.com.au, your competition has every right to register storageinsydney.com.au (without the word 'self'). If for whatever reason their website ranks higher in Google than yours, you may well loose a customer to them. Yet for an extra twelve cents per day, that person could have been your customer. So think about the advantages an extra domain name or two may bring you.

With the above in mind, your next question is now probably be something like "won't it be hard to maintain 5 different websites for 5 different domain names?". Absolutely not... because you would just pick a 'primary' (main) domain name and all of the others are redirected to it. If you have some extra domain names in mind, please write them down and contact me at StorMan ASAP so that we can check their availability and register them for you.

Continue reading the other 3 parts of Andy's post online...

After an extended holiday, we're pleased to announce that our StorMan PowerSessions are coming back - with the next set scheduled around April this year. In 2009, we held over 10 different sessions - covering everything from how to use the Sales & Quoting module, right through to sending TXT messages to your storer's.

What is a PowerSession?
For new clients (or those who aren't aware), StorMan PowerSessions are short, sharp online webcasts designed to show you how to use a particular StorMan feature. By keeping them under 20 minutes in duration, they're designed to let you learn new tricks with minimal fuss and interruption, so that you can get back on with your day.

Yes... they're still free!
Remember that if you're a current Advantage or Corporate Support customer, these PowerSessions are at no cost to you... but here's where we need your help. Because these sessions are designed for you, we need your input on what you'd like the topics to be.

Help us select the next topics
To have your say about what you'd like the sessions to cover, please use the form on our website's Contact Us page to tell us what you'd like to see. Alternatively, please call your local StorMan office and let us know.

Welcoming Timm... again! (by Timm Martin, USA Sales Representative)

Firstly I must say hello - again - to everyone out there in StorMan land. Some of you may be aware I left for a short time, but StorMan is just like the Mafia - when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. For those that didn't know I was gone, just pretend I never left.

Late last year, I was given an awesome opportunity by Ben and the team at StorMan to pursue a dream of running my own business in Melbourne and can safely say now that I owe a great deal of my sanity to the friends I made in the previous 10 years in storage. The product I was selling was no different to storage but I can comfortably just say that without the help of friends out there I would have made larger mistakes than the ones I did make.

Continue reading Timm's post online...

It's possible to lead a cow up stairs ...but not down.

SMS in a mess (by Timm Martin, USA Sales Representative)

I recently returned back to my home town of the Gold Coast and quickly found myself catching up with friends I had missed whilst on my last little trip to the southern state.

I was having a ball until my phone suddenly started ringing non-stop. A few back-to-back calls, and the obligatory voicemail messages for the calls I missed while on the phone to the other callers, had me worried that there was a great emergency that had somehow unfolded as I was enjoying my icy-cold beer overlooking my favourite stretch of sand (Kurrawa Surf Club in Broadbeach if anyone wants to look it up).

Continue reading Timm's post online...

Cleaning your keyboard
When we think of dirty & grimy surfaces around the home or office, we often think of the toilet seat or kitchen sponge. But, as the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters recently discovered, the computer keyboard is fairly high on the list as well (for those interested, the ranking, in descending order of average germ count, was: sponge, money, keyboard, toilet seat, light switch). So how do you clean your keyboard?

The first step would be to turn it over and tap the bottom edge on a desk. Once you get over the awe of discovering how many eyelashes and breadcrumbs fall out, place the keyboard back in its original position and wipe clean with an isopropyl alcohol wipe. A cotton bud may also assist in pushing the cloth deeper between the keys.

For more stubborn scuff marks and stains, some people have suggested placing the keyboard in the dishwasher (Australian computer magazine, Atomic, recently performed some tests on this and found that only certain keyboard plastics could survive the heat of the dishwasher), so we don't recommend this unless you're prepared to buy a new keyboard - just in case!

Speaking of which, keyboards these days start from about AUD $15... so if the dirt is just too hard to remove, it may well be easier to simply buy a new keyboard.

Have you ever stood in front of your pantry or fridge staring at the vast emptiness, occasional passing tumbleweed and random selection of ingredients (think a jar of olives, some cinnamon, a bag of pasta, and a bottle of vinegar) wondering what you can make with this stuff?

Look no further, because someone's come up with a tool to help. SuperCook is a website that lets you enter everything that you have in your pantry and / or fridge, click search, and it will scour the internet to find recipes for things you can make using the ingredients you entered. It will also inform you if you need additional ingredients to complete a particular recipe. Get cooking!

Hi there - I'm Darran, one of StorMan's Technical Support Agents. Each issue, I'll trawl through the deep depths of the internet to find you a funky piece of software, hardware or other interesting technological trinkets.

All-in-1 Chair

Have you ever headed to the beach or gone on a family camping trip, only to wish that sitting on your esky (chilly bin) was a little more comfortable? No... me neither - but just in case you did, this item may well be your dream come true.

This camping / beach chair is so much more than just a chair... it's also a drink holder, a magazine holder and drink cooler. All in one. It even has wheels! Granted it may be a little awkward sitting on a full cooling compartment (or one packed with ice, for that matter) - but it would certainly be refreshing to sit on, on a hot summer's day.

Nb. All 'Latest Gadget' information & imagery is sourced from online entities & supplier websites. StorMan generally doesn't endorse, own or test any of these products; we merely link to them as you might find them interesting for your own use...

This month we begin a brand new regular, where we'll randomly flashback to a blog post or news article that we've posted in the past.

With this month's SSAA web chats and eNews articles taking on a slight "Internet" theme, we thought we'd start off by flashing back to the 14th of October 2009, when I wrote a piece about using Twitter for Self Storage. There's also a 15-minute video accompanying the post to show you how to sign-up (and then use) Twitter.

This month's "Monthly funny" is an image of a concept shoe (Stiletto, to be exact). Complete with flashing lights, scrolling LED display, speakers for the siren sound and - wait for it - a miniature bull-bar at the front, these carbon-fibre heels are sure to turn heads.

Unfortunately (of should that be fortunately?) these heels are just a concept drawing as part of a design project called "The Stiletto Police". Strange but true!

Have you got a joke or funny pic to send us?
Please let us know!

A girl who was just learning to drive went down a one-way street in the wrong direction, but didn't break the law. How come?

Stuck? The answer is in the next issue!

Answer to last month's brainteaser: Just throw it up in the air and gravity will return it to you (if you throw it straight up).

The Credit Crisis (by guest blogger, Malcolm Collins)

I was recently speaking to the property people in four of our major banks. They each, in their own way, told me that their bank had lost its appetite for risk, lending has slowed appreciably, bank portfolios are being re-weighted out of property exposure, and good clients do not automatically get preference over new loans, or in fact, a good hearing. Sound familiar?

Banks credit and risk analysis staff are now the people to convince whether a loan to a well managed, profitable and forward looking storage business is a good investment and partnership to have. The discussion regarding higher borrower equity, lower loan-to-value (LVR) ratios and a less healthy interest rate do not make the rolling over of a debt or it’s renegotiation and repackaging as “easy” an experience as it was for customers up until the GFC hit.

Continue reading Malcolm's post online...

If your office has multiple telephones all hooked together, it will likely have a PABX system. But what does PABX stand for and what happens behind the scenes?

The acronym itself stands for Private Automatic Branch Exchange and is the name given to a device that makes connections among the internal telephones of a private organization and also connects them to public switch telephone network (PSTN - another acronym for you this month).

Initially, the primary advantage of PBXs was cost savings on internal phone calls: handling the circuit switching locally reduced charges for local phone service. As PBXs gained popularity, they started offering services that were not available in the operator network, such call forwarding and extension dialling.

Virtually all businesses will run a PABX system of some kind, however VoIP (Voice Over IP - yet another acronym for you) systems are becoming more common and are quickly replacing the traditional PABX to take advantage of internet-based calling by transmitting voice as data packets over a network. Most StorMan offices used a VoIP system for calls as this also enables free calls between offices all over the world - no matter where they're located.

Nb. Our 'Acronym of the Month' data is often sourced from Wikipedia & various other online sources.