Blog
Can Instagram Be Useful for Your Business?
In general, most people agree that social media is a useful tool for businesses – small and large ones alike. However, there’s one social media platform whose utility to small and medium businesses is questionable: Instagram. This platform is unique in the sense that only a caption and a picture are allowed to be posted. […]
Can Crowdfunding Make Your Business Boom?
You’ve probably heard of them: Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, GoFundMe. In the past few years, these websites have become huge proponents of getting those who don’t have any money but have good ideas the capital to get their products and services off the ground. This phenomenon is known as “crowdfunding” because the money raised is from a […]
3 Ways to Stay Productive When There’s a Power Outage
It’s incredibly tempting to forgo any sort of work when the power’s out, especially if you had a big project due the next day or you could use a break. Sometimes that’s fine, and it’ll all be okay the next day if you skip a few hours of work tonight. However, many people are no […]
Three Things It’s Okay to Outsource
Holding onto everything yourself and doing everything in-house is a fight that business owners have every day with themselves. However, the truth is that you – and your employees on hand – are limited beings, and if you aren’t devoting yourselves to the most worthy, expensive tasks, then you’re wasting a lot of time, money, […]
The Big Businesses are Using Social Media: Why Aren’t You?
It’s said over and over again: the answer to “why not social media?” is always, “I don’t have the time or money to focus on it.” It makes sense that as an SMB owner, you’d want to focus your time and resources on what you found most important, which is often making sure customers are […]
Business Basics: How to Register Your Business Name Correctly
When you’re just getting off the ground, you may find some confusion when it comes to registering your business name. After all, there are often a lot of steps, and those steps – when not done correctly – can result in a lot of lost time, money, and patience. Sometimes the steps can take upwards […]
Are You Managing Your Online Reviews?
Online reviews, particularly for products that aren’t bought in store (or can’t be), are incredibly powerful. This is especially true for the businesses that provide these products. If you start to soak up bad reviews, people will notice, especially if there is competition nearby. However, sometimes you just can’t help a bad review – and […]
Are Social #Hashtags Still Relevant?
Not so long ago, hashtags were the talk of the town. Every social media platform began to allow them – namely Facebook and Instagram, after Twitter made them an integral part of social communication. However, like every trend in social media, hashtags began to be used less often in productive ways, especially by companies. While […]
Why Your Business Should Be Accepting PayPal
All of the recent security breaches have some retailers running from online payment solutions like PayPal, a huge, multi-billion dollar platform that serves as a third party between a merchant and a buyer. However, this should not be the case: in fact, PayPal can protect you from problems that security breaches on your own networks […]
Why You Should Care About Website Backup
You’ve done it; you’ve created a website and it’s live. You poured a lot of effort into the website, and you’re incredibly proud of all of the things you’ve done. Your content is perfect. Your pictures are perfect. Your call-to-actions took a long time, but they’re perfect. Everything is perfect until something isn’t. Then you’re […]
A Visionary Approach to Your Security
The purpose of an IT partner isn’t just to fix something when it is broken, it is to keep your people working and your data secure. Astral moves beyond traditional managed services by addressing all the key areas of cybersecurity in today’s complex landscape.
