When it comes to marketing your company, along with its products and services, you want to have a certain air of respectability and legitimacy about what your business can do. You want to be perceived as “real” and “trustworthy,” above all else.

One way that you can almost nullify all of your efforts is to use a “free” email address as your primary point of contact. If your company email address is of the @hotmail.com or @gmail.com variety, you move down several notches in the respectability scale, especially if this email address features prominently in any of your marketing material.

Even if you choose not to have an official website at your own domain (but you should), you should have an email address as your own domain. Something similar to support@yourcompany.com would work just fine. This email can be managed through the import function in Gmail, for instance, for ease of use. You can also integrate it with desktop software like Microsoft Outlook.

It is very important to have your own web domain, if only for this purpose. It’s a very small investment — generally between $5 and $20 a year, depending on the TLD extension — for a huge leap in respectability and legitimacy.

Twitter can represent a huge source of traffic for your blog, but how you can best capitalize on this phenomenon? Part of it has to do with syndicating your blog content via your Twitter stream, but what if your readers want to share your articles with their followers too?

Well, the folks at Twitter have now released the official Tweet button that can be implemented on just about any website. In short, it puts a small “tweet” button your page, automatically generating a shortened URL, and allowing your readers to share the link with just a couple of mouse clicks. This is implemented right on your blog itself. The button also shows the number of times that the link has been shared.

There are two ways to go about implementing this feature on your WordPress blog. You could use the official utility from Twitter.com. This generates a couple lines of HTML code that can then be inserted into your theme templates as you see fit.

Alternatively, you could use any number of different WordPress plugins, like WP-Tweet, to achieve much the same functionality. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons.

You see it everywhere, so it must be effective. So many companies offer a range of different promotions, all of which are designed to lure customers into their fold, attracting them away from suitable alternatives and competitors.

With cell phone companies, you oftentimes see the offerings of free or severely discounted (subsidized) mobile phone handsets in exchange for lengthy service contracts. With home Internet service, you can oftentimes see a promotional rate that is only good for the first six months, after which the “regular price” is substantially higher. They bait you and then they make the switch.

Is this ethical? On the one hand, it is very attractive to see promotional prices that are substantially lower than the regular price of the next competitor, but it is very upsetting when the promotional price ends. This is especially true of consumers who don’t bother to look up what the regular price will be at the end of the promotional period, particularly if they lock themselves down into a multi-year contract.

Should the “regular price” be more prominently disclosed up front? Or is all fair in love, war, and marketing? Should the onus fall on the consumer to perform the suitable research needed or should the responsibility fall on the businesses to offer full disclosure?

To maintain the mobile lifestyle, you likely want to have a good Internet connection with you everywhere you go. Sure, you could constantly go hunting for the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, but it can be a lot more convenient with something like the Nokia CS-18 Rocket Internet Stick.

It may look like little more than your standard issue USB flash drive, but this Internet Stick actually contains a SIM card. It connects to the cellular network and allows your notebook or netbook to surf the web at surprisingly fast speeds. According to Nokia, the stick is good for up to 21.1Mbps download speed with up to 5.76Mbps for uploads.

There’s also a bonus microSD card slot built into the Nokia CS-18, which can come in handy for reading the small memory cards or simply using the Internet Stick like a USB thumb drive. The software for connecting to the Internet is also included and it can track the amount of bandwidth being used.

The Nokia CS-18 Internet Stick has been available through Rogers Wireless in Canada for a couple of months and it just recently launched with sister company Fido. If you sign a qualifying contract for your mobile data plan, you can have the Nokia stick for free.

Many choose to host their websites with BlueFur. They come from all walks of life, ranging from Internet professionals to casual sports fanatics. Artisans and other specialists also call BlueFur home and one of these fine folks happens to be Jeremy Hurn.

Based out of Bowen Island in British Columbia, Jeremy Hurn designs and creates hand-made furniture, bringing together “clean contemporary lines and the care and attention to detail found in traditional woodwork.” He creates a range of different furniture pieces and he is willing to make custom furniture to fit your specific space.

But why wouldn’t you buy the less expensive factory furniture instead? Isn’t it easier to just walk into an IKEA? Perhaps, but after taking a look at the technique and gallery pages on Hurn’s site, you may be swayed to commission some of his fine workmanship instead.

Do you use BlueFur as your preferred web host? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

Want to live up on cloud nine with your WordPress blog? Want to make it up there without spending any money on a premium theme? Then proClouds just might be the right template for your site.

This theme developed by “prowpthemes” features a simple layout that is airy and pleasing to the eye. It features a light blue and white color scheme to go with its cloud-inspired sky design. Because of its relatively simple design, this theme is both fast-loading and great looking.

Among the highlights from a technical standpoint are the included custom header image, full support for widgets in its single right-aligned sidebar, and integration with threaded comments for each of your blog posts.

Go to the WordPress Free Themes Directory to see the available screenshot and to access the free download link.