Smallbiztechnology.com

Sneezing Customers: Find Them and Help Them Boost Your Sales

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:22:06 -0500

The word "sneezing" in this case, does not refer to the common cold or swine flu. It refers instead to customers who love your product so much that they tell others about it. Being able to know who these sneezers are, and help them sneeze to other people is so important if you want to boost sales online.

In a traditional retail store, there is very little you can do, to facilitate customer evangelists. The best you can do is to have great customer service and an overall great experience. But the customer is not going to pass out 100 flyers for you.

Online, however, things are quite different. They can use their social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even direct email) to spread the word, or sneeze about you.

Charles Nicholls, Founder, CSO of SeeWhy, Inc. writes more about this below in a column he entitled, Finding the Sneezer this Christmas

Why Your Email Newsletter Is Useless. Can It Be Saved?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:47:36 -0500

Hundreds of thousands of us send out email newsletters on a weekly (or monthly) basis. We send these out to dozens, hundreds, thousands of customers (or others) in the hopes that they are doing some good.

Guess what? Too often they are useful pieces of digital trash, strewn in someone's email box, quickly deleted or never even read.

Email marketing company Campaigner, surveyed 259 small businesses with 1-20 employees. The first report - Small Business Marketing Health Check - focused on how small businesses are succeeding today and the mix of marketing tools they are using. Those findings were published in October.

This second report - Small Businesses Put Email Marketing to Work - focuses on small business adoption, plans, use and requirements for email marketing solutions. Both reports can be found here.

The survey found, that three top challenges faced by email marketers were:

Concerns that my customers will view email marketing as spamming
Too many email campaigns are filtered out by spam filters
Poor response rates

These are definitely valid concerns. What can you do about it?

Video Will Boost Your Business: It's Time To Dive In. BrightCove Finally Gets Smart About Small Biz Video Hosting

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:43:07 -0500

Online video is one of the most powerful communication media that businesses can use.

Thanks to the low cost of video production technology, such as The Flip video camera (now owned by Cisco) and very cheap hosting (just upload to YouTube or Blip.tv for free) you can convey just about anything, to anyone, through video.

Companies like TurnHere have taken video production a step further by enabling businesses to easily have professional videos produced.

One challenge is producing professional video segments and hosting them. It's easy to have video on Youtube, for example, flanked by advertising and limited control of how the video plays.

But being able to have customized players, add your own advertising and more is how serious businesses can differentiate themselves.

Brightcove has one of the best platforms for creating a customized and professional looking hosting platform. It started out as a free service, then after several months, it started charging $6,000 a month. Recently it got smart and offered a version for smaller business, this version starts at $100 a month.

Justin Kitch - "Host Of 12 Million Web Sites" On The Mobile Web

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:59:38 -0500

Justin Kitch, founder of Homestead, hosts 12 million web sites (since 1996). Homestead was bought by Intuit in 2007. There's not many CEOs who have Justin's claim to fame in the world of web sites for small businesses.

He writes on Entrepreneur.com how important it is to take advantage of the mobile web.

Cell phones are already the most ubiquitous electronic devices in the world. And with more than 40 million Americans who are now active monthly users of the mobile internet via smartphones and mobile browsers, the cell phone is quickly becoming the most popular device for browsing the web. Throw in the fact that people are often on the go when they're looking for information about a business, and you can see why it is fast becoming a requirement that businesses are "findable" via a mobile browser.

Following are a few tips to make sure your business is doing what it can to reach these mobile prospects, as well as serve your existing customers better by utilizing the mobile platform.

Read the rest here.

Geek Techs Can Help Conserve Energy and "Go Green": Free Software Tool Helps

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:45:00 -0500

While I do believe that much of the worlds focus on climate change and "going green" is politically charged, I think we can all agree that we MUST be better stewards of our environment.

By making purposeful decisions on the technology you buy and how you use it, you can do your part as well.

One big area of environmental stewardship is conserving on the power generated by computers and the heat they generate.

Discuss with your IT consultant one neat and free software tool he (or she) can use in this area.

SpiceWorks makes free network monitoring software and one of the tools they have released for their software is a software application, which enables IT professionals to automatically regulate the power consumption of networked computers.

This plug-in is available at Spiceworks Plug-in Center.

It Will be Tougher this Year to Make Sales Online. Here's Why and Here are Solutions

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:13:52 -0500

One of the most frustrating things for a retailer is to have lots of browsing traffic but little buying traffic.

According to SeeWhy, a company that helps companies convert browsers into buyers at the shopping cart, in reviewing some research data, customers this holiday season are going to be a tough crowd to make a sale from.

The SeeWhy press release reads that "in normal years, click through and conversion rates can be expected to increase as the deadline of Christmas approaches, and customers seek to find presents for loved ones.

But this year we’ve seen significant changes in buyer behavior as customers have searched for better deals. According to Hitwise, searches for promotion codes are up 40 percent year over year. The significantly increased sale volumes driven by the holiday shopping season have the effect of amplifying underlying trends."

IT Analyst Firm Rates 16 Firms A+. Have A Look Before Your Next Purchase

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:01:37 -0500

IDC, an IT analyst firm in Boston has identified 16 firms, targeting the small-medium sized business market, that are doing an especially noteworthy job through a wide variety of product and marketing efforts. These firms are recipients of the IDC SMB Excellence Award.

What this award highlights is that a) smaller to medium sized business continue to be able to leverage low cost technology solutions to enable their businesses to do more with less b) there are great companies reaching out to and serving the needs of these businesses on an exceptional level.

The noted companies are:

Market Segmentation/Customer Targeting - Cisco and Network Solutions have both looked at SMB customers in new and effective ways and have developed programs to meet the specific needs of key SMB groups.

Innovative Alliances - Two EMC companies, Decho and Iomega, are working together to provide bundled SMB storage capabilities in a flexible fashion. Similarly, Intuit and IBM have established a relationship that provides advanced access to Intuit QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions through IBM Smart Business platform technology.

When Cheap or Free Is Not Advisable: Ensuring Business Continuity

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:12:41 -0500

There are many free or very cheap services available to businesses.

Web hosting, email hosting, file sharing, CRM and more - you can find just about any service you need for free or very low cost, thanks to the growing of the Internet. Think about it, for all the power of Facebook and Twitter, when is the last time you received a bill from them?

On the other hand, there are a few things in your business that you should NOT select a vendor for based on price alone.

I was recently reading news about how Intermedia one of the best email hosting companies, now offers a 100% uptime guarantee. This is on top of their already offered 99.9% guarantee.

Non-Profits Can Use Tech to Boost Income: Insight from a NP Diva

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:12:28 -0500

Just because "non-profits" have no profit does not mean that they should not use technology to boost the money coming in, so that they can use it for the greater good.

Kristy Hall, President of Universal Synergy Group, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations and NGOs across the globe accomplish their mission.

I asked her to share her advice in how non-profits can leverage technology to increase their money flow.

Top Five Ways Nonprofits can use technology to raise money - they’re all free (or almost).

1. Have a “Donate Now” Button

Today, your organization must have a website. If you don’t have a website, that’s your first priority. An online search is one of the first places a potential donor turns to determine if an organization is legitimate.

And, I’m amazed when I ask groups of nonprofits that of those that have websites how many groups do not have a “Donate Now” Button on their site. Whether people donate online or not, you look more credible if you are able to accept online donations.

IMPORTANT: Just having a “Donate Now” Button does not mean that you’ll automatically raise tons of money online.

Get more information on how to get your organization’s “Donate Now” Button here:
www.TechSoup.org, www.google.com/nonprofits, www.NetworkForGood.org

Six Real Life Benefits of Business Intelligence Software: Why Smart Companies Get Smarter with BI

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:04:18 -0500

There are lot of executives who are smart. Many of them in fact are on the Inc 500 and other esteemed lists, such as the Stevie Awards.

However, no matter how smart a company is the executives can't just rely on their gut instinct to manage their business. They must rely on factual data to make decisions. One important piece of software in this regard is business intelligence (BI) software which helps managers interpret information and turn it into executable intelligence for the overall betterment of the company.

KPI Online's blog post What is Business Intelligence? A primer for small and medium sized businesses is very useful to understand the basics and benefits of BI.

Creative Vistas announced new BI software called OSS-IM View which helped their customer Rudder Capital gain 6 distinct benefits for their company: