How to Monitor Your Business Brand

Monitoring your business brand is important because it is how you will know if your marketing strategy is effective or not. With businesses taking their brands to social media sites, the need to monitor how brands are perceived by consumers is a must. It is through monitoring that you find out what others are saying about your brand. It is where you can get ideas on how to improve your product, services, or just about anything that can help you improve your business.

Using social media monitoring tools can assist you with your brand. When you have a lot of followers and you want to know what everyone is saying about your brand, you can gather the information you need by listening through such tools. You can also find out what other people are saying, even those that don’t follow you. This is a way to measure if you are meeting your marketing goals.

Here are some ways on how social media monitoring tools can help you improve your brand:

Gives you ideas for content marketing – Through social media monitoring tools, you can get ideas for your website content. It is not easy to come up with content ideas but if you have access to such tools, you can come up with content ideas just by reading through what your customers are saying about your brand. You will also get an idea on what kind of content best engages your readers or customers. If you continue to give them engaging content, you are likely to hear more from your readers.

Find out your demographic – Knowing who your followers are will help you come up with effective ways on how to engage them. The more you can engage your followers, the more chances you have of building a network with them. This can also help you make more informative business decisions.

You can even track conversations made by others who are not following you. With this type of information, you can strategize on how you can attract these people to follow you and join your community.

Customer service – Because social media is an easy way to reach out to brands, customers like to use the platform to call the attention of companies when there is a problem. With a monitoring tool, you can get to those customers faster. And customers love it when they get immediate response from brands regarding their concerns. It makes them feel that they are valuable to the company.

Monitor your brand and other brands – It is always good to know how the competition is doing. If you are in a competitive market, it’s wise to find out how your competition is doing. This helps you stay focused on how you can constantly improve your brand. You can also monitor brands that inspire you. All these will help you measure where you stand as a brand and push you to keep improving even when you are already ahead.

Engage in conversations – Because you can see conversations happening around your brand, you can join in on the conversations. This will help close the gap between brands and customers. If your followers or customers feel comfortable talking to you, then they are much more likely to share their ideas about your brand. It is also a good opportunity to build your brand reputation because you are reaching out to your customers yourself. This is your chance to make them feel valuable to you.

These are just some of the things that you can get from monitoring your business brand. Know what is happening around your brand and gather ideas on how you can constantly improve your brand. Listen to what your customers are saying about you and try to strategize on how you can get your needs and their needs to meet.

Social media monitoring tools can really help your business brand. Just remember that when you are using social media, you have to look into building a community and engaging customers instead of just focusing on making sales. Customers like it best when you make them feel that they belong in a community and not that you just want them to continue to buy your products or services. If you strategize your social media campaign well, you will be able to gain customers just by engaging and interacting with your readers and without having to drop a sales line. Just remember to be true to your brand values. Social media is a great place to build brand reputations so be sure you plan it well and have ways of monitoring your online presence.

Getting a Macbook Cracked Display screen Restore

Getting a Macbook Cracked Display screen Restore

In the event you handle to bang round your Macbook you might find yourself having to get a Macbook Cracked Display Repair. This may increasingly even be required when you by chance sit on your Macbook at some point. And actually that is not too arduous to do especially you probably have young children round or journey a lot and sling your laptop computer around as you go. You probably have managed to crack the display screen on your Macbook you actually don't wish to order a replacement screen from the manufacturer but you do wish to take your Macbook to a good Macbook repair shop and let them exchange it for you. You can not restore a screen so it's essential to get a replacement. These screens are relatively fragile they usually need an skilled to correctly exchange the screen.

You probably have an older laptop as an alternative of getting a Macbook Cracked Display Restore it's possible you'll need to get a brand new laptop with extra bells and whistles. Although a cracked display is just not too pricey to replace it gives you the opportunity to get a brand new computer. Just let the pc repair place transfer your entire data. The truth is this even is the suitable time to have a customized laptop computer made exactly to your specifications. This manner you'll get the facility you wish to run the programs that you simply need run. You can get a webcam or different additions that can make your laptop and also you more productive or at the least have more enjoyable on your Macbook perhaps at a quicker speed.

To avoid having to get a Macbook Cracked Display Restore you would need to notice that even though today's laptops together with a Macbook are really quite sturdy they nonetheless can not face up to heavy handling. They aren't a reinforced onerous sided suitcase that you would be able to just throw down beside you. Especially since so many people don't hassle with a case in any respect they only clutch their laptop tightly in their arms which can additionally crack the display if held too tight. Also try not to slam down the laptop computer cowl too onerous as this may occasionally additionally harm your display and even the circuitry that's behind the screen. Heavy dealing with might also break the hinges on the cover which isn't good for the laptop nor for you as that may should be repaired at some time also.

Of course if you happen to intend to drop your Macbook repeatedly then you definately actually should put money into a laptop computer case that should give it some protection. But if you must go through an airport security check then you will have to take that laptop computer out of its case. And so many individuals forget about their laptop and leave it behind on the security checkpoint that it is best to put your title, telephone number and your flight somewhere on the outside of the laptop. That approach you will be paged for those who leave it behind. Even going by safety might injury your Macbook if it is slammed around.

Dealing With the IRS When You Owe Money and Can't Pay

I have been reading The Big Missby Hank Haney. Haney was Tiger Wood's swing coach for a few of Tiger's best years on the PGA tour. Haney wonders why Tiger never opened up personally to the people around him. Really??? Tiger knew someone like Haney would hire a sixteen year old girl on her period to ghost write a tell all. Here's how the book goes, “Butch Harmon told David Leadbetter that Tiger really didn't want to go to the prom with me. He wanted to ask Butch, but felt sorry for me. That's so wrong. Everybody knows Butch looked fat in his prom dress anyway.”

As a golfer, I have a zero handicap – as in my handicap is that I have zero talent. I'm a scratch golfer. Every time I tee off, I scratch my head at how badly I suck. My pre-shot routine involves giving my golf ball the last rites. When I walk by the golf ball display at Dick's Sporting Goods, I hear the balls gossiping, “I hope he doesn't pick me.” I may stink at golf, but I'm pretty good at keeping clients from making bogeys with the I.R.S.

What should you do if you owe the I.R.S. money and can't afford to pay? I get this question a lot. It comes in the context of delivering a tax return with a significant balance due. The obvious question clients ask is “Should I get a filing extension for my tax return until I can get the money to pay?” This question stems from confusing an extension of time to file with an extension of time to pay.

When you receive an extension of time to file your return, you don't get an extension of time to pay your tax balance due. At first glance, this doesn't make sense. After all the reason most people need a filing extension is that they don't know what they might owe. Nonetheless, if you are asking for an extension of time to file your returns, you are required to make a good faith estimate of any potential balance due. You are also required to pay that balance due by April 15^th. The reason behind this requirement is that a taxpayer should never put in a better position by paying taxes late. If getting an extension to file meant an extension of time to pay, no one would ever file and pay by the original due date. We would all pay as late as possible.

When you get a filing extension and end up owing money by the time you finally do file the returns, the I.R.S. assesses both interest and a penalty for paying late. You don't get a penalty for filing late, but there is a significant penalty for paying late. The I.R.S. Even has the right to disallow a filing extension if you don't make a good faith effort to determine and pay your tax liability by April 15^th. As a practical matter, I have never seen them disallow a filing extension for this reason. However, Virginia routinely disallows filing extensions when the final balance due exceeds 10% if the total tax liability on a return. People, who file Virginia returns with filing extensions but with large balances due, pay both late filing and late payment penalties along with interest from May 1^st, the original filing deadline for Virginia returns.

If you have your tax returns completed by the original due date, file them on time even if you owe money. Yes, you are going to get nasty notices from the I.R.S., but there is no good reason to risk paying additional penalties by filing for an unneeded extension. In fact, until you get the first nasty notice from the I.R.S., you can't call them to arrange for a payment agreement anyway. If your balance due is relatively small, less than $10K, you can file form 9465 with your completed tax return and propose a monthly payment to settle your liability.

If you owe a really significant balance, greater than $10K, pay what you can when you file the return, and then begin working on a payment arrangement once you get the first balance due notice. Until you get that first notice, no one at the I.R.S. can help you with a payment agreement since you don't have a tax liability until the return has been processed. If you are going to owe taxes to both the I.R.S. and a state, pay the smaller of the balances due in full if you can. Dealing with one tax authority is painful enough. Dealing with two sets of nasty notices is more than most people can bear.

If you owe the I.R.S. more than $10K but less than $50K, I have some good news. Within the last couple months, the I.R.S. instituted a streamlined procedure for reaching payment agreements. Previously, balances of this size required a lot of paperwork and negotiating payment agreements followed a very similar procedure to making an offer in compromise – not good news.

I worked on one case for eight months. Every time I thought we were approaching an agreement, the I.R.S. would request updated financial information, and we basically started all over again. I felt like the guy in hell who bends over to take a drink from a lake only to have the lake recede as his mouth approaches the water. One day during tax season, I called the I.R.S. expecting another extended stay in hell. Instead, I had an agreement in twenty minutes. The next morning I read in a tax newsletter about the streamlined procedure. We were proposing a three year payment schedule. The procedure allows for five year repayment. Once in awhile we catch a good break in the tax business.

If you owe more than $50K, you probably need an attorney with bankruptcy experience. No, that doesn't sound happy. With really large balances due, the I.R.S. requires one or more of the series 433 forms. Wages earners complete one of the series and self employed taxpayers complete a different set. The 433 series forms let the I.R.S. establish the amount you can afford to pay. The forms are a form of personal financial statement that includes all of your assets, liabilities, income, and expenses. That doesn't sound so bad except for being a paper chase.

However, once you have completed the forms, the I.R.S. doesn't just subtract your reported expenses from your income to determine the amount you can pay. They compare your expenses against a table of allowable expenses and then use the smaller amount. For instance, if your mortgage payment is $4k, but the allowable housing payment is $2K, they use $2K in the payment calculation. Yes, that might just create a problem with your mortgage company. When calculating the amount you can pay, the I.R.S. doesn't care if paying their calculated affordable payment means you lose your house. That is why you need the bankruptcy attorney. Negotiating a payment agreement on a balance greater than $50K will take months and be expensive in professional fees. You can easily pay $15K in fees to get a payment agreement on a $60K tax balance due.

I haven't given you a lot of good news in this blog entry. The best advice I can give you is don't owe the I.R.S. a lot of money. Yes, I am a master of the obvious. However, I see a lot of business owners get into deep tax trouble by denial. This past tax season, an owner of an IT firm made $150K in profits and never considered making a tax payment during the year. It was his second year in operation. His first year his company lost money and consequently he owed no taxes. In the second year, he felt he needed all of the profit just to pay his normal living expenses. After all $150K doesn't make you rich in northern Virginia. Before starting his company, he made nearly $250K as an employee for a government contractor. Between Social Security, Medicare, and regular income taxes, he incurred a tax liability of $40K. Now he's in serious tax trouble. He knew he was digging a big tax hole. An hour of tax planning with me during the year would have shown the size of the hole, but he was in denial. Another year of this behavior and he'll be in bankruptcy.

The RG III era of Washington Redskin history has begun. I'm trying my best to be enthusiastic, but here's a question for you. How many running quarterbacks have won a Super Bowl? The number is somewhere between zero and zero. Steve Young and John Elway won Super Bowls, but not until long after their running days were over. Whether RG III's tenure is more successful than RG I's (Rex Grossman) will depend on the other draft selections this year. I'm most impressed with the offensive line picks. Super Bowls wins start with the big uglies in the trenches.

Thanks for reading! For serious tax and accounting advice, please visit our S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.

Laptop Laptop Display screen Repair - 3 Options to Consider

Laptop Laptop Display screen Repair - 3 Options to Consider

It occurs to one of the best of us, one minute your laptop is sitting there all secure and the subsequent it has fallen on the ground and also you need a laptop pc screen repair. In case your screen has broken and it is advisable to replace it you could have three choices which might be available to you:

1. You possibly can buy a brand new laptop computer but this isn't advisable as a result of value and inconvenience of having to transfer recordsdata etc.

2. You possibly can take your laptop computer to a service middle however you'll greater than seemingly be introduced with a invoice for round $600 - $900! That is the easiest route to take as you may simply drop your laptop computer in and choose it up when the laptop computer pc display screen restore has been carried out.

3. The third and remaining solution to a laptop laptop screen repair is to carry out the repair your self as the price for a typical 14" display screen is around $200 - $300 so that is by far the cheapest option.

It is not as onerous as it's possible you'll assume to exchange your laptop computer display screen and with the right steering you would obtain this with ease and save your self some $$$'s also.

There are some superb step by step guides out on the web that may enable you along with your laptop pc display repair and there are even some that have highly detailed movies so you can truly see what you must do proper there in front of you! With a bit of little bit of persistence this is easily do-ready and you could quickly have your laptop working, simply bear in mind to not drop it again.

Best Practices in Using Pinterest Contests

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. According to reports, it is now the third most popular social networking site, with Facebook and Twitter ranking as first and second. This virtual pinboard is truly making waves in the online world as more and more people have been signing up. It currently boasts 11 million registered users, and many of these people are logging onto the site everyday and creating the most beautiful pinboards.

Whether you’re a business or personal brand, you should definitely pay attention to Pinterest. It’s an excellent way to engage and interact with others as you create beautiful collections and share the things that you love and that inspire you. Through creating lovely pinboards that other people enjoy, you can create a buzz that encourages a good following and can promote brand awareness.

One of the best ways to create brand buzz in Pinterest is by hosting a contest. Most people enjoy contests as they are fun and challenging, and it’s always nice to win a prize. So if you want to promote your brand in Pinterest, creating a fun contest is a good idea.

So what are the best practices in using Pinterest contests? Here are some great ideas you should consider:

     1. Create the Best Pinboard Contest

One of the most challenging and creative contests you can host on Pinterest is one that asks people to create the best pinboards. You can require them to create pinboards that include pictures of your products, as well as other items that relate or look well with the products you’re offering. Then ask them to post it on their pinboard and tag you so that their followers can see the pinboard they’ve created. This really helps in creating buzz around your brand. You can judge the winner of the contest yourself, or you can judge the winner by the number of likes and repins the pinboard has.

     2. Most Repins and Likes Contest

With this contest, you can ask your audience to repin their favorite products from your collection and then ask them to solicit votes through repins and likes. The winner of this contest is the board with the most likes and repins.

Though this is a fun contest, it can also seem a bit like spam as the people who enter your contest solicit votes using different social networking sites. But it can be very effective in promoting brand awareness as people share their boards to their network of friends.

     3. Utilize other social media platforms

You can incorporate other social networking sites to your Pinterest contest to help promote better brand awareness. Facebook and Twitter are excellent social media platforms that you can require the contestants to use. This way, even their followers who are active in other sites will be able to learn about your brand and may even start following you as well.

Some good ideas for doing this include: asking contestants to share their pinboards that they’ve created about your brand in their Facebook wall, asking them to Tweet links to their pinboard, or asking them to blog about the pinboard they’ve created.

     4. Raffling off the winner

You can also simply ask your audience to create a pinboard of your brand, share it on their Pinterest pages, and then post the link to your wall. People can only enter once, and then you draw a random winner from the list of entries. The downside of this type of contest is that it is not very engaging, but at least it gives everyone a fair chance of winning the contest.

Pinterest contests are truly an excellent way to promote brand awareness, generate great content for your feed, and get links back to your pages and site. Remember though to review the Pinterest’s user guide to ensure that you are not violating any rules by hosting your contest.

If you want to host a contest but are not sure where to start, you can also observe some of the ongoing contests at Pinterests and learn what works and what doesn’t. Watch and observe how other brands create buzz using Pinterest contests.

Truly, there’s still a world of things you can do on Pinterest to help you promote brand awareness and create brand buzz. So why not host a Pinterest contest that lets people show off their creativity and enjoy as well? The reward you offer is just a little bit of an incentive that can help you gain a slew of new followers that can translate to potential customers and clients.

A Complete Overview of the iPod Contact Display Restore

A Complete Overview of the iPod Contact Display Restore

Have you ever dropped your iPod touch and picked it up solely to search out out that it is beautiful display screen is now wanting like something out of Charlotte's net? Or, have you ever picked up your nifty little device only to see that your poor iPod contact's display screen is shattered? This article will undergo a few of the potential repairs concerned with the iPod Touch display and how you can stop this from occurring within the future.

Once you discover your device in it is unlucky condition there's quite a lot of routes you can go from there. Many shoppers take their beloved iPod Touch to the Apple store, only to find out that the apple care plan they bought excludes the screen. Many people would suppose, effectively then why did I purchase the Apple care?

Once you sulk in your actions for lengthy enough, you'll revert to despair when the Apple retailer informs you that the screen restore is a whopping $200. This was serious sticker shock once I first saw it, a repair that costs almost as a lot because the device?

The following step could be to evaluate the damage yourself. The repair is a slightly lengthy restore, with the rubber surround being nearly inevitably broken on every removal. Whereas the iPod Contact restore might seem quite simple, it is rather more difficult than it could appear on the surface.

The opposite repair possibility is to send it off to an web repair firm to have it repaired. The prices will range from about sixty to 1 hundred dollars depending on the era iPod Contact you may have. This route seems the most logical do you have to choose to salvage your device.

The last option is the at house repair. This option may be very potential, however ought to be only tried by the semi-professional technician. The rationale for this being that the intricacy of the elements straight below the display are very prone to be damaged by the untrained restore attempt.

Should you simply be bored with your machine and resolve that you need to pony up for a new shiny one, there are several locations you can attempt to lower the cost of the brand new device. First, there are a number of corporations on the web that buy broken devices. Second, you may flip to eBay to see what the going fee is for somebody who has an interest in flipping your damaged device.

Do you have to run in to the predicament of a broken iPod Contact display, you will now have full knowledge on the options available to someone in your situation.

Customer Service: Smaller Can Be Better

Q: How can a small business compete with the “big store” down the street?

A: When it comes to providing value to customers, size isn’t everything—personalized service is.

This important fact can help distinguish small independent businesses from big box chain stores. It gives small businesses a powerful competitive edge in an age when more consumers expect a high level of service and responsiveness.

Your position at the “front lines” of your business gives you direct access to your customers’ needs, attitudes, and opinions. You know the kinds of products or services they want, when they want them, and how best to deliver them.

To gain these valuable insights, you need to proactively assess what you do and should be doing to keep customers coming back, rather than tempting them to try the chain store down the street.

Start by putting yourself in your customers’ place. How would you like to be treated if you were a first-time customer or a “regular?”  Also consider conveniences. What can you do to make it easier to find items and check out, rather than having to navigate a big-box store’s aisles and cashier lines?

Also visit other stores and service centers, including those unrelated to your business. See what they do that you find appealing, and adapt those practices to enhance your business’s customer experience. Similarly, watch for aspects you don’t like, but be sure to understand the reasons behind problems or poor service, such as understaffing, untrained staff, and limited inventory. This will help prevent similar problems from arising in your business.

How you connect with customers by phone or email will also help differentiate your small business from the sometimes bureaucratic nature of big-box chains. Answer calls promptly and with a friendly greeting. Avoid putting callers on hold for longer than a minute; take a message and respond as soon as possible. If you use an automated answering system, your customer service line should be one of the first options.

Although it may be impractical to handle email inquiries as they arrive, don’t let them sit for too long. Some email systems automatically generate a response to acknowledge the message. Make sure the text is upbeat and friendly—again, the kind of message you’d want to receive. A promise to respond within 24 hours may not be enough. Designate certain times during the day to handle email queries, or assign the responsibility to an employee.

What You Need to Do to Make YouTube Work for You

Though you may think that YouTube is full of homemade videos of people who are hoping to become famous, utilizing YouTube in your marketing campaign can actually help you promote your brand. It is the largest video sharing site in the world, with over 800 million viewers per month. Videos are very powerful branding tools since they help you connect more intimately with your audience. With the use of video, you can reveal more of yourself or your surroundings, and it really helps people connect with you better.

Of course, it isn’t enough to simply create a channel in YouTube for your brand, upload videos there, and hope that they effectively promote your brand. YouTube doesn’t work for everyone, but it can work for you if you use it wisely. Here are some tips to help you do this:

     1. Make sure to brand your YouTube channel

You want to ensure that your channel represents you and your brand, so it’s essential that you brand it. If it’s your personal brand, make sure that you use your full name in your channel. If it’s your small business brand, then you should use the name of your company.

Set up your profile properly – ensure that all the details are filled up so that people can find you. You want to link your personal or business website to your YouTube so that people who watch your video can learn more information about you or your business.

Also, the overall feel and theme of your channel should reflect your brand. Make sure to put up your picture or company logo, then use colors or designs that are associated with your brand so that people will remember you whenever they visit your channel.

Don’t forget to change the title of your channel! You should put a title that really represents you and what your brand is about so that people will know what to expect when they watch your videos.

     2. Create interesting, remarkable and short videos

To effectively promote your brand on YouTube, it’s essential that you create videos that people are going to watch, of course. So you have to create interesting and remarkable videos that are preferably short and sweet, since most people have short attention spans. You want to keep them engaged and then direct them to your website at the right time; you don’t want to bore them to tears with a long, rambling video. Keep it short, sweet and simple. Or short, quick and amazing. That will get people’s attention.

     3. Promote your channel

The great thing about YouTube is the fact that it easily integrates with many social media platforms, so you can easily promote the videos you upload. So if you want to make YouTube work for you, you need to get the traffic up in your channel. Specifically, you want more subscribers so that whenever you upload new content, you will have viewers.

So what you can do is promote your YouTube channel in your different social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also promote it in your blog. Make sure to encourage your audience to subscribe to your channel, not just watch your videos and leave.

Also, you should utilize SEO techniques so that your YouTube channel and videos come up in search engines when people search for keywords related to your brand.

     4. Interact with your audience

The comment section in your channel as well as each video allows you to interact with your audience on YouTube. You have the option of allowing all comments to be immediately published, moderating them before they’re published, or disabling them.

If you plan to allow comments, you should make sure that you monitor them regularly so that you can respond to your audience as well as moderate content.

     5. Monitor Analytics

A great feature of YouTube is the free analytics that come with it, so you can monitor your channel and learn what videos are particularly popular among your audience, as well as understand who your main viewers are. By knowing the demographics of your audience, you can create better videos that are focused and targeted towards them.

Making YouTube work for you isn’t that difficult. But it’s important that you understand the site you’re using, brand your channel so that it represents you, create videos that people will want to watch, promote your channel in your network, interact with your audience, and monitor your analytics. Videos are truly a powerful medium for promoting your brand, so make sure you use it effectively.

What is SaveLocal and Why Would You Use It?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past couple of years, you’ve surely heard about daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial. These sites have become extremely popular among people, after all, who doesn’t enjoy getting 50% off at a new restaurant or 50% off at an expensive spa?

For business owners, these sites can be an excellent idea since it can help them with their local business marketing and get new customers to your door. But as a small business owner, you need to ask yourself is: What do you really want—new customers or repeat ones? Do you want people who are only looking for deals, or do you want people looking for a brand they can be loyal to?

Also, did you know that Groupon typically gets 50% of what the customers pay? For example, if you put up an offer of 50% off on $20 worth of food. The customer pays you $10 for this deal and from this, Groupon gets $5 and you also get $5. That’s $5 for $20 worth of food. Imagine if thousands of people buy this daily deal (since these sites usually don’t allow you to put a limit on the coupons that can be bought), do you think you’re going to get any profit? Or would you actually become buried in debt?

Yes, there are many Groupon horror stories out there. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it hasn’t worked for some – there are also numerous success stories of companies that only have praises for these daily deal sites. But as a small business owner, are these sites the best choice for you? If you’re planning on marketing in West Texas, is it really recommended to use these sites that offer your coupons everywhere?

SaveLocal and Small Businesses

Here’s where SaveLocal comes in. ConstantContact, a company which has successfully helped thousands of small companies with their email campaigns, has now entered the deal site arena with SaveLocal. But what they’re offering is something quite different – SaveLocal basically helps you create, design, promote, and track your deals, at a very affordable price.

With SaveLocal, you decide what coupon to offer, the number of coupons you want to sell, and who can receive these offers. Unlike Groupon and other deal sites who reward people who are simply looking for a good deal (and aren’t likely to return and pay the full price), SaveLocal targets your existing customers and encourages them to share the coupon with their friends and acquaintances.

Basically, the coupons are only sent to the business’ email list and Facebook followers. The customers are offered the deal, as well as an incentive to share it with their friends and social network. It’s an excellent small business marketing strategy.

Though the people who will receive your coupons may be smaller in number, these people are the ones who are more likely to be returning and loyal customers. SaveLocal rewards your existing customers and encourages them to spread the word to their friends. These people are likely to be local, increasing the chances that they get the coupon. Also, for their friends to get the deal, they have to opt-in to your email campaign as well, giving you the ability to connect with them further.

You see, one of the basic downfalls of Groupon and other deal sites is the fact that you don’t get any information on those who buy your coupons. They buy the coupons, redeem them, and then they move on to the next 50% off deal, forgetting about you. But with SaveLocal, you can obtain the most valuable asset – a way to communicate with your new customers, to offer them other deals and encourage them to frequent your store again and again.

And what would this cost you? You only have to pay $1 to $3, depending on the cost of the deal you’re offering. This is perfect for small business owners, who can offer excellent deals and still get a profit from the sales.

But perhaps the main question you need to ask is: Why should I use SaveLocal? Can’t I simply create my own deals?

Well, you can. But SaveLocal makes it so much easier to conceptualize the deal and analyze the results at an affordable price. So if you want to save time and effort, then this site is a great way to do so.

For small business owners who want to offer deals to their customers without ending up in debt or even bankrupt, then SaveLocal is for you. Remember that you’re not targeting random people who just want a great deal. You’re targeting people who are likely to return and become regular customers. So to make it happen, give SaveLocal a shot!

Disclosure: I do have a partnership with Constant Contact. That partnership came about because of my genuine liking for their tools and system.

National Smack a Bookkeeper Week

Special note: I originally wrote this during the second week in March. My emotions were a little raw. So I held it until after tax season to see if I still felt the same way. I do....... Parental Guidance is suggested.

Many of you know March 15^this the tax filing deadline for calendar year corporations. Give yourself a pat on the head if you know that. However, not many people know that the entire week is a national holiday called, National Smack a Bookkeeper Week. President Obama signed this holiday into law to commemorate the criminally inept things bookkeepers do during the busiest week of a CPA's tax season.

Last night I made the mistake of checking my e-mail one last time before I headed home. I was hoping to get messages from a couple of clients that I could finalize their corporate tax returns. Instead I was treated to a message with the happy sounding “K-1 error” in the header. Instead of murdering the nearest person, I kicked a chair across the room instead. That was before I even read the message. I know when I get a message like this, somebody wants me to change a tax return I did a month ago.

We give all of our corporate tax clients draft returns to review before we finalize the returns. Silly me, I think this would be an excellent time for them to question amounts, ask questions, and get satisfied that the amounts on the tax return are correct. In reality, what happens is that too many of them blindly approve the drafts. Then we finalize the returns. This is usually in February. Then in March within a day or so of the filing deadline, they look at their tax returns and say “Oh my God! I can't pay taxes on all that income. The tax returns must be wrong.” Then they want us to answer a dozen idiot questions that don't change their income at all. If they asked these questions back when we were in the draft stage, no problem. Asking the questions on March 14^th or 15^th is a big problem. I have just few hundred things going on those days. The last thing I have time for is revisiting old tax returns. I break some piece of office furniture almost every year on March 14^th. Heavy drug use doesn't seem to curb my behavior. Calculators are my favorite target. When I walk by the calculator display at Staples, I hear them whispering.

I picked up the regrettably unbroken chair and read the message. A bookkeeper for a client was telling me I had made a grievous addition error on a corporate tax return that we had completed and filed a couple weeks earlier. She noted that one of my totals on the return, consisting of five numbers, was incorrect. I kicked the chair again – still not broken.

I know a little fact she doesn't. I didn't add up the five numbers and then enter a total. I entered the total, and our tax program breaks it up into the five individual numbers based on percentage of ownership for the owners. Over the last ten years, probably 200,000 corporate tax returns have been filed with this tax program. Don't you think someone might have noticed this bug before she did?

I added up the five offending numbers on my adding machine. Surprise, surprise Gomer Pyle, the numbers added correctly. Then I did it again – same answer. I was using a little technique, those of us in the biz, call double taping. That is we run two adding machine tapes to see if we get the same number both times. According to my fine Clarion University math training, I know that you should get the same answer both times. Math is funny that way. Apparently bookkeepers don't get the same training. Maybe that is why we are called CPA's – Certified Public Adding machine operators.

The truly amazing thing about her message was that she pointed out exactly what had caused my error. It was a number that we had discussed back when we were preparing the returns. Unfortunately that number was totally irrelevant. She had just mis-added the five amounts – that simple. Of course after finding one grievous criminal error on my part, she proceeded to question a couple other amounts on the tax returns related to alternative minimum tax (AMT). Ask around a bit. If you find a bookkeeper with even a rudimentary understanding of AMT, you will have found the evolutionary missing link between CPA's and bookkeepers. This is the semi-neanderthal, hunch backed bookkeeper who first stood upright to reach the office pencil sharpener. Yes accounting fans – my tax return was correct. A chair had suffered needlessly.

How many bookkeepers does it take to screw in a light bulb? No one knows. They are all still closing the books back in 1985. To be fair, how many Frank Stitely's does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one – with a credit card and a phone call to a real man.

Here is a frequent conversation thread with a bookkeeper.

Me: “Are the books ready for me to begin preparing the tax returns?”

Her: “Yes”

Two days later....

Me: “I spent a little time on this, and a whole lot of stuff is missing.”

Her: “Yes, I haven't entered the credit card transactions for the year. I thought you could get started in the mean time.”

Me: “No thanks, I'll pass. I don't really feel like starting all over again in two weeks once all the numbers change.”

Here's another of my bookkeepers' greatest hits...

Her: “I don't know where you got that number on the tax return.”

Me: “I took it from the sheet you gave me.”

Her: “It's wrong.”

Me: “Was there a reason you gave me a wrong amount?”

Her: “I wasn't focused on that number at the time.”

One more just to celebrate the holiday... This one happens in October as we are running up against the absolute final filing deadline.

Her: “Here is the information for the tax return. The numbers are all screwed up.”

Me: “Why are the numbers all screwed up? Haven't you been working on them for 20 months now?”

Her: “I'm not really finished but I know the deadline is coming.”

Me: “Don't you think it might be a good idea for me to work with good numbers?”

This is just a brief sample off the top of my head as I sit in Ruby Tuesday's munching on rabbit food. Tax season just creates so much material. I lied- here's a final one to keep in spirit with the holiday.

Me: “I tried opening your QuickBooks data. I need a password.”

Her: “I don't want you changing my data.”

Me: “Last year I made twenty-seven entries to correct your numbers. What are the odds, the number will be zero this year? I'll put my money on the Redskins winning the Super Bowl instead.”

You might justifiably ask why bookkeepers get bad attitudes. Obnoxiousness becomes a defense mechanism to hide ignorance. As you can see above, it doesn't work well with me. I can tolerate lack of knowledge if it comes with a sincere desire to improve. However, when the lack of knowledge comes wrapped in a nasty attitude, I find a way to remove the offending party.

I'm greasing the skids for a bookkeeper now. Every time her boss, the owner, tries to make a decision to grow the business, she tells him everything he does always fails. She does this to protect her salary. She's making nearly six figures – way too much for what she does. Taking on any business risk is unacceptable to her regardless of the potential payoff for the owner. I can only imagine being married to her – waking up every morning to someone telling me anything I do that day will fail. Trust me, she's on her way out the door now. I'm good at this. I can be Tony Soprano. She better have gills. She'll sleep with the fishes soon.

OK, you think I've been a little harsh. Tax season does that to me. I promise you a future installment where I show you how to find a truly excellent bookkeeper. They are out there, but they can be tough to find. You'll have to kiss a lot of frogs, but a princess is out there somewhere. If she happens to look like Jennifer Aniston, I get to kiss her first.

Now that tax season is over, on Sunday morning I find myself alone in the house with no one for company except for Jack Russell terrier, Sidney. Whooo hooo!!! To celebrate, I am running naked through the house farting and picking my nose. Sidney is joining me except, for obvious reasons, she can't pick her nose. Instead she's licking herself in places I can't dream of reaching.

Thanks for reading! For real tax and accounting advice, please visit our real S&K web site www.skcpas.com.

Android Utility Development and Its Scopes

Android Utility Development and Its Scopes

Each day is a busy day for Android developers, and it is quite pure because Android OS actually has appreciable share within the world market of smartphone. In accordance with a market analysis, one in three smartphones offered in market at the moment runs on Google OS, and this share is still going up. Android is an open supply project with OS and a few key applications. The OS is based on Linux and purposes are developed in Java.

So the key factor related here is open source, giving limitless opportunities of customization that fuels developers to work on a wide range of android software program improvement projects. For sure, this also offers business and corporate with alternatives to get their application developed and to amplify their online presence. Virtually all sorts of applications can be developed for Android platform, setting it aside from different smartphones resembling Apple iPhone, Microsoft and Nokia.

Android can perform operations identical to its rival - iPhone does. Its platform supports plentiful apps and supplies flawless choices & options to companies globally. Android's assist to following operations turns it one of the best working programs:

• Support to inventory administration

• Support to account transaction administration

• Support to MIS Reporting

• Support to CRM integrating Apps

• Support to Navigational software

• Support to games

• Help to PDF Reader

• Assist to Workplace Suites

• Help to apps integrating Microsoft Change ActiveSync assist

• Assist to business specific app growth and plenty of more.

Android OS comes integrated with most of the Google's companies like shopping, search, mails, maps, and navigation but, availability of tons of of 1000's of third party purposes and customised Android software program development turns this OS an ultimate choice. Google gives Android SDK (software improvement kit) at no cost that additional helps Android developers to easily work on concepts and quickly develop applications. Android SDK is set of software development tools including debugger, libraries, handset emulator documentation, sample code and tutorials.

This helps builders in creating numerous smartphone apps and providing them to companies engaged in areas like pharmaceuticals, gross sales, games, leisure, location based providers, and so on.

Google supplies limitless support to develop apps however when you wish to add skilled touch in your software, hiring a professional android software improvement company is recommended. Cellular Software program improvement firms work with groups of IT consultants, supported by staff leaders and guided by project managers. Such companies comply with a step-by-step course of to develop apps comparable to - conceptualizing the idea, looking on feasibilities, developing the concept, testing it on actual-life setting, and launching the end purposes in market.

How to Effectively "Game" Your Brand

Successful brands of today know that the key to success is connecting and engaging with the audience. You can’t just capture their attention – you have to learn how to keep it. You want your audience to stay longer in your website, interact more with you in social media, and effectively remember your brand and spread the word about it to other people.

This is why most brands now utilize an array of marketing strategies to promote their brand. And one of the most interesting and fun ways to do this is to “game” your brand.

So what exactly does “gaming” your brand mean? Well, it’s all about giving incentives to your customers, encouraging them to play, and giving them tangible or intangible rewards. Basically, people enjoy gaming – getting rewards, winning prizes, unlocking mysteries to discover new things.

Sometimes it’s not even about the incentive or reward, but the game itself. People enjoy being challenged – they like the thrill of solving a puzzle, and they love competing with fellow gamers.

But how exactly do you effectively launch a brand campaign that includes gaming? Here are some things you should first answer:

     1. Does your brand and gaming fit well with each other?

Not all brands and gaming go hand in hand. There are certain products or services that just don’t fit well with “gamification”, and it may brand’s like that more harm than good if they pursue gaming in their marketing campaign.

On the other hand, if your brand is all about fun and creating your own culture, then adding gaming to the mix can definitely give your brand a boost and encourage more interaction between your brand and your audience.

Think about how gaming fits into your brand’s current marketing campaign. Does it seem like the odd one out, or does it blend well with your other strategies? Don’t force gaming for the sake of adding it to your marketing mix – think of how well it fits in with your current plans first.

     2. Are your customers comfortable with “gamification”?


Before you even begin “gaming” your brand, you should start with understanding your audience. What do they like? What tickles their bones? Are they willing to try anything, or are they more cautious about new products and experiences? Would they be comfortable with “gamification”?

By knowing your audience, you can get a rough idea of whether they would be interested or not in gaming, and if they are, you’d be able to create a gaming experience suited especially for their tastes.

     3. What do you wish to gain from “gaming” your brand?

It would be silly to simply include games into your marketing mix without understanding your goals and knowing what you wish to gain from it. Do you want to promote brand awareness? Encourage brand interaction? Obtain more customers?

Getting into gaming should be more than just copying what everyone else is doing. You need to understand why you’re doing this and what you want from it.

     4. Is the game relevant to your brand and community?

It is essential that the game you put out for your brand is relevant to your community; otherwise, how would it work in promoting brand awareness? You want your audience to play the game, yet continue to remember your brand while playing it. You don’t want them to simply enjoy the game and then forget about you.

This is why the game you create should be something that relates to your brand, something that keeps your brand at the forefront of people’s minds. Think of Oreo Pinata and how the game really showed the consumers’ passion for Oreo. It wasn’t just about winning the contest, but the enjoyment of the game and how the community rallied around the brand that they loved.

     5. Does the game create a community around your brand?

This is perhaps the most essential question you need to ask yourself. If the game doesn’t form a community around your brand, then why release the game at all? You don’t want people to mindlessly immerse themselves in the game and forget the world. What you want is for them to enjoy talking about the game and your brand, share the game with other people, and encourage others to play. Otherwise, what’s the point of creating a game for your brand?

“Gamification” can definitely help you create brand buzz, but it’s important that you evaluate whether your brand fits with gaming and understand what you want to gain from it. Don’t just get into gaming simply because other brands are doing it – you want to ensure that gaming works for your brand, not against it.

How to Make Fancy Work for You

There are no limits today as to what direct sellers can use to market their products. From the tradition of hosting a party or going from house to house selling their wares, nowadays, direct sellers use social media, mobile, and other platforms in order to reach their audience.

Social media is definitely playing a huge part in many direct selling campaigns. Both companies and the direct sellers themselves are taking advantage of the different platforms in order to engage and interact with their consumers.

One of the newest and most popular social media platforms of today that’s making waves all over the world is Pinterest. It currently boasts a reported 11 million users who are enjoying the virtual pinboard. Even direct sellers can take advantage of the platform since it’s a great way to engage with your audience and find products that they love.

But there’s another site that’s starting to create a buzz and is comparable to Pinterest. The site is called Fancy and it started out having similar functions as Pinterest, where you can “Fancy” things and create a catalog of your favorite things around the web. But now it has transformed itself into something unique – it recently launched an ecommerce business that their CEO Joseph Einhorn believes may even rival the giant Amazon.

In the past, Fancy offered coupons and discounts to people who “fancied” certain products. But now, whenever a person “fancies” something, companies, retailers and merchants can now bid on who gets to sell the product or item. It doesn’t even have to be the exact item, but can be something simply similar to that product.

Some people say it’s like groupon in reverse. Instead of companies offering deals to everyone, people who “fancy” an item are instead offered good deals by companies or merchants. You can now easily purchase items from a site you enjoy visiting and get inspiration from. How great is that?

As a direct seller, should you consider Fancy in your marketing campaign?

If you’ve considered Pinterest, then you should definitely consider Fancy as well. With Pinterest, it’s more about connecting, engaging, and finding inspiration from lovely things, yet most of the time, it doesn’t really translate into sales. But with Fancy, you now have the power to bid on a product that someone fancies and sell it to that person right on the site. A user fancying a product can easily translate into direct sales for you.
Also, surprisingly, even though Pinterest has over 11 million users according to reports, the average pins per user are only 3. However with Fancy, which only has around 250,000 registered users, the average number of fancies per user is 66.

So even though there are significantly more users in Pinterest, Fancy users are a lot more active and passionate about what they’re fancying. As a direct seller, you can really take advantage of this knowledge.

Here are some tips on how to make Fancy work for you:

     1. Start fancying

Before you can begin making Fancy work for you, it’s important that you understand the platform, how it works, and how people are using it. Sign up and start fancying what you find as well as the things other people have fancied. Make your own personal catalog and show off your favorite things. You need to learn how the site works so you can make it work for you.

     2. Start connecting

Just like any other social media platform, Fancy is all about connecting with others. In addition to fancying products that you discovered yourself, it’s also a good idea to fancy products from other people’s catalogues. You also have the option of interacting with other users by commenting on their catalogues and items they’ve fancied. This creates a conversation between the two of you and helps you connect.

By following other people, you can hopefully obtain followers as well, and this helps you understand what your audience is interested in and how it translates to the products you’re offering.

     3. Start selling

As a direct seller, of course you want the end result to translate into direct sales, and Fancy can help you with that. Since you have the option of bidding on a particular item, product or service, then something that someone has fancied can result in a sale for you if you win the bid.

It’s important that you keep up with the trends and always be on the lookout for what people are fancying though. You want to be updated whenever someone fancies a product you’re selling or something related to it.

Fancy can definitely work for direct sellers, but it’s essential that you understand the platform first and how to engage with other users so you can really use the site to your advantage. Just wait and see, and Fancy may just be the next big thing in social selling.

Hootsuite and Your Brand

Many brands have embarked on a social media campaign in order to reach a wider audience and effectively promote brand awareness.

Of course, with so many social media accounts you need to sign up for in order to effectively promote your brand, it can be tricky to manage them all. Though you can assign different people to manage your different social accounts, it can also be very time consuming for you to have to monitor all of them to ensure that your brand campaigns are running smoothly. So is there a solution to this?

Managing your brand with Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an excellent solution to this problem. It basically gives you a social media dashboard where it integrates all your social media accounts in one convenient and easy-to-use platform. No more going from tab to tab or window to window in your browser – with Hootsuite, everything is neatly organized in one screen, so you can easily monitor your accounts, post updates, and track the progress of your campaign in one platform.

Hootsuite makes it easy for you to encourage brand awareness since everything is laid out for you in the dashboard. If you want to post the same content to your different accounts, you can easily do that within Hootsuite, saving you time and effort. And you can even schedule posts, which is an excellent feature you can use whenever you plan to be away but want to continue promoting your brand.

Hootsuite is also an excellent choice for brand monitoring. Some great Google Analytics features are built into the platform, so you can easily measure and share the results of your campaign without having to leave the dashboard. You can measure the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns, see page view statistics reports so you can see which content your audience likes, view regional traffic so you can target the locals, and even learn which channels are the best performers in terms of traffic for your brand, so you know where to focus.

Another excellent feature that Hootsuite has is the ability to shorten urls so that you can monitor whether your links are getting clicked or not. This is an excellent way to measure brand awareness and see if your call to action is effective or not.

The ability to create custom search streams also helps you monitor brand mentions so that you never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience. You can monitor mentions of your brand, keywords, competitor names, and a lot more. This enables you to gain insights on what people are searching for and talking about.

Truly, you will soon find that Hootsuite is an essential tool for brand monitoring and promoting brand awareness. Best of all is the fact that the tool is very affordable – you can actually get started on using Hootsuite to manage your brand for free. But if you want to add other team members as well as get more comprehensive reports, the pro plans start at only $5.99/month.

The Fancy - Taking on Pinterest and Social Commerce?

Many people continue to spend much of their time interacting and engaging on Facebook and Twitter, more and more individuals are also turning to sites such as Pinterest and Fancy for sharing and inspiration.

With over 11 million reported users, Pinterest seems to be on its way to becoming a highly popular social networking site. In fact, just this Monday, Forbes reported that they were now the “number three” social network joining Facebook and Twitter at the head of the class.  Pinterest is all about making highly visual and creative boards about the things you like and enjoy, and then sharing them with your friends and followers. Majority of its users are women, who enjoy pinning and re-pinning the content they find.

Getting a little Fancy?

But have you heard about Fancy? This site is actually quite similar to Pinterest, but with a couple of differences. The main difference is that unlike Pinterest, which is more about creative pictures and inspirational boards, Fancy is geared toward ecommerce, and has recently allowed users to buy products directly from the site.

Fancy started as somewhat similar to Pinterest, where you can “Fancy” the gorgeous products that are found in the site. It’s a social photo-clipping service that’s very popular among people who like looking for unique and rare things.

Interesting to note is that unlike Pinterest, Fancy’s users are 60% male and only 40% female. They are often seen posting high fashion clothes and accessories, consumer goods, and pictures of lovely and exotic places. And even though its current 250,000 users is a long way from Pinterest’s 11 million, it seems that Fancy users are more interactive in the site, as they fancy over a million products in just a week.

It joins the ranks of Google+ (another predominantly male social network – at least having more active and social males in their population) as being a network that reaches more men than women.

It first began its venture to ecommerce by offering coupon codes to users who fancy images from certain merchants. But now, you have the option of purchasing right on Fancy, without the hassle of having to leave the site.

How do you Fancy?

How exactly does it work? Well, whenever a user fancies an item, brands and retailers can then bid to sell that specific product. Once approved, they set the price and quantity for the item, and Fancy gets a percentage of the cost paid by the buyer.

It’s actually a different way of doing social commerce. Instead of brands and businesses trying their best to connect with consumers through special deals and other marketing strategies in social media, Fancy users are the ones who look for products they like, while brands and businesses bid on those products to determine who sells them.

The idea is quite new and innovative, and CEO Joe Einhorn is confident that it will soon appeal to the masses. Backed by some serious investors, Fancy seems to be set on taking ecommerce by storm.

The challenge, however, is getting more users to sign up in the site and start fancying things. Fancy’s 250,000 users is still a long way to go from where Pinterest’s 11 million users are standing.

So will Fancy be the next big thing in social commerce? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Be Careful You Don't Hand Your Brand Reputation Over to Youth

The youth today is normally seen as the more tech-savvy ones because they have grown up with the type of technology that is available to us today. It is this same technology that people have been using to improve the way they do business. We have computers and mobile phones and the vast number of applications we utilize in order to make business transactions easier and cheaper. We also have the internet where we can find millions of people to market to. Technology continues to improve in order to make our lives easier and because of this, businesses have become dependent on it.

Even though a lot of people have already become dependent on technology, there are still a lot of people who are having a hard time adjusting to computers and the internet. This is why many businesses have become interested in young professionals because the youth is expected to know more about technology. Businesses believe that younger people know how to effectively use computers and access the internet. Yet, just knowing how a tool functions doesn’t constitute expertise in marketing or at the very least communication.

There are those who know what Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are but they may not fully understand how to effectively catalyze conversations on these sites for marketing purposes. They may know how to post photos and share content but is there a true strategy and expected outcome from doing so?  Could something they do hurt your brand reputation? And, are you willing to let just anyone be responsible for your online identity?   While it may be true that younger employees or interns may be more knowledgeable in using social media, it is still important to follow tight measures to ensure that your employee is mirroring your brand online and utilizing their personal brand to express your brand in its best form.

Here are some tips on how you can protect your brand when you decide on hiring someone young to manage your social media sites:

Verify their computer skills – This is important since it involves handling your online reputation. You want to make sure that the person you are hiring for the post knows how to use the computer well and navigate the internet properly. This might seem absurd but again, you can never be too sure. Computers are made to speed up business transactions. If you hire someone who doesn’t really know what they are doing, you’re just decreasing office productivity. If the position is urgent, you want to make sure that you get someone who really knows how to handle computers and the tools that you are using.

Someone who understands your brand – It is important that the person you place in the position to handle your online presence understands who you are as a brand. If that person also has the same values as your brand does, you will have an easier time managing your employee. Make your employee understand who you are as a brand and how you want your brand to be portrayed online.

Keep constant communication – To ensure that you don’t risk your brand’s reputation you have to make sure you work closely with your employee. Establish constant communication between the two of you to ensure that your employee is doing everything right. It is going to take a while before they can adjust to the workflow which is why it is important that someone monitors your employee’s work. Keep in mind that this is your brand. Set rules for your employee to keep them from accessing their personal accounts while working. You don’t want your employee to accidentally post something on your brand profile and inadvertently cause a social meltdown.

Don’t turn all the responsibility over, yet – Don’t immediately pass all responsibility to your employee. It takes a while to get used to managing different social media at one time. You don’t want to overwhelm your employee with too many tasks because this will lead to mistakes. As you work closely with your employee, you will know when it is right to hand him or her more responsibility. Make sure to always check with your employee first though to see whether they understand precisely what they need to do and how to do it.

While I use the term “employee” here, the term freelancer, outsourced marketing department or advertising agency rep can be used, too.

Businesses have been taking their brands online and if you are thinking of hiring a young employee to manage your social media accounts on the premise that they are more knowledgeable about technology than older professionals, make sure to follow necessary measurements and provide readily accessible support, guidance and training. Marketing your brand using social media sites is not easy and if you need dependable help with your online marketing strategy, you can try Buzz to Bucks, which is a word of mouth marketing firm for small business and personal brands!

Virtual Desktops - Real Financial savings

Virtual Desktops - Real Financial savings

There's by no means been a greater time to chop overheads by up to 60%, and you can do it by deploying a Digital Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

VDI can slash the cost of your present desktop atmosphere - and lower energy use by 60%, as well. At the similar time, you get better productivity, higher security and extra business agility. VDI also reduces your total cost of possession by lengthening hardware life. This can assist you implement your VDI programme quickly and reduce your operating costs faster.

­ Minimize support prices as much as 60%
­ Improve security
­ Save on equipment
­ Enhance productiveness
­ Reduce carbon footprint
­ Increase enterprise agility
­ Assure back-up
­ Lower complete cost of possession
­ Get 12 month payback
­ Achieve integral catastrophe restoration

The most important expertise

Digital Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the certain option to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Forrester call it "the most important expertise to hit the corporate PC house because the skinny shopper". A current survey by IDG Analysis Providers suggests that 34% of corporate desktop supply can be virtualised by the tip of 2010. The reason being that the majority businesses are centred on individuals sitting at desktops, and it prices quite a bit to provision and manage this PC estate. Even worse, it has been calculated that only one per cent of the funding in desktop assets is used at anybody time - in any organisation.

Desktops are also a headache for directors; assist and upkeep are labour-intensive and Information again up and security is a constant problem.

You acquire immediately

VDI can take away all these worries and much of the associated fee since you create a virtual desktop infrastructure and consolidate the PC content onto centralised servers. Your customers have thin client access, enabling you to immediately deliver down the costs of hardware, power and licences by 40 to 60%. Security is ensured, again ups are automatic, catastrophe restoration is integral and crucially, you'll rework your administration.

Better for less

With traditional desktop computing the IT division usually has to dispatch a technician to resolve many finish consumer issues. You may stop this instantly with VDI, as a result of the main infrastructure is managed centrally.

All the things runs on servers that can be controlled centrally from an information centre. All information and applications are supplied from there to your users. This means that a technician can have any user up and working in minutes without even stepping out of the information centre. Your IT folks may give better assist at lower value, and everybody turns into extra productive.

As the primary useful resource (storage, processing power etc.) is centralised, you do not have to interchange the virtual devices. Typically, a VDI machine can run for ten years, so you scale back your complete cost of possession (TCO) nonetheless further. You protect knowledge to, as a result of the servers are safe (desktops are notoriously weak to data loss).

Still a very good user expertise

Importantly, with VDI you will not diminish the person experience. Virtual hosted desktops will not be mere dumb terminals. The top customers will obtain the identical wealthy experience they have turn into accustomed to from their PC.

Quick payback

You could see an nearly quick payback from VDI. Whenever you add up the features from centralised management and support, along with shared storage and the discharge of idle capability, clients typically achieve a return on funding inside 12 months: And it has never been extra essential to make these financial savings!

Because the numbers of employees relying on desktops has grown, the support duties have change into more demanding. It is increasingly complicated and labour-intensive to deploy or patch desktop operating methods, update anti-virus signatures and safe data. Additionally, for optimum productivity and safety, you should assist branch, distant and residential-workers as if they had been in head office.

Like taking 35 automobiles off the street

And, in case you are concerned about your carbon footprint, suppose what slicing desktop energy consumption by 60% can do for you. One medium-sized company that switched to VDI stated it was the equal of talking 35 cars off the road.

Acquire immediately

As a result of administrators can provision new desktops in minutes, giving customers their own personalised environments, with less need for retraining, you not solely decrease your TCO - you also turn into more agile. You possibly can respond sooner and compete more effectively.

Go to EMAContinuity @ http://emacontinuity.com

You must have a Social Media Process

Today, if your brand isn’t on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like, you’re going to be out of the loop and left behind. You’re going to be left in the wake of other brands’ success.

So maybe it’s time for you to jump on the bandwagon. You need to create your Facebook page, start a blog, and create a video for YouTube right now…

Or wait a minute.

Is throwing yourself head on to the oncoming train that’s social media really the best thing to do? Should you just start signing up for all these accounts without considering what’s best for your small business brand?

Of course not.

This is why it’s essential for you to have a social media process. As with any kind of marketing strategy or campaign you’re planning to utilize, you must first understand why you’re doing it and what your goals are in using it, before going ahead with implementation.

This is the reason why some brands fail in their social marketing strategy. It’s because they never had a social media process to guide them. They simply decided to get in while ahead, but they didn’t really have a clear goal on what they wanted to accomplish using these platforms.

So before you can start creating buzz in your social marketing, here are some things you should do:

Review your business goals

Before you can create a social media process, it’s important that you review your business goals. What do you want to achieve in social media? Do you want to build brand awareness, create conversation, generate leads, or sell products?

Remember though that social media is primarily for connecting with your audience, and not for selling. If you do hard selling in different social media accounts, you just might drive people away.

Consider the platforms available 

Though you may think it would be better for your small business to utilize all the social media platforms available to you, this may become time-consuming and cost-ineffective in the long run.

Instead, it is far better for you to focus on one or two platforms where you think most of your audience are in. This enables you to really target your audience and connect with them.

For example, if you’re a photographer, it may be more worthwhile for you to be on Flickr compared to YouTube or you might have concerns over copyright and want to review the platform terms of service.  Perhaps a site like Deviant Art suits you better? Or if you’re a professional looking for clients, LinkedIn may be the better choice compared to Facebook.

Understand the platform you’ve chosen

You’re not going to be successful in your social marketing if you don’t understand the platform you’ve chosen. Once you’ve determined what platforms suit your brand best, you need to study them and understand how best to engage your audience using them.

One of the worst things you can do for your small business brand is to botch up your social marketing presence because you don’t understand the platform you’re using. So study it first before jumping in.

Remember to measure

Now that you’re ready to start your social marketing campaign, it’s also important to determine what you’re going to measure. How are you going to measure the success of your campaign? If you aren’t measuring it, then how will you know if your campaign is succeeding or not, if you’re getting a return in your investment?

There are many tools that can help you measure the success of your campaign. Google Alerts and Social Mention are some of the more commonly used ones. Of course my personal favorite that I’m an affiliate with is Sprout Social.  So don’t forget to measure, since this is going to determine if you should soldier on with what you’re doing or if it’s time to re-evaluate and re-assess your campaign.

Without a social media process, your social marketing campaign will be destined for failure. So make sure that you start right. Plan ahead, and plan well. Don’t just jump into social media without reviewing your business goals, considering and understanding the platforms available to you, and having ways to measure your success.

Using social media is a great way to create buzz around your brand, but without a process, your small business brand isn’t going to go far.

Don't Disrespect Your Small-Biz Clients

When you're selling to small business, don't think of your customers as children.
You may have a big company, and theirs may be small. But don't talk down to business owners, and don't think for a minute that they are second-rate or stupid. Business owners are proud of their businesses, and they hate being talked down to.

No one means to insult their customers, but it happens all the time in small business. Take, for instance, a recent marketing venture involving Google, RBC, Rogers and The Globe and Mail.

“Get Your Business Online” (www.gybo.ca) offers Canadian business owners a free dot.ca web registration – and a free low-end hosting account. The laudable objective was to get more Canadian businesses online – but I found the solution clunky and even disrespectful.

Sure, participants could save the cost of registering a dot-ca domain name (e.g., sellingtosmallbusiness.ca), but that’s only a $13 item – and the free offer only covers the first year. Participants also got a barebones hosting account, enough to build a basic, no-frills web site – but again, the free offer only lasts a year. In ensuing years the hosting site (yola.com) collects another $13 or so per annum – although of course it really hopes to sell these clients up to more costly, but more fully featured, hosting plans.

The big problem, to my mind, was the sponsors’ assumption that a $13 fee was holding back entrepreneurs from setting up their own website. More likely, it’s a failure of vision, or ignorance of the web or how to sell on it, that prevent more companies from branding themselves and selling online. Setting up a cheap-looking website does nothing to solve these problems or  help these businesses grow.

Worse, the program allowed YOLA to advertise on the participants’ sites. Site pages also contained the phrase, “Designed by free CSS templates,” which pretty much exposes the website owners as freebie-seekers.

In other words, the program sponsors weren't respecting the participants’ businesses. They seem to have never thought about entrepreneurs' needs for credibility.

The system was finally revised to eliminate the telltale line, “Designed by free CSS templates,” but only after I complained about the program to an executive of one of its sponsor groups. I had previously denounced the oversight in my Financial Post column, but none of the sponsors seem to have noticed that. (You can read my original article on “Get Your Business Online” here.)

This is a prime example of how companies with the best of intentions can mess up when they sell to small business. Recognize the market’s need for respect and for well-considered, sophisticated solutions. Hard-working business owners deserve nothing less.

You are Your Business Brand

If you want to attract customers, you have to have a good marketing strategy. As a small business, especially when you are only starting out, you have to carefully monitor every step. You also have to monitor whether your efforts and strategies are working at attracting and gaining customers.

With small business owners, your business brand often assumes everything that the owner’s personal brand has – the good and the bad.

How do you marry the two so that it’s sustainable and duplicatable by others (team members, assistants) who come to represent your business?

Here are a few tips on how you can start building your own brand:

Your business values – You can only start building your brand when you know what impression you want to make on your customers. Setting your company values is always a good place to start. You can shape your brand based on how you want your customers to remember you. If you have employees, train them in how to act and do business the way your brand does it. Keep in mind that whatever you or your employees do or say gives people an impression of your brand. As a small business with a relatively small workforce, it’s easier for you to control your employees so take advantage of this.

As part of your marketing campaign, choose a simple branding message. This message should convey who you are and should attract consumers to try your products or services. It should be aligned with your products or services so that when consumers try it out, they will trust that you are someone who does good business.

Set the right tone – Your company voice should have the right tone when communicating with your customers. Your company “voice” should always be aligned with your business values and your brand. This adds consistency to your branding strategies. So whether you are physically or virtually interacting with customers, you should be sending your brand message in a consistent manner. This alone will help you stand out from the rest and it will help your customers distinguish you from the market.

A brand logo – People are quite visual beings and there is nothing more impressive than sending out a consistent message along with a logo or image that represents that message well. Having a good logo that complements your message will add consistency to your marketing strategy. This will also make it harder for consumers to forget you because they have something to associate their great experiences with.

Trial and error – Branding does not happen overnight which is why you have to be patient. You should be ready to try and mix things up until you can get the right tone, message, and logo to truly show who you are as a brand. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. If you have a social media account, use it to listen to what other people are saying about your business. Interact with your customers, whether online or offline. Take the feedback and use it to tweak your message, tone, or logo in order to satisfy your customers better.

Take care of your customers – Consumers can make you successful in so many ways. While it may be true that you were the one who came up with an innovation, your customers can help you shape it so as to attract even more consumers. If you know how to take care of your customers, even in the smallest way, you can become successful. Pay attention to their needs and they will keep coming back to you. Watch out for consumers trends and you will attract even more.

The toughest part of any relationship is the people. Isn’t that the truth!  Help yourself by connecting the dots on how you express your personal brand and how that translates to you business brand.  Share that with new team members and help them connect the dots from their personal brand to your business brand.  The ideal situation is when a person can express your business brand in their own style and voice – nothing is more genuine and powerful!