POST CATEGORY : Information Technology

5 Tools to Manage Your Small Business More Effectively

Running a business, however small, is no walk in the park. With little or no staff, you would have to take care of the many challenges inherent in business management, which can include financing, marketing, managing deliverables and growing the business, among other things.

business apps

Like a plumber and his tools, it is imperative that you are equipped with spot-on business applications to grow your business, as allowing yourself to settle for software systems that get in the way of effective communication, data accuracy and reliability, client relationships and employee engagement are detrimental to success.

If you’re in the market for tools to help you manage your business more effectively, here are five you might want to take a look at:

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a free social intranet framework for small businesses comprised of a maximum of 12 team members.…

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Why You Should Consider Hosted Small Business Forms

As an SMB CEO, you are required to find the best solutions offering you the best value for money, as resources are scarce these days.

When you are running a full-fledge business website, you need to give emphasis to one of the most important – yet often neglected – features of your website: Your online forms.

Online small business forms

Your online forms – particularly your contact forms – need to be crafted in such a way that it converts well. Increasing your contact form conversion rate should be your top-most priority.

When you design online forms, you essentially have two options: design and host on your own, or design and host using a third-party service.…

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Apps for a Small Business’ Accounting Needs

Being in the accounting department of a small business doesn’t mean being tucked away in the back corner of the office hammering away on a Dell desktop running Windows XP and an old copy of QuickBooks. No sir, accounting can actually be fun thanks to the help of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and some nifty apps as well as long awaited Mac accounting software.

small business owner using mobile accounting apps

The idea of putting accounting-related tasks into a mobile device might seem scary to some accounting pros. But the concept of being able to touch, swipe and manipulate numbers at the stroke of a finger can be pretty liberating.…

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Broken Data Storage – How to Recover Your Data?

As winter storms strike North America, chances are good that disaster will strike right at the heart of your business.

Hopefully you have surge protection to safe-guard your IT equipment and storage devices…

Hopefully you back up your data so persistently that there’s no chance you won’t be able to do a fast and easy disaster recovery once the storm lifts…

broken hard drive

There’s a lot of things an SMB CEO needs to be hopeful about. If you are like most people, some lessons have to be learned the hard way, and you now find yourself in a position where you have to recover some uber-important data from a dead or otherwise discombobulated storage device – your laptop, PC, thumb drive, SD card, or main server.…

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8 Essential Small Business Sales Apps for 2014

I just received a package delivered by one of the leading International shipping companies. The package needs to clear customs, and thus I obviously need to pay some fees. The company accepts collect-on-delivery (COD) payment, so I took that option. To my surprise, the delivery man requests the fees to be paid in hard cash – or a bank transfer before the delivery is made.

collecting payment using sales apps

I don’t know how about you, but as I rarely have cash at home this arrangement is, by any means, not that convenient for me. I thought, “Why on earth such big business don’t facilitate payment collection via credit cards/debit cards method?” Well, they will likely lose a client as, obviously, I have plenty of other choices of shipping companies that offer COD using wireless tools and apps – for my convenience.…

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Easy Step by Step Approach to Make a WordPress Site for Your Small Business

Almost every small business owner is faced with the challenge of building a website to help develop and market their brand at some point. To those of us who’ve successfully built a few, or dozens of sites, it seems almost silly that anyone would anguish over such a task – it’s really not that difficult right?

small business website building

However, for those of you who haven’t, but desperately want to: you probably have a hundred different questions running through your head:

  • “Do I really have the time to mess around with this darned website thinga-myjiggy right now?”
  • “What if I do all this work – research, planning, executing, outsourcing, maintenance – and it doesn’t make me any money?”
  • “Should I just pay someone to take care of all this stuff?”
  • “What’s this hosting thing I keep reading about, and what the heck’s the difference between managed and unmanaged – Windows or Linux?”
  • Maybe I need to enroll in some online courses – or learn more about HTML, PERL, and C++?

    • …

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Why You Need a Company Blog

Running a company blog can take up a significant amount of time. As a result, many small business CEOs are reluctant to start one. However, a company blog can reap long-term benefits for your business, particularly in terms of web traffic, viable leads, and brand reputation.

company blog

According to one survey, businesses with a company blog get 55% more traffic and 70% more leads than those that don’t. Here are the reasons why you should seriously consider starting a company blog.

  • A business blog is a hallmark of authority and quality. It demonstrates that your company is run by knowledgeable people, who have a deep understanding of their industry.

    • …

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Need More Hours in The Day? Follow These Tips for Cutting Your E-mail Time in Half

More than a quarter of an employee’s workday is consumed with reading and responding to e-mail, according to a study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).

email management on the go

E-mail notifications and mobile connectivity have left many professionals feeling as though they must read every e-mail as soon as it comes through—a practice that cuts into a worker’s productivity throughout the day.

But this constant connectivity can have a negative impact on your business—pulling employees out of conversations with associates and clients and leaving your team members feeling burned out. By making a few small changes to your e-mail, you can become more productive and provide better service to your client base.…

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Utilising Search to Start and Grow Your Business

As a search marketer for over ten years and CEO, I decided last year to start my own business and have Google to thanks for it’s success to this day. Here are a few key insights to help any CEO or business owner looking to start their own business online.

search marketing

Align Your Business To Search Behaviour

One of the first marketing 101 lessons at any school is that the pathway to success in 99% of cases is to meet an existing ‘need’. Google has the perfect free tool called the keyword planner which can help you understand what people are searching for and therefore the most popular sets of ‘needs’ in society.…

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High-Tech, High-Touch: Relevancy and Relationships for Today’s Young Businesses

Today’s marketing landscape is radically different than it was just one decade ago. It continues to evolve at an ever-increasing rate, keeping pace with the latest technological innovations.

mobile tech

Successful companies have adapted to the demands of this new environment, integrating competitive SEO and social media campaign initiatives into their marketing portfolios. Those who turn their backs on these changes put themselves at a steep disadvantage. However, those who are a bit too eager to go full-tech run the risk of falling even further.

The problem isn’t that businesses choose to embrace the high-tech transformation. After all, in order to remain relevant, a company needs to play ball on the same field as its competition.…

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