Category Office – IT

Entries 37 Total

Busting a few blogging myths for small businesses

Feb 4, ’12 2:59 PM
Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Blogging, Business Marketing, Marketing/PR

When I speak to business owners, whether to a group or one on one, about social media and, particularly, blogging, I often get a sense of unease in the room.

A lot of that is to do with people’s fears about writing, being wrong, being creative, having enough time, criticism from others etc etc.

This post aims to bust a few myths about blogging is and is not, from my perspective and was inspired by an exchange I had with another blogger on this site, Lorraine Allman, the other day on Twitter where I shared my perspective on blogging and what it is to me.

Lorraine Allman tweet

So, let’s bust a few blogging myths:

  • A great blogger does not need to be a trained writer. Like Seth Godin says in Talker’s block write like you talk. Everyone has something to say.
  • Blogging is like a muscle. You have to train yourself to get better. However, with practice you do get better.
  • When you blog, you don’t have to be right.
  • Blogging is about sharing your opinion, your analysis, your perspective.
  • Blogging lets people know what you stand for, should be part of your branding efforts. In a world, where many of us are looking for a more personal approach to doing business with a company or a person this is a great way for you, your personality and your thoughts to reach beyond you needing to be there.
  • A blog post doesn’t need to be long. In fact, some of the best blog posts I have ever seen are short.
  • A blog post doesn’t need to be written. It could be a video or a sketch or a photo or an audio recording (podcast) or a slideshow or……

Shall we blog?

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Top 5 Business Data Cloud Storage Tips

Jan 27, ’12 3:53 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Data Security, Top 5 Tips

top5.jpg

The top 5 tips weekly post is always full of hints and tips for small, home & micro business owners.

1. Although you often pay a monthly fee for cloud storage, it still usually works out cheaper than buying physical hardware for data storage.

2. The cost of cloud storage covers the outlay of the cloud provider for storing your data in a much more highly secured environment than would be possible for a small business.

3. Cloud storage is scalable and will cost far less per megabyte when you buy bigger storage packages.

4. Remote access to your stored files usually allows you to access them from your laptop or smartphone.

5. Don’t rely on free cloud hosts to store your business data. There is no guarantee that your host will be there from one day to the next.

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The Rise Of The Tablets

May 11, ’11 12:38 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Cloud Computing, Office - IT, Small Business / SOHO, Tablet Computing, use online IT

Ever since the launch of the Apple iPad sales in other computers have taken a hit, especially notebook computers.

Tablets

Given the ease of use, weight and dimensions, this is hardly surprising. When the iPad was announced we at WinWeb made the decision to make our new apps work natively in the Apple iPad browser. With that we continue in the tradition of true cloud computing applications that you do not have to install any software, all you need is a browser.

A whole raft of new tablets are available today and more are being announced. Focus have created a nice infographic about the development of the tablet market looking into the future – just click on it to see it bigger.

I think that tablets are ideal small business IT tools, especially if you use cloud applications to run your business. Some of the benefits are long battery life, high security (remote wipe and locate), easy online software updates, to name but a few.

Many are not only Wi-Fi enabled but also 3G ready, meaning you can take them on the road (or the beach) and still be in business, totally hassle free. I think you should have a look at them as a serious small business tool.

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Rethink IT. Revitalize Business. – IaaS

Apr 27, ’11 8:25 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories IT, Infrastructure as a Service, Office - IT, Software as a Service

When you look at products like WinWeb’s Online Office Suite you realize that it provides you with far more than just small business cloud computing software or Software as a Service (SaaS), it is actually a complete small business IT “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS).

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IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
Delivers time-savings, security and over 50% IT cost savings to small business.

Small businesses today often have a internal Ethernet network with one or more servers in a more or less secure location inside the businesses offices. Often plagued by excessive IT cost, downtime and relying on third party services to keep the network and office IT infrastructure going. Running a Microsoft Exchange Server can be expensive if you consider all the associated costs – you need to deal with security issues, physical security (who can physically get to the servers to damage them) and data security and backup when disaster strikes (fire, flooding, strike, etc).

Do you have all the answers? Or do you feel a little uneasy thinking about these topics?

All this is a thing of the past with a cloud-based small business office infrastructure or Infrastructure as a Service offering:

  • No Software Installation.
  • No Server Hardware.
  • No Server OS Software.
  • No Network Configuration.
  • No Service Contract Cost.
  • No Data Backup Problems.

And this all is not considering the hours of downtime, frustration, associated cost and loss of earnings. When your internal IT fails it becomes your number one priority, everything else stops, your business/customers suffer and that is very bad for business.

On the other hand, one simple, low monthly payment will deal with all IT issues relating to your business. A hard-disk fails, a computer breaks down, can’t get to the office, strike, flooding – you name it, just find a computer connected to the Internet and you are in business, easily and securely. Add to this the included 24/7 support and you know there is no way you could afford this kind of service/product for your small business in stand alone mode – it would just be prohibitively expensive.

Bottom line:- Infrastructure as a Service – saves time and over 50% of IT costs, while enhancing your data security – isn’t it time you had a look at better and cheaper IT and Rethink IT?

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Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

Apr 16, ’11 7:22 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Cloud Computing, Disaster Plan, Office - IT, Software as a Service, avoid growing pain, use online IT

Much is being said about so called APIs, software bridges, mashable technology an other little innocent sounding descriptions like – “our software plays nicely with this software”!

IMO – truth is – there is nothing “nice” about it! Let’s back up a little, what does it all mean?

What it means is this, the software vendors are asking you, the client, to connect their online software to another vendors software, in order to enhance your software functionality – this is a fragmented solution – where you data ends up in multiple places.

There are many reasons why this is being asked of you, some are:

  • They do not have the necessary resources, financially or otherwise, to produce a software application that provides a complete “integrated” solution for all the customer’s needs.
  • They lack the know how to produce an “integrated solution” and by offering fragmented solutions to the client they try to overcome their short comings.
  • They lack the understanding of the dangers to the clients data by following this fragmented approach!

Don’t get me wrong, APIs have their place, we use them to complement our clients experience with our software, but we never share our clients information with third parties or ask them to do so. This, in my view, leaves customers not only at the mercy of the old “It’s not us, it’s their problem!” excuse when things go wrong, but also puts clients data in many different places with often unclear legal and technical implications.

But, worst of all, when these APIs fail, and believe me they do, it can take days to get them fixed and back up running again – during which time the small business suffers financially, time wise because of duplicated work load and performance wise, because everyone is focused on the problem and not on the business.

The only way to go is with “integrated cloud computing“!

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Is Your Business Still Ignoring Social Media?

Feb 17, ’11 7:58 PM
Author techdeamon Categories Office - IT, bootstrap

Social Media for Business

Social media is arguably one of the greatest things to have ever happen to small businesses. In less than a decade of usage, it has managed to completely transform the way in which businesses are able to conduct their marketing activities.

In terms of what can be achieved with a great social media campaign, it puts even the smallest business on a level playing field with its larger competitors. A huge advertising budget of a multinational can be overshadowed quite easily by the simple power of a small business with a great idea.

Despite the compelling power of social media, many small businesses are simply unable to see all of the potential benefits that they could derive from it. This is a shame, because they are being left behind by big business once again.

The important thing to remember for any small business considering social media is that it cannot simply be used as a substitute for a business website. For the best results with social media you must integrate it with your own website, which should already be filled with interesting content that you can easily link back to.

Social media is important for branding purposes. Even if you are not concerned with immediately starting to use social media, you should at least secure your own business identity on the social networks as a placeholder to prevent anyone else from impersonating you.

Being a member of multiple social networks will also help your search engine rankings. Once a social media profile is indexed, it will count as a natural inbound link to your main website. Sharing links via social media will often help to improve the popularity of that link.

A social media profile can generate a large amount of high quality traffic to your website, because the people who click-through are likely to already be interested in your business or industry. Your best tactic is to select a social network that is relevant to your industry and then try to get creative. If your campaign goes viral it could be a massive success.

Interacting with customers is a key part of social media. This is a great way of drawing customer attention to new products or services that you offer. You can also use the social networks as a learning tool by finding out what other people in your industry are doing.

Small businesses that choose to ignore all of these great social media benefits are only going to be left further behind than they ever were before.

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Are You Risking Your Business By Taking Risks With Your Data?

Feb 9, ’11 8:34 PM
Author techdeamon Categories Data Security, Office - IT, use online IT

Cloud computing

Digital data loss can have severe consequences for any small business that is reliant on good recordkeeping. Losing customer data could mean that you don’t have any means to contact them or perhaps cause you to be left without details of financial transactions. This would either make it difficult for you to invoice them or leave a big hole in your financial records that would be difficult to account for at the end of the tax year.

If a small business does not take adequate data security measures, there are numerous things that have the potential to go wrong. A computer virus or trojan will almost certainly eventually infect unprotected computer systems that are connected to the Internet, causing damage or data loss. An antivirus / spyware solution and firewall is needed for every business computer to reduce risk.

Even computers that don’t have viruses can develop problems. Hard drives in particular have the potential to fail at any time and their lifespan can be quite unpredictable. Data loss like this can often be avoided by using external hard drives to backup your information, however if your business was to be hit by flooding, fire or theft then you would be likely to lose these too.

Some business owners use USB memory sticks to keep a record of data. Although these are often much longer-lasting than traditional hard drives and very convenient for data storage on-the-go, they are also very easily lost because of their small size.

The best solution for a small business is actually to embrace new technology and choose a cloud solution. This allows the business to store all of their information online far more securely than they would be able to offline.

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Is Your Business Blogging?

Jun 9, ’10 7:30 AM
Author techdeamon Categories Blogging

blogger

If your small business has a website (which it should!) then you should most definitely consider having a blog. Blogs are not just for rambling musings about peoples’ day-to-day lives and opinions, rather blogs are a fundamental way to improve traffic to your website and expand your business.

Blogs can be a great way to bring new customers to your business, or even to engage with current customers on a more personal level. A blog gives your business a voice, and a personality, and people do business with people. Giving your small business its own voice through a blog can be a great way to build your brand.

Having a blog also enables customers to engage with your business; they can comment on blog posts and have their own say about what it is that you and your small business do, how they think it could be improved and can even respond with praise for you service!

Blogging can also be a great way to increase web traffic. People often stumble upon blog posts relating to information they were looking for and will then visit your products or services from there. Chances were, if they were looking for something you have written about they are likely to be interested in your business!

There is another way blogging helps increase your web traffic, and that is by the increase in relevant, fresh content on your website. If you have a blog on your website the search engines love websites that have regularly updated, unique, relevant content. This in no way means you need to blog every day, but updating your sites’ blog regularly holds many benefits in terms of search engine optimization.

As well as creating a great avenue for fresh content to be displayed on your site, blogging also creates a new way for you to incorporate your key search terms in to your site; without it seeming ‘spammy’ or unnatural – if you talk about what your company does and related fields, chances are the keywords you are focusing on will naturally occur.

I love blogging about business and WinWeb.com – I find it exciting, and an exhilarating part of owning my own business. Give it a whirl, you just might love it!

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Martha Lane Fox on Digital Inclusion as a Route out of Poverty.

Oct 13, ’09 12:55 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories E-Commerce

I usually talk about – or rant more like – about why business needs to be online to save money, time and often their business, especially during economic downturns like these. But what about your everyday consumer?

Martha Lane Fox, best known as the co-founder of LastMinute.com, did a study with PWC and came up with some brutal numbers on how the everyday household can save hundreds of pounds and earn thousand more per year. Rather than me repeating it all here find out more on the BBCs Website. She has done an excellent job with this – you can’t afford not to see this.

And if you are still in a ‘business’ frame of mind, ask yourself these questions:

  1. How much money does my business lose because I don’t use enough online technology?
  2. How much can my customers save when they come to my website?
  3. How much better would my business do considering the savings in money and time, and increased turnover by using online technology?

Find out more @ bbc.co.uk

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Technorati – How relevant is it?

Sep 18, ’09 1:20 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Blogging

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I just received another email from technorati in which they told me that my loyal readers and blogroll entries no longer have any meaning to my blogs technorati ranking.

If you write for an audience like mine, where over 70% of my core readers don’t even have a website, it is very difficult to get anywhere with technorati. Does that make my readers or my blog less relevant. According to technorati it does – well, I beg to differ on this.

I am certain, that not only my blog falls outside of this very narrow band of technology insiders and geeks, which in my opinion makes technorati a useless tool to a large proportion of internet users and bloggers.

On another node, they can’t even pick up blog mentions on none registered blogs, this makes technorati a completely useless and distorting barometer of the blog-sphere.

Still, they want me to spread the “technorati” word for them, while they become more and more useless to me, so I’m sorry, but I have to decline this request for help.

Google ranks by popularity of the post in it’s niche. That appears to be a much more evenhanded approach, even twitter seems more appropriate.

So I guess my opinion is that technorati is no longer relevant! – ST.

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