SMB technical

I have been going through the process of upgrading the PC Workstations of our Software Development, Multimedia, and Program Development teams.

As these teams do fairly compute intensive tasks we chose to replace the old machines with new 64 bit engineering class workstations, with Microsoft Windows 7 pre-installed.

Overall, 64 bit Windows 7 has impressed us, with a few little caveats.

Manipulating large graphics and other types of rich media is significantly faster. By faster I mean seconds, rather than minutes. That has been the major benefit – worth the price of admission right there.

I had minimal issues with some older software we use such as Microsoft Office 2003, and Visual Studio, but found that versions of Adobe Acrobat earlier than version 9 are not compatible. So we were forced to upgrade a few version 7 and 8 licenses.

An upgrade of my backup software is also being required.

My largest frustration is that we have many remote workers accessing our network via a Cisco Systems VPN (Virtual Private Network) device, and for that, a small piece of software has to be installed on each machine.

The older 32 bit versions of that client  software had a feature that we relied on very heavily, which was the ability for the remote client computer to log in directly to our Microsoft Windows Domain. This allowed login scripts to provide access to resources, automatic user authentication to our Microsoft Exchange Server etc.

The 64 bit version of the VPN client has lost this functionality (at least as of this writing) which forces extra training for remote users on how to manually access resources, and training on how to properly authenticate (the name and password) for resources such as e-mail.

If you are a smaller business using some ancient piece of home built software built circa the mid 1990′s, you will most likely find that it will no longer work.

The SMB Takeaway

Overall, for compute intensive tasks, I believe you will find an immediate benefit to Windows 7. Testing all your older applications is a mandatory chore first.

Have you found major applications that gave you grief with Windows 7?

Filed under: business, IT, Real SMB IT, SMB, SME, Software, technology Tagged: Adobe Acrobat, Software, Windows 7

ul liSix Tech Guidelines and Rules For Technology SUCCESS In Your Business - Adrian's Network Virtual Networking Event/li liSohoOS Business Management Platform now Open for Business/li liConstant Contact's Emails Get More Social/li liOne-quarter of Small U.S. Businesses Expect the Gulf Oil Spill Will Impact Business/li liNew List of Upcoming Events, Conferences and Webinars for Growing Companies/li liStop Scratching The Surface of Twitter. Learn, Go Deep Boost Profits/li /ul pstrongSix Tech Guidelines and Rules For Technology SUCCESS In Your Business - Adrian's Network Virtual Networking Event/strongbr / September 16th, 8am/p pa href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/adriansnetwork.JPG"img alt="adriansnetwork.JPG" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/09/adriansnetwork-thumb-150x42-2104.jpg" width="150" height="42" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" //aJoin Ramon Ray on this month's virtual networking call to learn WHY it's important to INVEST in technology; WHY you should hire a TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT...and...well dial in to hear the full guidelines and rules! Don't forget! After the discussion there will be a regular virtual networking session. a href="http://adriansnetwork.com/"Click here for more details and to register./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zDFeyFLtm8zELVdHJ5gvPxmxd8o/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zDFeyFLtm8zELVdHJ5gvPxmxd8o/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zDFeyFLtm8zELVdHJ5gvPxmxd8o/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zDFeyFLtm8zELVdHJ5gvPxmxd8o/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=g5zeCZjQLFQ:AVy_JnrLbtw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/g5zeCZjQLFQ" height="1" width="1"/

Chris Dancy of ServiceSphere (@servicesphere on Twitter) tweeted this excellent 10 page (PDF) Executive Overview of IT Service Management (ITSM) and ITIL.

The PDF contains a succinct, and brief overview of the benefits of improving IT Service Management, with some easy to understand demonstrations of visual signs of poor ITSM.

If you are an executive wondering what the fuss is about with ITIL and ITSM, this document is a great summary.

Note, if you have been following this blog for a while, you will note some terminology changes compared to what I have written. This is simply because my experience has been with Version 2 of the ITIL framework, and this document summarizes ITIL utilizing the newer process terminology contained within Version 3 of the framework.

If you are looking into ITIL, I highly recommend checking out ServiceSphere at the above link, on twitter too!

Filed under: IT, IT Strategy, ITIL, ITSMF, leadership, Real SMB IT, service, services, skills, SMB, SME, technology, training Tagged: Executive, ITIL, ITSMF, SMB, SME

pOn the occasion of the June 22 Taste of Technology Small Business Series, a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/tasteoftechnology/liesoftwitterandfacebook/"The Lies of Twitter and Facebook/a 3 experts in social media gathered to speak about how businesses can leverage the power of social media for their businesses./p pLaura P. Thomas, Dell Global Small Business Creative Experience Teambr / Dan Zarrella, HubSpot Marketing Product Owner and Social Media Scientist br / Brent Leary, CRM Essentials/p pimg src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Laura%20P_thumb.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Dan%20Zarrella.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/brent_leary-thumb.jpg"/p pIn this next series of posts, we'll bring you their presentations./p pHere's the video and below is the video summary/transcript:/p h2Brent Leary, CRM Essentials/h2 centerembed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYH5ixQA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="520" height="310" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/center h2What is a customer management relationship and how to use CRM tools?/h2 pA lot of small businesses are trying to use CRM in the perspective of keeping their good customers in an efficient and effective way. CRM applications have been around for more then 20 years. At first these apps were really good at storing information. You could use them for keeping track of events, tasks, and contact information. Today there is so much more they can do./p pThe main challenge that a lot of small businesses are facing right now is finding and keeping customers on-line. Today your on-line customer relations can greatly influence your off-line business. Traditional CRM is not really helpful, because it wasn't build for that purpose. Right now it is the social media and the social networks that are driving the relationship building for businesses. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0Wk9_PClwzJeLL89dbQH0IwLYz4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0Wk9_PClwzJeLL89dbQH0IwLYz4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0Wk9_PClwzJeLL89dbQH0IwLYz4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0Wk9_PClwzJeLL89dbQH0IwLYz4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=gxUDbkCCaOM:-rAJrQzWZ1E:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/gxUDbkCCaOM" height="1" width="1"/

pOn the occasion of the June 22 Taste of Technology Small Business Series, a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/tasteoftechnology/liesoftwitterandfacebook/"The Lies of Twitter and Facebook/a 3 experts in social media gathered to speak about how businesses can leverage the power of social media for their businesses./p pLaura P. Thomas, Dell Global Small Business Creative Experience Teambr / Dan Zarrella, HubSpot Marketing Product Owner and Social Media Scientist br / Brent Leary, CRM Essentials/p pimg src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Laura%20P_thumb.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Dan%20Zarrella.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/brent_leary-thumb.jpg"/p pIn this next series of posts, we'll bring you their presentations./p h2Laura P. Thomas, Dell Global Small Business Creative Experience Team/h2 pHere's the video and below is the video summary/transcript:/p centerembed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYH5inIA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="520" height="310" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/center pDell, recently come under fire from the blogosphere because of the alleged poor quality of their customer-service. All the problems they suddenly faced originated from just one person, one #8220;little guy#8221; who created a blog to complain about his negative experiences as a customer and who generated a lot of heat for the company. /p pHis name was Jeff Jarvis and the blog he created in 2005 was called BuzzMachine./p pHe started a series of posts dedicated to the hardships he had trying to obtain the quality customer-service he thought he had purchased from Dell./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hF5iLgl-ISjYZI1tLv2BDr6c3rw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hF5iLgl-ISjYZI1tLv2BDr6c3rw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hF5iLgl-ISjYZI1tLv2BDr6c3rw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hF5iLgl-ISjYZI1tLv2BDr6c3rw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=ZNzKdquibmU:eVkQSsY3S6c:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/ZNzKdquibmU" height="1" width="1"/

pOn the occasion of the June 22 Taste of Technology Small Business Series, a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/tasteoftechnology/liesoftwitterandfacebook/"The Lies of Twitter and Facebook/a 3 experts in social media gathered to speak about how businesses can leverage the power of social media for their businesses./p pLaura P. Thomas, Dell Global Small Business Creative Experience Teambr / Dan Zarrella, HubSpot Marketing Product Owner and Social Media Scientist br / Brent Leary, CRM Essentials/p pimg src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Laura%20P_thumb.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Dan%20Zarrella.jpg"img src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/brent_leary-thumb.jpg"/p pIn this next series of posts, we'll bring you their presentations./p pHere's the video and below is the video summary/transcript:/p p(Ramon is opening the event and then Dan starts at abut 8:53 minutes into the video)/p centerembed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYH5inEA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="520" height="310" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/center h2Ramon Ray, Editor and Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com started the discussion./h2 pTalking about technology these days it is impossible not to mention Social Media, but there are many lies and half-truths circulating about Social Media out there. /p pThe most common false notion is that with Social Media participation success is guaranteed. Everybody uses Social Media, everybody has accounts on FaceBook and Twitter but what is the positive impact of that on the business development strategy of individual companies? /p pAlmost none, Ramon said./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ivnA8P1RLApkPuJmH_FDsdi1l08/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ivnA8P1RLApkPuJmH_FDsdi1l08/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ivnA8P1RLApkPuJmH_FDsdi1l08/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ivnA8P1RLApkPuJmH_FDsdi1l08/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=5-uhH6xYVK0:aaojFjGluro:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/5-uhH6xYVK0" height="1" width="1"/

pLabor Day is almost here and summer's winding down, but there are lots of great upcoming events to help you learn, connect and jump into Fall./p pThis list of events, conferences and webinars for growing small businesses and entrepreneurs is brought to you every other week by a href="http://smallbiztrends.com/"Small Business Trends/a and a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/"Smallbiztechnology.com/a./p div style="text-align: center;" * * * * */div pimg alt="Thumbnail image for techtherapy.GIF" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/02/techtherapy-thumb-150x113-1546.gif" width="150" height="113" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;" /stronga href="http://technologytherapy.com/events/?event_id=55"Advanced Facebook for Business/abr / August 31, 2010, 8:00pm EDT, Webinar/strong/p pDelve deeper into the world of Facebook for business with the Technology Therapy Group: how to create lists to organize your friends, change and customize your news feed, install applications to your page and profile, and create ads for your business./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5Qn50ugFMAkZWIxvcA1oP-0XpjI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5Qn50ugFMAkZWIxvcA1oP-0XpjI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5Qn50ugFMAkZWIxvcA1oP-0XpjI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5Qn50ugFMAkZWIxvcA1oP-0XpjI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=ETOA2qxUsL4:zXIOmTzH16o:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/ETOA2qxUsL4" height="1" width="1"/

Do you know if there is any value at all coming from your technology investment?

Unfortunately for many SME’s, they  don’t know. One reason for this disconnect is that we can have very little understanding on when money spent on IT is an investment, or well, just an expense.

One way to improve your value for price in technology is to look at where that money is being spent. And for many small to medium business, the primary two buckets your IT spending will fall into is supporting your direct activities or to increase their effectiveness. (note that more strategic use of IT for driving growth is beyond the scope of this post)

Process, IT Cost And Value

I want to demonstrate that taking a more holistic look at the way you do business can improve IT spending by ensuring that your IT spend is is being applied to those two buckets.

When there is work being performed, and that work is performed more than once, you can be sure that you are looking at a process. It may not be articulated, or formalized as a process - but it is a process.

As a SME business owner or executive, if you were to write down each step, and each event that happens when a new or existing customer calls looking for your product or service – what would that chain of events look like?

Many of us will make a mistake here!

We have the tendency to say; ‘Well sales gives that information to person ‘X’ who gets it out the door…’

I guarantee you – in most cases, you would be wrong.

I state wrong, because that statement is a generality, nice to say, but usually not the exact steps being performed.

If you look closer at what actually happens, it may look more like this;

a) phone call / email is received – maybe written down on a message slip?
b) if it is an existing customer, perhaps terms or conditions are looked up?
c) if a new customer – perhaps you collect information? even just in email?
d) is a message slip handed over to someone else to look at inventory or availability?
e) perhaps forward that message slip or email to someone else who can schedule or ship?

You get the idea. It is very, very rare that what you think happens in a particular situation is actually what is really happening.

Note: For a real example of a ‘process’ in action read this post titled; Don’t Automate Broken Processes

Once you have taken some time and drawn out each of these tasks and steps, you can begin to see where your technology investments can be made to support your direct activities.

In this case, any IT tools that can reduce manual steps and work in this process can be considered as directly supporting your activities.

To take a step further, look at how long each of the tasks you identified in the previous step take.

Any surprises?

Did you find one area where the majority of time is wasted before your product or service can actually be delivered to your customer?

Real World Example

A company I am familiar with is using an on-line sales force tool to track their sales funnel. In your sales funnel, I know that there are some critical numbers needed to gauge your success. Simple examples could include gross margins, cost of sales etc.

The automation tool that this organization was using had some sophisticated advanced metrics reporting, but as a higher cost option.

Because they wished to avoid paying for this reporting option?

From the president to the sales director, five senior people spend hours per month collating the data required for those metrics!

Looking at the time being wasted in their processes has shown them that getting the additional automated reports is more than worth the cost, in other words, to increase the effectiveness of their process.

The SMB Takeaway

Is a tech spend proposal supporting either of those buckets?

If not – why are you spending it?

Filed under: business, IT, IT Costs, IT Strategy, leadership, process, Real SMB IT, SMB, SME, technology Tagged: IT, IT Costs, SMB, SME, technology, technology investment

pTwitter is a VERY powerful tool for your business. To find customers, communicate with the customers you already have and research information about your industry. If you are just "tweeting" and not diving deeper, you're not getting as much out of Twitter as you could be./p pOne way to do that is to ensure you get the regular updates from Biz Stone, founder of Twitter. Of course this also applies to LinkedIn and Facebook...go deep./p pBelow is Biz Stone's latest newsletter, with all sorts of new goodies about Tiwtter./p pFrench impressionist Claude Monet said, "I am following Nature without being able to grasp her." Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once asked, "Why has elegance found so little following?" More recently, @ladygaga sings "I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me." At Twitter, we spend a lot of time thinking about following. In fact, this information network brims with such abundant variety that it helps to have a guide./p pWe've recently created a selection of tools to help you discover the accounts that are creating the information you want. We've worked with our friends at LinkedIn to create the a href="http://twitter.com/invitations?service=linkedinutm_medium=emailutm_source=newsletterutm_content=find_linkedinutm_campaign=2010ed3"Tweets app on LinkedIn/a which is useful for finding and following tweets from your colleagues. We've also published a a href="http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions?utm_medium=emailutm_source=newsletterutm_content=find_interestsutm_campaign=2010ed3"directory of popular accounts organized by topics of interest/a./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UzfHoLJCDSCRaFvlhJyhN-8Ow3Y/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UzfHoLJCDSCRaFvlhJyhN-8Ow3Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UzfHoLJCDSCRaFvlhJyhN-8Ow3Y/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/UzfHoLJCDSCRaFvlhJyhN-8Ow3Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uUGbR7c5YPo:JBW5im-_G_E:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/uUGbR7c5YPo" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="Thumbnail image for Kathy-chill-Citrix-online-Citrix.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/08/Kathy-chill-Citrix-online-Citrix-thumb-175x175-2025.jpg" width="175" height="175" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Kathy Chill, Vice President, Business Development and Product Marketing at a href="http://www.citrixonline.com/"Citrix Online/a tells us that although most professionals are mobile, businesses are NOT providing them with the tools to be more mobile./p pThe ubiquity of mobile devices in daily life is enabling mobility for a growing number ofbr / employees. With increased business travel and the trend to more flexible workstyles, the mobile workforce can be seen everywhere - in line grabbing lunch or sitting at Starbucks with their eyes glued to their cell phone or laptop. What effect is this having on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) specifically? Are small business workers as mobile as their enterprise counterparts, and how do they stay productive while on the move?/p pAccording to a recent survey by Citrix Online, 54 percent of SMB employees have become more mobile in their work habits in the past five years and 41 percent have become at least 50 percent more mobile. However, 60 percent of those surveyed said their current employer does not provide mobile tools and resources to increase productivity. In fact, a full 50 percent of respondents provide their own mobile devices and tools in order to be more productive while out of the office. The results of this survey point to a disconnect between employees and employers and suggest that small business owners are slow to recognize the impact mobility has on company productivity./p pAdvances in technology have made mobile devices more sophisticated and affordable, and connectivity speeds faster with 3G and 4G networks. There is also a plethora of Software as a Service (SaaS) options that let the mobile workforce do everything in the #8220;cloud,#8221; from storing important documents to business analysis to Web conferencing. Combined with the continuing shift in American work culture toward increased flexibility (e.g., virtual work policies becoming more widespread), it seems as if the rise in employee demand for mobile tools and resources will only increase./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3LLMVoNufAHCsrypq6MN0tzG2u8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3LLMVoNufAHCsrypq6MN0tzG2u8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3LLMVoNufAHCsrypq6MN0tzG2u8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3LLMVoNufAHCsrypq6MN0tzG2u8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Ju9qa26_-r4:TIl-aqiL_U8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/Ju9qa26_-r4" height="1" width="1"/

pWhy is Apple succeeding where others have not had as much success? I'm reading Simon Sinek's book "a href="http://www.amazon.com/Start-Why-Leaders-Inspire-Everyone/dp/1591842808"Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action/a". He speaks quite a bit on how Apple is a showcase for branding and marketing. Apple did not create the first MP3 player, Creative Labs did. However they created the first MP3 Player - the iPod - that we loved to use. What about the iPhone? Until the iPhone came along we all thought cell phones had to have lots of buttons. Well the iPhone only has one./p pimg alt="pandaform.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/pandaform.png" width="144" height="70" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /I've been trying out a href="http://www.pandaform.com"PandaForm/a and it's refreshingly SIMPLE to use. Things just work./p pI started using it to create a form for Smallbiztechnology.com and unlike all the scripts and FTPing one would normally have to do to build a form, I created a simple one with (with Captcha capabilities) in a few minutes, with no need to read the user manual./p pPandaForm.com is not designing something revolutionary. Forms, contact databases, and payments are not new or complicated. However PandaForm's interface is simple and easy to use./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p4cGcGpHJf727ixe1yUDr7Ya-WM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p4cGcGpHJf727ixe1yUDr7Ya-WM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p4cGcGpHJf727ixe1yUDr7Ya-WM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p4cGcGpHJf727ixe1yUDr7Ya-WM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=sLkyZylIMKw:rY3B6MBtrsg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/sLkyZylIMKw" height="1" width="1"/

pWalt Mossberg reviews mini-cell towers which boost cell phone signals:/p pIf you have lousy cellphone reception in your house, you may have wished you had a cellular tower nearby. Well, now you can buy your own and plant it right inside your home./p pWalt Mossberg tries out the ATT MicroCell, a small gadget that acts as a personal cell phone tower in your home for areas lacking coverage. He says the device has some significant limitations, but more importantly, it raises the question of why you should have to pay to fix a service for which you're already paying./p pVerizon, Sprint and ATT all have started selling gadgets that act as mini-cell towers, broadcasting wireless phone service just like a real cell tower does, though over a much smaller area: a single house./p pI've been testing one of these devices, ATT's $150 MicroCell, in two very different homes#8212;my own house in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and my son's basement apartment in New York City. I chose ATT for my tests because its network typically attracts the loudest complaints about bad coverage and dropped calls. a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703632304575451550096764346.html?mod=djemptech_t#articleTabs%3Darticle"(Read the full article here)/a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jVRH2W5hTL71qUhAi6N-kkxUsVs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=i832hi6tV9g:mTyzKEqCNvE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/i832hi6tV9g" height="1" width="1"/

pSandy Carter has spent close to 10 years helping IBM navigate the world of social media. IBM's a HUGE company with a variety of products and services and it's not an easy task. There are a variety of customers to speak to and a variety of products to consider how best to market./p pYou can learn a lot from her experience./p pMarketing enthusiasts worldwide tout the benefits and necessity of social media in business. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, professional communities, blogs#133;and the list goes on. /p pSavyy SMBs know creating an online presence will heighten awareness and, ultimately, bring in new business. What#8217;s often ignored, however, is that without a clear plan and direction in place before a company begins using social media, it will surely fail. If you're going to invest in a social media plan, don't dabble. Do it strategically./p pAfter nearly a decade of driving social media programs and offerings within IBM, I#8217;ve learned a few, simple, yet often ignored #8220;Digital Before and After#8221; practices that when followed, show why SMBs should use social media. /p h2What Do You Want To Say?/h2 pTake a hard look at your business structure and current communications plan to determine what you want to achieve through social media. Is it a greater awareness of your brand, better communication with your customers, a way to communicate news, or to achieve greater sales leads? Also brainstorm ways one-way communications withinbr / your company#8212;newsletters, e-mail blasts, or annual reports -- can be transitioned into a two-way communication using social media to offer more value and a voice to your stakeholders./p h2Who Do You Want To Say It To?/h2 pDetermine who your audience is. White collar executives? Internet-savvy Moms? Millenials? A bevy of social media tools target varied audiences. There are obvious examples#133; MySpace for the younger generation, and LinkedIn for seasonedbr / professionals, but there are thousands of others targeted to niche communities, and identifying your audience and where they are communicating online is a crucial step. Our #8220;a href="http://www-2000.ibm.com/partnerworld/pwhome.nsf/weblook/pat_sw_social_media.html"Getting Started with Social Media/a#8221; guide on IBM#8217;s web site is a great place to explore this topic further./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nyej0xA_I5yWr46kh64nHxDe7eY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=O0TIC5XMuXA:mW57o3afR90:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/O0TIC5XMuXA" height="1" width="1"/

pHaving a remote or branch office is challenging enough, but when you have to think about managing a "dual" infrastructure - not just the employees in your main office, management, finances and a dozen other things - it's a double (or more) challenge./p pTechnology can help you ensure your branch office does not turn into a major headache./p pimg alt="robert-ciampa-marathon-technologies.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/robert-ciampa-marathon-technologies.jpg" width="80" height="80" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Rob Ciampa Vice president of marketing at a href="http://www.marathontechnologies.com"Marathon Technologies/a said that there are five things you can do, technically speaking, to ensure that although your remote employees don't have access to a full time IT consultant, that their technology is just as good (or why not better) than their colleagues at the "main office"/p h2TIP #1 - Ensure Fast, Secure Networks/h2 pFor companies with a small branch office, secure internal (e.g., LANs and VPNs) and external networks are essential to effectively managing business-critical applications from anywhere in the world./p pMost internal network hardware is easy to set up and allows users to simply plug in and start using the network. However, you should take the extra time to configure the security features, as it may pay off in the long run. In addition, installing firewall software can help to secure an external network./p pThis is so important. Although it's a pain, to guests, to not allow them unfettered access to the Internet through your WiFi network, you'll be much more secure./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/amIXaVyu5MOrCdErZS5Kz0zls8U/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dx-gdF2Nm54:lV8Wct8WKME:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/dx-gdF2Nm54" height="1" width="1"/

pLarge businesses have large systems in place to monitor and block unauthorized information from leaving their companies. But even with these systems in place it's hard to monitor every key stroke that your employees are typing in email messages./p pHowever, you should be concerned./p pHaving personal or financial information of your customers (or employees) released (by accident or intentionally) could be an embarrassment but it could also be a criminal liability. Many of your industries are regulated and you could be held criminally liable for what information is publicly released. For those of you not in regulated industries you could still be liable.br / a href="http://www.palisadesystems.com/"br / Palisade Systems/a, recently announced the launch of a href="https://portal.compliancesafe.com/"ComplianceSafe/a, which helps protect small businesses against inadvertent disclosure of private or sensitive data that can occur through outbound e-mail data leaks./p pThe service is economical and pretty easy to use. You select from a list of data you wish to protect and what you want to do with it./p pimg alt="compliance-safe-Policies.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/compliance-safe-Policies.png" width="388" height="140" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" //p pIf you have information that Compliance Safe does not monitor, you'll have to work with your IT Consultant to decide what solutions might be best for you to give you the protection you need./p pBeyond a technology service, it's really, really important that you train your employees to know how to safely handle customer information. They need to know what they can share and HOW they can share it. Should they use a consumer file sharing service? Should they use a highly-secure and encrypted corporate file sharing service?/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BDtotkUaJwGmkWMKKtsmTFNXquY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4KaTT_e7Juo:CXzzF7RqAmI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/4KaTT_e7Juo" height="1" width="1"/

pI'm looking forward to the national discussion that we'll be doing as part of the a href="http://www.smallbiztechtour.com"Small Business Technology Tour/a. One of the biggest challenges that the business owners I speak with express is that they KNOW they need to leverage technology but they express frustration that they don't know HOW or have the TIME to do all of these things./p pThe solution I tell them is to work with an expert. This need not be expensive, but can be quite economical. There's no excuse why you should not be doing more with new media, why your web site does not look better or why you're not leveraging more with social media./p pEllen Pack, Vice President of Marketing at a href="http://www.elance.com"Elance/a#8220; which provides solutions for finding gurus to help you in your business, said, "Frustrated by the traditional on-site staffing model, businesses are embracing virtual and hybrid work structures which allow them to tap into highly skilled online teams on a flexible basis. Talented workers with hot skills such as Google App Engine development, HTML5, SEO and Social Media Marketing are experiencing unprecedented demand for their expertise and can find steady work and growing incomes.#8221;/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/G9KapGwh-DyQQxplbB5AcznXA7I/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=kUdthJCcsU0:gOy_3uL3jUA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/kUdthJCcsU0" height="1" width="1"/

pI've been online for a LONG time, like when Prodgy was hot and AOL was cool..../p pI remember when Internet Service providers and web hosts started offering "shopping carts" enabling us to sell online and it was like really neat to start selling online. Many of these providers have been bought out or are out of business./p pHowever, there's lots of new companies emerging (like a href="http://www.merchantcircle.com"Merchant Circle/a and a href="http://www.3dcart.com"3dCart/a) and older ones, like a href="http://www.netsol.com"Network Solutions/a, a href="http://www.godaddy.com"GoDaddy.com/a and a href="http://www.register.com"Register.com/a are still around and doing well./p pOne of the things that EVERY business must consider for their online sales is mobile sales. Your current web site is NOT optimized for mobile browser purchasing. This means that when customers want to buy from you from their smartphones (or other tiny screen devices) they are getting a pretty annoyed experience./p pIf you want to BOOST your online sales revenue, you've got to ready your web site to sell to mobile customers. If your e-commerce / web host can't help, consider switching./p pE-commerce provider 3dcart writes, the internet leaders like Amazon, Bestbuy, Walmart, Target and others have been exploring into the mobile arena for quite awhile now, and small online businesses might be losing out on this opportunity. Existing websites do not perform well on mobile devices, many elements cannot be displayed, sites get distorted and the variety of browsers and screen resolutions that exists between blackberries, androids, iphones and ipads, make imperative the need to optimize your site for mobile devices and avoid causing frustration to visitors./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BsuOuWvsBwRJNwKwq5se1mCcibc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nesCDWum2sE:_vdiDx-_v7s:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/nesCDWum2sE" height="1" width="1"/

pI've been online for a LONG time, like when Prodgy was hot and AOL was cool..../p pI remember when Internet Service providers and web hosts started offering "shopping carts" enabling us to sell online and it was like really neat to start selling online. Many of these providers have been bought out or are out of business./p pHowever, there's lots of new companies emerging (like a href="http://www.merchantcircle.com"Merchant Circle/a and a href="http://www.3dcart.com"3dCart/a) and older ones, like a href="http://www.netsol.com"Network Solutions/a, a href="http://www.godaddy.com"GoDaddy.com/a and a href="http://www.register.com"Register.com/a are still around and doing well./p pOne of the things that EVERY business must consider for their online sales is mobile sales. Your current web site is NOT optimized for mobile browser purchasing. This means that when customers want to buy from you from their smartphones (or other tiny screen devices) they are getting a pretty annoyed experience./p pIf you want to BOOST your online sales revenue, you've got to ready your web site to sell to mobile customers. If your e-commerce / web host can't help, consider switching./p pE-commerce provider 3dcart writes, the internet leaders like Amazon, Bestbuy, Walmart, Target and others have been exploring into the mobile arena for quite awhile now, and small online businesses might be losing out on this opportunity. Existing websites do not perform well on mobile devices, many elements cannot be displayed, sites get distorted and the variety of browsers and screen resolutions that exists between blackberries, androids, iphones and ipads, make imperative the need to optimize your site for mobile devices and avoid causing frustration to visitors./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FP9p6jKsUlKNvra4q7ZSNdWkTDM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=RS3GyQdwkLM:xTOBKc7QfbU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/RS3GyQdwkLM" height="1" width="1"/

ul liVerticalResponse Online Community Unveiled: Helping Small Businesses Grow Email Marketing Lists/li liSage Payment Boss Helps Small Businesses Get Paid Anytime, Anywhere/li liFree Shipping a Must for Small Business Online Purchases/li liIT Professionals Use Personal E-Mail to Hide File Transfer Activity from Management/li liNew Desktop Computer for Growing Small Businesses/li liNew iPhone Application Gives MyFax Customers Access to Faxes at Their Fingertips/li liHow to Use Email Marketing to Develop Customers for Life/li liTech Leaders: Should You Knock Them Down or Keep Them on Their Thrones/li /ul pbr / strongVerticalResponse Online Community Unveiled: Helping Small Businesses Grow Email Marketing Lists/strong/p pimg alt="Thumbnail image for verticalresponse.gif" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2008/07/verticalresponse-thumb-150x59-438.gif" width="150" height="59" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the launch of a new community resource aimed at small businesses that are interested in growing their email marketing lists #8212; thereby increasing their sales. The VerticalResponse List Building Bank is a community for small businesses to post tips and tricks while learning more about new and improved list building tactics from their peers as well as the experts at email marketing company VerticalResponse. Following on from the success of the VR Marketing Lounge, a community forum for marketers to meet and share their expertise, VerticalResponse has launched this latest forum for small business owners. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MGWs3MGBss9tadTLGDciUpUnTUY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uQL-AQAc77g:zN5adC4J3f8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/uQL-AQAc77g" height="1" width="1"/

pLast week we hosted the latest webinar in our email marketing series with email marketing company a href="http://www.campaigner.com"Campaigner/a. Wendy Lowe, Regional Development Director, talked about the MOST valuable asset your business has - your customers - and how you can keep them loyal to your brand or company using email marketing. /p pWatch a video replay of the entire webinar: /p div style="text-align: center;" embed src="http://blip.tv/play/A42VcaCfYw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="270" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/div pDownload a pdf file of the presentation slides a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/Developing%20loyalty%20through%20email%20marketing-august-webinar.pdf"here/a. /p pWendy explained that loyalty to your brand or business goes way beyond having a terrific product or flawless service - it's the overall experience that a customer has with your company and how they relate to it on an emotional level. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QXKG9yDt4Z_xOdBwlbQ4hBAV59o/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=WNmWkr8pNJo:-NSYLJ349Ng:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/WNmWkr8pNJo" height="1" width="1"/