February 8, 2010
It’s great to get recognition for your small business and it’s even better if that recognition comes with great prizes.
Brought to you every other week by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.
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Mom Invented: California Product Search
Enter by February 20, 2010
Anna’s Linens, a leading home goods retailer and seller of the entire Mom Invented® family of products, is in search of the next great product — invented by you. We’re looking for you to submit your most creative product ideas for a chance to win $1,000 and see your product sold at Anna’s Linens stores.
There will be three in-person pitch events at Los Angeles area Anna’s Linens stores where you’ll get to talk about your new product idea face to face. They encourage you to submit your idea online, then bring your emailed submission form and any supporting prototype samples or images to one of the live events. If you can’t make it to one of the in-store events you can submit your product idea online or by mail.
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tags: awards, competitions, contests |
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February 8, 2010
Technology is one of the most important aspects of business success. We all know that. But the challenge that businesses face is how to best use that technology as a tool for growth. While your head is knee deep in the inner workings of the growth of your business, it's easy to forget that day-to-day and quarter-to-quarter strategic planning of your business is essential and quite critical.
Dell's gathered business leaders together, Dell calls them Trailblazers, as part of its "Take Your Own Path" marketing campaign to share their stories of how their businesses have grown, what there challenges were and/are and how they are succeeding.
It's one thing to hear about tech success from Dell or a local IT expert. It's another thing to hear about it from your peers.
These Trailblazers are as famous as LinkedIn's founder Reid Hoffman and as not so famous, but just as smart and innovative as Juliet Davenport - CEO and Founder
Good Energy
tags: dell |
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February 8, 2010
Email is a powerful tool we use all the time. In order to maximize one's use of email, keeping in mind that most of you use Microsoft Outlook, it's so important to use rules setup in Microsoft Outlook to make it easier to automatically sort the emails you receive.
Rack Space's Michael Ferranti has a great blog post, Top 8 Rules You Can Use To Get Organized in Microsoft Outlook wherein he provide actual Microsoft Outlook rules you can download and use!
They include:
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tags: email, outlook |
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February 8, 2010
I've come across app after app after app that's created for businesses to be more productive for use on the iPhone. I'm wondering, maybe the iPhone is not a device just for consumers to have fun - maybe it's really a powerful device mainly for business productivity.
In fact, maybe it's worth it that you consider which of your software vendors and service providers have developed apps for the iPhone.
Why? For example, SurePayroll recently announced an iPhone app enabling their customers to manage payroll from an iPhone.
If you're always on the road, for example, what would you rather use? A bulky notebook computer or netbook (compared to a cell phone) or a svelte iPhone that can help you do most of the day to day and week to week tasks of running your business - such as payroll, HR, inventory or customer relations.
You can find thousands of apps for your business, from Apple, here.
tags: apps, cell phone, cellular, iphone |
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February 8, 2010
One of the reasons that very large companies such as Dell, Starbucks, McDonald's, Toyota (yes even them) and other companies have succeeded and thrived is that they have in place processes to generate ideas and ensure those ideas can be nurtured into profitable new products, services or business processes for increased profitability.
The simplistic way to nurture these ideas is how many of you might do it now. An employees goes to the boss and/or their immediate supervisor and shares an idea. The supervisor or boss then squashes the idea or runs it up the chain of command. Eventually the idea gets implemented, is given a slow death or never even gets off the ground.
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tags: ideas, spigit |
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February 7, 2010
What's Inside:
- Ratepoint Offers Free Testimonial Service
- Socialibrium Helps You Visualize Customer Touch Point Priorities
- Be Alerted To USB Data Leaks
Free Customer Testimonial and More
Rate Point Offering it's services for free...up to 125 users. Free customer testimonial management, email newsletter, online surveys and social media sharing http://wwww.ratepoint.com
Socialibrium - Visual Map of Customer Connections
Socialibrium can help you better manage your relationships and ensure no one is forgotten with a simple, lightweight, yet highly effective solution that automatically consolidates the communication channels you use every day to give you a clear picture of which relationships need the most attention right now.
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tags: ratepoin, socialibrium, usbcopynotify |
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February 6, 2010
Adobe Acrobat is one of the most popular and oft used products in the tech industry. Beyond Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer (I use FireFox) and popular web sites (such as Gmail), Adobe Acrobat is the "hidden" software that we use quite a bit.
Documents we read online are often created in Adobe's popular PDF format, to ensure that whether we open it or someone opens it in the next cubicle or next country that the document looks the same.
However, did you know that there's much more to Adobe Acrobat than meets the eye? If you are only using the free Adobe Reader, you can only view PDF documents and you are getting a very limited experience overall. Although the full version of Acrobat starts at $300, depending on what you do it can be worth it.
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tags: adobe, education, training |
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February 6, 2010
Most businesses with any half decent type of marketing have an email newsletter and website. Everyone of them might not have a blog or be active in Twitter, but they definitely would have a web site and email newsletter.
Traditionally, email marketing has been a very simplistic approach. Create your email newsletter (have great subject lines, content and overall design) and send it out on a regular basis to an bunch of email addresses. You might get more sophisticated and have a variety of email lists, but overall, you probably send the same email to the same lists.
However, Email Marketing 2.0 is what your business must quickly migrate to, if you want to use the power of email marketing as a tool to BOOST profits by getting prospects to buy from you, more often. Email Marketing 2.0 is a powerful way to ensure your current customers buy MORE from you.
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tags: campaigner, Constant Contact, email marketing, infusion soft |
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February 5, 2010
The concept of email marketing is not news to most small business owners. However many are still not using this tool to reach prospects and customers, whether they are unconvinced of the benefits or unsure of how to begin.
This guest column from Wendy Lowe, director of product marketing at Campaigner, gives a good overview of the benefits and some tips to incorporate email marketing into your overall strategy.
Small Businesses Use Email Marketing to Reduce Costs and Increase Profits
By Wendy Lowe
Email marketing has clearly crossed the chasm and is now a mainstream small business tool. According to Campaigner’s 2009 State of the Small Business Online Marketing Survey, conducted by Hurwitz & Associates, 46% of small businesses surveyed rely on email marketing, and 36% will be new users by the first half of 2010.
It’s no wonder small businesses are jumping on the bandwagon. Email is one of the most valuable and best performing marketing channels today. With the right email solution, it can be one of the easiest and most cost- effective ways to market a small business. Email campaigns offer a quick and affordable way to reach customers and prospects.
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tags: email marketing |
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February 5, 2010
There's a lot of Amish business growing and thriving and they are NOT using cars, cell phones, electricity or other comforts of life that we non-Amish take for granted.
Business Week writes that Miller Farm, a Pennsylvania food producer, has grown to $1.8 million in annual sales from less than half that four years ago. The farm is so busy it's turning away orders from food cooperatives around the country.
This story has two lessons:
Lesson One: Technology is NOT a must for business growth. What is most important is a great product, great customer service and getting the word out about your product, so you have customers. This Amish business goes to food shows and other types of events where they can show off their food and sign up contracts for retailers and direct order customers who want his all natural food.
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tags: amish |
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Mom Invented: California Product Search
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