SMB technical

pCommerce speech recognition software has been around for many years. Dragon Naturally Speaking one of the leaders in this space and has been around for 13 years./p pI have not fully test dictation software but I know that for many professionals, certain industries and for certain tasks it can work better than typing, especially for those who might not be able to type so fast./p pWith its latest version, version 11, Nuance has included more time-saving voice commands and shortcuts in Dragon Naturally Speaking./p pThe software collapses common multi-step tasks on the PC into direct voice commands. /p pYou can send emails and schedule meetings, search the Web for information, search your desktop, or even navigate between Windows, simply by saying what you want. Dragon 11 includes even more commands to consolidate multiple mouse clicks and keystrokes into a direct voice command that can be spoken anytime, such as:/p p#8220;Search Amazon for Bluetooth headset#8221;br / #8220;Search Twitter for haiku#8221;br / #8220;Search maps for 11 West 53rd St., New York, NY#8221;br / #8220;Search Dragon Help for working with GMail#8221;br / #8220;Send an email to Mike Smith#8221;br / #8220;Open My Pictures#8221;br / #8220;List Programs#8221;/p pSpeech recognition is not for everyone, but if you do a lot of typing and clicking it might be something for you to try out. a href="http;//www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking"Check out the new Dragon software here/a./p pa href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/technology/personaltech/29pogue.html?_r=1ref=personaltechemailnl=technologyemc=cta1"New York Times David Pogue says Dragon works very well./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EggZoyRFmN0m-x8LRYvmznzw9Hs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EggZoyRFmN0m-x8LRYvmznzw9Hs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EggZoyRFmN0m-x8LRYvmznzw9Hs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EggZoyRFmN0m-x8LRYvmznzw9Hs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk: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=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk: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=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=1dal_GDqAQg:3VU_7SDCtlk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/1dal_GDqAQg" height="1" width="1"/

We humans are vain.

I know the term is fairly negative and synonymous with conceit, but admit it! most of us get a thrill from seeing images of ourselves or our names somewhere.

You could call it our desire for that 15 minutes of fame, perhaps it is just seeing our name in print, I don’t think it matters what we call it, the result is usually the same.

So work with it!

How you work with it may vary depending on your organization size. But that little bit of human vanity may be something that we should not ignore.

How?

For smaller businesses, take a look at this website sample. This smaller business has put photographs of customers on their website for a few years now, but now they are even adding the ability for their customers to add their own images.

If a customer puts their own photograph there – you can bet that at least family and friends are going to be referred to it! One of those family or friends just might say;  hey! I they had a great time, we should check it out….

For larger SME’s that exact idea may not work for you. But how about internal motivation? employee engagement?

You have an internal company newsletter or intranet site – how about a quick picture accompanying that successful training program completion (they do call the concept recognition after all)

The SMB Takeaway

Don’t underestimate the power of the human ego

Filed under: business, marketing, website Tagged: marketing, SMB, SME, website

pAll growing businesses might not be able to have their data in ONE place. Between a contact management application, CRM service, email marketing provider and more, your data is often spread between two or more applications./p pFortunately, many of you are using online applications, which makes it easier to share the data than it would be using software installed on a server./p pUnfortunately, many of you are not taking advantage of the ability to integrate your data between these applications. Furthermore, not all of the applications you use make it easy to share data./p pa href="http://www.thesmallbusinessweb.com"The Small Business Web/a is a confederation of online services who agree to make it easy to share their data with other applications./p pI've written about it before, a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2010/03/super-easy-data-integration-th.html"here/a, but Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends Radio, has a href="http://www.smbtrendwire.com/2010/07/23/save-time-maximize-customer-data-with-integrated-business-applications/"recently interviewed the founders/a and I suggest that you listen to the podcast and HEAR how to leverage The Small Business Web for your business!/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KTqdELJ_sC51aocmWp9vanV65Co/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KTqdELJ_sC51aocmWp9vanV65Co/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KTqdELJ_sC51aocmWp9vanV65Co/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KTqdELJ_sC51aocmWp9vanV65Co/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg: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=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg: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=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=CUwYFI7UrFs:nUNLJBNf5Dg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/CUwYFI7UrFs" height="1" width="1"/

pGuest Post by Chris Mark, a href="http://www.propay.com"ProPay/a/p pfont color="gray"Chris Mark is the EVP of Data Security and Compliance for the ETA 2010 ISO of the Year, ProPay. Chris is a former MasterCard employee, founding member of the PCI SSC, former QSA and QSA Trainer. As a Visa trainer he trained over 15,000 people on PCI related topics. Chris has spoken at scores of events and published numerous articles on payment card security and the PCI DSS./font/p pFor companies that store, transmit, or process payment card data (credit or debit cards),br / compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is mandatory./p pSome of those companies must also validate compliance to meet the requirements of the card brands and banks. The PCI DSS is a set of 12 high-level requirements and approximately 220 sub-requirements. Most that have had to comply with the standard would likely agree that using the word #8216;difficult#8217; to describe achieving compliance is an understatement. Quite frankly, achieving and maintaining compliance with the PCI DSS is an extremely challenging and expensive undertaking. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the headache and associated cost of PCI DSS compliance./p h2Don#8217;t store, transmit or process Cardholder Data./h2 pWhile this may not sound feasible, many if not most, small businesses can leverage technologies that reduce or completely remove the data that is stored. As the PCI DSS only applies to the companies that store, transmit or process Cardholder Data removing such data can remove the need to comply with the requirements. Technologies such as hosted payment pages, secure payment redirects, and other technologies allow data to bypass merchant eCommerce systems. Since the transaction data never traverses the company#8217;s own systems, the PCI DSS requirements are reduced significantly. Rather than having to comply with all 12 requirements and their sub-requirements, the company would only need to comply with requirement 12.8 (Contracts) and requirement 9 (physical security)./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fFbPCQ83h1-lYbGdheJYQ0Uj3Tk/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fFbPCQ83h1-lYbGdheJYQ0Uj3Tk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fFbPCQ83h1-lYbGdheJYQ0Uj3Tk/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fFbPCQ83h1-lYbGdheJYQ0Uj3Tk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU: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=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU: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=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=CiZjEYkwGqM:vZiqZ02ZaKU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/CiZjEYkwGqM" height="1" width="1"/

pI spend just about every waking hour trying to educate growing businesses how to use technology as a tool to grow their business. I do this through writing, speaking or educating journalists./p pHowever, one of the constant frustrations is that business owners and entrepreneurs still find technology way too hard to use./p pI know there are many companies such as Intuit, Microsoft, Dell and HP who are doing their best to make technology simpler, but it's still a challenge. Even groups such as the a href="http://www.thesmallbusinessweb.com"The Small Business Web/a have come together to support easier information sharing of business data./p pa href="http://www.smb-gr.com"SMB Group/a conducted a study which found that "small-medium sized businesses are often unable to get the metrics they need to better manage their businesses--and have a hard time sorting through a plethora of technology jargon and fuzzy, indistinct solution value propositions to figure out what solutions will help them", said, Laurie McCabe, Partner, SMB Group./p pa href="http://www.pitchengine.com/smbgroup/routes-to-the-smb-market-opportunities-and-challenges-for-technology-solutions-vendors-/77064/"Read the press release here./a/p pThe survey results show the following:/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LLAyo1KIeTENEofRwTPsgFihwsI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LLAyo1KIeTENEofRwTPsgFihwsI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LLAyo1KIeTENEofRwTPsgFihwsI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/LLAyo1KIeTENEofRwTPsgFihwsI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I: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=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I: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=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=JFuwTGxhXhI:b8gQoWiEt1I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/JFuwTGxhXhI" height="1" width="1"/

pMany business owners struggle with just having a professional email address so that their email is joanna@joannasbakery.com instead of joannasbakery@aol.com./p pOf course many of these businesses are very small and have many other marketing and technology challenges as well./p pFor growing businesses who are looking to maximize their use of technology, another tip for you is domain names. I have almost 50 domain names related to various things I speak about such as a href="http://www.10websitemusts.com"10 Web Site Musts/a./p pI know another business owner who has 70 domain names and I'm sure some of you have many as well - this is good./p pFor those of you who don't have your name as a domain name, and at least 20 more domain names, I suggest you take a few minutes to register domain names that could be beneficial for your business./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5MKI0W6SEqBVwJi5WqmICiAMhXM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5MKI0W6SEqBVwJi5WqmICiAMhXM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5MKI0W6SEqBVwJi5WqmICiAMhXM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5MKI0W6SEqBVwJi5WqmICiAMhXM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo: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=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo: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=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=aRj3tmGhKc8:He3XqcerjAo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/aRj3tmGhKc8" height="1" width="1"/

pThe WSJ has just reported the Citigroup said they have a security flaw in their a href="https://online.citibank.com/US/JRS/pands/detail.do?ID=CitiMobileiPhone"iPhone application./a/p piCitigroup told its U.S. mobile banking customers they should upgrade to a new application designed for Apple's iPhone after the bank's original version was found to have a security flaw./p pCiti said its iPhone app accidentally saved personal account information in a hidden file on users' iPhones. Information that may have been stored includes account numbers, bill payments and security access codes./i a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703700904575391273536355324.html?mod=djemalertNEWS"Full article./a/p h2Lesson One: As I've written many times, regularly upgrade your software./h2 pOf course in 2010 it's more than just upgrading your software on your computers but you should regularly upgrade and get notices of any financial or other applications on your smartphone that you use for any personal or financial information (flights, children's information, medical records, etc, etc)./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mQuusZw6oX27FlNprEV4VBIx9f0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mQuusZw6oX27FlNprEV4VBIx9f0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mQuusZw6oX27FlNprEV4VBIx9f0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mQuusZw6oX27FlNprEV4VBIx9f0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc: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=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc: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=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=Q70QF32F5yI:Rrxk7D82pbc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/Q70QF32F5yI" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.protus.com/"Protus/a, owner of email marketing firm Campaigner, myFax and myVoice clued me in to a white paper from the a href="http://undress4success.com/telecommuting-makes-cents-2/"Telework Research Network (TRN)/a that says they can get a saving of more than $32,000 a year by simply allowing workers to spend half of their time telecommuting./p pOf course YOUR savings cost will be different. But the principle that you can save money by implementing a telecommuting strategy is real./p pa href="http://www.workshifting.com/downloads/downloads/Workshifting%20Benefits-The%20Bottom%20Line.pdf"Citrix Online has a very good PDF of this here./a If you're interested in how telecommuting could work for you, this paper is an excellent read./p pSteve Adams, Vice President of Marketing for Protus has a few tips on this:/p ul liVirtual phone services for small businesses that connect all employees (no matter their physical location or phone type) to a single business phone number to ensure one-number dialing convenience for callers, all for as little as $10 per month for an unlimited number of users/li liWeb-based software services that ensure each employee doesn#8217;t have to purchase their own programming/li liInternet faxing that allows each employee to send and receive faxes via email so each worker doesn#8217;t have to own a traditional fax machine/li liReal-time data sharing services for meeting convenience/li /ul pTelecommuting is not easy; it takes a well thought out and purposeful strategy. Fortunately, the technology is available to make this happen, it's just your will and planning to put it together./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FOekMRNvbgzf_K2ppjUAmcZgP9k/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FOekMRNvbgzf_K2ppjUAmcZgP9k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FOekMRNvbgzf_K2ppjUAmcZgP9k/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/FOekMRNvbgzf_K2ppjUAmcZgP9k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w: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=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w: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=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=R6jpn7N3EMo:w5HJI52kH_w:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/R6jpn7N3EMo" height="1" width="1"/

pThis week's list of contests, competitions and awards is brought to you by a title="Small Business Trends" href="http://smallbiztrends.com" target="_self"Small Business Trends/a and a title="Small Biz Technology" href="http://smallbiztechnology.com" target="_self"Smallbiztechnology.com/a./p div style="text-align: center;" *********/div pa href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/bloomberg.JPG"img alt="bloomberg.JPG" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/07/bloomberg-thumb-150x41-2010.jpg" width="150" height="41" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;" //astronga href="http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2010/06/seeking_americas_best_young_entrepreneurs.html"br / America#8217;s Best Young Entrepreneurs/a/strongbr / emEnter by July 26, 2010/em/p pBloomberg Businessweek wants your help finding America#8217;s best young entrepreneurs. In each of the last five years, they#8217;ve profiled 25 companies run by men and women no more than 25 years old. By definition, the companies they#8217;re looking for are young, and while there have been a handful of stars such as Facebook, most are little known./p pSend submissions via online form. 25 finalists will be posted in the fall and five winners will be chosen via reader votes./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u_qZxgxe6YGM8QRBxRvzH9O6CnA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u_qZxgxe6YGM8QRBxRvzH9O6CnA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u_qZxgxe6YGM8QRBxRvzH9O6CnA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u_qZxgxe6YGM8QRBxRvzH9O6CnA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg: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=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg: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=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=HKFIrBk8sp4:1Mzswt5QhRg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/HKFIrBk8sp4" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.egnyte.com"Egnyte/a recently announced Egnyte Everywhere, a new mobile suite that allows business users to securely access and share their business files from leading smartphones, including iPhone, Android and Blackberry, as well as the new iPad./p pWhen I read this press release, I thought of all the applications and services such as a href="http://www.dropbox.com"Dropbox/a, a href="http://www.carbonite.com"Carbonite/a, a href="http://www.pcanywhere.com"PC Anywhere/a, a href="http://www.logmein.com"LogmeIn/a, a href="http://ww.box.net"Box/a, a href="http://www.dropio.com"Dropio /aand many more that provide remote access to files./p pIt's a challenge to know what works best for you and YOUR business. Which features you need and don't need. The good thing, you have a lot of choice, low cost choices (or at least time to try them out and "taste" them)./p pEgnyte commissioned a survey which revealed that the number one thing mobile professionals miss most about not working in the office is easily accessing files from a file server./p pThe survey results also showed that nearly half (41%) of respondents reported that printing is the most frustrating thing about working outside of the office, while 36% were most frustrated by the inability to find a fast and reliable WiFi connection./p ul liThe iPad may be popular but 63% of professionals stated that it would not replace the PC./li liWorthy of a Dr. Drew intervention, 41% of mobile professionals confess they are most addicted to the Facebook app./li liIn the battle of the smartphone titans#8212;Apple versus Google, almost 60% of mobile professionals favor the iPhone as America#8217;s biggest winner edging out Android who had 29%./li /ul pSo, if you're looking for easy access to your files, remotely, you have a LOT of choices. The challenge, finding the one that works for you./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fSmRPhLZrGoKYvfF3b0minknGdg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fSmRPhLZrGoKYvfF3b0minknGdg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fSmRPhLZrGoKYvfF3b0minknGdg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fSmRPhLZrGoKYvfF3b0minknGdg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58: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=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58: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=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=nO1amhfi6Tw:ahYt6ckmX58:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/nO1amhfi6Tw" height="1" width="1"/

centerscript type="text/javascript" src="http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/embed/interview_widget.php?v=1f=20100726-C"/scriptnoscriptFind interviews with Small Business experts on the a href="http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com"Small Business Advocate/a show/noscript/center pDuplicated in case Javascript based post does not work:/p pWhat does the future look like with mobile apps and your small business? Ramon Ray joins Jim Blasingame to talk about the new technology advances in mobile computing, including smart phones and the i-Pad, plus how your small business should be preparing for mobile./p pa href="http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/small-business-interviews/ramon-ray-8366"Hear the full discussion here./a/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SUA7qY5yYsxWudWTlJ5kAzi-mPY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SUA7qY5yYsxWudWTlJ5kAzi-mPY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SUA7qY5yYsxWudWTlJ5kAzi-mPY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SUA7qY5yYsxWudWTlJ5kAzi-mPY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA: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=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA: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=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=dh0GYDPiApI:o6PCbthU3DA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/dh0GYDPiApI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="marchex-skype_how_it_works-_image.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/marchex-skype_how_it_works-_image.jpg" width="340" height="200" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /We all know a href="http://www.skype.com"Skype/a as the company that offers free or low cost calling./p pa href="http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100721/FREE/100729974/1078/newsletter011"BtoB online writes/a that Skype is launching a new service, powered by a href="http://www.marchex.com/"Marchex /ai, which is a pay-per-call advertising product called Click Call that turns phone numbers into little ads similar to pay-per-click search ads./i/p pIf you're an advertiser looking for reach Skype's nearly 600 million customers, then this option could be quite useful for you./p pPay only for the calls made to your business. Set your own budget. Closely track which calls at which times make your phone ring./p pSkype is not the first or last company to offer this type of service./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ta8-L9u5VJ_q_rEm8l1W0Dt9bVA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ta8-L9u5VJ_q_rEm8l1W0Dt9bVA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ta8-L9u5VJ_q_rEm8l1W0Dt9bVA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ta8-L9u5VJ_q_rEm8l1W0Dt9bVA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-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=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-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=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-E:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-E:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-E:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=vvB62zBZiow:1eyuJymiQ-E:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/vvB62zBZiow" height="1" width="1"/

ul liProPay Debuts Merchant Security and Risk Resources liOld Spice's Viral Campaign: Delusional As a Success Story for Your Business liConcur Breeze Now Available as Mobile Application liVideo: ATT Tech Support. Western Digital External Drives and Storage Solutions liDell Introduces 1135n 4-in-1 Multifunction Laser Printer liXerox Announces the WorkCentre 3550 liMaximizer Offers New Sales-Focused CRM Edition for Small Businesses liMobile Marketing Through SMS: Yes You Can...and Profitably liEmail Marketing: Build. Segment. Reward lioDesk on Hiring Freelancers li3 Ways to Turn Prospects into Customers and Customers into Fans /ul pbr / strongProPay Debuts Merchant Security and Risk Resources/strong/p pimg alt="Thumbnail image for ProPay.gif" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2009/11/ProPay-thumb-150x37-1363.gif" width="150" height="37" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /Lehi, Utah - July 22, 2010 - ProPay (www.propay.com), ETA#8217;s 2010 ISO of the Year and the industry leader in End-to-End Payment Security, credit card processing, and electronic payment services, is proud to debut a suite of resources designed to help educate merchants and help them more easily address data security, regulatory compliance and risk issues. Among these resources are a blog, newsletter and a series of whitepapers. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pmYw7jj98OQOsi1ZiESRKITgM-c/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pmYw7jj98OQOsi1ZiESRKITgM-c/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pmYw7jj98OQOsi1ZiESRKITgM-c/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pmYw7jj98OQOsi1ZiESRKITgM-c/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4: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=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4: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=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=OBHiISr1Rbc:Eog_Ds-_AU4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/OBHiISr1Rbc" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/MaryLunneborg-intuit-mobile-payments.png"img alt="MaryLunneborg-intuit-mobile-payments.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/07/MaryLunneborg-intuit-mobile-payments-thumb-250x266-2004.png" width="175" height="175" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" //aIntuit is one of the leading providers of payment solutions to small businesses. I've asked them to provide some insight to us on the world of mobile payments./p pfont color="gray" size="2"Mary Lunneborg, the author of this guest post, is Senior Product Manager of Mobile Payments at Intuit. In her role, Mary leads the strategic direction of GoPayment, Intuit#8217;s flagship mobile payments offering. Previously, Mary worked in product management on the Quicken Mobile team at Intuit, developing innovative mobile web experiences for users of the personal finance software Quicken. When she#8217;s not thinking about mobile payments, you may find her hiking in San Francisco with her two-year old daughter./font/p pMy grandparents paid the florist with dollars and cents; my parents paid by check; and now I pay my florist right on his iPhone. Like the rest of small business day-to-day operations, payments have been revolutionized by technology. Thanks to smartphone apps, small businesses can process credit card payments right on their phones./p pBefore the dawn of mobile payments, small businesses relied on four ways to get paid on the go:/p ul liOnly accept cash or check. Of course, checks require deposit and clearance, so they can bounce and delay cash flow./li liWrite down credit card information, then call or travel back to the office to process the card - not the most secure, accurate or professional method./li liTote and use an imprint machine, which delays processing, requires schlepping hardware, and is again not very secure./li liOr carry and use a wireless terminal, which can cost small businesses thousands of dollars in equipment rental fees and can be cumbersome to carry./li /ul pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QcCp2UsGnHTIPF4xLDmn3U6oquE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QcCp2UsGnHTIPF4xLDmn3U6oquE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QcCp2UsGnHTIPF4xLDmn3U6oquE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/QcCp2UsGnHTIPF4xLDmn3U6oquE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM: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=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM: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=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=zeeFynnext8:TjIBriLNEfM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/zeeFynnext8" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/oldspiceman.jpg"img alt="oldspiceman.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/assets_c/2010/07/oldspiceman-thumb-300x161-2002.jpg" width="300" height="161" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" //aThere's been a lot of well deserved attention to the viral campaign of a href="http://www.oldspice.com/videos/"Old Spice's commercial/a about the "Old Spice Man"./p pa href="http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/07/small-business-and-startups-engage-your-customers-marketing-oldspice/comment-page-1/#comment-4230"crowdSpring wrote a very good post, reviewing the video and campaign./a/p pTheir post reads in part, iThe quick-response videos generated nearly 6 million views in less than 24 hours. That#8217;s 6 million impressions for $0 in media buy. That converts to a CPM of $0. Did I mention that the cost of all of those eyeballs was $0?/i/p pThis is not true, as someone commented on their blog post./p pOne reason this campaign took was due to the following, multi-million dollar factors:/p ul liProfessional team to create the original video (professional videographers, actors and etc)/li liMillions spent on the Superbowl commercial to raise astronomical awareness for the video/li liMassive team to do more videos, etc./li /ul pSmall businesses - you and me - have none of this going for us./p pDoes that mean the hope of a viral campaign is NOT real? Of course not. But it does mean:/p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cBwUOWWh_IRcJODROx6p2OigDtw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cBwUOWWh_IRcJODROx6p2OigDtw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cBwUOWWh_IRcJODROx6p2OigDtw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cBwUOWWh_IRcJODROx6p2OigDtw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8: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=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8: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=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=-VGttB00CwI:Cw1_ZePYTi8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/-VGttB00CwI" height="1" width="1"/

pDell is a multi-billion dollar company which makes billions of dollars per year selling online. Their experience in online marketing is very important to them. VERY important. Dell is much larger than your business and yet the principles they have implemented in building their own online presence can be applied to your growing business./p pfont color="gray"img alt="mike-buck-dell.jpg" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/mike-buck-dell.jpg" width="150" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /iMichael Buck, the Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at a href="http://www.dell.com"Dell /ais responsible for the overall online business and strategy for Dell SMB worldwide and he's shared his insight in building web sites and the lessons he and his team have learned. Michael also champions community and social media efforts for SMB clients globally./i/font/p pAccording to Google#8217;s AdPlanner stats, Facebook is the no. 1 most-visited destination on the web -- that#8217;s more than 35 percent of all web traffic measured. Twitter ranks 18th, Flickr is 31st and LinkedIn sits in 56th place with 1.7 billion views. What do these numbers mean to business owners? Every day you aren#8217;t talking with customers, clients, and peers online you limit the growth potential of your company. /p pNew media continues to alter how people find and share information and connects people in new and exciting ways. To quote social media guru a href="http://www.briansolis.com/"Brian Solis/a, #8220;once scattered customer-bases are now unifying online as concentrated contextual markets, enabling the establishment of bridges and highways between businesses and prospects and ultimately creating new opportunities in the process.#8221; /p h2With social media, even the smallest business can take center stage./h2 pBy engaging in online networks and communities, entrepreneurs and business owners dramatically amplify their visibility among existing and potential stakeholders. Even for a company the size of Dell, social media offers a unique opportunity to reach customers you normally don#8217;t have the budget to target. For small and medium businesses, as long as you measure the success of activity in social media, it can act as a replacement for traditional marketing means. /p pFor example, a href="Wiggly Wigglers,"Wiggly Wigglers/a, a rural England-based natural gardening mail-order company, uses a href="http://www.facebook.com/dellsocialmedia"social media/a to connect with its worldwide customer base as it only has one location. Through social media the company:/p ul liExpanded to more than 120,000 customers worldwide and delivers its products across Europe;/li liCut its advertising budget by 80 percent when the company turned to social media over traditional advertising;/li liCurrently has more than 2500 a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=be7481ac6cd402538636690ed258a606refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Finit%3Dq%26q%3Dwiggly%2Bwigglers%26ref%3Dts%26sid%3Dbe7481ac6cd402538636690ed258a606gid=3120520301"Facebook /afans and 2300 followers on a href="http://twitter.com/wiggled"Twitter /aand sells perishable goods through both/li liHosts weekly podcasts from the #8220;Wiggly couch#8221; reaching thousands of listeners per week. San Francisco Chronicle readers rated it their #8220;favorite gardening podcast;#8221;/li liBuilt its catalogue based on Wiki ideas generated on its Facebook page by experts and customers./li /ul pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N_OB2p1Idtgyq2T6QF50ie9glN8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N_OB2p1Idtgyq2T6QF50ie9glN8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N_OB2p1Idtgyq2T6QF50ie9glN8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N_OB2p1Idtgyq2T6QF50ie9glN8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU: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=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU: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=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=uFw46-sIqd8:OXDpldF9IVU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/uFw46-sIqd8" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.pepcom.com"Pepcom/a is an annual event in New York City bringing together journalists (that's me) and tech companies (that's ATT and Western Digital) to showcase the latest and greatest technologies for businesses and consumers./p pI reported for a href="http://www.ifvnews.com"IFV News/a on Pepcom.br / a href="http://smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2010/07/video-3m-privacy-filters-teeny.html"br / View our part one coverage here./a a href="http://www.ifvnews.com/ifv-news-new-tech-tools-for-the-entrepreneur-and-sme-part2"View the second part here/a, where we talk to ATT about their tech support offerings for small businesses and Western Digital about their array of external hard drives and storage devices./p centera href="http://www.ifvnews.com/ifv-news-new-tech-tools-for-the-entrepreneur-and-sme-part2"img alt="ifvnews-2-att_westerdigital.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/ifvnews-2-att_westerdigital.png" width="478" height="295" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" //a/center pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/NWMYsg77bxdYiJqZLF2dH5r4vZQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/NWMYsg77bxdYiJqZLF2dH5r4vZQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/NWMYsg77bxdYiJqZLF2dH5r4vZQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/NWMYsg77bxdYiJqZLF2dH5r4vZQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0: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=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0: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=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=E8GZf345xMw:1ePam3Ds5N0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/E8GZf345xMw" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="12hoursoftech-150x54.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/12hoursoftech-150x54.png" width="150" height="54" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /On June 11, 2010, a href="http://www.smallbiztechnology.com"Smallbiztechnology/a.com produced a href="http://www.12HoursOfTech.com"12HoursOfTech/a as part of a href="http://www.internetweekny.com"Internet Week/a. The full day event, followed by a reception, brought together speakers from Ez Texting, Kutenda, Infusionsoft, Orange Soda, Net@Work, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, IT2Max, Tap11, Affect Strategies, Pattie Stone, Odesk, Hill Data Management , Yelp, RatePoint and Antonio Neves. /p p12HoursOfTech was hosted by Microsoft NYC and sponsored by a href="http://www.netatwork.com"Net@Work/a/p pWatch the video or view the transcript/p centerembed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHq3Q4C" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="350" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/center pbUsing SMS To Market Your Business And Boost Revenue/b/p pShane Neman, CEO, EZ Texting/p pEZ Texting was founded in 2007 as a simple, affordable text-messaging platform. The company specifically focuses on small to medium-sized businesses. Its goal is to make SMS mobile marketing as easy as possible and to allow small businesses to grow faster using cost effective and high-end technology. /p pThe basic components of EZ Texting are: powerful texting features, intuitive sorting tools and easy mobile marketing./p h2Mr. Neman gives some basic definitions:/h2 pThe SMS text is limited to a 160 characters. /p pA short code is a 5 digit or 6 digit number that allows you to receive and send short text messages to and from cell phone numbers from a computer system. The mobile carrier's customers send text messages to short codes to access and subscribe for a wide variety of mobile content. Common short codes are easy to remember and they are compatible across all US carriers./p h2What are the advantages of mobile marketing?/h2 pTo start with, mobile marketing protects consumers by unifying marketing practices. For example, whenever you get an SMS marketing message, it has unsubscribe information on it, Mr. Neman says. Mobile marketing itself is like any other form of marketing. It is just another medium - like print, radio, TV or search engines. /p pNext comes an exploration of the best practices in the industry. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KLnQhC1yXCcRZbZY6MTPSMPVQek/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KLnQhC1yXCcRZbZY6MTPSMPVQek/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KLnQhC1yXCcRZbZY6MTPSMPVQek/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/KLnQhC1yXCcRZbZY6MTPSMPVQek/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI: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=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI: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=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=XiaPpFz6Fcg:a_6vTQjeJTI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/XiaPpFz6Fcg" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="12hoursoftech-150x54.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/12hoursoftech-150x54.png" width="150" height="54" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /On June 11, 2010, a href="http://www.smallbiztechnology.com"Smallbiztechnology/a.com produced a href="http://www.12HoursOfTech.com"12HoursOfTech/a as part of a href="http://www.internetweekny.com"Internet Week/a. The full day event, followed by a reception, brought together speakers from Ez Texting, Kutenda, Infusionsoft, Orange Soda, Net@Work, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, IT2Max, Tap11, Affect Strategies, Pattie Stone, Odesk, Hill Data Management , Yelp, Rate Point and Antonio Neves. /p p12HoursOfTech was hosted by Microsoft NYC and sponsored by a href="http://www.netatwork.com"Net@Work/a/p pbJenna Jantsch - a href="http://www.verticalresponse.com"Vertical Response/a, Social Media Marketing Manager/b/p pWatch the video and/or read the transcript:/p centerembed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHtwW0C" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="350" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed/center h2The number one question people ask us once they sign up to do email marketing is: How do I build my list? /h2 pYou need to take your time. It#8217;s not built in a day, and it needs to be quality. /p pIt should consist of people who have given you permission to email them. If you have built your list yourself you can expect to achieve with it a lot more, than with a list of 100,000 random people, Ms. Jantsch says. /p pSuch a list is best achieved through opt-in forms or links to opt-in forms, on every single page of your website. Opt-in forms can be added to blogs or to FaceBook pages. On the form itself you also need to tell people what they are going to receive and give them a benefit. Some people even add opt-in information to their business cards saying on the back: You get 10% off if you sign for the newsletter here. You can also include opt-in information in the thank you notes in product packaging, saying: If you#8217;d like to have a discount or if you#8217;d like to be in the know then sign up for our email here. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/v-5VmxlH_8uhNcnELv4D4lZ26eY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/v-5VmxlH_8uhNcnELv4D4lZ26eY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/v-5VmxlH_8uhNcnELv4D4lZ26eY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/v-5VmxlH_8uhNcnELv4D4lZ26eY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY: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=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY: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=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4FuS8FKXvO4:2ykzJJvvSAY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/4FuS8FKXvO4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="12hoursoftech-150x54.png" src="http://smallbiztechnology.com/media/12hoursoftech-150x54.png" width="150" height="54" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;" /On June 11, 2010, a href="http://www.smallbiztechnology.com"Smallbiztechnology/a.com produced a href="http://www.12HoursOfTech.com"12HoursOfTech/a as part of a href="http://www.internetweekny.com"Internet Week/a. The full day event, followed by a reception, brought together speakers from Ez Texting, Kutenda, Infusionsoft, Orange Soda, Net@Work, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, IT2Max, Tap11, Affect Strategies, Pattie Stone, Odesk, Hill Data Management , Yelp, Rate Point and Antonio Neves. /p p12HoursOfTech was hosted by Microsoft NYC and sponsored by a href="http://www.netatwork.com"Net@Work/a/p pbMatt Cooper - oDesk - Director of Marketplace Operations/b/p pListen to the audio and/or read the transcript/p pcenterscript type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/pokkariPlayer.js?ver=2009070701"/script script type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/syndication/write_player?skin=jsposts_id=3891387source=3autoplay=falsefile_type=mp3player_width=320player_height=15"/script div id="blip_movie_content_3891387" a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/12hoursoftech-Matt_Cooper124.mp3" onclick="play_blip_movie_3891387(); return false;"img title="Click to play" alt="Video thumbnail. Click to play." src="http://blip.tv/file/get/12hoursoftech-Matt_Cooper124.mp3.jpg" border="0" title="Click to play" //a br / a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/12hoursoftech-Matt_Cooper124.mp3" onclick="play_blip_movie_3891387(); return false;"Click to play/a /div script type="text/javascript" play_blip_movie_3891387(); /script /center/p pWe are going to hear about productivity tools in a slightly different spin than what is usually implied. h2When starting a company you need a start up kit./h2 pThis typically includes Gmail, Google Docs, Skype - technology tools making you a lot more productive and efficient. A thing that is still generally missing from the picture is remote work, and building an online team using a distributed work force as opposed to one in the office. /p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AbzID12xtP6x0zt6zBHsrqIzyQI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AbzID12xtP6x0zt6zBHsrqIzyQI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AbzID12xtP6x0zt6zBHsrqIzyQI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/AbzID12xtP6x0zt6zBHsrqIzyQI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk: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=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk: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=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?a=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight?i=4iKNVYRn014:xEQ3PJaZWIk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~4/4iKNVYRn014" height="1" width="1"/