Do you hire great employees, no matter the position? Yesterday I went to Potbelly in Bolingbrook with my girlfriend and 5-month old puppy, Jack. I stayed outside with Jack and sat at a table while my girlfriend went inside to order. While sitting with Jack, a Potbelly employee comes out the side door and asks if my dog needed some water. No thanks, I told him, my girlfriend would be bringing some with our lunch. That’s pretty thoughtful, but what happened next really made me impressed. A few minutes later, the same employee came back out with a bowl I assume they use for salads. “Here you go, figure this would work better than a cup,” he said. What a guy. Going out of his way to make sure my dog was cared for. Do you hire people like this? If you’re not sure what that answer is, then you have the wrong people working for you. This guy had – Read the full article
Cloud computing solutions are the latest popular development in technological advancements. However, a number of businesses still fear that adopting these solutions would not be in their best interests. So what are the major concerns held by businesses and are they well founded? Concerns on Security, Implementation, Reliability? Research has suggested that the main concerns surrounding cloud technology include security worries alongside adoption or implementation difficulties and reliability. The truth is that while SaaS (Software as a Service) can be exposed to a number of vulnerabilities and dangers, such as those listed, the services are all protected with high security measures in order to ensure that ultimate safety and security of data is maintained. This means that a number of businesses could be needlessly rejecting cloud computing solutions based on unfounded or misguided concerns. (Editor’s note: Be sure to check out our post on the best cloud computing services and apps for small businesses!) Security of Data and Information Perhaps – Read the full article
Social media advocates are often quoted as claiming that social media is the greatest form of advertising because it is free. At Silicon Beach Training we use social media in a big way; we use it to increase exposure for our training courses. We use it to build relationships with key influencers and our customers. We also use it extensively to promote and share our flow of content generated to inform and inspire our existing customers and potential clients. One of the most important paybacks for all of this activity is it seriously improves our ranking. I believe that Google is going to up the stakes on this one, too; social shares are going to become even stronger signals that affect page position. In order to sustain these benefits, however, we need to employ people. We employ full-time people and we need to tap many external sources for content generation, paid for in currency and in back-links. Time and people – Read the full article
Twitter helps companies build their brand by introducing a new method of audience communication. Engaging, brief messages build interest and customer loyalty. In 140 characters or less, a company can inform their audience of their latest products or trivia knowledge. Any useful information will propel companies towards this goal. Tweeting and Marketing Companies can write Tweets that are automatically posted three to five times per day. Experts recommend frequency to keep customers interested. From a single article, companies can probably extract 10 or more tweets that represent the main points of the article. Only 25 to 30 minutes a week is required to generate daily Tweets for an entire week. Successful companies engage in a concept called mutual branding. This concept engages both employees and the company on a mutual page. The employee’s photograph and the corporate logo both exist on the page. The better the employee performs, the better the company looks. Feeds and Retweets Retweets and feeds will – Read the full article
It’s not uncommon for businesses today to use social networks – namely, Twitter and Facebook – as a platform for engaging with customers and managing customer relationships. This development has given rise to an increasing number of social media solutions and dashboards, each promising to streamline all tasks and bring a new level of ease in customer engagement. Let’s take a look at the best of these solutions and their features. MediaFunnel MediaFunnel is a social media suite for businesses and enterprises, with a host of features designed to make Twitter and Facebook accounts easier to manage. One of these distinguishing features is Multiple User Roles, or the ability to assign Administrator, Publisher, and Contributor roles and grant various levels of permission to review or publish tweets and Facebook posts (for greater editorial control and efficiency). Apart from monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions and tracking the performance of links via Bit.ly and BudURL, MediaFunnel also enables you to – Read the full article
As the digital marketing and tech world become more important to businesses, trends and tools are constantly being developed in an effort to make life easier for both employees and customers alike. Overall, analytics is swinging towards improvement for the user experience, bringing tools that aim to make management and analysis easier for organizations. The user experience trend has grown by leaps and bounds recently as businesses aim to give their customers a better experience. With the increase in the presence of social media, businesses have also been able to make the gap between buyer and seller. Because so many companies are just now starting to value social media as a major marketing tool, they are also experiencing other types of analytics and marketing tools for the first time. The presence of social media in companies’ marketing plans has pushed the value of a good connection between users and the company. The analytics of social media have really started to – Read the full article
Internet domain registrar, Web hosting company, and SSL Security Certificates provider GoDaddy has been sold to a consortium of private equity firms in a deal reportedly worth $2.25 billion. The company, which grew by 25 percent to $947 million from 2009 to 2010, and which has been expecting 2011 revenues to hit $1.1 billion after managing more than 48 million domain names and 9.3 million customers, will now enter into a strategic partnership with venture capitalists KKR & Co., Technology Crossover Ventures, and Silver Lake Partners. GoDaddy follows in the footsteps of Groupon, Zynga, and Skype as the latest in Silver Lake Partners’ series of technology investments. “I’ve always said we would make a move like this when the right deal with the right partners could help us do the right thing for our customers and our employees,” said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons in a press release. “This is it! We are partnering with KKR, Silver Lake and TCV – Read the full article
Say what you will about the power and popularity of social media, but it’s not going to make a number of marketers, business owners, and brand managers stop asking questions about what to do with it. Take Twitter, for instance. Questions about its viability are being asked over and over. If you’re one of those who have to keep asking, don’t be embarrassed. It’s okay to be skeptical. And it’s perfectly natural to scrutinize the immense popularity and business viability of Twitter before you dive in and make it part of your strategy. For the sake of clarity, let’s take on 9 burning questions about Twitter. How can Twitter and its 140-character limit possibly have any real business value? Twitter is more a communications platform than a mere application. And that’s where its value lies. It allows you to easily enter into conversations with other users – conversations where you can listen in, receive precious feedback, share information, and, essentially, – Read the full article
