So, you’ve finally decided to join the social media stream and now you’re looking for more creative ways to market your business. So far, you’ve built your Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and your newly launched corporate blog is receiving a lot of positive feedback from readers. There is one more thing that can boost productivity: social media applications. These apps can boost your marketing efforts and make the process even more efficient. Here is a breakdown of the five most popular social media apps that you can use to accelerate your marketing success: Networked Blogs Join an online family of over 500,000 blogs and build an active community around your own blog. With the Networked Blogs Facebook app, you can: Import the blog feed to your Facebook profile Share your posts with a huge community of bloggers Gain massive visibility Promote your blog on Facebook The first step is to add your blog to the Networked Blogs via Facebook. Once you – Read the full article
If many who were expecting a blockbuster acquisition in the tech industry were disappointed with the recent Google-Groupon deal that never happened, well – a bigger deal just came through – to the tune of $8.5 billion in cash. In a definitive agreement announced Tuesday, software giant Microsoft Corporation has acquired Luxembourg-based Internet phone service and communications company Skype. The investor group, Silver Lake, which bought Skype from eBay in 2009, oversaw the transaction. The deal represents one of the highest-valued acquisitions in years, and is expected by both companies to soon increase market opportunity as well as benefit individual consumers and businesses. It will, in particular, integrate the Skype platform and connect its 170-plus million users to a portfolio of Microsoft products, including Lync, Outlook, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. “Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers,” said Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will now become the president of the new Microsoft – Read the full article
The search engine wars are heating up, and Microsoft has once again boosted its Bing search engine to compete with Google. In the latest series of enhancements to its own search experience, Microsoft is expanding the HTML5 version of its Bing search engine to include an “instant search” feature similar to Google Instant. The HTML5 version – which had been previewed at www.bing.com/peek before the site was pulled down in the wake of unwanted publicity – offered a peek of what else the new Bing might have in store, such as “search previews as you type,” smoother “animations that make search come alive,” better search history interaction, pop-over windows for easy in-site navigation, and slideshows that appear for certain kinds of search results. Bing’s HTML5 site is being timed to correspond with the launch of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9, the upcoming version of its Web browser, designed to maximize the use of HTML5 browser technology. While Google remains at the – Read the full article
It’s pretty much understood that almost every business needs a website. Unfortunately, not every business owner has the expertise to set up one or the time to learn how. This is especially true for small, non-tech-oriented businesses that still need an online presence. Fortunately, there are a slew of services that can help businesses to get online in a fast, inexpensive and professional manner without having to learn coding. These point-and-click systems make it easy for a new webmaster to get a site set up quickly. They might not be the most robust solutions, but they might offer a quick start that can get a business online until something more permanent can be established. On that note, here are five code-free solutions for getting a business site online and running, often within a matter of minutes. Squarespace Squarespace offers a great deal of flexibility with its layouts and a slew of modules including blogs, forums, file storage and more. Users – Read the full article
About a year back we compiled a list of competitive intelligence tools and it turned out to be one of our most popular posts. Well its a new year now and we thought you deserved an updated list. We went through the old list and threw out a few services that are no longer useful and added a whole bunch of new ones for you to check out. Some of the sites are more convenient than others depending on your needs. Some are free and some our expensive. Some of them directly monitor competitors’ advertising efforts while others track social media channels. Some of them offer several services and others only one or two. Heck, some of them aren’t even meant to be competitive intelligence tools, but we think each has something beneficial to offer. It was by pure coincidence that it came out to be an even 40 tools so let us know if there’s more we need to – Read the full article
Facebook, the world’s largest networking site with over 500 million members, launched a new messaging system Monday, taking various communication platforms like E-mail, SMS, instant messaging, and chat and integrating them into what is called Facebook Messages. The system is a result of a 15-month engineering project, considered by many as the largest Facebook has undertaken. Facebook Messages is actually a revitalization of its current messaging system, and – despite industry observers and news media hyping the new feature as an “E-mail killer”, intended to rival Google’s highly popular Gmail – it isn’t technically a new E-mail platform. “This is not an E-mail killer,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We don’t expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say they are going to shut down their current E-mail accounts.” What Facebook Messages does provide are three unique communication features, which served as the highlights of Zuckerberg’s Monday announcement. Seamless messaging: Facebook users will be able to send and – Read the full article
Tracking time and invoicing clients are important office tasks that you may often wish you don’t have to do. If only, right? But regardless of whether you’re a freelancer, a consultant, a small business, or a corporation, you just have to have some form of system to keep that income stream running smoothly – plus, of course, a staff member employed specifically for the purpose of managing that system. Enter FreshBooks, a web-based accounting, time billing, cost estimate, and invoicing application that has been dubbed “the leader in online invoicing”. It’s designed to help users save time and money in performing such accounting tasks as tracking income, managing estimates, creating and sending invoices, receiving customer payments, and generating accurate year-end financial reports. It’s definitely a great concept, but does FreshBooks perform better than if you just hired an accountant or a third party? Our answer: yes. A resounding one. We here at Lakeshore Branding have recently incorporated FreshBooks into our – Read the full article
Critics are quick to point out that the Apple iPad isn’t exactly a replacement for your laptop. More than a mobile business platform, it’s a sleek tablet device for consuming content on the Internet. This doesn’t mean, however, that the iPad can’t increase your productivity while on the go. As the Apple commercial goes, “There’s an app for that.” Below you’ll find a list of essential iPad apps for small business users of the device. GoodReader At 99 cents, GoodReader is an affordable app for viewing PDF files and important business documents in other formats – like Word, Excel, PNG, PPT, TXT, and JPEG. It also supports high-resolution images, and can even do audio and video – perfect for opening and viewing all kinds of files, regardless of size. Need to download a presentation or a report from Google Docs for offline reading? GoodReader can also do that, and can even unzip those files and folders for you. Memeo Connect – Read the full article
