Monday, November 30, 2009
Social Media: Listening is Not Enough
Small businesses can gain tremendous branding and sales benefits from launching social media marketing programs—and it's not even that hard or costly. After all, the first step to get in on the social media game is to launch a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and maybe a company blog, right? The only problem is, many small businesses stop there. They get on Facebook and Twitter, then monitor the conversations taking place either just by looking at the posts and tweets, or by using a free buzz tracking tool to get an overall picture of what customers think of their brand, products, or services.
But, unfortunately, to gain real value from the social channel, companies don't just need to listen, but also to act. Use social media measurement tools to find out exactly what people are saying about your products and services, who is sharing this information with whom, and what impact this word-of-mouth traffic is having on bottom-line sales. You need to measure your social media marketing program with the same precision as you do your paid media programs—finding out with certainty which social media content is driving sales. Then, you can nurture those conversations, create new content, and target key influencers to drive a continued boost in sales.
Article taken from: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/
Ben Straley
CEOMeteor Solutions
Seattle
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Launch an Online Contest
Your business may already have a Facebook Page or a Twitter account. Perhaps you've even posted some videos to YouTube and launched a company blog. But few small businesses have experimented with another social marketing strategy: contests. Launching a contest online can be fairly simple—and cost you only your time. The best contests are fun, exchange value for participation (such as a gift certificate or discount), and can result in positive reviews, new customer leads, or other beneficial content for your company.
1. Make it easy to participate. Consider a customer review contest, where you invite people to create written or video reviews of your products or services and post them to a YouTube channel you create. If you have an established Twitter account with a solid follower base, consider running the contest via Twitter and inviting retweets. Or invite them to create a new logo or jingle for your company and share them through a Facebook page.
2. Promote your contest. If you have a retail site, invite visitors to participate via signs, send an email to your customer list explaining the contest, promote the contest on your Web site, blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page. Clearly explain the rules and communicate the incentive. [Note: Some states have sweepstakes and give-away promotion rules which must be followed if something of value is being given away free.]
3. Measure the results. Identify the winner, and reward the prize, but also follow up with all participants to thank them for their participation and ideally provide them all with a special gift, discount, or public recognition.
Clay McDanielCo-Founder and principal
Spring Creek GroupSeattle
Cultivate a Culture of Innovation
Innovate. Innovation. Innovative. These words get thrown around a lot these days. As far as our organization's self-image is concerned, we'd all like to think of ourselves as innovative. After all, it implies a progressive, forward-thinking view of the world and a willingness to challenge the status quo and embrace evolution (and the occasional revolution).
Reality, however, often tells a different story. While it's convenient to tack on the word "innovative" to our marketing materials, actually cultivating a culture and value system of innovation is easier said than done. Every company with even a semblance of success faces a harsh reality: the gravitational pull of success tends to make us change less and not more. Oddly, companies often need to be in serious trouble to start to think innovatively.
What can you do to cultivate and spawn innovation within your company? There are many approaches, but one is deceptively obvious: put in place and institutionalize real mechanisms for cultivating, measuring, and rewarding innovation. Innovation is an amorphous, easily-abused concept. By laying down real avenues for sharing, discussing, and recognizing ideas, your company can elevate innovation from catchphrase to a bona-fide company trait.
Rich Ziade
New York
Sijori Resort Batam is Natural Beauty of Indonesia
Just south of Singapore lies the perfect Balinese-style retreat. The Sijori Resort Batam, with its spacious, private hillside chalets overlooking lush, sprawling gardens, captures a distinct environment where the culture, history, and natural beauty of Indonesia all come together. Only 20 minutes away by car from downtown Nagoya, the hotel is only 30 minutes from the Hang Nadim International Airport, 10 minutes away from the Waterfront International Ferry Terminal and 5 minutes away Sekupang Ferry Terminal, guests at this Batam resort are afforded the convenience of being ideally located while enjoying all the benefits of an idyllic seaside retreat. 
Batam accommodations are unrivalled at the Sijori. This Batam resort boasts of 30 rooms spread over a five-block radius, that are suitable for both leisure and business travelers. Guests are afforded the luxury of spacious, tastefully designed interiors that serve as the perfect location to relax and unwind after a long, tiring day.
Facilities at this prime Batam resort are unrivalled, with its comprehensive range of amenities and facilities that cater to businessmen, families, and leisure lovers. Businessmen will find that our function rooms and business centre will have whatever they require, while those traveling for leisure can enjoy the wide array of facilities and attractions that the Sijori Resort Batam has laid in place.
For more information pls visit http://www.sijoriresort.com.sg.Labels: Hotels at Batam
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Measure Current Performance
In today’s tough economy, every dollar counts. Yet do you know how your business is really performing? How your company might compare to the norms for your industry?
Many entrepreneurs tend to operate by instinct, with no measurements in place. Establishing productivity standards, with performance metrics by product group and by customer, is a first step to track actual performance. To get started, you should evaluate every client account and define the minimal number of distinct tasks it takes to service the business. The key to being effective is not to get caught in creating too many tasks. Even with highly complex operations, the task count should be as small as possible.
Through observation and logs, you can determine over a two-week period the actual time and labor it takes to complete the total tasks. Your current average productivity measurements could be represented as units per man-hour.
The key is to keep it simple. But the creation of performance metrics will help establish predictability and give you better control. You’ll have a way to gauge how well your business is doing today and how you can improve it for the future.
Article taken from : www.businessweek.com
Chris Carey
President
Chris Carey Advisors
New York
Many entrepreneurs tend to operate by instinct, with no measurements in place. Establishing productivity standards, with performance metrics by product group and by customer, is a first step to track actual performance. To get started, you should evaluate every client account and define the minimal number of distinct tasks it takes to service the business. The key to being effective is not to get caught in creating too many tasks. Even with highly complex operations, the task count should be as small as possible.
Through observation and logs, you can determine over a two-week period the actual time and labor it takes to complete the total tasks. Your current average productivity measurements could be represented as units per man-hour.
The key is to keep it simple. But the creation of performance metrics will help establish predictability and give you better control. You’ll have a way to gauge how well your business is doing today and how you can improve it for the future.
Article taken from : www.businessweek.com
Chris Carey
President
Chris Carey Advisors
New York
Friday, November 20, 2009
The 'ABCs' of Password Management
Today's typical user has about a dozen systems they need to access with a user name and password. While passwords are an important and almost inevitable part of our everyday lives, they can put your organization at risk of financial and reputational damage if they are mishandled or compromised. Thus, it is important to be careful when choosing a password and logging in. Here are the "ABCs" of password management, with advice on how best to protect yourself when accessing your small business’ information—and your own:
1. Always be confidential. You should never share your password with others, period. Anyone else who has your passwords can impersonate you—accessing information and making transactions without your knowledge and leaving you to deal with the resulting problems. If employees want your password to access a given service, have them contact your IT department and get their own accounts. Nor should you reveal existing passwords when getting computer service; your help desk should be able to change your password for you or log on with its own account. And always be aware of your environment, watching out for ‘shoulder surfers’ who might watch you access your systems.
2. Be current. Make sure the computer you are using is up-to-date with the latest security software from one of today’s main vendors. Be sure, too, that you have an active subscription to updates and have regularly scheduled automatic scans of your system. Antivirus software alone is not enough, so look for a complete client-protection package from the leading vendors, including anti-spyware, anti-malware, host-intrusion prevention, and a desktop firewall. Unless you are properly protected, software can be installed on your system to watch keyboard input and easily steal your passwords without you noticing anything,
3. Consistently break consistency. Don’t use the same password for all systems. If your Gmail password is the same as your Chase Online Banking password, someone who compromises one system would logically and successfully attempt to use that password on all of your other systems. Separate any work passwords from personal banking passwords, and keep these distinct from your personal e-mail and social networking accounts. This limits your risk exposure.
Article taken from : http://www.businessweek.com/
Jared Beck
Senior Security Architect
Dimension Data
New York
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1. Always be confidential. You should never share your password with others, period. Anyone else who has your passwords can impersonate you—accessing information and making transactions without your knowledge and leaving you to deal with the resulting problems. If employees want your password to access a given service, have them contact your IT department and get their own accounts. Nor should you reveal existing passwords when getting computer service; your help desk should be able to change your password for you or log on with its own account. And always be aware of your environment, watching out for ‘shoulder surfers’ who might watch you access your systems.
2. Be current. Make sure the computer you are using is up-to-date with the latest security software from one of today’s main vendors. Be sure, too, that you have an active subscription to updates and have regularly scheduled automatic scans of your system. Antivirus software alone is not enough, so look for a complete client-protection package from the leading vendors, including anti-spyware, anti-malware, host-intrusion prevention, and a desktop firewall. Unless you are properly protected, software can be installed on your system to watch keyboard input and easily steal your passwords without you noticing anything,
3. Consistently break consistency. Don’t use the same password for all systems. If your Gmail password is the same as your Chase Online Banking password, someone who compromises one system would logically and successfully attempt to use that password on all of your other systems. Separate any work passwords from personal banking passwords, and keep these distinct from your personal e-mail and social networking accounts. This limits your risk exposure.
Article taken from : http://www.businessweek.com/
Jared Beck
Senior Security Architect
Dimension Data
New York
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Thursday, November 19, 2009
Reducing Data Center Power Usage
IT managers today are looking to curb the energy hogs in their data centers in order to limit spiraling energy costs by reducing power consumption, as well as cut overall environmental impact. Reducing data center power usage is a twofold process—the product of actually reducing power consumption by removing elements from the environment, as well as introducing more efficient components that can handle greater workloads, using the same or less power. To get started, your organization might reduce power usage by retiring older systems and consolidating them onto virtualized platforms. This would enable you to more efficiently pool physical resources and improve network management capabilities. At the onset of consolidation, there is typically an immediate drop in the amount of power used, but the practice of consolidation and virtualization must continue in order to keep the power growth curve moving in the right direction. Occasionally an organization might see a brief rise in power usage when virtualizing for the first time, due to the need to install the new physical servers on which the virtual servers will eventually run. This spike in growth will reverse as older servers are virtualized and their former physical counterparts decommissioned.
Eventually, your organization may return to the same amount of power consumed pre-virtualization. By the time this happens, however, you should be realizing much higher workloads than previously possible, and thus increasing the overall efficiency of data center power usage.
As you look for additional avenues to reduce power consumption, also consider these quick tips:
- Monitor the "lifecycle of usefulness" of your power and distribution systems. Inefficient equipment—often seven years old or older—can cause up to 50% of the energy you pay for to be dissipated as heat.
- Look for ways to optimize your current cooling strategy, especially for modern, high-density equipment. Consider adopting "in-row" or "in-cabinet" cooling strategies that use less energy in heat removal.
- Make sure your data center instrumentation includes sensors that enable you to monitor heat generation, power consumption, and overall cooling effectiveness.
Article taken from : http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/
Kris Domich, Principal ConsultantDimension Data, New York
Establish Daily Forecasting
With just about every business now under pressure to lower prices, it is more important than ever for business owners to know their real costs. What are the daily forecasts for your customers and what will you need to satisfy each order? By developing a system of receiving forecasts and then applying needed labor and materials, you will determine your exact costs each day.
To get started, you should ascertain your next-day activity from your customers. Then determine the number of man-hours required for the next day to meet client demand. In allocating labor, you should have just enough employees to get the job done for each customer without overtime. Add the daily cost of materials needed to complete the work.
At the end of each day, look at the number of tasks actually accomplished and compare it to the actual labor employed. If you see discrepancies in productivity, you can adjust as needed.
This daily forecast will give you a more concrete and accurate picture of your business. It will help you identify ways to save money, boost productivity, improve operations, and ultimately compete more effectively.
Article taken from : http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/
Chris Carey
President
Chris Carey AdvisorsNew York
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