9 Productivity Tools for Small Business Owners

24 April,2016 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

There are certain ways through which information technology reprises vital roles in the success of small businesses. We have already come to knowledge that in this technological era, the business owners must be making use of productivity tools in order to run their ventures smoothly. We have a list of 9 productivity tools that are just the best for business owners!

1) Teamgate CRM

It is a software for managing customer relations. You would need it if you wish to maintain a track of the information of your customers than just making sticky notes that stays on your bulletin board. There are plenty of software’s for customer relationship management but Teamgate is the best!

2) Asana

Asana is undoubtedly one among the best task management tools available and luckily, it is for free. With the dashboard that is easily able to be navigated, you could create fresh tasks, assign those tasks to particular teammates and mentor the development of such projects.

3) DropBox

This is the easiest means of sharing large number of files than sending them in a lot of emails. DropBox has also got Microsoft integration with office 365 and Hotmail for user convenience and is definitely a great choice.

4) Hootsuite

Than just spending time on Facebook to make sure your business is visible to people at peak times, you must make an account on Hootsuite. The fundamental package is free and you can use it to post on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook as well. You could share the content using one single dashboard and monitor the posts to their schedules on all social networks at a time.

5) FreshBooks

There can be no better platform for invoicing when compared to FreshBooks. You will be able to send out bills seamlessly and also can collect payments through credit cards and PayPal in one single step.

6) MailChimp

With a growing list of emails, you might want to quickly move on from the usual email platforms. This tool could be labeled as the leader of email marketing. You can send about 12000 emails every month to over 2000 subscribers. With growing needs, you can also upgrade to better plans.

7) TextMagic

Many people spend hours together on their phones every day and this is the reason small businesses need SMS services that can send bulk messages at a time. TextMagic is one of the best in this regard.

8) Google calendar

This is a great way for efficiently keeping a note on events among all the devices of yours so that you can do proper time management and scheduling. You can view the calendar using a PC, tablet or a smartphone and is compatible with iOS, Android and Windows.

9) Google Adwords Keyword Planner

Sign up to for an account on Google AdWords and look for keyword planner that is in the tool menu. You can make use of this tool to research keywords that you can include in your SEO and content marketing.

Why B2B Marketers Must Embrace Mobile Marketing Tactics?

22 April,2016 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

It is a well evident fact that the mobiles have successfully overpowered the use of laptops and personal computers. Moreover, when it comes to online marketing mobiles undoubtedly play a very crucial role. Here, it will not be unjust to mention that the B2B marketers too should adopt the concept of Mobile Marketing and the prominent reasons for it have been discussed below:

Postulate marketing metrics are largely influenced by the use of Mobile

In an era where mobiles have become a vital part of life, not opting for a mobile friendly site or choosing the one which offers less optimized mobile experience is certainly a bad deal. Therefore, the B2B marketers too must understand that a mobile approachable site without a doubt generates more traffic, leads to better bounce rate, organic ranking, and also proffer greater visibility.

Mobile friendly sites leads to fueled customer engagement

The above notion can be easily justified by the following statistics – A large portion of users got upset upon encountering that the site is not mobile friendly, out of which about 52% people decided not to indulge in business terms with the respective website. Therefore, a site which supports mobile marketing can successfully yield more sales, revenue to your business.

A large number of B2B decision makers are using Mobile devices

While business buyers incline towards the use of the internet for research and selection process, a large number of decision makers too are embracing the use of mobile devices. Thus we can say that the B2B mobile usage is gradually gaining a prominent role in the entire buy cycle.

A recent survey conducted by Google in partnership with Millward Brown Digital on about 3000 B2B decision makers in regard to their research and selection process indicated that about 42% people make use of mobile phones throughout the B2B purchasing process whereas the mobile queries too have shown a dramatic growth.

Tips to have a Mobile friendly site – Just 2 simple steps to follow!

Work on your Mobile Page Speed

For this, you may also need to optimize images, sanction compression, minify CSS etc.

Mobile Design Best Practices

Regulating the font sizes, viewport and avoid incorporating plugins.

These two steps account to be the most effective way to initiate or improve your mobile experience when it comes to business.

Mobile, your Competitive Advantage: The Bottom Line

Mobile marketing undoubtedly provides an edge to your business and contributes to the overall success of it. Not only this, it enables the business to generate more and more targeted traffic to its website and enhances visibility too. By rendering a comfortable experience to the customers, the respective business ends up generating more sales and new avenues too.

5 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs

16 April,2016 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

Image: attitudes4innovation.com

The one thing that is common among all the entrepreneurs is that they work to maximize the outcome while they minimize their investment of time. Technology is one thing that could help them in a great way regarding this. And the apt extensions of Google chrome can be a revolution in helping them. However, there are plenty of them and you can definitely not download all of them. Few extensions work better when compared to others, few are more useful, and few may even slow down the browsing experience. So, which are the extensions that are most appropriate for entrepreneurs? Here is our list of the 5 best Google Chrome Extensions for entrepreneurs.

1) MixMax

If there is one chrome extension we would suggest that is best on the list, then that would be MixMax. Before it came into the scene, all of the TCF team used Boomerang for automated follow up and email scheduling and also the Sidekick for keeping a track on who clicks on links and opens the emails. MixMax effectively replaced them and there has been no stepping back since. If you haven’t already started tracking the emails of yours, you must begin now. Besides providing data on who opens your emails, you will also know how quickly this happens. Apart from scheduling of emails, tracking and reminders, MixMax also allows you to schedule your events and meetings within the email. MixMax will go through your calendar and will inform you about when you are available and will provide the person who views your emails proper meeting time. They would later choose the one that suits them and the extension will instantaneously mark it on your calendar as well as theirs.

2) Rapportive

If you want to know who is at the other corner of your emails, Rapportive is what you must use. It puts their profiles of LinkedIn on a sidebar so that you easily view them and access them. You can just click so that you connect to them through LinkedIn without having to leave your email. It will also draw the information of profiles of LinkedIn connections which you share in common and this will allow you easily to name drop quickly. Rapportive also worked quickly on constructing your connection networks that is precisely why it is said to be one among the best chrome extensions for all those entrepreneurs.

3) Hootlet

Using Hootlet will automatically make it your best friend forever. The best feature of Hootlet is that you can toggle among multiple accounts, be it business or personal. Just by clicking on the icon of Hootlet you will be able to share the page which you are on as you are browsing the internet.

4) Evernote

You are certainly missing a lot of you are not using Evernote. It can be used for everything from organizing webinar content an ebook to remembering your gym locker code. Using the Evernote is like having a second brain which doesn’t at all require a headspace. This extension of chrome allows you to snip as well as save while you browse and read your emails. Saving the PDFs and anything for that matter is as effortless as organizing your already existing notebooks.

5) AdBlock Pro

We all agree that ads are too much annoying. Hence, this extension is as good for everyone as it is for entrepreneurs. This extension will do a great job of blocking all those unwanted ads that keeping popping onto the screen every now and then. This will save your time and patience by blocking them automatically.

The Donald trumps Clinton, Sanders on Social Media

15 April,2016 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

In the past one year, US has totally spent over 1284 years by reading things about Donald Trump through social media. The reach of this presidential candidate is unprecedented, as per the latest reports from SocialFlow which is a company of social media management whose software deals with the dissemination of news for a lot of the top organizations of media in the country.

If Trump was to obtain such attention through the purchase of ads, he would have to spend over 380 million dollars. But he gets his reach for free through tweets, shares, and likes. Not to mention that many of them are negative. The influence of social media on the current election for the president is powerful when compared to how powerful it has been in the past and the cycle of information it has generated can mold campaigns in the coming years as well. There are plenty of reasons why social networks have turned into such a strong influencer.

Most people now get their news primly from social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. The presidential candidates have found the fastest way to trend in news by putting up a comment or a statement on their social network posts. Patrick Ruffini, who is a political strategist as well as the founder of a digital media company known as Engage says that social media have actually opened doors for candidates to reach out to their voters as well as news consumers that get information on these candidates all the time. According to him, this is certainly the first election wherein candidates have identified that social networks can directly lead them to mainstream coverage of media and also to their voters.

Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images

This leads to a “feedback loop” as Ruffini calls it. Here, posts of the candidates on social networks make big news and such news is again circulated on social media which will increase the momentum of their reach and create much more chatter. The Co-founder, as well as the chief officer of products for SocialFlow, Frank Speiser, tells that this election is the first real social network election. Though social media was an auxiliary way of communication earlier, now candidates can directly put up messages and get people on social media to react. There is no need of purchasing access to reach out to millions of voters anymore.

With over 1.6 billion active users of Facebook and 385 million active users of Twitter, public reach isn’t a herculean task anymore. Now, social media has been a thoroughly thought strategy and candidates have started using social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a direct pipeline through which voters can be reached. This particular sensation has been fruitful, especially for the fact that it reaches to young voters as well. About two-thirds of young people aged between 18 years to 29 years stated that social media has helped them learn plenty of new things related to politics.

All in all, social media has really proved to be a worthy method of connecting to people, for candidates who look for maximum reach to their voters.

How Much Does Local SEO Cost?

10 April,2016 Business Advice, SEO Tips No Comment Author: Marie

How much does local SEO cost? A lot of people live under the misconception that SEO traffic is free. You pay nothing and yet you get a good footfall. But is it really possible? Is it possible to invest absolutely no time or money for your website SEO and yet generate a good amount of traffic? The answer is no, obviously. You might have built a very good and impressive website, but that does not assure you good traffic or you do not rank high in Google search. So, you have to spend a few bucks to get good traffic.

The next question is, what are the factors affecting SEO costs?

Competition

Competition goes hand in hand with local SEO costing. The higher the competition, the greater will be your local SEO costs. So if you have enough names competing against you in the same industry, then you will need to work harder and put in a lot more effort in making your website stand out. The main point to note here is the fact that you need to outrun the others in the field of work and you are set. You just need to be better than everyone else. One of the best solutions here is that you can review websites that rank high in Google keywords.

Multiple office locations

This is yet another factor that determines the amount that you could be spending for the local SEO of your website. The idea behind it is very simple. If you have more listings under the same name, or different locations for your office, it only means you would be spending more for each of those put together, as compared to a single office setup. This is because for each of the locations, the citations increase.

Multiple products or services

It is quite natural that when you use more products or services, you would need more keywords to target each of those. This directly leads to a higher local SEO costing. This is even more pronounced when you tend to build separate web pages for each of those products or services. Also, keep in mind the fact that each product comes with a set of competition; so that again takes us back to the first factor we discussed.

Keeping in mind all of these factors, the local SEO costing might vary. For an industry that is not very competitive and if you are advertising one product from one particular location, your monthly expenditures could be around $500 to $1000. This number could go up to $2000 for more competitive industries, or targeting multiple products or services. For automated local SEO services, the whole management depends on citations where you have to submit information for an annual fee of about $300-$500. On the other hand, holistic local SEO campaigns, this involves an overall management of internal website elements and optimizing the external factors. These campaigns might go as high as $900 to $2000 a month. Small scale local campaigns range between $400 to $800 and aim to increase visibility of website by focusing on multiple channels.

How did the websites of candidates running for President looked 20 years ago?

8 April,2016 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

With the advent of technology, there have been quite a few changes coming in. A huge part of the presidential campaigning is now done online, by means of campaign websites. These are indeed a very integral part of the whole campaign now. 8 years back when Obama campaigned in 2008, only 25% of the total adult population was active on social media. 8 years hence, in 2016, more than 65% of the adults in the United States use social media and networking. This makes communicating with the public online as an essential activity for the candidates.

Screenshot/Bush Cheney

But how was the situation 20 years back? Way back in 1996, Bob Dole was the first Presidential candidate to have made use of an online website for promoting his campaign. He laid the foundation which was followed by all the preceding candidates in all the elections henceforth. How did the first website look like? It was simple. It had a simple format, information about Dole, his stand on different policies, links to his speeches and the likes. Bob Dole, the man who never became the president, gave a new outlook and perspective to presidential campaigns.

The website dealt with a lot of issues Dole was working on. Some of the headlines include, ‘America should be the technology leader of the world’, and ‘Bob Dole will protect the constitutional liberty of Internet users’ and the likes.

BI Screenshot

The next interesting question here is, how was the first website made? The masterminds behind the site were Rob Kubasko and Vince Salvato, students of Arizona State University back then. They had the responsibility of building a campaign website, one that could beat Bill Clinton’s. The task was cut out. They would randomly work on the website and upload the information. Thereafter, the people in the campaign would get the uploaded data printed out, make changes and corrections and then fax the changes back to Kubasko. That was the work put behind this website.

Once all of that was completed, Dole announced his address on the air. There was no looking back from there. The site started getting hundreds and then thousands of visitors on a regular basis. This was a major highlight of Dole’s campaign. Clinton’s website faced similar situations, albeit a lot later. His website was simple as well, with a Briefing Room that contained the candidate’s views of immigrations, drugs and religious freedom. This was accompanied by pictures of Bill Clinton and a college electoral game that ran only on Windows 95 back then. Besides, there were some GIFS that worked when your cursor went over certain sections of the website. This Clinton-Gore campaign website was a success, something the candidates later looked up to.

But here is an interesting fact. The Dole Kemp website is still online at present. However, the last time it was updated was way back on November 5^th, 1996. George Bush went on to have his own website in 2000, with the exciting addition of a video player.

The Top 3 Ranking Factors According to Google

2 April,2016 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

Google’s rank algorithm is shrouded in mystery and rarely do they come straight out and tell us about their more than 200 ranking signals.

We knew last year, Google announced that RankBrain, their artificial intelligence system, is the the third most important ranking factor

In a Q&A with Google, Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, said the other two factors were links and content in response to a question by Ammon Johns.

I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it’s links pointing to your site.

He wouldn’t say which of was the more important factor. We now have 3 ranking factors on our list:

1 & 2: Links & Content
3: RankBrain

Of course, this aren’t the only factors as Google still look at many others But these are definitely the overall top three, officially confirmed by Google itself.

For a long time we have already known that links and contents have a great impact in rankings but the recent years, this has come into question. The confirmation done by Google in this Q&A provides content marketers with more ideas on how to improve their practice and push for growth.

Check out the full Q&A Video below.

5 mobile marketing trends to look out for in 2016

2 April,2016 Business Advice, Mobile No Comment Author: Marie

Technology is changing our way of living, adding a good standard in it and making it perfect for our future by providing many benefits to GPS navigation, easy way to pay your bills, video conferencing and many features which were just a dream in the past. It was a tedious task to achieve but technologists and scientists are exploring the way to make our life more comfortable which was just an impossible task in the past. Technology is creating a major impact on the mind of youngsters, Youngsters are becoming more intelligent and social media aware which was just a dream in past.

A recent study in mobile revolution shows that mobile users are exceeding the desktop one by a significant difference which indicates that users are attracted more to mobile technology rather than a big giant desktop one.

According to a recent study performed by eMarketers, It was predicted that 32% has increased mobile commerce from the past which was a good number to make it future perfect technology.

According to a recent survey, it was predicted that Apps mainstreams download is much more than Facebook and Twitter friends, followers, etc. It is a significant achievement that is achieved by Mobile technology world.

Wearable technology such as smart watches or mobile automation system such as Cortana, Echo and Siri makes our life more interesting and easy to live.

A grand announcement of $500 million from Hilton gives a serious look to M-commerce industry

Revolution through mobile apps.

Mobile apps are surpassing the television and social media marketing or even search engine optimization which is increasing the business and its impact on next level which can’t be ignored in this virtual world. It is an easy approach for independent shoppers and busy consumers to buy in the easy way which is a necessary step to increase the business in current scenario technology revolution.

Which Presidential Candidate has the Best Campaign Website?

24 March,2016 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Marie

When the Presidential elections are around the corner, there are a number of aspects we have to focus on and compare: which candidate has the best economic policies, healthcare policies and the likes. But there is one really interesting point to note here. Which presidential candidate has the best campaign website? The quality of the candidate’s website speaks volumes about the candidate in question. This is, basically, the hub of online campaigning and everyone has to get this absolutely right.

However, presidential campaign websites are not a new thing. They have been doing the rounds for the last 20 years ever since their inception by Bob Dole. Let us now see what the different presidential campaign websites offer us.

Marco Rubio

Website URL: https://marcorubio.com/
Tagline: A New American Century
At first glance, the website for Marco seems impressive and pretty much well balanced. So, this gives a good first impression. However, a little into the website, we encounter a series of pictures and videos that overcrowd the space, mainly because of their irregular shapes and sizes. There are also different caption bars varying in colors between red and blue. So, the best thing to do here is to organize the content in a more regular and eye pleasing manner with a much more simplified visual design.

6 Marketing Resolutions for 2016

20 March,2016 Business Advice, E-Commerce No Comment Author: Marie

Trends differ with passing time and this is true in every field. Specially, marketing efforts can go stale after sometime and you might have to give your brand a facelift. The New Year would be a good time to renew your marketing strategies with some resolutions which you could really stick to. Choose as many resolutions as you wish from this list and transform your marketing this 2016.

1) Make your content strategy and content schedule

One of the important questions you need to ask yourself is if you have a purpose for producing content. This could be the key for content marketing that is highly successful. It is your content that wins the goals which are defined by your brand and you. It creates interest among people about your brand. If you are just having a blog for namesake, it’s useless. Figure out what audience you are writing for, and write content that are of high quality and define your brand really well. You must also schedule the contents aptly.

2) Have a Brand Ambassadors’ team

Many of the companies underestimate the utility of their valuable assets, the employees. They are not just familiar with the brand but also work within the brand every day. You must ensure well-being of your employees and encourage them to endorse your brand through their own means. This happens by sharing your content through them and rewarding them for their engagement.

3) Start new training initiatives

This is something similar to the one previously mentioned. Choose courses that could upgrade the skills of your starts or develop other skills as well. It does well to your business as well as your employees’ personal set of skills. This will turn your employees valuable and give them the privilege of adding new skills to their resume.

4) Go for rebranding

If there are certain things that are not going well with your money and you are losing both money and customers because of it, you might have to go for rebranding in 2016. You must know well about when you are precisely choosing to go for Rebranding. If you have changed locations or if your website doesn’t do well, you must renew the brand!

5) Make use of new channels

What if the Twitter and LinkedIn, the channels that are good for putting up B2B content not enough? There are plenty other channels through which you can have your content reach the potential audience. You could go for press releases or go with ebooks as well.

6) Vary the content’s format

There are plenty of kinds of content but many businesses make use of only the text based contents. Because text content is easy to produce. However, you could choose adding videos, pictures, infographics or even memes. When used correctly, you can make the best out of these better formats.

BlogSimplio Labs Blog

9 Productivity Tools for Small Business Owners

Why B2B Marketers Must Embrace Mobile Marketing Tactics?

5 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs

The Donald trumps Clinton, Sanders on Social Media

How Much Does Local SEO Cost?

Competition

Multiple office locations

Multiple products or services

The Top 3 Ranking Factors According to Google

5 mobile marketing trends to look out for in 2016

Which Presidential Candidate has the Best Campaign Website?

Marco Rubio

6 Marketing Resolutions for 2016

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