Foursquare

Yet another new social networking tool that has become utilized more often by small businesses within the last year is Foursquare.  The "checking in" app has allowed businesses to attract new customers and offer discounts to frequent visitors.  Here are a few reasons why this app is very useful for small businesses, and should be adopted more often.

Tech Savvy Individuals Have Influence
Foursquare user are people that really love their neighborhoods, getting out and evangelizing the businesses they love. This tech savvy, early adopter is exactly the kind of consumer business should desire, because they can often times have a large influence on others. Embracing Foursquare and giving these tech leaders the tools to promote your business is just plain smart.

Online, Offline
Foursquare is another way for local business to use the efficient online tools to drive more in-person, offline activity. People are physically checking in to your business and talking about online in what can turn into a tremendously effective one-two punch.

Ability to Make Offers
Currently Foursquare allows just about any business to use their platform to offer deals and promotions to users. You can visit the Foursquare business page to get your business signed up. It’s free for now, but I’m it shoudl probably be a big revenue piece for them in the future.

Track and Reward
Foursquare’s gaming functionality allows businesses to create special promotions for mayors and badge earners and in effect setting up a competition among their most loyal fans.

The Game Aspect
One of the most intriguing aspects of Foursquare is the game. It’s amazing what some folks will do in order to win a game, come in first or, in this case, be the mayor of a popular spot. Gaming and entertainment are huge money winners and any small business that can find ways to add gaming elements tied to patronizing a business may just find a real competitive edge.

Automated CRM data
So many small businesses have little of no way to track customer behavior.  Every business should find ways to capture everything they can about a customer.  Foursquare can provide business owners with check-in stats for users. What this means is that the customer that comes in every day can now be tracked and even incentivized to get a free cup of coffee for every tenth check-in. It’s like the social version of the loyalty card.

Sync with Twitter and Facebook
Like all good social media platforms Foursquare understands the need to integrate with platforms that others already use. Foursquare users have the option to tweet or add a Facebook status update every time they check-in. What this means is that a Facebook user with a few hundred friends might expose your business by way of a Foursquare check-in to thousands of Facebook walls.

Accepting Credit Cards On Your Smartphone

This could benefit your small business in the future

Many small businesses rely on credit cards for most of their customer payments.  Until recently, most were limited to accepting credit cards via their website or their retail store.  A company named Square however, has recently released a new service that will look to change this.  Square frees up the small business to take credit card payments wherever you carry your iPhone.

The service includes a free application and attractively sized and styled hardware component that acts as the card swiping interface.  Both are free and mailed to you upon registration with the service.

The company has clearly thought through the needs of their small business target audience and this product looks to be fully encompassing.  The service includes:

• Free shipping of the hardware
• Free application for your smart phone or iPad
• Daily deposits of your money
• No commitments
• Reasonable transaction fees

This looks to be a great and innovative idea that will hopefully take off in the future.  I expect to see a lot of new opportunities for mobile commerce in the small business community thanks to this product, assuming that some businesses want to make the leap and adapt the technology.

Get Your Green On

There was a great article this morning in BusinessNewsDaily that focuses on the process of going green for small businesses.  In this day an age the green movement is in full swing and that means that it is important to find ways to implement green technologies or risk losing clients and sales to companies that do.  The article revolves around an interview with Daniel Esty, who is the chairman of Esty Environmental Partners, a professor at Yale University and Director of the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale. He is also the co-author of “The Green to Gold Business Playbook: How to Implement Sustainability Practices for Bottom-Line Results in Every Business Function” (Wiley, April 2011). He tells BusinessNewsDaily why it’s more important than ever for companies to focus on the environment and what it was like to advice the Obama campaign on environmental issues.  He delves into mistakes and common misconceptions with going green, and focuses on its importance to our world's environment today. 

It is a really compelling read and is very topical for our current environment.  The interview also struck an interesting chord with me because of how I can personally relate to it.  My father owns a dry cleaners and has lately been looking into utilizing more green methods of cleaning that would eliminate some environmentally hazardous chemicals from his workplace.  However, he has struggled with the expenses and difficulty of gowing green and wavered about its actual worth to the company.  This interview dispells some fears and worries and sheds some light on the actual cost saving that come with going green.  It is a very intriguing look at an issue that is more important that ever.

Get Your Green On: An Obama Advisor Tells You How

Energy Saving Tips for Your Office

We've discussed a lot about more computer related technology in this blog, but I thought it would be worth taking a look at some ways you could save energy in your office.  When looking at the standard monthly costs of many businesses, three of the areas that has a great portion of those cost are lighting, office machines and the heating and cooling (HVAC) system.

Lighting

Reduce lighting
There are a couple of ways to do this, one of the best is to take advantage of natural daylight. Turning lights off or dimming them during the day allows for lower energy costs. It can also make for a more comfortable environment. If you need more light use task lights to light the area where you are working.

Use timers and sensors.
The installation of occupancy sensors, timers, or photocells will ensure that interior and exterior lights are turned off at the appropriate time. These inexpensive devices can reduce lighting costs by up to 40 percent by turning off lights in unoccupied areas. In closets and restroom install motion sensors or timers so that the lights are off when no one is using the room. These can also be used in seldom used work areas such as copier rooms.
However, be aware that sensors may not be the best option in the work area. Many people have complained about the light going off while they are working at their desk typing a letter or working on a report.

Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)
This type of bulbs can last up to ten times longer and provide the same amount of light as standard incandescent bulbs. Replace incandescent lights in exit signs with LED fixtures, which can reduce costs of these signs by up to 95 percent. Caution though must be used with these types of bulbs since they do contain a small amount of mercury. CFLs should not be placed in areas where they could easily be broken.

Turn off the lights when not in use.
It doesn’t get any more simpler than this.

Office Machines

Turn them off when not in use.

Replace Power Wasting Units:
LCD monitors uses much less energy that a CRT Monitor. The cost for a new LCD monitor will pay for itself in a short period of time making it uneconomic to keep a CRT Monitor when replacing an older system.
Turn the monitor off when not in use or better yet have the computer put the monitor and itself into power save mode when inactive for a period of time.
Do you have an old hand-me-down refrigerator for office use? It may be using more energy than a newer energy efficient model.

Taking these lighting and computer tips will likely help conserve a lot of energy and in turn lower your monthly electric bills, something that is always important for a small business with limited capital.

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Turning off one computer and monitor nightly and on weekends could save up to $80 a year. It’s a good idea to set PCs, monitors and copiers to use sleep mode when not in use. Unless a computer is doing a critical function at night, such as a daily backup that takes hours or being used as a server, there is no reason for it to be on. Turning it off will not allow the system to last longer, and will only be wasting energy. 

Utilizing Groupon

In this crazy world of internet based promotion and social media, small businesses have more access to their customers than ever before.  Whether it is through creating a Facebook page or building a Twitter profile, businesses can relay information to their most loyal followers faster and more effectively than ever.  One thing that had been put to good use through conventional social media methods was the use of coupons.  Introducing coupons through Twitter or Facebook has been a somewhat common practive for many small businesses that took advantage of the programs.  My father, who as I've mentioned previously owns a dry cleaners, offered exclusive coupons to Twitter and Facebook followers upon adapting the technologies for his business.  While this is an effective method of offering price promotions to your consumers, there is a new avenue that small businesses can take that has become a national craze:  Groupon.

Groupon is a deal a day type of site that offers great discounts for local businesses in different regions.  The company offers one Groupon per day in each of the markets it serves. The Groupon works as an asssurance contract using ThePoint's platform: if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all, if the predetermined minimum is not met, no one gets the deal that day.This reduces risk for retailers, who can treat the coupons as quantity discounts as well as sales promotion tools. Groupon makes money by keeping approximately half the money the customer pays for the coupon.  So, for example, an $80 massage could be purchased by the consumer for $40 and then Groupon and the retailer would split the $40. That is, the retailer gives a massage valued at $80 and gets approximately $20 from Groupon for it. And the consumer gets the massage, in this example, from the retailer for which they have paid $40 to Groupon.

This is a great tool to acquire new customers, make some money, and just generally spread your name.  Also because Groupon is a growing website, it looks very progressive for a small business, and consumers like to see small businesses that are with the times and on top of the latest technologies.  Overall, Groupon is a great avenue for small businesses to take and offers a myriad of opportunities to grow your success.

Accounting Systems for Small Businesses

I found an interesting article in regards to small business accounting systems.  Essentially the site ranks different systems for small business use and provides criteria that they evaluate these systems by.  I thought it was pertinant to the subject of small business technology, because smaller, independent accounting firms need to have good systems in place in order to keep their books straight.  It is not like a major corporation where you have somebody coming to audit you and keeping your records straight.  Good accounting systems can be essential to your success.  Here is an excerpt from the article.

One of the hardest things about evaluating software products is determining what features are likely to be the most important for the intended users. Obviously, needs will vary depending on the type of business. Retail shops will need a strong inventory module that tracks product life, assigns value and produces solid reports. An e-commerce module may also be important to retailers who wish to sell products online. A service-related business will have other needs, such as the ability to set up varying services with related cost. The needs of a coffee shop, law office or small nonprofit will be different, as well.

The point is that everyone’s needs are different. So the product that receives the highest rating here may not be the product that is best suited for all small businesses. Business owners, along with the assistance of their most trusted business advisor, are the only ones who can make that decision.

What we try to accomplish with our product reviews is to provide a window into the product. What features does it offer? Is the reporting solid and comprehensive? Can you customize reports for your business? Can you access the product from anywhere? Is there adequate training and support available? Is it affordable?

We evaluate areas such as Basic System Functions, covering everything from product installation, ease of use, general system navigation, and the inclusion (if any) of industry-specific features for nonprofit organizations, retail businesses, construction and service-related businesses.

You can read more about these interesting analysis methods at the folling link: Source

Small Business Networking Terms

Technology can be very confusing.  Especailly when we venture into the realm of networking.  There are so many different terms, many of them important to understand, that small business owners do not have a strong grasp on.  Here we'll look at a few of these terms and try to provide a basic understanding of their meaning and their use in the small business tech world.

DNS

The Domain Name System, which is responsible for determining the corresponding IP address when you type a site name like www.smallbusinesscomputing.com into a browser. DNS service is typically provided by an ISP (though many small businesses also run DNS internally to locate resources on corporate networks), and it can often be a source of poor browsing performance and intermittent site connectivity problems.

Dual Band WiFi

This refers to 802.11n-compatible Wi-Fi hardware that can utilize two distinct frequencies -- the standard 2.4 GHz frequency used by 802.11b/g, and/or the 5 GHz frequency used by 802.11a. Although 5 GHz Wi-Fi devices generally have a shorter range than their 2.4 GHz counterparts, using the 5 GH z frequency can still be beneficial because it provides higher capacity -- i.e. more access points in a given amount of space-- and is far less susceptible to interference from outside sources, including from other wireless networks.

Using 5 GHz 802.11n requires a compatible access point and wireless adapters.

HomeGroup

Don't let the word "home" fool you,  for small offices without a central server, Windows 7's HomeGroup feature offers basic file and printer sharing among a group of PCs without any setup headaches. All you need to create or join a HomeGroup (alas, only Windows 7 systems can do so) is a pre-defined password that's common to all computers in the group. Then you can choose which items to share as well as whether you want to allow read or read/write access.

MAC Address

Media Access Control (MAC) address, an identification code composed of six pairs of hexadecimal numbers (0-9 and A-F) that's permanently assigned, or "burned-in" to every network device (PCs, servers, printers, etc.). Unlike IP addresses, which can change, MAC addresses are unique to each device. Devices with multiple network interfaces (e.g. both wired and wireless) will have a different MAC address for each. To view the MAC address on a Windows PC, type ipconfig /all from a command line and look for the number next to "Physical Address".

Tethering

The ability to connect a mobile phone with high-speed (3G) data service to a PC, either via a cable or Bluetooth link, for use as a broadband modem. Tethering is an extremely useful way for mobile networks to access the Internet from their laptops when Wi-Fi isn't available. The catch is that not all devices or carriers allow tethering, and those that do may charge a premium for the privilege.

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) converts voice into digital signals and thus allows phone calls to travel across a data network rather than on dedicated phone lines. VoIP-based small business phone systems are generally less expensive to purchase and install, and they're easier to maintain than traditional systems.

VoIP phone systems also tend to offer a high degree of PC integration, with features like the capability to receive voice mail messages via email and to place and receive calls from a "soft phonem" or desktop software application.

So there you have it, some basic networking terms that can help you to better understand computing and help build your knowledge base as a small business owner.

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