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Google Chrome Apps to Improve Your Online Business

Google has recently launched a new Webstore for Chrome users to get Google Chrome apps and extensions that are perfect for small business owners to improve your business. Below is listed the top 6 free apps and extensions that are offered and are perfect for small businesses that are on tight budgets.

1. Google Shortcuts

This handy little extension is a great tool to use because it will conveniently display all of your chosen Google services as buttons or as a small drop-down menu next to the address bar in your browser. You can add things like Google Reader, Google Calendar and Gmail with a single click on your browser. 

2. Scribble

Another app that is great to help improve your business is Scribble. It is basically like a virtual post-it notes application. If you like to keep lots of notes or thoughts in text files, this is a great way to organize and manage them in a clutter free way.

3. Vyew

This tool can improve your business because it is kind of like a web conferencing tool, but you can do a lot more with it. It offers the ability to upload files, images and videos into conference "rooms" where anyone can have access to them in real time and continuously. 

4. Todo.ly

This tool is also great to help improve your business because it is an easy way to manage all of your tasks as well as create lists. You can create projects and sub-projects and give them due dates and more. 

5. Write Space

This tool is a text editor that offers full-screen, distraction-free writing. You can work offline and your work is automatically saved with every key stroke. You are also able to customize the settings to your liking. 

6. Pivotal Tracker

This tool can help improve your business because it is a project management tool that is story based. It allows a team of software developers to get together and provide feedback to you in real time on your projects.

 

How to Improve Your Small Business' Reputation

Marketing is nothing like the way it used to be anymore. There are many small business owners out there that need to wake up to the fact that if they are not marketing on the web, then they are not going to be able to survive the ultra competitive market. It is simply the case that at least some small business marketing must be done online now if the owner is hoping for the business to reach its fullest potential. 

Some of the small business marketing tools are pretty obvious. You could start by just putting a few banner ads on some websites that you suspect might be visited by potential customers. If that works a little bit for you, then that is great, but that is not the only part of online small business marketing. 

Another great way to get your company's name out there is to make sure that you are creating pages on all of the social media websites. The best part about this is that the social media sites allow you to post your page for free. You are suddenly going to have access to millions of potential customers who are all commenting and sharing information with one another around the clock. This is a small business marketing dream. If you are not already doing this for your business, then you absolutely must start working on this today. 

Finally, you might consider adding live chatting software onto the official website of your business. Obviously, if someone is taking the time to come to your official website, then odds are they are interested in your products. Make sure that you use live chatting software to be able to communicate with them in real time to provide some of the best customer service on the web. These are just a few of the small business marketing strategies being used in the new age. See for yourself if they work for your small business and help improve your online reputation.

Improve Your Online Reputation with a Twitter Contest

Few people could deny the appeal of contests; when it comes to social sites like Twitter, word can be spread about them at a much quicker pace. 

However, one should keep in mind that starting a contest on Twitter requires specific skills. One should know their way around social media marketing, what the laws are for contests in a specific state, what the impact will be on the brand, and so on. The purpose of having a Twitter event should not sit completely with the chance to promote products. It should also impact a company's business goals.

If a company wants to go through with their Twitter project and further brand promotion in a positive way, there are certain steps that should be taken.

Step One: Regulations and Rules

Before starting the contest, it is important to have certain information prepared. How many prizes will there be? Who is eligible? How long do participants have to enter? Will the competition be based on a name drawing, or will people vote on the winner? The rules and steps should be clear and easy to follow.

One should also make sure they are following competition regulations for their state to avoid legal trouble.

Step Two: Details

Exactly what the winners will be getting should be established as quickly as possible. Many companies opt to have a grand prize, a second prize and a third prize. When people have more chances to win something they are much more likely to take part. 

As Twitter is being used for the event, a special hashtag should be created for posts made about it. The tag should be clever, unique and improve your brand image; in this way entries will stand out more and be easily accessible. All participants should be encouraged to use it if not required and even emails and any other outside communication related to the competition should mention it.

Step Three: Promote

A company should treat the process as they would for any other marketing campaign. Each promotional post on Twitter should be planned ahead of time, with dates and even hours of the day mapped for when they will be released. A special calendar set aside specifically for this can be quite helpful.

Messages released to promote the prize giveaway should compel excitement, making people feel as though they would be crazy not to try to enter. Close to the end of the contest, a sense of urgency should also be pushed.

Step Four: Launch It

Once everything has been planned, the event should be officially launched. Messages and posts for awareness are the most critical during the first day, so this should be taken advantage of. One should make sure, however, that they are not going to be overshadowed by another prize giveaway or event. Should this be so, they may want to hold off the launch.

Step Five: Keep Promoting

Once the winners have been awarded their prizes, a company should not just mail it to them and move on. If they want to have long term success and even earn brand loyalists, they should stay in touch with the winners. Winners should continue to hear about special promotions in a message sent directly to them. This will ensure that they stay aware of the company and spread the word for months to come.

How to Improve Your Customers' Online Experience

The world of enterprise needs to focus more on their customer's experience. It isn't enough to simply have a great product or a great service, the online business has to make their customer's online experience satisfying. Your online customer's will have a better online experience if you can focus their attention on what you think is most important for them to focus on.The online world is full of information. According to Gartner, an online analyst, growth in social networking will be seen at more than 80% and a $1 billion market is being projected from engaging online customers favorably. 

Some ways of improving your customers' online experience is to focus in on what you perceive as being your customer. Then engage your customer by appealing to her or his social and cultural background. Once you have conceived an outline of your potential customers, share your perceptions with all member of your team and allow them to work on further engaging your online customers' experience by offering your products and services in such a way that will be attractive to people with your customer's social or cultural backgrounds. 

Mix Social Events Like A Honeymoon With Shared Interaction 

Spending a honeymoon in Tabacon in Costa Rica can be a powerful situation that can be used to enhance your online customers' experience. Sharing your agenda on your honeymoon from dining in the rain forest to mixing with motel staff is a great way of building communication with your customers and relating to a real or fantasy situation that they would enjoy.

Make Events Come To Life

Your business online can be brought to life when you have understood the basic tenets of engaging your customers in social contact by sharing your life events. Here are some ways of doing such social networking that will enhance your customers' online experience:

1. Hear and respond for better online support. An example given here is to illustrate that social net workers can hear what another net worker needs online and respond. For example, the airline, Virgin America, through being a part of a social network learned of a special problem with one of their fellow net workers. Virgin American using the social channels set up responded almost immediately with an 800 number that solved their problem. 

2. Keep files of online customers' personal information. Again, using the Virgin America example of responding to online customers, if Virgin America had not only contacted the customer with the problem with the customer's personal information, the customer could have had their problem addressed more quickly. Learning to avoid waste of customer time in personal data retrieval would make Virgin America's online customer response even better. 

3. Develop an awareness with your personnel of how and when it is appropriate to let the customer know the extent of your stored information about him with your company. 

Finally, learn about online social networks like Twitter. That social network is remarkable for the extent of online persons who have Twitter accounts and who also have online work positions with companies that you might deal with. The person with whom you are connected to on Twitter just might already have your email address and other information on you based on your online presence and profiles.

The Future of Digital Public Relations

In the last several years the media industry has been going through an evolution. The industry is restructuring to more of an online presents due to the modernization to digital public relations. This includes hundreds of social networking sites, online profiles and more. For businesses wanting to keep up with these changes, there are several things that need to be considered in regards to their online presence. For example how to share information on social networking sites, the need for blogging with a drive to be the forerunner, and the expansion of multimedia/mobile apps.

Social Network Sharing

To be a leader in digital public relations the constant use of social networking sites is going to be imperative. Articles in leading business magazines state content-rich media that will prompt networking users to share will become the principal method of advertising. The more provocative the headlines the better, for captivating traffic and spreading information quickly. The competition will force digital public relations to rely on feedback from these social sites to measure progress and better create information flow.

Blogging In, Banners Out to Be in the Forefront

With the increase in popularity of consumers getting their information from bloggers, the need to transition from banner-style advertising to content-driven blog postings is a must. This will afford PR companies to advance in digital public relations by creating their own custom tutorial and guidance bulletins. The use of online networking sites lets PR companies derive audience-specific content giving them the ability to become forerunners in the industry.

Multimedia Options and Apps

In this age of digital public relations, it is important for agents to create content for podcasts, online video sites, and pictorial/slideshow sites. These will give PR agents the possibility to promote in a more complete fashion. The use of mobile apps will further assist in promoting the multimedia options.

10 Social Media Tools for Fundraising

Media for social communication is called Social Media. Manipulating the latest in publishing and communication technology, social media turns communication into interactive dialogues. Businesses use the term consumer generated media (CGM) when associating its techniques for interactions with their customers. A cohesive trend connecting all social media movement is its affect on advertising. Being able to engage their customers within a matter of minutes has proven to be a invaluable tool in marketing and sales. 

Lets take a look at some of the 10 great social media tools in no particular order:

1. Twitter

It’s no surprise that most of us have twitted and twatted our way around using our most up-to-date gadgets. Twitter is a internet website that proposes social networking and mini-blogging use for over 175 million people. Twitter users send messages known as Tweets. Tweets can be seen by anyone using Twitter but can be limited to the Tweeter’s followers. However users may sign-up to others tweets which is known as following, and those who sign-up are known as followers. Its been rumored that Twitter is known as the “SMS” of cyberspace. 

2. Facebook

The social network service introduced in 2004 has launched millions of faces. Facebook has more than 500 million users throughout the world. This is how it works: users construct their own profile, then add on other users as friends and swap messages. Of course there are many other activities like joining groups organized by their school, church etc. It’s intended for individuals 13 years or older if they want to become a Facebook member.

3. University Of The People

Much needed and about time its here--this web-media education crusade has made its goal to “democratize education”. Through an internet campus Univeristy Of The People offers free higher education to students from around the world.

4. Epic Change

As an example for raising money via social media since 2008 its innovative and well, people conscious. By asking those who contribute to tweet about what they have to be thankful for when making a donation, Epic Change has become a web trend that raises funds and improves your organizations' online presence.

5. Social Middleware Platforms

Crowdrise and Jumo are the new middleware platforms for non-profit organizations to help them utilize internet media. 

6. Mobile Media For Fundraising

Mobile internet usage has been increasing with the usage of more powerful gadgets like the smartphone. Fundraising efforts by non-profit organizations using this method will become more popular. 

7. Corporations And Social Good Causes

The web brought about a number of corporations with causes (like breast cancer) by contributing part of their profits. This trend will continue to boom but with more accountability on both parts corporate charity.

8. Twitchange

Twitchange host eBay celebrity memorabilia auctions.

9. Stillerstrong

A celebrity campaign social medium used to contribute money for schools for children in Haiti.

10. Cyber Santa

SMS shopping has been exploding for a while. With all of the new apps available for mobile phones Santa will very soon be out of a job.

Making a Living in the Online World

The world is increasingly moving to the online spectrum only. It seems that we all are doing more and more online and less in the real world. As a result, teams of professionals to work in digital public relations are needed by many of the leading corporations. The job of those who work in digital public relations is to make sure that the company they work for is staying ahead of the curve. 

The technology sector is probably the most competitive one that exists. It is also the most picked over one in the world. That is to say that the individuals who use the technology are very picky about having everything work to perfection. If there is something off, then they will let you know about it. Those working in digital public relations have to make sure that they are able to pitch a product to even the pickiest of customers.

Based on the demands that are required of someone working in digital public relations, it should be no surprise that the education requirements are equally demanding. There is a heavy screening process just to get a job in this field. You have to fight for your spot against plenty of other equally intelligent and innovative individuals and your online reputation needs to be top notch. The job may seem glamorous to you now, but you will soon realize that it is much more work than you probably think. 

Working in digital public relations means that you have to be ready to be cutthroat, and you have to be ready to be creative. You want your ideas to jump off the page and impress the boss, but you also want to make sure that you know when to take a step back and admit that you don't know something. This job is not for the faint of heart, but the rewards can make it worth it if you are ready to commit yourself to it.