Information Technology

As an SMB owner, you want to maximize the investments you’ve made in your business. You want to get more done in less time. And you want to ensure you’re communicating effectively with customers and employees. The right technology can help you do both. Here are three ways you can ensure you’re making the right technology decisions for your business.

1. Know that “free” often comes at a cost. The old saying is true: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Saving money in any way possible is a top priority for most small business owners, but when it comes to choosing technology, it pays to think through the downsides of free solutions before they end up costing your business in the form of frustration and lost productivity. A free software program may have some of the features you need, but getting it to integrate with separate business applications can be a huge challenge.

“Free” also often means you won’t have access to tech support when something does go wrong, and you’ll be on your own to learn the ins and outs of the technology as well. If you want to learn how to use a solution, and get professional help integrating it with other applications and fixing issues when they arise, a sound alternative to free is to pay a reasonable monthly or annual subscription for cloud solutions.  (more…)

Have you ever had one of those days when life just decided to come crashing down all at once? You know, one of those days when the alarm clock died (or maybe you just hit the snooze button one too many times), there was absolutely NO food in the fridge, your kids got up early and decorated your briefcase with flower stickers (in an attempt to make it pretty, of course), the dog tracked mud in from the backyard, and when you finally made it out to your car, you discovered you’re out of gas? So much for getting to work on time.

When life decides it’s time for a hectic day, it’s easy to forget some of the most important things — like that PowerPoint® presentation that lays out the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The presentation you’ve been tirelessly working on so you can impress your boss at today’s meeting. The presentation that is currently saved on your home computer.

So, what do you do?

You can’t turn around and go back to the war zone that is currently your house — after all, it’s likely that your creative kids decided to decorate the handouts that were supposed to accompany that presentation, and while unicorns and Dora the Explorer stickers make them giggle, your boss might have a different reaction. How are you going to save what’s turned into a rather cloudy day?  (more…)

There are many different factors that determine which websites appear in Google’s search results. The first step, however, is making sure Google knows your site exists and is able to correctly interpret the information on your web pages.

To help with those first steps, meet Webmaster Tools, a free tool to help you understand more about your website’s position on search results pages. The information you can learn in Webmaster Tools can help you develop a strategy  to improve your chances of appearing, appearing higher, and appearing more often in searches.

Read on to learn more from our 3-part series on Webmaster Tools.

♦ Lesson Highlight: Use free Webmaster Tools for a search-friendly site

Webmaster Tools can help you understand how Google “sees” your website. Once the tool is connected to your site, you can access free reports, and learn answers to important questions like:  (more…)

If your website is the online home for your business, your domain name is the unique street address that helps visitors find you online. It’s a critical part of building a strong presence on the Web. Unfortunately, many of the short, easy-to-remember .com’s and .net’s are no longer available. And who wants a domain name with so many characters that you need a ph.D to remember it, or, even worse, a domain that really doesn’t describe what your business has to offer?

Luckily, the online naming game is changing.

With new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) hitting the market all the time, there’s never been a better time to choose a memorable online identity for your business. The hundreds of descriptive new domain extensions—such as .shop, .lawyer, .photography and .guru, just to name a few—give business owners an unprecedented opportunity to register domains that perfectly represent their products or services.

Here are five tips to help you pick a kick-ass domain name for your business’s online identity:

Tip No. 1: Choose a Domain That Describes Your BusinessSure, you want your domain to stand out like a flashy commercial among the gazillions of other domains on the Web, but you also want to be clear about what you do and who you are. (more…)