Ten or 15 years ago, managing your information technology was simpler in one sense.  A company decided on its computing environment -– its designated operating system, devices and software –- and that’s what employees used.  Period.

But then along came the BYOD trend.  BYOD, which stands for “Bring Your Own (computing) Device” to work, has swept America in the past five years.  Employees got used to using technology in their personal lives – so much so that that they didn’t want to give it up when at work.

We all seem to want the flexibility to work from home and while on business travel, using devices we individually feel comfortable with.  And of course we all want to use the coolest new mobile devices rather than staid company-issued laptops or desktop computers.

If your business is like ours, you’re now under pressure to allow employees to use their own smartphones, tablets and laptops for work.   A study last year found that 95% of large companies surveyed allow employees to use employee-owned devices for work.  It’s now become ingrained in the workplace.

The BYOD trend has benefits, to be sure.  It makes for happier employees.  They can be more productive while working outside the office.

BYOD Trend Challenges for Small Businesses

But the BYOD trend also poses extra challenges for businesses:

Control - One obvious thing is that it is harder to control your IT environment.  With companies relying more on technology to conduct business, there’s simply more to manage to make sure everything works as seamlessly as possible.  Top that off with employees using a variety of devices and operating systems … and complexity multiples.

Personal vs. Work - Then you have the morphing of personal activities with work activities when people use a single device for both.  The question becomes how to partition them. How do you keep personal email separate from work email in a way that employees don’t resent, and that protects both the company and the employee?

Mobility - Your team may work from different locations, such as their homes, or they may simply do more work while out in the field or on business trips. They will be using mobile devices and that brings added challenges. Mobile security is one of them – and that can be as simple an issue as a tablet getting lost.  One honeypot study found that when mobile devices where intentionally lost, in almost all cases the data was accessed, either for illicit purposes or simply to discover the owner.  If a mobility-related incident resulted in losses, the average was almost $250,000.

Security - Small businesses in general face more IT security challenges than ever before.  According to one study, companies with fewer than 250 employees were the focus of 31 percent of all cyber attacks last year.  And with so many different devices, and so many of them being mobile devices, security concerns are multiplying.

So, What Can You Do?

A lot, actually.  The most important thing is:  do not turn a blind eye to BYOD devices.

Recognize that the IT environment is very different today.  It calls for new policies, employee education, adoption of up-to-date best practices, and last but not least, implementing device management tools and other technology solutions designed for a BYOD environment.

Here are 5 steps to take to operate in a BYOD environment:

1 .  Require Notification

The whole idea behind the BYOD trend is giving greater freedom to employees. However, there are ways to achieve a sense of freedom, without abdicating control altogether.   For one thing, make it a policy that all devices have to be “registered with” or brought to the attention of your  IT administrator or any outside firm that assists you with IT, so that device management solutions can be enabled.  Some employers exert more control by creating a list of  ”approved BYOD devices.”  While this poses some restrictions on employees, at least it meets them halfway.  You have to know who is using what.

2.  Adopt Best Practices

For instance, require mobile devices to be secured with a password-protected screen lock when not in use.  Also, require employees to notify the company immediately in the event a mobile device is lost or stolen.  These and other best practices will help protect your business.

3.  Create a Policy

With freedom comes responsibility. Create a written BYOD policy for employees. This could be in the form of a memo, incorporated into the employee handbook, and/or placed on the company intranet.  Make employees aware of what is acceptable, and what’s not.

4.  Educate Employees

Take the time to educate employees about the challenges and risks.  You’ll get more cooperation if they understand the “why” behind rules.  A lunch and learn session or simply bringing up the topic in staff meetings can go a long way.

5.  Implement a mobile device management solution

This is probably one of the most crucial things you can do.  A mobility management solution gives you a way to manage multiple devices and applications, from a central dashboard.  It enables you to view the “big IT picture” and treat BYOD devices as integral points in your IT systems – not something separate or unrelated.

Look for one that offers robust security and that protects important company data.  Security certainly will be at the top of the list.  But you also want the ability to monitor and manage mobile devices.

Beyond that, some mobility management solutions can help you manage expenses, too, through consolidated reporting.  You can manage different devices and different plans through a single dashboard.

Advanced security specifically for mobile devices, such as capabilities for remote wipe of data in the event a mobile device is lost, and data encryption, can create peace of mind.

Data archiving solutions can also add to convenience. They help you meet disaster recovery and legal archiving requirements, and further secure your IT assets.

Bottom line:  there is a lot you can do to allow employees the freedom and flexibility to use devices they prefer.  You don’t have to sacrifice protection of your business assets or create an unwieldy logistical situation in doing it.

Shutterstock: BYOD Message, Mobile, BYOD at Work

The post 5 Ways to Avoid BYOD Nightmares appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Last year we published a list of 20 Social Media Monitoring Tools. One of the more popular tools on that list is Hootsuite. Today we give you a deep dive into Hootsuite:  what it is and how it can make you more productive with social media.

If you are looking for a tool that lets you manage all of your social media accounts and presence in a single place, and collaborate as a team on them, then Hootsuite should be at the top of your list to investigate.

Hootsuite is a Web-based tool (although it also can be used on popular mobile devices- see screenshot above).

You take a few minutes to set up a Hootsuite account;  then connect your various social media profiles.  After this one-time setup, you will be able to use it.  Here are 4 essential functions that Hootsuite performs:

1. Manage Your Social Accounts in One Place

You do this from the Hootsuite dashboard, without visiting each site separately or using a multitude of different mobile apps.  This includes replying to others, retweeting, “liking,” sharing and responding to private messages, and otherwise carrying out activity on your social accounts.

The activities that you can perform vary by social media platform. You won’t be able to do every single thing for your Facebook Page, for instance. But we’ve found that we can do 90% of our day-to-day social activities from within Hootsuite.

You can manage Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Google Plus, MySpace, WordPress and Mixi — individual profiles and business pages.

2. Schedule Updates

The built-in calendar is one of the most important features. Use it to schedule posts to your social accounts.  In other words, you can keep your accounts active. More importantly, you can be efficient by scheduling all your social updates at one time for, say scheduling once a day or once a week. In other words, you can “batch” your work. Then you aren’t constantly interrupting other activities to update social accounts throughout the day or week.

There’s also an auto-schedule feature that will automatically schedule your tweets and updates to go out at optimal times.

Running a marketing campaign and have a lot of updates to make over a period of say, two weeks?  You can actually upload a CSV spreadsheet for all the messages.

If you prefer “set it and forget it” automation, you can add RSS feeds to automatically update social accounts every time a new article goes out from your company blog, for example.  You can set it to post one item at a time (recommended) or more.  You can direct it to check for new items in the feed and post them, once per hour or up to once per day.

3. Communicate and Collaborate as a Team

You can assign tasks, such as responding to a tweet or a private direct message, to a team member, as seen above.  No emails or separate instant message instructions needed. Assignments are right there within the Hootsuite dashboard.

Also, because multiple users can use Hootsuite, everyone can “see” what activity is completed or hasn’t been done yet.  Again, no communicating via email or messaging programs to find out if someone followed up on that Twitter customer complaint yet, or not.   How many users you can have depends on which product level and upgrades you have purchased.

4. Get Analytics and Reports

Fragmented results here and there don’t do much to help you analyze and understand how well social media is working — or not.  For that, you really need to see a bird’s eye view of activity over a period of time, and be able to compare it.

Many social media platforms now offer analytics.  But who has time to run and grab those analytics from Facebook Insights, or a multitude of other social sites?  Hootsuite’s built-in analytics and reports  give this kind ability to track your progress and understand what’s working best, in one place.

Best of all, you can get weekly reports emailed to you.  These are extremely helpful.  For instance, here at Small Business Trends we review the analytics reports in staff meetings from time to time.

What I Like About Hootsuite

The company keeps investing in enhancements to its platform.  Hootsuite just keeps getting better.  And that’s not always true with products.

Here are two aspects that are particularly impressive:

Integration / Interoperability With Other Marketing Applications

You’re not limited to managing just the 8 social media platforms Hootsuite currently covers. You can extend capabilities to other social media sites and even other programs, by adding “apps” from the Hootsuite Apps Directory.

For instance, you’ll find apps for social sites such as Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Scoop.it, YouTube and several more (see screenshot below).

Then there are apps that offer some level of integration or interoperability with popular marketing and CRM programs that businesses use.  There are apps for ConstantContact, Nimble, HubSpot, Salesforce, ZenDesk and more.  What exactly the apps allow you to do with Hootsuite varies by app.  For a description of one such app, see our write-up about the Batchbook and Hootsuite integration.

Most apps are free.  Some, like the app for Salesforce, require an additional monthly fee. But even the paid premium apps are relatively inexpensive. Apps usually cost less than $5 per month per premium app.

I like the fact that Hoosuite has been open to allowing these kinds of apps, through its developer program.  It makes Hootsuite more useful as a central dashboard and management tool.

Different Pricing Levels to Meet Different Needs

Another positive aspect of Hoosuite is that it offers different pricing and feature levels.

There’s a free level, for a single user to update 5 social profiles.  This is good for a really small startup or sole proprietor.  It’s also a risk-free way to try out Hoosuite.

The Pro version, currently $8.99  a month  – the price recently went up — can be used with a small team of two users.  Additional users can be added for a fee.  The added users can vary — anywhere from $10 to $15 for the third user, and $15 to $30 each additional after that.  It all depends on whether you are under the “new” pricing or old.

Note that some of the features in this review may only be available at the Pro level.

With Pro you can manage an unlimited number of social profiles.  You receive an enhanced analytics report, and can choose an unlimited number of apps.  There’s a 30-day free trial of this version, too.  The Pro version is what most small businesses likely will use.

The Enterprise version is for, well, large enterprises.  Pricing is not even available on the site for Enterprise.  The Enterprise version adds advanced features, such as advanced security, geo-targeting, advanced customer support. It also adds Hootsuite University, an online training program for social media and learning to use Hootsuite.

There’s a discount of 10% for annual billing instead of monthly, for some savings.

What I’d Like to See Hootsuite Do Differently

While I like the different levels of Hootsuite, some small businesses may consider it expensive to purchase certain add-ons ala carte.  The cost can really add up.

Hootsuite University is one such add-on I’ve heard people kvetch about.  Ala carte it’s $21 per month.  Small business teams really could benefit from training. But the pricing model poses a challenge.  Small business owners I’ve heard from are concerned that once you sign up for a monthly fee, if team members don’t use it, you could find your organization a year later paying for a service that’s rarely been used – just because somebody forgot to cancel it.  A one-time fee per user would solve that issue.

Another pricing issue is the limitations and expense of using vanity URL shorteners for brand enhancement of your links shared.  For instance, at Small Business Trends we’ve started using our own URL shortener of http://SBT.me.    Hootsuite allows custom URLs — but only if you sign up for Owly Pro.  That costs $49.99 per month.

Small businesses will be very cost sensitive about social media tools. Just 39% of small businesses say they get ROI from social media. Of those the majority isolate the dollar value to under $1,000 per year.

Still, at the base price of under ten bucks a month, Hootsuite Pro delivers excellent value. The base price should be affordable by most small businesses.  Just be careful about those add-ons!

At Small Business Trends we are paid customers of Hootsuite. We did not get any special consideration for this review.

More About Hootsuite

As mentioned, Hootsuite is a Web-based based app, and can be used from most modern browsers.  There are extensions (“hootlets” or “hootbars”) for Chrome and Firefox browsers.

Hootsuite offers mobile apps so that you can manage your social presence from an iPhone, Android devices and the iPad.

HootSuite Media, Inc. was founded in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, who is also the company CEO. Its headquarters is located in Vancouver, BC, Canada.  It has over 6 million users, who send 3 million messages a day through the dashboard.

Overall, Hootsuite is the gold standard today for managing your social media accounts.  It offers a strong affordable mix for small business users.

The post Review of Hootsuite: Manage Social Media From A Single Dashboard appeared first on Small Business Trends.

It’s Small Business Week in the United States, and in honor of that we invite you to participate in a live Twitter chat on Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 8 p.m. EST, presented by FedEx Office.

The topic is:  Startup Tips That Make the Difference in Success. We’ll be discussing what it takes to be successful when starting a business and growing it.

We hope you’ll join in and pose any questions you may have.  Or if you have any tips to offer other small business owners about startup success, we invite you to share them.  Be sure to follow @FedExOffice too.

Join The Twitter Chat: Follow #SmBizEdge

Be sure to join us for this live Twitter chat event:

TOPIC: Startup Tips That Make the Difference in Success

DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 2013

TIME: 8 pm EST (New York time)

LOCATION: Twitter.com: Just follow the hashtag #SmBizEdge to participate.

Be sure to follow me, Anita Campbell, at @SmallBizTrends too. If you’ve never taken part in a Twitter chat before and you need some pointers, be sure to read “How to Participate in a Twitter Chat.”

Disclosure: FedEx Office compensated me to participate as a small business expert during the FedEx Office Tweet Chat program and write this post. The ideas in this blog post are mine and not ideas or advice from FedEx Office.

The post Twitter Chat #SmBizEdge: Startup Tips That Make the Difference in Success appeared first on Small Business Trends.

In the context of business, “sunk costs” are when you’ve spent money already and will not recover it.  In other words, you’ve  ”sunk money into something.”

The problem comes in when you keep spending — even when whatever you’ve invested money in, is no longer a good idea.  Yet you keep throwing good money after bad.

This sunk costs situation happens much too often in business.  We insist on getting value out of the money we’ve already spent.  We become determined NOT to lose money.  We can’t — we won’t — let go.

However, by not letting go when something isn’t working, we can end up losing a lot more.  We keep pouring money, time and effort into something that has no chance of working or would lead to a poor result at best.  The project or initiative  keeps costing more and more.  Instead of cutting our losses, we compound them by hanging on.  We make our losses worse.

It goes against our nature to let go.

It’s called the sunk cost fallacy.

The BBC: An Example of Sunk Cost Fallacy

A perfect example of the sunk cost fallacy came to light just last month, in May of 2013.  The BBC revealed it was scrapping — finally – a £100 million technology project.  It had dragged on for 5 years.  The problem:  a stubborn desire on the part of the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer to continue building a custom system when commercial systems already on the market would have done the job at a fraction of the cost.  Add to that an overpaid, under-supervised enterprise consulting firm — and you have a sunk cost fallacy of epic proportions.

Instead of calling it quits, the project dragged on. Instead of admitting the money previously spent was sunk costs that would never be recovered, they poured more money into it.

Entrepreneurs and business owners can fall into the same trap. We get emotionally caught up a project, an employee, an initiative.  We want to make it work.  We think that somehow we’ll turn things around.  After all, it would be wasteful not to try to get benefits  out of money we’ve already spent, we think.

We keep pouring money into it in a misguided attempt not to lose our initial investment.  We continue long after logic and good sense suggest it’s time to pull the plug.

Pride sometimes is involved, too. Who wants to admit that something was a mistake? ‘Maybe if we keep working on it, we can salvage it,’ we think.

David Ariely, a behavioral economics professor and author of Predictably Irrational, points out that humans often think they will behave in one way (perhaps the way logic and reason suggest). But in reality we behave differently (perhaps  driven by emotion to keep throwing good money after bad).

We tend to focus on the money we will lose if we were to walk away.  Instead, if we were reasoning through the problem, we would be thinking about what we could gain by scrapping a wasteful situation — and finding a better solution.

How to Avoid a Sunk Costs Nightmare

As entrepreneurs and small business owners, what can we do?  Focus on your business goals and the end result you want.  In other words, you need to look to the future, not money spent in the past.

Put out of your mind the idea of  recovering on sunk costs. The money is gone.  Cut your losses.  Sweep up the mess … and move on to something more productive.

It’s also important to learn to recognize when you might be in the midst of a sunk costs problem.  We may not even realize that we are in danger of succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. When we’re smack in the middle of it, it’s hard to see that we are putting more money at risk.

Get a second opinion from someone not emotionally involved in the past expenditures.  This is where a good accountant or CFO is worth his or her weight in platinum.  He or she will be more likely to evaluate the situation logically.

A smart business owner knows when to seek advice — and take it.

Shutterstock: wasted money

The post What Are Sunk Costs? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Growing businesses have at least one thing in common. They all need the ability to “scale”, i.e., be able to grow without infrastructure and systems holding them back. Or as I often say, you have to be able to get out of your own way as you grow.

If you are held back from opportunities because your existing systems aren’t flexible enough or it cost too much to expand, or you feel locked in to outdated technology that’s cumbersome to manage – then your business will suffer.

The good news in one area, telecommunications, is that there are many more choices for small businesses today than even 5 years ago.

One of those choices is a cloud phone system.

A cloud phone system is where you use the power and benefits of the cloud for telecommunications. Cloud phone systems offer a number of advantages:

Avoid costly equipment

With a cloud-based business phone system, there’s typically little hardware involved (other than the phones themselves). So you don’t need to worry about buying, maintaining and upgrading equipment or even the software, such as for a PBX switchboard. It saves on capital expenditures and also cuts down your internal maintenance costs.

Convenient management

A cloud phone system gives you a Web-based management console to configure features and users. Look for a system whose dashboard is easy to understand and use — by a non-telecommunications professional.

Fast to set up

Some phone systems require a lot of lead time to set up. For example, a dedicated VOIP system on your premises may require multiple visits by an installation crew, and training sessions to learn a complex system. A cloud system is much closer to “plug and play.”

Get more leverage with more features

For small and midsize businesses, you’re able to get the kind of features that large enterprise phone systems take for granted, but without the enterprise cost. You can easily get features such as call logs, conference calling, and auto attendants to direct incoming calls.

And while you could piece together such features from a variety of providers, there’s less complexity when you get them through a single provider, management them with a single interface, and get a single consolidated billing.

Easy to understand, predictable billing

Back in my corporate days I remember meetings where we talked about nothing but our high telephone costs. Those costs were mainly driven by expensive hardware we had on site, such a bulky PBX switchboard box, and complex added charges and complicated discount formulas. On more than one occasion we hired a consultant to come in and audit our phone bills, and help us to reduce them.

That’s when I learned the value of an easy to understand billing system. A system built on a flat monthly rate, with any add-on charges clearly identified, saves a lot of management time. It also helps control costs because it’s more predictable and you can budget more accurately.

911 emergency capabilities

One of the knocks against VOIP systems or a system like Skype, is that some don’t offer emergency calling. You need this. Better cloud systems today recognize that businesses need emergency (as well as 411 directory assistance) capabilities, and offer them as standard features.

Unified communications

Unified communications is often an extra feature, and for organizations that do heavy phone work, it can lend considerable efficiency. Unified communications means that you can seamlessly use other devices such as computers for placing and taking calls, getting voicemails sent to email, and other integrated features. It saves users time, and lets them be more productive. For instance, if you’re working on your computer and need to make a call, you can do so right then and there from your computer. If you need to check voicemails, you can go to your email inbox along with other messages.

Bottom line is this: consider these kinds of benefits when reviewing your phone system needs.  And if you haven’t reviewed your phone bills or business phone system in a while, do it soon.  A lot has changed in the last five years.  It pays to see what’s out there, and see how the right phone system can help your business scale, instead of getting in your way.

Cloud Systems Photo via Shutterstock

The post Scaling for Growth: The Benefits of a Business Phone System in the Cloud appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Google is set to launch a new app to help advertisers create Web ads and engaging Web content assets, using a standard called HTML5.  The new tool is called Google Web Designer.

Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, pre-announced it on the official DoubleClick Advertiser blog:

“To help advertisers and publishers more seamlessly unlock the potential of cross-device programs, we are investing in a new HTML5 creative development tool – Google Web Designer. Available in the coming months, Google Web Designer will empower creative professionals to create cutting-edge advertising as well as engaging web content like sites and applications – for free. Google Web Designer will be seamlessly integrated with DoubleClick Studio and AdMob, greatly simplifying the process of building HTML5 creative that can be served through Google platforms.”

Google Web Designer is not exactly what the names implies — and that has created some confusion on the Web.  Several sites reported it was  a tool to design websites.

However, its main purpose appears not to be about creating websites. Google already offers Google Sites. Rather, Google Web Designer was pitched by Mohan as a tool to create rich media advertisements at last week’s Think DoubleClick industry event.

This new product appears created to address the growth of mobile devices.  Currently the DoubleClick Studio contains Flash tools for building rich media ads.

According to Mohan in a video address to the audience at the Think DoubleClick event, rich media ads are hot.  There has been a “50% increase in engagement rating for rich media ads over the course of the past several months,” he says.

However, Flash-based creative has some limitations.  It’s not viewable on many mobile devices such as tablets (including Google’s own Android platform), without users  going through complicated work-arounds or installing special plugins.   HTML5 is important to enable rich media such as video-based creative to be readily viewable on mobile devices.

Google Web Designer will allow agencies and advertisers to build advertising creative that can run across all modern devices and modern browsers in HTML5 format.  It will be available within DoubleClick and as a stand alone tool.

Google Web Designer Not the Only DoubleClick Improvement

This new product is one more step in the growing range of advertising-related product offerings Google is building out under the DoubleClick brand.  They were previewed last week at the Think DoubleClick event, after a brief review of the online advertising industry.

As Mohan points out, people have been predicting — wrongly — the demise of display advertising almost since the beginning. “We’ve seen how all that’s turned out,” he notes humorously, adding that display advertising is a $200 billion industry opportunity.

Mohan walked through the online-advertising history, starting with DoubleClick for Publishers, an application that started 15 years ago and three years after the first display ad debuted on the Web.  Google acquired DoubleClick in 2008.

Google AdSense, the Google ads that publishers place on their websites and the product many think of when they think about Google advertising, is 10 years old.

If you’re not familiar with DoubleClick for Publishers, it is an ad serving program that intelligently delivers ads on a website, tracks performance metrics such as click-through rates, provides reports, and more. AdSense ads can be delivered through DoubleClick for Publishers, or publishers can deliver their own direct-sold ads or house ads.

There’s a main version of DoubleClick for Publishers.  And there’s also a free version called DFP for Small Business (Small Business Trends uses DFP for Small Business to serve ads on this site).

In other news last week, Mohan announced Campaign Manager, which is the renamed and upgraded advertiser tool platform.  Recognizing the importance of social, Google also has integrated Wildfire into DoubleClick, to get a better sense of how your social presence feeds into your advertising efforts. He says this is just the first step of the integration between Wildfire and DoubleClick — more to come.

Also announced was better integration between advertising using YouTube video and DoubleClick.

Image: video still from Think DoubleClick

Correction:  Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick was announced in 2007 but not completed until 2008 after regulatory approval was given.

The post Google Announces Web Designer, Enhancements to DoubleClick appeared first on Small Business Trends.

What is RSS?

RSS has been plagued by geeky terminology in the past. We’re going to explain it here in business terms — and why it’s still important.

Usually when someone gives a definition of RSS it reads something like this:   The acronym “RSS” stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication.

Uh, that really helps explain RSS, doesn’t it?  :-)

We prefer to explain it this way:  RSS feeds give readers a method to keep up with their favorite blogs, news sites and other websites.  Anyone can choose the sites they wish to subscribe to, and then get updates in one centralized location.

In essence, RSS allows the content to come to you. That means you do not actually have to go to each blog or website individually when you want to view new updates they’ve published.

What do I use RSS for?

That depends on whether you are consuming content created by other sites, or you are the website or blog owner.

As a consumer of content:

Much like magazine or newspaper subscriptions, RSS brings the content to you as the person reading it.  You’re not limited to reading in a feed reader.   For instance, using a tool like IFTTT or FeedBurner, you can trigger an email to be sent to you whenever your favorite site updates.

For business owners, there are plenty of blogs and news sites, such as Small Business Trends, that contain useful information and tips that you can subscribe to.  We give instructions for how to subscribe a little later (below).

As a website owner or blogger:

For bloggers and website owners, RSS is a good Web marketing tool.

It is a means to create a loyal repeat following.  It helps you grow your site by keeping you top of mind with your readers.  Here at Small Business Trends we have many thousands of subscribers who get a daily email of fresh content we’ve published, via our RSS feed.  That’s in addition to subscribers to our weekly newsletters.

As a blog owner or website owner, it’s up to you to create and publicize your RSS feed.  Most blogging software makes this easy on the blog owner, because the software automatically creates RSS feeds.  WordPress, for example, is one content management system that automatically creates an RSS feed for the site.

Here’s an interesting factoid about WordPress and RSS feeds. You can generate a feed for any page in your WordPress  site simply by adding “/feed” at the end of any URL in a WordPress site.

You can also update your social networks (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) automatically from an RSS feed using a tool like TwitterFeed.  This saves you time.

As a consumer of content, how do I subscribe?

RSS feeds can be read using an RSS reader or reader app.  Reader examples include Feedly, The Old Reader, and NewsBlur. There are also desktop and mobile apps that deliver RSS feeds such as NetNewsWire and Flipboard.  Get Prismatic is another interesting reader app.

One of the most popular readers, Google Reader, is in the process of being shut down.

Once you’ve chosen a reader app or service to use, you can then choose blogs and other sites to subscribe to. Each reader has a slightly different process for subscribing.

You’ll need to find a Web URL for the RSS feed.  The easiest way to tell if a website has an RSS feed is to find the orange icon — pictured above — somewhere on a website page (often in the header, sidebar or footer).  On some sites, such as large news sites, you might need to find a page with “Subscribe” options, as the site may offer different RSS feeds for different types of content.

Then right click on the RSS icon and choose “copy link address” or similar command.

Many sites offer RSS feeds through FeedBurner, a service of Google that makes RSS feeds prettier and more user-friendly.  FeedBurner-converted feeds often contain a link that will allow you to select your reader and subscribe with one click.

You can also subscribe to receive daily emails.  FeedBurner offers a service that converts a site’s RSS feed into an  email (other services also do this, including FeedBlitz and AWeber).  Many people choose to consume RSS feeds this way, as a daily email update that comes right to their inbox — instead of consuming feeds through a feedreader program.

Is RSS dead? No!

Google has not invested in improving FeedBurner, its RSS “convert-to-pretty” service, in a long time. Then Google made the decision to shut down its popular Google Reader service.

Those two factors have led some to predict the death of RSS itself.  For instance, at One North, one person writes, “I’ve always had a hard time convincing people outside our industry to use RSS. The best explanation I could offer was to compare it to Twitter.”

It may be true that end users are not subscribing to RSS feeds in feedreaders as much these days.

But it’s also true that RSS is everywhere whether people realize it or not.

One way to think of RSS is like plumbing.  It works behind the scenes.  It’s the pipes that make content portable on the Web.  RSS is still a key way that content published on one site can be seen (either in full or perhaps with just a headline and short snippet) in other places. For instance, RSS is how a lot of content gets fed to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in the first place.

Popular publications like Small Business Trends get considerable traffic from people who read in feedreaders or emails.  A recent 30-day period saw 292,000 views of RSS content, and 449,000 clicks back to the site.  Not too shabby for something some claim is dying … .

Keep in mind, that’s based on FeedBurner statistics.  FeedBurner mainly tracks Google Reader stats — and email subscribers through FeedBurner — these days. Over 90% of our subscribers according to FeedBurner are on Google Reader. But many newer services don’t appear to be tracked.  If that’s true, then the impact of RSS is understated.

Some worry about scraper sites picking up your content and using it via RSS feeds. John Battelle, Chairman of Federated Media (an advertising partner of ours) attempted to shut off full feeds for his content several months ago. He then  relented based on his audience feedback — the article and its comments are good reading.  Just let me point out, there are other ways to scrape content besides RSS, and getting rid of your feed probably will not stop them.

Despite rumors of its death, RSS is alive and well on the Web today — working behind the scenes.  One day it may be replaced.  But until there’s a widespread and easy-to-use replacement format, RSS is still important.

RSS Photo via Shutterstock

The post What is RSS? And Is It Still Important? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The deadline for technology companies to compete in CRM Idol is fast approaching.  Monday, June 10, 2013 is the entry deadline.

CRM Idol takes a broad view of what constitutes CRM technology — it’s a competition to discover the most promising new marketing-related technologies.  Here is a sampling of the kinds of technology that may qualify:

• CRM applications
• Marketing Automation
• ocial Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Sales Force Automation
• Sales Intelligence
• Sales Optimization
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Operations
• Customer Service
• Web Self-Service
• Customer Experience Management (CEM, CXM)
• Social Media Monitoring
• Customer Analytics
• Enterprise Feedback Management
• Reputation Management/Engine
• Innovation Management

Companies must have less than $12 million in revenue and have been founded less than seven years ago.

“The submissions for this competition keep getting better and better,” said Paul Greenberg, CRM Idol founder. “Every year we see great companies committed to innovation in the CRM space, and I’m sure this year will be no different.”

Once submissions are in, those who meet requirements will be announced June 20. After product demonstrations, interviews, and voting by judges and the public, the CRM Idol 2013 winners will be announced Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013.

This is the third year for the CRM Idol competition.   Eight former participants in the competition have been acquired, with many others enjoying increased visibility and great success.  Former winners and participants cite CRM Idol as an important differentiator with both prospects and investors.

The primary judges for CRM Idol 2013 for the Americas include industry experts Brent Leary, co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials LLC, Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal of Beagle Research, Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder at ThinkJar LLC, Jesus Hoyos, partner and co-founder of Solvis Consulting, and Paul Greenberg, managing principal at the 56 Group.

Winners of the competition will be awarded with consulting hours from the judging panel, the opportunity to pitch to investing partners including Bain Capital Ventures, publicity with leading industry publications, and technology licenses with valuable tools including Salesforce.com, Infusionsoft, and Marketo.

Go here for complete rules.  To submit a nomination, request a submission form by emailing:  request@crmidol.com

The post CRM Idol Competition – Get Nominations In By June 10 appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Cloud computing or “the cloud” is one of today’s hottest computing concepts.

It’s increasingly how small and midsize businesses take advantage of automation and improve operations and effectiveness. The Cloud makes it easier for the distributed workforce, with remote employees, to operate as a team and share information. The Cloud provides a central place for proprietary databases and applications.

It saves money too, because the Cloud typically requires less investment in capital equipment. Computing operations can be hosted virtually in a central data center, reducing maintenance costs of maintaining equipment on premises.

And the cloud is also an integral element of backup and disaster recovery plans for many organizations. If one location is inaccessible (such as when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast U.S. last year), organizations with cloud-based backup systems can continue operating with minimal or no interruptions.

But how does your organization connect to cloud applications and data stored in the cloud?  We don’t mean how individual users connect necessarily, but rather how your network connection is set up to pass information among your systems and access applications.

You may think there’s only one practical choice: use a regular Internet connection. Many small companies start out that way.

But one of the trends we are noticing is that a dedicated Ethernet connection for accessing the Cloud, is now within reach for smaller businesses. In the past these dedicated networks and connections were available mainly for large enterprises — and too pricey for smaller businesses. On top of that, they were often complex to set up and maintain.

But as technology takes on a central role in smaller organizations, and demand for secure access increases, ISPs are coming out with new offerings at price points designed for small and midsized companies. And not only is the price within reach, but the setup and maintenance can be outsourced now to your ISP.

Here are some advantages of a dedicated Ethernet network to access your cloud assets:

Security

As we’ve pointed out before, small businesses are now being targeted by cyber attackers. Smaller organizations are perceived as soft targets.

Let’s say you need to back up sensitive customer data to your cloud system. With public Internet connections, there is greater risk of intrusion. Information is passed along a route in the public Internet, and your service provider probably will not take responsibility for an intrusion that happens with another company along the way. Dedicated Ethernet connections are more secure by their nature, because that “handing off” of data through the public Internet doesn’t happen.

Losses Minimized, Opportunities Gained

In the above scenario, less security means more potential liability for your company. A security incident can mean considerable expense to investigate, mitigate issues, notify customers, and potentially pay damages — not to mention a public relations nightmare in the making.

Also, if your company is involved as a subcontractor to a larger organization, you may be required by contract or policy to take certain security steps, or indemnify against them. If you company is not able to meet security requirements, you may not be able to take advantage of opportunities.

Less Complexity

There was a time when setting up an Ethernet connection to the cloud would have been challenging. But today they are much less complex.

You can basically outsource the private Ethernet connection. An ISP that is set up to serve business clients can deliver a more-or-less “plug and play” dedicated network, meeting your requirements, to connect to the cloud.  You don’t have to support the Ethernet connection either — ongoing support gets handled by your service provider.

Reliability and Availability

When your cloud assets are mission critical, reliability and availability are key issues.  Ethernet is typically based on fiber and can be switched to a redundant path almost instantly, eliminating interruptions.  Public Internet connections can’t guarantee that your systems will be available consistently with the level of performance needed.

With a dedicated Ethernet network, your offsite cloud data and applications can offer the same level of performance as if they were  located within your local are network, but still maintaining the advantages of cloud computing.

Shutterstock, Ethernet fiber

The post Reaching the Cloud: Dedicated Ethernet vs Public Internet Connections appeared first on Small Business Trends.

We are so excited about our new Small Business Events Calendar.  This is a public calendar for the small business community.  We invite you to share your events on it.

How It Works

Events – and Awards and Contests, too – On the Events Calendar (pictured above) we include not only events such as conferences, webinars, Hangouts … but we also include small business contests and awards.  Since contests and awards are deadline-driven, they lend themselves to calendar listings.

It is FAST to submit an event – We wanted to keep it simple… and make it easy. It takes under 2 minutes to submit an event for a free listing.  Go here to submit an event.

Basic events listings are FREE –  There’s no charge for listing a small business event.

More visibility for those who want it — Want to include a description of the event?  What about a discount code, an event hashtag, a logo, and a direct link to the registration page?  Want more visibility at the top of the page? All those things are available for Premium listings, which cost just $99.

No irrelevant events –  One of our main gripes with public calendars is that they quickly get overrun with irrelevant events and, well, spam.  Small business is the ONLY niche we serve – we are 100% focused on it. We wanted only high-quality events that fit squarely into that niche.  Every event is reviewed by a human being. Most events are reviewed within a few hours – but please allow up to 24 hours. You will receive an email when your event is approved.

Events get wide visibility -  This is a joint effort with Ramon Ray and his SmallBizTechnology.com site, and events get publicized in both sites.  Since both sites serve the same audience — small business — it made sense to join forces.

Put an Events Calendar on your site – Would you like to display small business events on your website?  Then grab the code for one of our embeddable events units.  There’s a convenient sidebar widget, and a full-page version.

Weekly events posts – Each week on Saturday we highlight upcoming events by issuing a roundup article. This appears on Small Business Trends and also SmallBizTechnology.com. If you have an event coming up within the next 30 days, and you want to get it in the week’s roundup, be sure to submit it by Friday 9 am EST, the cutoff.

Back Story Behind The Calendar

It’s based on proprietary technology – The events calendar was conceived and built by our Technology team here at Small Business Trends.  In the past we had a third-party calendar, but it had limitations and couldn’t be automated (more on that below).  So we decided to replace it.

Over a period of months, we looked at many third party calendars and online events services.  We studied all the  WordPress events plugins.  None of them was quite right for our purposes.  We ended up starting with an events plugin, but customizing it extensively.

A case of automation –  We don’t talk a lot about our technology here at Small Business Trends. But one of our outside advisors has recommended we open up and share the “Small Business Trends story” more.

In the past two years we’ve invested heavily in our backend systems. To say that we run WordPress doesn’t even scratch the surface.  WordPress is at the core, but this site is heavily customized.

Efficiency is crucial in your business, I’m sure.  It is certainly is in ours.

We’ve built backend systems with an eye toward automating repetitive manual activities as much as possible. We’re a small team. Our company is profitable and totally self-funded. Through automation we’ve freed up our precious human resources to focus on “value-add” activities — ones that require intelligence and talent. The grunt work we let technology handle.

The Events Calendar system is an example of automation.  For instance, the weekly events posts are automatically pulled from the events calendar database — and don’t need to be manually entered.  The posts simply need to be reviewed and the first paragraph customized.

Cost savings of $7,500 – It will save at least $7,500 annually in labor costs.

In the past, we’d manually create weekly events and contests posts.  Those took a ton of time.  People would email us information about events, and our extended team (including someone from SmallBizTechnology.com) would have to dig for the information among several inboxes. We’d manually grab images and load them.  We’d search event sites for descriptions and edit them.  We’d also separately load the events into our previous events calendar – another duplication of effort.

We’ve gone from spending 3.5 hours a week on events, to spending less than 30 minutes. That’s a savings of three hours a week.  In a year’s time, it adds up.

Scaling for growth – Automation is crucial to scale a business for growth. All that manual work wasn’t such a big deal when the site was smaller. But as a business grows, manual activities multiply. They bury you.

Without automation, we wouldn’t be able to offer all the features to the small business community that we serve.

Let us know what you think about the Events Calendar system, and if there’s anything we can do to improve it, in the comments below.

The post Review of the Small Business Events Calendar: Can We Improve It? appeared first on Small Business Trends.