Small Business Blogs

I recently wrote this on free blogs and blogs site at MyTypes.com, thought this might benefit one of our small business owner/visitors:

Top 5 Technologies for small businesses

Before we start telling you about these top 5 technologies, I want to make it clear these are my opinion, and not based on research institute of small business administration or the US Chamber of commerce. Last week I read the state of the small business report from the US Chamber published recently, and it was too long and not helpful. I think small businesses like all businesses have similar challenges of efficiency, lack of financial resources, lack of people resources and lack of time. If technology could help them, they would love to use it, but if it’s not easy to use, they will not! We think every one should use technology to help them, not just online businesses.

They are not usually very tech savvy, and don’t have huge corporate arms training them on the latest version of Powerpoint, word or the sales force automation tools. If you don’t know this, large corporations spend billions of dollars a year training their employees on technology tools. In my professional opinion small businesses have a major disadvantage here. I use to work for Gartner Group’s learning division where I have 2 years of experience in the online business and corporate technology training area with large and small organizations. Bottom line is that today, small businesses can compete with large companies because of simple technology initiatives and tools available. You no longer need to work for a large company to have similar online tools, or be an online business. Look at Google, they just announced a suite of applications for small businesses, read the Boston Herald articled linked at the end of this blog. But here are the top 5 technology tools all small businesses should utilize to grow, why not use the advantages that online businesses use?

1. Mobile email device, such as a blackberry is a must. You shouldn’t have to go back to your computer and go check email, you should be busy spending time with your customers, employees, and suppliers. Do not check email back at the computer, and waste your time. Instead Save time, by using a blackberry or something similar, check email and send email from any where any time. I am a blackberry user of over 7 years now, there is nothing better, yes I have tried Plam and Treo products. It’s important to remember, You don’t have to check your email all the time, or respond to all of your emails all at once. Have some self control folks! You should be out and about doing your business, and check it when you have a moment. Do not set it to buzz every time you get an email. Control your time, save time, and be connected, not be a mess. There is no better tool for small businesses or actually any online business or not, than a mobile email via blackberry.
2. Having a business blog is a must! And you should be using a free business blogging system such as Blogger.com, Wordpress.com or MyTypes.com, as those blogs get indexed by Google every day. What does that mean, and Why you say? This whole website and company is based on blogging, and we wanted to develop a business blogging platform that had built in SEO for you. Blogs are the #1 way to promote your businesses on line, because search engines such as Google consider them news, you need to blog about your specific products and services and generally what is going on about your businesses regularly.

3. You need a website ( or blog site ) with a custom Domain, that has your professional representation with a custom design for you. First thing we recommend is that if you have the money, you hire a custom html web designer and have it done. Next best thing is for you to find a industry based solution, one with templates already built in for you. For example in the real estate or mortgage industry there are specific solutions, and there is so much specific content and application tools, that one really has to consider those solutions first. Next for a blogsite, in addition to your website or within your URL. For example: blog.MyWebsite.com, Great place to start is Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org. Ask your tech person for help, if they don’t know about these tools, have them take a look for find another tech person.

To find a tech person, If your needs are custom and complex you may want to look at Joomla.org or Drupal.org to find a great solution. These systems have thousands of programmers that know them very well, and they are totally free to use, you don’t have to pay in licensing fees at all, or give them your code. Chances are you are not very technical, so go to one of those communities websites and hire a programmer for about $2k or less you should get a full Joomla or drupal based site custom designed for you. All of the tools such as blogs, templates, shopping cart, and online business needs should be there for you. Best of all they are free, this new wave of Open Source technologies really is changing the world.

4. Learn about SEO (which stands for Search Engine Optimization), Online business marketing. It’s not just about mail marketing with news letters, SEO, blogs and Google Adwords based Search Engine Marketing are key to help you target key customers. Again there are many great resources on the web, including our SEO blogs and main blogging and SEO blogs coaching areas from the front page of our website at MyTypes.com.

5. Join an online businesses community such as a Barter system at ITEX.com. Why should small businesses join any online business communities, especially active one’s like Barter networks? No man is an island, neither is a women, or are any businesses. We all need each other to succeed, businesses need customers, suppliers, employees, not just owners:-). There are number of challenges and situations that you may want to get advice on. The chances are there are owners of businesses out there that have dealt with those issues, and often times they want to help you. You may have some advice that may help them, this is what online businesses communities do in an efficient time saving way. Barter services company like ITEX also have an online marketplace, such as eBay. eBay has been immensely popular due to it’s online business community of checks and balances of buyers and sellers. It almost forces you to have references, and that gives businesses credibility, and makes them more successful.

Bonus technology advice, you probably use Quick books to manage your books via your accountant already. If not, you should have a book keeper accountant do that, but you should use the online version of QuickBooks, not just the desktop. This way, your accountant can work remotely, yes you can just mail them your receipts, save time, save hassle!

Technology usage to grow your small businesses is not just about being efficient, it’s about saving you time so that you can spend it with your clients, employees, friends and family. Remember relationships are usually the most important things in life, especially the friends and family kind. If you treat your customers and employees like family, which most successful businesses do, you will succeed. And, our technology advice above is catered to help you do just that. Yes you can!

Here is Google’s free applications article promised earlier:

Google releases new online software for businesses in latest swipe at Microsoft - BostonHerald.com

This is another one of our marketplace blogs we wrote today, 2/14/2008, if you sell a product or service you probably want to read…

I wanted to write this post to start listing the features of our online marketplace that we have started to build within our MyTypes.com/Marketplace area. The list of features is too long, so I am shortening it. We actually are using an application suite from one of our favorite Open Source CMS’s, Joomla.org. We started to build the online marketplace, as the Barter system ITEX that we are working with, because their marketplace is the second most visited area of their website. ITEX also has more than 24,000 small businesses in the system with thousands of barter items that people search for. While this online marketplace is setup to promote the ITEX Barter site and Barter ITEMS, we also wanted to promote this marketplace within non-barter clients. Yes, we are opening this online marketplace to be a listings for any businesses trying to buy or sell services. So think of this marketplace as a directory of b2b, a list of online businesses, or businesses of any kind that want to sell products or services, not just barter.

The businesses directory tool was used to create this Marketplace, and it shows entries of companies, clubs, persons, shops, products. The entries are divided into categories, which can contain subcategories. One entry can be entered in several categories. The companies/clubs/persons enter themselves in the index. Registered users can modify or delete their entries. Entries can be renewed by the user if they expire.

Using the integrated Category & Entry Manager in the back-end, all categories and entries can be managed comfortably. Entries and categories can be deleted, unpublished and moved. This is not a common but great flexibility of our Marketplace.

A Fields Manager can be used to configure each field entirely. This concerns the ordering, obligatory fields, fees, field length (width of field and number of characters), field type (textfield, textarea, checkbox, checkbox group, select list, text code or calendar), search methods, in which view a field should be shown (Category View and/or Details View), and much more. An unlimited number of new custom fields can be added, oh yeah and with SEO and SEO tools for all for free at our LinkMint.com site!

For each entry two images can be uploaded (besides the linked images in the description). The images will be resized to a predefined size. With the URL field “image” it is possible to add fields for linked images.

An alpha index is available to show only entries starting with a specified letter. Also only the most popular entries and categories, the recently updated entries, the new entries or entries by tags (mata keywords) can be shown.

In a menu module all categories within the Marketplace can be shown in tree view or all main categories in a flat view. An extended search function gives the possibility to search within the existing values of one or more fields or within a specific category.

Detailed Features:

Multi-Level Categories to show full depth of Marketplace
Adding Multiple Subcategories at once
User definable fields (textarea/inputbox/checkbox/checkbox group/select list/calendar)
Wide possibilities of configuration
Dynamic Page Titles (SEO -Search Engine Optimization), to rank the specific marketplace items high on Google, this is probably the Best Feature of our system
RSS Feeds (configurable to show latest, random, etc. entries)
Integrated Google Maps connection
Security Image for spam protection
Extended Search Function
Category Search, most online marketplaces don’t have this.
Edit and delete functions for the user (via front-end)
Quick Edit/Edit in Place function
Show all entries of one user
Integrated Wysiwyg-Editor (front-end)
Meta Keywords & Description (SEO)
Show entries by tags (meta keys)
Image Upload
Supports field URLs http, email, linked image and linked media file (video/audio)
Text code field for Add/Edit Entry form to show individual information
Connection to Paypal
Category & Entry Manager
CSS file editable within back-end
Templates for Details View and V-Card, editable within back-end
Template for Add/Edit Entry form, editable within back-end
Template Parser with Syntax Checking
Language Manager to install new languages
Confirmation emails for author and/or system operator
Alphabetical index for category and entry selection
Show most popular entries and categories
Show new & recently updated entries

Marketplace Category function

Multi-Level Categories. That is, each sub-category may have sub-categories. Unlimited nesting depth.
One entry can be entered in several categories (by default 5 categories, extensible by configuration file).
All Marketplace categories are individually promoted on our network of sites, and are SEO’ed for maximum exposure.

Entries

Adding an image/logo, which will be shown in the V-Card and/or in the Details View.
Adding an icon/symbol, which will be shown by default in the upper right corner of the V-Card and/or in the Details View.
Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description can be set up by the user. Used for the Tags feature. These are the most important aspects of your SEO efforts.
This is exactly the main advantage of our Marketplace, that ebay and Amazon provide. Have you noticed their items ranking high on Google, this is how they/we do it.

Front-End-View

Marketplace is divided into three views: the General View ( Marketplace main page), the Category View and the Details View. A category view shows all subcategories and entries of a category. A Details View shows only one entry.
The views are almost entirely configurable within the back-end and additionally by changing the view templates.

In the General View all main categories can be shown together with an image and a short description.
Already in the general view all entries can be shown as V-Cards.
A Category View shows the corresponding sub categories and the entries within the category as V-Card.
For each entry two images can be added. One small picture (icon/symbol), which will be shown by default in the V-Cards and the logo image, which will be shown by default in the Details View.
CSS file, editable within the back-end, for changing the layout easily.
Connection to Google Maps possible and routing function.

User Edit Function

Edit and delete functions for the user.
If a user is logged in, he can edit and delete his own entries. Also he is able to move his entry to another category.
The user is able to add his entry afterwards to additional categories.
It is adjustable within the back-end, if the delete function really deletes an entry or sets it only to un-publish.
User IP addresses of set up and changing will be saved.

Search

Extended search function using one single search field.
Drop Down Lists with all already entered values for all fields possible.
Separate drop down lists also for user defined custom fields.
Searching within a specific category possible
Search parameters are saved within a cookie.
Auto search with parameters given in the URL.

Other Features Coming soon!

Photo Gallery - a plugin to show an “unlimited” number of uploaded images in Details View (horizontally or vertically) with Lightbox effect.
Review & Rating - a plugin to vote and comment an entry.
Video/Audio - a plugin to show audio or video files (YouTube support).
Radius Search - a plugin to search within a radius of cities.
Download - a plugin to upload and download files.
Featured Listings - a Pay option to show entries on a featured position.
This marketplace will always remain free, people will be given an option for featured listings, but unlike eBay and Amazon, we will NEVER price gauge our sellers just because we have buyers.
In case you have noticed we get ranked very high on the search engines, and we will continue to get a ton of traffic this way. The early sellers of items on our Marketplace will benefit by their listings always showing up near the top of all of our system. We have a special software rules & algorithm built in to our system.
Our SEO efforts are not just talk, you will find our sites at the top of the search engines, always! **As we write this we are ranked top 50 in Google to top 10 for SEO related VERY COMPETITIVE keywords such “SEO“, SEO Tools, and Wordpress SEO.

Posted by Admin in b2b

Filed under: Blogs on February 14th, 2008