Tim Leberecht in this 7 minute presentation explains how giving your brand to others gives you more information and control over your brand.
Category Archives: Technology
Every day technology changes. Here we try to keep you posted with things that can help you and your business stay one step ahead of your competitors and in touch with the needs of your customers.
Business Relationships
I recently had a meeting with the Flagstone Junior Chamber of Commerce. The question was asked “what is business about?” The most obvious answer one can give is ‘Profit’. But how do you make that profit? When you look at business, you suddenly realise the success of a business comes from its relationships. Lets look at this from the starting point of profit and work back.
We make a profit by earning more income then what we spend on expenses. Income minus Expenses= Profit/(Loss)
We spend money on expenses and capital to produce the goods and services we sell. In order to purchase those goods we need to buy them from other suppliers, be it the owner or their salesperson. In order to sell our goods and services we need to sell them to other people.
The purchase of those goods and services happens as a result of your business creating a relationship with the supplier. You may have found them online or been introduced to them through another person. Likewise, you create sales by developing relationships with your customers. (refer to the article on Customer Service- “Retail V Online- Retails Secret Weapon To Win Customers“).
Internally you have people who you employ or owners in the business with you. Externally you have relationships with third parties such as government, industry regulators and organisations etc.
The business success can depend on how good the relationship is between all of these people. And like in any relationship, good communication is important. This is why Social Media is becoming such an important tool used by business to build relationships with current and prospective customers.
Business is a creation of man and as a result is built on our social interaction with one another. If your business doesn’t have a good relationship with someone or someone doesn’t have a good relationship with your business, this can affect the success of your business.
~ Damien Foley
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Computer Back Ups Are Like Car Insurance Because…
We only realise how important it is when we need to use it.
We use computers in business to hold important information as emails, documents and files etc. But if your computer crashed, what would happen to your business? I read recently of a home business that had their laptop stolen. The laptop wasn’t the most valuable thing stolen, the information it had on it was far more valuable. Because all of the business information was on the laptop they effectively had no business.The best advice for this to be prevented is to have backups that are:
– backed up regularly- the more frequent the back up the less information is lost.
– multiple backups- more than one back up copy.
– both onsite (same location as computer) and offsite (different location to computer).
– tested regularly.
Here are some ways to minimise the risk of your business being hurt by the loss of your computer with backups:
1. Make Hard/Paper Copies-Pro: less likely to be stolen or become corrupted by a virus etc. Con: Cost of paper, environmental impact, Cost of storage, cost of administration, still susceptible to fire and water if on site, hard to maintain and move.
2. External Hard-drive– Pro: relatively cheap, can be done automatically, easy to retrieve information, can be based off site. Con: Also susceptible to viruses, if located on same premises as computer still susceptible to theft, fire and water, limited storage space.
3. Backup Tapes/Disks/USB– Pro: Easy to use, compact and easily removable from site, somewhat cheap, can have multiple back up copies Con: Susceptible to virus, can be easily damaged, limited storage space, can be subject to theft, fire and water.
4. Website/Third Party Storage Provider– Pro: can be easy to set up to backup automatically and regularly, offsite location to computer, usually higher storage space, can be easy to retrieve, may have multiple ‘mirrored’ site storage Con: Cost can be minimal depending upon host provider, would need an expert to set up correctly, would need assurance as third party provider there is security with both access and cyber attacks, business confidentiality and information privacy might not allow it without high cost, storage space subject to hosting package.
5. Cloud Applications– Pro: you have little if any software and information held on your computer as held by third party provider, little if any disruption to work if result of theft, fire or flood as just log on from another computer, generally a high level of security with trusted providers, usually have ‘mirrored’ back up in various locations. Con: Cost but minimal and usually paid monthly, plans are typically paid for by the amount of storage space used, need the internet to access so not best for no or slow internet access.
So if you don’t already have a backup policy for your business information technology, it might pay for itself in the future. We never know when we can be the victim of theft, fire or flood. Will you now be looking into what back ups your business has or should have?
~ Damien Foley
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Instagram and Pinterest- ‘A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words’
New forms of social media are constantly arriving in various shapes and forms. The dominating social media sites currently are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Foursquare (Google+ perhaps?). But there are new kids on the block that are taking words away and replacing them with pictures as a means to communicate.
Instagram, with its recent sale to Facebook for around $1b, is one big player in this space. The Instagram App allows you to take pictures from your mobile phone and quickly transfer them to the internet, using different “filters’ to alter the picture. You can view what friends are posting on Instagram and have the option to share on other social media sites as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Flickr. You can give the picture a caption and ‘geotag’ to let people know where you took the picture.
Pinterest is a site that allows you to ‘Pin’ pictures from other websites into albums and folders to share with others. So this is a great way for people with similar interests to share pictures. Pinterest does encourage ‘Pinners’ to declare the website where the picture was pinned from.
How Business Can Use Instagram and Pinterest.
So my question with this is whether Instagram was going to allow photo’s to be shared directly to Pinterest?
“You shouldn’t need to be too worried if that doesn’t happen as you can pin images that are on websites (including individual posts). So your intention then would be to use an interesting image with a quality post. Then pin the image (linked to the source URL). If your image is re-pinned you should see a spike in traffic.” says Leesa Watego of Iscariot Media.
So if I have interesting photo’s that people will ‘pin’ and ‘re-pin’ linked to my website, I will see a spike in traffic to my website from the picture , especially if it is related to the website content. If my website content is of high quality and of interest to those leads generated from the Pinterest picture, then I should see an increase in traffic to my website. Which leads us back to the point, that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ at a glance. Pictures are a way to attract people to our website. So Instagram and Pinterest have a valuable place in many businesses as a social media communication and marketing tool. Especially for those businesses where it is very difficult to say in words what you do, how you do it and how great a product you have. So if you are considering if Pinterest and Instagram is for you as a social media tool, my advice is to get in and try it.
~ Damien Foley