As humans, we’re continually looking to improve and advance. Whether it’s trying to eat better, to quit smoking once and for all, to spend less money, or to spend more time with family and friends, we formally or informally create our own goals — optimistic that we’ll stick to them this year. In this light, I’ve assembled my top 10 New Year’s resolutions for the small business owner.
1. Go small. You want customers to support the concept of small business, right? This means you should adopt a small business mindset at your own business too. Analyze your current vendors and service providers for opportunities to “downsize.” If you find any opportunities to support a small business instead, whether virtual or brick and mortar, aim to switch at least one vendor or supplier.
2. Go mobile. By 2015, more U.S. Internet users will access the web through mobile devices than through PCs. On average, 15% of all searches on Google today are from a mobile device. How well are you catering to this mobile population? Make 2012 the year you optimize your search marketing, email marketing and website to focus on this growing mobile community.
3. Go local. These mobile users are constantly interacting with things and places that physically surround them. Microsoft reported that 53% of mobile searches on Bing have a local intent. The online world has become an essential place for businesses to connect with their local community. Make sure your business has a local listing on key search engines: Google Places, Bing maps, and Yahoo maps.
4. Learn how to delegate and do more of it. When you’re just starting out and times are tough, it’s natural to tighten the purse strings. However, consider what you could gain by handing over certain tasks to contractors, virtual assistants or full-time employees. By relinquishing control of administrative tasks or company blog updates, you’ll free up time for what’s ultimately going to keep you in business: bringing in revenue.
5. Invest in one new customer touch point. Whether it’s blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, mobile coupons or QR codes, new ways to connect with customers seem to pop up daily. As a small business owner, you don’t have to excel in every new technology or network that comes along, but you should try to be wherever your customers are. Ask your current customers where/how they’d like to connect with you, then spend some time in 2012 to make it happen.
6. Refresh your website. In the race to master new social media tools, don’t overlook your own website. After all, social media efforts like Twitter campaigns end up driving traffic somewhere, right? It doesn’t make any sense to build a beautiful and savvy Facebook presence that funnels people to a boring, inaccurate, and out-of-date website. Keep it current and engaging!
7. Protect your assets with an LLC or corporation. While legal fine print may not be the most glamorous part of your business, forming an LLC or corporation can be critical to your business and personal financial health. These business structures protect your personal assets from any company liabilities. That is, if your business is sued or has bad debt, your personal property may be shielded from legal repercussions. Keep in mind that creditor judgments can last a total of 22 years, so you’re protecting not just what you own today, but whatever assets you’ll gain in the future.
8. Get your books ready for tax time early. Are you notorious for waiting until the last minute to organize and file your taxes? Do you find yourself wading through emails, or scrounging through your car to find stray business receipts? Don’t wait until April to start on your 2011 tax forms. Start fresh in 2012 by organizing your books from day one (even if that means outsourcing your accounting).
9. Social network in the real world. Whether the plumber recommends a carpenter or the web designer recommends a copywriter, business is driven by referrals and connections. In 2012, put some effort into networking by signing up for an industry conference or seeking out a local meetup group. These are invaluable ways to develop relationships and share advice with fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners.
10. Put time for you on the calendar. As an entrepreneur, remember that you’re solely responsible for your own motivation, productivity and well-being. There’s no boss to pat you on the back or give you a raise. It’s up to you to keep yourself motivated and inspired. In 2012 be sure to reward yourself for specific milestones like a big client win, meeting a tough deadline, or working “overtime” for multiple nights on end. Sticking to 10 resolutions is a lofty goal for anyone. Follow the tips that ring true for your situation, and adjust as needed. Do you have other resolutions for your business in 2012?
How much extra money can you make with better customer service?
This comprehensive guide on ecommerce customer service will teach you how to improve your customer service strategy without altering the structure of your business. It also helps illustrate just how much money you can make from your existing customer base with great customer service.
50 Good Ecommerce Customer Service Strategies
1. Offer a monthly product giveaway to customers that sign up for your newsletter. 2. Offer coupons to your customers for writing a seller review. 3. Add coupons & promotions in your e-mail marketing. Don't have an e-mail marketing strategy set up? You need one. 4. If possible, work to offer same day shipping for customers that need their items in a hurry. 5. Increase your call center hours to take into account extremely early and late orders. 6. Offer free return shipping for a limited time to see if that added feature builds confidence in your customers and leads to more conversions. 7. Give customers the ability to have their items sent gift wrapped, or to purchase their item with gift wrapping for them to wrap themselves. 8. Offer gift cards to your customers so they can easily share your website with others. 9. Implement live chat. Live chat can greatly decrease the number of abandoned carts at your webstore. 10. Give a coupon to each customer that signs up for your weekly newsletter. 11. Let customers apply to become a ‘product tester’ where they get your products for free in exchange for writing about them on blogs and linking back to your website. 12. Throwing a video-submission contest using your products and rewarding the winner, then use those videos for your own marketing. 13. Provide product recommendations or similar items to customers below the items they're interested in to make it easier for customers to find items that work well in sets, and to increase average order volume. Sweetwater does a great job of this: 14. Be upfront with shipping and tax costs. No one likes hidden charges. 15. Invest into your site navigation and search functions. Customers who can't find an item they're looking for quickly is one of the major causes of a high bounce rate. 16. Start a review contest. Whoever writes a review gets entered to win a drawing of $1,000. Roots Canada has a great example below: 17. Create a blog where you show off your expertise about your products and interact with your customers. 18. Start a Twitter & Facebook page and promote it on site to share deals and listen to your customers. 19. Throw a Holiday-inspired contest where a winner receives a gift package or makeover of their house with your products. To be entered into your contest you can have users sign up for your newsletter or fill out a short questionnaire. 20. Display McAfee, Better Business Bureau or VeriSign secure badges. 21. Include a personable About Us page. Here’s a great example: http://www.heartypet.com/t-about.aspx 22. Lower shopping cart confusion. Use one of these tools for help: 23. Increase your return policy time table to increase customer confidence. 24. Give coupons to customers that share their purchases on Facebook. Shopon.com provides a tool to help you do just that. 25. Display positive seller reviews and testimonials on your home page. 26. Personalize your brand beyond your About Us page with interviews and op-eds from your staff. Show off your expertise of your products. 27. Offer delivery estimates so your customers can know when to expect their order. 28. Add additional payment methods like Paypal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Checkout so your customers can checkout with ease. 29. Open a forum where your customers can talk openly about your products. You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn from them. 30. Ask for product reviews in exchange for coupons. You can then use these product reviews as valuable SEO on your website. 31. Create a ‘deal of the day’ or ‘deal of the week’ for your customers. 32. Offer a deals section to your customers. Offer quarterly or yearly clearance sales to clear out old inventory. Wetsuit Warehouse does a great job of this: 33. Give your customers free samples of products for signing up to your newsletter. 34. Donate generously to a charity and promote it on your website. 35. Run a special promotion where a certain % of proceeds goes to charity. 36. Offer a ‘best sellers’ or 'popular products' section to your customers. 37. Add a coupon section to your website for easy access. You’d rather keep your customers on your website while they look for coupons instead of on Google, right? Macy's does a great job of it: http://www.macys.com/campaign/social?campaign_id=61&channel_id=1 38. Offer freebies / coupons for customers that share your products on social networks. 39. Reach out to bloggers with a strong community and let them write about your products. They don't even have to be in your industry – do they have a hobby that your products can service? 40. Give coupons and deals to users who invite their friends to shop at your store. Have them e-mail you a copy of their invetation for a coupon. 41. Have great phone support? Connect consumers directly to a phone representative from a search engine. More: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2120364/Phone-Through-Rate-is-new-AdWords-Ranking-Factor (Make sure to read the comments- some good insight there). 42. Include any retailer awards on your home page. 43. Host a blog-a-thon where you invite regional bloggers interested in your products to a big party where they are the theme, in exchange for a blog post. Lucky Gunner does a great job of this 44. Listen to your customer and talk about it. Offer an easy ‘submit feedback’ button on your website, then talk about any changes you make that take into account customer suggestions on your website or blog. 45. If all of your products are made by people in America, show it off on your About Us and home page. 46. Offer discounts if customers buy in bulk? Let it be known, clearly! 47. Have a list of charities to donate to? Share that list on your website. 48. Offer multiple language phone support for your products? Show it off clearly on your home and product pages. Don't have multiple language phone support? Depending on your products it might make sense to add new language support to your customer service team. Talk with your current team to see approximately how many non-English speaking calls, or calls where the caller cannot speak English very well, happen. 49. List your contact info clearly, including a mailing address, on your Contact Us page. I hate it when I find retail stores that only include a customer inquiry form to fill out on those pages without any information about the company. 50. Advertise your top customer service employees on site to show off your good customer service skills and promote good customer service within your company. Enough from an online marketer. Lets hear what online retailers themselves have to say about their customer service strategy.
How much extra money can you make with better customer service?
This comprehensive guide on ecommerce customer service will teach you how to improve your customer service strategy without altering the structure of your business. It also helps illustrate just how much money you can make from your existing customer base with great customer service.
50 Good Ecommerce Customer Service Strategies
1. Offer a monthly product giveaway to customers that sign up for your newsletter. 2. Offer coupons to your customers for writing a seller review. 3. Add coupons & promotions in your e-mail marketing. Don't have an e-mail marketing strategy set up? You need one. 4. If possible, work to offer same day shipping for customers that need their items in a hurry. 5. Increase your call center hours to take into account extremely early and late orders. 6. Offer free return shipping for a limited time to see if that added feature builds confidence in your customers and leads to more conversions. 7. Give customers the ability to have their items sent gift wrapped, or to purchase their item with gift wrapping for them to wrap themselves. 8. Offer gift cards to your customers so they can easily share your website with others. 9. Implement live chat. Live chat can greatly decrease the number of abandoned carts at your webstore. 10. Give a coupon to each customer that signs up for your weekly newsletter. 11. Let customers apply to become a ‘product tester’ where they get your products for free in exchange for writing about them on blogs and linking back to your website. 12. Throwing a video-submission contest using your products and rewarding the winner, then use those videos for your own marketing. 13. Provide product recommendations or similar items to customers below the items they're interested in to make it easier for customers to find items that work well in sets, and to increase average order volume. Sweetwater does a great job of this: 14. Be upfront with shipping and tax costs. No one likes hidden charges. 15. Invest into your site navigation and search functions. Customers who can't find an item they're looking for quickly is one of the major causes of a high bounce rate. 16. Start a review contest. Whoever writes a review gets entered to win a drawing of $1,000. Roots Canada has a great example below: 17. Create a blog where you show off your expertise about your products and interact with your customers. 18. Start a Twitter & Facebook page and promote it on site to share deals and listen to your customers. 19. Throw a Holiday-inspired contest where a winner receives a gift package or makeover of their house with your products. To be entered into your contest you can have users sign up for your newsletter or fill out a short questionnaire. 20. Display McAfee, Better Business Bureau or VeriSign secure badges. 21. Include a personable About Us page. Here’s a great example: http://www.heartypet.com/t-about.aspx 22. Lower shopping cart confusion. Use one of these tools for help: 23. Increase your return policy time table to increase customer confidence. 24. Give coupons to customers that share their purchases on Facebook. Shopon.com provides a tool to help you do just that. 25. Display positive seller reviews and testimonials on your home page. 26. Personalize your brand beyond your About Us page with interviews and op-eds from your staff. Show off your expertise of your products. 27. Offer delivery estimates so your customers can know when to expect their order. 28. Add additional payment methods like Paypal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Checkout so your customers can checkout with ease. 29. Open a forum where your customers can talk openly about your products. You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn from them. 30. Ask for product reviews in exchange for coupons. You can then use these product reviews as valuable SEO on your website. 31. Create a ‘deal of the day’ or ‘deal of the week’ for your customers. 32. Offer a deals section to your customers. Offer quarterly or yearly clearance sales to clear out old inventory. Wetsuit Warehouse does a great job of this: 33. Give your customers free samples of products for signing up to your newsletter. 34. Donate generously to a charity and promote it on your website. 35. Run a special promotion where a certain % of proceeds goes to charity. 36. Offer a ‘best sellers’ or 'popular products' section to your customers. 37. Add a coupon section to your website for easy access. You’d rather keep your customers on your website while they look for coupons instead of on Google, right? Macy's does a great job of it: http://www.macys.com/campaign/social?campaign_id=61&channel_id=1 38. Offer freebies / coupons for customers that share your products on social networks. 39. Reach out to bloggers with a strong community and let them write about your products. They don't even have to be in your industry – do they have a hobby that your products can service? 40. Give coupons and deals to users who invite their friends to shop at your store. Have them e-mail you a copy of their invetation for a coupon. 41. Have great phone support? Connect consumers directly to a phone representative from a search engine. More: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2120364/Phone-Through-Rate-is-new-AdWords-Ranking-Factor (Make sure to read the comments- some good insight there). 42. Include any retailer awards on your home page. 43. Host a blog-a-thon where you invite regional bloggers interested in your products to a big party where they are the theme, in exchange for a blog post. Lucky Gunner does a great job of this 44. Listen to your customer and talk about it. Offer an easy ‘submit feedback’ button on your website, then talk about any changes you make that take into account customer suggestions on your website or blog. 45. If all of your products are made by people in America, show it off on your About Us and home page. 46. Offer discounts if customers buy in bulk? Let it be known, clearly! 47. Have a list of charities to donate to? Share that list on your website. 48. Offer multiple language phone support for your products? Show it off clearly on your home and product pages. Don't have multiple language phone support? Depending on your products it might make sense to add new language support to your customer service team. Talk with your current team to see approximately how many non-English speaking calls, or calls where the caller cannot speak English very well, happen. 49. List your contact info clearly, including a mailing address, on your Contact Us page. I hate it when I find retail stores that only include a customer inquiry form to fill out on those pages without any information about the company. 50. Advertise your top customer service employees on site to show off your good customer service skills and promote good customer service within your company. Enough from an online marketer. Lets hear what online retailers themselves have to say about their customer service strategy.
For big brands, Google+ is probably a good investment — but is Google+ an efficient use of time for small businesses? Google unveiled Google+ brand pages in November, enabling businesses and brands to join its social network. Since then, big brands — including Pepsi, Macy’s and Toyota — have jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, creating yet another hub page for their content-hungry fans. We reached out to our community to better understand how (and if) small businesses are using Google+. We received more than 50 responses detailing the merits and downfalls of using Google’s social network as a small business. Below are some of the top thoughts on the pros and cons of using Google+ as a small business. Read on and add your thoughts in the comments below.
A bulk of the small businesses we spoke with said they feel Google+ is an important social platform because it was developed by Google, one of the Internet’s favorite brands and one of the most influential websites when it comes to site referrals. But small business owners gave a plethora of reasons for being early adopters of the platform. Here are some of the top reasons we heard for using Google+.
1. Get an SEO Boost: Bob Shirilla, director of marketing at Simply Bags, says that his business joined Google+ because he relies on Google search referrals for sales conversions. “Google+ influences search for all the people who have included my business in their circle,” he says. “We have also put a +1 button on each product page. This is a great way to get free promotion from people who like the product to people with similar interests.”
2. Host a Hangout: “Hangouts offer an amazing opportunity for businesses to engage in a highly personal way with clients, customers and industry thought leaders,” says Roger Friedensen, president and CEO of Forge Communications. “Plus, employees in remote locations can hold team meetings to brainstorm with one another from an interface that affords them immediate and easy access to share and collaborate on most of the information materials they might need, such as documents and spreadsheets.”
3. Expand Content Distribution: Phyllis Khare, the social media editorial director of iPhone Life magazine, says that Google+ is a great platform for expanding the publication’s content distribution. “It took us almost a year to get 1,000 Likes on our Facebook Page, and three days on G+ to get that number to Circle us,” she says. “We are gearing up for Hangouts with some of our writers in 2012 to answer iOS questions and a few other fun things with contests and giveaways.”
4. Connect with Early Adopters: If your business falls in the Internet or technology industries, Google+ could be a great place to connect a tech-savvy audience. “The people that are on Google+ already are most likely going to be early adopters of other technologies and marketing channels,” says Jason Pinto, CMO at interlinkONE. “When we look at what defines an ‘ideal customer’ for our products, that criteria is certainly high on our list.”
5. Segment Your Audience: “The obvious benefit of Google+ is that it allows us to share select content with specific audiences,” says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning. Google+ makes it easy for businesses to segment their audiences and share content directly with those certain groups of followers.
6. Use Google+ to Network: David Greenberg, president of Parliament Tutors, says that his business does not have a Google+ page, but that he uses his personal Google+ page to network and gather contact data and research the “personal side” of relevant contacts, such as journalists and potential clients, so that he can better create a connection with them. He adds that the “About” section of a contact’s Google+ profile is usually a great start.
7. Just Explore:Netronic Managing Director Martin Karlowitsch says, “We currently use Google+ for exploratory purposes. It is still a niche platform, but quickly growing and with a platform giant behind it. Knowing the impact that Google has on the way people find relevant information on the web, Google+ soon can become significant by combining social and search. I want to start early using this platform to be prepared when this inflection point arises.”
5 Downfalls of Using Google+
While most of the small business owners we spoke with had a very positive outlook for Google+, we also spoke to a number of skeptics who identified numerous flaws in the social platform. Here are the top five reasons that small business owners gave for limiting their engagement on Google+.
1. Administration is Difficult: “The pages need to be created from an individual’s Google+ account, and you cannot add admins or any other users to manage the account,” says Jason Donaldson, an account executive at Formic Media. “Depending on the size of the business, this may not be an issue. For example, if you only have one or two employees, there probably isn’t an issue accessing the page from a personal Google account. The problem becomes more exaggerated with businesses that don’t have a dedicated social media manager (unlikely with small businesses), because of the need to give out personal account information for users to post on the business page.”
2. Facebook and Twitter Reign: Many of the small businesses we spoke with pointed out that they maintain engaged audiences on Twitter and Facebook, but most of their customers and clients don’t use Google+. So, the platform isn’t much of a priority for their business. In the words of TwiloPR President Chris Heuwetter, “The true value is in Facebook, where we see a nice return on our efforts. Google+ seems like a ghost town [for many small businesses].”
3. Social Dashboards Don’t Integrate Google+ Yet: While more progressive social media dashboards, like Hootsuite, have integrated Google+ into their products, many social dashboard services on the market do not enable users to post to Google+. For businesses that manage their social presences from one central location, the lack of Google+ integration is a huge barrier to Google+ usage.
4. Google Side Projects are Unreliable: James Beswick manages online marketing for a bar in San Antonio called Drink. He looked into creating a Google+ page for the bar, but decided against it, since he’s not certain that the social network will pan out. “Google keeps starting and shutting down products — Buzz, Wave and Hotpot, to name a few — and I’m not entirely convinced the same thing won’t happen with Plus,” he says. “Given the time and cost of engaging followers, I think the effort is better spent on Facebook.”
5. Growth Is Small: Tara Parks, senior marketing administrator at Convergence Networks says that she sees potential in Google+, but that growth has been small for her company. “The biggest drawback to Google+ so far is that it’s hard to grow a fan base, since businesses can only add other businesses to their Circles, and not individuals, the way you can on Twitter (until they add you, that is),” she says. “It will definitely be a lot more fun once more people start using Google+.”
We live in a world of absolutes: Here’s what happened. Even when we look to the future, our predictions are couched in the world’s sometimes difficult realities. It can, to be honest, take all the fun out of guess work. So, once a year I allow myself to go beyond the likely, beyond the possible and deep into the world of the implausible. What follows are my most ridiculous and unlikely predictions. Most are just nuts, but one is, to be honest, all too scarily possible. See if you can guess which prediction I’m talking about.
1. Facebook Buys Digg
Facebook’s 2012 will look a lot like its 2011: More growth, more change. Still, it hasn’t quite broken through on the content curation and voting side of things. With all the frictionless sharing people will be doing, they may no longer think about accumulating “likes.” Digg started using Facebook’s OpenGraph in 2011, which makes it easy to share what you’re reading on Digg to Facebook. As I see it, this is simply the first step on the road to a much deeper relationship. When Facebook buys Digg next year, users will get the ability to “Digg” not only profile pages, but people. That’s right, you could really “Digg” someone on Facebook. It’s so 1976, but also so cool. I foresee another side to the Facebook universe where people, places and things are Dugg on a more generalized basis, but those Diggs bubble up to individual profile pages and appear alongside Likes, Readings, Watching, etc. There is an 85% chance that all of Digg’s existing audience will walk away from the service if this acquisition happens, but I’m not sure most of them will stay with the content curation destination anyway.
2. Scientists and Hollywood Develop New Way to End Movies
3D has pretty much flopped, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to get movie-goers into theaters. Scientists will partner with Hollywood studios to unveil a new technology known as “Fresh Ends.” Using CGI, Hollywood script writers, voice and context recognition and logic algorithms, Fresh Ends technology will generate new endings for some of the world’s most popular films. These slightly rewritten movies will be re-released to theaters — just like the 3D rereleases — and are expected to add 15- to 20% additional box office returns to each film. For now, Fresh Ends only works with movies shot digitally.
3. SOPA Becomes the Law of the land
Myopic congressman and a distracted president take the Stop Online Piracy Act and pass it into law. Designed, at least according to the bill, “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes,” SOPA has an almost unprecedented chilling effect on the web. Thousands of U.S. sites shut down, other larger ones continue, but are now full of boring pap that could never be misconstrued as content piracy. Content creators of all stripes are so unsure of what will be labeled piracy they struggle to create anything. By the end of 2012, however, an underground Internet (The UnderWebs) arises. It’s full of unfettered communication and content, and slowly but surely, millions of web surfers around the world begin using it instead of the government-policed Internet — a platform that dies a sad, quiet death in 2018.
4. Apple Intros a 5-inch Tablet Phone Hybrid
Sorry, no iPhone 5 or iPad 3. Unable to decide whether it should deliver a 7-inch iPad 3 or a 4.5-inch iPhone 5, Apple comes down squarely in the middle with a giant handheld that, naturally, makes calls and is almost large enough to be a usable tablet. The hidden bonus? It’s also a fully functional HDTV. Apple, however, will remain mum for most of the year on whether or not it plans on actually delivering a larger Apple iTV.
5. Google+ Takes Center Stage
Virtually unchanged for more than a decade, Google’s search page undergoes a subtle, yet important transformation. The search giant places a “+” sign right next to the “Google” Logo. But the change is more than logo-deep. If you hit your own “+” sign on your keyboard before typing in your search query, all results will feature Google+ search results on top. If you hit “+” twice, your search query can be used to launch a new Google+ post. You’ll still have to select which circles you want to share your search query with. Rumors will swirl throughout 2012 that Google wants to rename the entire company “Google+.”
6. Honda Releases Asimo to Consumers
Japanese auto manufacturer Honda shocks the world by unveiling a fully operational, $1,999 Honda Asimo Home Helper Robot. Like the Asimo we’ve seen in product demonstrations and on YouTube, “Home Asimo” can walk, run, jump, make coffee and sandwiches and, as we soon learn, clean toilets. Honda sells a stunning half million units before August, 2012. The most startling news, though, comes when one Home Honda robot in Dearborn, Michigan turns on its family’s computer and signs itself up for Twitter and Facebook. By December, more than 300,000 of the robots have been destroyed or returned.
Join Me On Google Plus i want You in Mine family sagar ganatra
For big brands, Google+ is probably a good investment — but is Google+ an efficient use of time for small businesses? Google unveiled Google+ brand pages in November, enabling businesses and brands to join its social network. Since then, big brands — including Pepsi, Macy’s and Toyota — have jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, creating yet another hub page for their content-hungry fans. We reached out to our community to better understand how (and if) small businesses are using Google+. We received more than 50 responses detailing the merits and downfalls of using Google’s social network as a small business. Below are some of the top thoughts on the pros and cons of using Google+ as a small business. Read on and add your thoughts in the comments below.
A bulk of the small businesses we spoke with said they feel Google+ is an important social platform because it was developed by Google, one of the Internet’s favorite brands and one of the most influential websites when it comes to site referrals. But small business owners gave a plethora of reasons for being early adopters of the platform. Here are some of the top reasons we heard for using Google+.
1. Get an SEO Boost: Bob Shirilla, director of marketing at Simply Bags, says that his business joined Google+ because he relies on Google search referrals for sales conversions. “Google+ influences search for all the people who have included my business in their circle,” he says. “We have also put a +1 button on each product page. This is a great way to get free promotion from people who like the product to people with similar interests.”
2. Host a Hangout: “Hangouts offer an amazing opportunity for businesses to engage in a highly personal way with clients, customers and industry thought leaders,” says Roger Friedensen, president and CEO of Forge Communications. “Plus, employees in remote locations can hold team meetings to brainstorm with one another from an interface that affords them immediate and easy access to share and collaborate on most of the information materials they might need, such as documents and spreadsheets.”
3. Expand Content Distribution: Phyllis Khare, the social media editorial director of iPhone Life magazine, says that Google+ is a great platform for expanding the publication’s content distribution. “It took us almost a year to get 1,000 Likes on our Facebook Page, and three days on G+ to get that number to Circle us,” she says. “We are gearing up for Hangouts with some of our writers in 2012 to answer iOS questions and a few other fun things with contests and giveaways.”
4. Connect with Early Adopters: If your business falls in the Internet or technology industries, Google+ could be a great place to connect a tech-savvy audience. “The people that are on Google+ already are most likely going to be early adopters of other technologies and marketing channels,” says Jason Pinto, CMO at interlinkONE. “When we look at what defines an ‘ideal customer’ for our products, that criteria is certainly high on our list.”
5. Segment Your Audience: “The obvious benefit of Google+ is that it allows us to share select content with specific audiences,” says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning. Google+ makes it easy for businesses to segment their audiences and share content directly with those certain groups of followers.
6. Use Google+ to Network: David Greenberg, president of Parliament Tutors, says that his business does not have a Google+ page, but that he uses his personal Google+ page to network and gather contact data and research the “personal side” of relevant contacts, such as journalists and potential clients, so that he can better create a connection with them. He adds that the “About” section of a contact’s Google+ profile is usually a great start.
7. Just Explore:Netronic Managing Director Martin Karlowitsch says, “We currently use Google+ for exploratory purposes. It is still a niche platform, but quickly growing and with a platform giant behind it. Knowing the impact that Google has on the way people find relevant information on the web, Google+ soon can become significant by combining social and search. I want to start early using this platform to be prepared when this inflection point arises.”
5 Downfalls of Using Google+
While most of the small business owners we spoke with had a very positive outlook for Google+, we also spoke to a number of skeptics who identified numerous flaws in the social platform. Here are the top five reasons that small business owners gave for limiting their engagement on Google+.
1. Administration is Difficult: “The pages need to be created from an individual’s Google+ account, and you cannot add admins or any other users to manage the account,” says Jason Donaldson, an account executive at Formic Media. “Depending on the size of the business, this may not be an issue. For example, if you only have one or two employees, there probably isn’t an issue accessing the page from a personal Google account. The problem becomes more exaggerated with businesses that don’t have a dedicated social media manager (unlikely with small businesses), because of the need to give out personal account information for users to post on the business page.”
2. Facebook and Twitter Reign: Many of the small businesses we spoke with pointed out that they maintain engaged audiences on Twitter and Facebook, but most of their customers and clients don’t use Google+. So, the platform isn’t much of a priority for their business. In the words of TwiloPR President Chris Heuwetter, “The true value is in Facebook, where we see a nice return on our efforts. Google+ seems like a ghost town [for many small businesses].”
3. Social Dashboards Don’t Integrate Google+ Yet: While more progressive social media dashboards, like Hootsuite, have integrated Google+ into their products, many social dashboard services on the market do not enable users to post to Google+. For businesses that manage their social presences from one central location, the lack of Google+ integration is a huge barrier to Google+ usage.
4. Google Side Projects are Unreliable: James Beswick manages online marketing for a bar in San Antonio called Drink. He looked into creating a Google+ page for the bar, but decided against it, since he’s not certain that the social network will pan out. “Google keeps starting and shutting down products — Buzz, Wave and Hotpot, to name a few — and I’m not entirely convinced the same thing won’t happen with Plus,” he says. “Given the time and cost of engaging followers, I think the effort is better spent on Facebook.”
5. Growth Is Small: Tara Parks, senior marketing administrator at Convergence Networks says that she sees potential in Google+, but that growth has been small for her company. “The biggest drawback to Google+ so far is that it’s hard to grow a fan base, since businesses can only add other businesses to their Circles, and not individuals, the way you can on Twitter (until they add you, that is),” she says. “It will definitely be a lot more fun once more people start using Google+.”
We live in a world of absolutes: Here’s what happened. Even when we look to the future, our predictions are couched in the world’s sometimes difficult realities. It can, to be honest, take all the fun out of guess work. So, once a year I allow myself to go beyond the likely, beyond the possible and deep into the world of the implausible. What follows are my most ridiculous and unlikely predictions. Most are just nuts, but one is, to be honest, all too scarily possible. See if you can guess which prediction I’m talking about.
1. Facebook Buys Digg
Facebook’s 2012 will look a lot like its 2011: More growth, more change. Still, it hasn’t quite broken through on the content curation and voting side of things. With all the frictionless sharing people will be doing, they may no longer think about accumulating “likes.” Digg started using Facebook’s OpenGraph in 2011, which makes it easy to share what you’re reading on Digg to Facebook. As I see it, this is simply the first step on the road to a much deeper relationship. When Facebook buys Digg next year, users will get the ability to “Digg” not only profile pages, but people. That’s right, you could really “Digg” someone on Facebook. It’s so 1976, but also so cool. I foresee another side to the Facebook universe where people, places and things are Dugg on a more generalized basis, but those Diggs bubble up to individual profile pages and appear alongside Likes, Readings, Watching, etc. There is an 85% chance that all of Digg’s existing audience will walk away from the service if this acquisition happens, but I’m not sure most of them will stay with the content curation destination anyway.
2. Scientists and Hollywood Develop New Way to End Movies
3D has pretty much flopped, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to get movie-goers into theaters. Scientists will partner with Hollywood studios to unveil a new technology known as “Fresh Ends.” Using CGI, Hollywood script writers, voice and context recognition and logic algorithms, Fresh Ends technology will generate new endings for some of the world’s most popular films. These slightly rewritten movies will be re-released to theaters — just like the 3D rereleases — and are expected to add 15- to 20% additional box office returns to each film. For now, Fresh Ends only works with movies shot digitally.
3. SOPA Becomes the Law of the land
Myopic congressman and a distracted president take the Stop Online Piracy Act and pass it into law. Designed, at least according to the bill, “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes,” SOPA has an almost unprecedented chilling effect on the web. Thousands of U.S. sites shut down, other larger ones continue, but are now full of boring pap that could never be misconstrued as content piracy. Content creators of all stripes are so unsure of what will be labeled piracy they struggle to create anything. By the end of 2012, however, an underground Internet (The UnderWebs) arises. It’s full of unfettered communication and content, and slowly but surely, millions of web surfers around the world begin using it instead of the government-policed Internet — a platform that dies a sad, quiet death in 2018.
4. Apple Intros a 5-inch Tablet Phone Hybrid
Sorry, no iPhone 5 or iPad 3. Unable to decide whether it should deliver a 7-inch iPad 3 or a 4.5-inch iPhone 5, Apple comes down squarely in the middle with a giant handheld that, naturally, makes calls and is almost large enough to be a usable tablet. The hidden bonus? It’s also a fully functional HDTV. Apple, however, will remain mum for most of the year on whether or not it plans on actually delivering a larger Apple iTV.
5. Google+ Takes Center Stage
Virtually unchanged for more than a decade, Google’s search page undergoes a subtle, yet important transformation. The search giant places a “+” sign right next to the “Google” Logo. But the change is more than logo-deep. If you hit your own “+” sign on your keyboard before typing in your search query, all results will feature Google+ search results on top. If you hit “+” twice, your search query can be used to launch a new Google+ post. You’ll still have to select which circles you want to share your search query with. Rumors will swirl throughout 2012 that Google wants to rename the entire company “Google+.”
6. Honda Releases Asimo to Consumers
Japanese auto manufacturer Honda shocks the world by unveiling a fully operational, $1,999 Honda Asimo Home Helper Robot. Like the Asimo we’ve seen in product demonstrations and on YouTube, “Home Asimo” can walk, run, jump, make coffee and sandwiches and, as we soon learn, clean toilets. Honda sells a stunning half million units before August, 2012. The most startling news, though, comes when one Home Honda robot in Dearborn, Michigan turns on its family’s computer and signs itself up for Twitter and Facebook. By December, more than 300,000 of the robots have been destroyed or returned.
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Over the course of about a month, ThemeForest released fifteen video tutorials that teach you EXACTLY how to use the jQuery library. You’ll start by downloading the library and eventually work our way up to creating an AJAX style-switcher. Beautiful learning and resource!
Coded real-world examples of themeable buttons and toolbars using the jQuery UI CSS framework, a system of classes developed for jQuery UI widgets that can easily be applied to any plugin, and even static content. Demo
The jQuery Cycle plugin allows developers to quickly and easily create a slideshow out of anything contained within a given div element. However, this is more than just your grandmother’s slideshow fade plugin. The jQuery cycle plugin comes with a vast array of transition effects for you to use. Demo
InnerFade is a small plugin for the jQuery-JavaScript-Library. It’s designed to fade you any element inside a container in and out. These elements could be anything you want, e.g. images, list-items, divs. Simply produce your own slideshow for your portfolio or advertisings. Demo
Expose is a JavaScript tool that exposes selected HTML elements on the page so that the surrounding elements will gradually fade out. Works like a charm if you want to stand out. Demo
Blockquotes can really assist in making your text visually appealing. Jack Franklin gives us a great tutorial on how to create blockquotes using jQuery. Even beginners to jQuery will be able to learn how to make these blockquotes.
This tutorial will show you how to use jQuery to add a sequent of CSS classes to create a graphical list. The second example will show you how to add a comment counter to a comment list using jQuery’s prepend feature. Demo
This tutorial will be showing you how to create a customizable interface with widgets. The finished product will be a sleek and unobtrusively coded iGoogle-like interface which has a ton of potential applications! Demo
his tutorial will be showing you how to create a style switcher using jQuery and PHP. The end result will be an unobtrusive & entirely degradable dynamic style switcher which will be quick and easy to implement. Demo
As first add is obvious, but on their official website you can find many tutorials related to mastering Your Jquery skills even in several different languages.
Learning jQuery is a multi-author weblog providing jQuery tutorials, demos, and announcements. They have tutorials for all skill levels, and each entry is categorized by level of difficulty.
Learn how easy it is to apply web interaction using jQuery – beautiful tutorials and website, if you still can’t find what you need, you can even request a tutorial.
jQuery Ajax tutorials to jQuery UI examples, you’ve found the ultimate list of tutorials and plugins for jQuery! Everything from Ajax file uploaders to RSS feed plugins, all on one of the longest pages you’ll ever scroll.
This blog is about programming (with focus on web applications and JavaScript), music and other stuff the author happens to write about. It’s also the home of several jQuery plugins.
An online cheat sheet and visual reference to Jquery, where you can find Jquery functions well explained, updated to jQuery 1.2.6. version. While playing with Jquery, this website seems to be a very useful place to visit.
