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The 5 W’s of World Class Customer Service Training

By Rosanne D Ausilio PhD in Featured

The preamble to the United States Constitution begins, ‘we, the people.’ I feel strongly that we, the people, are what makes the difference in life, both personally and professionally.

The interaction anyone has at any level with your employees, including you, gives a customer — whether current, potential, internal or external — an opportunity to make a judgment about you, your company, all companies like yours. I’m not just talking about call centers here. All technical support or help desk personnel are included as well. As a matter of fact, anyone who is in the customer service business period.

With continued focus on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a customer’s experience. For the customer, the person on the other end of the phone is the company. The contact center is still the most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through the center. And it’s been reported that 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. State of the art technology is a necessity today, but it is meant to enable human endeavors, not to disable them.

SEO 3.0 – The New Rules

By Scott Jason in Featured

If you follow changes in SEO, you have probably recently heard the term SEO 3.0. It was coined by an SEO professional named Mike Meyer in late 2010. It is an extension of the concept of Web 2.0 but specific to search engine optimization. For anyone who is not yet familiar, here is a quick primer.

SEO 3.0 is an identifier meant to help organize search engine optimization phases into chunks that fit into a timeline. This ensures you are using only the most current techniques because even some from just a year or two past can get you in trouble. Following is a basic breakdown:

SEO 1.0 (1995 to 1998): This is where it all began. Basically, there were no rules. This era is affectionately known as “The Wild West of Online Marketing”.

SEO 2.0 (1999 to 2010): This is what most of us know today. Lots of rules that changed constantly.

SEO 3.0 (Oct. 2010 and on): This is what we need to know in order to succeed both today AND tomorrow. These are the new rules we need to learn and apply if we want to succeed after all the major search engine algorithm changes that happened in late 2010 and so far in 2011.

Effective Internet Video Marketing for Small Business

By Karl Walinskas in Featured

If you’re like many small business owners, your online brochure you call a website might not be hitting the customer grand slams you want or expect. If people cannot learn something new from your content and you haven’t updated it since 2007, put up an under construction sign and read on. You must have superior content to rule the search engine universe and hold the eyeballs of visitors with attractive, valuable and changing content. Web video marketing is a great way for you to provide that content that web viewers in 2011 are growing to expect. It also puts your SEO on steroids to take on the major search engines. Warning: do your web videos the right way, the better way, to have people watch, relate, and buy.

The key to quality web video is the content more than the technology. Here are some of the best video marketing methods to promote your business online:

PRODUCT, SERVICE OR CAPABILITIES DEMO

Whatever it is that makes your company unique and worth talking about, you can video it and with some simple editing to introduce it, post it on your site, and distribute to your YouTube Video channel (if you don’t have one, get one, it’s free). Many firms will have physical products they can show in action. Think auto manufacturers websites showing videos of the new line. As a small business, yours doesn’t have to be that sophisticated, just show what your widget does and how it provides value to those who would buy it.

Most small businesses out there are service businesses. If you have a dog grooming business, show the pooches getting cleaned up with their happy canine smiles. Cleaning business? Pan in on the crummy before shot of the ___, show the cleanup process, and finish it off with the much improved after view.

Often the unique advantage of a business is a process that means they’re faster or better than the competition. This works really well when showcasing that new MRI machine that doc just bought, or the fully programmable laser cutter at the sheet metal house that shows how it can make parts faster, cleaner, and at better quality than metal shops without one.

HOW-TO VIDEO

This falls into the category of value-add or training for your web viewers. It can be an instructional video on using the topsy-turvy planters you sell at your greenhouse or simply how to do something better around the house. The main purpose of how-to is some way to make life easier or better for your readers, and for you it creates site stickiness, where prospects and customers will want to come back often.

NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH

This can take the form of a product demo with a little extra. New product launches tend to be time sensitive, hyped and require sufficient explanation as to what the product does that sets it apart from prior versions or other current market offerings. Ideas are to show interviews with customers requesting, “I wish we could get…” statements that provided you with the original market pull to create the product or service, your CEO or top Exec enthusiastically explaining the launch (see next section), stats or data cleverly shown that show it’s the next big thing, and of course sufficient product demo components. These same elements might comprise a new product launch press release, simply meaning that this video can double as a video PR. There can be a lot of editing and cost involved if you bring in all of these ideas, but how much are you spending to develop your new product or service?

EXECUTIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW

Here’s one that is not often seen that provides you with a presentation of 3rd party credibility for your small business. The Executive Video Interview is an affordable way to promote small business, both on your site and virally. The return on investment can be disproportionate to the cost.

All you need as a small business owner is a Skype account and a webcam. That’s it! Your webcam quality is more than enough to make quality video. The real magic is in the interview process. Picture Larry King or Matt Lauer interviewing you as CEO of your business about your business as if it’s the national news, asking your probing questions that get at the value your business brings to the marketplace in an informative way. If you’re going to pursue it, look for a provider that has experienced interviewers and a sample portfolio before you pull the trigger.

Look, anybody with a webcam can record herself speaking into the lens in a monologue in an introductory video. Have you ever watched one? For those not trained in speaking before a camera, they can be dry, boring, and all too often comical as the speaker reads from cue cards. Is this how you want your business to come across?

The Executive Video Interview provides more value because you are being asked questions that drive great answers in a relaxed, authentic way that highlight the competitive advantage of your business while providing some take away value for your viewers. There are no cue cards, you can pause when answering and even trip over your words and it is all expected because people are viewing a dialogue. A nice marketing touch is to use your Executive Video Interviews to accompany blog posts and provide a a unique perspective for viewers on your small business area of expertise.

Many ways exist to effectively web video market your business. I’ve listed a few here, some you may have known and some maybe not. Whatever you do, consider adding video to your site in some fashion to keep readers interested, provide more takeaway value, and keep the site dynamic.

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Stand apart from the more than 10.5 million hours of video uploaded on YouTube annually by reading http://bit.ly/hC6NHs. Use of Executive Video Interviews at http://bit.ly/e8MY3I is an economical alternative for small business.

8 Simple Strategies You Must Use To Improve Your Website Sales and Profits

By Shirley Crichton in Featured

Without the right planning, you can easily spend a lot of time and money creating a website that doesn’t perform as well as you expected. So, whether you’re just creating your website, or you want better performance from your current one, here’s 8 Simple Strategies you must use to improve your website sales and profits.

No 1. Find The Way To Be Unique

Understand your unique selling points (USPs). Then you can make sure that you highlight them in your website copy. Many sites look very similar and the more unique you can make yours, the more people are likely to remember and buy from your site. Give your visitors what they are looking for and tell them why you are the person they need to provide it

No 2. Have A Strategy To Drive Traffic to Your Website

People will not just arrive at your website and buy your products, You have to have a continuous strategy to drive traffic to your website. Some ways you can use to drive traffic to your website are:

• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Optimization For Natural Search Engine Listings Mutual Linking With Other Relevant Sites
• Article Marketing and Ezine Advertising
• Having An Affiliate Program
• Advertising Offline

No 3. Always Get Your Visitors’ Details

Always get your visitors’ names and email addresses. Then you can send them relevant articles and information regularly. Providing you send them useful and interesting emails, you will build their relationship with you and your products and make future sales more likely. Typical ways you can collect visitors’ names and email addresses are to:

• Use an opt-in box on each page, offering a free sign-up incentive.
• Use pop-ups, pop-unders or exit pop-ups, either in addition to the opt-in form or instead of it.
• Offer a trial or demonstration of your product. Free access to a short extract from an ebook or audio, or maybe a two week free trial of a software product.
• Offer something specially produced for the sign-up incentive, like an audio recording or a PDF report.

No 4. Use Compelling Headlines

Your readers will use your headline to determine whether, or not, they want to read the rest of the page. So, your headline must be dynamic and attention grabbing and express the benefits of the product. Internet users generally skim through sales copy and you need to make it easy for them to find key points. Keep paragraphs short and easy to read and identify main points with sub headlines.

No 5. Make Navigation Easy

Making navigation easy for visitors will improve your website sales and profits. If your site navigation is confusing, visitors will leave. Specific points to note are:

• Clearly guide visitors to the action you want them to take.
• Use text rather than graphics, or graphics with text instructions. Then what you want visitors to do will always be understood.
• Keep your links in the same place on pages. Be consistent throughout your site.
• Make sure your links show up easily against the background. Dark text on dark background is always difficult to read. Check the color after the link is clicked as well.

No 6. Use Graphics With Caution

Flashing animations or graphics, irrelevant to your site, won’t enhance your visitor’s experience, they just make it harder for them to read your content. Although they are great at getting people’s attention, limit graphics to uses where they enhance the content or clearly highlight an action to be taken.

No 7. Demonstrate Your Trustworthiness

Internet users are often cautious when buying anything online. Some good ways you can demonstrate why they should trust you are:

• Include testimonials from satisfied customers.
• List your contact information, including telephone number.
• Display photographs of you and your products.
• Use well known payment facilities like Worldpay.
• Offer a guarantee and always honor it.

No 8. Set Up Visitor Statistic Tracking

Tracking website statistics is essential. Basic statistics you need to be monitoring are:

• Website daily traffic statistics.
• Opt-in or email sign up rates.
• Sales conversion rates
• Average visitor value

From these basic statistics you can monitor changes to your site and evaluate their cost effectiveness.

If you’ve already got a working site, use these 8 essential points as a check list. And if you’re currently putting your site together, make sure that you incorporate these simple website strategies to improve your website sales and profits from the very start.

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Shirley Crichton is a UK information marketer, passionate about sharing what she has learnt with people new to this often confusing world . To learn more about getting your internet marketing business started and profitable, claim your free and comprehensive 95-page report ‘ Online Marketing Made Easy’ at http://www.ShirleysOnlineMarketing.com and give yourself a head start.

HTML Email Marketing – Two Mistakes You Are Making Right Now

By Jonathan McCulloch in Featured

HTML email marketing is almost irresistibly tempting for anyone seeking to do email advertising because, let’s face it, it looks so cool sending all that wonderfully formatted and professional-looking email doesn’t it? I mean even the ‘little guy’ can look like a ‘player’ with a bit of work.

Um, no. The fundamental difficulty with HTML email marketing is… what looks fantastic at your end… often looks absolutely atrocious at the other.

Here’s why:

First, HTML is a standard… but not every email client interprets it the same way. Like it or not every creator, manufacturer and developer of HTML rendering software has his own slant on things. And, rightly or wrongly, despite the standards, the same HTML is shown differently by different browsers and email clients.

For example, Google’s Gmail shows HTML differently from Hotmail and Yahoo (I know, because I’ve tested it). And then you have the standalone email clients like Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus, Outlook, and Lord knows how many others, each with its own idea on how things should look.

The upshot of all this is what YOU can see at your end as the email writer is NOT what everyone else is going to see — of that you can be sure. Your only real question is exactly how MUCH difference is there between what you can see and what they can see.

And unless you’re prepared to test every email before you send it with, say, the top 20% of email clients that will represent the choices of about 80% of your readers, you’ll never know. In other words, you could be sending out emails that look like a dog’s dinner to your prospects, clients and customers… and you’ll never even know it.

And secondly… your pictures are NOT shown. There’s a second reason why what you see at your end isn’t the same as what your readers see, and it’s to do with security.

When you include an image in an email, often it’s hosted remotely — say, on your website or somewhere else. And the idea is, when the recipient opens it, the email client downloads the picture and displays it.

Only… this is a huge security and privacy issue, so most decent email clients do NOT display images by default and instead show a message saying, in effect, “click here to see images in this message”. And people rarely bother.

Why would they? It pays to remember an important rule of marketing here: no one cares about you; all they care about is what’s in it for them.. So while you might try to offer some inducement for them click and show images, they almost never will and all you’ve done is put yet another obstacle in the way of your marketing efforts.

And meanwhile, the images not being shown means your email looks absolutely terrible (I had one recently which clearly had everything of interest as a remotely hosted image, because all I got was the ‘missing image’ icon).

Plain works best

In general plain-text or very simple HTML works best (by simple I mean use bold, italic, underline and link-anchors and that’s all you need). You get better readership and your click-through-rate tends to be higher.

Does this really work?

Yes. If you doubt me on this, just sign up to emails from the big-name Internet marketing gurus who test this kind of thing to death, and you’ll see probably without exception plain and simple is the way to go.

Give it a try and let me know how it works out.

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Lead generation and email marketing expert Jon McCulloch is the author of “BIG Marketing Muscle for Small Business”. This book reveals the strategies he has used with his clients to realize response rates over 300% better than traditional methods (and over 1,000,000 pieces sent, so this is not just ‘theory’).

Your free book is waiting for you here: => http://www.jonmcculloch.com/big-marketing-muscle

Continuing the Sales Conversation After The Pitch

By Jason Hier in Featured

Once you have made the sales presentation, there is always the dilemma of how to stay in contact and keep the lines of communication open, whilst still trying to add value to the wholes process. Collaborative selling is certainly a process which can be mutually beneficial to both parties concerned. The potential benefits of reducing risks, getting great quality and service, making sure the correct solutions or products are delivered at a price that is fair and equitable, with no misunderstanding is clearly in everyone’s interest. To achieve this there needs to be an easy and sociable way to communicate but within the context of a business environment. With the increase in availability of collaboration tools this article looks at how collaborative selling can be delivered, along with the potential benefits to be gained.

There are countless books, videos, seminars, gurus, and webinars to name but a few, on how we can improve our Selling capability. There are many aspects to the whole Sales process itself, which is why there are so many avenues of information on the subject. In today’s world, people have become more able to say “No”. Although in the UK, we still find it hard to say NO, (unless the salesperson is really pushy, rude and not very pleasant) only then, we might say No! This word, although only two letters is one of the most powerful words and probably the word that most people do not want to hear – as it is a word of rejection, it is negative, you haven’t got the answer you wanted. Because of this, people who are selling (and we are all selling something at some time) find it difficult to decide once they have made their “Sales” pitch, how do you follow up without being too eager, or too pushy.

Alternatively if you wait too long will they think that you do not care, not interested or lazy, until you get yourself into such a state of indecision, you do nothing – which is even worse!

Technology innovation will continue to impact and change our culture, behaviors, and the way that we will communicate with one another. One of the outcomes is that this continual innovation of technology has provided a buffering or a “cyber wall” between people, both in business and socially. Socially people are texting, while in business they use email. Technology has become a virtual wall for people to hide behind. Is this a good? Time will tell – but we need to be able to have the confidence to communicate in a way that is positive, active and adds value whether in business and or socially.

In the UK, “selling” as a job, has not always had a good standing as a profession. Yet whatever business you are in, without Sales, nothing happens until the Sale is made! No orders, no money coming in, no money to pay salaries and we all know what that means!

Our lives both in business and privately will be changed dramatically by social media. In business this is happening at an alarming rate and it’s not just Business to Consumer, it’s Business to Business as well. Business Social Media communication is not a fashion trend, it is a fundamental shift in how we all communicate, both socially and in importantly, within business.

As I have said before, this “Business Social Networking” is a way to “humanize your business” in terms of its sales and marketing, customer service and support, when using technology. It is clear to me when there are various tools out there like Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn and You Tube, the ability for Businesses and Customers to consume information, write about it, vote on it, send it on to other people, who in turn do the same in a viral way is quite amazing – and it is virtually FREE to do – the only real cost being your time. One of the earlier disadvantages (that’s if is/was really a disadvantage) is how do you accurately measure the ROI? Well if you search on YouTube for “Social Media ROI socialnomics”, you can see from the video people and corporations are managing to measure and get their ROI in very positive way.

Most of you will be receiving Tweets, email messages, Videos, webinars, and podcasts to name a few, which if you select carefully is hopefully interesting, informative and adds value to what you want. This is social media and I include business social media when I say this, but interestingly it seeks you out, the customer, allowing you to engage and start collaborating real time. Taking this to a more specific business situation, I just recently created a presentation using a product called sharpcloud. One tool that is very visual and collaborative and has been on the market for sometime. The recent addition of being able to create a presentation within your sharpcloud Story (Marketing Content, Sales Presentation, Strategy, Technology Roadmap and the like) allows you to deliver a social but thoughtful and helpful introduction to your Story. When people first go to your online Story, you are able to guide them through Views of your Story, in a way that makes sense, whilst also allowing the viewer to pause the presentation, so that they can explore your story, write a comment, vote on an Item and continue the presentation by pressing the Play button again. This becomes a journey of discovery for the viewer, which becomes more interesting, interactive as well as an enjoyable “business social” experience

So “Death by PowerPoint” is no longer an issue. Being able to make your “sales presentation” via tools like sharpcloud, in the linear way that you would do so with PowerPoint is a familiar experience for most viewers.

However, one of the main benefits is when the potential customer or client asks that question, say about costs, that you do not have in that PowerPoint deck, then it’s a missed opportunity. Well in sharpcloud, you can quickly click to a view that visually shows the information to answer the question. You could also link to media content such as videos, other presentations, documents, sales brochures, testimonials, etc within the story that is either part of sharpcloud or hosted on You Tube, or some other content platform. Once you have answered the question, you can carry on with the presentation.

So now that we are able to make a “Sales” presentation and not worry about what slides to include or create, or have ready for a “just in case” question, lets come back to how we can continue this Sales process. As with other social technologies the key element is the ability to collaborate.

The ability for you and your customers to remain connected and be able to communicate and collaborate in a business social way, is a major advantage when compared to the more traditional approaches. I am not saying we forget about these approaches, but when combined with a collaborative selling approach, over time this will have a major positive effect on you, your client, your brand and your business and organizations future success. It is highly likely that your competitors are not even thinking about this let alone doing it!

The fact you can mutually learn and provide feedback back to one another, (sales/presenter & client/audience) and be able to bring this knowledge and information back into your respective company and organization not only improves the sales engagement, but facilitates in reducing the sales cycle time. A major benefit for the marketing group is being able to gain insight directly from clients with regards to the relevancy of the marketing content that they have generated and what they need to focus on in the future. Collaborative Selling is mutually beneficial to all parties involved in the process by being able to remove/reduce the risk and deliver clarity and certainty with regards to products and or services.

This “Collaborative Selling” will help to influence outcomes in a positive way, by creating a “real time umbilical cord” relating to decision making, personal experience, costs, as well as fostering and nurturing both the sales person and customers relationship, into a trusting and collaborative one.

One last point, which is relevant to all of us is costs.

Using business social networking to deliver Collaborative Selling is a relatively low cost proposition, with free social media marketing channels, coupled with commercial products such as sharpcloud, cannot be over looked when comparing to the traditional corporate ways of Sales and Marketing. By getting traction with your market, developing relationships and increasing your brand awareness on a global scale using collaborative technologies, means businesses and organizations have to give serious thought and consideration of how they stay engaged and keep the conversation alive with their clients and customers, during a highly competitive sales process.

Eventually we will all have to do it, small or large otherwise those who do, will win!

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Jason Hier is an expert in using sharpcloud to help businesses deliver highly effective sales presentations in a very visual and collaborative way. By being able to keep the conversation alive after the initial sales presentation positions both supplier & customer into a unique position to collaborate & innovate – developing the optimal solution. Get a FREE 1/2 day consultation today www.roelto.com/freeconsultation.php

2010 SEO Predictions That Came True – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Warner Carter in Featured

Each time a year ends, we encounter countless bloggers and writers who share their thoughts about the incoming year. Some predictions are theoretically supported and some are just plain wild guesses. Predicting what’s in store for the next year is almost a tradition for writers, even those not involved in SEO and Internet marketing. Sports writers, business analysts, music critics, and amateur writers – they all follow this unsung tradition. Many think that this tradition is worth following because nailing a wild guess or a well-researched fact means only one thing: respect from your readers.

It’s only the third month of the year but some predictions from last year have become realities. People never expected that the realization would be this quick, but, unbelievably, many predictions are coming true right now.

The Power of Content Length

This was a common prediction that was heavily criticized. I read on some blogs last year that Google would be considering a site’s content length as a determining factor for site ranking. Experts and SEO veterans commented that this was an amateur’s prediction, but they all ended up wrong. As a result of this latest algorithm update, many guest blogging sites have increased their minimum article length to 450 words, and some are requiring even lengthier articles. Perhaps this recent update caused content-related terrors to some SEO geeks. They’ll just have to remember that quality is still better than quantity.

Mastering Your Email and Inbox

By Katrina Sawa in Featured

As a small business owner you’re probably doing a ton of things yourself in your business – some you need to do but some also that maybe you shouldn’t be doing, right? In talking with hundreds of entrepreneurs every month I find that the majority of them (you/us) struggle with our email inboxes…they’re overflowing right?

You’re either:

1. Overwhelmed with email and your inbox

2. Feeling like you’re tied to it or it follows you around (on your smart phone)

3. Confused on how to organize it better – the flow, the emails you need, the spam, etc.

4. Ignoring it all together

5. Wondering how you can ever take a vacation (or a couple days off) and NOT check in

6. Or you’ve got it down and thoroughly organized like a well-oiled machine

Well, if you’re NOT in the situation of the very last point then you may be interested to know a few things you can do to better manage your emails and inbox. After all, you’re wasting hours a month deleting and sorting through emails you don’t even need to show up in the first place.

The following are 4 tips I suggest to better manage your emails:

1. Sort and organize your emails – Use the rules option in your mailbox feature to send specific emails into their own folders in your inbox to start.

• I send all the emails from my team (various VAs) to one folder so I can hammer out responses all at one time every hour or couple hours or so as it fits my time schedule.
• I send all my email newsletters (the ones I do want to keep) to a newsletter folder in my inbox to read when I have time. Guess what? Rarely do I ever have time nor do I miss them!
• I send all emails from particular people like my own coach, my mastermind or other group I may be a part of to their own respective folders to keep them organized and my main inbox less cluttered.

2. Unsubscribe from everything you really don’t need – Ask yourself, do you need it?

• Like the Staples and Office Depot emails I was getting….I know when I need office supplies where I’m going to go to buy them, I don’t need reminders of where to go and I certainly don’t need to be tempted with special sales to buy stuff when I don’t need anything.
• Or, the email newsletters you get that scream sales at you or that don’t have relevant content anymore for you; if you don’t want the person to know you’re unsubscribing them have them automatically sent to your trash folder.

3. Create template emails - For emails or information you send regularly, keep a folder handy with the most recent emails in it for easy reference and copying to save time on future responses.

• I receive applications for complimentary strategy sessions with me from people every week and I send pretty much the same thing to each person to schedule their session, all I have to do is copy an old email, enter in updated dates/times available and press send.
• I also send out information about speaking for groups or telesummits to organizers and event producers so I have an email ready to go with my speaker sheet in it which includes talk titles, bio, picture, references and logo in it so I don’t miss out on any opportunity that comes along because that information isn’t put together.

4. Delegate when you’re away – Find someone to check your email for you so you can actually take a few days off or an entire vacation without checking in. (what a concept!)

• Use a service such as logmein.com so they can log into your computer from anywhere which makes it convenient for them and write out a cheat sheet for them for what to look out for when managing your emails.
• My cheat sheet is 5 pages long but it covers all the bases and important emails that could come through and what to do with them so I don’t return to hundreds of emails responded to but not ‘handled’; there’s a big difference.
• My team knows to text me on my cell with any pressing issues but there rarely are any when you have a team that kicks butt like I do. (That comes in time)

Follow these simple steps and you’ll be well on your way to Mastering Your Email and Inbox!

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(c) Copyright 2011 K. Sawa Marketing International. Katrina Sawa is an Award-Winning Author & Speaker who’s helped hundreds of small business owners take dramatic steps in their businesses to get them to the next level in business, revenues & their personal life. Get her Free Entrepreneur’s Success Kit at www.JumpStartYourMarketing.com!

Experts Tackle The Definitions Of: What Is Cloud Computing?

By Sandra Tiffany in Featured

Cloud computing has many definitions and can be confusion. The following is a list of some of the definitions and will help to clarify its meaning.

1. Cloud computing refers to the providing of computing resources on-demand through a network. This ability can be compared to the supply of a utility. Utility services are available to the users in a simple way without the users needing to know the details of how the services are provided.

2. Another simple explanation for cloud computing is “internet centric software”.

3. It is a broad array of web-based computing services that allow users to obtain a wide range of computing functions on a “pay-as-you-go” basis that previously required tremendous hardware/software investments and an I.T. department to manage.

4. Cloud computing is the accessing of resources and services needed to perform computing functions that require dynamically changing needs.

5. Cloud computing means: outsourced, pay-as-you-go, on-demand, somewhere in the Internet.

As you can see there are as many definitions of cloud computing as there are I.T. experts.

The concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1960′s with John McCarthy, a full professor at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. He was the first to suggest that computing time-sharing technology might lead to a future in which computing power and even specific application could be sold like a utility business model. This notion faded in the 1970′s because the hardware, software and communications were not ready for his concept. Now, his computing model has re-surfaced in the form of “cloud computing”.

Some Fortune 500 companies, such as Google and IBM, have invested in researching cloud computing technology. Although they have not completely switched to these technologies they recognize there is growing movement towards it. Microsoft has also thrown its hat in the ring and is currently working towards cloud computing technologies.

Amazon was one of the first major companies to employ cloud computing, creating dense technological networks that enabled users to access various materials and allowed the company to vary the access by demand.

Cloud computing technology was developed as a means to increase ease of use and user-friendliness while providing great benefit to the companies using it. Many different types of companies can benefit from cloud computing technology. These early adapters are the large companies that exist online and require large amounts of on demand computation power, various vendor software applications, complex search techniques and large data storage.

Cloud can also be highly beneficial to companies that run many different types of services or have many functions because it can both optimize performance and create better organization of these tasks and utilities.

Cloud computing creates a network among many different types of Internet connections and shares those connections to create an organized system of applications and services.

It also uses a combination of hardware and software to satisfy a variety of client needs with the resources and costs shared among them.

Cloud computing technology can satisfy a variety of clients from large corporations to small companies. There are benefits of cloud computing for both types of companies and their users such as:

1. computing resources available on-demand through a network
2. scalable computing power
3. pay-as-you-go
4. no need to purchase the latest software and hardware
5. increased ease of upkeep and everyday operation management
6. increased ease of access to the companies data and sophisticated retrieval techniques.
7. ease of use and user friendliness
8. greatly reduced cost as high as 30%

There are savings to be had by a company willing to move their information system to the “cloud”. It’s worth taking a look at especially during these times where it’s vital to save on costs.

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Sandra Tiffany wanted to share her knowledge and experience about the growth and maturity of the cloud computing business world. Read the various articles about how business has applied cloud computing and the difference between grid and cloud computing There are books, auctions and information and don’t forget to look at the “Deal of the Day”.
www.cloudbizcomputing.com

Facebook for Business: A Spam-Free Way to Get People on Facebook to Visit Your Site

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Featured

Okay, so when we last left our discussion, I was talking about what’s considered spammy at Facebook, and why spam at Facebook will ultimately fail. That leaves us with the question – how do you get people in Facebook to visit your site without spamming them?

How can you increase your exposure at Facebook without seeming like a spammer?

As I’ve said before, if you want to blatantly market on Facebook, you have a several options you can exercise without looking like a spammer. Get a Facebook Business Page, Buy a Facebook Ad, Participate in or Create a Group, or Leverage Your Profile.

Now, I’d never discourage you from doing any of these, in fact, you should do them all.

But I’m not going to write about them all here today. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. You create a business page – if you know how to build and manage a community, you’re all set. (If you don’t, still a discussion for another day.) And who doesn’t know how to buy an ad? Yes, there are more effective ways to use ads on Facebook, but at the end of the day, the basics don’t need to be covered.

Networking through groups and leveraging though? Not as common-sense based as you might think.

For now let’s take groups. It’s an easier topic, and leveraging your profile will probably take an entire day of videos, which I will discuss another time.

The reasoning behind joining groups on Facebook is simple: groups are mini-communities that have discussion boards, and often links, photo and video sharing areas, where people have agreed that they have a common interest, and want to exchange information about it.

Let’s say you teach people how to turn a $39 book into a $300 info-product with videos and audio CDs. You search groups and you find a book marketing group for authors.

Awesome, perfect market – if they’re marketing their books, they want to make more money, and if they want to make more money, your program is custom-made for them. There’s 2000 people in this group and you can just count the money flowing in…

Here is where most people go wrong. They go into a social group with an ad mentality, and start posting what are essentially, ads for their products on the wall (the general guestbook type area) or in the discussions. And it will backfire every time.

“But Tinu”, you might be thinking, if it doesn’t work, “why do people keep doing it”?

I’ll answer that, but first let’s look at why it doesn’t work.

The fastest revelation will come from the dating world. Ladies, please raise your hand if you would respond favorably to the following situation:

A guy walks up to you and says, “Hi, you’re cute, let’s have sex now.”

Anyone?

Yeah. If there’s 100 ladies in the room, maybe, MAYBE one chick has her hand up.

If I say, all desperate women put your hands down, that will drop to zero.

So why do people do it? The same reason why one in one hundred people respond. Desperation and/or just plain ignorance. Not stupidity, mind you. They just honestly don’t know the right way to do it.

And the desperate customer, you just don’t want to have. No matter what you offer them, they’ll claim it doesn’t work and ask for a refund. So, really, it doesn’t work at all.

Then what does work?

Value.

There are tons of ways to get people on Facebook to come to your site and even do business with you at some point – add value, bring value, create value, enhance value. All of them have two steps, first, make someone else’s life a little better, second, don’t look so desperate for a sale.

Let them come to you.

Everyone wants the folks at Home Depot to help them buy a light fixture, but no one wants to be sold a lamp.

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Learn one more way to use Facebook for Business, completely free here: www.freetraffictip.com/ – you don’t even need to enter your email address.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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