Google Reader: Gone for Good After July 1, 2013

Google keeps surprising people. That latest came as it announced it was shutting down Google Reader, the RSS feed reader application, on July 1, 2013.

In a statement on the Official Google Blog titled “A Second Spring of Cleaning” the search behemoth wrote:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

A number of other Google services are being shut down.  Most, however, seem either developer-focused or appealing to  niche interests.

For most people, losing Google Reader will be the biggest blow of all the products being shut down. John Resig tweeted that 97% of his feed hits come from Google Reader.  Here at Small Business Trends we have a similar experience.  Out of the 120,000 subscribers to our RSS feed, 90% are from Google Reader.

Of course, we’ve seen much slower growth in RSS readership, as our Twitter following has grown these past 3 years.  People today get a lot of their news updates through social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social sites.

I’ve always found Google Reader hard to use.  It has an inflexible user interface with limited customization features.  But it really depends on how you use a feedreader.  Some people actually read the full text of their content in an RSS feedreader. Others use a feedreader to be alerted of new news and merely look at the headlines, jumping over to the originating site to read the content.

If you are looking for an alternative to Google Reader, there are a number to consider, including start pages such as NetVibes, which is very customizable, and Feedly (which already offers instructions for transitioning from Google Reader).

Another one that we use internally for some of our processes is My Yahoo.  My Yahoo is streamlined and makes it easy to scan headlines - it’s good if headlines are mainly what you are interested in. It’s not the best solution if you wish to read the full text of feeds in the reader itself.

MarketingLand also has a healthy list of alternatives to Google Reader.

Posted by Anita Campbell on March 13, 2013.

Categories: Technology Trends

Google Reader: Gone for Good After July 1, 2013

Google keeps surprising people. That latest came as it announced it was shutting down Google Reader, the RSS feed reader application, on July 1, 2013.

In a statement on the Official Google Blog titled “A Second Spring of Cleaning” the search behemoth wrote:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

A number of other Google services are being shut down.  Most, however, seem either developer-focused or appealing to  niche interests.

For most people, losing Google Reader will be the biggest blow of all the products being shut down. John Resig tweeted that 97% of his feed hits come from Google Reader.  Here at Small Business Trends we have a similar experience.  Out of the 120,000 subscribers to our RSS feed, 90% are from Google Reader.

Of course, we’ve seen much slower growth in RSS readership, as our Twitter following has grown these past 3 years.  People today get a lot of their news updates through social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social sites.

I’ve always found Google Reader hard to use.  It has an inflexible user interface with limited customization features.  But it really depends on how you use a feedreader.  Some people actually read the full text of their content in an RSS feedreader. Others use a feedreader to be alerted of new news and merely look at the headlines, jumping over to the originating site to read the content.

If you are looking for an alternative to Google Reader, there are a number to consider, including start pages such as NetVibes, which is very customizable, and Feedly (which already offers instructions for transitioning from Google Reader).

Another one that we use internally for some of our processes is My Yahoo.  My Yahoo is streamlined and makes it easy to scan headlines - it’s good if headlines are mainly what you are interested in. It’s not the best solution if you wish to read the full text of feeds in the reader itself.

MarketingLand also has a healthy list of alternatives to Google Reader.

Posted by Anita Campbell on March 13, 2013.

Categories: Technology Trends

How to Build Employee Engagement: Open-Plan Offices

With the latest unemployment numbers showing that U.S. businesses are steadily adding new jobs and the Dow Jones breaking records, the economic outlook in much of the country is brighter than it’s been in years.

As a small business owner, it’s essential to take advantage of these economic indicators to expand your operations and keep your business growing. And study after study shows that, by simply increasing employee engagement, business owners can improve nearly every area of their performance.

Why

Because engaged employees have been found to lead directly and indirectly to:

• Decreased turnover rates.
• Higher operating income.
• Higher productivity.
• Fewer missed days.
• Increased customer loyalty.

In a recovering economy, these factors can make the difference between ho-hum growth and pedal-to-the-metal expansion. So how can you build employee engagement without hiring a top-dollar consultant or sitting through a weekend retreat

Start with eliminating the physical barriers in your workplace.

Open-Plan Offices: Employee Engagement Machines

Studies of open office spaces show that they are effective at increasing employee engagement. I see this research confirmed on a daily basis thanks to the open-plan office I work in.

The benefits of an open office space include:

The Ability to Share Great Ideas With Each Other

I’d love to take credit for all the great ideas in the office, but the truth is that many fresh ideas come from my team members.

Thanks to our open office plan, they can (and do) flag me down, point out a process or procedure that’s inefficient or not working and suggest a solution. Within a matter of minutes, we’re talking through improvements and making changes.

As CEO, it’s my job to recognize when one of my team members is being brilliant and then funnel resources to that person so he or she can make great things happen. This agility empowers everyone in my office to take ownership of what they do and initiate improvements when necessary - and that benefits the entire company.

Everyone Talks to Everyone

This builds friendships among the team, which boosts employee engagement. Members of my team have independently launched a basketball league, after hours get-togethers and office birthday celebrations.  All of which make the office a pleasant place to be.  When you spend the majority of your waking hours somewhere, you want it to be pleasant.

A side benefit is that everyone knows what’s going on in various departments, which prevents anyone from feeling as if they’re working in a silo. When everyone has an idea of how their work contributes to the greater good, it boosts internal motivation and productivity.

Accountability for the Work

No walls in the office means no slinking off to a cubicle to play solitaire or fritter away time on social media. When I can stroll by and ask for an update at any moment, my team knows they need to be ready to show me something good.

But this goes both ways: I’m also on the hook for being productive.

My team hears me talking to their colleagues, asking about the latest developments and offering feedback. We’re all constantly accountable for our work, which means we’re constantly pushed to produce the best work we can.

Successes Can Be Rewarded in Real Time

When one of our producers makes a sale, they ring a bell and folks in the office offer a word of encouragement. During our weekly office meetings, we acknowledge the work each department has done to move us forward. And I’m never shy about announcing to the entire team a particularly deft maneuver I notice someone making.

The promise of rewards for good work keeps my team motivated and makes them feel valued when they deliver.

If You Can’t Show the Door the Door

So how can you improve employee engagement if switching to a more open office layout isn’t a possibility

Go out of your way to show your team that they matter to you and to your business. Ask for their opinions about the work they do (and actually take what they say into consideration). Use face-to-face conversations instead of email when possible and hold your team accountable for what they do.

Reward them when they do it well.

As you improve the engagement of your staff, you can expect to see improvements in nearly every business indicator you track - no matter what happens in the larger economy.

Open Office Photo via Shutterstock

Mobile Advertising: Google vs. Facebook

Mobile advertising is a relatively new space, but it’s growing very quickly, as phones and other mobile devices are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Mobile advertising may soon overtake desktop advertising as we enter a post-PC age.

We’ve taken a look at social network advertising, now let’s examine your mobile advertising options. Facebook and Google are the two big players here, in terms of audience. Google recently rolled out one of the biggest changes in 10 years to AdWords campaigns, so now is a great time to be thinking about getting into the mobile advertising game.

Google

Google AdWords just launched “enhanced campaigns,” which are designed to make it easier for advertisers to reach people on multiple devices, based on where the person is, the time of day and the capabilities of their device. Google’s blog post announcing the change explains:

A pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator).

For a pricing example, Google says a breakfast cafe “can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.”

But the change has some advertisers complaining, as the New York Times reported:

Mobile ads have been less expensive partly because their demand has been relatively low. But now all Google ad campaigns will include mobile devices by default (though advertisers can opt out of mobile.) This will drive more bidders into each auction and likely forcing up mobile ad rates. This is good for Google but disappointing to advertisers.

Some advertisers also say they do not want to lose their fine-grained control over their ad campaigns and cede that control to Google. For example, iPad users generally spend more on e-commerce sites than users of other kinds of tablets, so many retailers showed ads only to iPad users, but now they will lose that option.

Facebook

Facebook’s newly announced news feed is heavily focused on standardizing the mobile and desktop experiences. The new news feed will look just about the same on all screens. This means a wider news feed with big pictures and videos, which in turn means more real estate to play with. Facebook might also looking into a new ad category: video ads that auto-play in the news feed.

Because Facebook is pretty new to the mobile advertising game, they’re focused on the basics.

“A lot of people will talk about the holy grail of advertising where you’re walking down the street and your phone is buzzing with alerts about deals around you and a movie’s playing nearby,” Facebook News Feed product manager Jeff Kanter tells InsideFacebook.com. “I think it’s an awesome vision and the world will get there, but at this point in time, mobile advertising is working really well because it’s where people are spending their time.”

At this point, there is no real difference between Facebook’s mobile advertising and desktop advertising. The benefits of advertising with Facebook are the ability to target a specific segment of the population based on age and personal interests, and that your ads can go front and center, right in the news feed.

 Google VS. Facebook

Facebook

• Often cheaper than Google
• Targets by age, personal interests, and more
• You can get more prominent placement in front of your target audience’s eyes
• Not reliant on search terms â€" people visit Facebook multiple times per day to read through their news feed

Google

• Targets by location, time of day and search terms
• Can target by personal interests/search history, if users don’t opt out
• Bigger reach than Facebook â€" Ads appear on Google searches, YouTube videos, Blogger websites and millions of other sites using AdSense.
• When people search Google, they’re looking for something specific. If you’re trying to sell something niche, you’re going to have a better target/conversion ratio with Google.

What’s been your experience with mobile advertising What do you think about Google’s new enhanced campaigns How about Facebook’s new News Feed Let us know in the comments!

Two New Facebook Features Add Help To Businesses Managing Multiple Pages

Managing multiple Facebook pages for businesses with several locations used to be quite a challenge as administrators had to find ways to organize a list of different accounts and pages for each of their sites. Thankfully, Facebook improved that process in 2011 with the introduction of parent and child pages. Now, they are working to improve the user functionality even further with features called “Graph Search“ and “Nearby.”

The parent and child pages give the parent administrator full access and control of information being shared on all the child accounts associated with it. This becomes especially helpful for specials and deals the company may want to send out to all locations. The administrator can even push profile photos and cover images through the parent page as well.

The newer features like Graph Search allow the user the ability to look up anything shared with them on Facebook, with each search being unique to that user. For example, a search could be done for “restaurants my friends like,” or “friends who like to ski.” Our very own Ramon Ray, editor of Smallbiztechnology.com, recently wrote about the new Graph features and what we can expect.

The Nearby tool helps the user find places near them, based on their activity as well as their friends activity. People can search by category, like restaurants or hair salons, and can run the search right from their mobile device.  This includes getting directions, ratings and recommendations. Searches can also be run for check-in deals that are close to the user’s current location.

“From national fashion brands to regional franchises, any company that has more than five locations and is leveraging Facebook as part of its marketing effort should seriously consider the sales and mobile engagement opportunities this unique functionality affords,” says Jason Cormier, Co-founder of Room 214, a firm that assists companies looking to implement and manage these features.

Facebook also recently rolled out updates to another application for managing content. “Pages“ gives an administrator access to manage their content right from their mobile phone or tablet.

Have you used any of the new Facebook features  If so, what do you think

Two New Facebook Features Add Help To Businesses Managing Multiple Pages

Managing multiple Facebook pages for businesses with several locations used to be quite a challenge as administrators had to find ways to organize a list of different accounts and pages for each of their sites. Thankfully, Facebook improved that process in 2011 with the introduction of parent and child pages. Now, they are working to improve the user functionality even further with features called “Graph Search“ and “Nearby.”

The parent and child pages give the parent administrator full access and control of information being shared on all the child accounts associated with it. This becomes especially helpful for specials and deals the company may want to send out to all locations. The administrator can even push profile photos and cover images through the parent page as well.

The newer features like Graph Search allow the user the ability to look up anything shared with them on Facebook, with each search being unique to that user. For example, a search could be done for “restaurants my friends like,” or “friends who like to ski.” Our very own Ramon Ray, editor of Smallbiztechnology.com, recently wrote about the new Graph features and what we can expect.

The Nearby tool helps the user find places near them, based on their activity as well as their friends activity. People can search by category, like restaurants or hair salons, and can run the search right from their mobile device.  This includes getting directions, ratings and recommendations. Searches can also be run for check-in deals that are close to the user’s current location.

“From national fashion brands to regional franchises, any company that has more than five locations and is leveraging Facebook as part of its marketing effort should seriously consider the sales and mobile engagement opportunities this unique functionality affords,” says Jason Cormier, Co-founder of Room 214, a firm that assists companies looking to implement and manage these features.

Facebook also recently rolled out updates to another application for managing content. “Pages“ gives an administrator access to manage their content right from their mobile phone or tablet.

Have you used any of the new Facebook features  If so, what do you think

Mobile Advertising: Google vs. Facebook

Mobile advertising is a relatively new space, but it’s growing very quickly, as phones and other mobile devices are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Mobile advertising may soon overtake desktop advertising as we enter a post-PC age.

We’ve taken a look at social network advertising, now let’s examine your mobile advertising options. Facebook and Google are the two big players here, in terms of audience. Google recently rolled out one of the biggest changes in 10 years to AdWords campaigns, so now is a great time to be thinking about getting into the mobile advertising game.

Google

Google AdWords just launched “enhanced campaigns,” which are designed to make it easier for advertisers to reach people on multiple devices, based on where the person is, the time of day and the capabilities of their device. Google’s blog post announcing the change explains:

A pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator).

For a pricing example, Google says a breakfast cafe “can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.”

But the change has some advertisers complaining, as the New York Times reported:

Mobile ads have been less expensive partly because their demand has been relatively low. But now all Google ad campaigns will include mobile devices by default (though advertisers can opt out of mobile.) This will drive more bidders into each auction and likely forcing up mobile ad rates. This is good for Google but disappointing to advertisers.

Some advertisers also say they do not want to lose their fine-grained control over their ad campaigns and cede that control to Google. For example, iPad users generally spend more on e-commerce sites than users of other kinds of tablets, so many retailers showed ads only to iPad users, but now they will lose that option.

Facebook

Facebook’s newly announced news feed is heavily focused on standardizing the mobile and desktop experiences. The new news feed will look just about the same on all screens. This means a wider news feed with big pictures and videos, which in turn means more real estate to play with. Facebook might also looking into a new ad category: video ads that auto-play in the news feed.

Because Facebook is pretty new to the mobile advertising game, they’re focused on the basics.

“A lot of people will talk about the holy grail of advertising where you’re walking down the street and your phone is buzzing with alerts about deals around you and a movie’s playing nearby,” Facebook News Feed product manager Jeff Kanter tells InsideFacebook.com. “I think it’s an awesome vision and the world will get there, but at this point in time, mobile advertising is working really well because it’s where people are spending their time.”

At this point, there is no real difference between Facebook’s mobile advertising and desktop advertising. The benefits of advertising with Facebook are the ability to target a specific segment of the population based on age and personal interests, and that your ads can go front and center, right in the news feed.

 Google VS. Facebook

Facebook

• Often cheaper than Google
• Targets by age, personal interests, and more
• You can get more prominent placement in front of your target audience’s eyes
• Not reliant on search terms â€" people visit Facebook multiple times per day to read through their news feed

Google

• Targets by location, time of day and search terms
• Can target by personal interests/search history, if users don’t opt out
• Bigger reach than Facebook â€" Ads appear on Google searches, YouTube videos, Blogger websites and millions of other sites using AdSense.
• When people search Google, they’re looking for something specific. If you’re trying to sell something niche, you’re going to have a better target/conversion ratio with Google.

What’s been your experience with mobile advertising What do you think about Google’s new enhanced campaigns How about Facebook’s new News Feed Let us know in the comments!

Mobile Advertising: Google vs. Facebook

Mobile advertising is a relatively new space, but it’s growing very quickly, as phones and other mobile devices are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Mobile advertising may soon overtake desktop advertising as we enter a post-PC age.

We’ve taken a look at social network advertising, now let’s examine your mobile advertising options. Facebook and Google are the two big players here, in terms of audience. Google recently rolled out one of the biggest changes in 10 years to AdWords campaigns, so now is a great time to be thinking about getting into the mobile advertising game.

Google

Google AdWords just launched “enhanced campaigns,” which are designed to make it easier for advertisers to reach people on multiple devices, based on where the person is, the time of day and the capabilities of their device. Google’s blog post announcing the change explains:

A pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator).

For a pricing example, Google says a breakfast cafe “can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.”

But the change has some advertisers complaining, as the New York Times reported:

Mobile ads have been less expensive partly because their demand has been relatively low. But now all Google ad campaigns will include mobile devices by default (though advertisers can opt out of mobile.) This will drive more bidders into each auction and likely forcing up mobile ad rates. This is good for Google but disappointing to advertisers.

Some advertisers also say they do not want to lose their fine-grained control over their ad campaigns and cede that control to Google. For example, iPad users generally spend more on e-commerce sites than users of other kinds of tablets, so many retailers showed ads only to iPad users, but now they will lose that option.

Facebook

Facebook’s newly announced news feed is heavily focused on standardizing the mobile and desktop experiences. The new news feed will look just about the same on all screens. This means a wider news feed with big pictures and videos, which in turn means more real estate to play with. Facebook might also looking into a new ad category: video ads that auto-play in the news feed.

Because Facebook is pretty new to the mobile advertising game, they’re focused on the basics.

“A lot of people will talk about the holy grail of advertising where you’re walking down the street and your phone is buzzing with alerts about deals around you and a movie’s playing nearby,” Facebook News Feed product manager Jeff Kanter tells InsideFacebook.com. “I think it’s an awesome vision and the world will get there, but at this point in time, mobile advertising is working really well because it’s where people are spending their time.”

At this point, there is no real difference between Facebook’s mobile advertising and desktop advertising. The benefits of advertising with Facebook are the ability to target a specific segment of the population based on age and personal interests, and that your ads can go front and center, right in the news feed.

 Google VS. Facebook

Facebook

• Often cheaper than Google
• Targets by age, personal interests, and more
• You can get more prominent placement in front of your target audience’s eyes
• Not reliant on search terms â€" people visit Facebook multiple times per day to read through their news feed

Google

• Targets by location, time of day and search terms
• Can target by personal interests/search history, if users don’t opt out
• Bigger reach than Facebook â€" Ads appear on Google searches, YouTube videos, Blogger websites and millions of other sites using AdSense.
• When people search Google, they’re looking for something specific. If you’re trying to sell something niche, you’re going to have a better target/conversion ratio with Google.

What’s been your experience with mobile advertising What do you think about Google’s new enhanced campaigns How about Facebook’s new News Feed Let us know in the comments!

Email Campaigns Made Easy with These Low Cost Do-It Yourself Email Templates

Too many small businesses have failed to unleash the power of email marketing as a tool for direct selling, relying mostly instead on their websites or Facebook fan page. But here’s one very good reason why email marketing for small businesses makes such good sense - emails are accessed by your customers every day (well almost). Your message sits in their inbox, glaring at them waiting to be opened. It’s a great opportunity for you to directly connect with your customers. Making your email communication fun and relevant will compel your prospects to read your email and perhaps even await the next in the series.  It’s a fantastic way for a call-to-action and engaging your customers.

Ben Settle an email marketing aficionado who has been working on direct response campaigns for more than 10 years gives us an interesting take - “An email is internet text version of talk radio. People tune in every single day to hear that person as he/she reveals things about themselves and just get really personal with their audience. That’s kind of how it is with email. It’s very intimate. Do it right and people get to know you like they know their favorite radio talk show host”!

And here’s the good news - gone are the days of boring, bulk templates from email marketing platforms with a limited range of template-specific images per season or occasion. Small business owners without any design experience or HTML knowledge can now design their own custom email templates by combining elements from the company website and adding logos and other images. This is done with the help of custom email template creation software to maximize the results of the campaign. It also means that you don’t have to hire a graphic designer to create your custom template, thus saving your business some much-needed revenue. Importantly, visual branding that links up your advertising, website and email communications creates a consistent persona. This, in turn, can only improve top-of-mind recall by your customers and result in more sales.

VerticalResponse, which offers a suite of do-it-yourself marketing solutions for small businesses, has recently launched InstaEmail Template Machine. It allows users to create an email template that matches their website, by importing images, logos and color schemes.

As per Janine Popick, VerticalResponse CEO “Our InstaEmail app significantly simplifies the process and enables small businesses to create a great-looking, custom template quickly and easily.”

Once you have designed your template you can choose whether you want to save it to your Vertical Response account, or download it as a zip file, or copy the code to your email campaign program.While they are not the first company to do this, the InstaEmail Template Machine provides free access to more than 700 pre-designed email templates.

MailChimp and Constant Contact also have an extensive library of email templates as part of their overall email marketing services.  Constant Contact gives you free access for a limited time only (2 months) and with Mail Chimp the free service is restricted to 2000 subscribers. Both Mail Chimp and Constant Contact have paid monthly plans costing as little as $10 to $15 a month.

Thanks to these easy- to- use email template design solutions, businesses with small budgets can now themselves create professional email campaigns and newsletters that are completely in sync with the rest of their visual branding.

March 2013 Patch Tuesday brings Internet Explorer 8, \'evil maid\' fixes

Admins will focus their attention to workstations, as Microsoft patched nine Internet Explorer vulnerabilities and three USB driver vulnerabilities in this month's Patch Tuesday update.

With four bulletins rated critical and three rated important, March's patches fall short of the near record-breaking number of patches seen in February.

The most urgent Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerabilities that need to be addressed affect IE 8.

The updates are "very critical for those who use IE 8. It's still an important patch, but you don't have to rush it out [if you're using a newer IE version]," said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO at Qualys, an IT security firm based in Redwood Shores, California.

A USB driver-related patch is also worth attention, Kandek said.

If an attacker has physical access to a workstation that is powered on, the machine could be compromised with an exploit on a USB thumb drive.

Though the bulletin is only rated important, Kandek said this is one to watch. There are numerous opportunities when an attacker could gain access. This type of approach is dubbed the "evil maid" attack where machines left in hotel rooms would be attacked, Kandek said.

Silverlight, Microsoft's interactive media plugin, received a critical patch, which repairs a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely take over a machine.

In Microsoft Office, Visio, OneNote and SharePoint all received patches.

A full list of bulletins can be found from Microsoft. 

Non-security updates

Microsoft also released a number of non-security updates on Tuesday, squashing a number software bugs.

A cumulative update is available for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. It fixes issues with potential Group Policy Object errors, reliability improvements when using USB 3.0 devices and Wi-Fi performance on Windows 8 devices.

An update rollup for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2012 SP1 is available, containing 90 hotfixes since the release of the first service packs for both operating systems. Another update for Windows Server 2008 R2 fixes an issue with Active Directory and PowerShell.

Windows Defender for Windows 8 received an update, adding new anti-malware functionality and overall performance fixes.

Microsoft delivered Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 application compatibility updates, which add support for devices. The company also added a compatibility update for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012's legacy upgrade experience.

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and Windows RT now supports all Flash content, as opposed to a Microsoft-controlled whitelist.

Email Campaigns Made Easy with These Low Cost Do-It Yourself Email Templates

Too many small businesses have failed to unleash the power of email marketing as a tool for direct selling, relying mostly instead on their websites or Facebook fan page. But here’s one very good reason why email marketing for small businesses makes such good sense - emails are accessed by your customers every day (well almost). Your message sits in their inbox, glaring at them waiting to be opened. It’s a great opportunity for you to directly connect with your customers. Making your email communication fun and relevant will compel your prospects to read your email and perhaps even await the next in the series.  It’s a fantastic way for a call-to-action and engaging your customers.

Ben Settle an email marketing aficionado who has been working on direct response campaigns for more than 10 years gives us an interesting take - “An email is internet text version of talk radio. People tune in every single day to hear that person as he/she reveals things about themselves and just get really personal with their audience. That’s kind of how it is with email. It’s very intimate. Do it right and people get to know you like they know their favorite radio talk show host”!

And here’s the good news - gone are the days of boring, bulk templates from email marketing platforms with a limited range of template-specific images per season or occasion. Small business owners without any design experience or HTML knowledge can now design their own custom email templates by combining elements from the company website and adding logos and other images. This is done with the help of custom email template creation software to maximize the results of the campaign. It also means that you don’t have to hire a graphic designer to create your custom template, thus saving your business some much-needed revenue. Importantly, visual branding that links up your advertising, website and email communications creates a consistent persona. This, in turn, can only improve top-of-mind recall by your customers and result in more sales.

VerticalResponse, which offers a suite of do-it-yourself marketing solutions for small businesses, has recently launched InstaEmail Template Machine. It allows users to create an email template that matches their website, by importing images, logos and color schemes.

As per Janine Popick, VerticalResponse CEO “Our InstaEmail app significantly simplifies the process and enables small businesses to create a great-looking, custom template quickly and easily.”

Once you have designed your template you can choose whether you want to save it to your Vertical Response account, or download it as a zip file, or copy the code to your email campaign program.While they are not the first company to do this, the InstaEmail Template Machine provides free access to more than 700 pre-designed email templates.

MailChimp and Constant Contact also have an extensive library of email templates as part of their overall email marketing services.  Constant Contact gives you free access for a limited time only (2 months) and with Mail Chimp the free service is restricted to 2000 subscribers. Both Mail Chimp and Constant Contact have paid monthly plans costing as little as $10 to $15 a month.

Thanks to these easy- to- use email template design solutions, businesses with small budgets can now themselves create professional email campaigns and newsletters that are completely in sync with the rest of their visual branding.

Fortune 500 Thrives, But Small Businesses Not So Optimistic

Every month here in the United States the NFIB (National Federation of Independent Businesses) conducts a survey and updates its Small Business Optimism Index.

The Index that just came out yesterday, saw a small 1.9 point  rise. The Index is now up to 90.8.

Small Business Optimism Up - Must Be Good News, Right

The Optimism Index number went up, so you’re thinking, “it has to be good news.”  Well… not so fast.

With all such indices and surveys, it all depends on the perspective and context.  Yes, it’s positive news, but if I had to sum it up, I’d say “it’s hardly rousing.”

The NFIB notes that survey results are on a par with 2008.  That’s good because there’s been a bounce back.  But it’s bad in the sense that the results are actually below small business optimism levels for both the 1991-92 and 2001-02 recessions.  The Small Business Optimism Index chart tells the tale:

Here we are in March of 2013, with reports indicating the economy is improving.  As I write this, the stock market in New York has had eight straight days of gains, based on great earnings reports by large corporations.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at an all-time high.

But here’s the rub.  That improvement hasn’t made its way to small businesses yet.  Small business sales revenues trended down over most of the past year, 2012. And according to the NFIB’s report, small business sales numbers are still weak. Is it any wonder that optimism is anemic

Some of the reason may be all the fear mongering coming out of Washington â€" and all the talk about raising government spending.  Paying for that spending disproportionately hits small business owners in the form of taxes â€" at least, that’s what many business owner believe, no matter what the pundits and politicians try to tell us.  Taxes and government regulation are bigger issues for small business owners than for the rest of the population, according to a Gallup poll.

In a prepared statement, NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said:

While the Fortune 500 are enjoying record high earnings, Main Street earnings remain depressed. Far more firms report sales down quarter over quarter than up. Washington is manufacturing one crisis after anotherâ€" the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff and the sequester. Spreading fear and instability are certainly not a strategy to encourage investment and entrepreneurship. Three-quarters of small-business owners think that business conditions will be the same or worse in six months. The Index gained almost 2 points last month; that was good news. But, until owners’ forecast for the economy improves substantially, there will be little boost to hiring and spending from the small business half of the economy.

Small Business Sales and Profits Weak

Here are some additional results highlighted by the NFIB release:

• Weak Sales - There are still more business owners reporting declining sales in February 2013 than positive sales trends.
• Same Earnings and Wages -   43 percent of small business employers reported falling profits.
• Weak Credit Demand - Small business demand for credit stayed low in February. Only 7 percent of small business owners said they were unable to get the credit they needed in February, though that is one percent up from the previous month.

Results are based on responses by 870 NFIB-member small businesses surveyed randomly during the month of February.

The NFIB is a nonprofit founded in 1943, that advocates on behalf of small businesses. The organization represents small businesses of many sizes, from solo entrepreneurs to those with several hundred employees.  The typical NFIB member employs 10 people and reports gross sales of $500,000 a year.

The full NFIB report can be downloaded here (PDF).

McAfee Move Anti-Virus

Anti-malware today suffers from a frustrating dichotomy. First, it is, arguably, the most mature of all of the capabilities in the security practitioner's toolkit. Certainly, McAfee is one of the grand old products of the genre. On the other hand, a huge percentage of today's threats - especially advanced persistent threats - are delivered using increasingly sophisticated malware. Throw virtualised environments into the mix and one has a witch's brew of potentially bad news.

McAfee has successfully brought together the application of a centralised policy engine - ePO - with its anti-malware capability in the physical world. There is a strong suite of enterprise-class protection for the physical data centre. Today, though most enterprises of any size are becoming virtualised, so this protection needs to reach into the virtual to be effective. Today's virtualisation extends from servers to endpoints, so the notion of pervasive anti-virus (AV) is even more important. Data and other transmittable files - especially bad files such as malware - can move extremely quickly across a virtualised network backbone, so controlling malware in a virtualised world may well be more important than it is in the physical world. Management for Optimised Virtual Environments (Move) AV addresses this challenge head-on.

Move is optimised for the virtual - and it is hypervisor agnostic. It is managed through ePO policies and it integrates cleanly with other McAfee capabilities in the physical enterprise. Nowhere is a scan storm more threatening to system performance than when it results from AV scanning across a virtual network. Move monitors all of the loads - memory, CPU, IO, disk, hypervisor and more - in the virtual environment and manages itself accordingly.

Should one be using VMware as a hypervisor, Move hooks the vShield API and works directly at the hypervisor level. Overall, this is an efficient, comprehensive approach to integrating a virtualised data centre with a physical data centre, as well as with endpoints. If one is a virtualised shop and not using McAfee as the in-house AV product, Move alone is a good enough reason to rethink the enterprise-wide AV strategy. AV is not the end of the line for Move, either. We were told that new capabilities will be added to it, fleshing out a total security environment that addresses an integrated hybrid environment, all under the control of a single ePO. Not bad for the company that started the widespread acceptance of anti-virus by giving it away.

Reflex Virtualization Management Center

This is one of those products that one would think is a no-brainer. Virtualised data centres can get very large and complicated and managing it is a challenge. So why doesn't someone come up with a unified approach to managing configuration, security, deployment and monitoring It should be easy. After all, in a virtual environment we can spin up a management server with little effort and almost no cost. As it turns out, it's not quite a walk in the park, but, like a virtuoso musician who 'makes it all look so easy', the clean simplicity of VMC's deployment is deceptive. 

A lot of thought clearly went into this product. VMC takes advantage of the nature of a virtual data centre. Part of that nature is that there is a lot of data moving on the virtual network. That data tells us all about the environment - and if one can just collect and analyse all of that streaming data, it can be managed, and that is exactly what VMC does.

Some of the product's capabilities seem to flow naturally from the straightforward analysis. For example, if one is seeing all of the data in the enterprise, it follows that the user should be able to understand how the system is behaving. That, logically, includes capacity measurement, security and other types of monitoring. VMC can handle monitoring, performance and capacity, security and configuration management, all behind a single pane of glass. 

It addresses several management tasks of critical virtual systems in a unified manner, so VMC is ideal for dealing with regulatory compliance and reporting issues. The product does this by taking the data it collects and using it to model the enterprise. Once the model is built, it can be kept current and include such things as topology maps of the virtual enterprise. Drill-down into the topology reveals configuration and performance measurements.

Reflex VMC is straightforward to deploy and configure. It is well supported by Reflex and brings a much easier paradigm to the management of virtual environments, no matter what hypervisor one is using. Pricing can be a bit complicated, so contact Reflex for more details in that regard. Overall, this is a top-drawer tool and, given that there is far more to talk about than I can fit in the space allotted, if you work in a virtual environment, this is one you really need to look at.

Symantec Critical System Protection

The notion of wrappers has been with us for a long time. Back in the early days of Unix and Linux, we used wrappers to provide security to not-so-secure applications, such as telnet. Today that concept has matured and we see it popping up in modern apps. Symantec CSP is a good example. One might characterise CSP as a security wrapper for mission-critical environments. That means that if it is a crucial piece of the computing infrastructure - such as a Scada system or a medical device controller - it gets the security protection it needs.

That protection does not stop with those systems, however. CSP is integrated with the enterprise's security infrastructure, so it becomes an extension of that environment, extending seamless protection across the enterprise, physical or virtual. 

CSP consists of two pieces: a detection and a prevention component. Detection watches behaviour on the enterprise to determine if something is going on that shouldn't be. The component even extends to watching system admin accounts, something that is a sort of Holy Grail for security administrators.

The key to CSP is data. The detection piece monitors everything in the virtualised environment from the hypervisor up through the applications. It looks for disallowed or potentially dangerous actions and kills or de-escalates the process. So an administrator doing something inherently dangerous - inherently because as an admin he/she has total super user rights - may be de-escalated to a normal user without those rights. 

CSP has a small footprint - zero to one per cent of system resources on the system to which it is attached - and less than 20MB of storage. It is Windows, Linux and Unix compatible and is optimised for VMware, either vSphere or ESXi. It is behaviour-based, so CSP needs no AV data files or exploit profiles. If an action is going to violate a policy or cause damage, it is stopped. The detection policies are designed to support regulatory compliance and users have a lot of control over how they can configure the system as a whole.

We liked this product for its ability to address important, but hard to secure, systems and still integrate cleanly into the virtualised enterprise as a whole.

Bitdefender GravityZone

This sounds a bit like one of those inflatable toys at local fairs inside of which children bounce around, or perhaps some science fiction environment that surrounds a planet. Actually, although it is neither, it has some similar characteristics. 

Like the child's toy, GravityZone lets users bounce between various computing environments: physical, virtualised and mobile. Just like a gravitational field around the planet, it pulls the paradigms together and down to a single security management environment. Each of the paradigms has its own security requirements, but as part of a coherent enterprise each needs to work in concert. The focal point is the GravityZone Control Center. Each of the management modules plugs in separately.

Consider the typical virtualised - or hybrid if you prefer - enterprise. The servers live in the virtual. The endpoints are physical, with some of them mobile devices. Each has its own requirements, operating systems and security quirks. Certainly it would be more pleasant to take the security management from each of the portions - each quite different from the rest - pull it together in a single management console and facilitate security interaction between them. That is exactly what GravityZone does. 

GravityZone comes as a virtual appliance and it supports an extremely wide range of physical virtual and mobile systems, operating systems, mobile environments and hypervisors. For today's enterprises, it is unlikely that one will have something that GravityZone can't support, but if something is present - a hypervisor, for example - Bitdefender will configure it for you.

GravityZone can operate agentless or with an agent, and Bitdefender recommends that users deploy a virtual appliance on each host in their virtual data centre. This is especially important for large data centres with a lot of hosts. GravityZone has a small footprint and does not detract from the performance of the rest of the data centre or any of the endpoint devices. It is vShield-compatible, but it can work with several other hypervisors. 

Support is available in a variety of formats - from per-incident to mission-critical packages. Basic support is included in the price of the product. This is well worth looking at, especially if the user has a complicated hybrid environment.

Deployment is simple and the functionality it offers is crucial to the coherent security management of a complicated environment. One very useful feature is the self-provisioning capability for mobile devices. For each deployment, the system generates a unique QR code. The prospective user rads the code and immediately is tied into the environment using Active Directory. This addresses one of the biggest issues in mobile devices: user provisioning.

BuildChatter.com: The Start-Up That Saves You Time and Helps You Manage Social Media Marketing

Businesses not using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are missing out on golden opportunities for mass marketing.  Smart players are using these social sites daily because they know they have a captured audience and that they can control, to some extent, what their target market is learning about them.  The challenge comes in carving out the time to stay on top of these sites.  Thankfully, the frustration of not having enough time is exactly what John Macintosh was experiencing when he developed Buildchatter.com, an easy to use social media management and marketing solution.

Launched in February 2012, BuildChatter.com is a website designed to help small business owners who want to establish themselves in the realm social media, but just don’t have the time or experience to do it effectively.

“I started on a search for an easy to use, affordable solution for my small business,” says Macintosh.  “What I found available was too expensive, complicated, incomplete or time consuming.  Frustrated, I decided to design and build a suite of tools that could respond to these challenges and be used by all small business owners for little or minimal cost.”

BuildChatter is easy to use by simply installing the BuildChatter traffic tab onto your website and link it to BuildChatter.com.  You will immediately begin to see a more targeted audience following your website.  Prices range from free for the basic Socialite package (you can apply add-ons for a small fee), to $55 for the SocialPlus.  Some of the add-ons include:

• Analytics that provide real time data on followers, posts, and promotions
• Social ROI Calculator that provides the return on investment generated through social media efforts
• Engagement Tools that allow the posting of sweepstakes, quizzes, polling and video showcasing

Macintosh has bootstrapped Buildchatter.com with the help of some funding from family and friends and is currently building specialized solutions for a variety of new markets. Currently, Buildchatter.com’s competition is mainly North Social and Wildfire.  However, Buildchatter.com’s pricing structure and ease of use makes it a great tool for business leaders that want to save time marketing to social media sites.

Retailer fights PCI fines for non-compliance following breach

A company is challenging costly penalties levied for non-compliance of Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards, by suing the credit card company that imposed the fines.

Nashville-based sportswear company Genesco filed a lawsuit against Visa to recoup more than $13 million in fines imposed on it after a 2010 breach. Visa is among the credit card processing companies that self-regulate PCI compliance standards, and are given oversight to fine companies for violating the rules.

In the incident, a part of Genesco's computer system was hacked, potentially exposing credit and debit card details of customers to intruders. At the time, Genesco notified customers about the breach, but provided no details on the number of individuals impacted. It did, however, recommend that customers monitor their accounts for potential fraud.

In the complaint, filed in a United States District Court in Nashville, Genesco said that Visa ‘had no reasonable basis for concluding that Genesco was non-compliant with the PCI DSS requirement at the time of the intrusion or at any other relevant time'. The PCI standards in question involve safety requirements for the storing of card data.

Genesco claims that during the system intrusion, hackers did not steal any stored payment card information on its computer network, but tried to access data it was transmitting to credit card processors.

The company also said that many of the accounts Visa flagged as being potentially compromised in the incident, and eligible for its Account Data Compromise Recovery process (ADCR), were not accessed in the breach due to Genesco rebooting its servers, which caused log files containing sensitive cardholder data to be overwritten before hackers accessed it.

According to Genesco, attackers used ‘packet sniffer technology', which captures and analyses information as it passes through a network.  

“The criminals did this by inserting into Genesco's computer network malicious software that employed ‘packet sniffer' technology custom designed to acquire account data while the data was in transit through Genesco's computer network [and] on its way to Fifth Third Bank or Wells Fargo for transaction approval,” said the complaint.

Bit9 adds advanced threat indicator technology for advanced attack detection

Bit9 has added new detection and forensic capabilities to its platform to leverage endpoint and server sensor technologies.

The additions allow for a continuous recording of all activity on endpoints and servers to be made, which can help identify attack patterns. New additions allow an organisation to install a single agent on an endpoint or server to provide advanced threat detection, protection and forensics simulatenously, as well providing instant enterprise-wide information without polling or scanning.

This ability is powered by Bit9's new Advanced Threat Indicators (ATI) that identify advanced threat patterns based on file and process attributes and behaviours, find threats in real time, in the past and based on a sequence of events and leverage the cloud-based Bit9 Software Reputation Service.

Brian Hazzard, vice president of product management, said: “To defend themselves against advanced threats and zero-day attacks, enterprises need a security solution that monitors and records all activity on their endpoints and servers in real time.

“However, they want to avoid installing multiple agents that degrade system performance and increase administrative overhead. Bit9 offers the only single endpoint and server sensor-and-recorder that provides advanced threat detection, protection, and forensics.

“Our new Advanced Threat Indicators detect attacks that signature-based security solutions, especially anti-virus and behavioural host intrusion prevention systems cannot. This has already produced significant value at our early access customer sites. We've detected malicious files and activities that evaded traditional security solutions.” 

BuildChatter.com: The Start-Up That Saves You Time and Helps You Manage Social Media Marketing

Businesses not using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are missing out on golden opportunities for mass marketing.  Smart players are using these social sites daily because they know they have a captured audience and that they can control, to some extent, what their target market is learning about them.  The challenge comes in carving out the time to stay on top of these sites.  Thankfully, the frustration of not having enough time is exactly what John Macintosh was experiencing when he developed Buildchatter.com, an easy to use social media management and marketing solution.

Launched in February 2012, BuildChatter.com is a website designed to help small business owners who want to establish themselves in the realm social media, but just don’t have the time or experience to do it effectively.

“I started on a search for an easy to use, affordable solution for my small business,” says Macintosh.  “What I found available was too expensive, complicated, incomplete or time consuming.  Frustrated, I decided to design and build a suite of tools that could respond to these challenges and be used by all small business owners for little or minimal cost.”

BuildChatter is easy to use by simply installing the BuildChatter traffic tab onto your website and link it to BuildChatter.com.  You will immediately begin to see a more targeted audience following your website.  Prices range from free for the basic Socialite package (you can apply add-ons for a small fee), to $55 for the SocialPlus.  Some of the add-ons include:

• Analytics that provide real time data on followers, posts, and promotions
• Social ROI Calculator that provides the return on investment generated through social media efforts
• Engagement Tools that allow the posting of sweepstakes, quizzes, polling and video showcasing

Macintosh has bootstrapped Buildchatter.com with the help of some funding from family and friends and is currently building specialized solutions for a variety of new markets. Currently, Buildchatter.com’s competition is mainly North Social and Wildfire.  However, Buildchatter.com’s pricing structure and ease of use makes it a great tool for business leaders that want to save time marketing to social media sites.

M-Commerce: Why Your Website Needs to Be Mobile

Mobile commerce, also known as m-commerce, is evolving - and small businesses must evolve with it.

A 2010 survey by Internet Retailer of 149 chain sellers, chain retailers, web-only merchants, catalog companies and consumer brand manufacturers found only 8.8 percent of these companies operated an m-commerce site.

However, the same survey suggested 75.9 percent of these retailers already had plans to launch a mobile site with 31.9 percent expecting to be selling through mobile devices in the next six months.

Flash forward to 2012 when eMarketer estimated an increase of mobile sales by 81 percent to a total of $25 billion in revenue that year. Another 55.7 percent increase in mobile sales is expected this year, with mobile sales representing about 15 percent of total retail e-commerce in the U.S. by the end of 2013.

The increasing commitment to mobile retail and resulting rise in sales is no surprise. In his book M-Commerce, author Paul Skeldon estimates that more than 70 percent of the world’s population now own mobile phones, and 74 percent of those owners have made purchases as a result of using a smartphone while shopping. Based on current trends, mobile global commerce sales will have reached $120 billion by 2015, estimates Skeldon.

Small businesses need to develop mobile commerce presences of their own, if they haven’t done so already, to take advantage of the evolving market.

To do so, smaller companies have the choice to either invest in custom mobile commerce development or to purchase a ready-made solution that will give them a mobile presence with their current site’s options and features.

Companies like Zuznow, founded by husband and wife team Chen and Racheli Levkovich, say they offer small businesses the option to automatically render a traditional website in mobile form with no need for additional programming.

The company’s website describes Zuznow as a “one-click mobilization.”

Zuznow boasts 100 paying customers who use the service to create mobile-friendly versions of their websites while preserving the look and feel of their original sites.

Zuznow’s solution aims to supports advanced features, such as user authentication, shopping carts, optimized purchase forms and PCI compliance. No software installation is needed. Customers can incorporate Zuznow’s technology with just a few lines of code. Mobile optimization is then maintained 24/7, and updates are automatically integrated into the mobile version of the site.

The Zuznow team says the solution captures a website in its entirety and is capable of translating it for all available mobile platforms. Mobile device users visiting Zuznow-supported sites are automatically directed to the Zuznow proxy, which detects the device in use and converts the site to the appropriate mobile version for that device. The automatic adaptation service now specializes in complex business sites, especially e-commerce.

The service is delivered at a cost of $100 per month. The company continues to add conversion features for additional platforms like iPad and plans to incorporate optimization for smart televisions in the near future.

With a majority of customers currently in Israel and Germany, the company is working on partnerships to provide services in the rest of Europe and the United States.

Whether they use a service like Zuznow or work with a developer to create a custom option, small business retailers must consider how to provide mobile versions of their sites to take advantage of today’s burgeoning m-commerce market.

M-Commerce Photo via Shutterstock

Three Reasons Why Old Fashion Face-To-Face Networking Is Better For Your Small Business (Infographic)

As a scion taking over the family business, or a young entrepreneur, you are undoubtedly well aware of the marketing prowess of the internet.  Websites, blogs, online community forums, email marketing or mobile campaigns are known to be  cost effective tools for reaching your target customers, most of whom own smart phones and carry tablets everywhere they go.  Referencing a statistic from one of my previous blogs, the Local Consumer Review Survey 2012, by Search Engine Land, revealed that 70 percent of consumers read online reviews before purchasing and 58 percent trusted a business with positive online reviews. So an online presence is a given even for small businesses.

Significantly, what this statistic also tells us is that a large chunk of your customers are NOT basing their purchase decision on information available online. So there is more than the click of a mouse or tap of a smart phone to marketing small businesses. Can the old fashioned way of presenting your business face to face, or in-person networking, still reap big results for local businesses

Social Networking The Old Fashion Way

Dealing with business contacts in person, rather than communicating via the internet is helping the successful entrepreneurs and business owners generate $137.5 billion in revenue as per report by moo.com. The company, which is an online printing service, has also published results of a 2012 survey conducted to review the impact of networking for businesses. The survey covered 1500 business owners across the U.S and U.K, of which 30 percent were small businesses. Here are the key takeaways for small businesses from that survey -

• While the internet was the top-of-mind, most used way for networking, a significant 90 percent of small businesses reported getting fresh business from in-person networking
• 30 percent confirmed that they were able to acquire a lot of new business from people networking
• Handing out business cards is another emerging trend, with 69 percent of entrepreneurs confirming that they are effective for networking.

Tips for Effective In-Person Business Meetings

Keeping in line with the old school  of marketing a small  business, here are few helpful pointers for making a good impression in that all crucial in-person business meeting:

• Go prepared with a strong introduction - who you are, what your business offers and where is it based. But also remember to keep it short.
• Highlight what makes your business different from others
• Ask the right questions, get to know your customer - What can I do for you What are your interests or profession
• Tailor the way you describe your business offering basis the person you are dealing with
• Appear reliable in your conversation; resist the temptation of getting swayed by the discussion. Don’t over-commit or misquote information.
• Follow up on the initial meeting. The Moo survey revealed that 36 percent of entrepreneurs followed up within 2 days of the contact and 34 percent within the week.
• Last but certainly not the least - your body language can set the tone for the meeting. No eye contact, unpleasant appearance and a limp handshake could derail the meeting before you even get a chance to pitch your product or service.

The infographic is a reminder that regardless of new communication technologies, the basics of engaging clients with personal interaction remains as relevant as ever. Using the internet to reach out to potential and existing clients must be supplemented by with in-person networking. Small businesses should utilize opportunities to promote themselves at conferences, exhibitions, seminars, professional body events, parties or maybe even at the local pub!

Three Reasons Why Old Fashion Face-To-Face Networking Is Better For Your Small Business (Infographic)

As a scion taking over the family business, or a young entrepreneur, you are undoubtedly well aware of the marketing prowess of the internet.  Websites, blogs, online community forums, email marketing or mobile campaigns are known to be  cost effective tools for reaching your target customers, most of whom own smart phones and carry tablets everywhere they go.  Referencing a statistic from one of my previous blogs, the Local Consumer Review Survey 2012, by Search Engine Land, revealed that 70 percent of consumers read online reviews before purchasing and 58 percent trusted a business with positive online reviews. So an online presence is a given even for small businesses.

Significantly, what this statistic also tells us is that a large chunk of your customers are NOT basing their purchase decision on information available online. So there is more than the click of a mouse or tap of a smart phone to marketing small businesses. Can the old fashioned way of presenting your business face to face, or in-person networking, still reap big results for local businesses

Social Networking The Old Fashion Way

Dealing with business contacts in person, rather than communicating via the internet is helping the successful entrepreneurs and business owners generate $137.5 billion in revenue as per report by moo.com. The company, which is an online printing service, has also published results of a 2012 survey conducted to review the impact of networking for businesses. The survey covered 1500 business owners across the U.S and U.K, of which 30 percent were small businesses. Here are the key takeaways for small businesses from that survey -

• While the internet was the top-of-mind, most used way for networking, a significant 90 percent of small businesses reported getting fresh business from in-person networking
• 30 percent confirmed that they were able to acquire a lot of new business from people networking
• Handing out business cards is another emerging trend, with 69 percent of entrepreneurs confirming that they are effective for networking.

Tips for Effective In-Person Business Meetings

Keeping in line with the old school  of marketing a small  business, here are few helpful pointers for making a good impression in that all crucial in-person business meeting:

• Go prepared with a strong introduction - who you are, what your business offers and where is it based. But also remember to keep it short.
• Highlight what makes your business different from others
• Ask the right questions, get to know your customer - What can I do for you What are your interests or profession
• Tailor the way you describe your business offering basis the person you are dealing with
• Appear reliable in your conversation; resist the temptation of getting swayed by the discussion. Don’t over-commit or misquote information.
• Follow up on the initial meeting. The Moo survey revealed that 36 percent of entrepreneurs followed up within 2 days of the contact and 34 percent within the week.
• Last but certainly not the least - your body language can set the tone for the meeting. No eye contact, unpleasant appearance and a limp handshake could derail the meeting before you even get a chance to pitch your product or service.

The infographic is a reminder that regardless of new communication technologies, the basics of engaging clients with personal interaction remains as relevant as ever. Using the internet to reach out to potential and existing clients must be supplemented by with in-person networking. Small businesses should utilize opportunities to promote themselves at conferences, exhibitions, seminars, professional body events, parties or maybe even at the local pub!

Kristin Hall of Google: Mobile Importance in Affiliate Marketing #AMDays

Meet Kristin Hall, a seasoned online marketer who heads up Google Affiliate Network‘s Publisher Development team. At Affiliate Management Days SF 2013 (April 16-17, 2013), Kristin will be representing Google on the keynote panel devoted to the role of the affiliate network.

* * * * *

Question: If you were to emphasize one important area that every affiliate manager should be paying more attention to, what would it be and why

Kristin Hall: Mobile.

Mobile is driving Read More

The post Kristin Hall of Google: Mobile Importance in Affiliate Marketing #AMDays appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Microsoft issues seven bulletins for Patch Tuesday, but nothing for Pwn2Own vulnerability

Microsoft released seven bulletins last night, containing four patches rated as critical, to fix 20 vulnerabilities.

The patches fix flaws in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Server Tools and Silverlight. Dustin Childs, group manager of response communications at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, said that it recommended deploying MS13-021, MS13-022and MS13-027 first.

MS13-021 is the Internet Explorer patch and resolves nine issues in the browser, the most severe of which could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted web page using Explorer.

Marc Maiffret, CTO of BeyondTrust, said: “This bulletin alone composes almost half of the vulnerabilities addressed this month. Every supported version of Internet Explorer (6 through 10) is affected, thus implicitly making all supported Windows platforms (including Windows RT) a target for attackers.”

Ziv Mador, director of security research at Trustwave, said: “This bulletin covers nine CVE's, eight of these were reported privately to Microsoft but one of them, and we suspect the one that is out of CVE numerical order, was publicly disclosed. As we suspected last week, all of them are use after free vulnerabilities in various parts of Internet Explorer.”

Microsoft also recommended the Silverlight patch be installed rapidly. This fixes a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution if an attacker hosts a website that contains a specially crafted Silverlight application.

Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, said: “This patch for Silverlight addresses three flaws that can be used to take control of both Windows and Mac OS X computers. 

Mador said: “This is something you usually see in Linux and not so often in Windows, at least not since the introduction of function pointer encoding in XP SP2. This one could require a little social engineering to exploit.

“Both Mac and Windows versions of Silverlight 5 are vulnerable, but not the current build 5.1.10411.0, which already addresses this vulnerability and is not impacted.  Microsoft does expect exploit code to be developed for this fairly soon so it is best to allow auto update to do its thing and install the patch.”

The final patch Microsoft recommended focusing on is the important-rated MS13-027, which resolves three issues in Microsoft Windows that could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker gains access to a system. It said that in a default configuration, an unauthenticated attacker could only exploit this vulnerability if they have physical access to the system.

Mador said: “The flaw exists in all supported versions of Windows from XP SP2 up to Server 2012. Since the problem exists in the USB drivers you could try to prevent users from using USB devices, which these days would probably mean taking away their keyboard and mouse.”

The other two critical patches are MS13-023 that fixes a vulnerability in the Visio Viewer that could be exploited by convincing users to open seemingly legitimate email attachments, and MS13-024 that patches an elevation of privilege flaw in SharePoint.

Despite these, Microsoft did not issue a patch for the Internet Explorer 10 vulnerabilities exploited by Vupen at Pwn2Own. Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle, said: “Unfortunately, this month's update doesn't include the IE 10 bug disclosed at the CanSec West Pwn2Own competition, but with Microsoft's commitment to rapid response on IE vulnerabilities, I'm sure we can expect that fix next month.”

Gartner Conference: Identity and authentication are key to mobile security

Identity management is critical in mobile devices but considerations need to be given to the user experience and data security.

Saying that you can "think of the new influx of wireless devices in the network as a type of denial-of-service", Gartner's Trent Henry was presenting on 'identity and security considerations for mobility'.

Henry said that IT managers need to consider whether their risk profile is high, medium or low, and develop a mobile strategy based upon that. He said: “Look at what type of devices they are using and what app stores they use, also look at device ownership, does your organisation provide them or what does the user bring to the table You need the ability to wipe, control and encrypt devices.

“What are the risks to your environment and what controls can you do to reduce risk What we are looking at is light data footprint. If there is no data on the device, you don't have to touch it.

“Think about credential theft, sniffing and think about controls. Think about health checks and authentication environments. Think about identity and access management (IAM). If there is no resident data footprint, you can use your existing IAM infrastructure to deal with the device and the users on it, in an application itself you can offer access to one-time passwords (OTP) and the public key infrastructure (PKI) to bind a user to a device and offer assurance to the user.”

Henry admitted that there may be a need for stronger credentials for connectivity and mobile device management, and maybe OTP apps so users can do what is required, but the implications around the user experience and full-time connectivity could be an issue.

He also said that when it comes to authentication and identity, there needs to be an understanding of who the user is and what credentials are required. If the risk profile is high, you will need a hardware OTP or smartcard; for a medium risk it is a software OTP; and for a low risk environment, a user name and password may suffice.

Concluding, he recommended not launching into a product selection or architecture for security, and think about what you need to do and whether it is network or end-user facing, and data management and use cases.

“Think about security about information protection so it doesn't get bolted on at the end, you may get away with a simple web application but in mobile, there is a lot of competing forces for the user, so you will want to strengthen your protection,” he said.

“Think about risk and the sense of data used in your organisation and data outside repositories; it is no longer just SharePoint, data is now coming from mobile with far fewer controls than you are used to. Think about the authenticator and implications for authorisation and take time to think ahead of time and whether to do a wrapper or use a software development kit (SDK) - this can answer hard questions for a developer.”