Post Planner: It’s Like Having An On-Demand Facebook Marketing Team

Are you running a Facebook page for your brand? Need some help with content curation and time management? Take a peek at Post Planner! It’s like having an on-demand Facebook marketing team!

Post Planner features a growing content library to help find content on many subjects to post, status ideas and questions to share with your audience.  Once you’ve got the content, there is a scheduling tool that allows you to stagger posts and post in different time zones.  Analytic tools allow you to target your audience and provides analytics that help you better engage with your audience!  Basically, it’s the whole package!

Having engaging, interesting content to keep your customers coming back to your Facebook page and ‘liking’ your status is important, because customers don’t just want to be sold to. So when you don’t have statuses specifically pertaining to your business, like asking your customers about how you can make improvements to your business, or sharing information about upcoming products, you can make use of Post Planner’s status ideas.

Let’s take a look at some:

They have a lot of different kinds of ideas in categories like Engaging, Branding, Entertainment and Seasonal. It looks like a pretty novel idea and a handy tool if you’ve got your hands full with your Facebook page(s) and want to have new content added on the regular. They also offer a post scheduler so you can set things for the best traffic times. Are there other companies like this out there? I found a website of free Facebook status ideas, but it is not specifically geared toward businesses.

Post Planner refers to their service as like having a social media team on demand. It promises to save you two hours a day. You can try them out for free for a month, then their plans start at $19/month.

For more on building a brand through social media, check out our archives! And don’t forget about Ramon Ray’s book, The Facebook Guide To Small Business Marketing, for more on how to manage and use Facebook.

Let us know how you curate your Facebook brand pages in the comments below!

Twitter Now Provides Free Analytics Feature

If you’re trying to learn more about the impact you have on Twitter, some basic Twitter analytics are now available for free from the site.

The new Twitter analytics feature was first spotted this week by at least two online marketers who posted about their findings. We’ve seen no official notice of the feature on the Twitter blog so far.

Christopher Penn, vice president of marketing technology at SHIFT Communications, and Danny Olson, a digital strategist at Weber Shandwick, both posted about it, but we couldn’t find any official announcement.

The Twitter analytics tool can be found with a few quick clicks from your main Twitter dashboard.

To get there, simply use the pull down menu on the right side of your task bar on your Twitter account page and look for the Twitter Ads link under Edit Profile. (We’ve heard that some users are having difficulty accessing the new feature because the proper buttons don’t yet appear on their task bar.)

Once you click through to the Twitter Ads section, look for the Analytics tab near the top of the page and choose “Timeline activity” on the pull down.

That’s it.

A timeline along the top of the page graphs out your mentions, follows, and unfollows in six hour increments over a several week period.

Below this, a history of recent tweets shows you a more detailed analysis with the number of Faves, Repeats and Replies each tweet has received. It also gives notifications of the number of times that links in your Tweets have been clicked.

Twitter also provides notification for tweets that have received above “normal reach” and how many times over your normal reach each tweet has gotten. (Though there’s little explanation of what this actually means.)

There’s also a button allowing you to download a customized history of your Twitter analytics over the past two days, 7 days, 30 days or 90 days as either a CSV or XLS file.

Pick the “followers” selection under analytics in the Google Ads section and you’ll get a brief overview of your Twitter history, wrote Penn. But be aware, some users may get a notification there is not enough data to display these analytics yet, perhaps because the feature is new.

Of the service, Penn comments:

That’s all you get for now from Twitter. It’s a good start, but it’s not nearly enough if you want to go crunching serious numbers to find out Twitter’s impact on your marketing efforts. For that you’ll still need to heavily rely on third party tools.

What do you think? Will you find the new Twitter analytics helpful in measuring your impact on Twitter?

Twitter Photo via Shutterstock

Post Planner: It’s Like Having An On-Demand Facebook Marketing Team

Are you running a Facebook page for your brand? Need some help with content curation and time management? Take a peek at Post Planner! It’s like having an on-demand Facebook marketing team!

Post Planner features a growing content library to help find content on many subjects to post, status ideas and questions to share with your audience.  Once you’ve got the content, there is a scheduling tool that allows you to stagger posts and post in different time zones.  Analytic tools allow you to target your audience and provides analytics that help you better engage with your audience!  Basically, it’s the whole package!

Having engaging, interesting content to keep your customers coming back to your Facebook page and ‘liking’ your status is important, because customers don’t just want to be sold to. So when you don’t have statuses specifically pertaining to your business, like asking your customers about how you can make improvements to your business, or sharing information about upcoming products, you can make use of Post Planner’s status ideas.

Let’s take a look at some:

They have a lot of different kinds of ideas in categories like Engaging, Branding, Entertainment and Seasonal. It looks like a pretty novel idea and a handy tool if you’ve got your hands full with your Facebook page(s) and want to have new content added on the regular. They also offer a post scheduler so you can set things for the best traffic times. Are there other companies like this out there? I found a website of free Facebook status ideas, but it is not specifically geared toward businesses.

Post Planner refers to their service as like having a social media team on demand. It promises to save you two hours a day. You can try them out for free for a month, then their plans start at $19/month.

For more on building a brand through social media, check out our archives! And don’t forget about Ramon Ray’s book, The Facebook Guide To Small Business Marketing, for more on how to manage and use Facebook.

Let us know how you curate your Facebook brand pages in the comments below!

Apple Announces $10 Billion App Market and You Should Pay Attention

If your business has an app or you are thinking of developing one, it’s time to take note.  We’ve reported that Google recently announced immense sales growth at it’s own Google Play app store.

Now, Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone a step further in clarifying the exact size of the market for apps from third party developers including small businesses.

During the opening of the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this week, Cook told attendees that Apple has paid out $10 billion to third party developers over the first five years of its app store’s existence. And $5 billion of that was paid out in the last year, he said.

Nor are downloads limited only to the store’s most popular titles. Of the 900,000 apps the Apple Store currently has available, Cook estimates 93 percent are downloaded monthly.

We don’t know the distribution of the earnings among app developers who offer downloads from Apple’s store. But we can assume there is room in this market for apps offering value to a variety of niche audiences.

Not Just for Game Developers

Potential earnings aren’t limited to just game developers either. Though the biggest money makers in a recent report were gaming apps, at least one non-game download has made it into the top 10 in revenue.

Turbo Tax Snap Tax was one of the top 10 earners in the Apple app store in February, no doubt benefiting from the looming U.S. tax deadline.

There are probably apps you could develop based on your business’s products, service or expertise.  A useful app created for your primary customers or audience could generate extra revenue, even if it isn’t among the top income producers.

In App Purchases are the Biggest Sellers

Recent numbers also show most revenue isn’t generated from app downloads themselves. In fact, in the same survey cited above by analysis firm Distimo, 71 percent of revenue was generated from in-app purchases.

Those purchases were all made from apps that were originally downloaded for free. These “freemium” apps then require users to pay for additional features.

Is there an app you could develop for your business with added features available at a premium?

Apple Photo via Shutterstock

Apple Announces $10 Billion App Market and You Should Pay Attention

If your business has an app or you are thinking of developing one, it’s time to take note.  We’ve reported that Google recently announced immense sales growth at it’s own Google Play app store.

Now, Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone a step further in clarifying the exact size of the market for apps from third party developers including small businesses.

During the opening of the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this week, Cook told attendees that Apple has paid out $10 billion to third party developers over the first five years of its app store’s existence. And $5 billion of that was paid out in the last year, he said.

Nor are downloads limited only to the store’s most popular titles. Of the 900,000 apps the Apple Store currently has available, Cook estimates 93 percent are downloaded monthly.

We don’t know the distribution of the earnings among app developers who offer downloads from Apple’s store. But we can assume there is room in this market for apps offering value to a variety of niche audiences.

Not Just for Game Developers

Potential earnings aren’t limited to just game developers either. Though the biggest money makers in a recent report were gaming apps, at least one non-game download has made it into the top 10 in revenue.

Turbo Tax Snap Tax was one of the top 10 earners in the Apple app store in February, no doubt benefiting from the looming U.S. tax deadline.

There are probably apps you could develop based on your business’s products, service or expertise.  A useful app created for your primary customers or audience could generate extra revenue, even if it isn’t among the top income producers.

In App Purchases are the Biggest Sellers

Recent numbers also show most revenue isn’t generated from app downloads themselves. In fact, in the same survey cited above by analysis firm Distimo, 71 percent of revenue was generated from in-app purchases.

Those purchases were all made from apps that were originally downloaded for free. These “freemium” apps then require users to pay for additional features.

Is there an app you could develop for your business with added features available at a premium?

Apple Photo via Shutterstock

Top Seven Outsourced E-Commerce Myths Debunked

E-commerce is at an all-time high, exceeding one trillion dollars for the first time in history last year. In fact, the industry has grown so quickly, it has left many small business owners scrambling to keep up.

Many of these small businesses, eager to improve their own odds of success, have chosen to outsource e-commerce to those in the industry who know it best. However, choosing the right e-commerce provider can be challenging with so much misinformation floating around. To correct some of these misconceptions, Cleverbridge co-founder and operations VP Craig Vodnik recently tackled seven myths about outsourcing e-commerce.

Myth #1: Outsourcing Will Force Me to Give Up Control

Some businesses are under the impression that outsourcing e-commerce means giving up control of their online store’s look and feel. As Vodnik points out, some template solutions require changing the overall look and feel of a store. If this is a concern, Vodnik recommends choosing an outsourcing provider that allows flexibility and customization. Look at outsourcing as a partnership and search for a provider that allows you to retain control of your store’s look and feel.

Myth #2: Outsourcing is Too Expensive

An in-house solution generally requires a large up-front investment in technology and personnel-an investment that continues as a business realizes technology has to be regularly updated. In addition, businesses usually find that technology must be optimized to work on a more global scale, accepting foreign currencies and translating website text.

“Various financial studies have demonstrated a positive ROI when the costs of a provider are compared to in-house costs,” Vodnik points out. “Outsourced e-commerce has been cited as reducing merchants’ full-time equivalents (FTEs) for development, maintenance, and customer service, while generating additional revenue that’s possible with a comprehensive portfolio of foreign payment options, currencies, checkout languages and other capabilities.”

Myth #3: Outsourcing is All-or-Nothing

Some business owners choose to combine outsourcing with an in-house approach, calling upon an outside provider to handle certain facets of an e-commerce operation. Vodnik recommends choosing to outsource a small part of the process first, then gradually expanding to include other projects as your company continues to grow.

Myth #4: Outsourcing Isn’t Necessary

Some small businesses operate under the misconception that because they offer payment solutions like a simple shopping cart, they have no need to further enhance their site’s e-commerce. However, the Internet reaches all areas of the globe and if a business hopes to be able to provide products to consumers around the world, internationalization is essential. An outsourced e-commerce solution can take a small business beyond PayPal to reach customers everywhere.

Myth #5: Price is the Only Difference

Price isn’t the only differentiating factor between e-commerce solutions providers. Providers usually specialize in different technologies, experience, client base, service level agreements, fraud prevention, customer service, and more. Vodnik recommends analyzing your own business needs for today, while anticipating what you’ll need tomorrow, before making any decisions about a provider.

Myth #6: Nobody Knows My Customers Like I Do

While this may be true, outsourcing providers have built-in automated fraud protections that can benefit your company in ways manual processes can’t. As your business grows, you’ll be processing larger numbers of transactions, making it more difficult to keep up with each individual customer. For this reason, fraud prevention is one of the areas many small businesses choose to outsource.

Myth #7: Outsourcing Will Make Me Lose Touch with My Data

While outsourcing e-commerce may feel like a wall will be erected between you and your data, Vodnik emphasizes it doesn’t have to be that way. Many e-commerce solutions providers give business owners the ability to maintain ownership of customer data, control the flow of sales funds, manage operational tasks, and use advanced store management tools. Vodnik has found that in-house solutions often don’t provide the operational visibility outsourced solutions provide.

When it comes to outsourcing e-commerce, Vodnik believes choosing the right solution for your business’s needs is crucial. For more information on Cleverbridge’s outsourcing options, visit http://www.cleverbridge.com/corporate/.

Top Seven Outsourced E-Commerce Myths Debunked

E-commerce is at an all-time high, exceeding one trillion dollars for the first time in history last year. In fact, the industry has grown so quickly, it has left many small business owners scrambling to keep up.

Many of these small businesses, eager to improve their own odds of success, have chosen to outsource e-commerce to those in the industry who know it best. However, choosing the right e-commerce provider can be challenging with so much misinformation floating around. To correct some of these misconceptions, Cleverbridge co-founder and operations VP Craig Vodnik recently tackled seven myths about outsourcing e-commerce.

Myth #1: Outsourcing Will Force Me to Give Up Control

Some businesses are under the impression that outsourcing e-commerce means giving up control of their online store’s look and feel. As Vodnik points out, some template solutions require changing the overall look and feel of a store. If this is a concern, Vodnik recommends choosing an outsourcing provider that allows flexibility and customization. Look at outsourcing as a partnership and search for a provider that allows you to retain control of your store’s look and feel.

Myth #2: Outsourcing is Too Expensive

An in-house solution generally requires a large up-front investment in technology and personnel-an investment that continues as a business realizes technology has to be regularly updated. In addition, businesses usually find that technology must be optimized to work on a more global scale, accepting foreign currencies and translating website text.

“Various financial studies have demonstrated a positive ROI when the costs of a provider are compared to in-house costs,” Vodnik points out. “Outsourced e-commerce has been cited as reducing merchants’ full-time equivalents (FTEs) for development, maintenance, and customer service, while generating additional revenue that’s possible with a comprehensive portfolio of foreign payment options, currencies, checkout languages and other capabilities.”

Myth #3: Outsourcing is All-or-Nothing

Some business owners choose to combine outsourcing with an in-house approach, calling upon an outside provider to handle certain facets of an e-commerce operation. Vodnik recommends choosing to outsource a small part of the process first, then gradually expanding to include other projects as your company continues to grow.

Myth #4: Outsourcing Isn’t Necessary

Some small businesses operate under the misconception that because they offer payment solutions like a simple shopping cart, they have no need to further enhance their site’s e-commerce. However, the Internet reaches all areas of the globe and if a business hopes to be able to provide products to consumers around the world, internationalization is essential. An outsourced e-commerce solution can take a small business beyond PayPal to reach customers everywhere.

Myth #5: Price is the Only Difference

Price isn’t the only differentiating factor between e-commerce solutions providers. Providers usually specialize in different technologies, experience, client base, service level agreements, fraud prevention, customer service, and more. Vodnik recommends analyzing your own business needs for today, while anticipating what you’ll need tomorrow, before making any decisions about a provider.

Myth #6: Nobody Knows My Customers Like I Do

While this may be true, outsourcing providers have built-in automated fraud protections that can benefit your company in ways manual processes can’t. As your business grows, you’ll be processing larger numbers of transactions, making it more difficult to keep up with each individual customer. For this reason, fraud prevention is one of the areas many small businesses choose to outsource.

Myth #7: Outsourcing Will Make Me Lose Touch with My Data

While outsourcing e-commerce may feel like a wall will be erected between you and your data, Vodnik emphasizes it doesn’t have to be that way. Many e-commerce solutions providers give business owners the ability to maintain ownership of customer data, control the flow of sales funds, manage operational tasks, and use advanced store management tools. Vodnik has found that in-house solutions often don’t provide the operational visibility outsourced solutions provide.

When it comes to outsourcing e-commerce, Vodnik believes choosing the right solution for your business’s needs is crucial. For more information on Cleverbridge’s outsourcing options, visit http://www.cleverbridge.com/corporate/.

NYC Event 6/26: Selling To Why - Brain Based Selling

If you are frustrated by a long selling cycle, anxious about not closing, upset by not having a compelling story or just winging your meetings then you definitely want to attend our upcoming NYC event,  ‘Selling To Why: Brain Based Selling’!

   

Ramon Ray        Jeremy Rawitz

 Date: June 26th, 2013

Time: 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Where: Regus Office Suites, 112 W 34th St, New York, NY 10120

The Science of Motivation and Decision making will be discussed as it relates to developing and utilizing a selling system. We will examine how the Brain makes decisions to buy and how to exploit that to control the sales process.

We will also look at how beliefs impact buying and how to blow up the prospects beliefs that are roadblocks to sales. After a theoretical overview on why and how people buy, we will discuss real world tactics and questions you can start using right away to qualify prospects, take control of the sales interview and to move the meeting or selling process to a faster close.

We’ve got a few complimentary tickets available to the first 5 people who register using the code RRVIP!

Your Presenters:

Ramon Ray, Regional Director of Development, Infusionsoft
and Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com

Jeremy Rawitz, President of Sales Strategy Corp.
and a Sandler Trainer

HubSpot’s Mike Volpe on Why You Need Context AND Content In Marketing

When you think of marketing today, the first word that typically comes to mind is content - whether it be blog posts, images or video. But the one thing that may be keeping your marketing content from reaching its intended audience is context, or lack thereof.

Mike Volpe, chief marketing officer for inbound marketing platform provider HubSpot, talks about the importance of understanding context in order to create content that builds long-term relationships. Below is a portion of our conversation from the exhibition floor at Dreamforce 2012.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: What does inbound marketing really mean to a small business person trying to make their mark building relationships with customers?

Mike Volpe: Inbound marketing is really the ability to attract more people into your business…. It is really about creating content with context, so it is connected with the right people at the right time, using those two concepts together to attract more people into your business.

I actually think for small businesses this is even more critical than larger ones because small businesses have smaller budgets and less time. Making small changes in their lead generation and their sales can make a huge, huge impact.

Small Business Trends: So you hit on that whole context thing. You hear the term content is king, but is it really now? Isn’t context and content about the same today?

Mike Volpe: I think content and context need to work together. We are getting better at having personalized messages on email, and I think even to some degree on social. But why is your website home page the same for every single person visiting it, the same for your customers, the same for people who have already or already in your sales pipeline?

You should be able to display personalized context on your website and have personalized relationships there just like you do on email and just like you do on social. So it is really figuring out what ways you can bring all that stuff together and have those good contextually based conversations.

Small Business Trends: How has inbound marketing changed over the years with the entry of all of these social networks, mobile tools and the Cloud?

Mike Volpe: I feel like the theory of inbound marketing hasn’t changed at all, but the actual tactics used have. I think in 2006 and 2007, a lot of inbound was really SEO and blogging and that was when we first connected. You were starting to blog and you were a big podcaster and doing all of those things. It has gone from that to Twitter and Facebook and mobile has become more important over time with tons of proliferation of smart phones.

All of those things have become more and more important. But I think that those are all tactics and channels that will continue to change over time.

I think what is not going away is that consumers don’t want to consume advertising, they want to consume content that is useful and interesting to them. That needs to be the cornerstone of your marketing and that is why we talk so much about inbound.

Small Business Trends: Can you talk about the power of LinkedIn and what it can offer small businesses?

Mike Volpe: I think that for small businesses, especially if you are a B2B small business … selling to other businesses. The data we look at for Web traffic - LinkedIn vs. other social networks - if you are a B2B company the conversion rate can be three to four times higher of that traffic converting into leads and then the conversion rate of revenue is much higher.

We found with B2B companies, LinkedIn can be a fantastic community. There are some great ways for small businesses to get involved with LinkedIn. You have company pages and LinkedIn just launched functionality in companies for segmentation of your audience company pages. There … are groups you can form. So there a lot of ways to get involved there. I think that LinkedIn, especially if you are a  B2B company, should not to be overlooked.

Small Business Trends: How does Pinterest fit in to how a small business can actually leverage inbound marketing?

Mike Volpe: I think the key to Pinterest is visual context because it is such a visually based medium. So a lot of consumer B to C companies have made really, really good use of Pinterest by posting pictures of cool, innovative, interesting products and being active within those communities. There are a lot of consumer retailers that have done well branding products on Pinterest.

Even within B2B we have a Pinterest account because we do all of these things ourselves. We have found that photos, images, pictures of charts and graphs of data, are interesting to our audience and have performed well. Images of the covers of our ebooks and then linking out to where you can get the ebooks, things like that have performed well for us.

Small Business Trends: How important is video to a small business?

Mike Volpe: Video is one of the things that is both easy and hard. I say that video is easy to create but it is really hard to do well. You do a lot of podcasting and you do a bunch of videos as well and you have a huge background in radio, which helped you become good a doing those things.

For many small businesses, video is not the place that I would necessarily start first. You can do it and it can be effective, but I would start with many of these other things. Blogging, creating content, ebooks, webinars - all of these things I would do before I really worked my way up to video.

Small Business Trends: We talked a lot about inbound marketing, content and the top of the funnel? l know that you guys are really getting into the middle-of-the-funnel, or as you call it ‘MOFU.’ Can you talk about ‘MOFU’ and where automation fits in and how that can help a small business?

Mike Volpe: What is interesting about the middle-of-the-funnel, or further down in the sales marketing process is that, as you learn more about people, context becomes more important and brings us back to the beginning part of the conversation.

As you learn more, you need to really respect that. When you’re communicating, show them that you still know a lot about them. It is annoying when you have interactions with the company and then someone else calls you and they don‘t even remember or recognize any of the things that they have been talking to you about.

With email communications you are sending out there are ways to automate that stuff. But make sure you are segmenting and personalizing those so that you’re recognizing the context of the conversation. The same thing with social and the content of your website. Again someone is already talking with your sales rep and then maybe a meeting is setup for the next day. You should be showing something that is relevant to that type of conversation on the home page or other pages of your website.

The middle-of-the-funnel is really about context. Yes, you can do a bunch of automation, whether it is automating emails or other work flows or other content that is appearing on your site. So automation can help there. But make sure that you use the automation in a smart way to respect the context of what’s happening within that portion of the conversation.

Small Business Trends: So we know that content is really important for marketing, branding and promotion, but what about customer service? Retaining customers, not just looking for new ones?

Mike Volpe: We all know companies drive a lot of ongoing value from their customers. More and more of the companies are moving to a subscription model, or keeping customers for a long time becomes more and more important; so continuous marketing to your customer base is a really smart thing to do because it helps to drive the top line and the bottom line.

One aspect of it is to continue to understand the context of the relationship of the customers. But there is also a lot of content. If you have a customer community or customer feedback, you can take that content and use it for marketing to your customers. You can also use it for marketing to your prospects.

Sales people can take customers stories and things like that from the customer community and use that and use social for marketing at the top of the funnel and getting new prospects in, as well as communicating with people at the middle-of-the-funnel. After that, your customers use all of the content from all of the stages to help you.

A lot of people know if you can get content from your customers in front of your prospects, then more than likely, you can convert. Because they’re going to trust what your customers are saying more than your sales people. So those types of things can be really, really effective.

Small Business Trends: That’s cool to see because we are used to seeing integration with services like HubSpot, with the front for marketing and promotion. So it is nice to see that integration is starting to carry through to the service side.

Mike Volpe: Absolutely. We talk about the notion of a funnel more because there is not another great model out there to really understand the process. But it is not something that ends. There are so many opportunities. I think there are a lot of synergies between what’s happening between customer support and marketing, because social is what ties it all together.

* * * * *

Watch the video below of my interview with Mike Volpe of HubSpot.

This interview on the importance of context to the success of inbound marketing for small businesses is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

HubSpot’s Mike Volpe on Why You Need Context AND Content In Marketing

When you think of marketing today, the first word that typically comes to mind is content - whether it be blog posts, images or video. But the one thing that may be keeping your marketing content from reaching its intended audience is context, or lack thereof.

Mike Volpe, chief marketing officer for inbound marketing platform provider HubSpot, talks about the importance of understanding context in order to create content that builds long-term relationships. Below is a portion of our conversation from the exhibition floor at Dreamforce 2012.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: What does inbound marketing really mean to a small business person trying to make their mark building relationships with customers?

Mike Volpe: Inbound marketing is really the ability to attract more people into your business…. It is really about creating content with context, so it is connected with the right people at the right time, using those two concepts together to attract more people into your business.

I actually think for small businesses this is even more critical than larger ones because small businesses have smaller budgets and less time. Making small changes in their lead generation and their sales can make a huge, huge impact.

Small Business Trends: So you hit on that whole context thing. You hear the term content is king, but is it really now? Isn’t context and content about the same today?

Mike Volpe: I think content and context need to work together. We are getting better at having personalized messages on email, and I think even to some degree on social. But why is your website home page the same for every single person visiting it, the same for your customers, the same for people who have already or already in your sales pipeline?

You should be able to display personalized context on your website and have personalized relationships there just like you do on email and just like you do on social. So it is really figuring out what ways you can bring all that stuff together and have those good contextually based conversations.

Small Business Trends: How has inbound marketing changed over the years with the entry of all of these social networks, mobile tools and the Cloud?

Mike Volpe: I feel like the theory of inbound marketing hasn’t changed at all, but the actual tactics used have. I think in 2006 and 2007, a lot of inbound was really SEO and blogging and that was when we first connected. You were starting to blog and you were a big podcaster and doing all of those things. It has gone from that to Twitter and Facebook and mobile has become more important over time with tons of proliferation of smart phones.

All of those things have become more and more important. But I think that those are all tactics and channels that will continue to change over time.

I think what is not going away is that consumers don’t want to consume advertising, they want to consume content that is useful and interesting to them. That needs to be the cornerstone of your marketing and that is why we talk so much about inbound.

Small Business Trends: Can you talk about the power of LinkedIn and what it can offer small businesses?

Mike Volpe: I think that for small businesses, especially if you are a B2B small business … selling to other businesses. The data we look at for Web traffic - LinkedIn vs. other social networks - if you are a B2B company the conversion rate can be three to four times higher of that traffic converting into leads and then the conversion rate of revenue is much higher.

We found with B2B companies, LinkedIn can be a fantastic community. There are some great ways for small businesses to get involved with LinkedIn. You have company pages and LinkedIn just launched functionality in companies for segmentation of your audience company pages. There … are groups you can form. So there a lot of ways to get involved there. I think that LinkedIn, especially if you are a  B2B company, should not to be overlooked.

Small Business Trends: How does Pinterest fit in to how a small business can actually leverage inbound marketing?

Mike Volpe: I think the key to Pinterest is visual context because it is such a visually based medium. So a lot of consumer B to C companies have made really, really good use of Pinterest by posting pictures of cool, innovative, interesting products and being active within those communities. There are a lot of consumer retailers that have done well branding products on Pinterest.

Even within B2B we have a Pinterest account because we do all of these things ourselves. We have found that photos, images, pictures of charts and graphs of data, are interesting to our audience and have performed well. Images of the covers of our ebooks and then linking out to where you can get the ebooks, things like that have performed well for us.

Small Business Trends: How important is video to a small business?

Mike Volpe: Video is one of the things that is both easy and hard. I say that video is easy to create but it is really hard to do well. You do a lot of podcasting and you do a bunch of videos as well and you have a huge background in radio, which helped you become good a doing those things.

For many small businesses, video is not the place that I would necessarily start first. You can do it and it can be effective, but I would start with many of these other things. Blogging, creating content, ebooks, webinars - all of these things I would do before I really worked my way up to video.

Small Business Trends: We talked a lot about inbound marketing, content and the top of the funnel? l know that you guys are really getting into the middle-of-the-funnel, or as you call it ‘MOFU.’ Can you talk about ‘MOFU’ and where automation fits in and how that can help a small business?

Mike Volpe: What is interesting about the middle-of-the-funnel, or further down in the sales marketing process is that, as you learn more about people, context becomes more important and brings us back to the beginning part of the conversation.

As you learn more, you need to really respect that. When you’re communicating, show them that you still know a lot about them. It is annoying when you have interactions with the company and then someone else calls you and they don‘t even remember or recognize any of the things that they have been talking to you about.

With email communications you are sending out there are ways to automate that stuff. But make sure you are segmenting and personalizing those so that you’re recognizing the context of the conversation. The same thing with social and the content of your website. Again someone is already talking with your sales rep and then maybe a meeting is setup for the next day. You should be showing something that is relevant to that type of conversation on the home page or other pages of your website.

The middle-of-the-funnel is really about context. Yes, you can do a bunch of automation, whether it is automating emails or other work flows or other content that is appearing on your site. So automation can help there. But make sure that you use the automation in a smart way to respect the context of what’s happening within that portion of the conversation.

Small Business Trends: So we know that content is really important for marketing, branding and promotion, but what about customer service? Retaining customers, not just looking for new ones?

Mike Volpe: We all know companies drive a lot of ongoing value from their customers. More and more of the companies are moving to a subscription model, or keeping customers for a long time becomes more and more important; so continuous marketing to your customer base is a really smart thing to do because it helps to drive the top line and the bottom line.

One aspect of it is to continue to understand the context of the relationship of the customers. But there is also a lot of content. If you have a customer community or customer feedback, you can take that content and use it for marketing to your customers. You can also use it for marketing to your prospects.

Sales people can take customers stories and things like that from the customer community and use that and use social for marketing at the top of the funnel and getting new prospects in, as well as communicating with people at the middle-of-the-funnel. After that, your customers use all of the content from all of the stages to help you.

A lot of people know if you can get content from your customers in front of your prospects, then more than likely, you can convert. Because they’re going to trust what your customers are saying more than your sales people. So those types of things can be really, really effective.

Small Business Trends: That’s cool to see because we are used to seeing integration with services like HubSpot, with the front for marketing and promotion. So it is nice to see that integration is starting to carry through to the service side.

Mike Volpe: Absolutely. We talk about the notion of a funnel more because there is not another great model out there to really understand the process. But it is not something that ends. There are so many opportunities. I think there are a lot of synergies between what’s happening between customer support and marketing, because social is what ties it all together.

* * * * *

Watch the video below of my interview with Mike Volpe of HubSpot.

This interview on the importance of context to the success of inbound marketing for small businesses is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

NYC Event 6/26: Selling To Why - Brain Based Selling

If you are frustrated by a long selling cycle, anxious about not closing, upset by not having a compelling story or just winging your meetings then you definitely want to attend our upcoming NYC event,  ‘Selling To Why: Brain Based Selling’!

   

Ramon Ray        Jeremy Rawitz

 Date: June 26th, 2013

Time: 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Where: Regus Office Suites, 112 W 34th St, New York, NY 10120

The Science of Motivation and Decision making will be discussed as it relates to developing and utilizing a selling system. We will examine how the Brain makes decisions to buy and how to exploit that to control the sales process.

We will also look at how beliefs impact buying and how to blow up the prospects beliefs that are roadblocks to sales. After a theoretical overview on why and how people buy, we will discuss real world tactics and questions you can start using right away to qualify prospects, take control of the sales interview and to move the meeting or selling process to a faster close.

We’ve got a few complimentary tickets available to the first 5 people who register using the code RRVIP!

Your Presenters:

Ramon Ray, Regional Director of Development, Infusionsoft
and Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com

Jeremy Rawitz, President of Sales Strategy Corp.
and a Sandler Trainer

50 Ways Your Business Can Get The Most Out of Gmail

Google has been working hard to make itself attractive to business users. For small businesses, using the tools provided by Google can be a very viable alternative to using traditional business software. Here are 50 ways your business can get the most out of Gmail.

1. Choose the look you like. It may seem obvious, but the Google settings tab is the place to start to customize your Inbox just how you like it. Gmail users have a high degree of control over the way their mail appears, if they bother to use it.

2. Mix it up with chat. Live chat boxes have become increasingly common on websites in recent years, because they provide a more immediate form of communication than e-mail without the costs of the telephone (or the inconvenience of trying to hold a telephone conversation in a noisy environment or a crowded place). Google’s mail settings allow you to see chat notifications as well as new e-mails.

3. Switch on the keyboard shortcuts (and learn how to use them). Two-fingered typists, who like to use the mouse, may not get much use out of this tip, but fast typists can speed along even more quickly by making use of keyboard shortcuts - provided that they are actually turned on.

4. Put up a decent picture. It’s always nice to put a face to a name and even in small companies, people don’t always know each other, particularly if a company has new staff, temps or contractors. External parties (e.g. customers) will also see your picture, it’s fine if it’s basic, but make sure it looks decent.

5. Make the most of the signature function. Gmail will handle a text-based signature quite happily, but if you want to append something more elaborate to your messages, you can do so by creating an image file and uploading it as your signature.

6. Get personal with indicators. Google can add indicators showing when a mail has been sent to you personally (as opposed to a mailing list) and when it has been sent only to you. This can be a helpful hint as to the level of priority.

7. Use the out of office wisely. Google has an out-of-office function, which is also useful for letting people know when you’re in lengthy meetings. If you want to be more discrete about who knows your whereabouts, you can choose to have the responses sent only to your contacts.

8. Ever-increasing circles. Circles are possibly one of the most useful and under-used functions in Google. They let you organize your communication by people and their groups rather than just by subject. If you regularly deal with different groups of people (your team, your company as a whole, suppliers, customers), this can be a much more effective way of working.

9. Centralize your accounts. Many companies of all size operate a combination of group mailboxes and personal e-mail addresses. Gmail allows users to link up to 5 other accounts and view them from their Gmail address. They accounts don’t even have to be Gmail accounts, although they do have to have POP3 enabled, which Gmail does. People responsible for checking more than one Inbox can therefore do so conveniently from one central point.

10. Share access appropriately. Gmail allows users to grant access to other parties, to read and send mail on their behalf. This can be extremely useful for people who work with assistants or who need to stand in for colleagues when they are absent.

11. Filter out the irrelevant. Filters are another powerful tool in the Gmail user’s arsenal. Basically you can use Google to automate the treatment of e-mails according to certain criteria. There is a whole range of options for this, including the ability to assign different colours to different message types (e.g. from different senders, or according to subject or a keyword), which can be a very effective way of picking out the wheat from the chaff in your Inbox.

12. Call from your e-mail. In addition to being able to place calls to your Google contacts (for free), you can also call landlines and mobiles at very reasonable rates.

13. Set up Gmail offline.  Although still in Beta, Gmail offline is a handy tool, which does what it says on the can. It allows users to read, reply to, search and archive mail offline. When they next go online, the Gmail offline will synchronize with its online counterpart. At the moment, it’s only available for Chrome.

14. Bookmark the emails that matter. The paperless office may be some way off, but there is still some irony in printing off e-mails. With Gmail, each e-mail has its own URL, so you can bookmark them instead.

15. Get the most out of Google Calendar.  Although Google Calendar is available to everyone, there are some neat tricks which are only available to Gmail users. For instance, Gmail users can add events from their Gmail conversations directly into their Google calendar.

16. Group your contacts effectively. One of the fundamental differences between Google and other e-mail systems is that Google is built from the ground up on the premise that relationships between people are the key part of any network. Make the most of this by creating circles and groups to suit your requirements.

17. Keep your profiles complete. One of Google’s major selling points is its ability to move seamlessly between platforms. An example of this is the fact that contact information from a Google user’s Gmail account will be shown in the Google+ profile of the user’s contacts. This eliminates the need to switch between the two systems to find relevant details. Another example is the ability to call people on their real-world phones (landline and mobile) from inside Google. This again depends on having their numbers stored in Google.

18. Control your contacts list. Google tries to be helpful and will automatically add e-mail addresses to Google contacts any time you send a mail to them. This is a Marmite feature in that people who only send a limited number of e-mails to new contacts tend to love it, whereas people who regularly send occasional e-mails to people they’re quite happy to forget tend to find their contact list getting very bloated very quickly. This feature can be turned on and off from Google settings.

19. Merge and destroy. One Gmail feature that heavy e-mail users will soon learn to love is “Find and Merge Duplicates”. It’s another feature which does exactly what it says on the can and will help to eliminate the spawning and multiplying contacts, which can clutter up other address books.

20. Undo the damage. Gmail has the option to restore the contacts list to any way it was within the previous 30 days.

21. Star the mails that matter. Pin a Google star to important mails so you can find them quickly.

22. Work with labels instead of folders. Gmail doesn’t really do folders, but it does do labels instead and the great thing about labels is that you can attach more than one to each e-mail. This actually makes them a far more efficient way of working than folders, once you get used to them.

23. Learn to love Move To. When you click on an e-mail in your Inbox, you will see various icons, one of which looks like a folder. Click on this and the top heading is “Move to” followed by various options. This works very similarly to traditional folders and you can use it to create new labels as well.

24. Archive - for those who can’t bear to throw anything away. Hitting the dustbin to delete sends e-mails into digital history, but if you’re not quite sure enough to be that drastic, archive moves them out of your Inbox and into a giant digital storeroom, which has so much space that it may never need to be cleared out. A smart trick is to label before archiving so that if you do feel the need to find an e-mail or just want to have a clear out, it’s easy to identify key e-mails.

25. Always attach attachments. This is one business users will love. Gmail actively scans for phrases suggesting that the outgoing mail should have an attachment and if there isn’t one, it checks with the sender if there should be. (Bonus tip, if you make a point of attaching files before you type the e-mail, Gmail will upload it while you’re typing).

26. Undo send. With many other internet e-mail programs once it’s gone, it’s gone and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Over in the Labs tab, there’s the option to enable an “undo send” function. Basically this means that whenever you hit the send button, Gmail will wait a few seconds before actually doing the necessary, in case you change your mind.

27. Use your calendar to manage your e-mail. Need to remember to e-mail someone on a particular day? Set a reminder in your Google calendar. It will then e-mail you to make sure you remember.

28. Control your e-mail chains. As well as getting to grips with reply v reply all, put a stop to messy e-mail chains by highlighting the part of the text that actually matters and then hit reply. Gmail will only include that part of the original message in the response.

29. Decide whether or not to have a conversation. The ability to group e-mails according to a conversation is another feature Gmail users either love or hate. Fortunately the haters can turn off the feature under the General tab.

30. Decide between important and priority. Important mails you label yourself, but Google’s Priority Inbox feature (from the Inbox tab), means that Gmail will actively look out for mails which are potentially important and bring them to the top.

31. Enjoy a Snooze. A common scenario is when you know you need to deal with e-mail soon, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Marking an e-mail as unread or similar isn’t necessarily a lot of help for busy people who get a lot of e-mail. Snooze is a wonderful free add on for Chrome users, which will boost a message back up to the top of a person’s Inbox at a given time. There is an alternative called Boomerang for users of other browsers, but it is chargeable.

32. Take Gmail to task. Underneath the Inbox there is contacts and then there is tasks. Basically this provides Gmail users with an electronic to do list. It’s a handy little feature and can be made even more so with the Remind Me add on for Chrome users.

33. Banish Attachments from your Inbox. Large attachments are both a fact of modern life and a huge drain on processing resources. Chrome and Firefox users can sign up to Attachments.me (for free) and move e-mail attachments directly to Google Docs (or another of the Cloud services).

34. Keep attachments out of your hard drive. One of the reason small businesses are growing to love Cloud-based computing is the fact that their data is often massively more important than the computers on which it is stored and Cloud-based storage avoids the risk of it being destroyed with hard-drives or needing an internal IT department to support server infrastructure and a back-up system. Gmail gives users the option to import files directly from Google Docs.

35. Use templates to save typing. Under the labs tab in settings, there’s an option to enable canned responses. In other words, if you keep being asked the same questions time after time, use this feature to save your fingers.

36. Synch your mail with your mobile or tablet. Admittedly this is far from unique to Gmail, but the ubiquity of Android phones and the fact that the Operating System is ultimately controlled by Google, does increase the attractiveness of having a Gmail account and if you’re going to have one, you might as well use it.

37. Become a gadget freak. From the labs tab enable Calendar Gadget and Google Docs gadget to be able to see both from inside Gmail.

38. Use two-step authentication. Basically this means that every time you access your Gmail, you’ll have a PIN sent to your phone. This can be an attractive security feature for small businesses.

39. Use remote logout. At the bottom right of your Inbox, you’ll see your last activity on the account. Click on details and if you’re accidentally still logged in from another computer, you can log out.

40. Chat discretely. Generally speaking chat conversations are recorded in the Chat history. If you’d prefer to avoid this, click on the actions button at the top of the chat window and click “Go off the record”. Please note this only applies at your side. The other party will have to do the same for it to be completely confidential.

41. Save your favorite searches. Make your favorite search and then bookmark the resulting page.

42. Control your subscriptions. Many people sign up to professional newsletters and do get value from them, but they’re rarely priority reading. Gmail’s excellent search function means you can set up (and bookmark) a search on the word “unsubscribe”, which will catch most of them and have them diverted where you want them to go until you’re ready to read (or delete) them.

43. Translate your content. Even Gmail can’t turn some jargon into plain English but it can do a fairly good job of translating basic e-mails from your Inbox.

44. Mute Conversations. If constant pleading does not succeed in getting you removed from an e-mail thread, select a conversation and choose Mute from the more actions menu. You’ll still receive the messages but they’ll be moved into archive bypassing your Inbox. You’ll only get the messages into your Inbox if you’re sent a message directly or if you’re included in the to or cc lines of a new message. Messages can be unmuted if you change your mind.

45. Use snippets for quick e-mail scans. Snippets are the e-mail equivalent of the short descriptions you see in Google web searches. They’re bit more than the subject line and a bit less than in a preview pane. They’re a really handy way of organizing e-mail quickly.

46. Preview your messages. If snippets isn’t enough, under Labs you can turn on a preview pane, to see a bit more of your messages.

47. Choose how much control to give your filters. Under Inbox, you can choose to have Gmail override any filters you set if it thinks a message is important.

48. Control your chat. Gmail allows you to decide whether your online status can be seen by everyone or just a select few people. Users can switch between either depending on their needs at the time.

49. Search Everything. Under Labs, turn on Apps Search and Google will search your docs and sites for a particular term along with your e-mail and display the results below the e-mail results.

50. Find where you need to go. Under Labs, turn on Google Maps previews in mail and Gmail will show you the location of any addresses mentioned in the mail.

The tools are there to help you remain organized and help you better manage your day, so go ahead and use them!

50 Ways Your Business Can Get The Most Out of Gmail

Google has been working hard to make itself attractive to business users. For small businesses, using the tools provided by Google can be a very viable alternative to using traditional business software. Here are 50 ways your business can get the most out of Gmail.

1. Choose the look you like. It may seem obvious, but the Google settings tab is the place to start to customize your Inbox just how you like it. Gmail users have a high degree of control over the way their mail appears, if they bother to use it.

2. Mix it up with chat. Live chat boxes have become increasingly common on websites in recent years, because they provide a more immediate form of communication than e-mail without the costs of the telephone (or the inconvenience of trying to hold a telephone conversation in a noisy environment or a crowded place). Google’s mail settings allow you to see chat notifications as well as new e-mails.

3. Switch on the keyboard shortcuts (and learn how to use them). Two-fingered typists, who like to use the mouse, may not get much use out of this tip, but fast typists can speed along even more quickly by making use of keyboard shortcuts - provided that they are actually turned on.

4. Put up a decent picture. It’s always nice to put a face to a name and even in small companies, people don’t always know each other, particularly if a company has new staff, temps or contractors. External parties (e.g. customers) will also see your picture, it’s fine if it’s basic, but make sure it looks decent.

5. Make the most of the signature function. Gmail will handle a text-based signature quite happily, but if you want to append something more elaborate to your messages, you can do so by creating an image file and uploading it as your signature.

6. Get personal with indicators. Google can add indicators showing when a mail has been sent to you personally (as opposed to a mailing list) and when it has been sent only to you. This can be a helpful hint as to the level of priority.

7. Use the out of office wisely. Google has an out-of-office function, which is also useful for letting people know when you’re in lengthy meetings. If you want to be more discrete about who knows your whereabouts, you can choose to have the responses sent only to your contacts.

8. Ever-increasing circles. Circles are possibly one of the most useful and under-used functions in Google. They let you organize your communication by people and their groups rather than just by subject. If you regularly deal with different groups of people (your team, your company as a whole, suppliers, customers), this can be a much more effective way of working.

9. Centralize your accounts. Many companies of all size operate a combination of group mailboxes and personal e-mail addresses. Gmail allows users to link up to 5 other accounts and view them from their Gmail address. They accounts don’t even have to be Gmail accounts, although they do have to have POP3 enabled, which Gmail does. People responsible for checking more than one Inbox can therefore do so conveniently from one central point.

10. Share access appropriately. Gmail allows users to grant access to other parties, to read and send mail on their behalf. This can be extremely useful for people who work with assistants or who need to stand in for colleagues when they are absent.

11. Filter out the irrelevant. Filters are another powerful tool in the Gmail user’s arsenal. Basically you can use Google to automate the treatment of e-mails according to certain criteria. There is a whole range of options for this, including the ability to assign different colours to different message types (e.g. from different senders, or according to subject or a keyword), which can be a very effective way of picking out the wheat from the chaff in your Inbox.

12. Call from your e-mail. In addition to being able to place calls to your Google contacts (for free), you can also call landlines and mobiles at very reasonable rates.

13. Set up Gmail offline.  Although still in Beta, Gmail offline is a handy tool, which does what it says on the can. It allows users to read, reply to, search and archive mail offline. When they next go online, the Gmail offline will synchronize with its online counterpart. At the moment, it’s only available for Chrome.

14. Bookmark the emails that matter. The paperless office may be some way off, but there is still some irony in printing off e-mails. With Gmail, each e-mail has its own URL, so you can bookmark them instead.

15. Get the most out of Google Calendar.  Although Google Calendar is available to everyone, there are some neat tricks which are only available to Gmail users. For instance, Gmail users can add events from their Gmail conversations directly into their Google calendar.

16. Group your contacts effectively. One of the fundamental differences between Google and other e-mail systems is that Google is built from the ground up on the premise that relationships between people are the key part of any network. Make the most of this by creating circles and groups to suit your requirements.

17. Keep your profiles complete. One of Google’s major selling points is its ability to move seamlessly between platforms. An example of this is the fact that contact information from a Google user’s Gmail account will be shown in the Google+ profile of the user’s contacts. This eliminates the need to switch between the two systems to find relevant details. Another example is the ability to call people on their real-world phones (landline and mobile) from inside Google. This again depends on having their numbers stored in Google.

18. Control your contacts list. Google tries to be helpful and will automatically add e-mail addresses to Google contacts any time you send a mail to them. This is a Marmite feature in that people who only send a limited number of e-mails to new contacts tend to love it, whereas people who regularly send occasional e-mails to people they’re quite happy to forget tend to find their contact list getting very bloated very quickly. This feature can be turned on and off from Google settings.

19. Merge and destroy. One Gmail feature that heavy e-mail users will soon learn to love is “Find and Merge Duplicates”. It’s another feature which does exactly what it says on the can and will help to eliminate the spawning and multiplying contacts, which can clutter up other address books.

20. Undo the damage. Gmail has the option to restore the contacts list to any way it was within the previous 30 days.

21. Star the mails that matter. Pin a Google star to important mails so you can find them quickly.

22. Work with labels instead of folders. Gmail doesn’t really do folders, but it does do labels instead and the great thing about labels is that you can attach more than one to each e-mail. This actually makes them a far more efficient way of working than folders, once you get used to them.

23. Learn to love Move To. When you click on an e-mail in your Inbox, you will see various icons, one of which looks like a folder. Click on this and the top heading is “Move to” followed by various options. This works very similarly to traditional folders and you can use it to create new labels as well.

24. Archive - for those who can’t bear to throw anything away. Hitting the dustbin to delete sends e-mails into digital history, but if you’re not quite sure enough to be that drastic, archive moves them out of your Inbox and into a giant digital storeroom, which has so much space that it may never need to be cleared out. A smart trick is to label before archiving so that if you do feel the need to find an e-mail or just want to have a clear out, it’s easy to identify key e-mails.

25. Always attach attachments. This is one business users will love. Gmail actively scans for phrases suggesting that the outgoing mail should have an attachment and if there isn’t one, it checks with the sender if there should be. (Bonus tip, if you make a point of attaching files before you type the e-mail, Gmail will upload it while you’re typing).

26. Undo send. With many other internet e-mail programs once it’s gone, it’s gone and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Over in the Labs tab, there’s the option to enable an “undo send” function. Basically this means that whenever you hit the send button, Gmail will wait a few seconds before actually doing the necessary, in case you change your mind.

27. Use your calendar to manage your e-mail. Need to remember to e-mail someone on a particular day? Set a reminder in your Google calendar. It will then e-mail you to make sure you remember.

28. Control your e-mail chains. As well as getting to grips with reply v reply all, put a stop to messy e-mail chains by highlighting the part of the text that actually matters and then hit reply. Gmail will only include that part of the original message in the response.

29. Decide whether or not to have a conversation. The ability to group e-mails according to a conversation is another feature Gmail users either love or hate. Fortunately the haters can turn off the feature under the General tab.

30. Decide between important and priority. Important mails you label yourself, but Google’s Priority Inbox feature (from the Inbox tab), means that Gmail will actively look out for mails which are potentially important and bring them to the top.

31. Enjoy a Snooze. A common scenario is when you know you need to deal with e-mail soon, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Marking an e-mail as unread or similar isn’t necessarily a lot of help for busy people who get a lot of e-mail. Snooze is a wonderful free add on for Chrome users, which will boost a message back up to the top of a person’s Inbox at a given time. There is an alternative called Boomerang for users of other browsers, but it is chargeable.

32. Take Gmail to task. Underneath the Inbox there is contacts and then there is tasks. Basically this provides Gmail users with an electronic to do list. It’s a handy little feature and can be made even more so with the Remind Me add on for Chrome users.

33. Banish Attachments from your Inbox. Large attachments are both a fact of modern life and a huge drain on processing resources. Chrome and Firefox users can sign up to Attachments.me (for free) and move e-mail attachments directly to Google Docs (or another of the Cloud services).

34. Keep attachments out of your hard drive. One of the reason small businesses are growing to love Cloud-based computing is the fact that their data is often massively more important than the computers on which it is stored and Cloud-based storage avoids the risk of it being destroyed with hard-drives or needing an internal IT department to support server infrastructure and a back-up system. Gmail gives users the option to import files directly from Google Docs.

35. Use templates to save typing. Under the labs tab in settings, there’s an option to enable canned responses. In other words, if you keep being asked the same questions time after time, use this feature to save your fingers.

36. Synch your mail with your mobile or tablet. Admittedly this is far from unique to Gmail, but the ubiquity of Android phones and the fact that the Operating System is ultimately controlled by Google, does increase the attractiveness of having a Gmail account and if you’re going to have one, you might as well use it.

37. Become a gadget freak. From the labs tab enable Calendar Gadget and Google Docs gadget to be able to see both from inside Gmail.

38. Use two-step authentication. Basically this means that every time you access your Gmail, you’ll have a PIN sent to your phone. This can be an attractive security feature for small businesses.

39. Use remote logout. At the bottom right of your Inbox, you’ll see your last activity on the account. Click on details and if you’re accidentally still logged in from another computer, you can log out.

40. Chat discretely. Generally speaking chat conversations are recorded in the Chat history. If you’d prefer to avoid this, click on the actions button at the top of the chat window and click “Go off the record”. Please note this only applies at your side. The other party will have to do the same for it to be completely confidential.

41. Save your favorite searches. Make your favorite search and then bookmark the resulting page.

42. Control your subscriptions. Many people sign up to professional newsletters and do get value from them, but they’re rarely priority reading. Gmail’s excellent search function means you can set up (and bookmark) a search on the word “unsubscribe”, which will catch most of them and have them diverted where you want them to go until you’re ready to read (or delete) them.

43. Translate your content. Even Gmail can’t turn some jargon into plain English but it can do a fairly good job of translating basic e-mails from your Inbox.

44. Mute Conversations. If constant pleading does not succeed in getting you removed from an e-mail thread, select a conversation and choose Mute from the more actions menu. You’ll still receive the messages but they’ll be moved into archive bypassing your Inbox. You’ll only get the messages into your Inbox if you’re sent a message directly or if you’re included in the to or cc lines of a new message. Messages can be unmuted if you change your mind.

45. Use snippets for quick e-mail scans. Snippets are the e-mail equivalent of the short descriptions you see in Google web searches. They’re bit more than the subject line and a bit less than in a preview pane. They’re a really handy way of organizing e-mail quickly.

46. Preview your messages. If snippets isn’t enough, under Labs you can turn on a preview pane, to see a bit more of your messages.

47. Choose how much control to give your filters. Under Inbox, you can choose to have Gmail override any filters you set if it thinks a message is important.

48. Control your chat. Gmail allows you to decide whether your online status can be seen by everyone or just a select few people. Users can switch between either depending on their needs at the time.

49. Search Everything. Under Labs, turn on Apps Search and Google will search your docs and sites for a particular term along with your e-mail and display the results below the e-mail results.

50. Find where you need to go. Under Labs, turn on Google Maps previews in mail and Gmail will show you the location of any addresses mentioned in the mail.

The tools are there to help you remain organized and help you better manage your day, so go ahead and use them!

Are You a Bit of a Control Freak?

I’ll admit it, I’m a control freak.

When I used to print out and mail cartoon packets to publications I had a way I liked to do it: Letter on top, return envelope folded thusly, mailing label centered but up just a bit.

As I got more successful and was sending out more and more packets every week, my wife was kind enough to help stuff envelopes occasionally. I remember watching her work and offering suggestions (correcting her every move) and her eventually getting fed up.

“Oh for (blankety blank), I can fold something in half you know! Really! I can!” She growled, “Also, stamp placement? Maybe not as big a deal as you think.”

She was totally right. Now I email out my cartoons and I don’t have to hassle her anymore.

But I also like those emails just so…

Fraud detection technology launched to offer automated and manual checks

Payment service provider Ogone has launched an online payment fraud protection tool that it said aims to reduce false positives relating to automatic or manual checks.

According to the company, Ogone Fraud Expert includes device fingerprinting, a rule set of over 20,000 controls, a database of pooled industry and merchant knowledge and the option of outsourcing dubious transactions checks to Ogone's team of fraud consultants.

Filip Gosselé, product director at Ogone, said: “All in all, most of our clients' fraud prevention costs have increased, which means that their margins have been correspondingly hit.

“Ogone Fraud Expert has been developed in order to provide an answer to these issues by combining precise configuration of historical risk analysis assistance tools, new fraudster identification tools and the outsourcing of the checks to Ogone's fraud consultants.”

The company claimed that to protect against online fraud, merchants have adopted an increasing number of solutions that help them to evaluate the risk level of a transaction by analysing certain criteria. However, this has resulted in tightened blocking rules, which has led to a greater number of legitimate transactions being rejected, while the installation of anti-fraud systems requires dedicated teams.

Ogone said that Fraud Expert enables merchants to relax their blocking rules, thereby reducing the automatic rejection of legitimate transactions and offers support for refining the configuration of their risk analysis criteria.

“Whatever the recommendation, the final decision to accept or reject a transaction is a matter for the merchants, who remain firmly in control of their sales strategies,” Gosselé said.

Fraud detection technology launched to offer automated and manual checks

Payment service provider Ogone has launched an online payment fraud protection tool that it said aims to reduce false positives relating to automatic or manual checks.

According to the company, Ogone Fraud Expert includes device fingerprinting, a rule set of over 20,000 controls, a database of pooled industry and merchant knowledge and the option of outsourcing dubious transactions checks to Ogone's team of fraud consultants.

Filip Gosselé, product director at Ogone, said: “All in all, most of our clients' fraud prevention costs have increased, which means that their margins have been correspondingly hit.

“Ogone Fraud Expert has been developed in order to provide an answer to these issues by combining precise configuration of historical risk analysis assistance tools, new fraudster identification tools and the outsourcing of the checks to Ogone's fraud consultants.”

The company claimed that to protect against online fraud, merchants have adopted an increasing number of solutions that help them to evaluate the risk level of a transaction by analysing certain criteria. However, this has resulted in tightened blocking rules, which has led to a greater number of legitimate transactions being rejected, while the installation of anti-fraud systems requires dedicated teams.

Ogone said that Fraud Expert enables merchants to relax their blocking rules, thereby reducing the automatic rejection of legitimate transactions and offers support for refining the configuration of their risk analysis criteria.

“Whatever the recommendation, the final decision to accept or reject a transaction is a matter for the merchants, who remain firmly in control of their sales strategies,” Gosselé said.

OWASP Top 10 released for 2013

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released its well-referenced Top 10 risks list facing developers.

For another year, ‘injection', which includes vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, was rated as the top application security risk. It was followed by ‘broken authentication and session management', which can lead to password, key and session compromises. Coming in third was ‘cross-site scripting', a flaw that lets attackers inject data-stealing code into a website not under their control.

In 2012, injection also held the top spot. This year, broken authentication and session management and cross-site scripting switched positions on the list.

According to OWASP, which had been seeking feedback for this year's list for several months, the rankings are meant to "raise awareness about application security by identifying some of the most critical risks facing organisations".

The OWASP Top 10 project, first unveiled in 2003, is often referenced by standards groups and US government agencies. 

However, some security experts caution that the list should not be viewed as a "prescriptive" guide for securing software because it is too broad. As proof, they point to the fact that the list hasn't seen very much movement since it was first released.

OWASP Top 10 released for 2013

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released its well-referenced Top 10 risks list facing developers.

For another year, ‘injection', which includes vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, was rated as the top application security risk. It was followed by ‘broken authentication and session management', which can lead to password, key and session compromises. Coming in third was ‘cross-site scripting', a flaw that lets attackers inject data-stealing code into a website not under their control.

In 2012, injection also held the top spot. This year, broken authentication and session management and cross-site scripting switched positions on the list.

According to OWASP, which had been seeking feedback for this year's list for several months, the rankings are meant to "raise awareness about application security by identifying some of the most critical risks facing organisations".

The OWASP Top 10 project, first unveiled in 2003, is often referenced by standards groups and US government agencies. 

However, some security experts caution that the list should not be viewed as a "prescriptive" guide for securing software because it is too broad. As proof, they point to the fact that the list hasn't seen very much movement since it was first released.