XYRM Innovation: 06/13/14

FCC looking into slow Internet download speeds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators will review agreements between Netflix, Verizon, Comcast and other content and Internet providers to figure out whether they are causing slow web download speeds for some consumers, especially for streaming video content.

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Foursquare 101: 10 Ways to Use Foursquare to Grab Local Customers and Boost Your Business

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Nina Yiamsamatha, Marketing Manager, of Foursquare. For those who don’t know what Foursquare is – it’s a mobile app that people use to find places to go – and it’s a very powerful tool for small business!

Foursquare is an amazingly powerful tool for small businesses to capture the local consumer. While Google or Bing searches are great, Foursquare offers a more refined search ability by capturing what the user likes based on check-ins and search preferences.

In the interview, Nina gives us a Foursquare 101 lesson and shares some tips and strategies on how you can best utilize the power of Foursquare for your business, including how to boost your business through promotion and advertising. Watch the video below or click here.

Did you catch all those tips that Nina offered? Here’s the are again – and a few more:

1. Make sure you business is listed on Foursquare.

2. Claim your listing on Foursquare.

3. Optimize your listing by adding, business description, hours of operation, a website link, social media links, menus (if applicable) and other important details like wifi, delivery, payment options.

4. Use the Foursquare advertising solutions to boost your business.

5. Upload photos so that people can see what you are providing.

6. Add tips so local travelers can see everything that you have to offer.

7. Create a list of your tips, and those of businesses around you, so that people can see that you are invested in the area.

8. Use local updates to engage with customers who have checked into your business.

9. Offer a Foursquare special.

10. Use Foursquare analytic tools to monitor how you’re doing and engaging with users.

Using these tips, you can create an effective Foursquare presence and start grabbing local foot traffic to your business. Already using Foursquare and these tips? Share your site and tips for success in the comments below!

The post Foursquare 101: 10 Ways to Use Foursquare to Grab Local Customers and Boost Your Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

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Major Player Seeks IPO, Google Gets Small Biz Friendly

reading on vacation

There are many service providers that can benefit small businesses today, especially online. Two of those service providers had major announcements this week. And, there are plenty of other important developments, too. Be sure you stay up-to-date with the information that could most affect your business. Let the Small Business Trends editorial team keep you in the know.

Online Services

GoDaddy Files Plan to Go Public, Raise $100 Million. Domain registrar and Web hosting company GoDaddy Inc. filed for a $100 million public offering Monday.

Google My Business: An Easier Way To Manage Your Business Listing Online. Google launched Google My Business, an easier way to manage information about your business and how it appears on Google maps, Google+ and search.

Rock Your Business With These 23 Website Building Tools. You don’t need a big budget to create a rocking small business website or Web presence. There are many inexpensive or even free Web building tools out there.

Social Media

Live Report from Facebook’s First “Fit” Event for Small Businesses. Facebook’s first “boot camp” for small business owners was held. The event took place at Skylight Clarkson Square in New York City and Small Business Trends was in attendance.

Twitter Attack Caused Thousands to Retweet a Single Message. A Twitter attack caused thousands of people’s accounts to retweet a single message this week. But this was apparently only if the original tweet that started the trouble was viewed through TweetDeck, a popular application used to manage Twitter accounts.

Pinterest Beta Tests Do-It-Yourself Promoted Pins for Business. Following the lead of other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is ramping up its marketing features.

Analytics

Ever Wish You Had the Same Data As Amazon? Terapeak Says You Can. When deciding how to set your prices or maybe even what to sell in the first place – it would be great to have more information.

Lumiary Lights the Way for Marketing Your Online Business. Meet Lumiary, the company that says it will pull in all of your marketing stats and analytics, and save you a lot of time overall.

Taxes

Estimated Tax Payments: Your Questions Answered. Estimated income tax payments are a fact of life for most of us who run our own businesses. Unlike those who are employed and receive paychecks where taxes are withheld by the employer, most business owners and the self-employed will be required to periodically send an amount called "estimated tax payments" to the IRS.

IRS Adopts Taxpayer Bill of Rights. The IRS this week announced the adoption of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. According to the IRS, the document is intended to provide American taxpayers with a better understanding of their rights.

Funding

Small Banks Continue to Grab Share In Small Biz Loan Market. Small banks continue to grab a big share of the small business loan market. A recent survey shows small lenders already grant more than half of small business loans.

Angel Investments Update Since the Economic Downturn. Now that the CVR has released its 2013 estimates of angel investing activity in the United States, we’ve provided an updated analysis.

30 Crowdfunding Sites to Take Your Venture to the Next Level. Small business owners frequently do not have the capital to pursue new venues, and crowdfunding is one way to obtain needed funds to bring your innovative business ideas from dream to reality.

Startup

New Magazine Tells of Smart Hustling Small Business Entrepreneurs. Is there a difference between a small business entrepreneur and other small business owners? Ramon Ray, technologist at Smallbiztechnology.com, says he believes there is.

How to Turn Your Home Brewing Hobby into a Business. Michael Langone, the entrepreneur behind HopBox, combined a variety of different skills and interests when launching his home beer brewing business. Langone was studying to become an architect, and didn't expect to make brewing a career.

How to Turn a $300 Investment into a Design Business. Terrence Kelleman started his business completely by accident. With no previous business or marketing experience, he turned a small investment into a multi-million dollar design business.

Entrepreneurship

These High School Entrepreneurs are Building the Next Google. The next Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Larry Page could still be in high school. Three 17-year-old students at Horace Mann School in Riverdale, N.Y. could be among these future tech entrepreneurs.

Michael Dell To Promote Entrepreneurship Globally For UN Foundation. Michael Dell and his company Dell Inc. have been emphasizing entrepreneurship and the innovation it brings over the past year. The company even launched an ad campaign in 2014 celebrating Dell’s roots as a dorm room startup.

Research

Think You’re Lucky? The Power of Optimistic Thinking Could Mean Cash! When National Geographic took to the streets to ask people if they felt lucky or unlucky, little did the people know they were partaking in an experiment of positive thinking – and $20 was at stake.

Uh Oh! Sleep Deprivation is Linked to Unethical Behavior. How much sleep did you get last night? If you work at a small business, it's probably less than six hours. So did you tell any lies today?

Marketing

New Horizons 123: Video Production, With No Camera. Julie Weishaar, owner of New Horizons 123, is a video marketing consultant working with small businesses to create videos to promote their brands. That may not sound too unusual until you realize that she does it without a camera.

Regulations

This FDA Ruling Could Devastate Small U.S. Cheesemaking Businesses. The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has sent a shock wave through the artisan cheesemaking community by saying that cheese can no longer be aged on wooden boards.

Reading on Vacation Photo via Shutterstock

The post Major Player Seeks IPO, Google Gets Small Biz Friendly appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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First Look: HP PageWide Printing for Wide Format Printers

pagewide printing

This week in a special first look in San Diego, HP demonstrated innovative new technology that makes the printing of large drawings, maps and posters faster and cheaper on a per page basis. It applies HP’s PageWide technology, introduced in 2006, to wide format printers used by printing companies and in other production settings. (Another innovation in its day, HP’s InkJet printer turned 30 last year.)

Small Business Trends was there to give the small business community a first look into how this new technology works.

When it comes to wide printing, such as the printing of posters or blueprints, there have not been that many options. Up until now there have been two major choices when it comes to wide format printing: Inkjet and monochrome LED.

Inkjet allows images to be printed in full color but can be very slow and costly. Projects can take up to 1 to 2 minutes to complete. The other option, monochrome LED, allows a user to print jobs faster but only prints in black and white.

PageWide printing changes all of that by allowing printing that is twice as fast as LED while using color.

pagewide printing

How Does PageWide Printing Work?

PageWide printing uses ink similar to the inkjets that are sold today. But instead of using a single moving printhead, PageWide printing uses a long row of continuous printheads resulting in no longer needing to move a printhead to deliver ink. This allows a faster and more precise delivery of ink over the method used now.

The printer that HP demonstrated this with contained over 200,000 ink nozzles giving the printer the ability to apply around 3.7 billion drops of ink per second. That is 18.5 times more ink than the HP T7200, which uses the moving printhead.

A New Type of Ink for a New Type of Printer

Along with the PageWide printing, HP has also announced a new type of ink to be sold with PageWide printers called Pigment Inks. Pigment inks, as the name suggests, use color pigments rather than dyes. This provides a higher color and black saturation lowering the amount of ink needed and ultimately lowering the cost of printing per page.

These pigment inks were specially designed for PageWide to promote a longer life for the printhead and are also water, smudge, highlighter and light fading resistant.

Here’s a look at the technology in action:

When Will PageWide for Wide Format be Available?

HP has said that PageWide for wide format printers will be available in the second half of 2015 and will be available in four different models. Prices for the four models will be announced halfway through 2015.

So what does this mean for small businesses? Well, if you’re in the printing industry, it might mean lower costs, higher quality and quicker turnaround times for printing larger documents. If you’re not in the printing industry you may get those benefits passed through.

Also, remember that this PageWide technology has already been applied to desktop multi-function printers.

Image Credit: Small Business Trends

The post First Look: HP PageWide Printing for Wide Format Printers appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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How to Make Guest Writing Work for You

guest writing

Let me start this post by saying I know there’s a lot of controversy when it comes to guest writing these days, at least as it pertains to SEO (search engine optimization).

While Matt Cutts, spokesperson for Google, says that guest writing won’t help your SEO efforts, it does work as a tool to brand yourself and your company. I’m living proof as I’ve been on both sides of the equation.

But there’s definitely a right and wrong way to go about finding guest writing opportunities for branding purposes. Let’s take a look at strategies that have been proven.

Guest Writing Strategies for Branding

1. Pinpoint the Sites Your Audience Reads

This first step can take a while and involves a bit of research, but ultimately, it will decide the fate of your guest writing efforts. You only want to pitch sites that your customers read, and that have a decent amount of traffic. What’s decent? You’ll have to decide (and start small, then grow from there), but a rule of thumb I offer is:

Alexa ranking of 500,000 or lower.
PageRank of 5 or higher.

Put together a spreadsheet of the sites that meet your criteria. Also, make sure the sites are updated regularly. Don’t waste your time on those that last posted eight months ago.

2. Read the Blogs

Seems so silly, but a ton of bad guest article pitches out there are attributed to the fact that the sender never bothered to read the site. If they had read it, they might have discovered that the site doesn’t take guest articles, or that it has specific guidelines, or that it’s not a good fit.

So do your homework. Read several articles, and look for information on the About page that might give you insight into how to propose a topic.

3. Craft a Custom Pitch

I can tell when someone copies and pastes a pitch. It’s canned and impersonal. I tend to delete those emails. So make sure yours is personalized. Refer to an article you really enjoyed. Offer a one sentence explanation of who you are, then provide a title or two you’d like to write about. Include bullet points to dive deeper into the post topic.

4. Be a Good Writer

If you’re lucky enough to get approved to write an article, be responsive to the editor. Turn your article around promptly, and make sure to run Spellcheck. I have trashed articles people worked on because they required too much editing on my part. Follow guidelines. If they say a post must be 400-600 words, don’t make it 375.

5. Support the Site

Once your article is live, share the heck out of it on your social networks. Show the site owner that you’re committed to supporting the site, and even after your article is published, continue to share content from that site. This will set you up for success if you want to develop a longer, more regular guest writing opportunity.

Just like your mom taught you, the key here is to be a good person. Be reciprocal in sharing social love, and respond to deadlines in a prompt manner.

While you may not be getting paid to write the article, you are getting “paid” in potential new customers and traffic to your site, so treat it as if money were involved.

Excited Photo via Shutterstock

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