Google Apps Series Episode 3: Google Docs
Here is a great overview of Google Docs for business use. One of the most amazing features is that multiple workers can edit the same document or spreadsheet at the same time. This represents a substantial productivity gain as compared to workers emailing files back and forth.
This video demonstrates how Google Apps for Business provides small businesses with an easy to use productivity boost.
Google Apps Series Episode 1: An Introduction to Google Apps for Business.
Google is providing small and medium sized businesses with tools that were previously only within reach of large organizations that can afford expensive server rooms and IT staff. In this series of articles, we will be looking at the Google Apps suite as it applies to small to medium sized businesses. My objective here is to provide business owners with a basic understanding of what Google Apps is and how it may be beneficial to them. Google Apps is an opportunity every business owner should be aware of, whether you are a one man operation or have hundreds of employees.
What is Google Apps? Basically, Google Apps is a suite applications, like Microsoft Office. These include Gmail, calendar, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation creator, chat, voice, and more.
What’s the big deal? Firstly, the price. The Google Apps suite is extremely inexpensive, and it is efficient to deploy, and is extremely low maintenance. Previously, businesses invested in expensive Microsoft Exchange servers for email and calendar sharing. This is now available from Google liternally at a fraction of the cost. And there is a second deal this is a big deal — the Google suite offers many beneficial features that Microsoft does not.
Let’s take a look. Here is a quick video overview of Google Apps for Business:
Bravo to Google for helping the little guys compete with the big boys.
Here at Geeks on Wheels we have helped numerous businesses take advantage of Google Apps to increase productivity, while at the same time dramatically reducing costs as compared to using Microsoft solutions.
Call us at 914-562-1800 for more information or help determine if Google Apps is a good fit for your organization.
In the next episode of this series we will be looking at some examples of how businesses use Google Apps.
Every day our time is wasted by unsolicited email. Spam filters help us separate out the stuff we definitely don’t want to be bothered with. They fall short, however, in separating the important stuff from the maybe-I’ll-read-it-later materials.
Here is where we can utilize multiple email addresses to save time. When you shop online, sign up to receive information about a product or service, join a bulletin board — give them a secondary address. Keep private the email address you print on your business cards and use to collaborate with colleges, clients, and friends. Many people can tell you from experience that once some online marketers get a hold of your email, they will never give up sending you spam and they wont stop selling your email address to other marketers either.
One you have the really important email separated out from messages containing sales receipts and product updates, you can work more efficiently. If you are having a busy day, you can stay focused on the inbox that matters, and when you need to find that receipt or are wondering if some company or sales person out there has sent you a discount offer, give your second inbox a look.
If you are a small business this comes with added benefits — You can share such an inbox with other employees. I recommend setting up an email account such as purchasing@yourdomain.com and adding this inbox to Outlook for everyone in the company with the ability to spend money on its behalf. This provides you with a single email inbox where you know you can find every invoice from all of our major vendors, for example. How much did that new inventory item one of your employees just purchased cost? A quick search for the part number gives you the a list of every time this item was ordered, what it cost, and even what the invoice number was.
A great way to manage two email accounts to use software such as Microsoft Outlook, and set them up as separate inboxes that you can conveniently click between.
Organizing your email is a simple and effective way to improve productivity. If you would like assistance from a pro on best managing your email call 914-562-1800.
For small businesses online marketing can be intimidating. You don’t just need a web site, you need it to appear in search engines results. But the Internet is a big place, and how is your small business going to compete with national companies with massive budgets for online marketing?
I have good news for you. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines are expanding their emphasis on local search results, delivering local business listing over national search results in more and more search results.
You can take advantage of this by creating free local listing for your business with the major search engines at the following sites: Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local. It doesn’t take much time and it is definitely worth the effort. You should include a link to your web site in the listings of course if you have one.
You also need to know how many people are visiting your site, and see how that changes over time. Are you moving in the right direction? A great free way to do this is Google Analytics.
Finally, and here’s the big one, you should improve your web site to draw local search engine traffic, also called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Of course your site should be quality enough to convince visitors to pick up the phone, however that will have to be the subject of another post.
Search engine optimization firm David MIHM, Inc recently published the results of in-dept survey of SEO experts into what the most important factors are for driving visitors to your web site.
Here are the key takeways from the report:
The complete report can be found here.
A list of major online business directories can be found here.
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