Skip to content

Archive for December 2011

12
Dec

6 Quick Tips to Optimize your Website Using Social Media

Social media, a social instrument of communication is a phrase which is very popular nowadays in search engine marketing world. It changes the way of communication between individuals, organization and communities. Social media unlike the regular media is a two way street which allows you to communicate in response to the content in the media. Using social media determines the level of your website reach to people. In this blog let us look at those different types of social media which will aid you in optimizing your website for maximum results.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking websites help companies on a long term basis as they find the opportunity of getting a fan, follower or subscriber on a social media platform. On Twitter you get someone to follow you or connect with you in LinkedIn or subscribe to your YouTube channel- all these help to keep lines of communication open for a long time even after they are away form your website. To achieve maximum communication, make sure you set up an interactive profile page. You need to have a strong social media profile which shows in the top results for your name, website and blog. This will increase your brand’s visibility and yours too. If you intend to create a fan page in Facebook, let it be unique and content fresh. Add the social media buttons or the plugins (as we call them) in the home page of  your website. These will help you interact, comment and build relationship. Also, you need to plan much ahead for the logo to be added in the Facebook page for a power brand.

Include the Facebook Like Box

Facebook Like Box is a social plugin through which you can attract a lot of visitors and get likes for your website from them. By adding a like box you create a page for your website and invite likes. People tend to believe when their friends like, support or promote something. Your visitors can “Like” your website with just one click and from the Like Box you’ll get to see how many people liked your website.

Add Facebook Like Button to Share

You can add the Facebook Like button or the Retweet button of Twitter in your website to help your visitors share the content in other networks easily. 

Link Your Blog With Your Website

You can integrate your blog into your website and pull the recent posts as links to your Home page. Many businesses choose to build their website on a blogging platform like WordPress. By doing this you can improve the interactivity of your website by pulling your blog posts from your Home page.

Fix a Video

Add a video which tells about your products or services explaining how customers felt after using your products. You may also add a “How to” which would give instructions on how to use your products and the source to get assistance if required.

Social Bookmarking

Make use of the bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious to add your new content and bookmark them. These websites have the potential to drive a  lot of traffic to your website in a short time.

About the Author: Linda has been writing on latest technlogy for quite sometime. Her interests include mobiles, gaming seo and more. She has written many articles on airbnb clone, etsy clone, yipit clone and many more.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…


 

10
Dec

Small Business Owner’s Holiday Season Cheat Sheet [INFOGRAPHIC]

The holiday season is well underway. With all the speculation about this season it can be hard for small businesses to know what to expect. So what does the small business owner really need to know about this holiday? We have your game plan right here.

(click image for larger view)

Click for Full Size View

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…

Photo Credit: blog.intuit.com
9
Dec

Why Tracking Your Expenses is Smart and How to Start Today

Unless you’re willing to take on some extremely high monetary risk, the old adage is almost always true: you have to spend money to make money. No matter what your business involves, there will be some costs associated with it. There’s a reason why the retail industry as a whole spent well over 8 trillion dollars on operational expenses in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

If you’re a startup, it’s even worse – you need to be sure that you have plenty of extra money around in order to anticipate any unexpected costs. Add to this the fact that fiscal irresponsibility and lack of financial planning are two of the biggest factors in business failure. Being lackadaisical about monitoring your cash flow can quite literally cost you your business, and spending money on things you didn’t need, or failing to shop around, will sting in retrospect. So, it should be very clear that you need to track every cent that is received and spent by your business. For entrepreneurs, especially online entrepreneurs, you may need to do this tracking yourself.

Organizing Your Expenses

The first step involved in smart money tracking is categorizing your business expenses. Creating a balance sheet is perhaps the most comprehensive way to examine what you’re spending money on.

A balance sheet contains both assets and liabilities. In very simple terms, assets represent the money that you have, while liabilities represent where you’re money is going. There are two types of liabilities: current and non-current. Current liabilities include:

Accounts Payable – These expenses represent money owed to trade suppliers that have provided goods as inventory or other services essential to running your business.

Accrued Expenses – These costs involve money that is owed but not billed, such as payroll taxes and wages.

Notes Payable – These involve obligations such as promissory notes that mature within one year.

Current Portion of Long-Term Debt – This figure represents the amount of long-term debt that must be paid within the next year. An example of this would be a large loan that was used to purchase a business space.

Non-current liabilities include:

Notes Payable to Officers, Shareholder or Owners – This is exactly what it sounds like. If you’re a small, startup Internet business, you might not have to worry about these costs for a while.

Non-current Portion of Long Term Debt – This involves term loan expenses that are due after one year.

Contingent Liabilities – This category accounts for things that may become liabilities, such as lawsuits.

These categories are standard for any business. In simpler terms, a balance sheet forces you to think about common expense categories such as:

  • Taxes
  • Utilities
  • Employees (wages, benefits)
  • Office supplies
  • Vendors
  • Loans
  • Insurance
  • Licenses and permits
  • Rent/mortgage
  • Advertising/marketing
  • Leasing equipment

Costs associated more specifically with Internet businesses include:

  • Domain name
  • Internet service
  • Hosting
  • Software

Tools For Tracking

It’s simple to create a balance sheet using a spreadsheet editor such as Microsoft Excel or a free alternative such as Google Docs spreadsheet (the latter allows you to easily share the document with co-workers). Microsoft also offers a free balance sheet template for Excel users. Several other programs exist for managing business expenses, including:

  • Quickbooks
  • Sage Peachtree
  • Quicken
  • Texthog
  • Outright

These products vary in cost and features. For example, Outright is free, while Quicken starts at around $20. Some of these programs also allow you to focus on your personal expenses. Also, it’s important to have a filing cabinet that has folders for each of your categories. Keeping receipts, bills, check stubs, invoices and other paper documents in order is essential for staying organized. If you receive many of these notifications through email, consider using an email client such as Thunderbird to easily create folders and manage these types files.

Staying Smart

There are some specific practices that should be considered in order to most effectively track your expenses. They include:

Personal vs. Business – Always pay for business expenses from a dedicated account. Not only is it ethically justifiable, but it makes tracking much easier. Keep all business files apart from personal files, and get a dedicated business credit or debit card.

Adapt – The whole purpose of tracking your expenses is to avoid spending money needlessly. If there’s anything in your files that you could be paying less for, always investigate your options. For example, it’s imperative for an online business to compare Internet providers instead of paying an unnecessarily high rate.

Do the Work Immediately – Effective tracking involves processing invoices and purchases right away. Getting behind can lead to lost files and inaccurate expense reports.

Hire Out – If your business gets big enough, it’s very wise to hire a CFO or pay for an accounting consultant’s help. It’s better to spend the money getting it done right rather than doing a rushed, incomplete job yourself.

Don’t Forget About Deductions – As you track your expenses, it’s beneficial to make note of the things that you can deduct from your taxes. Check out the IRS page on deducting business expenses to learn more.

About the Author: Mitch O’Conner is an online marketer and writer. When he’s not busy testing sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games or going camping.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…

9
Dec

How to Run Your Small Business (Instead of Having Your Small Business Run You)

Owning your own business is like going on a new adventure every day, without knowing where it will take you, what dangers you’ll face along the way, or even whether you’ll make it out alive.   That last part depends mostly on the business you’re in, but hey, it can certainly feel like your small business is going to kill you, or at least get the better of you on any given day.

A very close friend of mine, who happens to own his own apparel company, came to me recently, shaken, unshaven, and obviously stressed.  He began telling me how he was missing meetings, losing track of time, neglecting personal relationships, and generally forming more bad habits than he could keep up with, on account of his business was taking over his life. 

I definitely related to his situation, and then started thinking about ways to help him (and other small business owner like him, myself included). 

Here’s what I came up with:

Know How (and When) to Say No

Small business owners should have four legs, we scramble so much.  And while the world appreciates our hustle, we often agree very hastily to much more than we can actually take on, in the hopes that we can cut a better deal here, or get more funding there. 

Much of this hustle is necessary, but much of it is not.  Yes, it is important to make contacts, to pitch your product, and to get funding, but missing meetings because you have too much on your plate is much more damaging to your reputation than saying no ahead of time.  If you are feeling like your business is running you instead of the other way around, than examine your current commitments to see which are essential, acknowledge to yourself that it is OK to say no, and then, in the future, say no to the things that aren’t. 

Plan Every Second of Your Life

No, I’m not exaggerating.  What kills many small business owners is ambiguity in their schedules.  Don’t allow this to happen.  Get a planner, a journal, a piece of notebook paper, or a napkin — whatever it takes — and write down exactly what you have to do that week, and when you will be doing it.  Zero in as microscopically as possible, to the point that you include such details as “eating ham sandwich alone at 12:05,” or “meeting with (x) investor at Starbucks on 1234 Main at 1:39pm.”  Specificity in activity and time count.  Don’t leave any “wiggle room”; free time is time that is unaccounted for, unless, that is, you schedule it in.  See how that works?  You can’t feel guilty about free time if you knew you were taking it. 

This should go without saying, but often we small business owners need to hear what goes without saying, so: DO NOT VARY FROM THE SCHEDULE.  Once it is written, DO IT. 

Take Free Time

This is extremely important.  There’s a reason the normal work week is only Monday to Friday: Neither the human body nor the human mind were designed to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  With that in mind, plan some free time, and even some vacation time, into your week.  You will be able to focus better, and will feel more in control of your life if you do things outside of running your business, and, best of all, you will be able to run your business better when you are refreshed and thinking clearly. 

By the way, after I presented my friend with these strategies, he adopted them, and while I can’t vouch for his business, I can vouch for his health and happiness, and I can say that after following my advice for a few weeks, he looked like a million dollars, and felt like it, too.  And you can’t run a business if you feel like anything less.

About the Author: This is a guest post by Eliza Morgan who is a full time blogger.  She specializes in writing about business credit cards. You can reach her at: elizamorgan856 at gmail dot com.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…


 

8
Dec

5 Biggest Website Mistakes That Too Many Small Businesses Make

Let’s face it – your company needs a website. For many customers, your website will provide their first impression of your business. A simple, well designed website can go a long way, but watch out for these common errors that can turn customers off.

 

1. Making your Customers Work to Find You

For me, the most common reason I visit a business website is to get their phone number or address. I’m of the opinion that contact information should be on the header or footer of every page of your website. Unless you are doing online sales, the ultimate goal is to get customers in your door, right? Don’t make them work so hard.

 

2. Burying the Lead

Ever click on a business website and think ‘what are they even selling?’ Every page of your website should give a strong indication of your product or service. This can be as simple as throwing a picture of a truck on every page is you’re a trucking company. A strong company name and logo can also do the trick. But if your company name is “Dynamic Systems Enterprises”, you’ll need to be clear of what your website is about, and remind your customer on every page why they are there.

 

3. Out of Date Content

It seems pretty basic: keep your contact information and prices up to date on your website, but too many small business owners forget it. Changing prices and disconnected phone numbers can immediately kill a new lead. But also watch for old information in other parts of your content. If I see a website advertising an event from 6 months ago, or running a promotion that ended last season, I don’t trust that ANY information is current. I might even think you’ve gone out of business.

 

4. Goofy Stock Photos

Stock photos are inevitable, but some of them are downright ridiculous. These photos have even sparked the new trend of “stocking”, or imitating stock photos.

 

 

Sure, visuals are a must for your website, and if you don’t have high quality photos of your business, products, and employees buying or getting free stock images can be a quick and cheap alternative. But really look at the picture before you put it up there, is this really how your employees look when celebrating a success?

 

5. Too Many Gimmicks

Skip the crazy animation and graphics; the last thing you want is for your website to take a long time to load. This can lead to instant click off. Small business owners also can’t seem to resist the allure of Hit Counters. Not only will it reveal if you have low traffic to every person who visits your site, it just looks tacky.

Avoid these mistakes by remembering that your website should match your business. If you are an upscale restaurant, your website should feel upscale as well. If the client services your store is relaxed and personable, that’s how your website should feel too.

Approach designing your website like you would designing your store front. Would you put those two colors together? Would you have a photo like that hanging up? Would you have any information out of date? Use these questions as your guide when setting up your online presence as well.

Having a website for your business is essential to staying competitive in today’s marketplace, make sure it’s bringing new customers in rather than making them “click off”.

 

About the Author: Becky Canary-King is an Account Manager and Press Contact at Direct Incorporation, a company focused on providing a more economical and efficient alternative to using a law firm for common legal/entrepreneurial issues. She blogs for Direct Incorporation’s Blog, offering tips for the first 6 months of your small business.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…


 

8
Dec

Forget About SEO…But Don’t Forget About SEO

You’ve heard all about SEO and how important it is. Now forget about it!

That’s right, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you and there aren’t any typos in that sentence. I just told you to forget about SEO. However, just make sure you don’t forget about SEO.

While initially building an internet presence, website owners frequently get caught up in trying to check all of the little tick boxes on their SEO checklist. By doing so, they often forget that it’s not the search engines they are creating their website for.

How many times have you read an article on a website and felt that it was awkwardly worded or the flow of the sentences just seemed a little off?

Some of those instances could be attributed to someone focusing more on search engine optimization by trying to fit the right amount of keywords into their article. They do this by focusing less on the people that are reading their website.

Forget About SEO

It’s true that search engines are going to send a lot of traffic to your website. The problem is that search engines are never going to leave comments or share your posts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Additionally, a search engine will never spend a single cent with you. People will. Not search engines, people.

The instant you start focusing on search engines more than on the visitors to your website, will be the same instant you will notice your bounce rate increase. Your bounce rate increases every time someone comes to your website and leaves without spending time on your site.

Don’t Forget About SEO

With all that said, there are few considerations that you should still make while setting up your website for the first time. These considerations are specifically related to website configuration and structure since this is hard to go back and correct later on.

Let’s take a look at one of these typical SEO faux pas. A website owner suddenly finds out that their permalink structure isn’t “SEO friendly” and decides to make a change.

Unbeknownst to them, changing all of the URLs on their website now breaks all of the inbound links to their site. (Inbound links are when other sites link to your site) This, in turn, causes their site to disappear from Google. This is all due to there no longer being any inbound links to the site.

So much for making the site more “SEO Friendly.”

It’s not hard to find horror stories across the web about a site administrator that has decided to change their permalink structure a month or two after their website had been created. This also goes for a lot of other SEO tweaks recommended on various websites.

The best way for a new website owner to go about SEO is to install one of the many SEO WordPress plugins out there. Granted, some are better than others but most will serve you well. Which SEO plugin to choose can come down to a bit of a religious war at times but I prefer a free plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast. Install the plugin, learn to set it up and then forget about it.

Some WordPress themes have built in SEO features which means that you won’t even need to add a third party plugin.

Forget About SEO

Even though it’s important to forget about SEO and just focus on the content, it’s also important to make sure your website is configured the right way to begin with. Then forget all about SEO until much later on.

SEO is an important way to attract new visitors to your website but you have to be careful about how you go about it. Remember to lay a solid ground work but don’t let SEO take control of your site.

About The Author: Matthew Hooper helps individuals, small businesses and organizations build an internet presence. Don’t forget to get his free report on building an internet presence. You can also check out his WordPress Course full of step-by-step videos so that you can learn WordPress in a single weekend.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…

7
Dec

Guide to Renting Desk Space for Small Business

When you’re starting out in business, or even if you’re already up and running, then the cost of office space is often one of the biggest headaches facing any venture. Little wonder then that so many people simply decide to work from home, because this can be a great way to cut costs and keep overheads to an absolute minimum.

However, for anyone who has even gone down this route, or who is thinking of giving it a try, working from home comes with a whole array of cons that stack firmly up against the pros. Sure, there’s no commute, you’ve got creature comforts all around you and it’s cheap and easy.

The downsides can soon pile up though, because working from home can be solitary. There are also the interruptions that you’ll probably get from well-meaning loved ones. And working from a spare bedroom, study or even the garage soon loses its appeal. In fact, when you weigh it all up, the working from home scenario can be a double-edged sword.

Moving on up

It’s not suprising therefore to find that many small businesses are biting the bullet and moving into rented desk space locations. This can actually be a great way to go, and if you’re already leasing an office, then it makes sense to consider this angle too. One of the main benefits is that contracts are invariably on a short-term rolling basis and highly competitive.

With landlords keen to maximise profits from their dead space, you’ll find that many locations in inner cities and prestigious business parks are often way more affordable than you might have ever imagined. Of course, if you enter this desk space rental market with just a desk and chair option then there will be precious little in the way of frills. But, if you’ve got a desire to keep it simple and dip in and out of the office, then this may be all you need.
Saving cash

Cost saving will be instantaneous, because the landlord takes care of all the upkeep, the cleaning and all the rest of it. Desk space rentals often come with broadband internet but almost everything else will be absent. But the plus side to that is you just need to turn up, plug in your laptop and get working. Then, at the end of the day, simply unplug and head off home.

The added benefit of all this is that it’s highly flexible and you can be in and sitting at your desk in a matter of days or even hours. There’s certainly none of the protracted legal stuff to go through when you’re considering something like a traditional office lease. The same goes for when you want to leave or move on, with those rolling contracts providing much more freedom for people who don’t want to be tied into a contract or lease for years on end. With the current business climate proving to be tricky to say the least, then this sort of flexible working approach suits many people, both start-ups and those in an existing venture.

About the author: Rob Clymo writes on behalf of office space site www.officegenie.co.uk, the online marketplace for serviced offices and shared office space in the UK.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…


 

7
Dec

Is Your Marketing Department Faced With Reality?

According to a recent study from MarketTools, nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of companies provide customer service and assistance to clients via Facebook, while 12 percent turn to Twitter for such activities.

The study goes on to note that while 34 percent of the executives polled reported they were aware of customers utilizing social media to discuss their business and its products and services, fewer than 25 percent of these executives claimed that their businesses “always” get back to these customers.

According to a spokesperson for the company, “Companies are increasingly embracing social media as a way to interact with their customers, though they are missing an opportunity to incorporate this feedback into a voice of the customer program. Organizations that use enterprise feedback management solutions are able to analyze feedback gathered through social media channels, along with feedback gathered through more traditional channels, to uncover insights to help improve business processes that lead to higher overall customer satisfaction.”

Some other numbers from the study note:

  • Thirty-three percent of executives report that their businesses have a better focus on utilizing social media as a channel to obtain customer feedback when compared to the same time a year ago;
  • As for what parts of their company are using social media, 44 percent cited public relations, 42 percent noted corporate marketing, while 34 percent stated product marketing and customer service/support;
  • For the nearly 70 percent of companies sporting an active presence through social media, 48 percent are active on Facebook, 24 percent on Twitter, and 17 percent through their own business blog;
  • Twenty-two percent reported that their company’s CEO oftentimes participates in social media on behalf of the business. Facebook is the social media channel of choice, used by 68 percent of the CEO’s, followed by 44 percent that participate through the company blog, and 35 percent who are active via Twitter.

If your company has been slow to the switch when it comes to using social media through your marketing efforts to interact with customers, keep a few things in mind:

  • Active usage of social media allows you to interact with customers and potential customers in real-time. Whether it is a product/service question, a concern, or even a complaint, there is no replacing the immediacy by which social media venues provide;
  • More and more consumers are using social media to obtain information on products and services, purchase items online and talk about their experiences. It only makes sense to have a social media presence so that your business can stay one step ahead of the competition;
  • While some business leaders feel that social media is a fad, all signs point to it being around for the foreseeable future. To disregard SM now is only allowing your company the opportunity to fall further behind the competition, competition that in many cases are using social media on a daily basis to reach out for more business.

 

Whether it is to promote products and/or services online, respond to questions and concerns about your business or just follow the industry tides to see where you need to be, using social media in your company’s marketing efforts is more important than ever.

Are you a social or anti-social marketer?

About the Author: Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ background checks, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…


 

6
Dec

How to Not Lose Money on Groupon

Groupon is not some scam. The deals, which they present on their site, are legitimately discounted. This issue, however, is not for consumers who take advantage of the service, but for businesses who see Groupon as a viable way to advertise their business.

In order to be featured on Groupon, businesses have to discount their services by 50%. In addition to that, they have to give Groupon another 50% off of whatever is left over. This means that a product normally selling for $100 will be sold for $50 on Groupon, leaving an extra $25 for Groupon and $25 for the business owner. In other words, to be featured on Groupon, you have to be willing to discount your products by 75%! If you sell hundreds or thousands of your product or service, your business stands to lose a lot of money! As such, if you plan on using Groupon, you have to think of the following before taking advantage of their service…

Return Rate

Groupon users are looking for bargain discounts and have very little brand loyalty. As such, if want your Groupon campaign to be profitable, you have to do something that makes the discount users wanting to come back. For example, you can upsell your Groupon customers by offering an additional product or service that you can actually make money off of. You can also form long term relationships with customers by collecting their contact information, asking them to follow you on social networks such as Facebook, and offering them a future incentive (in the form of a coupon) to come back without having to pay Groupon 25% of the discounted price.

Variable Costs

If you’re, say, the owner of a massage parlor that sells $30 massages, losing $5 on a redeemed Groupon is not that big of a deal. If, however, you offer $500 helicopter tours, your business simply cannot afford to take a 75% cut off the original price. A third of businesses who’ve used Groupon say that they’ve lost money, meaning that many business owners are too lazy to do the math before accepting a Groupon promotion. Groupon’s promise of charging you for guaranteed revenue may seem appealing, but that revenue may very well come at a heavy loss to your business.

Online Reviews

A massive amount of new Groupon customers will also bring in a massive amount of reviews to your business on sites such as Yelp.com. Although the amount of reviews may help your business in the search engines, a study claims that Groupon reviewers often leave negative comments about your business, which may negatively influence purchase decisions of future prospects.

Your business may also suffer negative publicity from your current customers, who may get agitated if they see you discounting your products. Long term, this may harm your brand.

Like with any form of advertising, you, as a business owner, have to do your homework. If you feel that you can get a high return rate, sell products or services whose variable cost is low, and can please your Groupon customers so that they write favorably of your business, Groupon is a viable option. Otherwise, you stand to lose a lot of money if your business uses Groupon.

About the Author: Nickolay Lamm protects individuals from invention promotion company fraud at InventHelp.

 Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…

6
Dec

How Cloud Hosting Could Grow Your Business

Times are tough economically and especially so for small and medium sized businesses, many of which are looking to cut costs wherever they can.  But there is a saying that in order to make money you have to spend it, trouble is where should you be spending it?  Most business owners would look to enlarging stock levels or adding to their marketing budgets, but in fact investment in your business infrastructure could actually save you money whilst helping you to make it.

 The Importance of Efficiency

Improving efficiency with internal systems and practises is often a high priority for many businesses no matter what their size.  Finding more efficient ways of working has never been more important, especially when looking to make cost savings. And whilst outsourcing some areas of administration is a good start, it is actually your IT needs that could offer the best means of cutting costs and improving efficiency.

I began thinking about this after a conversation with my younger sister.  She works in recruitment, specializing in placing employees with job providers and offering on-the-job training placements.  She currently works from home, taking in referrals and finding suitable job placements.  But her working process is flawed.  She spends around 10 hours per day processing referrals, something which I initially said was a good thing, it surely meant business was thriving.  But she pointed to the fact that all referrals come to her over the phone, not via email because of security concerns over sending this kind of sensitive data.

She went on to explain that as each referral comes in she is contacted by phone and has to manually write down all the details, a practice that takes around 20 minutes.  Not a very efficient process.  I asked why they were not using a secure email server and was told they were saving money by using a free hosting service which was not particularly secure.  I suggested a move to cloud hosting but was told her boss had turned this idea down as being too expensive.

 When Free Isn’t Really Free

And therein is the flaw.  You may think that a ‘free service’ is the ultimate cost cutter, but this can be counterintuitive as rarely are such things efficient, reliable or even productive, especially when talking in terms of IT. Taking down referrals ‘by hand’ over the phone will often lead to mistakes as well as being time consuming.  Receiving them electronically will mean a faster, more efficient means of working with placements being filled quicker and fewer billable hours.  Surely that means a better service for all concerned?

Why cloud hosting?

 

Cloud hosting is enjoying strong growth and it is a sector that will continue to grow as businesses realize it’s potential.  By switching to this form of virtual hosting businesses will save money on their IT requirements and negate the need to invest in their own internal server and staff to maintain it. 

But is it secure?

 

Security within cloud environments has been a hot topic of debate over the last few months, however, industry experts point to cloud hosting via an established provider with a data center as being as secure, if not more so, than most in-house setups.  Security providers are working pro-actively to instil confidence in the market and attract more businesses to sign up.  The signs are it is beginning to work as some high profile companies are now switching their IT needs to cloud hosting environments in a bid to cut costs but maintain services.

For any business to grow there has to be inward investment in the infrastructure of the firm.  Everything from administration to stock control is computerized these days which can mean large scale investment in IT equipment and software.  Cloud hosting can offer businesses a means of incorporating the hardware and applications they need whilst making significant savings on the cost of installing their own in-house.  In turn the provider will maintain and manage the environment within the data center meaning businesses will not need to hire in additional staff.

In these times of austerity cuts and uncertainty within global markets businesses need to look at ways to cut their costs, maintain services and improve efficiency.  Rather than looking at ‘front of house’ operations it is the back office that can most often provide the best opportunities to save money, increase productivity and ultimately grow the business.  Cloud hosting offers a tremendous opportunity to achieve all of these for minimal investment and within a short period of time.

About the Author: Article by Georgina Clatworthy, a freelance writer of five years producing articles about technology, business and marketing.  I am not associated with Quality Tech but can recommend them for cloud hosting services.

Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…