Small business social media - ideas to improve use

eMarketer commented on some new social data from Street Fight that identified the number one reason small business owners enter the waters of social media. Curious as to what it was? Are you? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/-igTlOlSyGI/the-number-one-reason-smbs-go-social-is%e2%80%a6.html Shared via my6sense

Google webinars

I don’t know a single small business owner not actively looking for ways to get more from their SEO. We want trusted information focused on the areas we’re not always too sure about like… search ads. Or how to decipher Google Analytics. Let’s fac ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/-uKmgTBBLS8/google-webinars.html Shared via my6sense

Making social media work in business

supply chain innovation social media casemore GHG

This ties in with some of what I have already been trying - replace email with social media to share better and reduce copies.  The challenge still remains to find the needle in th haystack (what worked rather than what did not).  Tagging could well help here.

Arkadin Web Conferencing

I have started using Arkadin Web conferencing and this looks as if it will be very useful.

Web conferencing allows remote conferencing with multiple users but as well as sharing a telephone conversation, a screen can be shared too.  This is especially useful for business partnering discussions, where I as the accountant am talking operational managers through numbers.  In the past I have sent large spreadsheets, waited ages for my client to open them and had discussion where I might have to keep referring to row numbers and column names.  Now I can share my screen so that the client sees what I see.  They see me point my mouse, I can highlight information and they can see it in real time.

This will also be useful for training where I can show a client what to do, or they can show me what they are doing and I can explain the problem.

More info at www.arkadin.com

Top tips for Twitter

One of the most important ways for businesses to get ahead on Twitter is by helping others who have a problem, according to a new list of tactics. http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/567647/s/1cce4b38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Ctechnology0Ctwitter0C90A93740A0CTop0E20A0ETwitter0Ebusiness0Etips0Bhtml/story01.htm Shared via my6sense

Clear Books - speed

So far I have found Clear Books to be fast to very fast (evenings and weekend).  Monday night at about 6:30 pm was slow though.  Could have been a once off or a problem my end, but something to monitor.

Clear Books - electronic invoicing (good and bad)

Clear Books has some good tools for electronic invoicing.  Not only can you capture a pdf, there is a tool to click to email the invoice.  The good part here is that instead of sending a pdf as an attachment, it sends an email with hyperlinks to both the invoice and a live statement.

The advantage is that the client can see the latest details.  The disadvantage of course is that if for any reason you were not up to date, the client can see that too!

Security thought: if the hyperlink remains valid for that client for all time and continues to show live information, a former employee of the client with the hyperlink would still have access to live statements and by drilling down, to the invoices.  Need to follow this up.