The rise of gadgets easily available to the workforce combined with the growing trend towards mobile offices (unless you work at Yahoo, of course) has made the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) a common practice in business, particularly for small businesses. It saves money. People are more comfortable using devices of their choosing. It’s practical almost all the way around. These perceived benefits, however, are not so beneficial to the IT people in small business. BYOD poses many problems from security to compatibility and forces them to have to troubleshoot a much wider array of problems…

It’s called having business intelligence, savvy, and it doesn’t just mean knowing the ropes or being well versed with the client. It means having an eye to the current, an intuitive ability to respond to the river of data coursing through your company, and if yours is a small business, it probably means knowing where to turn to have that information processed, organized, and returned to you in palatable “intelligence” packets. If you are operating a small business you might be missing serious opportunities if you aren’t paying attention to everything your business is telling you….

“I sit down at the computer and think of things to post on social media.” This is the problem. It’s the challenge that faces many companies as they try to explore new ideas to post about on social media. They have “social media time” set aside, and while this is good to schedule and maintain, it also allows people to miss some of the best opportunities available in social media. It’s what happens in the day to day affairs of a business, the things that come to us when we least expect it, that really makes for strong social media posts. Businesses all too often try to come up with their social media posts while…

Defamation. Freedom of speech. Honesty and transparency versus lies and coverups. These and other gray matters are all in play in a $750,000 lawsuit filed by a Virginia contractor against a former customer who left a scathing review on review sites Yelp and Angie’s List. If it gets settled in court, the ramifications will be felt by both the review industry as well as millions of small businesses around the country. If Christopher Dietz, owner of Dietz Development LLC, wins the lawsuit, many consumers will become fearful of posting reviews that call out businesses. If Jane Perez, the woman who…

With everyone being on the go these days, it’s only natural that the smart small business or entrepreneur would take advantage of the technology that is now available. If you’re in the know, you’ll be able to utilize your mobile phone’s technology to collect payments for services rendered while you are at an event, away from your business’ central location, or just out and about. Apps such as GoPayment, Square, Pay Anywhere, Sailpay, and Sage are prime for growing your business while on the go. GoPayment offers users a free card swipe dongle that attaches to your mobile phone. With no…

One of the hardest parts about personalizing social media profiles and pages is getting the artwork and branding just right. Every site has different sizes and styles that they prefer when placing artwork on your page. The challenge is that they rarely (for some reason) tell us the dimensions that work best. This graphic by San Diego web design is a perfect cheat sheet for those who want their pages to look just right. It’s particularly useful for agencies who have to post graphics on a semi-regular basis. Click the image to download the PDF version for safe keeping. …