by Aurelien Parment | Jun 16, 2015 | Small Business
For many of us, Skype is the communications software platform that brought video chat into the mainstream and allowed us to keep in touch with family and friends who were far away. Acquired by Microsoft in May of 2011 for $8.5 billion, Skype can also be the communications software platform relied upon by businesses due to its integration with Office 365.
As a business owner you have many options in how you communicate and collaborate with clients or colleagues. However, with Skype replacing Lync as the de facto communications tool as of November 2014, not only can you communicate effectively, but also leverage the integration with Office 365 for seamless productivity. In today’s blog post, we’ll share five tips you can use to get the most out of Skype for Business to get more done.
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by Aurelien Parment | Jun 4, 2015 | Small Business, Web Hosting
Selecting a web hosting provider was difficult back when the web was new. Nowadays with so many services and review websites, finding a provider is easier than ever. However, many of these reviews only cover shared hosting services, which is just a small slice of the web development pie. For those who want to explore how a virtual private server, or VPS server, can help, reviews are more difficult to come by.
You might be asking, what is a VPS server? A VPS server is a virtualized server which mimics a dedicated server within a shared hosting environment. It’s different from dedicated and shared hosting because it optimizes for high traffic, quickens recovery times in case of a crash or security breach, provides more opportunity to customize server applications, as well as dedicated resources so you can utilize everything you need for your website at any given time without worry that someone else needs it to.
The next question you might be asking is how to find good VPS hosting, especially with reviews far and few in between. In today’s blog post, we’ll look at four key characteristics to look for when choosing a VPS for your business.
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by Aurelien Parment | May 28, 2015 | Small Business
Over 100 billion emails are sent and received per day, with the majority coming from business email. Though consumer-oriented email is expected to decline in the coming years, business-oriented messaging is expected to rise to 132 billion emails by 2017. For anyone using email to communicate, this is no doubt overwhelming and worrying, as it’s both costly and time-consuming: A McKinsey study estimated that workers spent 28% of their time per week checking and answering email and broken communication due to email distraction and delay of answering messages costs $1.5 billion dollars per year in the United States alone.
With the usage of email increasing, business owners and individuals are discovering the challenges of keeping up. After all, ignoring email for a few hours means coming back to more messages, and answering emails every few minutes means that work doesn’t get done and time is lost. In today’s blog post, we’ll share some useful advice that will help those who feel tied to their email to discover their freedom again and get work done.
Tips for Breaking Free
Articulate your subject line: The quickest way to ensuring that your email gets ignored is a vague subject line. While “hey!”, “please read”, and “urgent” appear to be simple and to the point, they miss the boat on setting the right intention through communication. Make sure your subject lines are coherent and specific so your reader knows exactly what’s being asked of.
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by Aurelien Parment | May 19, 2015 | Small Business
Modern business moves at the speed of light and employees want to feel more engaged than ever in their day-to-day work. Unfortunately, both companies and employees feel the other isn’t doing enough, as recent statistics suggest that 88% of employees don’t feel passionate about work while 79% of companies feel like they have a retention problem. Couple this with the fact that 39% of employees feel like their company does not collaborate enough, and you have a real problem.
Besides engaging employees and acknowledging them for doing a good job, businesses need to look to technology to create a more collaborative and team-driven environment. In today’s blog post, we’ll look at five reasons why businesses should look at investing in a collaboration platform for their organizational needs.
1. Team Alignment
According to HR consultancy firm ClearCompany, 97% of employees and executives surveyed feel that a lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a project. With nearly total agreement, it’s clear that feeling a part of something gets everyone on the same page working towards a common goal. When emails can get lost, notes forgotten, and voicemails unreturned, there can be a disconnect that prevents everyone from being able to work well together.
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by Aurelien Parment | May 13, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
As organic reach on Facebook for brand pages dip to all-time lows and social media as a whole becomes more and more noisy, business owners and those with personal brands are looking for more effective ways to reach their audiences. When there are so many options out there and already so much to do, what is a time-strapped person to do?
Turn to an old reliable: the mailing list.
Thankfully, we’re not just talking about physical mailing lists that involve printing and sending out fliers but also email mailing lists as well, which have grown in interest over the past few years due to the fact it’s one of the last few elements of an audience that a business owner or brand can own since social media posts don’t always hit their intended audiences.
As a business owner you might be new to the world of email lists. In this blog post, we’ll talk about what email lists are, why they are important, and how you can use them within your WordPress installation to grow your list.
Let’s go!
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by Aurelien Parment | May 12, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
In today’s technology-rich world, people and their businesses are expected to be on all the time. Whether it’s being available on social media or having a constantly updated website, having available and accessible media is the desire of many, especially for those looking for a momentary distraction.
For websites that are run by individuals and sole proprietors, the desire is certainly there to let a website sit upon publish. For those especially where web development and design may not be a strength, just being able to place content, ensure that all the tags close, and call it a day can be an achievement in itself.
Suffice to say – it’s unfortunately not enough.
In today’s blog post we’ll look at why a website should always be a “work in progress”, and why a true website should never be complete.
1. Search Engine Indexing Matters
The process in which search engines catalog and categorize websites is the science of indexing, which is what Google has become known for. Until Google gets around to indexing your website, it’s not going to show up in search results, and neglecting the updating process of your website means that any search engine finding it is only going to take longer.
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