Rumor has it that Apple may announce the release date for iPad 2 on March 2.  Since the initial launch last spring, iPads have revolutionized the way many small businesses work.  If you are considering upgrading or purchasing your first iPad, here are some must-have apps for small business owners:

Rumor has it that Apple may announce the release date for iPad 2 on March 2.  Since the initial launch last spring, iPads have revolutionized the way many small businesses work.  If you are considering upgrading or purchasing your first iPad, here are some must-have apps for small business owners:

Boxcar

Messages and notifications seem to come from everywhere now.  If you have the notifications turned on for your iPhone or iPad, every app you’ve installed could be sending you notifications, putting you into pop-up overload.  Check out Boxcar and add all of your social media accounts to consolidate your notifications, messages, retweets, mentions, DMs, new followers, new blog posts, and so much more.  This is the productive way to manage all of your social media accounts!

Today marks an important milestone for Windows 7: the arrival of its first service pack since the operating system's release in late 2009.  The service pack doesn't bring any new major features for consumers, but it includes two important back end additions that promise to improve performance in Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2.

Today marks an important milestone for Windows 7: the arrival of its first service pack since the operating system's release in late 2009.  The service pack doesn't bring any new major features for consumers, but it includes two important back end additions that promise to improve performance in Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2.

Most importantly included in SP1 are a number of fixes for bugs and security holes, which may be useful for those who don't use the auto-update feature (no names mentioned) or are applying the update to machines that don't have an active Internet connection.  Other small changes include improved HDMI audio-device performance, a fix for printing mixed-orientation XPS documents, and "improved support" for Advanced Format storage devices.

Web hosting is something that virtually every business has, and it's typically viewed as a commodity where the lowest price wins.  But, is the lowest price providing added-value for your business and your site, or are you missing out on significant business benefits that a few dollars more per month might have provided?

Hosting Questions to Ask

Here are some questions to think about as you consider renewing or making a change in your web hosting this year.

Web hosting is something that virtually every business has, and it's typically viewed as a commodity where the lowest price wins.  But, is the lowest price providing added-value for your business and your site, or are you missing out on significant business benefits that a few dollars more per month might have provided?

Hosting Questions to Ask

Here are some questions to think about as you consider renewing or making a change in your web hosting this year.

Business Pages Are More Like Personal Pages

Facebook announced major changes to business pages yesterday.  The big news is that features that have been noticeably lacking on business pages have arrived! 

1. Pages were designed for businesses to be on Facebook and engage with an audience, but the engagement tools provided to businesses didn’t quite measure up.  Now, you can choose to receive notifications about activity (comments, posts, likes, etc) on your business page just like you can on your personal page – allowing you to be more responsive to your audience when they choose to engage with your business.
2. You can now interact with other pages (not personal profiles) as your page.  On the right side of the page, there is an option that says “Use Facebook as <your page name>.”  Click on this option and then view other pages that your page has liked.  You can comment and like on those pages as your business, instead of as you personally.  This is a huge visibility builder for business pages!
3. You can now see a news feed of all of the pages your business page has liked.  Want to really keep your business and personal lives separate on Facebook?  This is a huge step forward!  Instead of using your personal profile to ‘like’ pages that are more relevant to your business, you can like those as your business page instead and then see all of those pages in their own newsfeed.
4. Business pages now have the same row of featured photos at the top that the personal pages have.  A big difference is that you can’t manipulate the order of the photos on the business page to create a cool design – we tried!  For business pages, the photos appear at random.  With some creativity, you can still use this space to display something interesting.

Business Pages Are More Like Personal Pages

Facebook announced major changes to business pages yesterday.  The big news is that features that have been noticeably lacking on business pages have arrived! 

1. Pages were designed for businesses to be on Facebook and engage with an audience, but the engagement tools provided to businesses didn’t quite measure up.  Now, you can choose to receive notifications about activity (comments, posts, likes, etc) on your business page just like you can on your personal page – allowing you to be more responsive to your audience when they choose to engage with your business.
2. You can now interact with other pages (not personal profiles) as your page.  On the right side of the page, there is an option that says “Use Facebook as <your page name>.”  Click on this option and then view other pages that your page has liked.  You can comment and like on those pages as your business, instead of as you personally.  This is a huge visibility builder for business pages!
3. You can now see a news feed of all of the pages your business page has liked.  Want to really keep your business and personal lives separate on Facebook?  This is a huge step forward!  Instead of using your personal profile to ‘like’ pages that are more relevant to your business, you can like those as your business page instead and then see all of those pages in their own newsfeed.
4. Business pages now have the same row of featured photos at the top that the personal pages have.  A big difference is that you can’t manipulate the order of the photos on the business page to create a cool design – we tried!  For business pages, the photos appear at random.  With some creativity, you can still use this space to display something interesting.

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the biggest buzzwords thrown around in Internet marketing conversations, and we’ve found it to be a topic that is confusing at best to most business owners.  We recently presented a seminar about SEO basics for members of Network Now where we de-mystified it to help business owners (in this case, the audience happened to be almost all women business owners) understand what it is, how improved rankings can help their business, and easy steps they can take on their own to improve where their business appears in search engines.

What is SEO?

In the simplest form, search engine optimization is the process of naturally improving the visibility of your website.  Note that we said it was a process, not a project.  SEO is not a project that has a defined start and end time; it’s a process because it needs to be an ongoing effort to be successful.  The logic used by search engines to determine the order in which pages appear changes frequently and your site needs to be adapting and evolving with those changes.  The only catch is that the search engines never really tell you what their logic is to page ranking or what you are doing right or wrong.  

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the biggest buzzwords thrown around in Internet marketing conversations, and we’ve found it to be a topic that is confusing at best to most business owners.  We recently presented a seminar about SEO basics for members of Network Now where we de-mystified it to help business owners (in this case, the audience happened to be almost all women business owners) understand what it is, how improved rankings can help their business, and easy steps they can take on their own to improve where their business appears in search engines.

What is SEO?

In the simplest form, search engine optimization is the process of naturally improving the visibility of your website.  Note that we said it was a process, not a project.  SEO is not a project that has a defined start and end time; it’s a process because it needs to be an ongoing effort to be successful.  The logic used by search engines to determine the order in which pages appear changes frequently and your site needs to be adapting and evolving with those changes.  The only catch is that the search engines never really tell you what their logic is to page ranking or what you are doing right or wrong.