An eclectic guide to the best productivity apps 2017
I’m taking a broad view of productivity as I run down what I believe are the best productivity apps you need to be running in 2017, and you’ll see what I mean by “taking a broad view” as I detail the first app on my list. I’m also going to touch on apps and services across all the platforms, including the Apple Watch. 1Password. This is a password app that functions across all of your devices. You compose one master password (or use the iOS fingerprint function) to unlock the app. It then fills in your username and password. Let’s be honest here, most people are very lax in their password security habits. 1Password will create long passwords that use all the letters, numbers, and symbols on your keyboard. This will save you a bit of time by eliminating the need to look up, create, and enter strong passwords, but more importantly, it will save you from the lost productivity suffered if and when you have a security breach. It’s like they say: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is the essence of productivity. RoundTeam. This is an online service that posts to your Twitter account. There are many scheduling apps available – such as Hootsuite and Buffer – but RoundTeam doesn’t require you to find the content. Here’s how it works: You create a list on your Twitter account and Round Team will create posts from that list. You can set up filters, frequency, and the times of day you want it to post. Once you set it up, you can walk away and never have to tend to it again. If you have just one Twitter account to which you’d like to add an “autopilot” feature, the free RoundTeam level will be fine. TripAdvisor. If you travel for business or need to entertain clients, the Apple Watch TripAdvisor app will enhance your productivity. Getting to the best places quickly and efficiently when you’re on the road is a must. Having the latest crowd-sourced information available on your wrist is an invaluable service. Harvest. This is time tracking, expense reporting, timesheet approval, and invoicing software all in one app. Harvest has reports and graphs that let you know how you’re doing with billing and timing on specific projects so you can maintain control – and profitability. If you’re a solopreneur or freelancer, you might be able to get by with the free version of Harvest. Forest. For day-by-day, hour-by-hour productivity, the Pomodoro technique is tried and true. There are many apps that will take you through the 25-minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of down time routine, but while all are functional, few are very interesting. Forest changed that by using gamification. Instead of merely watching a timer count down, you plant trees and watch them grow. The browser plugins are free; the mobile device apps are a couple of dollars. Streaks. In terms of personal productivity, the single biggest secret is to create good habits – it isn’t by accident that Steven Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” has been a perennial bestseller. Streaks is an app designed to help you form good habits…well, six of them at least (sorry, Mr. Covey). This is an Apple app that...
read moreStrategies to survive the tidal wave of retail closures
Have there been times in your life when you’ve looked back at some mistakes you’ve made and said to yourself, “I should have seen the handwriting on the wall”? For retailers today, the “handwriting” is appearing in business news headlines like: These major retailers are closing more than 3,000 stores this year, Clark.com Stores are closing at an epic pace, CNN Money “The Retail Bubble Has Now Burst”: A Record 8,640 Stores Are Closing In 2017, Zerohedge.com More than 3,200 stores are shutting down — here’s the full list, Business Insider You would recognize most of the names on these lists. Some, like Sears, RadioShack, and K-Mart, wouldn’t be surprising, but others – Bebe, CVS, and Abercrombie & Fitch, for example – are more of a surprise. (It just doesn’t seem very long ago that Abercrombie & Fitch was killing it and retailers everywhere were trying to clone its approach to retailing.) It’s no secret that much of this disruption is being caused by online sales. If you look at the various lists of retailers closing stores, it’s like taking a stroll down the center aisle of your favorite mall from the anchor store at one end, to the anchor store at the other. Malls are being replaced by online mega-sites like Amazon. Phil Wahba has a great article on Fortune that details how the Simon Property Group is fighting to “reinvent” the shopping mall. I’ve heard about big hunks of shopping malls being taken over by medical groups, fitness centers, public libraries, public schools, and all sorts of other “mixed use” tenants. Often some stores will stick around as well. These repurposing efforts could create opportunities for local entrepreneurs. Keep tabs on the ups and downs of your nearby malls and look for news about possible redevelopment projects. There are two other approaches to consider if you don’t want to get caught up in this retail disaster: The if-you-can’t–lick-’em-join-’em strategy, and Selling items that aren’t sold over the Internet. Join the crowd As I said above, online portals are replacing malls. In addition to Amazon, eBay and Walmart are notable. You may have recently seen that Walmart is tweaking its shipping charges to compete better with Amazon Prime deals. Walmart has a “marketplace” program for third party sellers; it’s their version of the Amazon Associates program. Sears has a marketplace program as well, and so as does Rakuten.com (formerly Buy.com). An aggressive approach would be to get your products included in as many online marketplaces as possible. Inventory tracking and order management are the hurdles you need to clear to pursue a multi-channel approach like this. Software packages and cloud services are on the market, but they can get fairly pricey. Orderhive is highly rated on GetApp.com and has inexpensive entry-level pricing. Specialize in non-online products Some things may never be sold online, others are probably years away. For example, I don’t think anyone will be selling puppies online very soon…at least at the big shopping portals. Other items, like liquor and cigarettes, are illegal to sell online. (It’s interesting to note that liquor sales is one of the categories that is also pretty recession resistant.) Anything that can be customized will be somewhat immune to online competition as well as items that people need to experience first-hand...
read moreThe Essentials: What is SEO content?
To start answering the question, “What is SEO content?” we need to begin with the most basic and simple answer – anything that can go on a web page – and then start unpacking that answer. Think of what you have seen on the thousands of web pages you’ve viewed over the years. Your list would probably be something like this: Articles, Products, Videos, Graphics, Photos, Contact information, Audios, and Lists. We could break down many of those bigger categories into subcategories, but you get the idea. Anything that appears on a web page will play some role in the search engine optimization of your website. After all, Google and Bing are likely to “index” virtually every page of your site, therefore all the pages of your website have the potential to be found in a search. The question then becomes: Are your pages “optimized” so they will be found when people are conducting searches relevant to the purpose of your website? The elements of SEO The topics you focus on, the language you use, the titles you write, and the way you “code” the content on your web pages will all have a huge impact on their ability to be found in searches. Further, each of those areas or attributes contributes to how powerful your SEO content is. Google algorithms are getting better in their ability to understand the subjects and purposes of web pages, but search engines aren’t Einstein. For example, I was recently reviewing some political articles by a writer who was new to writing for the Internet. What he wrote was interesting and offered some insights, but most of his writing discussed arcane historical background. He seldom identified his core ideas in direct, straightforward language. His reasoning was mostly done via clever comparisons. Search engines would never be able to properly index his writing. If I had the assignment to write 1,000 words on President Trump’s environmental policy, but spent most of those words talking about the original formation of the EPA and laying down other historical context, Google probably wouldn’t index the article properly. So when we ask the question “What is SEO content?” I think an important way to begin defining it is through what graphic artists call “negative space”: Your content is not SEO content if it is not optimized. The creation of SEO The process of defining what is SEO content and then creating it for your website begins with a deep understanding of what you want to accomplish and how prospects relate to what you want to accomplish. You need to think of all the different online searches people would conduct in their efforts to find the product, service, or information that you hope to provide then with. Without that understanding, it is impossible to create SEO content. And, those who understand those things the best have a far greater likelihood of online success. To get a better grip on what is SEO content, let’s do some more defining by negative space: Content is not SEO content if it does not include relevant keywords. Therefore, spend more time up front researching keywords than creating content. Content is not SEO content if your content is not properly organized. Therefore, use headings, subheadings, bullet points and occasionally include your keywords in these...
read morePersonal branding and social media: The potent one-two punch
A smart personal branding and social media program make it easy for people to find your needle in the haystack – whether that “needle” is you personally or your business. There has been a growing trend in recent years to associate business owners – their personal brands – with the companies they run. This is true for organizations both big and small. This may seem like it makes it more difficult to elevate the exposure of your company, and there is some truth in that. However, this slight disadvantage is outweighed by the fact that your personal brand is portable; you take it with you no matter what your current pursuit might be. Personal brand, social media symbiosis This underscores the importance of properly managing the connection between personal branding and social media. To do this you must: Establish your personal presence on the major social media platforms, Launch a website with a URL built around your name, such as SusanSolovic.com, and Claim the email address firstname@firstnamelastname.com. I know that it’s not a perfect world and getting an ideal exact match for your name on all of these platforms and as the domain name for your website, might not be possible. The easiest way to lessen this problem is to start by finding the best possible domain name available for your name. That will make it somewhat easier to achieve a good measure of consistency across all the platforms where you are present. Let’s continue to examine the importance of consistency. Not only do you want to develop a naming scheme that gives you the maximum amount of personal brand consistency across the Internet, you want consistent words and images as well. Social media 911 Some of you may be thinking that these are minor points, but let me give you a problem I encounter almost every day: I want to credit a someone who has written what I consider to be a good article and share the author’s Twitter handle. Often, the author’s Twitter handle will not be included in the biographical notes of the article – if any biographical information is offered. In this case, I’ll try to find the author on Twitter. Usually this is fairly easy, but many times I find an individual who has two or three different Twitter accounts. If (and this is a big if) I decide to dig more deeply, I often discover that various accounts have been started and then abandoned. When this happens I usually give up on crediting the author. That’s too bad for the person who took the time to write an otherwise good article. However, if accounts are consistent and the person’s head shot is consistent, then it is easy to identify the right person. It also sends a unified message to everyone who visits these various profiles and websites. Attention to brand details If you have ever worked with a large corporation, you know how much attention they pay to the care and feeding of their brand image. They insist on certain colors, a specific logo, a style of language, etc. Why do they do this? Because it’s good business. Giving your customers and prospects any visual or verbal clues that cause them to be confused about your brand will have, in the long run, a...
read moreThis week in small business: Up your e-commerce game
While there is a lot of good general information in this week’s batch of curated content, I think anyone involved in e-commerce is going to be especially pleased with many of the offerings. Leadership, management, and productivity The best sure-fire way to boost the bottom line is to reduce costs. If you’re into e-commerce, Munira Rangwala’s instant money saving tips will be welcome indeed. Laura Emily Dunn interviews Lisa J. Donahue, Managing Director, AlixPartners, for her Women in Business Q&A series. It was a pile of bad news that ultimately sparked Karen Lynch’s success. Suzanne Bearne tells the story in BBC News. Think you should move your business? Zuckerberg says he wished he would have stayed in Boston. Patrick Riley explores the issue in “Loyalty vs. Location: Why Startup Founders Should Stay Put.” Marketing and sales Anyone involved in e-commerce needs to hear what Armando Roggio has to say about the nine critical content marketing tasks for e-commerce. And how about strategies to keep your e-commerce customers coming back? Lindsay Kent gives us five ways to build e-commerce brand loyalty. The simpler the better and that makes George Stenitzer’s one-page content marketing strategy very appealing. Alfred Lua reveals the 60 marketing tools the guys at Buffer use. I like that Tamanna Mishra focused on B2B companies in her article on 2017 social media trends. Neil Patel is one of the top experts on digital marketing, so you need to read what he has to say about homepage SEO. Writing for Forbes, Brock Blake outlines five ways small business owners can leverage social media for growth. April the Giraffe must have world-class marketing and PR people behind her. Find out how April became an Internet sensation in this article by Tor Constantino. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Discover what you missed this time around and be ready for the end of the next quarter! Read Chris Myers’ Forbes piece, “Three Things That Should Be On Every Entrepreneur’s End-Of-Quarter To-Do List.” Take your elevator pitch to the next level. Check out Peter Economy’s article on how one entrepreneur got Mark Cuban’s attention in a matter of minutes. I give Leah Wald an “A” for writing on a topic that I’ve never seen addressed before: “Determining The Right Amount Of Transparency For Your Startup. The countdown is happening – 10, 9, 8… – so you want to make sure everything is in order. You need Peter Schroeder’s 55 pre-launch tips for your...
read moreAnswer this one question to find the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner
Which would you prefer: To stand back and admire a beautiful wall you had built brick-by-brick, or To imagine what that a beautiful brick wall would look like in an area where the people had never before experienced brick walls? In many important ways, how you respond to that question will embody for you the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner, and where you land on the continuum between the two. As a society, we need people who prefer both of those scenarios. The work involved with each is difficult and requires its own set of skills. There is significant risk along each path. People fail at both. Like risky business? If you take the most pleasure in building something to completion, you shouldn’t feel that you’re any less important than someone who is willing to take greater risks. And, if you’re a big risk taker, don’t feel bad that you usually don’t like to stick around to see projects to their ultimate ends. There are, however, some individuals who relish both aspects of this commercial yin-yang relationship. There are risk takers who are so passionate about a single industry or product that they put everything on the line in the beginning – to get their business going – and continue to invest themselves until the business is fully developed or they come to the end of their career. But, I think that more often the responsibility of long-term growth and management falls to others, making the stories of founders who get booted out all too common. And this brings us to the reason why understanding and appreciating the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner is important. If you currently own a business, or if you are in the process of planning to open a business, what perspective are you working from? Are you planning to get the business going and then position it to sell – or hand over management to someone else – and move on to your next project? Or, do you envision your business to be your life’s work for the foreseeable future or perhaps until retirement? Choosing the right plan How you respond to these questions will have a large impact on the type of business you found and the way you manage it. If you believe that the entrepreneurial route suits your personality best, you need to start a business that comes with a greater degree of risk. Your plan, product, or service needs to be more unique and have a greater “upside” potential. You need to demonstrate that its potential is obtainable, but you don’t have to “carry the ball across the goal line.” Tom Taulli has a good article on Forbes that covers a lot of the essentials for selling a startup. If you want to build a solid small business and stick with it through all of its growth cycles, you don’t need to take as big a risk in the beginning. However, as you work to establish your business and navigate the economic cycles, you will certainly find yourself coping with enough risks to keep you challenged! Here’s another difference: If you’re taking the entrepreneurial route, you would be inclined to make a “go-no-go” decision more quickly. You need to get a minimum...
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