I’ll be the first one to admit it – I am a big Apple fan.  I think—and millions of satisfied Mac users would agree—their products are by far the best on the market, and Mac computers beat any PC running windows in both quality and ease of use.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to show you why having an Apple / Mac setup is the easiest and most painless solution for business owners and entrepreneurs on a go.  Below is my personal Apple / Mac setup of devices that work seamlessly with one another.

iMac 24” – The ultimate All-in-one desktop.

I spend most of my time in front of my iMac.  It is the base of my operations.  I do most of my design work, administration, accounting and everything else associated with running a business on my iMac.

Being a graphic designer I need a lot of screen real-estate – the 24” screen on the iMac along with another external  24” monitor provide all the space I need.   By plugging an external USB hard drive to the computer, it feels like I have unlimited storage space, even for editing large movie files.

I can access my iMac and all it’s files via wireless network or—thanks to MobileMe service—even over the internet from anywhere in the world.

To keep my data safe, I use online backup by BackBlaze which automatically backs up content of all my drives to a secure online server.

MacBook Pro – Incredible mobile powerhouse

If you are a business owner, you probably know what it is to be always on-the-go.  I meet with lot of my clients at their premises a notebook has become a necessity.  I use my MacBook Pro for showcasing our design proposals, making final tweaks to client’s websites at sign-offs, browsing internet and responding to emails, when I’m on the road.

I can access the internet anywhere and I don’t even need to have any special USB modem. Just by using my iPhone’s internet tethering option, I can connect my MacBook via to the internet via iPhone.  It all runs over bluetooth so there isn’t even a need for a cable.

Data synchronization

Now the beautiful part about all this – all my key data is synchronized with all the devices I use.  This means I have all my emails (IMAP), contacts, notes, calendars and passwords synchronized (via MobileMe).

I also synchronize all my documents, projects and working files between my iMac and MacBook Pro.  This way I can go to see a client, make any changes to his project on my notebook right on the spot and when I get back to the office, all the changes are automatically mirrored on my big computer.  This works both ways so any changes I may have made on the iMac will get transferred onto the MacBook and any changes I made on the MacBook will get transferred onto the iMac.  (via ChronoSync)

This also means I have all the key data stored on two separate computers. In the event of an unexpected power cut or a hardware failure I can still access all my data and keep my business running.

iPhone

Say what you want but to me iPhone is the best smartphone out there.  If nothing else, the 150,000 apps available for it should be big enough reason to get one.

I use iPhone to quickly check my emails and calendars, make notes on the go, keep in touch on social media or browse the internet when I quickly need to check something and I’m not close to my computer. Because all your contacts, notes, calendars are synchronized with your computer, it really becomes such a handy tool you start wondering how did you ever lived without one.

It can also provide internet access over mobile network for your notebook, without having to sign up for an extra data transfer plan. Connecting notebook to the internet via iPhone takes only a few clicks and is so far the most elegant solution of getting onto the net from anywhere.

Apple Airport Extreme base station

The Airport Extreme base station is an amazing wireless router.  Not only it provides 802.11n dual-band fast wireless network for up to 50 users, it also has an USB port for plugging in your printer or an external hard drive.  This will let you print documents from any room in the house to one central printer or turn a USB hard drive into a shared drive that’s accessible wirelessly on your network and over the Internet.

MobileMe subscription

MobileMe is a service that pushes email, contacts, and calendar events over the air to all your devices. So your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and PC stay in always synchronized.   It is a must-have for any business professional with Mac and iPhone.  Not only it allows you to keep your key data in sync, it also comes with other brilliant features. The one I find most invaluable is the “Find my iPhone” service, which let’s you find your lost iPhone or iPad using GPS. It even let’s you display a message on the lost phone, make it ring, or erase all your data in case it has been stolen.

iPad

With all the hype, I have to mention iPad as well.  Although it is not available in New Zealand at the time of writing this article, I can easily see it as a perfect fit into the computer setup described above.  iPad is perfect for that casual web browsing, reading your favourite blogs over the coffee in the morning, checking email, or replacing your old paper diary and organizer.

It’s small enough to carry around in your briefcase, yet it’s large touch screen offers the developers plenty of real-estate to work with.  We are already seeing some tremendous applications designed specifically for the iPad and—just like it has been with the iPhone—it’s just a matter of time before we’ll be able to find apps for almost any occasion on the iPad.

Google Wave

There is one more tool I’d like to mention. Although it’s not an Apple product, it has similar properties that are behind the success of Apple’s products.   Google Wave is simple, innovative and milestones ahead of anything else we have known so far.  It’s an online tool for real-time collaboration and communication.

I have adopted Google Wave for my business because it makes working on a project and overall communication much simpler than email or phone calls.  It’s perfect when you have more people working on same project, even more if some of the people involved are either on a road or work from remote location.

With Wave, it’s easy to log in from any location, check on the project status, post your own updates or just chat with your colleagues.  One of the many uses I found is to use Wave for taking notes when in the meeting with a client.  My colleague can instantly see all the notes and instructions I’ve written, as well as any file attachments, and she can start working on the project straight away. She can also post her own questions which I can instantly see while in the meeting and address any issues I might have missed, right on the spot. For some businesses, Google Wave can be a perfect free time-saving tool.

Quick summary

Here is a quick summary of my vision of “Perfect Mac Setup”

Use iMac as your desktop computer and as a heart of your operations.

Use MacBook Pro whenever on the go or for working at home.  You could also use your MacBook Pro as your main computer when in the office, simply by plugging it into the Apple 24″ LED Cinema display (any other monitor would work too, but these ones are the best).

Use iPhone for phone calls, quick checking of emails and calendar on the road and to connect your notebook to the internet when no wireless network is available.

Use iPad for reading on the internet, checking and writing emails when not at the computer and as an organizer. I’m sure you would quickly find many other uses for it as well.

Use Apple Airport Extreme as your wireless network router.

Setup your mail server as IMAP to keep all your emails synchronized. IMAP stores all your emails on the server so any changes you make on one computer (marking messages read, moving emails into folders, deleting messages etc…) are automatically reflected on all the devices connecting to the server.

Use MobileMe service to keep your contacts, calendar events, passwords and other settings synchronized between your iMac, MacBook, iPhone and iPad.

Use ChronoSync to keep your data files, documents and working files mirrored between your desktop and notebook. This way you’ll always have all your latest data with you and you don’t have to worry about losing data in case of an unlikely hardware failure.

Use BackBlaze for online backup – it’s cheap and it automatically backs up all your files onto a remote server.

Use Google Wave when communicating with your team on a project or in cases that usually required a lot of emailing back and forth. It could very well save you a lot of time.

The above setup and solution is what I found to be working best for myself and my team. I think it shows how seamlessly Apple products work with one another – it plays a big part in why I recommend Apple products to anyone I think would benefit from owning one.

I hope this post will help you make things easier for yourself. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on the topic.

What did you find as a best computer solution working for you?

Your website may very well be the most powerful marketing tool at your disposal. Not only it is your point of contact on the web and the place for your clients and prospects to find out information, but your website also has a huge impact on your prospects’ purchase decision. In fact a whopping 97% of the 200 surveyed buyers—from companies of all sizes—say a provider’s website has an influence on their ultimate purchase decision.

The survey was conducted by RainToday.com and included more than 200 buyers responsible for more than $1.7 billion in professional services purchased, such as accounting and financial consulting; architecture, engineering, and construction services; human resources consulting; IT consulting and services; legal services; management consulting; marketing, advertising, and public relations; and training services.

The influence of professional services websites on purchasing decisions has increased significantly over the past four years. According to the survey, 74% of buyers report the provider’s website holds at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider. This is 23 percentage points higher than in 2005 and represents a significant increase in the importance of websites.

It’s clear that having a good, well established website that delivers results is vital for professional services firms. With more and more of our daily activities conducted online, having a good website could be the key to success for many businesses.

With a well performing website you can:

• Establish that you are professional: through professional design, writing, and arrangement of content.
• Establish that you are worthy of consideration: through an overview of your services, your client list, biographies of your professionals, and case studies that show how your helped clients.
• Establish yourself as an authority: through blog posts, publications, videos, and other resources to help build credibility, reliability, and trust. All of these are essential elements necessary to win clients and increase your sales.

Should you start a business blog on your website?

What can a blog do for your business?

A blog is a great and easy way to promote your business. Studies have shown us time and time again businesses that do blog have clear advantage over their competitors. To sum the most obvious benefits having a business blog will help your search engine rankings, increase your website traffic, generate more leads from your website and improve your brand visibility.

A quick introduction to blogging

The word blog is derived from the term “web log”. It is a platform for easy publishing of content. A website that’s part online journal and part open forum. Sometimes blog readers can post their reactions to blog posts and other readers can then add their two cents to those comments, thereby continuing the dialogue.

A few facts and statistics

Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors.

The so-called blogosphere contains blogs on practically every conceivable topic. Every day there are over 900,000 new blog posts. Technorati – a blog search engine – has indexed over 133,000,000 blogs since 2002.

More important for business owners are the business blogging statistics. According to HubSpot – an internet marketing company – businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages in search engines.

In a study done by marketing research company MarketingSherpa, businesses have found blogs to be 4th most important tool in generating new sales leads. But enough with the numbers and let’s look at the actual benefits of having a business blog.

Benefits of having a business blog

There are so many benefits it seems almost insane not to have a blog these days. Here are just a few reasons why having a blog is good for your business.

1. Create great content

Content is the king! By having a blog you can provide your readers with relevant information that’s related to your industry and products and keep them informed about the latest news. If you publish new posts on a regular basis your readers and customers will keep coming back to your website and they will always think of you first when they need your services again.

2. Search engines love blogs – having a blog will help your search engine rankings.

Search engines just love blogs because they offer a large amount of text content that is updated and added to on a regular basis. Because your posts are relevant to your field, you are generating invaluable content filled with the right keywords you need to rank high in searches, just by posting articles. As other people start linking to your blog posts your website will be accuring the all important inbound links from other relevant websites. As at end of 2009 inbound links and good content are the two most imporant factors in search engine rankings. Blog is an easy, cost effective way to get your business visible at the top when people search for your niche.

3. Demonstrate your expertise

By sharing your knowledge about your industry or services over a period of time you to demonstrate your expertise in your field. Blogging builds your credibility with your readers and potential clients. Your audience will have confidence in you as they can see that your are knowlegeable about your particular industry or product.

4. Low cost marketing – it only costs your time

Blogging is effective low-cost marketing. It doesn’t take much to add a blog to your website or you can use one of many free blogging services like Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger.  Once you have setup your blog the only investment required is your time.  Get in the habit of posting blog updates regularly and the benefits you start getting back in return will amaze you.

5. Connect with your audience on personal level

A blog gives you an incredible opportunity to be yourself and communicate with your audience on a more personal level. Most of the materials found on today’s websites is formal and impersonal. People are looking to make a personal connection with those they do business with.

Imagine this: your potential customer is looking at yours and your competitor’s website. He needs to decide who is he going to call first. Who do you think he’s going to pick? Naturally he will call first to the person he feels more connected to. Your blog will help you make this connection and nudge your potential customers to give you a call first.

6. Increase your brand awareness

A blog gives you a great opportunity to buld up your brand awareness. The more a customer hears your name, the bigger chance of remembering it. By connecting your blog with social bookmarking and social networking sites like Digg, Redit, Stumpleupon, Twitter or Facebook you also spread your influence into areas of potential customers you would not be able to target otherwise.

7. Increase the number of leads and sales through your website

Building up brand awareness goes hand in hand with increased sales. As indicated by Business Weeks’ Olga Kharif in “Blogging for Business”, Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems disovered his blog was a gold mine when his sales people started reporting they were selling deals faster to the readers of his blog. Blog also gives you an opportunity to mention your latest special deals and promotions in a more casual form than your main website.

8. Develop relationships with other bloggers

Once you get into your blogging routine you will discover there are other bloggers like you with similar goals and interests. Start promoting them and they will promote you in return. The whole blogosphere is built of connections and there are thousands of bloggers helping each other out every day.

9. Blog is a central element for online interaction with your customers

Source: BetterBusinessBlogging.com

Your blog will become a central place for all your other online interaction with customers and prospects. Even if you use other channels like Twitter or YouTube to engage with your followers, blog will allow you to bring all of your online activities together. In his brilliant post “Treat your Blog as your online home” Mark White says:

A blog, however, allows a business to bring all of these other elements together, creates a focal point for a community of customers, provides the company with its own social network hub whatever else goes on in the market and allows it to expand on the information disseminated on Twitter, YouTube or iTunes.

10. Develop library of marketing materials

This benefit of a business blog is often not mentioned. As you post your articles and updates you will over time generate an extensive library of marketing materials you can use elsewhere.  Need to print a new brochure for upcoming show or mailbox drop? Look into your blog archives – chances are you will already have some information in your blog therefore saving you time otherwise needed to write new copy for your brochure.

Keep it useful…

Ultimately blog can be a low cost, easy to use, highly effective marketing tool for differentiating your business from the competition and increasing customer loyalty.  All that’s required to run a successful small business blog is commitment, creativity, most importantly, keeping your blog useful for your readers.

Many business owners face the same problem as you do – you know you should spend some time to work on promoting your business but there is always something else that needs to be done instead. It doesn’t go away either. Once you have dealt with one thing, something else pops up. By the end of the day, all the good intentions you had to work on your blog, marketing materials or website are never put to action.

You probably know you should update your website on a regular basis. You are aware that all the studies prove businesses that do blog have significantly higher number of visitors and incoming links.

So what can you do to keep your business running and find time to publish at least one post or article a week?

1. Find inspiration
   The best way to write good article fast is to have a clear idea what are you going to write about. There are a number of resources you could use to get you going. Chris Brogan has published a list of blog topics to get you unstuck (here and here) which I always find to be a tremendous help.
2. Collect ideas
   I also keep a running list of possible blog topics I could write about as a note on my phone. I have it always handy and keep adding to it every time an idea pops into my head. This list became a great tool I use whenever I’m stuck and can’t think of a new blog topic to tackle.
3. Plan your time
   Set aside some time for working on your writing, updating your website or working on your newsletter. Unless you have a set time to do these tasks you will just keep on postponing them. My initial goal was to spend half an hour every day on working on my own website but now I found out it works out better for me to set aside half a day block once a week to work on my blog and inbound marketing articles.

   Choose whichever works for you – be it a set amount of time every day or just half a day on the weekend, but you will need to stick to it.

4. Get on with it.
   Just go ahead and start blogging, post new content on your website, write up an email newsletter. Anything you do will be better than doing nothing. Your website is far more likely to succeed if you publish one average article a week than one finely polished post a month. It’s the frequency and the momentum that counts.

I can almost guarantee if you stick to these few simple rules you will be on a surefire way to improving your website visitor traffic, page rank and increasing sales your website sales.

Where do you find time for blogging and creating new content?

Everybody makes mistakes sometime.  It’s how we deal with them what makes all the difference. This article explains a little bit what to do when you make mistake and what steps to take to turn a unhappy and frustrated client into satisfied and loyal one.

I’ll be the first one to admit I make mistakes like everybody else.  Most of the time they are small and easily fixed but once in a few years comes the odd cock-up that really sends a client spinning.  Based on my personal experience, here is what to do when you have a client who’s angry and frustrated because you made a mistake.

1)  Apologize
“I am sorry” should be the first thing you say in situation like this, even if you think you are in right. If you are being wrongly accused, you will sort it later.

2)  Investigate
Find out what exactly happened. Make sure you have all the facts and you know where did things go pear-shaped. If you indeed find you made a mistake acknowledge it.  Honesty, humility and genuine effort to fix the problem is the best approach when it comes to these unpleasant situations.

3)  Fix the problem
Once you found out what went wrong, fix whatever can be fixed.  It is important you are proactive and offer viable solution your client is happy with. If it only requires your time and minimal expenses on your part you might get through fairly unscathed. Sometimes you’ll just have to bite the bullet and spend some extra money to fix the problem, but it is still better than the alternative of having unhappy client in the wild, damaging your reputation.

4)  Offer some compensation
Ok, you apologized, you fixed what was wrong, let’s offer some form of compensation to make up for the damage caused.  We’re not necessarily talking financial compensation, that should be the last item on the list, but rather a free service or a product as a gesture of good will.  If you can offer something that is low cost to you but has a high perceived value even better.  Of course you don’t have to offer anything but if you do, it shows you really care and you want to make things right. In most cases you will be on the right track to a happy ending by now.  There might still be a bit of hidden bitterness on both sides about the whole situation, but you should be able to shake hands and leave satisfied with the outcome.

5)  Follow up
Make sure to follow up on the case with your client. Give him a ring in two weeks time to find out if everything goes as you agreed to. Let him know you care and that he is important to you.  Describe what steps are you taking to make sure the problem gets resolved properly and if there are any holdups, make sure the client understands why they occurred.  Also let him know when everything has been resolved to put his mind at ease.

6)  Follow up again
That’s right, follow up on the case again in three months time. Just to say hello and to make sure the client has no other problems with your product or service.

You should follow the 90 day rule and keep in touch at least once every three months anyway. Anything longer that that and your clients will forget about you.  The best way to keep in touch is either by phone call or just by sending our regular monthly newsletter. You might be surprised how much extra business you can pick up just by reminding people you’re there for them.

This should be it. Of course there is no guarantee the steps described above will work for everybody but I believe in most cases it will. If you keep humble attitude and show you really care and want to make things right, most clients will give you a fair go.  Funnily enough you might even came out with better relationship with the client than before because you get to communicate more and he can see you are doing everything you can for him.

There is another benefit of making things right – if you keep your client loyal, you still have a bit of control over what he says about you.  However if you parted ways and he left, you now have an unhappy client telling everybody how he wasn’t pleased with your service. And because he doesn’t want to talk to you, you have no way of convincing him otherwise.

The bottom line is – be human, be humble, show that you care.

What do you do when problems arise?

A couple of years ago I went to a local networking event. Instead of the usual mix and chitchat type, this one had a goal to help business owners solve particular issues they were having. People gathered around a table, each presented a problem he was dealing with at the time and the rest of the group pitched in ideas on how to solve it.

Although it has been some time now, I still remember some of the discussion. One of the issues presented at the meeting was: “how do I stop being used for information?”

This was an issue an owner of local travel agency was facing. Apparently people would come to her office, find out what the best deals on flights are and then book the tickets from home to avoid paying agency fees.

I could see her frustration over this – in her mind she was giving away free advice and was getting nothing in return.

I didn’t know nearly as much about inbound marketing back then as I do now. Thinking back about this, I don’t see this as a problem at all. If anything I believe it’s a good thing if people come in for information. It means they see you as an authority in your field and respect you enough to come ask for advice.

The question shouldn’t be “How to stop  people from using me for information?”; the question should be “How can I provide free information to as many people as possible?”

By providing with valuable information free of charge, you not only help people out but you also build trust and respect by your potential clients. People are far more likely to spend money with someone who they trust or who helped them in the past. If you help your customers now, you are “paying it forward” for them to come back to you later.

Sure there will be a few tire kickers around who will just try to get all the free advice and go elsewhere in search of cheaper deal. But there will also be those, who will come back to you because they trust you and they want to spend money with you, even if you charge more than your competition.

There is also the whole SEO aspect to providing free information on your website. Every extra page that you publish on your site, every bit of information counts towards your web page ranking. On the web the content is the king and the more content you have, the better chance you have of ranking higher in search engines that your competitors.

So in short, please give away lots of free advice because providing free information:

• Increases your credibility.
• Helps to build trust by your customers.
• Encourages people to come to you later.
• Builds positive image for you and your brand.
• Helps building your brand awareness.
• Increases sales.
• Improves your website’s SEO and search engine rankings

I can speak for myself that this approach truly works. Usually if someone comes to me for an advice I try to help as much as possible, without worrying about the immediate cost. I found people usually come back when they are ready to move forward and get a website designed. It may take them six months to ring me back, but they usually do. And they tell their friends I did help them out so the message gets spread around, bringing more clients without doing costly advertising.

What’s your take?  Do you give away free advice to your clients?

It’s amazing how business to business fundamentals are the same now as they were fifty years ago. While the times change, businesses change, technologies change, the basics of B2B marketing don’t. While we have new technologies and tools available, it’s still about relationships. This short, well acted gig speaks for itself.

Link to original video on YouTube – B2B marketing fundamentals don’t change.

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog.

I’m really thrilled that as a first post I can start with a huge giveaway and a great opportunity for anyone who needs a website build or re-designed.

I run a web design studio called Digital Arts and as a small business owner I know too well times are tough for many of us.  I also believe the best way we can all get ahead is by helping each other out. That’s why me and my team came up with the following offer:

Every other month, we would like to build a whole new website for one business completely free of charge.

This includes:

• a customized professional design
• content management system
• free hosting for one year
• SEO
• Email marketing software
• website statistics
• tips on how to make most of your website.

So I’m not talking some cheap, three page website – this is a real deal. To quantify the value of this offer I can say that at the moment my company sells this package for about 2,500 USD. In saying that the value can be relative – I have seen some of my competitors charging twice as much for similar deal so it depends who you talk to.

Anyone can sign up for either a new website or a website makeover.  To keep things transparent and fair we will shortlist the candidates at the end of each round to about 10 who we think deserve it the most and then run a public poll to select the final winner.  This way you decide who should win.

There are no hidden costs and nobody has to purchase anything from us to be eligible to win.

I really hope this offer will be well received.  I’d like to support the business community as much as I can and at this moment this is the best way I can do that.  I plan on running the free makeover initiative for as long as there is an interest in it.  This means if you have missed out, you can always sign up for another round.

I appreciate everyone’s help in spreading the word – after all the more people hear about this, the more businesses me and my team can help out.

My question to you is:

a)  If you are a small business or a startup entrepreneur, would you be interested in this?   If you are, why not register at http://www.websitemakeoverproject.com

b)  Would you be willing to spread the word for us on your favorite social network?  Or do you have any ideas how to let the business world know about this initiative? Please let me know your thoughts.

Check out the Free Website Makeover at http://www.websitemakeoverproject.com

Many thanks to everyone and I welcome all comments.

All the best,
Michal