Twitter birdie on tree image

These entrepreneurs use Twitter to communicate their unique perspectives. Follow their tweets and learn from the big players. I hope you enjoy the article.

ttp://mashable.com/2009/10/29/entrepreneurs-twitter-follow/

Claudia Walliman

New Imac Computer image

Although the new iMac has been improved in many respects, Apple – as usual – keeps the price of the basic machine in £949; the same cost of the basic model for the previous generation.

In the top models of the iMac line, it will be possible to incorporate QuadCore processors, 16GB of RAM and hard drives up to 2TB (approximately 2.000 “gigs”). Significant cosmetic changes are incorporated into the new iMac, with the back and the base of the computer, formerly of black plastic, in aluminium finish, slightly thinner.

In the initial setup – 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM, graphics card ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB and 1 TB of storage – the new iMac 27 “is priced around £1,599.

These all-in-one will come from factory with embedded wireless accessories, and those wishing to use the bigger keyboard (with numeric keys) will have to order directly from the Internet store, a move not liked for those who prefer Wired keyboard with its convenient USB port and complete set of numeric and shift keys.

The most popular computers from Steve Jobs, the “Macbook White” – so successful that the market took its big brother, the version made of aluminum – also went through a microscope for a “total re-engineering.

In appearance, Apple’s engineers devised a carcass “unibody”- in one piece – slightly more rounded, and incorporated the glass trackpad, significantly larger than the equivalent of a conventional notebook and enables the “multitouch” that hitherto exclusive to the very expensive model MacBook Pro and Air.

New Apple MacBook image

For around £799, that until recently bought a Macbook with 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and 2.13 GHz processor, you will be able to purchase a laptop with 2 GB of RAM (two modules of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM), a slightly higher processor and 50% more storage.

We’re looking forward to getting hold of one of these new iMacs, have you already got one?

Michael Gomez

‘The Techy Guy’ at Marketing for Small Businesses Ltd

New Apple Magic Mouse image

As had been rumored, the Cupertino company announces its new mouse, the “Magic Mouse”, which replaces the Mighty Mouse, an accessory that has been vehemently criticized for sacrificing usability in exchange for a cute design. The major failing of the Mighty Mouse – one of the most expensive in the market, is the tiny area that performs the “scroll” function – just a few months of use are enough before the piece requires constant cleaning, as grease and dust settle on the delicate scroll mechanism. On several occasions, the wear of this mechanism impacted on the ability of the mouse click, disabling the expensive accessory.
Apple seems to want to redeem themselves with the new Magic Mouse, whose design completely eliminates the mechanism of the sphere and the style of the new BlackBerry Tour, uses an optical sensor to detect movements. The news, however, has been met with skepticism from some consumers, who are accustomed to poor performance by Apple when it comes to design and manufacture of mice that can run correctly for a reasonable period of time.
The new mouse will work wirelessly via Bluetooth, with rechargeable batteries, and allow the use of “multitouch” like those Apple presented on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and soon after on their notebooks trackpads.

The Magic Mouse will be on shelves later this month with a price of around £55.

Don’t forget to bookmark this article if you liked it!

A demonstration video of the Magic Mouse can be watched here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgiGd53jg2U

by Michael Gomez

The ‘Techy Guy’ at Marketing for Small Businesses Ltd

Last June during their IO 2009 meeting Google announced the development of a technology that might change the way we communicate and collaborate through the web.

This technology, presented under the name WAVE was developed by the same people who created Google Maps and a support team in Sydney, Australia, and is described by their creators as “what email would be if it was to be created today”

Email was created 40 years ago as a communication tool that only was capable of handling text. As technology advanced, new types of information were incorporated to the daily exchange such as images, audio and video; however, email programs managed to handle these new requirements in a very efficient way.

Today evolution has brought new mechanisms for communication that people use in their daily lives besides email. In fact, technologies such as instant messaging, chat, cell phones, etc, are used as alternate – complementary – non related tools to attend our communication needs.

Wave will present an integrated solution to these needs by offering a mechanism where they will interact under a natural platform. In fact, their creators describe it as a communications platform that will handle instant messaging, group or private conversations, documents exchange, documents collaboration, wiki type site building and more.  In a few words, just what you actually do with email plus several other programs and sites, joined in a single and simple window; managed by the browser of your choice, without installing any program on your PC and from any operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc).

If this description has not amazed you yet then here are some more details that will be integrated in the product:

-       Online spelling dictionary with predictive text capacity.

-       Live transmitting of every word/character of your message.

-       Search tool to embed web search capacity in the conversation ‘Searchy’ feature.

-       Drag and drop contacts into the wave.

-       Play back feature, which allows you to keep track of the history of each wave from creation to last input in movie motion.

-       Create group albums by dragging and dropping the participants photos into the wave.

-       Embed the whole wave into a blog ‘Bloggy’ feature.

-       Discussion and content collaboration capacity, ideal for planning your projects, trips, events, etc.

-       International language input method.

-       Live editing.

-       ‘Yes, No, Maybe’ gadget to organise responses.

-       Twitter capacity ’Twave’ – a Wave of tweets.

-       Insert a Google map by highlighting a location name in your Wave. Add comments and markers to your map and use the polygon tool to highlight specific areas.

-       My very favourite!!!!! ‘Instant translation to 40 languages if any of the parties does not speak your language’.

In summary, its an email + chat + instant messaging + document collaboration + document sharing and editing + translation tool + online dictionary + more, more… much more! All integrated in a single window.

The product will be released by the end of this year. The effects this will have in the way people communicate is not easy to predict, but as we see it, two things look clear from now:

Our current email communication will become obsolete. Group integration will be enforced, as the language barriers no longer will be a limitation.

Want to add your own prediction? Please send us your comments on this post and remember to ‘Bookmark it’ if you liked it.

Michael Gomez

‘The Techy Guy’ at Marketing for Small Businesses

For a more detailed description visit http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

‘Outsourcing has always had the good and the bad associated to it, but the success of outsourcing all over the developed world has proven beyond doubt, that the volume of the pros associated with outsourcing overpower the cons to a great extent. Latest in the field of outsourcing is the concept of “virtual marketing departments”.

Wondering what these are? Well, just like any other outsourcing job, virtual marketing departments take care of all your marketing needs and strive to make your startup/established business a success in the online world. Right from branding to developing market strategies and getting leads and tackling the media etc., these departments know all the tricks of the trade and the best part is that they help you save a lot of time that you otherwise would have wasted on doing each of these things on your own.

You might put a question to me at this juncture- why outsource when I can hire people and see them formulate plans in front of my eyes? Well, I understand your apprehensions about outsourcing your marketing job to a third party virtual department, but in doing so, you are entitling yourself to a hoard of benefits. First up, you don’t pay these virtual departments on an on-going basis. Rather, you pay them only for the work they do. On the other hand, if you had a dedicated marketing system set up for your company, you would have had to pay them a fixed salary and compensation packages, irrespective of the kind of work they are doing. In outsourcing, therefore, you tend to save at least two quarters worth of money that you would have paid your local marketing department.

Besides, you would also have incurred the cost of setting up the office, telephone connections, health benefits, worker’s comp etc. for your dedicated marketing department, while this is not the case with virtual marketing departments. Virtual departments have their own infrastructure set up and all you have to do is pay them and put your idea across, without worrying about anything else. So, what are you waiting for? Just outsource your work to a virtual marketing department and give yourself complete peace of mind.

Another point to consider is that if you hired a local in-house marketing department, you would need to train them to do the tasks you need. This takes time and expertise which you may not have, and the benefit of having a Virtual Marketing Department will free up your time and stress of wondering how to get your marketing going.’

For more information on our Virtual Marketing Department (VMD) Service please call us on:

01202-233262

or emails us to hello@marketing-for-smallbusinesses.co.uk

Extracted from http://ezinearticles.com/?Outsourcing-Tips-For-a-Small-Business-Virtual-Marketing-Department&id=3017036

The Finland government just introduced this week law projects that will guarantee Internet access as a constitutional right.  This means a milestone on the tech history; an example that surely will be followed by other countries.

In 2004 Estonia pronounced a similar law but Finland’s government wants to go beyond the mere right to internet access: They also guarantee Broad Band Access to everyone living in the country. Indeed, starting July 2010 people are entitled to a 1 Mbps connection right (about the standard today), but this speed will be systematically increased as technology advances allows to do so.  Estimations calculate that by 2015 a 100 Mbps transmission rate will be the guaranteed right !!!.

100 Mbps are about 12 MB per second. In plain words, your PC, Laptop or any other device suitable to this type of communication could be transmitting or receiving the information contained 12 times in Romeo & Juliet every second.

The impact on daily life, social and commercial relationships and business is not hard to imagine. Just think of all the information (documents, transactions, audio, images, video, etc.) that can not be transmitted online today due to its size and you will have a pretty good idea of the first limitations that are to disappear; and, as usual with technological advances, the list will grow and grow.

Sources:

http://brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/14/today-it-is-a-good-day-for-making-a-history-well-done-finland!.aspx

http://europe.rights.apc.org/c_rpt/finland.html

Follow Mfsb]]> http://marketing-for-smallbusinesses.co.uk/blog/finland-makes-history-on-the-internet/feed/ 0 http://marketing-for-smallbusinesses.co.uk/blog/how-to-identify-and-deal-with-different-types-of-clients/ http://marketing-for-smallbusinesses.co.uk/blog/how-to-identify-and-deal-with-different-types-of-clients/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:26:47 +0000 admin http://marketing-for-smallbusinesses.co.uk/?p=1242 My friend, who owns an IT Technical Support company and deals with many different types of clients, sent me this article which he found in Smashing Magazine. I found it very interesting, I hope you do too… By the way, check out our latest Start Up Business Package.

In business, being able to read people and quickly get a sense of who you’re dealing with is an invaluable skill. It turns your encounter with a client into an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the upcoming project and how it will need to be handled. It is one of the building blocks of a professional relationship.

In today’s digital age, the arena has shifted to the Web, and the online office space that most freelancers inhabit limits personal interaction. Though sussing out a client’s personality via online communication is difficult, it still remains an invaluable tool in your arsenal.

In the freelancing field, you will encounter a range of client types. Being able to identify which you are dealing with allows you to develop the right strategy to maximize your interactions with them, and it could save your sanity. Below is a list of the most common personality types and the tell-tale signs that will tip you off.

The Passive-Aggressive

This is the client who is very passive when you ask for initial input, but when you submit the finished product, they aggressively attack it, demanding a lot of detailed changes, both major and minor. They had an idea of what they wanted all along but kept it mostly to themselves. Even though they showed appreciation of certain ideas and elements throughout the development process, do not expect the passive-aggressive client to keep any of them as they send revisions your way.

Identifying Characteristics

• Communication is mostly one-sided and unhelpful during project development.
• Makes statements such as:
  • “I’m not really sure what we’re looking for.”
  • “Just do something that would appeal to us generally.”
  • “You totally missed the point of what we wanted.”

How to Deal

Patience is the key. Expecting the last-minute requests for revisions may soften the blow of the client’s aggressive behavior. Keep your original layered design intact so that you can easily refine and change it later (not that you wouldn’t, but it does happen). Also, make sure your contract specifies a limited number of revisions.

The Family Friend

This is the client whom you have known for years either through personal or family interaction, and this connection has landed you the job. The relationship will be tested and perhaps marred forever by what could very well be a nightmare of a project. This family friend believes he deserves a “special” price and unbridled access to your work. They will sometimes unwittingly belittle your work or not take it seriously because of their personal connection to you.

Identifying Characteristics

• These clients are easy to identify because… well, you know them.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “Could you just throw something together for me?”
  • “I don’t want you to think that just because I know you I want you to cut me a deal.”
  • “You’re going to charge me what?! But we go way back!”

How to Deal

The way to deal with this client depends on how well you know them and how much you value your relationship with them. But remember that anyone who would take advantage of such a relationship is not truly a friend, so respond accordingly. An honest approach could end up saving the relationship. But start off with a professional, not personal, tone, and they may follow your lead. Of course, if you truly value the relationship, you may want to pass on the job altogether.

The Under-Valuer

Like the family friend described above, this client will devalue your creative contributions. But there is a difference: you do not actually know this person. There is no rationale for their behavior. They feel they should get a “friend’s” pricing rate not because they want to be friends with you, but because they do not see your work as being worth that much… even if they couldn’t do it themselves. Not coming from a creative background or even having had exposure to the arts can mar someone’s appreciation of the work that you do. After years in our field, we make it look easy, and that is what the under-valuer sees.

Identifying Characteristics

• Does not respond to questions in a timely fashion.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “It’s not like it takes much effort on your part.”
  • “Couldn’t you just throw something together for me?”
  • “How hard can this really be?”

How to Deal

Confidence is key here. You know what your work demands and how well you do your job. The under-valuer will recognize this confidence. Don’t back down or concede a point to the client when discussing your role in the project. Standing firm will establish the professional and respectful tone you deserve. If the client does not respond in kind, cut your losses and decline their project.

The Nit-Picker

This client is never fully satisfied with the work you do and will constantly pick on minor details here and there that they dislike and want changed. Do not be surprised if they ask you to change these same details over and over ad nauseam. It is not a sign of disrespect (as it is with the other clients), but simply the nature of the person. They may have been burned in some other project and are now unsatisfied with everything in their path, including your work.

Identifying Characteristics

• Complains almost consistently about unrelated things.
• Personal outlook comes with a scathing bite.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “How hard is it to [fill in the blank with any rant]?”
  • “I’m really not sure about this element here. It just doesn’t pop!”
  • “I don’t think you are really getting it.”

How to Deal

Once again, patience is important (especially if you have some sadistic reason for taking on nit-picking clients). Try to detach yourself from the project as much as possible, so that the constant nit-pickery does not affect you personally. It is easy to feel hurt or get defensive when your work is repeatedly questioned, and you may begin to doubt your skill. But understand that this is not about you or your talent; it is simply a personality trait of the person you are dealing with. And once again, protect yourself in the contract.

The Scornful Saver

This client has similarities to the nit-picker and under-valuer but is actually impressed with your work and skill set. The criticize you merely to undermine your confidence in an attempt to lower your pricing rate. Unlike some other client types, the scornful saver understands creative people and their processes. But they are cheap and manipulative, and their scheme may have worked in their favor once or twice in the past. So, they continue to subtly abuse the people they hire in the hope of saving every last penny.

Identifying Characteristics

• Compliments always come with a less-than-flattering qualifier.
• Takes time to respond to questions, sometimes making you ask more than once.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “I really like what you’ve done overall, but I’m unsure about one or two things.”
  • “You may not have gotten exactly what we’re looking for, but you’re close.”

How to Deal

Once again, it is all about confidence. Having a solid understanding of your field and being confident in your knowledge and abilities will keep this client’s manipulation in check. Standing your ground and even calling the client on some of their tactics could shift the balance of power over to you. Be prepared to walk away from the project if the disrespect and manipulation continues. There will be other projects and other clients.

The “I-Could-Do-This-Myself”-er

Where to begin… When this client farms a project out to you, they make clear to you that they know how to do what they’re hiring you to do but that just don’t have the time to actually do it. They may be working at a firm or an entrepreneur; either way, you are there to pick up their slack. If they’re at a firm, you could be in for an interesting situation; they were likely hired for their particular style and proposals, and now you will have to please two sets of people: the person who hired you and the people who hired him.

Identifying Characteristics

• Will generally be (or look) hectic and rushed.
• Communication from them often takes the form of short bursts of information.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “I could easily handle this if my schedule weren’t so full.”
  • “Really? Not sure that’s the direction I would’ve gone in, but whatever.”
  • “Remember, you are filling my shoes, and they’re pretty big.”

How to Deal

The “I-Could-Do-This-Myself”-er will likely have recognized your talent and skill right away, which is why they hired you. They merely want you to know that this project (and thus you) is not above their ability. And though these reminders will grate on you periodically, they will let you run with your ideas, perhaps offering suggestions or feedback on the final design.

The Control Freak

This client desperately needs to micro-manage every little detail of the project, no matter their qualifications. No decision may be made without their explicit input and approval. This tiresome client forces himself into your workflow, heedless of either invitation or protest, and will demand access to you at whim. The concepts of boundaries and strict work processes are easily lost on the control freak, who constantly disrupts the flow. They may also believe you lack dedication or preparedness, further reinforcing their need to interfere.

Identifying Characteristics

• Initial contact is long, detailed and one-sided, with little input sought from you.
• Your input remains unsought as the project pushes forward.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “This way we can keep in contact 24/7 in case you have any questions, or I do.”
  • “I really know best what is right for the project and what is not.”
  • “What do you mean, I’m distracting you? I am the only thing keeping this project on track!”

How to Deal

If you absolutely must take on this client, for whatever reason, resign yourself to the fact that you will not be steering at any point. You will have to detach yourself from the work because you will have no control at all. You will merely be constructing, not designing, so just let go and let it happen. You may want to exclude this project from your portfolio.

The Dream Client

This client, widely dismissed as a myth, does in fact exist and understands the full scope and artistry of your work. They value your role and creative contributions and want you in the driver’s seat as soon as the project gets underway. They are timely with responses and payments… payments that they did not “negotiate” but rather accepted for what they are. They reflect on your suggestions and have confidence in your capabilities.

Identifying Characteristics

• Is enthusiastic about the project and your involvement in it.
• Communication shows awareness of and respect for your role.
• Makes such statements as:
  • “Here’s the brief we prepared. The rest is pretty much up to you.”
  • “We like what we’ve seen and trust you’ll do great things for us.”

How to Deal

Don’t brag! Just enjoy the ride and hold on to them for as long as you possibly can!

Wrap-up

Being able to identify the type of client you are dealing with will prepare you for the job ahead. It will also help you decide whether to accept the job in the first place. Your contract will reflect the power dynamics of the project, so the more you know about the client, the better able you will be to adjust the contract as necessary. Have you come across other types of clients in your freelancing career? Please let us know in the comments.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/15/identifying-and-dealing-with-different-types-of-clients/By Robert Bowen, October 15th, 2009