Your small business may be running along smoothly, but can it do better?  For small businesses that transmit and receive large files constantly, do you have a fast-enough Internet connection?  For a business that accepts credit cards, again, is your credit card processing machine attached to a dial-up or high-speed Internet connection? Or is your current broadband connection limiting your business potential?

 

You may think it doesn’t matter, but it does.  Internet speed is important in running almost any business today, and the right network will better support the applications you will one day very soon rely on. 

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Guest blog from Camille Ricketts, the lead green technology writer at VentureBeat, the leading online publication covering technology investing.  To learn about Verizon’s green efforts click here.

 

Small businesses have a lot of incentive to adopt greener practices. Consumers are more concerned than ever with how eco-friendly the products and services they use are, and the government is moving fast to institute energy and carbon emissions caps for companies big and small. Most of all, however, “going green” stands to save small businesses a substantial amount of money.

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This spring, small businesses looking for the most value can enjoy fast Internet free (after applied credits on qualifying services) for one-year by signing up for the Verizon total business solution which includes Verizon High Speed Internet, Internet security solutions, 25 GB of online data storage, and unlimited nationwide calling with five of the most popular calling features starting at $53 per month for the first year with a 3-year bundle agreement – a savings of over $300!  Plus, customers signing up for the total business solution get a free standard router Read more...

Morgan Stanley Research has just released a comprehensive Internet Trends research report on the growth of the mobile Internet market and how quickly it’s growing in comparison to the adoption rate for the ‘desktop’ Internet that came of age at the turn of the century.  And, it’s no secret that social networking is driving business advertising in new directions.

 

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From Anita Campbell, founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, an online resource for small businesses.

 

Here are some of the resources that will give you a start to help you build customer loyalty using promotions and amplifying them with social media.  These resources are intended as a companion for the webinar, “Keep Current Customers Loyal: Offer coupons/incentives and do it right so you generate buzz.”

 

 

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Guest blog from Anita Campbell, founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, an online resource for small businesses.

 

The cost of acquiring new customers is “typically three to six times that of retaining existing ones,” says Lawrence Friedman in his book The Channel Advantage.  According to Bain & Company, just a 5% increase in your customer retention rates will increase your average lifetime profits per customer.

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In recent years, small businesses have adopted smartphones like the ubiquitous BlackBerry® to keep in touch with their companies through email, document-sharing and other capabilities once confined to computers. Increasingly, smartphones have become mini-computers and workstations for many, so questions naturally arise about their security features.

 

Media reports have caused some customer concern about the potential for spyware (software that obtains information from a user’s computer) or malware (malicious, harmful software) in wireless devices. So far there only have been a few isolated incidents reported in the United States.

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