James A. Martin

Last year’s The Lego Movie was a box-office hit. It was also a “100-minute toy commercial” and an “awesome piece of content marketing” for the privately held company that manufactures the colorful plastic bricks. Content marketing, as The Lego Movie illustrates, is not “just about blogging,” said Kevin Mullett, director of visibility and social media […]

YouTube is a powerful marketing channel for small businesses. With a YouTube video or ad you can potentially reach far more viewers than you would with a Super Bowl ad—and at a tiny fraction of the cost. Recording a Google Hangout on Air and posting it to YouTube is an effective, easy way to reach […]

In case you haven’t heard, Facebook designed a version of its social media platform for the business world and dubbed it, aptly enough, Facebook at Work. Will it be a convenient way for small businesses to collaborate using a familiar interface and tools they already know? Or will Facebook at Work be, in columnist Oliver […]

If it’s a new year, it must be time for a new search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, right? Not so fast. Granted, Google updates its search algorithms 500 to 600 times annually, according to SEO consulting company, Moz. Some huge updates, including Panda, Penguin, and more recently, Pigeon, were designed to provide more useful and […]

What do you give someone who seems to have everything—including his or her own business? How about a tile that beeps, a tube that responds to voice commands, or maybe a selfie camera that actually takes great selfies? And that’s just for starters. As a small business owner and an avowed tech weenie, I’ve tried […]

Facebook is the most popular advertising platform among small businesses because it’s easy to target highly specific audiences, and it can help drive targeted traffic to your websites and boost sales. But the return on investment (ROI) from Facebook and other social media advertising can be difficult to track, and it’s easy to waste your […]

At last, there’s an iPhone as big as a Frisbee. The iPhone 6 Plus, with its 5.5-inch screen, finally brought Apple-loving small business folk into the world of big-screen smartphones. But here’s the really ”big” news: The 6 Plus, and to a lesser extent the iPhone 6 (with its 4.7-inch screen), could be large enough […]

I’ve arrived at a point in life when my 11-inch MacBook Air is too bulky for travel (it weighs 2.38 pounds). I want to be as unencumbered as possible when I travel. And yet, I also need to get work done. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of essential gadgets (not […]

Apps keep this mobile world rolling along, and they play a vital role in helping small business owners stay effective and competitive while on the road. With 1.2 million apps in Apple’s iTunes store, there are plenty of unsung heroes—apps that are worth your while, but most likely have escaped your attention. The following are […]

Is the cash register following the fax machine into the Great Technology Graveyard? Without a doubt, the answer is yes—especially for small businesses. Mobile point-of-sale (POS) systems, which combine a credit-card reader that communicates with a smartphone or tablet app, are clearly taking over. Shipments of new mobile POS devices in general are projected to […]

Over the past few years, Google has repeatedly rocked the world of search engine optimization (SEO). In its efforts to provide people the most relevant, spam-free results, the search engine giant has made several major upgrades to its search algorithm. The changes have been dubbed Panda (which punishes low-quality sites), Penguin (which demotes sites that […]

Microsoft’s native Office apps for iPad, long rumored, finally debuted in late March. But are they too little, too late? No, according to many reviewers; the trio of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the iPad “isn’t at all what we expected,” said Engadget. “In fact, it’s a lot better.” Microsoft “built a software suite that […]