Small Business Computing Staff

–Written by the Small Business Computing Staff It’s time to pick a gift for your favorite small business owner (even if it’s you). You could go the office superstore gift card route (boring!), but this holiday season why not give the entrepreneur in your life a gift that lasts longer than a lunchtime errand? We’ve […]

By Lawton Ursrey If you want to grow your small business, at some point you need to delegate to other people. The problem is that when you don’t need help, you’re not looking for it. And when you do, you need it yesterday and you don’t have time to find the very best people for […]

Click, click and poof—you’re open for business. In the Internet age, it can seem just that easy to start a small business.  Entrepreneurs can access a variety of information and small business IT resources that make it easy to transform an idea into the next big thing.  And it’s easy to see the appeal—from Groupon […]

By Harry Brelsford Alright already, I heard you. You “hate eight,” and you don’t even want to consider Windows 8 as a replacement OS after April 8, 2014 when Microsoft stops all support for Windows XP. Windows 8 represents an enormous paradigm shift, and the consensus I hear from many small business owners goes something […]

—By Lawton Ursrey Are you really as productive as you could be? There’s only so much time in the day, and no matter how much time you put into your business it never seems like it’s enough. But maybe your problem isn’t that you don’t have enough time—maybe it’s that you’re using the time you […]

Editor’s note: On April 8, 2014, Microsoft plans to shut down product support for Windows XP, Office 2003 or Windows Small Business Server 2003. Harry Brelsford, founder of SMBNation, is an expert on the coming change. In the coming months, Harry will offer his insight and advice on what small businesses need to know about […]

Is micromanagement the bane of your existence? You know what I’m talking about—that overbearing, in-the-minutia manager that makes you dread coming to work each day. We’ve all had at least one in our careers. You may have one on your team now or, even worse, be one yourself. Of course, micromanagement is no laughing matter. […]

By Tamara Weintraub Most small business owners understand how important it is to invest in online lead generation, and they use a range of tactics including search advertising, email marketing, retargeting and more. But according to research commissioned by InsideSales, 55 percent of companies don’t respond to new sales leads at all. Why don’t small […]

— Janine Popick Whether you’re in sales or marketing, you’re pretty much trained to talk about how awesome your product or service is and why people should buy it. Always be closing, as they say. Well, what if you stop selling and instead be genuinely, honestly helpful? Members of our content marketing team recently attended […]

In the eyes of many small business owners, moving all or part of their small business IT to the cloud can be a daunting task.  Yet recent trends such as bring-your-own-device (BYOD), the consumerization of IT and the strong correlation between technology and business outcomes, have sparked a movement to cloud-based solutions across all industries […]

— By Tamara Weintraub, content marketing manager, ReachLocal When it comes to online search, about 85 percent of clicks go to organic links on the search engine results. It’s more important than ever for your small business to appear on the first page of the search engine results page, whether consumers are searching for product […]

Small business owners handle a mountain of pressing tasks every day, anything from accounting and project tracking, to troubleshooting and meeting deliverables. Despite that mountain, it’s important not to lose sight of what matters most — your customers.  Every customer is different, with his or her own unique needs and objectives. It’s important to listen […]