Computer Service Business Success And The Need To Focus

Do you own a computer service business that needs better marketing results? Many computer consultants start out thinking the home user, or B2C (Business to Consumer) market is the right place to be; but they quickly realize the difficulty of making a profit as a one-person (maybe two-person) operation catering to the needs of home users. If you own a computer service business that wants to provide solutions to small businesses, you need to realize that there are a lot of different types of small businesses out there. This article goes over 3 ways to define the “small” in small business and figure out which type of small business is the best focus for your computer services business. 1. Know about Home-Based Businesses and Micro-Small Businesses. A home-based business typically just involves 1-2 computers and an individual. A micro-small business is just one very small step up from that in size, with 5-10 employees and that many or fewer computer systems. If you focus too much on home-based businesses and micro-small businesses, you’ll have a hard time selling a lot of ongoing services agreements. While both types of businesses are technically within the definition of “small business,” they may not be the best clients for your computer service business. 2. Avoid Targeting Micro-Small and Home-Based Businesses. First of all, these kinds of small businesses often have lots of consumer-grade PC’s, which will not be a big help for implementing sophisticated client/server networking solutions. Secondly, these kinds of small businesses often use pirated software, which will give you major problems when you start to develop long-term technology plans and complex networks. Thirdly, most of these kinds of small businesses will be reluctant, and often unable to pay for your sophisticated, high-end professional services. Fourthly, these kinds of tiny small businesses often believe that IT is not that important to their company, so they don’t need the benefits you are offering. And finally, these kinds of tiny small businesses are usually too small to afford a real, dedicated server and a real client/server network, making your solutions overkill. swrafi sesxi 3. Great Computer Service Business Success Resides in Small Businesses with 10 or More PCs. Computer service business owners that target companies with at least 10 PC’s are generally more successful at building strong businesses. At that point, small businesses cannot continue to run peer-to-peer networks. They also cannot afford to wait for volunteers and moonlighters to get around to responding to needs or emergencies. Small businesses that have 10 or more systems start to get really serious about putting in real client server networks, dependable back-up solutions, reliable power protection and secure firewalls. At this size, small business decision makers usually understand the need for more sophisticated total business solutions. They also know that they need to use IT more strategically in order to compete and grow. Small businesses with 10 or more systems are ideal because they will rely on your expertise and will understand why they need a very professional computer service business to take ownership of the total business problem, provide on-going service and not just respond to emergencies one at a time.

sports blog

Sports Media Challenge announces the top 10 baseball blogs in the official Sports Blog Index.? The SBI is the first ever standard measurement to identify the top blogs across all sports and in each major sports category and aims to be a helpful tool to determine where the most passionate fans go on the Internet and which blogs carry the most weight. This month, the most influential blogs identified in the index are dedicated to baseball as teams break spring training and prepare for opening day.

“Passion and community are at the core of sports, which is why fans have embraced blogs,” said Sports Media Challenge President Kathleen Hessert. “Even Congress and Presidential candidates are using blogs to reach out to their constituencies. It’s been estimated that there’s a new blog created every minute and a recent report found that over 50 million Americans and over 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population visited blogs in 2006. We go where the fans go and take you with us.”

“Baseball has always been romanticized in literature and is arguably the most heavily analyzed sport in our culture,” said SMC Director of New Media Strategy and Fan Engagement Dex Bustarde. “The result in the blogosphere is literally hundreds of blogs – many very well written – with loyal communities analyzing the sport beyond what mainstream media is normally willing to do.”

With this proliferation of blogs dedicated to all things sports, SMC identified the need to establish an Index to determine where fans and critics go online to feed their insatiable hunger for information. The giant sports networks bring us the facts, but SMC is tracking where the best virtual water cooler conversations are taking place and where fans and critics congregate to debate the hottest issues.

The Sports Blog Index will be updated monthly to ensure that the listings reflect those blogs that fans count on most for their online word of mouth.

Many of the best baseball bloggers are published in traditional media as well. This year, the blogger behind the USS Mariner is releasing his first book, “A Cheaters Guide to Baseball this season.”

In conjunction with the top blogs for an individual sport, SMC has identified the top five subjects discussed on blogs in the Index which we will be glad to provide to you via e-mail. Send your request to tips @ sportsmediachallenge.com.

There are three criteria that Sports Media Challenge use to rank blogs for the top 10 – Influence, Fan Engagement and Quality. These criteria combine quantitative aspects, including the number of incoming links that connect to the blog, number of fan comments as well as qualitative measurement by Sports Media Challenge analysts.

Buzz Manager, a staple service of SMC, is the proprietary search engine that mines, monitors and analyzes online content and helps rank blogs in the Sports Blog Index. Buzz Manager tracks and measures the online word-of-mouth and mainstream media exposure of brands in the sports market. A combination of proprietary technology and human analysis is used to determine a brand’s awareness and fan perception. The Sports Blog Index uses the Buzz Manager tracking software to determine ratings for the thousands of sports blogs bring tracked. Beyond blogs, Buzz Manager also monitors trends on other forms of fan-generated media? (FGM) including message boards, MySpace and YouTube sites and other social networks that focus on sports. We can measure the volume, intensity and direction of influential fan sentiment.

We urge fans and media to send us a link to a sports blog they think should contend for a top 10 spot on the Index. We will put it on our Watch List and it will be added to our Buzz Manager search engine. Even if a blog focuses on one sport or team, please send them along because, as you see above with the baseball specific list, we will release a sport specific blog Index each month of the year. You may send these to tips @ sportsmediachallenge.com.

For interviews on anything pertaining to the Sports Blog Index, please contact Harold Kaufman at (704) 451-8938.

About Sports Media Challenge

Since 1988, Sports Media Challenge has helped more than 100 leading university athletic departments, professional leagues, teams and world-class sports personalities protect and enhance their brands through strategic communications, consulting and training. Some of the more prominent clients to use PR and marketing tools both proactively and reactively include, The Universities of Notre Dame, Tennessee, Texas, THE PGA TOUR, The NFL, MLB and NBA teams as well as NFL MVP Peyton Manning, Yankees Captain Derek Jeter, and NBA great Shaquille O’Neal. Sports Media Challenge has become the industry leader in online word-of-mouth marketing.

search engine and it optimization

 Search engine optimization specialists Elixir Systems, a privately held company, announced today that their revenues have increases 500% in the past year. This amazing growth came about from a dramatic increase in sales of their search engine optimization services. “We are excited by the level of growth last year. We have worked hard to get to this point and we are looking ahead to the coming year with anticipation for more growth. We altered our focus slightly to target mid-sized B2B organizations who are in need of a complete professional, and ethical search engine optimization service.” said Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Systems.

Search engine optimization is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. This dramatically increases the traffic to the web site. Many web sites are expensive to build and are technologically advanced but they cannot be ranked by the search engines because they were never optimized.

Search engine optimization has become a necessity for companies that are serious about increasing Internet business and achieving prominent rankings in the major search engines. Elixir developed their search engine optimization service for one purpose only – to help people grow their business.

“You see search engine optimization is not a one-off task. There are many people out there who would try to have you believe otherwise,” said Ms. Downhill. “The truth is that there are many tasks involved and it requires close interaction and communication between the search engine optimization provider and the client to succeed. We have to learn about you and your business and your industry. We have to learn what your expectations are and if they can be realized. We also have to decide on the best way to approach the SEO process for your specific business.”

About Elixir Systems:

Elixir Systems is a full service, professional search engine optimization company that specializes in helping companies of all sizes to get their web sites highly ranked in the search engines. They have been involved in the industry for seven years and have been applying their expertise and knowledge to boost traffic to numerous sites. Elixir Systems has offices in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information visit http://www.elixirsystems.com or call 602-494-6326.

advertising and google adsense

Advertisers and publishers seeking to drill deeper into the complex world of contextual advertising will find that world on full display April 22 at the inaugural ADSPACE Contextual Advertising Conference & Expo. Co-located with ad:tech San Francisco and title sponsored by Google, ADSPACE will take place at the Moscone West Center.

ADSPACE is the first conference and expo of its kind tailored both to small-to-midsized publishers wanting to increase their digital revenue through the use of ad networks as well as advertisers seeking to maximize ROI and optimize their ad targeting. Split into two distinct tracks – one for each audience – ADSPACE will blend best practices, how-to techniques and success stories as advertisers and publishers alike get a first-hand opportunity to engage leading contextual network providers such as Google AdSense.

“This is almost a hidden economy that drives billions and billions of revenue, and for many people is a sole source of income,” said David Rodnitzky, Co-Director, ADSPACE, LLC. “Most conferences give lip service to this area, but the stakes are high and knowledge is not being shared. We see this event as an opportunity to reach the advertising and publishing communities, contribute to that knowledge and bring people together to share ideas.”

By providing a forum in which advertisers and publishers can exchange tips and techniques, hear success stories and engage leading solution providers, ADSPACE hopes to create a greater sense of community among contextual advertisers and help avoid common pitfalls.

For advertisers, placing ads in hundreds of thousands of sites at once can be frustrating and overwhelming without effective tracking and transparency, to the point that many advertisers avoid contextual advertising entirely. For publishers, where site content is almost always paramount, opportunities can often be missed in small adjustments that can be made in ad placement or makeup that can significantly increase profits.

“Contextual advertising is a $ 6.7 billion industry globally,” says Marc Phillips, co-director, ADSPACE, LLC. “By bringing this community of publishers and advertisers together, ADSPACE can help attendees learn how to make more money from text advertising such as Google AdSense and other affiliate advertising offers.”

Direct engagement with representatives of Google AdSense, as the title sponsor of ADSPACE, is among the highlights of a packed agenda bookended by two keynotes, the latter titled “Insights from an AdSense Rock Star – Tales from the AdSense Millionaires Club.”

Other sessions include:

Ten Proven Methods to Increase Your eCPM and Generate More Revenue (Publishers Track)
Tools & Technologies: Using Targeting and Optimization to Achieve Success (Advertisers Track)
Beyond Text Ads: In-Text, Affiliate, Lead-Gen, eBay and More! (Publishers Track)

ADSPACE attendees will have access to 2 full days of the ad:tech San Francisco expo floor, which includes a dedicated ADSPACE exhibit zone and lounge. They also have access to 300+ ad:tech exhibitors, special events and keynote presentations. ADSPACE conference details are available at: http://www.adspaceconference.com/sf/adspace/

About ad:tech

ad:tech expositions, LLC is the leading organizer of conferences and exhibitions for the interactive marketing community worldwide. ad:tech produces the world’s largest interactive marketing events held in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. ad:tech is produced by dmg world media; based out of the company’s headquarters in Larkspur, California. For listings of exhibitors, speakers, events and upcoming conference offerings, visit http://www.ad-tech.com.

About dmg world media

An international exhibition and publishing company, dmg world media produces over 300 market-leading trade exhibitions, consumer shows and fairs each year and publishes 45 related magazines, newspapers, directories and market reports. dmg world media employs 700 people and maintains a worldwide presence through more than 30 offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the United Arab Emirates, China, India, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. dmg world media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT), one of the largest and most successful media companies in the United Kingdom. Additional information on dmg world media can be found at http://www.dmgworldmedia.com.

affiliate

Affiliate Programs Network (?APN?), the leading affiliate marketing resource is pleased to welcome 13 new quality affiliate programs to its top-rated network of directories and affiliate resource sites. Affiliate programs listed on the Affiliate Programs Network are recognized as affiliate marketing leaders.?Affiliate programs listed on our network are among the best in the industry,? said Lou Fabiano, APN?s CEO. ?We are pleased to have them as a part of our network.?

The Affiliate Programs Network includes exposure on APN?s flagship property at AffiliatePrograms.com, as well as Affiliate-Programs-Directory.com, Affiliate-Programs-Guide.com, Webmaster-Programs.com, Affiliate-Scheme.co.uk, AffCommunity.com, and AffiliateMarketingBlog.com.

About Affiliate Programs Network

Affiliate Programs Network (?APN?) is a leading affiliate marketing resource with a top rated network of affiliate program directories. APN?s network includes AffiliatePrograms.com, Affiliate-Programs-Directory.com, Affiliate-Programs-Guide.com, Webmaster-Programs.com and Affiliate-Scheme.co.uk. APN is the ultimate resource for affiliates with directories, affiliate news, industry articles and an active community.

As a trusted industry resource, APN is dedicated to promoting the viability of the affiliate marketing industry and working to foster confidence in its ability to ethically produce solid business results via communications, industry standards and accountability.