CloudOn Productivity App Now Available on More Devices

CloudOn Productivity App Now Available on More Devices
5 Reasons Writers Ignore Your Pitch
Independent Workforce On The Up And Up?
Most profitable industries for small business
The Wirecutter Represents Sea Change for Online Monetization

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 01:00 PM PST

CloudOn, the free productivity app that gives users access to Microsoft Office on their mobile devices, just introduced a new version that works on a number of new devices and integrates more third party tools.

Until now, CloudOn has mainly been used on tablet devices, but version 3.0 of the mobile app is also available on iPhones, iPad Mini, and Nexus 7 devices.

In addition, the new app offers support for Microsoft SkyDrive, along with existing support for other applications and tools like Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive.

Of course, the main draw of CloudOn is that it gives users access to the Microsoft Office suite while on the go, so that editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations doesn't have to take place within the confines of an actual office.

The photo above shows the main dashboard on the iPhone app, as well as an example of editing an Excel spreadsheet in the app, which includes all the same Excel features you're used to seeing on more traditional devices.

Cloud technology has made collaboration between team members infinitely easier. But the introduction of mobile technology into workplace culture has complicated things a bit, since not all of the same tools and applications are available on mobile devices as they are on traditional workplace computers.

So instead of just hosting files in the cloud, CloudOn stores applications there so that they can be used on a variety of different devices. But rather than introducing you to a new cloud storage solution or brand new applications, CloudOn specializes in giving you access to the applications you and your team already use.

This new version simply makes it easier for even more users to take advantage of the productivity app, meaning they can access tools and files from their mobile devices without having to actually upload the files to a new storage service or applications.

The app was originally introduced in January, when it was made available for just iPad users. To date, it has been downloaded onto more than 3 million devices. It is currently available for free in both the App Store and Google Play.

The post CloudOn Productivity App Now Available on More Devices appeared first on Small Business Trends.

5 Reasons Writers Ignore Your Pitch

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 11:00 AM PST

As a small business, you're always trying to win media coverage and build buzz about your brand. To do so you're creating media and blogger lists to help you reach out to folks and let them know about what you're up to.

But are your efforts falling flat?

Below are 5 reasons reporters may just be ignoring your pitch:

There's No Relationship

The first time you reach out to someone shouldn't be to ask for a favor or a mention on their blog. It should be to help them and address their needs. Pitching someone for media coverage when you don't have some level of pre-existing relationship is going to be an uphill battle. This is why it's so important to identify media contacts EARLY and then dedicate time to getting on their radar. Maybe you first reach out via Twitter in a way that solves their problem. Or you start strategically commenting on their blog. Or you give them a shoutout by highlighting their expertise to your readers. Taking the time to build that relationship before you need it is Rule 1 of online networking and will help ensure your pitch gets read.

You Pretend Your BFFs

If you have a close relationship with someone, it's okay to reference that in your pitch email. In fact, it would be kind of weird if you didn't. However, if you don't know someone that well (or at all) don't try to fake it in the email. Sometimes because we're nervous or because we want to come off as "friendly" or "conversational" we take too many casual liberties when addressing someone. We call them by nicknames we see others using. Or we reference information we've stalked online. Or we simply don't give them the respect they deserve. For a blogger or reporter, this is a serious turnoff and may actually cause them to believe you're mocking them. Not a good way to start a new relationship.

Impersonal Emails

While you don't want to pretend to be buddy-buddy, you also don't want to send an email that reads like an ad in the Yellow Pages. Do your homework before you pitch someone so you're able to target it as much as possible to their interests.

Take the time to:

Learn the reporter's name
Get an understanding of what they cover on their blog
Learn their tone
Get to know their audience and who they are
Check for information about HOW they like to be pitched/contacted

Once you have all this information you can craft a message that is customized for them and speaks to their audience and interests. An email that is properly targeted will always win out over one that is not.

There's No WIIFM

We're all busy. For us to take time out of day we need to know WIIFM – What's In It For Me? What will trying your product or recommending your service get me? How will it make me look like a hero to my audience? How will it make their jobs or lives easier? Because that's what I'm after. I only care about your product when I know how it will benefit my audience.

When you're laying out the WIIFM, don't just list off the ins and outs of your product or brag about its latest and greatest feature. Focus on pitching the story. We don't care that your oven cooks food 20 minutes faster than other ovens. We care that we can use those 20 minutes to spend time with our families or to read our kid a book. That's the WIIFM. It's not about the product. It's about the story.

Insulting the Blogger

Be careful when talking to bloggers and other media to make sure you're giving them the respect they deserve. You want to avoid things like:

Assuming you know their audience better than they do
Offering money for a post right off the bat
Offering an exclusive when you're pitching other outlets
Belittling their professionally (accidentally or intentionally)

Often times these things happen accidentally simply because we're not careful with our words or the phrases that we use. Take extra time to read through your pitch email to make sure you're not stepping on any toes or writing something that could possibly offend.

We all need to pitch bloggers and reporters from time to time to help our brand build awareness. Taking the time to craft our pitches properly can greatly increase your odds of getting read.

The post 5 Reasons Writers Ignore Your Pitch appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Independent Workforce On The Up And Up?

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 08:00 AM PST

workforce If you’re looking for work in this brave new 21st century world, the place to be is in the freelance space, according to a recent global business survey by Elance.

The survey, in which more than 1500 firms from around the world participated, contains quite a bit of great news for freelancers — otherwise known as nonemployer businesses.

When asked whether hiring freelancers online gives them a competitive advantage, 85% agreed that it did. Of them, 53% noted that online hiring reduces hiring costs for them, while other advantages included faster time-to-hire and access to a broader talent pool.

Perhaps the best news from this survey for the contingent workforce is that contract work appears to be here to stay. Evidently, the best thing about a virtual contract workforce from the business point of view is that it gives the business access to a talent pool that is as good as or better than (69%) what is available to them locally.

Between that and the fact that firms are not usually required to provide the same benefits to those contractors as they would be for permanent employees, it is easy to see why 73% of survey resopndents say they will have hired more freelancers in 2012 than they did in 2011. Of them, 27% have on-site freelancers and the remaining 73% use online contractors.

Businesses surveyed also noted that they anticipate having lots of work for programmers and developers (70% of respondents), graphic designers (61% of respondents), writers (38% of respondents), marketers (32% of respondents), and mobile app developers (28% of respondents) over the next six months. Looking further down the road, 57% of resopndents anticipate that more than 50% of their workforce will consist of online freelancers within the next five years.

Of course, this survey has some significant limitations. Elance did not indicate where its pool of respondents came from but, if it was culled from among their own clients, then the survey qualifies as a Kool Aid sales pitch from those who have already drunk it. It would be interesting to see the results of a similar survey conducted among a more random assortment of business owners and/or human resources managers.

That said, these survey results do make sense in the light of increases in nonemployer numbers in both 2009 and 2010, in spite of the limping economy — or perhaps because of it. For many firms of many sizes, lean is the name of the game in the information economy and contract workers can be experienced and highly skilled and extremely cost effective. For cash-strapped small businesses and cost-cutting larger ones, it doesn’t get much better than that.

In the meantime, however, the implications for the American workforce are worth pondering. I am not aware of anyone who is looking at these numbers right now but it appears that nonemployers, examined as a segment of the workforce, are somewhere between 25% and 33% of American workers.

That is a trend that is not likely to reverse itself anytime soon and it is a trend that needs the attention of economists and policy makers, as well as the business community.

Crowd Photo via Shutterstock

The post Independent Workforce On The Up And Up? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Most profitable industries for small business

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 05:00 AM PST

If you are thinking of starting a small business, you might care about potential profits. While your skills as an entrepreneur and the quality of your business idea certainly influence what you will earn, so does the industry in which you operate. In fact, as figures from business data aggregator Sageworks Inc. show, small business profitability varies a lot across industries.

Using its proprietary database of private company financial statements collected from accountants and financial institutions that supply information on their clients, Sageworks' analysts provided me with a list of the most and least profitable industries in 2011 for businesses with $5 million or less in sales.

As the table below shows, the most profitable industry was "other financial investment activities," with an average net profit margin of 16.9 percent, while the least profitable was" land subdivision," with an average net profit margin of -12.4 percent.

While the number of industries is too few to draw any firm conclusions, I think they suggest a pattern. You need a license or a lot of training to enter many of the most profitable industries (e.g., law, medicine, accounting, dentistry, real estate). Because more people can enter the least profitable industries, competition may be driving down small businesses' profit margins in those industries.

Keep in mind that net profit margin is just one measure of the attractiveness of an industry to small business. As I have shown before, the industries with the highest margins don't have the highest average profit per business. In fact, Internal Revenue Service data show a correlation of only 0.09 between the industry's average annual income for an S Corp and the industry's average net income as a percentage of sales for a similarly organized company.

Nevertheless, knowing high and low margin industries is probably useful to people thinking of starting a small business.

Source: Sageworks Inc.

The post Most profitable industries for small business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The Wirecutter Represents Sea Change for Online Monetization

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 02:30 AM PST

As we move into 2013, many things are changing. Among those changes is the way some online small business owners and entrepreneurs are monetizing their business Websites. We’ll look at this and other innovations in our New Year’s Eve edition of the small business news roundup. If you think of any trends we’ve missed, be sure to mention them in the comment section below.

New Models

Cutting through to new innovations. Former editor of Gizmodo and Gawker Media’s gadget blog Brian Lam has created a whole new kind of online business model. The Wirecutter challenges traditional online publishing approaches that depend upon increased volume to drive more advertising revenue. Instead, Lam has created a new twist on an old idea, and it could be the wave of the future! The New York Times

It’s resolution time! With the New Year comes new resolutions and Daniel Kehrer has 13 of them here. From fixing your Website to improving your customer service, to becoming a better Twitter user to nurturing leads, there are probably scores of things you would like to accomplish in your small business in 2013, and we’d like to know your plans, too. BizBest

Changes in Strategy

12 lessons learned. Online business owners use blogs almost without exception in their marketing, communications, and networking, but the craft of blogging continues to evolve. No matter what your business model might be in the New Year, blogs will probably still be an important part of the equation. Here Jane Sheeba talks about some of the lessons she learned in 2012. ProBlogging Success

New house rules. Social marketing is changing too as the New Year dawns. Some of the major shifts include Facebook’s promoted posts, a way to pay to insure specific posts definitely wind up in more of your fans’ news feeds. One social marketing coach and strategist teaches how to take advantage of the new feature to get your message out more effectively. Andrea Vahl

Other Trends

Content marketing mojo. Content marketing is one of the biggest trends heading into 2013, especially for online businesses. But content marketing itself has many trends that bear watching, trends that may prove very important in your online marketing and networking strategies. Here are seven trends in particular that will probably be used by you and your competitors soon. Ragan’s PR Daily

King of curation. One growing trend mentioned time and again in content marketing is content curation. However, a recent post claims it’s tough to see profit from this technique unless you own the platform upon which content is being collected and shared. Without control over sites like Facebook where businesses are building all their “social capital,” value can be lost with a single policy change, critics argue. Curation Traffic

Practice makes perfect. Not all new trends involve the Internet, at least not directly. For example, one of the first steps Jesse Jacobs, founder of Samovar Tea Lounges, took was to eliminate WiFi from his establishments to create a place of contemplative peace for his customers, many of whom, ironically, are part of the tech industry. Jacobs preaches a new approach to entrepreneurship and to living that may become a dominant trend in the New Year and beyond. Jonathan Fields

The post The Wirecutter Represents Sea Change for Online Monetization appeared first on Small Business Trends.