Backup Power Options for Small Businesses | business.com

June 19, 2020June 18, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s important to develop a disaster plan for your business that accounts for the scenario of a power failure.

Power failures pose a serious financial risk to small businesses, interrupting your operations and income if you don’t have a backup plan.
Onsite power backup options include uninterrupted power supplies and generators.
Price and capabilities determine the best generator for your business. Portable, stationary, propane and natural gas versions are all available for commercial use.

Power failures are one of the most common risks to small businesses. You don’t need to live in the path of a hurricane or in an earthquake zone to be at risk of this particular disaster. Widespread power grid failures can occur almost anywhere. While manufacturers and retailers can experience substantial losses of perishable inventory, service-oriented businesses can be impacted by the loss of computer and phone service.

Ad Tech vs. Marketing Tech | business.com

June 19, 2020June 18, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Has your company invested in the right platforms to engage your customers?

Ad tech and marketing tech serve two different purposes. Ad tech helps you build your brand, while martech helps you connect with established prospects.
Examples of ad tech are Undertone, AdPushup and Tapad.
Marketing tech examples include SEO, Google Analytics, Salesforce and Buffer.

Articles, webinars and discussions on marketing can spur some confusion in reference to advertising technology and marketing technology (sometimes shortened to “martech”). Columns argue about which industry to invest in, which is superior to the other and where their futures lie.

Nintendo Won’t Allow Real Money Transaction in New Horizons | Digital Trends

June 18, 2020June 15, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Nintendo will start taking action against real-money transactions in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Nintendo said on Monday, June 15 that it will move to eliminate real-money transactions when players buy and sell villagers and other items in the game. In a statement to Japanese website J-Cast, Nintendo said that using real money to buy and sell virtual goods is a violation of its terms of service. The company didn’t divulge how it would handle incidents but said that it will evaluate each transaction on a “case by case basis.”

5 Benefits of Having A Toll-Free Number for Your StartUp | The Startup Magazine

June 18, 2020June 15, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Despite of the numerous advanced technologies, there are still some things that remain as a constant in the business industry. One of these, is your toll-free number. Regardless of your business size, as in this case, you’re still starting up, there are so many benefits that you can gain from having one.

First, it begins with improving your reputation and credibility, as it makes your business look more professional. Accordingly, it also increases the excellence factor of your customer service. These are only a few, and other advantages are discussed briefly as follows:

It Improves Your Customer Satisfaction

On the business’s operational side, one cannot deny that you’re going to encounter problems, one way or another, with your customers. At any given time of day, these clients will need to contact you to have their issues resolved.

BP faces hit of up to $17.5bn as it forecasts lower oil prices | BBC News

June 17, 2020June 15, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

BP has forecast lower oil prices for decades to come as governments speed up plans to cut carbon emissions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

It has cut price forecasts by about 30%, and expects Brent crude to average $55 a barrel from now until 2050.

As a result, the oil giant says it will revise down the value of its assets by between $13bn and $17.5bn (£13.8bn).

BP said it would have to become a “leaner, faster-moving and lower-cost organization”.

Last week, the firm announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs following a global slump in demand for oil.

Americans May Be Ready to Spend–but Some Businesses Aren’t Ready to Sell | Inc.com

June 17, 2020June 15, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The coronavirus pandemic has hit hard. More than 100,000 Americans have died. Businesses nationwide shuttered, and more than 44 million people have filed for unemployment insurance since mid-March. The stock market wobbles. However, as the economy reopens, and many Americans benefit from federal assistance, businesses across the country may be in line for a healthy dose of increased consumer spending.

“If jobs are coming back relatively quickly,” which the May jobs report indicates, spending should pick up, says Scott R. Baker, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Baker recently co-authored a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that consumers had curtailed spending since March, while incomes remained largely untouched. Baker suspects that consumers largely pushed off purchases because of financial concerns or because the businesses they’d typically patronize weren’t open.

Where are all the robots? | TechCrunch

June 16, 2020June 14, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

We were promised robots everywhere — fully autonomous robots that will drive our cars end-to-end, clean our dishes, drive our freight, make our food, pipette and do our lab work, write our legal documents, mow the lawn, balance our books and even clean our houses.

And yet instead of Terminator or WALL-E or HAL 9000 or R2-D2, all we got is Facebook serving us ads we don’t want to click on, Netflix recommending us another movie that we probably shouldn’t stay up to watch, and iRobot’s Roomba.

So what went wrong? Where are all the robots?

How to Clean Up Your Old Posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram | WIRED

June 16, 2020June 14, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

AS SOCIAL MEDIA platforms have evolved, they’ve become more and more about the moment—what you’re doing now, rather than what you were doing five years ago. While looking back through photos and posts can be heart-warming and provide a buzz of nostalgia, it can also be painful and embarrassing.

If your social media life spans more than a few years then you might not want friends, family, or prospective employers looking back on the sort of person that you used to be. Here we’ll show you how you can scrub your timelines on the three biggest social platforms, using both built-in tools and third-party add-ons.

How to Get Ongoing Media Exposure Using Seasonal Stories | Entrepreneur

June 15, 2020June 14, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Seasonal stories are events that are celebrated, often worldwide, every year such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Black Friday, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year, Halloween, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Seasonal stories also include the 4 seasons: spring, summer, autumn/fall, and winter.

Pitching seasonal stories is a great way of getting regular media exposure and as the event happens at the same time every year, as a business owner, you can prepare for them in advance and use the same or similar angle year after year.