MO VE TO A PAPERLESS OFFICE WITH

EVERNOTE

Evernote allows you to file everything you could possibly want to file, in one

place.

You can file web pages, text documents, photos, voice memos, & even

handwritten notes.

Notes can have file attachments, can be sorted into folders, tagged, given

comments, search & exported as part of a note book.

Evernote stores & edits notes on the users computer, however those with an

Evernote account can also save their docs on line on the Evernote server.

Therefore should your internet access stop for a while you can still access your

notes on your own computer.

The free online service displays a usage meter and currently has a monthly

usage limitation of 60MB/month storage.

For $5 per month you can upgrade to the premium solution of up to 1000MB/

month usage.

www.evernote.com

To Join Business Clubs UK, for Networking & Coaching events call Sharon on

0845 6431028

A Cookie is a message given to a web browser by a web serv-

er. The browser stores the message in a text file. The mes-

sage is then sent back to the server each time the browser

requests a page from that server. The cookie is deposited

onto the hardware as a txt file.

The main purpose of a Cookie is to identify users and possibly

prepare customised web pages for them. When you enter a

Web site using cookies you may be asked to fill out a form

providing such information as your name and interests. This

information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your web

browser which stores it for later use. The next time you go to

the same Web site your browser will send the cookie to the

Web server. The server can then use this information to pre-

sent you with custom web pages. So, for example instead of

seeing a generic welcome page you might see a welcome

page with your name on it.

Cookies are used by almost all websites, for a variety of pur-

poses:

Analysis of visitor behaviour (known as 'analytics')

- To personalise pages and remember visitor prefer-

ences.

- To manage shopping carts in online stores

- To track people across websites and deliver targeted

advertising

On May 26th 2012 a new EU originated law came into effect

that requires website owners to make significant changes to

their sites and may fundamentally change the whole web

browsing and shopping experience for everybody. This Cookie

Law is amended privacy legislation that requires websites to

obtain informed consent from visitors before they can store

or retrieve any information on a computer or any other web

connected device.

The information Commissioners Office (ICO) is responsible for

enforcing the law and have the powers to issue website own-

ers fines of up to £500,000 for serious breaches.

If your web site is based in the EU or services customers in the

EU then this law applies to you.

This law is to protect the users privacy, and states that the use

of Cookies needs to be made clear on your site, with an op-

tion for either the user to opt in or out of having them depos-

ited on their machine. You will also need to tell them what

cookies you are collecting, what you are using them for and

the degree of intrusiveness.

There are two key elements of implied consent, according to

this guidance, these are:

Information. Visitors

need to be given a

clear notice that the

website uses cookies,

and an explanation of what they are used for.

Choice. Visitors to a site should have the ability to ex-

ercise control over the setting of cookies - even if the

consequences might be loss of functionality for that

visitor.

Web sites can gain consent in any way from the user

clicking a button, subscribing to a web sites service or

dismissing a banner, toolbar or popup.

Some cookies do not require consent & these are cookies that

are strictly necessary for the web site to function, ie shopping

baskets, logins and security. These “essential cookies” are not

subject to this new law. However “non essential cookies” are

These non essential cookies are used for advertising such as

affiliates, tracking & analytical purposes.

My recommendations

Firstly go to www.ico.gov and read carefully their guide lines

on the new EU cookie law. Secondly you may want to..

Do a Cookie audit, check out which cookies your web site is using. http://www.ghostery.com/ is a free down-load you can use, but there are other free plugins as

well.

Update your privacy policy to clearly state a list of your cookies & what they are being used for. If you don’t have a privacy policy you can find FREE web sites that ask you a few questions then create a policy for you. Ensure you add onto

that your list of Cookies & their uses.

Select a solution to gain consent from your users ie: a pop

up box with a tick box, or a drop down tool bar, for example.

Once your chosen solution is installed check your site works correctly in different browsers. Possible Solutions for users to give consent to your cookies:

www.cookiecontrol.com. This site is free and allows you to

customise your plugins. They have different plugins for Word-press, Drupal7 and Magento not to mention standard website versions.

www.cookieok.eu If you have a Wordpress site and are look-

ing for a simple plugin with a top banner display this could fit your needs www.thecookiecollective this is a managed system where for a yearly fee it updates and alerts you to changes in your cook-ies so you can make the required changes. Definitely don’t do nothing! Or you could find yourself with

a hefty fine!

May 2012 Newsletter

Have you sorted out your Cookies yet?

Is your Head in the Clouds when it comes to Cloud Computing?

What is Cloud Computing?

Computing can be split into 3 main categories,

these are the Hardware/ Server which provides

the processing power, the Operating System, ie

Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X Lion, and

finally the Applications you install onto your oper-

ating system such as Microsoft Office for exam-

ple.

Historically all these 3 components were always

used together. In the 60’s / 70’s medium sized

businesses had a “Main Frame” which was con-

nected to a number of “dumb terminals”. These

were simple devices that allowed you to plug in a

monitor, keyboard & mouse, but had no intelli-

gence. The main frame would simply allocate

each “dumb terminal” a little amount of pro-

cessing time. Obviously the disadvantages to this

were that as the company grew and the number

of dumb terminals increased the smaller the allo-

cated processing time frames got, resulting in

each terminal running slower & slower to a point

where the server couldn’t cope. This would then

result in a larger capacity server being needed.

More expense & time, not to mention downtime

as data was transferred from one to the other.

Also should the server fail for any reason then no

one could access their work bringing work to a

halt.

Now with Cloud Computing, you can separate all 3 of these categories and access all of them via the internet.

Large Clusters of servers, situated in regions such as Arizona are now available for anyone to use via the internet, so no longer do companies have to invest large chunks of money installing their own private server on their premises.

We have been using Cloud Computing in its inau-gural form with such email providers such as yahoo or Hotmail for a while. Also storing your photos & videos on social networking sites such as Facebook. All of your personal information is stored on the Facebook servers, somewhere in America and you are accessing them via the inter-net!

One of the most significant ben-efits of Cloud Computing is that it is dynamically scalable and can grow with your business.

Just as we pay for the amount of electric we use, you can now pay for what you need. Cloud ven-dors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) sell computer processing by the hour.

As I mentioned, with Cloud computing you can separate the Applications from the Operating Sys-tem from the Processing power. Therefore there are 3 ways to use Cloud computing:

SAAS (software as a service), PAAS (Platform as a service) & IAAS (Infrastructure as a service).

The simplest form of Cloud Computing is SAAS, this is where you can access applications via your web browser ie: Google Docs. You can start using them as if they are installed on your computer, but if your computer fails you can use another computer and still access the files. Another ex-ample of this Quick Books.

Search Just Got Social

Another reason why being social & an

expert in your field counts!

On the 1st June Microsoft will launch, what it

claims to be its biggest update ever. It will introduce

social results into its search engine. Similar to

Googles +1, apart from Bing will incorporate

relevant information being talked about by your

friends on Facebook, Twitter and more.

When you search you will see three columns. The

left will contain the usual algorithmic results, the

middle will provide a snap shot of information ie

maps, reviews and the right sidebar will have

“social-orientated” results.

Microsoft's research show s that 90% of decisions

are made based on friends recommendations or

recommendations from experts. The sidebar allows

you to interact with your friend's and also influential

figures, experts who are sharing their knowledge on

that particular subject.

Bing will scour blogs and networking sites to find

active “experts” on the topic you are searching for

and offer these social suggestions as well.

The side bar will be non-intrusive. Microsoft also is

mindful of your privacy & security settings so when

you are signed into Facebook using Bing the search

engine will only reveal content your friends could

access by viewing your Facebook profile.

It pays to be Social

If you are a B2B provider what networking

events do they go to

Are they affiliated with official bodies

Do they go to trade shows

Now you need to make them aware of your busi-

ness.

Plan a advertising campaign

Get some PR about your company in the lo-

cal press

Book onto a trade show if your target mar-

kets are likely to attend

Send a E-marketing campaign

Tweet about yourself, post a question on

LinkedIn and Facebook

Start a group on LinkedIn

Be a guest speaker

Go to networking events

Attend Charity events

The next step is what do you say to them?

The best way to identify if your target market may

be interested in your product or service is to ask

questions! Don’t storm in with a sales pitch that will

send them running for the hills.

Ask the Magic question Listen for the answers,

which will help you to find the Hook.

The magic questions are:

Who

What

When

Where

Why

How

Not all of these question are appropriate but this will

help to qualify them to see how receptive (Hot) they

are.

Keep refreshing your plan:

Identify new target markets.

Remember to monitor all you sales leads, where did

they hear about you.

If you get a good response from a particular

marketing strategy do more of it!

If something didn’t work don’t do it again, try an-

other strategy or a different target market.

Go through the same step by step plan as before.

For further help with your sales strategy contact

Lynette info@ljbsalesdevelopment.co.uk

www.ljbsalesdevelopment.co.uk

07540 802 118

Is your Head in the Clouds when it comes to Cloud Computing?

PAAS (Platform as a Service) Here a Cloud Supplier (Company which owns a group of servers) can offer an operating system for you to add or develop your own apps onto. For example Microsoft word is an application running on a Microsoft Windows Platform. You use the app and store your files on the vendors servers.

When you open up your window it looks like a reg-ular desk top with all your apps. You can then work as if its installed on the computer in front of you, but all the processing resides on the terminal ser-vices server.

IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service). Here the Cloud supplier provides the servers for you to access on line and which will store all your data, running what ever operating systems or apps you please.

Enabling companies to move their existing programs and data into the cloud and to close down their own local servers or data centres.

This “naked” infrastructure known as the server can be real or virtual. Real or “dedicated” servers are individual circuit boards known as “blades” mounted by equipment racks in a data centre. Virtual servers are a software controlled slice of a real server. This slice is known as an “instance”. This means that many users are able to use the processing power of one physical server.

A virtual server instance performs exactly the same functions as a physical server, however is cheaper to supply as each does not require its own piece of physical hardware in a cloud data centre. On the other hand some customers may not want to share

a server as it may seem less secure. For this reason the most commonly known types of Cloud Compu-ting are:

Private Clouds – here a customer rents a number of servers in a data centre. This means that their cloud hardware is separate from that of other us-ers. They are therefore considered to be the most secure, however cannot be dynamically scaled and is very expensive. Another option of a private cloud s is where you have your own cluster of servers in your own server room, just for you without web access. Ie the Government use a private Cloud.

Dedicated Hosting – Here the customer rents dedi-cated servers on demand from anywhere in the da-ta centre. These servers are mixed in with other servers however they do not share the server with anyone else. This is less costly than a dedicated Cloud and can be dynamically scaled.

Hybrid Hosting – A combination of using dedicated servers and instances. A company may run all of its applications on dedicated servers but store its data on virtual server instances. A Business can rent in-stances by the hour to cope with seasonal peaks in demand. Again the whole thing is dynamically scal-able.

Cloud Hosting – A Customer rents as many instances as they require on demand. The serv-ers they are using are being shared with other customers. Some companies see this as too risky, however cloud hosting is the lowest cost by far and the most technically and environ-mentally efficient form of IAAS, as it allows the provider to run all of their servers in use to capacity, closing down those that are not required.

So WHY would you use the CLOUD?

For one man bands and small businesses paying out a lump sum for an application such as Microsoft Pro-fessional Package or Adobe Suite may be too much all at once. In this situation you may decide to “rent” it from the application providers Cloud. This “pay as you go” option always gives you the most uptodate version.

If you have a small amount of data but have a number of employees who want to access the same files and your data isn’t sensitive you may use “hosted instances”. Here you only pay for the amount of stor-age space you need and can scale this dependent on your requirements on an ongoing basis.

If you run a large web site with lots of data and usage you may want to use a “hosted instances” which is scaleable as the traffic to your web site grows without any disturbance in performance.

If you are a large company with lots of staff and storage needed you may use a hybrid cloud, enabling you to have your own personal servers and also “instances” as & when you require them. These servers are accessed via the internet and not on your premises.

For very large companies or Organisations you may require your own private Cloud. This is secure, but

costly. It can be a cluster of servers together in a data centre accessed via the internet or could be in your

own private servers on your premises.

Selling Tips

Identifying your target market and talking to them!

Identifying your target market and being able to talk to them is one of the most important aspects of

your business.

How can you sell your product or service unless you know who and where your market is?

When I ask businesses I work with who is their target market they quite often say everyone, unfortu-

nately you cannot sell to everyone it is physically impossible so the best way forward is to really think

about what it is you are sell and who are the most likely people to sell it to.

Sounds simple but this is one of the hardest things to do.

Really analyse your business, what you do, how you do it differently to your competition, how you can

add extra value etc

Here are a few tips to make the process bearable; once you have mastered this, selling your product or

service becomes more manageable and you can concentrate your efforts more effectively and monitor

the results.

How to Define Your Target Market:

Look at Your Current Customer Base

Analyze Your Product/Service

Choose Specific Demographics to Target

• Age

• Location

• Gender

• Income level

• Education level

• Marital or family status

• Occupation

• Ethnic background

How to Define Your Target Market:

Consider the Characteristics of Your Target

Market

• Personality

• Attitudes

• Values

• Interests/hobbies

• Lifestyles

• Behaviour

How to Define You Target Market: Evaluate Your Decision

Once you've decided on a target market, be sure to

consider these questions:

• Are there enough people that fit my criteria?

• Will my target really benefit from my product/

service? Will they see a need for it?

• Do I understand what drives my target to make

decisions?

• Can they afford my product/service?

Can I reach them with my message? Are they

easily accessible?

Find your Brenda and Bill:

Visually identify your target market, put an image

of them on your notice board in the office. This

will help you to focus on who they are and where

you will find them.

The next stage is to plan how you are going to

reach them:

What magazines/papers do they read?

What are their hobbies do they play golf

Where do they shop?

Are they members of other local clubs

Do they use social media Facebook, Twit-

ter are they on LinkedIn