20 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs an iPad

Guest Blog Post by Rebecca Buscemi

When Apple created the iPad, there was plenty of criticism about what some people viewed as a ‘giant iTouch.’ But what has resulted is a new way in which people are conducting their business from a sleek, powerful and portable device. Now, professionals are also using the iPad in their various businesses for just about everything. The list is growing with uses including:

• Client intake evaluations
• Viewing and sharing documents and presentations
• Reviewing client information on a secure database
• Holding web meetings across multiple offices, and more.

Here are 20 reasons why your business NEEDS an iPad:

1. Are you in the medical field? Using the KeyNote app you can show your patients powerful before and after pictures in a creative presentation.

2. Have more than one office? Conduct a staff meeting that all of your offices can participate in by using the GoToMeeting or Webex app.

3. Does your business deal with children? There are plenty of games and puzzle applications that you can download to keep children entertained while they are waiting and you are talking to talking to their parents.

4. Is your business listed on FourSquare? Have your customers ‘check-in’ to your business upon arrival so you stay on other potential customers’ social media ‘radar.’

5. Download the Pandora app and stream music into your business. Let your customers or clients choose the ‘artist station’ that they want to listen to while they are waiting.

6. Use the iPad to educate. You can use animations, diagrams, charts, etc. to teach your customers just about anything.

7. If you are trying to collect business improvement information, simply install the PollDaddy app and create a customer-ready survey in no time! They can take it while waiting a few minutes or anytime you might need to fill a small window of time.

8. Do you post informative (or even fun) videos on YouTube? Click on the YouTube app and share with your videos.

9. Have a Facebook Business Page? Why not have your customer’s ‘like’ and check-in to your business page while they are with you.

10. Take notes on your iPad and say goodbye to pen and paper! There are tons of apps that were created to transform a traditional paper-based work flow over to the the iPad with ease! Take a look at the Penultimate app.

11. Have some additional thoughts about a project after hours? Download the Dragon Dictation app and you can dictate your ideas to your iPad and then send them off as an email, or save for a later time.

12. If you are a medical professional, you can stream movies from the Netflix app to help your patients relax and move through the visit.

13. How about your e-newsletter? At Get Results Marketing & Business Coaching we use MailChimp and love it! You can suggest your customers join your mailing list and present them with the iPad to enter their email address. MailChimp has a great kiosk-style app called Chimpadeedoo that you can use to collect email addresses in no time!

14. Looking for a way to back up and syncs files across multiple computers? Then check out Dropbox which provides you with remote file access, sharing and also doubles as a PDF- and document-reader.

15. Need a quick way to update all of your main social media networks about a special offer that you are running next week? Then download the Hootsuite app and have the power to coordinate everyone one of them.

16. Task manager extraordinaire!  Things for iPad is an awesome and well-designed task manager that helps you keep track of all your important to-do’s and syncs with your iPhone and Mac.

17. Need to track how much time your or your employees are spending on tasks or projects? Time Master is a convenient app that tracks time spent on projects.

18. Accept credit cards at your site or store? Take a look at Square. You can purchase the additional card reader, that plugs into your iPad, or just key in the card numbers manually.

19. Travel much? Prepare for your trip and get real time updates on your flight using FlighTrackPro or get help finding a Taxi!

20. Ready to streamline and simplify payroll? Then take a look at Sure Payroll.

There are plenty of more reasons why you should use the iPad in your business and we talk about them all at our Social Media Hands-on Workshops for Small Businesses. Our workshops even include an iPad loaded with apps that you can use at your business! Not able to make it to the workshop? No problem, we can bring your loaded iPad to your workplace and train you and your staff in your environment with a individualized plan of action. Contact us at info@getresults4u.com for any questions. Are you using the iPad in your business? Share with us below!