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!

There is a cost factor to every task that goes on when an employee (even the practice owner herself/himself) is ‘on the clock.’ Many businesses actively quantify these activities by averaging the amount of time it takes to accomplish these tasks. By doing so, they can apply the costs which go into that work and compare it with the amount of income those activities either generate or support. In business terminology it is called “Activity Cost Analysis” (or ACA) and can provide extremely eye-opening information. This is actually not a new concept at all and many companies have changed entire corporate workflow procedures as a result of effective ACA.

IBM’s WebSphere Business Modeler¹ website provides an excellent table, which simply explains the process and breaks it down for almost anyone. See below:

Although both this model and the website are geared toward software development, ACA can be applied to anything – even dental office activities.

So let’s discuss this in terms of everyday activities in a dental practice. Obviously, the faster you are able to perform any procedure (without negatively affecting the results of your treatment), the more productive that time was for your office. You can perform more treatment within the same workday. From a clinical perspective, I am sure every dentist knows this stuff backwards and forwards, but how many offices carry that level of ACA through to EVERY single task performed in the practice?

One of the biggest areas of uncertainty has to do with marketing support procedures that are clerical in nature. “Data-mining” your files for information that will help your marketing efforts can be excruciatingly time-consuming and BORING. Yet it is also one of the best ways to get information about people who already know you. The introductions have already been made, and treatment has already been performed – at least once. But how do you get that information to a useable status?

For instance, I happen to know of an office that is very well-known in its community, well-respected by their peers, has plenty of business but wants to be even more profitable. They have fairly standard practice management software, even though it is not the latest and greatest version. They also don’t really use its functionality as fully as they can and are just now flirting with the thoughts of using new media marketing (i.e. Social Media, email marketing, texting services, etc.) to grow and stay busy during some typically slower times of the year.

Here is the problem: while they collect all their customer email addresses on their written forms, no one ever enters them into their software and they never update it. (The owner is not very interested in the use of technology, so the business culture follows that example.)

Now that their marketing needs require the ability to build lists, they have two choices:

1. Buy a list.
2. Build it from existing records.

Both methods have pros and cons associated with them, and their effectiveness will depend on many outside factors as well. In my opinion, however, it does not matter whether or not they buy a list. Ultimately, having the information from those files in an electronic format that can be used and refined for future purposes will be invaluable to them.

There are ways to minimize the activity costs for these data mining tasks. Making the transfer of this data a major staff initiative will neither be a productive nor cost-effective activity for their highly-paid clerical team. One suggestion I offered this business owner was to have her high school age son (or one of his more responsible friends) spend time in the afternoons doing data entry in a minimum wage position. This can be augmented by her own staff when they were slow during less busy times – even if they set a simple goal of a certain number of entries per day.

Estimating the amount of time it would take to accomplish this, we discovered that the job could be done within a much shorter time frame than originally thought, with minimal impact on her own team’s primary responsibilities. In other words, everyone remains productive because…

the right people were doing the right work at the right times.

This is exactly what they are doing, and in the end, they will have a valuable list for customer retention and reactivation marketing that makes an appropriate impact on their overhead.

We have all probably worked with people who always seem exasperated and overloaded. At least, that is how they appear. If they are truly that busy, you might want to examine why. It may be totally justified, and they might be extremely efficient. However, they may be just running from one “fire” to the next with no clear understanding of how it affects the office profitability and their sanity.

How much more relaxed do you think your team would be if they were REALLY efficient because

they were focusing the appropriate amount of activity on the most important tasks?

From a purely customer service perspective, a relaxed atmosphere is warm, welcoming and soothing to your customers, especially the new ones.

There are so many examples of cost/benefit analyses that ACA can help you measure for your business, and now is the time to think about it. Even though the economy seems to be a bit better, I think most of us believe we will be in this slump for some time to come. Therefore, make 2011 the year you take control of your business expenses and truly understand your opportunities to make and save money. In the process you might just improve your team’s interaction with each other and your customers.

We are happy to discuss this with you if you wish, or simply point you in the direction of some fantastic experts we know who can provide you with expert analysis.

Reference Source: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dmndhelp/v6rxmx/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.btools.help.modeler.doc/doc/concepts/analysis/taskcostanalysis.html

Last week, I introduced some new ways that New Media is integrating with Social Media and some fantastic tools that we find essential to be successful in your marketing efforts. One of the points that I brought up, is that getting set up on your social media sites is half the battle. There are three main sites that you should start with when you decide to take your initial social media plunge and they are: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. By utilizing these three sites, you are able to reach a wider audience and stay in front of them!

I created this downloadable that outlines some short cuts and tips when setting up these three sites. Included are:

• A work around if you do not want to create a personal profile on Facebook, but still would like to have a Facebook business page,
• The places when setting up your YouTube account to optimize with key words,
• How to link Facebook to automatically feed to Twitter;
• and more!

Enjoy and let us know if you have any questions! You can email me directly at rbuscemi@getresults4u.com

Click Here for Your Quick Social Media Setup Download

I’m sure with the big social media movement, you have heard from others to “Forget the Yellow Pages.” There is a general assumption among many out there that social media and the Internet just may replace print one day. And who knows? There is definitely signs that print has started to decline. But there are some forms of print media that have decided to embrace, instead of fight, the Internet and New Media. Once example is the Yellow Pages or YP.com.

Embracing with open arms, YP.com is definitely on the forefront of Internet Local Search and integrating New Media. You might be asking, “What is Local Search?” So here is a simple way to look at it: If you would take all of the information out of the Yellow Pages, take an online map and match the all of the addresses with details, such as pictures of the street, the business, aerial photos, then add patient testimonials and place all of them on the Internet where people can search and find what they are looking for in a matter of seconds, you got Local Search!

Creating powerful connections between businesses and the people that are searching for them, YP.com has integrated some of the following strategies:

• Facebook connect which allows visitors to quickly connect and essentially ‘log-in’ to YP.com through their Facebook account.
• YP.com apps for the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and Adroid. To get these apps, all you have to do is simply go to YP.com on your mobile device.
• How about the power of Local Search on your TV? Check out YPTV!
• To add to the simplicity of searching for a business, YP.com has created the YP.com toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Ready to add your business to YP.com? It’s simple to do! (And it’s FREE!) Here are the steps to get you started:

1. Go to YP.com and click ‘Advertise With Us’ at the top of the website.
2. On the next page, click ‘Get Started’ and fill in the required fields.
3. Once the required fields are filled out, you can then enter more detailed information about your business. Some of the things you will be including is your address, business categories (up to five categories), website, products, services and (one of the most important to me) any and all social media sites.
4. After adding the additional information about your business, you are able to finalize and confirm your listing and It’s live!

Now your customers can find you on YP.com, write awesome testimonials about you and also connect with you on all of your social media sites on one site! Welcome to Local Search!

Wow! How quickly things are changing on Facebook! Last night, Facebook rolled out the new Pages for people to try out if they are up for the challenge. For many it really is a challenge; the layout and features have changed quite a bit. Feel free to try the new layout at your leisure, you have the ability to take it for a test-drive up until March 1. After March 1 the changes are permanent and the old pages will be a thing of the past.

We wanted to take a few moments and update you on the changes that have happened to try and lessen some confusion. So here we go!

• Take the time to ‘Take a Tour” that Facebook is offering at the top of your business Page. You will see this option at the top of the Page as soon as you get there.
• Another thing you will notice is that, very similar to the way personal profiles are set up, you now have a photo strip at the top of the page that you can adjust. You can use this photo strip to showcase your awesome team members, fantastic smiles that you have created, the options are endless!
• Ready to make some adjustments to the settings of your page? Click on ‘Edit’ which is now found in the upper right hand corner of your Page. Here is a biggie! Go to ‘Your Settings’ and make sure you have your Page set up to email you when someone posts on your Business Page.
• Here is another neat feature: Under the ‘Edit’ option, check out ‘Featured.’ Under this option, you can add up to five additional pages that you ‘like’ that will rotate and also you can ‘Feature’ the page owners (who are usually the business owners.)
• You can also now ‘Login as Page’ which gives you the ability to comment on other pages as the PAGE instead of yourself. You can find this option in the top right hand corner of the actual page, under the ‘admin’ images. But, you can not interact with personal profiles as your Business Page, only Pages!
• When you are using Facebook as your Page, the notifications in the upper left hand corner will reflect things happening on your page, such as someone new that ‘likes’ your Page or comments received on your Page.
• You can also now post on your Facebook Page as yourself, not just your Page. You can do this by going to ‘edit,’ ‘Your settings’ and then ‘Posting preferences.’
• Be aware that the navigation has moved from the top to left side of the Page in the column underneath your Page profile picture. And where did that little box go that was under your Page image? It now will appear in the Info tab.
• When people visit your Page, they will be able to mutual friends who also like your Page, as well as mutual Pages you share.
• There is also a pretty powerful spam filter which includes a moderation (you pick the words you don’t want to show up on your Page) and a profanity blocker.

I hope this provides you with some clarification on the changes on the Pages. If you have any questions or can’t locate something, feel free to post on our Page. We are always happy to help!

Don’t try to do it all yourself!

You should spend your time focusing on your strengths, and let Get Results Marketing and Business Coaching help with the rest! After all, what is your time REALLY worth to you?

This can all be MUCH easier!

It is in our best interest to make you successful! It is our obsession! So contact us today and tell us the areas of your business where you need the most support. We will help you devise a program that is right for YOU!

1-800-275-2350