Startups.ie

Introduction
From 15k RAID 5 SCSI HDD’s to that all important 1920×1200 WUXGA Matte display, yes with rubbish bamboozling terms like that you might be tempted to put technology for your business way down the “todo” list. Well this is a big mistake. Your business needs to use IT from the very beginning to have any hope of even matching the competition. Yet if used correctly, technology can help any small business punch way way above their weight. Follow these few tips to have your business roaring like the God of thunder gargling with nails!

The Landline
Forget about phone land lines such as Eircom, you need what is known as a “VOIP” phone system. Get a fast internet connection, any VOIP phone handset and sign up for a www.blueface.ie account. This will give you 1) your all important land line number with the ability to take 5 calls at the same time, 2) Fax line and 3) it’s VOIP so you can move that landline number anywhere with an internet connection or even route calls to your mobile at your leisure. Don’t forget that’s only scratching the surface of a VOIP phone system’s capabilities.

The Mobile
A mobile phone is not just used for taking calls. Pick up a smart phone (such as blackberry) for instant access to email. Your phone’s calendar and contacts will also be linked into your main email system (Google Apps). Adding an entry to your calendar on the phone will sync it on all your computers automatically wirelessly over the air. Even your business partner or secretary can add in calendar reminders for you on their computers that sync to your phone automatically.

Domain Name
Register a domain name and try to get one with words related to your business in the name. If your business is called Contoso and you are wedding DJ, well www.contoso.com is of little no use, you need to try register www.weddingdj.ie and yes if your business is based only in Ireland, that needs to be a dot ie not dot com – Google.com will redirect most Irish searchers to Google.ie and Google.ie always gives higher ranking to sites ending with a dot ie. Registering a ie domains used to be expensive but www.Blacknight.com have fantastic deals.

Website
Before you run wild looking at designs creating a site, don’t forget the purpose. Sales and Marketing. You may have a pretty site but if people can’t find it well I’m sorry but let me whisper to you…..it’s useless… For a website to generate business you need to have it at the top of Google. There are three top spots in Google. 1) If you pay for Google adwords 2) Submit your business to Maps (these appear under adwords for any search that has a place in the search term e.g. wedding DJ Dublin) and finally 3) Google Organic listings.
For 1) Adwords, make sure your web development company has your site ranked at least 7/10 with Google – the higher the rank the cheaper the ads. Adwords is a bidding war but if you are not up on top it’s a waste of time and money. The worst is to be paying just that small amount under the competition and only appear on the side right panel. Increase the bids until you are at top.
Submit your business to maps for point 2) at www.google.com/local/add and please take time to fill in everything loading in as many keywords related to your business as you can.
Finally, to get to the top of Google organic listings, ask your web developers to optimise the website for search engines and install a wordpress blog. You must run a blog and make regular posts , at least once a week in the correct way -by this I mean ensure you have loaded up the title of your blog post with keywords “Wedding Music Service by Wedding DJ in Cavan” and follow this by adding keyword tags “Wedding DJ Dublin” “Wedding DJ Cavan” etc.
So as you can see, getting the website to the top is a job in itself but put in some hard work and it will become your entire sales team.

The Email
Less than 5 people? Google Apps. Google Apps. Google Apps. Nothing can beat this for a new small business. It acts like a central email server storing all your email, gives you SPAM and Virus free access over the internet, through Outlook, on your mobile phone. All email is synced too which gives full access to all email including sent items from anywhere. You can always move to a server running email software when you are a bigger company.

The Network
Again, with Less than five people do not buy a server. A real server will cost 3k to 5k – and please don’t even consider the cheap “fake” sub 1k servers that are nothing more than glorified PC’s. Use your own PC in the office to act as the server, sharing out files and keeping the files and folders in a central location with two USB external drives as backup. Swap the backups disks every Friday and bring one home for that all important off-site backup. There are other options too like www.dropbox.com and www.idrive.com if you trust having your files with a third party. Antivirus software is essential as is your office productivity software – Microsoft Office 2007 or Open Office are the typical choices.

Remote Access
A free option here is to use www.logmein.com or alternatively a firewall for your network will provide remote access with additional security features. Remote access will let you work on your office computer from anywhere as if you are sitting at your desk.

General Tips
Going that extra mile is absolutely essential to any new business starting up and IT is like the coach running along side shouting words of encouragement. Whether it’s the technology that allows you to take that vital call/answer that important email out of hours or perhaps finish that tender document remotely on the office computer from home on a Saturday morning. The extra mile turns into an extra 26 mile marathon with success at the finish line.

Great Blog John Thank You.
Contact John at www.complex.ie for great web design and IT Support