Computer Support Blog

Traditional TV ratings are mostly indicative of a show’s potential as an advertisement space.  The more people that watch a show, the more eyeballs view the commercials attached to that show.  However, in the age of digital media, significant money can now come from direct digital sales to an online audience.  Ratings are not always helpful at measuring the overall potential of a show to make money through DVD, Blu-Ray and digital sales. A show with a smaller but very active and engaged audience can outsell a show with a very large audience who only watches casually.  Now, with social media becoming a major part of viewers’ everyday lives, networks and producers finally have a chance to gain insight into audience engagement.  Invested viewers constantly tweet and update their Facebook profiles with comments about their favorite shows as they air and directly afterwards.  Cool person in technology Laurent Maisonnave has created a system called SeeVibes to report the level of social media engagement for television shows.  With Maisonnave’s system, network and cable stations can get insight into how many people emotionally invest in their content and how they can encourage further investment.  Read more »

Trying to react to how customers interact with and perceive a website is one of the most difficult challenges of modern marketing.  Companies devote extensive time and resources to constantly updating their websites in reaction to how visitors spend time on and engage with their sites.  Usually, companies perform long-term tests, which help them decide on new designs and content for their pages.  However, a new startup has released a product that can help businesses react even more quickly and dynamically to how people use their sites.  Cool person in technology Karl Wirth founded Evergage to create a system where companies can react to visitors on their site in real-time and provide specially tailored content to users depending on their behavior.  Read more »

Small independent retails stores local chains face an uphill battle when trying to compete with national chains and large corporations.  Bigger companies can hire large teams to manage social media and email campaigns on the web for branding and marketing purposes. However, many small retail businesses do not have the personnel or time to dedicate to online marketing.  Cool person in technology Ted Teele founded his company SnapRetail to help independent retail stores maintain an online presence without having to dedicate many resources to the task.  Teele’s company provides stores with a social media and email platform that uses well-known promotional tactics and marketing concepts to provide small retail businesses with email and social media campaigns that they can set up easily. SnapRetail actually gives shop owners pre-created promotional templates and social media posts that only require minor customization.  Shops can schedule these prefinished emails and social media posts for weeks at a time using the SnapRetail dashboard.  Using Teele’s product, one person can manage long-term online campaigns with minimal effort and time involved.  Any storeowners who are unclear on the basics of social media sites will want to speak to a business computer services company to learn about the issue before trying Teele’s service. Read more »

Craft breweries depend heavily on word of mouth for most of their business.  Unlike major corporate beer brands, people can only find specific craft beers in a limited numbers of bars, restaurants and retail stores.  Small breweries also do not have the proper resources to put large amounts of money into national advertising campaigns.  Enthusiasts telling others about specific brews and smaller companies is what keeps many of the regional craft beer companies alive.  Cool person in technology Kevin Bradshaw wants to help craft breweries extend their marketing reach and make it easier for craft beer fans to find particular beers they enjoy or discover new ones to try.  Bradshaw’s company Beerdog produces an iPhone application that that has customers take pictures of the beer they are buying. Bradshaw’s app the automatically recognizes the beer’s brand and tags the brand with its location using the smartphone’s GPS.  Users can search for particular brands in their area and see where others have found craft beers they enjoy in nearby bars, restaurants, and stores.  Craft beer fans simply load up the app to see what locations have the brews they want instead of having to ask around awkwardly.  Users who want to download the app should find iPhone IT support if they have trouble.  Read more »

Even when someone is generally a charitable person, life can be chaotic and prevent that person from donating to charitable causes very often.  Some charities offer donation plans where people pay on a monthly basis in the style of something like a computer tech support subscription.  However, these subscription plans are hard to market without a product and can flounder when trying to gain traction.  Cool person in technology John Ludlow presents a unique solution to this problem with his startup Snoball.  Snoball allows people to donate automatically on a regular basis, but uses a unique hook to draw more people to its program.  With Ludlow’s company, donations to charitable organizations trigger when a particular event that a donor chooses happens.  For example, a nonprofit could use Snoball to create a system where every a certain basketball team wins a game, people donate ten dollars to a special cause or foundation.  Read more »

Creating engaging advertising is one of the hardest challengers that most marketing teams face.  Banner ads and invasive video ads often do more to turn off viewers than actually interest them in a product or service.  This situation gives marketing professionals a particularly difficult challenge when it comes to advertising on the web.  The good news for them, however, is that there exists a cool product in the tech industry that can help them create interactive ad experiences that are far more likely to get viewers’ attention.  That cool product goes by the name of Jivox. Read more »

Data entry is never anyone’s favorite task in a sales job.  Sales professionals always prefer to spend more time connecting with clients and working out deals rather than typing details into a computer system.  Filling out forms with customer information, dates, and progress reports often feels like wasted time.  However, these processes remain necessary parts of a sales operation, much to the chagrin of anyone who sells. Read more »

In 2005, three ex-PayPal employees founded a site that changed content distribution and viral marketing on the web forever.  They named that site YouTube.  YouTube popularized the practice of everyday users creating content and posting it on the web.  YouTube kept the content specific to the video format, but still managed to change the way people thought about the web.  YouTube videos are now essential for many companies, public personas, celebrities, and artists in order to have a serious presence on the web and gain a strong fan base.  However, not all content marketing is best through a video format.  That’s where cool person in technology Scott Annan steps in with his company Accel.io. Read more »

Small business owners who don’t have the technical knowledge or the right connections can have a lot of trouble setting up an online store for web-based clientele.  Cool product Volusion provides a complete e-commerce solution for businesses covering every aspect of the process.  Volusion distinguishes itself from its competitors by including every aspect of e-commerce for small business rather than focus on one particular point of it.  Other services provide help with an online POS system, social media marketing, or order processing.  However, these services usually come from separate companies, making the process less convenient and fractured for already-stressed business owners.  Volusion differentiates itself by offering solutions for all of these things in one complete package.  The company wants to be a one-stop solution of sorts and give small businesses one experience for all of their e-commerce dealings.  In theory, this sort of all-in-one solution could reduce the need for business IT support services.  However, in practice, that may not be the case, as people may need tech support to help them learn the ropes of Volusion’s software. Read more »

Social analytics aren’t always the most accurate way to find out what a company’s reputation is on the web.  Most of these analytics tools scan social networks and find relevant posts simply by the mention of a business’s name and potentially a few keywords.  However, this often means that these tools measure both positive and negative statements about a company in the same manner.  Someone complaining about a restaurant’s menu and someone complimenting it could look the same in many tools as long as the authors used one or two of the same words.  This situation demands a more accurate solution and the team at Local Measure believe that they have found one.  Read more »