5 tasks every business should have done by Halloween.

The season of pumpkin flavored everything may seem months away – and the holiday season even father off in the distance. Yet, in reality, once the back to school campaigns start to die down, small businesses should already be thinking ahead to the busy holiday season. Instead of waiting until the last minute to get ready, there are some steps you can take now to ensure that your small business ends the year on a high note.

Create a Holiday Marketing Plan
Did you know that 69% of consumers are more likely to frequent a local small business with a social media presence? It is important to decide how you will use all the marketing tools at your disposal, including social media and traditional routes, to your holiday advantage. The fall is also a great time to decide what holiday season outreach your small business will participate in and then start reaching out to get involved now.

Organize Tax Documents
Just as the whirlwind of the end of one year starts to settle, another looming time of year takes shape: tax season. Do yourself a favor and start getting organized now. Make sure you have important documents ready and available, and that your bookkeeping is up to date. If you plan to make any significant charitable donations before December 31, decide how much and where it will go.

Update Your Website
This is especially important if you are a retailer with an online presence. Make sure your site has your most recent merchandise listed and is easy to navigate for shoppers. While you are there anyway, double check all of your contact information and be sure that nothing has changed since you last modified it.

Decorate
Even if your business doesn’t tend to get “dressed up” on a seasonal basis, take advantage of the cooler temperatures to update the look of your office. Change out faded furniture, update office equipment or just add new accessories that rejuvenate your professional look.

Touch Base with Customers
Get ahead of the holiday marketing game by sending out an email promotion, or just an newsletter with information about what is new and happening at your small business. Invite the customers in your email database to follow you on social media and to subscribe to your company blog. By reaching out to your customers long before your competitors do, you will plant the seed for success when the holiday season rolls around.

Whether you are a small business retailer, or service provider, gearing up for the end of the year (and the start of the next one) is a great way to prepare for a less stressful, more lucrative holiday season.

The iPhone 6 Plus has been out for six days...and the complaints are in!

As we get further and further into the technology world, the fad for Apple has always been this: The next new iPhone will be thinner with more features than ever. Is curving or bending part of those features? If you own an iPhone 6 Plus, it just may be.

According to TIME, with the larger screen on the newer iPhone is cool, it might also present a problem when you put it in your front pocket and you happen to wear tighter pants.

We hope you bought that insurance on those new iPhones! Be sure to keep them out of your pockets - buy a belt clip here at Shop IES. Limited quantities available; sale ends 9/30/14.

Source: Time.com

What traits do you need to start your own small business?

When it comes to starting your own venture, there are certain character traits that are essential. Here are five traits you need to successfully start your own small business...

Work Ethic:
You’re going to need a solid work ethic for two reasons: First, if you’re smart, you’ll begin your small business while still working at your current career. That takes a ton of pressure off of you in the beginning regarding revenue generation. Many businesses take some time to turn a profit, so it helps to keep cash flow coming in from another source until that happens. And second, starting a small business requires a ton of hard work – regardless of any overnight Internet sensation success stories you may have read about.

Time Management:
Again, if you start your business while at your current job, you’ll need to maximize each and every minute of your working day. Create a to-do list, cut off all Internet distractions such as social media or fantasy sports leagues, and take care of personal errands like grocery shopping or dry cleaning on your daily trek to and from work. Proper time management is crucial, as every minute you can free up is one more minute you can devote to your small business.

Passion:
If you don’t truly believe in what you’re doing, your chances of success are minimized. If you’re not supporting a cause you truly feel enthusiastic about, you’ll have a hard time staying motivated. Often, the joy it brings you is the only thing you’ll have to fall back on when times get hard.

Ingenuity and Flexibility:
Being creative and ingenious are also parts of small business success. You might think about starting a landscaping business, but later find that organic gardening is more popular than landscaping with ornamentals. If you thought your ticket to success was social media marketing, but that hasn’t worked out, you might have to branch out into other advertising options. Being willing and able to change is a key asset in small business success.

Perseverance:
Unless you’re extremely lucky and find success rather early on, you’ll need to be patient. Realize that patience is a virtue when it comes to launching your small business idea. It’s a stellar strategy if you want to get into small business ownership while still working at a traditional career, and you never know what might come of it.

Still on the fence of whether or not you should make the leap into being a business owner? IES can help you with a professional website, marketing, and social media plan. Give us a call at 781-816-9437 or email contactus@iesadvisors.com.

1. Work Ethic

You’re going to need a solid work ethic for two reasons: First, if you’re smart, you’ll begin your small business while still working at your current career. That takes a ton of pressure off of you in the beginning regarding revenue generation. Many businesses take some time to turn a profit, so it helps to keep cash flow coming in from another source until that happens. And second, starting a small business requires a ton of hard work – regardless of any overnight Internet sensation success stories you may have read about.

2. Time Management

Again, if you start your biz while at your current job, you’ll need to maximize each and every
minute of your working day. Create a to-do list, cut off all Internet distractions such as social
media or fantasy sports leagues, and take care of personal errands like grocery shopping or dry
cleaning on your daily trek to and from work. Proper time management is crucial, as every minute you can free up is one more minute you can devote to your small business.
- See more at: http://blog.fiverr.com/traits-need-start-small-business/?utm_source=el_ct&utm_term=n492#sthash.S5qgntss.dpuf

Upgrading to iOS 8? Avoid the iCloud Drive bugs.

The new iPhone 6 is here! As usual, with a new iPhone comes a new operating system release. For those of you downloading iOS 8, you may want to avoid using iCloud Drive. After you download iOS 8 and you begin the setup process, at some point you're going to be given the option of signing into iCloud Drive. We recommend you do not do it, as it's not meant to work properly until Apple releases the new Mac operating system.

If you use iCloud to sync documents and other things between your phone and your computer (as most people do) you will lose that sync ability if you activate iCloud Drive today. You can wait on it until October 21st - the date Mac's new operating system, Yosemite, is released. It is important to know that iCloud Drive, once activated, can't be reversed - you can't turn it off and go back.

Over all, iOS 8 is without question the most comprehensive, detailed upgrade that Apple has ever offered to its iPhone / iPad software. You are probably going to need to find somebody that can give you a tutorial on this. There are things throughout this operating system that, if you just wait to discover them, could take you six months to go through them all or find them all.

3 things to consider before you install iOS 8 on your iPhone.

Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, is live and available for download & installation now. All you have to do is go to Settings > General > Software Update to make it happen. But wait!

1) Make sure you back up your phone before updating.
This is really important and something most people ignore. Then you start crying when the install freezes and suddenly you lost all of the pictures of your cat with that cute little vest on. Forever. You'll never see those pictures of Mr. Tinkle again. You don't know how your phone is going to act during the installation and you don't know what kind of hidden glitches may be in the new operating system. It's likely ok, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Always back up your phone!

2) Don't put iOS 8 on your iPhone 4 / 4S.
The update is available for you, but don't do it. (Frankly, you shouldn't have installed iOS 7 either). The older phone just doesn't fill the hardware requirements of the new OS and the performance suffers significantly because of that.
If you like your 4S, keep it. But don't expect any changes coming your way. It will be just like it is today - forever

3) Realize that install of iOS 8 needs 5.8GB of space.
Delete whatever music, videos, pictures, or applications you need to in order to make the switch.

If you're planning on buying the iPhone 6 tomorrow, you should keep this in mind as you make your selection of which version to purchase. Those of you going the cheaper route and getting the 16GB model are only going to have a little over 10GB of space available to play around with, which isn't a whole lot when all your photos, videos, and music are restored.

Does your company have a website? Here's 3 things it should never do.

Is your website doing it’s job? If you’re not seeing the traffic, signup, or revenue numbers that you expect then your website might be making some big mistakes, but they might not be the mistakes that you think. Easily overlooked and often improperly implemented, these are the 3 things that your website should never do.

Create Ambiguity
A successful websites lives and dies on the strength and clarity of its messaging. It’s not just the copy, successful website messaging flows from site design and architecture all the way down to background images and font-type. Ambiguity is your enemy, so desired action must be clear: filling out a form, buying a product, or calling a phone number. Once you establish the action goals you can battle ambiguity by ensuring that every component of your website plays a part in pushing visitors toward these desired outcomes.

Get Pushy
Video and audio players that start automatically, “sign in to continue” pop-ups on informational pages, oversized images that reduce page speed – forcing unnecessary decisions or experiences can be the fastest way to push visitors away from your website. Instead of getting pushy, you should understand what a visitor wants from your site, and then work to resolve those intentions into a positive outcome.

Skimp on Visuals
Low-quality stock photos or mismatched color schemes send a bad message, you absolutely can’t afford to cut visual corners when building an effective website. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel on visual experience, leverage standard practices that visitors expect and appreciate. Resources like Kuler allow you to view user submitted color schemes to get inspiration and see what works for others while quality stock imagery is available from places like iStockphoto.com or Shutterstock.

If you have a struggling website, give IES a call. We can help you get a much higher ROI on your website by redesigning or reconfiguring it.

IES, Inc.
781-816-9437
iesAdvisors.com
 

The Web's newest scam: Jennifer Lawrence nude pictures.

There is a new (true) current event which unfortunately is the ultimate click bait. A hacker got into Apple's iCloud and hacked the account of Jennifer Lawrence and many other celebrities. Apparently, she had taken nude pictures of herself and they are all out there now. You would think these celebs would have learned by now, but no. Apple has patched a bug that would allow brute force attacks on iCloud, and this may have been how the hack was done, or it could be simply a guessed password.

The cyber criminals are already working on campaigns to exploit this event and these are going to be very enticing phishing attacks over the next few months.
 
This weekend, it was all over the news that hackers leaked nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities. The news is true, and the pictures are out there. The problem is that the bad guys are going to use this to trick people into clicking on links and open attachments, which will infect your computer with malware. Do not get curious and fall for these scams.

Do you use Craigslist to sell? You may want to check out these facts to avoid ad deletion...

First and foremost, keep separate Craigslist accounts when posting from home and the office. When posting from home, you are likely the only person posting from that location. While at the office, chances are multiple people are posting. You do not know how others are posting, what tools they use, and what boards they are posting to, and not to mention multiple people from one location will look very spammy to Craigslist. Keeping your accounts separate will make sure your home account (most likely to in good standing) does not get polluted by other people’s behaviors in the office.

Keep your ad content varied.  Craigslist has an algorithm to detect spammy and duplicated ads. It is important to write good ad descriptions. We recommend writing multiple versions of ad descriptions for best results. Using one generic description for multiple ads is a huge red flag.

Do not post to multiple boards with one Craigslist account. Sometimes you might have multiple listings in very far locations, which might need you to post to different boards (like Boston vs. North Shore). Posting many ads to multiple board is another red flag.

Do not post simultaneously using one Craigslist account on multiple computers. Do not switch computers while using the same Craigslist account within 24 hours. To be safe, within 24 hours, only post from one location, with one computer, and one Craigslist account.

Do not switch between your Craigslist accounts in one location frequently. Switching between many Craigslist accounts in one location is yet another red flag.

Post locally, this means do not use proxies and VPNs, particularly public ones.  Each internet connection has an IP address, kind of like your mailing address, which is how others identify you on the Internet. You should post from a local location. For example, if you are posting from New York to the Boston board, Craigslist knows and will mark you as a spammer.

Don’t expect 100% go through rate. A 20% deletion rate is normal, particularly if you are posting every day. High deletion rate indicates something is wrong with either your location, your account or the ads you are posting.

If you are in need of a professional company to manage your Craigslist posting, give IES a call / email today! 781-816-9437 / contactus@iesadvisors.com