A Yorkshire based security specialist firm, ITogether, has put together an online guide for small businesses on how to get the most out of the iPad.

The guide is apparently a reaction to a survey the company commissioned, which showed that many business users are failing to take full advantage of the facilities offered by the Apple tablet.

The survey in question found that while almost all of those questioned were using businesses apps on their iPad, nearly half of them, 41%, hadn’t synched their iPad with Microsoft Exchange.

Three quarters of those who had failed to do so admitted that they hadn’t because they weren’t sure how to set it all up.

Hence the guide will show you how to accomplish this task, and also highlights the considerable number of business apps which can be downloaded to help the average SMB.

Furthermore, it points out the security strengths of the iPad, including “ full device encryption, pass codes and other remote management policies”.

Simon Richardson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, ITogether, commented: “The research findings were alarming – the iPad is a significant investment so it was concerning that many people weren’t using it to its full potential.”

“The guide contains step by step guidance about how to access work email accounts quickly and easily via both iPad and iPhone.”

If you want to have a read of the online guide, you’ll find it on the ITogether blog page.

The big thing about being a freelancer is that it is very hard to separate yourself from the computer once there is work to be done. In my early days of working from home, I only had a few hours of sleep everyday. Most of the time, I was in front of my computer trying to finish the project as early as possible so I could take on another one. Even when I was working as a virtual assistant with a schedule of 8 to 4 on weekdays, I was always tempted to find another project during the evening or on weekends. Most of the time, I could not find the time to relax and spend it away from the computer.

One of the most important things to master when you are working from home is to strike a balance between career and home life. This is very important if you wish to have a happy existence. The following are the things you can do to achieve it:

How To Separate Work From Leisure

• Designate a separate space from your home solely for working. This would allow you to get into the right frame of mind when you sit down to work and during the time when you leave the workplace after you have consumed the number of hours allotted for working.
• You have to make a plan. Set a time when you are going to start to work and when it is time to stop.
• Always have a set of goals to achieve during the day and leave the workplace once these are done.
• Limit the working time to a number of hours and take a break during lunch or by taking a walk outside of the house.
• Give your leisure time more attention. You have to plan it and stick with it. Do not sacrifice it for more work.
• Make a list at the end of each working day of all the stuffs that you want to get done the following day.

Most work from home folks tend to get lost tracking the time when they are busy working. This will lengthens the day and makes it hard for them to take the needed break away from the computer. Eventually, they can ask this question, “Is this what I want to be living my life for the long term?”. If not, then you have to make the decision of setting strict boundary between work and leisure and stick to it no matter how tempting it is to keep working. Discipline is the key to success and balance. You can have both if you commit to both. There will always be more work to do, so the only solution is to learn to self-regulate.

You can visit my blog, The Freelancer Notebook, if you’re looking for work at home opportunities online. Or, you might just want to browse through the blog and look for some tidbits and info.

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Did you know that decluttering office space doesn’t mean remodeling or reposition furniture? Even though it is nice to be able to remodel your workplace and reposition your furniture, this is not what makes you efficient.

The most important area of one’s workplace is your actual function room, and this is the area you should concentrate on should you want to optimize your day time. What will improve your efficiency is having a function space that’s clear of clutter and situated inside a manner which will optimize your ability to produce.

When workplace clutter becomes an issue, your ability to complete tasks will probably be negatively affected. We all know how essential it’s to discover paperwork and products we need on a daily or weekly basis. Even products we only need several times a month can become easily lost unless you declutter workplace room and organize files. Instead of danger losing a client or your job, make a point to obtain organized!

Filing Program

Any documents you require should be incorporated into a filing program. Do not place every thing in 1 drawer or folder. Rather, use basic alphabetization for quick reference. If you prefer you are able to use dates to sort paperwork. For some individuals or particular types of filing using dates function really well. Another concept to easily identify files would be to use folders that come with colorful tabs that you are able to write on.

Some careers need the use of reference information. For those who have paperwork or guides you need to use frequently, keep these inside a separate region. Label a drawer for resources, or consider placing these in binders. You can even buy binders of various colors to help differentiate in between every.

Label Your Work Space

Labels are a great method to declutter workplace room. Allow it to be a point to notate the contents of each folder and binder. Some folders and binders consist of clear slots that may be used to display a label. Be as brief and descriptive as you can. Prevent vague wordage when utilizing labels. Instead, incorporate dates and description without having writing whole sentences.

Numerous desks consist of slots for labels on drawers. If yours does, allow it to be a stage to use them. This might be beneficial ought to you miss work 1 day time and somebody needs to discover a particular file inside your desk. Plus, drawer labels will assist you to discover each document’s rightful location. Words, colors, and dates can help you declutter office function space successfully.

 photo credit: Edd Morgan

Desk Decorations

Adding personal touches for your desk can make the day time more pleasant. A family photograph here or a motivational paperweight there can really liven up your work space. Nevertheless, keep it to 1 or two products. Whenever you start to scatter unnecessary items all over your desk top, you may minimize your accessible function region and create confusion. An open region will provide you with breathing room and permit your mind to believe without feeling overwhelmed. If you can hang products on walls, do so. This can help keep the desk best cleared for function related items.

When you declutter office room, you might find items you borrowed from coworkers. This might be a stapler or some pens, or possibly a reference book. Avoid accumulation of these products by producing a point to return them as soon as you no longer need them. Do not allow materials to sit on your desk. Not only will this add clutter for your function room, but it is also an example of poor workplace etiquette. Other people might need those objects or materials, so make sure they’re immediately returned to their rightful location.

Whenever you declutter office room, you’ll promote effectiveness and positive habits. You might notice a quicker work day and simpler time locating the points you have to get the job done. This will not only alleviate your stress levels, but also make you a better employee. Customers will be pleased with your organized nature, and your coworkers will appreciate your reliability when you declutter workplace room.

Checking your inbox for incoming electronic mails from time to time is not really a healthy habit especially if you are about to finish something or you are reaching a goal.
Keep the checking to a minimum and allow yourself to work and do away with your email later.

Little did you know that by just checking your email, let’s say every hour, would actually cost you too much time and would therefore delay you in meeting your deadline or in reaching your goal.

How can it cause delay on your job or tasks to be done?

This is because by checking your email almost every hour a day, there is a big tendency that you lose the concentration you have on your job.
Your focus will be lost and you will be distracted by the emails that have been arriving to your inbox.
I know how some of your friends would forward letters, jokes, greeting cards and even just a simple message and just by reading those, you are actually wasting your precious time.
Try to think the time you have spent in reading each email, digesting what the email is all about and then decide whether to reply to the said mail or choosing who to forward the mail to.
By just doing those things, you can now waste about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how long the email is and how long you allow yourself to be diverted.
The 30 minutes to an hour that you’ve spent on your email alone can let you finish more important tasks already so, don´t limit yourself.

Also, I know how disturbing it is when your attention can quickly be diverted to another thing.

Try to imagine, you are writing an article about food supplements and their benefits and then when you checked your email, someone has sent you a message about the cons of taking food supplements.
Try to imagine what would happen to you.
Would you still want to continue with the article or would you have doubts with the one you are currently writing?
See the power of one new email have?
Just one message can make you stay out of focus and delay you from completing your task.

When is the best time to check your inbox, read mails and answer or forward it to somebody else?

Well, first thing to put to mind is to teach yourself to check your email at the maximum of two times a day only.
Do not exceed the number indicated and it is also much better if you just check it once a day.
The best time for you to do this is during the start of your day or during the night when you are about to sleep.
And when you do check your mail, answer first everything that needs to be answered and after that you can now have the freedom to forward some of it and read the irrelevant ones.

Checking, reading, answering and forwarding your email once or twice a day is very beneficial for you.
You can really save up your time and I bet, you will be surprised by how much time you will actually win if you restrict yourself in opening your email inbox from time to time.

photo credit: markhillary

There is a great chance that you own a computer or any other piece of electronic equipment. There is also a great chance that you ran into some problems with these devices and called the manufacturer for technical support. There is a good chance that the technical support you called is located thousands of miles away from the company in another country.

This is called outsourcing. Companies today are now considering outsourcing their jobs in other countries, such as the Philippines, Mexico, India, and China because of cheap labor. The reason why outsourcing is very popular among companies today is because of cheap labor, quality services and it allows the company to focus more on important factors involved in letting the company grow.

Help desks, and technical support services aren’t the only outsourced jobs today. Now, companies are also outsourcing their payrolls, their business process, data entries, human resources and a lot more. Because of the growing competitiveness of other countries in the information technology, outsourcing companies are now widely available.

Here are some of the advantages of outsourcing services and the reason why companies are considering outsourcing their jobs:

• Lower personnel costs
• Allow the company to focus on more important factors
• Free up space in the company building for other important uses
• Increase productivity
• Effectively manage the jobs of a company
• Reduce cash flow
• Free up management time
• Increased company efficiency

However, with all the advantages of outsourcing, there are also disadvantages that you should consider. Here are some of the disadvantages that outsourcing will have:

• Loss of local jobs, particularly jobs related to customer service and technical fields
• The company losses direct control over the management
• Quality problems
• Slow response time, which can lead to frustration and anger of some of the customers
• Foreign agents sometimes have different accent that may be hard for local consumers to understand
• Slow resolution times
• Reduction of product sales because of frustrated customers or people who boycott a company’s products because they outsource

These are some of the disadvantages of outsourcing. However, if your target is cheap labor, you can definitely consider outsourcing. But you have to make sure that the quality of the services of an outsourcing company should be at par with your standards. For example, if you need a call center to be outsourced, you have to make sure that the employees of the call center company should be competent and qualified to get the job done. You should also consider the fact that they should be able to speak fluent English with an accent that is easy to understand.

Outsourcing has a lot of benefits that your company can take advantage of. However, before you outsource, you should first weigh the advantages and disadvantages and know whether outsourcing is for you.

If you want to provide jobs for your countrymen, then you shouldn’t consider outsourcing or you should consider outsourcing your company’s jobs to local outsourcing companies.

These are some of the things you should consider when you plan on outsourcing. You have to keep in mind that there are a lot of advantages as well as disadvantages in outsourcing. You have to be able to weigh it in order to arrive at a good decision in whether you want to outsource or not.

Avoiding the Mistakes every Small Business Blogger Makes

When people run their own business and they read about how every business needs a blog to succeed, they tend to misinterpret this common exhortation somewhat. They feel that you need to have a blog whether or not you know how to run one or care about one. Running a blog the wrong way tends to be far worse than not running one at all. Small businesses, more and more, are trying their hand at content development.  As they try to do this, observers are beginning to see how businesses, if they do it right, tend to gain new customers or retain existing ones. When they make a mistake though, it’s easy to see how they quickly tarnish their image (and their customer roster). What kinds of mistakes can you make as a business blogger? Consider these.

Avoiding the Mistakes every Small Business Blogger Makes

Before the Internet came along, things were rather simple. Wherever you chose to set up your business, you physically belonged there and nowhere else. These days though, every business on Earth is practically in one place – the first page of a popular search engine. Basically, your blogging efforts need to be tied in with your plans to hog a good spot on a good search engine. Before you actually get into content creation, you need to try to think about what exactly you’re trying to achieve through this. Are you trying to get people to be more aware of your brand and your business? Is your blog’s post to read like a commercial so that it succeeds directly in selling something? Perhaps you just want a blog to get your name out there and connect with people for no specific agenda (which would be good, too). Do you wish to just have your voice heard or do you wish to build a community where people gather around?

Avoiding the Mistakes every Small Business Blogger Makes

The problem with being a small business blogger is that as usual, responsibility for the blog falls to the overworked businessman who runs the whole show. It can be quite difficult to take care of a quality blog when everything else clamors for one’s attention. If the owner of a business is pretty clear that he wishes to grow and nurture an online community, that would be a great reason to never neglect the blog. Lots of businesses start a blog without putting much thought into whether they have the time to support it. A neglected blog kind of makes a bad impression.
Have you read about how Zappos, the shoe retailer, has been spending half a million dollars correcting the grammar and language on its user comments pages? They do this because visitors to a website or a blog, when they read poorly written stuff, go away with a terrible impression about the whole website. Apparently, they’ve found that when a visitor reads a negative comment about a product that’s written in perfect English, he still walks away with a good impression of what the product stands for. On the other hand, when he reads a poorly-written positive comment about a product, he refuses to buy that product. The language quality of what you say on your blog really rubs off.

And your blog posts need to invite participation from visitors to your blog. That’s supposed to be the whole point of any blog post – that it should invite participation. A blog post doesn’t have to be a lengthy dissertation. It just has to be a provocative and well written opinion on something that is likely to draw reader interest.

Avoiding the Mistakes every Small Business Blogger Make