5 Android Apps That Small Businesses Should Be Paying Attention To

Smartphone Usage Creates New Opportunities for Businesses

In honor of Google’s third annual developer conference, Google I/O taking place this week, I thought it would be fun to look at a few Android apps that businesses should be paying attention to. Android will be heavily focused on during the event, and you can expect a great deal more Android app development to come, especially as the platforms moves into the television space.

That said, these apps aren’t only available for Android. They are available for other mobile operating systems as well, such as iPhone. That’s all the more reason to pay attention to them.

1. Layar

Layar is an augmented reality app, and a popular one at that. It offers different layers of augmented reality for different needs. There are layers for things like restaurants and bars. A user holds their phone up in any given direction and can see nearby businesses in that direction.

2. Aloqa

Aloqa is a local app that notifies users of nearby places and events by category. If I want to see some nearby gas stations or gift shops for example, I can do so with this app. There are numerous channels users can customize to meet their needs, and plenty of them cater to varying types of businesses.

3. Square

Square is an app that lets anybody accept credit cards, and best of all they even send users free card readers. For more on this, see here.

4. Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social game, and businesses have already been finding ways to entice customers with it for some time. You can read more about this here. Foursquare is the one that gets the most publicity, but there are a variety of similar location apps that should be looked into – Gowalla and Loopt, to name a couple (look for Google to do more and more with location as well).

5. Bar Code Scanner

Bar code scanner is just one such app in this category, but the point is to recognize that an increasing number of people are carrying around bar code scanners in their pockets via their smartphones. You can take advantage of this by using bar codes, QR Codes etc. in your signage, and in your marketing.

Of course, in addition to these apps there are the more obvious things like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which mobile plays an increasing important role in.

What mobile apps do you think offer the greatest opportunities for small businesses? Let us know what you think.

What It Really Takes To Build A Successful Business

So here’s the deal…After 16 years and six business, I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to build a successful business. And I’ll tell ya, most of what my Mom told me—and most of what I believed going into the first four—turned out to be dead wrong.

In each of my early businesses, the busier I got the more of my life I gave up. Soon I was working ridiculous hours but I didn’t have a whole lot in my bank account to show for it. I was basically chained to my computer.

Since my vision of success was working 25-30 hours a week and having plenty of time to ski, mountain bike, kayak and travel, I wasn’t too happy about the whole “you gotta give up your life to start a business” concept. But I did it. And frankly, it didn’t get any better until I decided to hell with that! There had to be another way!!

Thank goodness I found it! That’s why I created my newest business, The Unchained Entrepreneur. I wanted a place to share what I’ve learned with entrepreneurs everywhere.

Below are ten of the key business beliefs I’ve developed that helped me unchain myself from my business. I hope they help you start creating the business—and life—you’ve always dreamed of!

1.    Anyone who wants to have a successful, thriving business—and a fulfilling personal life—should be able to. Remember, it’s your business and your life. You have the power to make them be any way you want.

2.    Marketing isn’t an optional expense. It’s a mandatory investment in the success of your business.

3.    Sleep, get exercise, eat healthy, enjoy a hobby and take care of yourself. You always attract more success when you feel your best.

4.    If it isn’t fun make it fun, don’t do it at all, or find someone else to do it for you!

5.    Success is not defined by how many hours you work in your business, but by how many hours you’re able to spend NOT working in it!

6.    It’s better to be yourself versus what you think others want you to be—even in business. These days the best branding is personable, authentic and unique.

7.    Spend some time unplugged each week. Go out in the woods or a park or a lake somewhere where you can hear yourself think. Voice mail and off buttons exist for a reason.

8.    While it’s always good to do research and analysis, at some point you just have to trust your gut, make a decision and take action.

9.    It’s not what happens that matters, but how you deal with it. Changes that seem forced on you are almost always a good thing for your business in the long run (IE “The universe knows more than you do. Stop fighting it.”).

10.    The very things that scare you the most when it comes to marketing and growing your business are probably the things you most need to be doing.

Want a whole big batch of even more detailed, practical tips and wisdom to help you get started building the business—and life—you’ve been dreaming of?

Grab a copy of my FREE “Success without Shackles Starter Kit” here: http://theunchainedentrepreneur.com/

Twitter Business Center Testing Underway

New controls, features should give companies an edge

It looks like Twitter is finally – and literally – getting down to business.  After working on the site’s stability, translating it into different languages, and finding new corporate offices, it’s now testing a control panel for companies called the Twitter Business Center.

The new Business Center should, judging from screenshots obtained by Ben Parr, allow small business owners to “[c]ustomize the contents of your business profile page,” “[a]dd a ‘Verified Account’ badge to your profile for credibility and authenticity,” and “[a]dd contributors so multiple people can easily tweet from your business account.”

Then one other very interesting feature is the ability to “[r]eceive direct messages from any follower” – even if you’re not following that person in return – which should make the matter of fielding questions and complaints much more straightforward.

To reiterate, though: the Twitter Business Center is just in testing right now, and there’s no way for anyone to opt into the test.

It also remains unknown when the next stage of development might occur, or how much Twitter might eventually charge for access to the Business Center.

Stay tuned, then, and at least make sure that your Twitter account is linked to a working email address in case Twitter tries to include you in the experiment.

Facebook Location Features Will Unlock More Potential for Businesses

Facebook Location Features Coming Soon

We’ve talked about multiple ways Facebook can help your business online, and that is not limited to online businesses, although selling through Facebook is becoming easier and easier thanks to application developers like Payvment.

Facebook is getting ready to start offering location-sharing features. It’s not certain exactly when this will happen, but reports have suggested that it will be before the month is over. Code within Facebook’s touchscreen interface has been discovered that will place a “Places” tab on Facebook user profiles.

“This will be the biggest thing to happen to local businesses since paid search,” says Ian Schafer at AdAge. “The ability to leverage frequent visits to their locations to passively and actively influence others to do the same, deliver special offers, or redirect local foot traffic at a moment’s notice can lead to a direct, measurable impact on in-store sales and word-of-mouth.”

If you thought Foursquare had some good opportunities for local businesses, consider that at last count (months ago at this point) Facebook had over 400 million users.

Location sharing is an increasingly growing trend, and is influencing how people access information. It’s also playing more of a role in search. With or without search, Facebook participating is a game changer.

Foursquare alone just surpassed 40 million check-ins. I could see Facebook surpassing that in a week.

Let’s not forget that Facebook is also sending brick and mortar businesses decals to promote their Facebook pages.

Facebook has been a good way for businesses to engage with their customers in the past, and now there are an increasing number of ways to do this. One app will let you add an actual Support tab to your Page.

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 10

I started out this series by saying that Walt Disney is one of my heroes. This is not to say that Walt was perfect, or even consistently admirable. There are plentiful rumors and tales of Walt’s anti-semitism, despotic management style, mercurial temperament or politically insensitive transgressions. The Disney Studio was far from the happiest place on earth. Disney animators unionized after promises of profit sharing on the hugely profitable Snow White vaporized and Walt subsequently scooped up all the credit for the amazing artistic and technical achievement of the studio team. Even longtime friend Ub Iwerks had a trial separation from Walt for 4 years after being constantly shoved out of the spotlight (although he subsequently returned and spent most of his remaining career with Disney). Yes, Walt had a monumental ego. Yes, he was a glory-hound. And yes, he could be a tyrant to work for.

But that’s not how we remember Walt.

We remember his as a visionary, an artistic pioneer, a maker of magic and possibly the most powerful entertainment icon of the 20th Century. His presence was so powerful that the company foundered for years after his death, trying to guide themselves with the management mantra: What Would Walt Do?

You see, the way we remember things is substantially different that the way things actually are. The same is true for people. Eulogies never inventory the deceased’s many faults (because we all have many faults). They memorialize their strengths, their gifts and their accomplishments.

Leveling and Sharpening

In order to jam things into our long term memory, we take facts and distill them into an idealized version of reality. It’s called “Leveling” and “Sharpening”. We “level” out the mediocre, the mundane and details we just don’t agree with, basically eliminating them as unnecessary “noise” from our memory. Then, we “sharpen” the extraordinary, whether it be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad. Finally, we pick one or the other. We tend not store diametrically opposed opinions of things or people. It creates too much cognitive conflict. We either like things (or people) or dislike them. If we like them, we filter out the negatives and build up the positives. If we dislike them, we do the reverse.

It’s this human tendency that I talked about before in Daniel Kahnemann’s exploration of remembered happiness vs experiential happiness. We level and flatten our lives as well, forever storing an idealized (or demonized) version of what actually happened.

So, for me, although I’m aware of Walt’s faults, that’s not really part of my “image” of the man. I focus on his accomplishments and many gifts. And as I inventory them, I am comfortable in calling him one of my heroes. Walt’s achievements were, by any measure, extraordinary. Perhaps they would be beyond the reach of someone less driven, less egotistical or less tyrannical. Perhaps, perhaps not. But that’s not really for me to judge. What is important to me is that Walt achieved them.

And there is my final lesson from Disney. It’s the extraordinary that will be remembered. It’s when we reach beyond our limits that we determine what we’ll be remembered for. The mundane details of our lives will get lost in the retelling, along with our mistakes and faults, if we strive to achieve something remarkable.

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Dreams Make a Difference – Part 1

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 2

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 3

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 4

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 5

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 6

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 7

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 8

Dreams Make a Difference – Part 9