Great News girlies! My PB Knock Duvet is being featured at
So I can proudly wear this button for the SECOND time:o)
So I can proudly wear this button for the SECOND time:o)
Thursday, May 19, 2011
I've Been Featured at Knock Off Decor!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Hundreds of ways to work smarter with Google Apps
Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Team
Talking to our small businesses customers, we see they have a passion for what they do and a drive to succeed. On the Google Apps team, we have a passion for helping small businesses succeed by providing them with access to the same technology that large enterprises often have at their disposal. Google Apps offers small businesses hundreds of ways to leverage the power of the web to work more efficiently and focus scarce time and resources on getting ahead of the competition.
To celebrate National Small Business Week, we’d like to share a few of the ways that Google Apps is being used every day (we’ll spare you the time of wading through hundreds). And to make it even easier to get started on tasks such as invoicing and project planning, all examples provided are based on templates from the Google Docs and Google Sites template galleries.
Google Docs template gallery:
#1: Letterhead - Create a professional looking template for your outgoing letters and share it with others in the company. Print letters directly from your browser with Chrome.
#2: Budget planner - Easily build a 12-month budget spreadsheet that you can edit from anywhere throughout the year – no matter where your spending takes you.
#3: Invoice - Save time by creating invoices in a spreadsheet – totals are automatically calculated, and you can share them with co-workers to ensure accuracy and speedy payments.
#4: Customer satisfaction survey - Get feedback from customers and visitors about your product or service with a form. Easily analyze and graph the data.
#5: Business plan - Put your vision down in a doc. Share it with family, investors, banks, and others to get input and spread your ideas.
#6: Project timeline - Give others in your company insight into key milestones, completion dates, and other project details.
Google Sites template gallery:
#7: Intranet - Build an internal website where employees can access company news, employee training information, company policies, holiday schedules, and more.
#8: Project site - Centralize project information in one place. Display a team profile and key dates, and embed project docs and spreadsheets directly in the site.
#9: Team site - Create team rosters, schedule team meetings, and track progress of action items all in one place.
#10: Employee profiles - Build a community by creating profile pages where your employees can post their goals, internal resume, and internal blog.
The list continues but we hope this gives some idea of the range of use cases where Google Apps can help improve productivity for any small business. To learn more, check out some of our new resources including product videos and additional templates at www.google.com/apps/smb.
Talking to our small businesses customers, we see they have a passion for what they do and a drive to succeed. On the Google Apps team, we have a passion for helping small businesses succeed by providing them with access to the same technology that large enterprises often have at their disposal. Google Apps offers small businesses hundreds of ways to leverage the power of the web to work more efficiently and focus scarce time and resources on getting ahead of the competition.
To celebrate National Small Business Week, we’d like to share a few of the ways that Google Apps is being used every day (we’ll spare you the time of wading through hundreds). And to make it even easier to get started on tasks such as invoicing and project planning, all examples provided are based on templates from the Google Docs and Google Sites template galleries.
Google Docs template gallery:
#1: Letterhead - Create a professional looking template for your outgoing letters and share it with others in the company. Print letters directly from your browser with Chrome.
#2: Budget planner - Easily build a 12-month budget spreadsheet that you can edit from anywhere throughout the year – no matter where your spending takes you.
#3: Invoice - Save time by creating invoices in a spreadsheet – totals are automatically calculated, and you can share them with co-workers to ensure accuracy and speedy payments.
#4: Customer satisfaction survey - Get feedback from customers and visitors about your product or service with a form. Easily analyze and graph the data.
#5: Business plan - Put your vision down in a doc. Share it with family, investors, banks, and others to get input and spread your ideas.
#6: Project timeline - Give others in your company insight into key milestones, completion dates, and other project details.
Google Sites template gallery:
#7: Intranet - Build an internal website where employees can access company news, employee training information, company policies, holiday schedules, and more.
#8: Project site - Centralize project information in one place. Display a team profile and key dates, and embed project docs and spreadsheets directly in the site.
#9: Team site - Create team rosters, schedule team meetings, and track progress of action items all in one place.
#10: Employee profiles - Build a community by creating profile pages where your employees can post their goals, internal resume, and internal blog.
The list continues but we hope this gives some idea of the range of use cases where Google Apps can help improve productivity for any small business. To learn more, check out some of our new resources including product videos and additional templates at www.google.com/apps/smb.
What Can Google Answer to Help You Grow Your Business?
Happy National Small Business Week!
On Monday, we gave you five tips to empower your business with online tools and resources. Because it’s National Small Business Week, we’re also taking the time to reflect and find additional ways we can help businesses like yours. Online marketing and technology products may not central to why you started your business, but they can be central to growing your business.
In honor of National Small Business Week, we want to answer your questions about online marketing and technology products designed for small businesses. We want to hear what’s on your mind about how you can use technology to start and run your business. Your question could be about using technology and online resources in general or about Google products and services specifically.
If you have something to share, head over to our Google Moderator session where you can add a new idea or you can vote on ideas that have already been submitted.
We’re excited to hear from you and we hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your day to let us know what you’d most like to hear about from us. Just by sharing what’s on your mind, we get a better sense of what we can improve and where we can help make things easier and more efficient.
And if you haven’t already checked out some of our existing resources, take a few minutes to visit:
On Monday, we gave you five tips to empower your business with online tools and resources. Because it’s National Small Business Week, we’re also taking the time to reflect and find additional ways we can help businesses like yours. Online marketing and technology products may not central to why you started your business, but they can be central to growing your business.
In honor of National Small Business Week, we want to answer your questions about online marketing and technology products designed for small businesses. We want to hear what’s on your mind about how you can use technology to start and run your business. Your question could be about using technology and online resources in general or about Google products and services specifically.
If you have something to share, head over to our Google Moderator session where you can add a new idea or you can vote on ideas that have already been submitted.
We’re excited to hear from you and we hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your day to let us know what you’d most like to hear about from us. Just by sharing what’s on your mind, we get a better sense of what we can improve and where we can help make things easier and more efficient.
And if you haven’t already checked out some of our existing resources, take a few minutes to visit:
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Click. The AdWords newsletter: May 2011
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Posted by Jenn Karakkal, AdWords Small Business Team
Summer Printable
Summer break is just days away, and I wanted to give E the chance to hand out a little something special to all of his buds at school.
I stopped by Walmart and browsed their party section last night. There isn't much to choose from, but they did have these cute little guitar necklaces with bubbles inside. They are $2 for a 4-pack.
Here's what he will be handing out:
And if you are interested in this printable,
then go
HERE to download.
We are going to eat lunch with E today, and he really excited:o)
Looking forward to making his day!!!
Monday, May 16, 2011
Google's 2010 U.S. Economic Impact
(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)
This week is National Small Business Week, an opportunity to celebrate the spirit and ingenuity of small businesses like Everblue, a start-up in North Carolina.
Everblue was founded in 2008 by veterans Chris and Jon Boggiano along with fellow entrepreneur Grant McGregor. The brothers’ goal was to make the U.S. more energy independent by helping people get certified in sustainable building practices. With old-fashioned hard work and some help from Google AdWords, their business has quadrupled in size. They now have 80 full time employees and instructors, and this year alone they’ll train tens of thousands of people—architects, engineers, electricians and others—to build smarter and greener.
Everblue was founded in 2008 by veterans Chris and Jon Boggiano along with fellow entrepreneur Grant McGregor. The brothers’ goal was to make the U.S. more energy independent by helping people get certified in sustainable building practices. With old-fashioned hard work and some help from Google AdWords, their business has quadrupled in size. They now have 80 full time employees and instructors, and this year alone they’ll train tens of thousands of people—architects, engineers, electricians and others—to build smarter and greener.
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| Chris and Jon Boggiano, veterans and co-founders of Everblue, a training institute for sustainable building. Today we’re announcing that Google provided $64 billion of economic activity to businesses, website publishers and non-profits in 2010. This is an 18% increase from the economic impact total in 2009. Here’s how it works: for every $1 a business spends on Google AdWords, they receive an average of $8 in profit through Google Search and AdWords. We’re proud that Everblue and over one million American businesses use our advertising services to tell consumers about their products and services. Learn more at google.com/economicimpact. Posted by Claire Hughes Johnson, Vice President, Global Online Sales |
Celebrating small businesses and integrated, easy-to-use web tools
In honor of National Small Business Week, we’d like to take time this week to share ways that Google Apps and the Google Apps Marketplace can help small businesses work more productively and efficiently.
Today, we’re highlighting a few of the Small Business Web apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, and how our customers run their businesses on them every day. Google shares the Small Business Web’s dedication to providing tools that have enterprise-grade functionality, as well as align with small businesses’ priorities.
Apps that work together
Particularly for companies without a dedicated IT team or person, the list of necessary business tools can quickly become unmanageable. Web apps that provide deep integrations with Google Apps and with each other are especially useful for growing businesses that don’t have time to manage multiple, distinct applications.
Olark lets customers live chat with website visitors directly from the Gmail interface through Google Talk, and provides easy access to chat transcripts. Peter Macaulay of KitchenwareDirect.com.au says, “The ability to live chat with customers without leaving the Google Apps interface is a huge productivity advantage. The simple and elegant implementation meant we were up and running in a matter of minutes. Staff members are easily able to set their availability for chat, enabling them to easily multi-task.”
WORKetc is another app that makes Gmail into the front end workspace, but for CRM, project management, and customer support. It let’s you easily share emails related to particular projects with relevant team members without forwarding or copying other email addresses. D. Hogan of Varis Energy says, “Any emails that need to be shared with my team get tagged in the WORKetc gadget that is built right into Gmail. This immediately lets everyone else who is assigned to a project or lead have access to the new information from the received email.”
Access all the time
As compared to larger businesses, small businesses are even less suited to managing servers, and tend to have many employees on the road or in non-office locations. Accessing their data and documents from anywhere, on any Internet-connected device is a core benefit of using web-based tools like Google Docs. OfficeDrop digitizes paper documents to make them text-searchable in Google Docs.
Greg Skidmore of Belpointe Asset Management says, “Each month we send a box of paper files to OfficeDrop and have them scanned directly into Google Docs. If I have a document that I need scanned right away, I use OfficeDrop’s scanning software, ScanDrop, and upload it immediately.”
Easy to Use
Small business owners and employees often wear a lot of hats and they’ve asked for solutions that are easy to learn and use. Michael Bower of Michael Bower Digital says, “I always need to know where my money is, without wasting time organizing my paperwork. As my business grew, I was losing control of my cashflow. Both Google Apps and FreshBooks have just enough features to keep my workflow and invoicing organized, allowing me to focus on my work.”
These are just a few examples of the many Small Business Web app vendors in the Google Apps Marketplace who provide the functionality and integrations a small business needs. Over 30 Google Apps Marketplace apps have already joined the Small Business Web and declared their commitment to helping small businesses focus on what they do best. They include:
We celebrate National Small Business Week to recognize the importance of small businesses for promoting a healthy economy, and we’re excited to help them continue to grow and succeed through the smart use of technology.
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