Corporate blog: how to blog for business

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Jan 24 2012

Corporate Blog’s are the latest in the online marketing strategy. Along with social media sites, a corporate blog makes for a very powerful tool to get into the eye’s of the customers. The question remains on how to manage your corporate blog and ensure that you blog for business.

The fundamental reason for your company to have a corporate blog is to have a strong online presence and representation. Everything is online. With the rapid growth of forums and social sites, one comment or post against your company, and the world knows about it. In this regard a corporate blog comes handy since you can control the extent of damage by having a simple post on the issue. The real question is however, how do you blog for business? Any enterprise undertaken, no matter how small, must give profit or else it’s a waste of time and resources. Blogging for business is not to be looked at with the traditional perception. Your business is not just on the new customers your blog will bring, but how well you keep your repeat customers happy. A corporate blog goes a long way in customer relations and that is a great help for business.

Blog for Business by making your corporate blog a part of your company

Your customers only see the end product that you provide and are in touch with just a handful of employees. The rest of the “machinery” is hidden away in offices and meeting rooms. Bring the

Read more…

Tags: Blog, Corporate Blog
No Comments »

Twilio raises second microfund from angels McClure, Conway

Financial Reviews | Posted by Kiara Withers
Jan 19 2012

This week at the Twilio Conference in San Francisco, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure announced the launch of a second Twilio MicroFund of $250,000 to invest in companies that are based on Twilio’s Connect platform.

McClure and Ron Conway of SV Angel will each invest $125,000 in the fund. McClure will manage the investments, with Twilio serving as an advisor.

Twilio, a 500 Startup’s portfolio company, provides cloud-based telephony services. The San Francisco-based company, which is hosting a two-day conference, has raised more than $15 million in venture funding from 500 Startups, Bessemer Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Lowercase Capital and numerous angel investors.

The first Twilio MicroFund of $250,000 was supported entirely by McClure and launched in late 2010. It has funded 10 companies to date: Callyo, FastCall411, KnockKnock, Magnolia Prime, Order Mapper, Proven, Qwipd, Textaurant, Voicendo and Volta.

Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson told me that the idea for the fund came from a , which he posted not long after backing Twilio initially in 2009. In the tweet, McClure said he had invested in his fourth startup based on the company’s platform.

“Dave was already investing in Twilio companies, so we decided to formalize the process,” Lawson said.

Apparently, there is no shortage of startups working off of Twilio’s API. At the conf

Read more…

Tags: Mcclure, Mcclure Conway
No Comments »

2 savings accounts you must have

Financial Articles | Posted by Jacob ONeill
Jan 19 2012

If you have decided that 2012 is the year youre finally going to kick your finances into shape, then getting into the savings habit will be a big part of the process. Dont think that sorting out your money needs to be too daunting a task though, Sians got some great tips on how to get organised bit-by-bit.

And now, the saving. This neednt be complicated either. Aside from a current account to use for day-to-day spending, there are only two other places you absolutely must have some money saved up.

1. An emergency fund

With the number of unemployed in the UK at 2.64 million the highest its been since 1994 redundancy is still a big worry for plenty of us. But if you did lose you job, how long would you be able to support yourself and your family?

Thats why if you save for anything this year, it should be an emergency fund. Yes, you could get some form of insurance, but ASU accident, sickness and unemployment insurance  is often expensive and has a lot of exclusions, meaning you could end up with much less cover than you thought.

By creating your own emergency fund, you are effectively insuring yourself. You dont have to rely on hoping a policy pays out if you find yourself in trouble, you know you have the money.

Read more…

Tags: Savings, Savings Accounts
No Comments »

How to achieve your New Year resolutions

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Jan 09 2012

Make a plan to stick to your resolutions

Another New Year. Another resolution. What should it be this time? I went on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour last week to discuss this very question. The other guest on the programme said that she didn’t fancy resolutions much. She didn’t like the “oppressive” notions of “obligation and duty” that they come wrapped in.

I’m not so sure. I rather think we could all do with a little more in the way of notions of obligations and duty. That’s particularly the case when it comes to our finances – which is why, when the other guest suggested everyone resolve to eat better chocolate in 2012, I suggested we all make a proper financial life plan instead.

“Save more” is generally one of the top resolutions made in Britain. But it is a pretty useless one: if you don’t add a proper target to your resolution, it will fall apart long before the sales are over. It is too vague to work. “Save £200 a month until I have three months’ worth of income sitting in a cash account” is better.

But taking it further and making a financial life plan with a series of targets is the best way to go. Most of us neglect the management of our money. We get it, we spend it, we save it and we invest it. But we don’t do so to a set plan. We don’t sit down, decide realistically where we want (or need) to be financially and then work to get there. The results are obvious.

So he

Read more…

Tags: New Year, Year
No Comments »

Important forecasts for the stock market in 2012 …

Financial Reviews | Posted by Kiara Withers
Jan 06 2012

Last week I told you why I continue to insist that most investments I recommend pay for themselves through steady income generation, and why capital appreciation is merely a natural byproduct of that philosophy.

However, I didn’t get specific on particular investment areas to consider in the new year. So today, I want to take a deeper look at the stock market by telling you what areas were the best performers last year as well as what sectors may hold the most promise as 2012 gets underway.

So let’s start with …

A Look Back at the Stock Market in 2011

For the full year, the S&P 500 ended just a bit lower — .0028 percent, technically — than it began 2011.

BUT, and this is an important one, the index managed to eke out a 2.11 percent total return for the year once you factor in dividends.

So right there is an important lesson: Dividends can literally mean the difference between a losing year and a winning one!

Of course, I really pay a lot of attention to how the S&P 500′s ten individual sectors perform because it tells us a lot about general market sentiment along with where future opportunities might lie.

Her

Read more…

No Comments »

The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Freedom Edition

Financial Articles | Posted by Jacob ONeill
Jan 03 2012

A few days ago, a technical problem with The Simple Dollar cropped up involving the front page not refreshing for some users of the site. A reader emailed me about it.

A few months ago, I would have then spent several hours reading documentation and trying to figure out what was wrong. There would have been a decent chance that I would have broken the site in the process. I would have been stressed out, lost the chance to write multiple posts, and walked away wishing I could be doing something else with my time.

Now? I shot an email to my technical contact at Cut Media. They did some stuff. It seems to have been fixed. It took me about two minutes, without stress about breaking the site or anything else.

This is why I made the choice that I did to join forces with Cut Media. They’re good at handling the things that I’m bad at and don’t enjoy. I might not have the financial options I had before, but I have a lot more freedom and a lot less stress.

Terry Gilliam on Ideas, Unlearning, and Avoiding Debt Terry Gilliam is a former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe (he usually did the animation work) and moved on to directing films. I really enjoyed this interview from him about finances and creative careers. (@ the 99 percent)

I’m Investing 100% of my 2012 Income One member of this couple is investing her entire 2012 salary into building a small business with multiple employees. That’s

Read more…

Tags: Dollar, Simple Dollar
No Comments »


Page 1 of 5112345...Last »