Nex-Tech Blog | Technology Tips and Tricks | Industry News

Boot Camp is in Session! Nex-Tech recently had the opportunity to partner with the Hays Area Chamber of Commerce to offer a Digital Marketing Boot Camp presented by certified content marketing expert, Frank Kenny. Kenny drilled home the top key points in helping small business owners tackle social media marketing through Facebook, the creation of a customer email database through website pixeling and content creation with email marketing. Each of these marketing boot camp drills focused on helping small business owners tackle a few key marketing aspects for business growth.

Extended employee leave is becoming one of the more prevalent staffing challenges for business owners. While it’s not a new issue, it certainly is gaining significance as the job market is shifting. Younger generations have a more pronounced demand for work-life balance, paid parental leave is on the rise with leaders, from both parties calling for a nationwide program and more and more companies join the growing trend of flexible work hours and sabbatical options for employees. Sure, all that is great news for employees and while big corporations might have enough resources to fall back on, it is often difficult for small and medium businesses to plan for and get through extended leave situations. The matter of the fact is that no matter the industry or the size of your business, eventually you will have to deal with being one or several staff members short for an extended period of time.

Our team had to recently deal with such a situation and I was the culprit! I didn’t spare them any hurdles either by being the textbook example of what NOT to do! Here’s what happened: I was expecting my first child and planning for 12-week maternity leave and had the best intentions of prepping for my absence, briefing my team and leaving detailed notes on everything I was working on. Little did I know that my little guy had a mind of his own and decided to show up seven weeks early, leaving my team scrambling and me feeling horrifically guilty. Thankfully, everyone stepped up to the plate and did a fantastic job picking up what I had left and we got through it! But that experience really made me consider how reactive we go about dealing with extended leave without much strategy or planning. So, I decided to turn this into a learning moment and give you some takeaways to help you hopefully avoid repeating my mistake. Here are my five big Ahas. Disclaimer: I am not an HR expert, just someone who had to learn the hard way.

I remember, almost 20 years, ago how excited I was to be part of a server deployment.  Cool new hardware, having to put all the parts in the box, operating system installation and configuration to the network (Some of you are thinking “Yeah, what fun?”).  That fun has now worn off to the reality of servers today:

Have you ever Googled your own name to see what results would show up? If not, you must try it. Most likely you will see a result of social media profiles listed, and one of them might actually be yours. You might also see a few images of yourself pop up as well. Are you happy with how those search results depict your personal image? Let me share a few tips I have learned from some experts on how to build your individual brand online.

When getting support for items around your office and home many times you make that decision by who is local, by manufacturer (Like Chevy or Ford) or by reputation.  However, when choosing a technology partner (That could be referred to as a Managed Service Provider (MSP), Value Added Reseller (VAR) or many other terms) that decision can be more difficult. 

In today’s fast paced, competitive environment, business owners and operators don’t often consider how a call reporting or call recording solution might bring value to their organization.  Below is a down and dirty “hot” list of features and functionality that just might benefit your operation.

What is Call Reporting?

Call reporting, quite simply, is the ability to take the detailed call information from your telephone system and the telephone company, compile that information and run reports on criteria that you determine.

Benefits:

• The ability to monitor time and effectiveness of staff on the phone through performance metrics.
• Measure marketing campaigns by tracking call activity on a per campaign basis.
• Get statistics on where your calls are coming from to make more effective advertising decisions.
• Assign costs to call time for internal or external billing.
• Notification of 911 calls and recording threats or harassing calls.
• Managing and optimizing line capacity by monitoring usage.
• Analyzing heavy call times to make informed staffing decisions.
• Viewing call progressions to ensure that customers are not “bounced” around.

Rarely have I heard anyone say Wow, so much time and so little to do!  One common theme I have heard in business is everyone saying that is a great idea, but when will I or anyone else have time to get it done?  The better question is if it is such a great idea, how can you afford not to get it done?  What I want to give you are five tips to utilize the tools around you to maximize your time and gain more free time in your business week.

1. Siri or Cortana. How many times have you been driving and needed to schedule a meeting, have a reminder set or send a message?  If you are like me, you are hesitant to use these services because you have had poor performance.  With 4G now, the devices are faster and the software has improved, making the experience much better.  Let your virtual assistant help you gain time!

2. Email can waste a lot of time. Justin McClung, Director of Development, Innovation & Administration at Nex-Tech, gave a great session at Tech Edge and did a Fastest 16 Minutes webinar called Inbox Zero.  While zero is probably a bit aggressive for me, I do believe that there are definitely keys to success in minimizing email interruptions.
   1. Turn off the pop up notifications. It isn’t that important.
   2. Touch email once. File it or act on it.  Delete it if it isn’t important.
   3. Create a filing system that is easy.

What is Snapchat?

 Many of us have spent hours stewing over that same big question, “Should I build a Facebook page for my business?” Just moments after posing this question, an abundance of additional concerns set in. What if it is expensive? What would I post about? What if a customer posts negative comments on my page? I already have a website, so I don’t need a Facebook page, right?

In order to develop a successful marketing strategy, it’s important to customize our efforts towards our target end consumers. For many businesses, this could mean an extremely diverse set of demographics. Multi-generational marketing has become increasingly important with five distinct generations that encompass our region's overall buying power. In order to communicate effectively to our consumers, we must properly identify which generation they are categorized in.