Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’
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Small Business
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Many students who are on the verge of graduation will soon be faced with the grisly task of finding a job that they are both interested in as well as qualified for. One of the most important characteristics that a company looks for in a potential employee is the employees work experience in their related field. Having the skills that qualify you are a great advantage but without a work history in your desired occupation it is often very difficult for graduates to get a foot in the door. For many of us it’s a vicious cycle because, how exactly do you go about getting experience when need experience to get the job to get that experience? It might sound like I am talking in riddles but in reality the chances of finding a job that you really want are slim unless you already have a connection with someone within the target company.
So how do we go about getting the experience that we need to satisfy our potential employer’s expectations? Internships are a great option and can be very fulfilling if both parties are benefiting from the arrangement. Both the company and the employee should profit for a good internship to be successful.
If you own a small business why not share your experiences, teach, and provide young newcomers to your profession with the information and training they need? After all you were once in their position and most likely could have used the help. As the company and the intern build a relationship experience is transferred while the company benefits from the extra help. If an internship program is done properly, your company has very little to lose.
The following are suggestion for how to establish an internship program within your organization.
- Create a curriculum or work plan to follow throughout the internship.
Create a plan that covers all aspects of the job to ensure maximum growth. Determine a length of the program and contemplate a potential rollover to a full time position. Be creative, share, and determine the best way for you to teach and your intern to learn.
- Detail an orientation process.
Perform introductions, provide ground rules, and layout the expectations for all the parties involved.
- Work with your intern personally or assign a suitable supervisor.
Choose someone who wants to teach and lend their experience to the intern. Try to get to know each other on a personal level so that the experience is memorable.
- Create a feedback process.
The organization should establish a system to provide feedback to the intern. Similarly the company should inquire about the intern’s thoughts or insights about the program.
Gaining the experience is probably more beneficial to the student than financial compensation, but it is still important to compensate them. As previously stated, the organization shouldn’t be the only one benefiting from this experience.
- Coordinate with local colleges and universities.
Develop a working relationship with local education in order to locate students who would benefit from the program.
Small businesses are urged to create programs like this to ensure that our future workforce is adequately equipped and those that are in need of a mentor have one available. The inspiration, bonds, and gratitude will most likely last forever and you will be left with a sense of pride for doing something helpful for someone. Not only gaining the experience, an intern will also gain an appreciation for the ones who took the chance to help them when other companies wouldn’t. In addition in most cases small businesses that create internships are in great social standing and receive positive community feedback. Our company maintains a paid internship program for students studying in the field of information technology.
So if possible pass on your professional knowledge and wisdom, and help shape the future employees.
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
We’re an information technology firm providing two services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support to businesses.
Tags: business, company, experience, internship, internship program, program, Small Business
Posted in Business Tools, Productivity, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, December 17th, 2010
Hello everyone this is Dustin and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog! We’re an information technology firm in Maryland providing two services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support to businesses.
Although in person face to face communication is still the most valuable method of corresponding with friends, family, and colleagues the digital world is quickly changing the way we interact with one another. The question that a business owner should ask themselves is, do older ways of communicating in person hold back their business and is it an attribute that is beneficial to their business?
Of course one on one conversation still plays a crucial role, regardless of the type business but given the present technology available business owners now have the opportunity to potentially increase their efficiency. Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared software clients. The user’s text is conveyed over a network.1 If used properly and not as a replacement for in person contact, tools such as Instant Messaging and Video conference greatly amplify high-quality business communication and add another layer of convenience for companies.
Ways Instant Messaging Help:
- Staying Connected: Whether communicating with employees, co-workers, or customers you have the ability to connect with and communicate immediately. IM is available on most phones and can keep you in touch even when out of the office or away from your computer.
- Reducing Time and Effort: Again quick communication, users have the ability to type and send in a matter of seconds and do not have to wait forever for a response. Unlike E-mail there is no lag and a response is processed faster. IM systems also allow users to view who is available, not available, or who is away from their program. This is helpful because you know immediately when the recipient receives your communication. In addition IM can eliminate some of the chit-chat and phone tag between users. Although eliminating small talk may be a bad thing when building a professional relationship with someone it is not so much necessary when conveying quick ideas or decisions.
- Creating Excellent Customer Service: The awareness feature keeps people familiar with who is available to handle their issue. Knowing exactly who can help and who can’t can dramatically cut time and effort making it a lot easier to solve issues or get answers. Another plus is that IM only adds another option for customers or users making their experience more pleasant. Some customers might not like using the phone and find they can express their concerns, problems, or ideas more thoroughly and freely through messaging.
Even with all of the benefits that Instant Messaging has to offer there are also some minor downsides that can lead to decreased productivity. Misuse of course is a big setback because it is easy for people to get distracted with unnecessary communication. Dilemmas can also arise due to misinterpreted messages. For example misunderstandings can be created due to the lack of tone or feeling that is conveyed in the message. There is also the possibility of legal risk from neglected attention to detail, or inappropriate use of Instant Messaging. Like E-mail Instant Messaging is also open to viruses and other security risks. The other potential problem with IM is that in order to communicate with other members you need to be utilizing the same messaging service since interactivity between services does not exist. Meaning that, you may have set up various accounts in order to communicate with all the individuals that you need to.
Even with the negative side of Instant Messaging it would still prove to be an important and useful tool. Regardless of if you’re considering its use for external or strictly internal communication as long as it is used properly this option is a great help and can be used in whichever capacity that you decide is right for your business.
Check out these Instant Messaging Services:
Thanks for reading!
-Dustin
CDTek.com
1 Instant messaging. (2010) Retrieved December 17, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging
Tags: Communication, instant messaging, Small Business
Posted in Communication, Networking | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Anyone will tell you that a lot of business is done on the go these days. You’re out at a meeting or just traveling for work and you need to get some stuff done. Mobile devices go a long way in enhancing human productivity. However, it can get complicated when half of your staff wants one device and the others are splintered. It will be a nightmare for your IT department.
An important part of planning is setting up a standard for your business. Just like anything else, you need to have a framework in place to facilitate these areas of your company. It’s best to let the IT department work their magic here, but you definitely have input.
Stick with something that everyone can get their work done on. For some companies, it’s Apple’s iPhone. For others, RIM’s Blackberry line gets the job done. Both have perks and drawbacks for different types of businesses. Meet with your staff, if your company is small enough, or take a poll to see what your employees NEED, not want.
By establishing a standard for smartphones in your organization, you will prevent a lot of IT headaches. At the same time, you’ll squash the deluge of requests for personal phones or special requests for cutting edge tech.
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: business, IT, Mobile, Planning, Security, Small Business, tech
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Friday, October 1st, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Knowing how your employees feel is crucial to any business’ success. If all of your employees are miserable, but you don’t know it, that will lead to big problems later. However, finding out how your people feel can be tricky, especially if you are a medium sized business. Gathering the opinions and viewpoints of all of your workers can be taxing. However, if you want to manage this easily, a great option is an internal poll hosted online.
Now, you can either have this hosted internally on a server, but if your business can’t pull that off, you can always go with an external provider and make the poll private. As we all know, people often feel pressured to say the right thing, especially when it comes from the boss. The best way to get around this is to make the poll anonymous.
Making the poll anonymous can give your workers the assurance that they can be honest without fear of repercussions. Once you have this data, you can determine how you need to make decisions that will affect your business. Ignoring feedback from subordinates can lead to problems down the road, so make sure to make use of this valuable resource.
Example Online Polling Resources:
ITLpoll.com (open source), MicroPoll.com, QuestionPro.com, SurveyMonkey.com, Zoomerang.com
-Josh
CDtek.com
Tags: Employees, Feedback, Medium Business, Polls, Small Business
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland.
We provide several services, like InternetMarketing and Technical Support to small and medium business.
So you’ve got an amazing, potentially award-winning blog. Welcome to the Internet. There are lots of both terrific and terrible writers out there, waiting for their voices to be heard. You are now one of them. Now here comes the tricky part, how do you get them to look at your blog before everyone else’s? Well, there are a few ways to make this happen. One of the fastest and most reliable is to submit them
Digg.com
Digg is one of the most popular socially powered aggregate news sites on the Web. Users must register before posting or commenting on the site, but membership is free. If you are submitting an article, you submit the link and provide basic details about the post. You choose the category, enter the Title and Description, and send it on its way. Your post will appear on the site relatively quickly and then users browsing the New Posts section will see it. If they like it, they vote for it (Digg It!).
Facebook
We’ve talked before about using Facebook to promote your business. If you have a page for your business/blog already, then you can update it as necessary to reflect new posts or marketing strategies to draw in more users. Facebook’s status as a social networking site makes it a great place to spread your influence. Bear in mind, you may want to get involved in various Facebook groups to get your name out there.
StumbleUpon
SU was around for a while before either Digg or Facebook, and as such has a decently sized user base. You must register to use it, and then you submit your articles in the same way that you would with Digg, though StumbleUpon offers a bit more description possibilities. The cool part of StumbleUpon is their “Stumble button that takes into account info from the user’s history and randomly suggests a site.
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: blog, Blogging, Marketing, Small Business, Social Networking
Posted in Business Tools, Marketing, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Reisterstown, Maryland.. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization)and Technical Support to small and medium businesses.
Keeping track of your business’ various tasks can be a daunting task. After all, you’ve started a small business in order to do what you love. This may be a valuable utility style service, but odds are that you’re doing something else. However, you still need to keep your office in order. You can’t cover all of your
Now, you could definitely go to a bigger agency like H&R Block for your Tax needs or a big chain for HVAC needs. However, if you think about it, it would be better to go with a small business owner like yourself. They have a better understanding of where you are, since they are there themselves. Also, they will probably already be connected with other small businesses in the area.
By forging an alliance, of sorts, with other small business owners, you can open your business up to a whole new world of possibilities. You can engage in a real give and take scenario. This helps to create a new marketplace for your business as well as others. Banding together will enable you to share important data and also get an idea of how to advertise for each other. You will almost always find an interesting overlap area that will mutually benefit both you and your newfound partners.
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Associations, Local Business, Small Business
Posted in Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
 - Untitled photograph of an Apple iPhone 4 Retrieved June 2010, from: http://www.apple.com/iphone/
Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Reisterstown, Maryland.. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization)and Technical Support to small and medium businesses.
It’s no secret that I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy. I am continually captivated by the new technology on offer from the Cupertino firm. With the impending release of the iPhone 4, I thought it important to make a case for ownership for those of you still holding out. Let me assure you: In time, you will come to love your new master.
HD Video Capture
It’s true! You can record video from one of the two cameras on the device in 720p. This is a big deal if you are taking video of work being done on a jobsite or just showing off new products to potential clients. It also is capable of support for a mobile iMovie app, which will allow you to do some minor edits to the video before posting it on YouTube or sending it to your clients.
Video Chat
This may seem like old technology or unimportant tech to some people. Certainly many tech news sites have been vocal about thinking video chat is superfluous. Again, I bring up the example of communication with potential clients/current investors. All you need is WiFi access and you can video chat with other iPhone4 users. Called “FaceTime” by Apple, this app also lets you switch between the front and rear cameras. One second you’re having a conversation with a client and the next, you can switch to the forward facing camera to show them the progress you’ve made. Once we get to a point where cell towers can handle this kind of data, I think this trend will take off.
Threaded Mail
This has been a long time coming. Email services like Gmail keep emails formatted in a conversation style when the subject line or series of replies are in a common subject thread. This hasn’t been available on the iPhone yet, and with iPhone4/iOS4, this feature is coming to the phones. This will allow you to keep track of topics better and organize your conversations. Also worth noting in Mail is that since it supports PDF, you can save attachments to the free iBooks app.
The iPhone 4 is a pretty cool piece of technology and I think that if you are looking for a smartphone for your business, the iPhone4 will meet that need. Check it out here!
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Apple, iPhone, Small Business, Smartphone
Posted in Telephone | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Reisterstown, Maryland.. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Technical Support to small and medium businesses.
No one will deny that a lot of business is done today on the go. The traditional 9 to 5 office day has been supplanted by a mobile workspace that may always be open. The web has made business something that is always on and not constrained by location. Because of this, Internet access is key to making your business work. There are two options for the small business owner looking to work while out on the road.
Use Your Smartphone as an Access Point
Given the capabilities of today’s smartphones, they are a powerful asset in your business toolkit. Aside from what you can do on the phone itself, some smartphones now allow you to “tether” your phone to your computer in order to use the phone’s internet connection. This is dependent on your provider. Recently, for all you iPhone users, AT&T announced tethering this summer. While this has been promised for a while, it looks like it might happen this time. It will cost approx $20/month on top of your current plan. This plan will work well in most places where you get 3G coverage. Just bear in mind, it will play off of your monthly data allowance. Unlimited Data plan members will be fine, but you’ll want to watch your bandwidth otherwise.
Buy a Cellular Data Access Point
Sprint has been pushing this option for a while. Essentially, you pay for a tiny device that acts as a router. Instead of using a cable, your device will pickup the wireless data signal and allow you to connect wireless devices to it. This option will most likely work best if you need to network multiple devices on the go. I don’t recommend relying on this as your sole Internet connection, especially as you will burn through your data allowance rather quickly. This is best for sharing data locally among devices and moderate Internet usage.
That’s all for this week. Come back again next week for more small business tips!
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: access, business, data, internet, phone, Small Business, Smartphone, wireless, wireless broadband, work
Posted in Business Tools, Working Remotely | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Finksburg, MD. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Technical Supportto small and medium businesses.
An operating environment is the technical term for the technology in use at a specific location. That location can be as small as a business office or as large as a national company. When it comes to operating environments, just like milk, you want it homogeneous. What I mean by this is that you want technology that will play nice together so that you can get the most out of your money. Here are some ideas for keeping your network layout in sync.
Choose the same OS
Using the same operating system for all the computers on your network is a big part of having a network function well. While it is not absolutely required, it is something we recommend. This is because when you have a variety of computing environments, you have to have people who know all their ins and outs. For this reason, I recommend that all computers run the same OS, at least, if they are in the same network. You may need to create small networks for specific, older software, but on the whole, keep everyone on the same page.
Uniform Software Packages
In the same vein as keeping all operating systems in line, controlling what software is installed on work computers is vital to network health. Things like this can be managed via a server with administrative powers on a network. However, enforcing this becomes difficult if your computers are a mish-mash of operating systems. There are some exceptions for specialty software, but on the whole, employees should be using the same version of the same software. This cuts down on IT complaints as well as time taken to convert/modify files for use across multiple software bundles.
We could on for days about ways to keep your network in line. The best recommendation I can make is to plan out, in detail, your business’ needs and then go from there. It may be cheaper up front to go with what you can get easiest, but in the long run, you’ll be glad you’ve chosen to keep all your technology in line.
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Computers, digital, internet, network, operating system, Small Business, software, technology
Posted in Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Finksburg, MD. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Technical Support to small and medium businesses.
Getting office space for your small business is a big decision. It may seem like something you need to do right away. After all, you want your business to grow and getting your own office space with your name in lettering on a big front window seems like a good start. All the big players have this, so why shouldn’t you? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Deciding to break out of your apartment/friend’s basement/dark cave is a big step. First, consider why you want a new space. If it’s just for a change of scenery, I would caution against leaping into a lease. You may be eating up vital capital that could become useful later. Certainly being at your primary place of residence can seem a bit dull, but if you can tough it out, I’d recommend it.
Now, there are situations in which you’ll need space of your own. For example, if your business relies heavily on meeting people to discuss deals and other business propositions and you can’t use a restaurant/coffee house for the occasional meeting, then you’ll need space of your own. I’m not saying your clients won’t appreciate that sweet TRON poster in your house, far from it. However, it may not come across as professional. For this reason, get out and grab a place to call your office. Be careful to balance a sort of minimalism (knowing how much space you actually need) with blind expansionism (manifest destiny doesn’t apply to your business).
When it comes down to it, make sure you carefully consider your business’ needs; not your wants. If you can save $2,000 by spending your first few months in your living room rather than a tiny office, do it! You may be glad to have that money later. That’s all for this week. Come back next week for more small business tips!
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Office Space, Renting, Small Business, Tips
Posted in Small Business Tips | No Comments »
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