Win The Internet (For Free!) with Google

by Felicien | Mar 13, 2018 | Education

The Internet of Things – and of course, the Internet –has created an endless network of connectivity. Consumers have embraced living in a digital world, and all the ways the Internet makes day-to-day life easier.

Is there one single piece of information you wish you knew about your customers that just evades you? We already know the answer to that question – yes! Don’t you wish there was a magical process by which you could answer every question you’ve ever had about your customer base? Would you cater your operations and marketing to their needs to develop a deeper sense of loyalty and longevity?
There are ways to better understand your target market. Focus groups collect incredibly valuable information in a controlled environment, but are very expensive and only represent a fraction of your customer base. Telephone surveys rely on clear communication and carefully constructed questions which are properly delivered – but first, the target respondents have to answer the call. It’s neither cheap nor easy to get answers, but it’s not meant to be. Consumers are protective of their privacy and their money!
So, what’s the best way to figure out what your target market is thinking? Instead of trying to read your customers’ minds and potentially making costly mistakes, we suggest a better option – just ask them.
Email surveys were the darling of the decade until the last few years, but are still heavily used. All a business needs to have is an email address on file for a customer — whether former, current, or potential — and the ability to craft questions that will deliver meaningful responses. What is meaningful depends entirely on how the business plans to use the information obtained through the survey.
If you’ve ever designed an online survey, you’ve tried SurveyMonkey. With limited features and use parameters, it’s a free tool – and a fantastic option. That word “limited” is the challenge that users face: why limit yourself when your business depends on the outcome? Sure, simplified surveys with radio buttons, checkboxes, or drop-down menus are easy, but they can be misinterpreted – or worse, the user can choose the incorrect response by accident and still record it.
Of course, surveys are notorious for low levels of response, though average response rates have risen in recent years. The current average response rates hover around 1 in 4, or 25% of recipients will answer. This rate tends to increase rather significantly with an incentive to respond. You’ll need to account for a “margin of error”, which will vary, but basically, it means that of those 1 in 4 recipients that respond, some of their answers will not accurately reflect their preferences, like where we said they might have accidentally chosen the incorrect answer. Most people expect the average margin of error to be about 5%.
Now that we’ve talked about some statistics, let’s talk about the meat of a survey. Here is where the true difference between platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms matters.
First, how to create a new Google Form:

Go to https://forms.google.com/
Click on “Blank” with the plus sign in the box.
You’ll see the options to toggle between “Questions” and “Responses” at the top.
You can type the title of your Form (survey) where the large bold text says “Untitled form”.
Underneath this, there is a section to add a description if you desire.
Simply type in your Question in the appropriately labeled field.
Next to the field where you can type in a Question, you can select the type of Question you want to ask, with responses in the following formats:

Multiple choices
Checkboxes
Dropdown
Short answer
Paragraph

Type in your first Response option.

You can add an image here, or even a YouTube video.

Underneath this, you can click “Add Option” to add more responses.
Form designers can also choose whether the Question requires a response, or if the respondent can bypass that Question with a “skip” feature.

Google Forms has updated its user interface recently, and now you can add responses in a grid display format. You’ll want to play around with the options to see what looks best for your needs. Think carefully about the number of questions you need to ask, and the number of responses to choose from within each question. Too many of either can overwhelm a consumer, and best practices suggest that asking no more than 5-7 Questions is ideal, with each having no more than 3-5 responses.
Other cool features you can add to your Google Form include:

Themes

In the main navigation menu at the top of the screen, you’ll see an icon that resembles a painter’s palette. Clicking this will drop down a menu of color circles or the icon that looks like a photo – clicking here will open the Themes menu where you can truly customize the user experience.

Results can be stored in a shareable spreadsheet

Google can’t track who responds automatically, but it will automatically store all results from responses within a shareable spreadsheet, and like with any Google Sheet, you can edit this with charts or other visual representations of the data collected.

Results can be emailed to a designated user, rather than a user (or teams) needing to check a dashboard continuously.
Using Google Forms functions with the same basic principles as Google Docs, in that collaborators can access a shared file to help design survey questions and flow.
Forms are already mobile-friendly; the impact of this feature is huge given the number of people that access email via their smartphones or tablets outnumbers those accessing email via desktop or laptop computers.

Readily-available free survey tools aren’t always so feature-filled. Paid tiers of SurveyMonkey offer tools like geotargeting and more robust features, which are useful if responses are tailored in such a way that this is necessary. Google Forms can’t help you with geotargeting, but Google does offer a paid option with its Google Surveys solution.
How else can you use Google Forms?

Manage event registrations.
Share the Form via social media channels or to website traffic to collect email addresses for email marketing or email newsletters.

One more feature we want to touch on is logic processes. In Google Forms, designers can change the user flow of the Form at the individual respondent’s level and based on their answers. You can toggle certain responses to one question to skip the next question, and even do what the Marketing world would all an “A/B split” where one response would take the respondent in one line of questioning, but a different response would take another user down a different path.
Use Google Forms to get to know your customers, and take full advantage of the Internet. Consumers like to share their opinions, and if they can do this using their smartphone while on the go, you’re much more likely to increase responses.
Get to know Google Forms and see how Google wants to help you — and your business — win the Internet!

Tired Of Juggling The Many Apps Your Team Uses?

by Felicien | Mar 13, 2018 | Education

Integrate and Collaborate Seamlessly Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams has become the go-to chat-based workspace in Office 365. It’s more than just a hub for teamwork. It’s even customizable for each type of team.
Microsoft Teams is perfect for one-on-one conversations, open group discussions or even public meetings. It has many modern features that make meetings more fun and productive. For instance, there are cool GIFs, stickers, and emojis available so team members can show a little personality. The program integrates well with Outlook email and it’s easy to switch between teams. Add to that the ability to use video calling on Android that includes mobile voice and you’ve got an excellent business resource.
The Microsoft Teams app provides users with all the tools necessary to facilitate meetings for corporate America as well as freelancers and even educational institutions. With so many people now taking online classes, the Teams app can give a tutor and student the perfect place to discuss Algebra or learn a new language. The app is fairly intuitive and most users pick up all the fine points of how to use it very quickly.
How Microsoft Teams Sets Itself Apart
With so many meeting apps available now, organizations want to know why Microsoft Teams is better. That’s a good question and it does have a good answer: because this app is included in Office 365, it seamlessly integrates with all the programs that today’s business professionals are already using. Within the Teams app, users can access all files and any Office programs such as PowerPoint, Excel, Word and OneNote. In addition, the app features integration with Power Bl, SharePoint and Planner Intelligence using Microsoft Graph.
Though you can open these files using other meeting apps, they are seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft Teams app, limiting the additional steps that users must perform. Many of the exciting features are available with just a single tap. Regardless of what type of business you’re in, the Microsoft Team’s app can be customized to work the way you need it to. That’s one of the big reasons why people in so many different industries choose Team. The app works just as well for a few people or a dozen. It works nicely for business pros, teachers and students. The app is easy to set up and takes very little instruction to get started. With custom memes and tailored channels, most people quickly become expert Teams users.
Beyond the Basics
After using Microsoft Teams for a while, most people start looking around at some of the more advanced features, of which there are many. Do you need to integrate some common cloud services into your meeting? It’s a simple process.
Partner integration is available for Trello and SAP but Microsoft will be adding new partners in the future. The individual channels contain Bots that can be working in the background on important tasks. In addition to those great features, the Teams App is served from the Microsoft global hyperscale cloud. That makes it available from anywhere in the world, so if you need to meet with people Japan, in Taiwan, someone in Quebec and a group in India, it’s a simple matter to do so. Team players can share their documents, show a PowerPoint, go over an Excel spreadsheet and work on many other tasks like these. There are virtually a limitless number of tasks that can be done and without the help of an IT specialist.
Ideal for the Medical Field
Since the Teams app is compliant with HIPAA, ISO27001, and others, it’s perfect for use in a medical facility of any type or size. However, the app could also work well in telemedicine. Though live face-to-face meeting software is included in most programs for the telemedicine industry, Teams could be used in numerous instances. Say you were on the go and needed to use the app from your mobile phone. It’s not only quick and easy but remember that it is compliant with most HIPAA guidelines. Talk to a colleague or patient. Sometimes you just need a quick face-to-face with someone and that’s it.
Excellent Built-In Security
The Teams app is big on security as well. With so many thousands of cyber-theft events taking place each year around the world, you just can’t be too careful. Sometimes a team might be talking about their favorite flavor of ice cream and sometimes they might be discussing a new hyperdrive for America’s next rocket ship. Multi-factor authentication and built-in data protection are just two ways Microsoft ensures that your meeting will remain confidential.
Use Teams to Enhance Customer Service
Though this is being done in some organizations, in the future there may be a great number of businesses that contact their customers using apps like Teams, to let customers know about some problem with an order. Perhaps you just sold hardwood flooring to a residential customer for their whole house but now you’ve learned that the flooring is back-ordered for six months. Wouldn’t it be better to speak to this customer face-to-face when you break the news to them? Customers may be less upset when they realize that the store cared enough to have a manager call them and speak to them in person about the problem. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to retail sales.
In the sales world, it’s very common to have angry customers whose brand-new refrigerator/stove/television/computer just stopped working. Mitigating customer problems is a great way to use Microsoft Teams.

Working Together
Microsoft Teams encourages people to work together. You can bring up the new budget from Excel and let everyone go over it, make comments, and suggest changes. You can open the new marketing plan in Word so that a whole room full of execs hear about the latest marketing campaign. They need to become familiar enough with it to pass on the information to employees in their department. Since most people have Office 365 already on their computer, there’s nothing new to install.
How to Set Up a Team
Simply go to the Office interface and click on the Teams App. At the bottom left corner of the screen, select “Create Team”, then type a name and short description. Next, add people to your new team. Using Microsoft Outlook, you can add an entire group. Now click “Done” and create a general channel. Other channels may be added later as needed. Name and describe this channel, click “Add” and it’s all set up. Within just a few minutes you can have a specific meeting place set up where you can meet each week with co-workers, students, your doctor, unhappy customers and much more.
Miscellaneous Features
Adding and removing team members is simple and only takes a few moments. A tutor who is working with five different students throughout the day could easily change the student’s name quickly in between each lesson. You might start with a private chat, just between the teacher and student. However, what if you wanted to add a second teacher or several more students? It’s easy to do that. Just list the name(s) of the people you want to attend, then compose a new message in Outlook to invite them to attend. While in a chat, you can make a video or audio call by selecting the icon for it. Chats can be renamed, which is good for those that get transferred to a different department. You can continue using the same chat room; just add or remove people as needed.
Microsoft Team has so many more features that make life and work much simpler. It is quickly becoming the favorite virtual chat room for business people in every industry. If you’re still feeling you need some help with setting up a chat room, Microsoft offers a great range of informative YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions for how to do just about anything.

Has Microsoft Won The War?

by Felicien | Mar 12, 2018 | Education

Do Your Employees Think Of Your Meetings As Nap Time?

by Felicien | Mar 12, 2018 | Education

Weekly leadership meetings can be boring for everyone involved. It can be difficult to get anything real, tangible or important accomplished – unless you have the right strategy put in place.

The concept of the leadership meeting started out with the proper intentions. Entrepreneurs wanted a way to improve their leaders and inspire organic growth throughout their company. Over the years, these leadership meetings have morphed into dull, tedious get-togethers that nobody wants to attend. So how can you put some life back into your weekly leadership meetings? How do you get everyone so keen on attending that they arrive early? It may seem impossible, but it isn’t.
Step One – Create Interest
People love contests, and they love winning things even more, so why not incorporate that concept into your weekly meetings? At the end of each meeting, challenge the participants to find the answer to some question that relates to your business, your industry and/or its history. It could be anything from “Who held the first patent on an automatic dishwasher?” to “What was the slowest day in New York Stock Exchange history?” Winners could receive a free lunch or have their photo posted on the bulletin board. Get creative and come up with some great challenges for your participants… items that will really make them think. There are endless ways to create interest for an upcoming meeting. You could even put together a small team whose job is to plan unique meeting events.
Step Two – Time
Late arrivals can cause meetings to get off to a rocky start. Get your people in the habit of showing up five minutes early and always end the meeting on time. Time flies when you’re having fun, but it drags when everyone is bored silly. So, put together an interesting agenda for each meeting; something with a theme can be fun. Then start and end on time. Adjust meeting lengths so that you don’t have 20 minutes where nothing happens. Try to be flexible with meeting lengths. You may have a week where there are lots to discuss and other times where there’s almost nothing to talk about. Don’t force people to sit for 30 minutes in a meeting when there’s really nothing to say or do. Getting out early always perks everyone up!
Step Three – Get Everyone Involved
Many meeting goers just sit quietly during the whole time and say almost nothing. How can you get everyone involved so that the meeting is a big success? Each week, assign several people to come up with pressing topics for the next meeting. Try to involve everyone at some point instead of calling on the same people each week. People will just naturally become more interested if they are part of putting together the meeting agenda. This also helps you to identify natural born leaders and people with creative thinking. Ask different people to be responsible for refreshments, topics and other meeting-related things.
Step Four – Solve Real Issues
One thing that can really make a meeting a yawn-fest is when there’s nothing interesting to talk about. Try to solve real issues at each meeting. If you aren’t sure, then ask employees to submit items they think are company-wide problems. Maybe there are specific issues in the accounting department that need to be dealt with. Employees usually know more about what’s really going on than the management does, so enlist their help to identify real problems that need answers.
Everyone likes to think they’re contributing and helping to make their workplace better. Don’t be afraid to tackle the tough issues, such as appropriate workplace dress codes. There are always a few renegades in every company who will show up to work in house shoes or skirts that are too short. If your workplace doesn’t have an established dress code, then this would be a good topic for a company-wide meeting. Employees must realize that dress codes are set in place so that no one is paying more attention to what a person is wearing instead of their job.
Step Five – Get People Talking
Many of us are simply not good at speaking in public. In fact, the majority of meeting-goers will sit quietly the whole time and never say one word. How do you get everyone talking? How do you get their attention? One great way that always works is to begin each meeting by asking each person to talk about themselves. Most people enjoy talking about themselves. So, start each meeting by going around the room. Give each person five minutes to tell everyone what they’ve been up to. What are their hobbies? Do they have pets? What did they do last weekend? This can become a great time of bonding where employees learn more about each other.
Generally speaking, people get along better if they feel some sort of connection with each other. This can also lead to better cooperation in the workplace and fewer disagreements.
Next Steps
Putting together an effective meeting week in and week out can be challenging. Why not assign meeting agendas to small teams each week? Try to be flexible and change things up now and then by holding the meeting in a virtual space like Zoom or Go-To-Meeting. Change up your venue as well by holding one meeting each month at a local coffee shop. Try to meet in well-lit rooms with multi-media available. People tend to nod off more when they’re sitting in small, cramped, poorly lit rooms with dingy walls.
Once a year, take your meeting to another city. You might choose a city of historic interest or someplace where you’re thinking of building a new office/location. When your meeting times are interesting, fun and lively, people will get involved and you’ll notice that the meetings are making a positive impact on everyone. Try to remind your employees that weekly meetings are meant to help them grow as people and as employees. If your company isn’t benefiting from weekly meetings, then they’re a waste of time and resources.

Tired of Your Local Shock Jockeys?

by Felicien | Mar 9, 2018 | Education

Give Free Global Radio A Try Instead
Listening to free, global radio stations is a great way to broaden your horizons and liven up your listen to habits. It’s also a lot easier than you may think.

Why Listen to Global Radio?
Many people are saying that radio is dead, but that’s not true at all. It has morphed into something much greater than it once was. Today, many of us have friends and family living in other countries, which is why someone might want to listen to a radio station in Hong Kong. There is a wide range of other reasons as well. Maybe you grew up in the Philippines and just want to keep up with what’s going on in your hometown. Tuning into one of their local radio stations is a great way to do this.
Say you just moved from Seattle to New York, but maybe you’d like to continue getting daily news from Seattle. Or maybe you might be thinking of moving to New Zealand. What better way to find out what life is really like there than by listening to local radio stations?
Get Local News & Weather
You can get local news, weather and other fun, interesting or weird information by tuning into radio stations in other parts of the world. The best part about this is that there are now several services that offer you the ability to listen to dozens of different radio stations from Ireland to Australia. Many of these services allow you to browse by station or by country. Let’s say you want to listen to a radio station in Latvia.
Latvia is a small country on the western border of Russia. Estonia lies to the north, while Belarus lies to the south. In spite of this being a small remote nation, one global radio service offers 19 different radio stations in Latvia. Some of these stations are broadcast in Russian while some are broadcast in Latvian or other Baltic languages. If you’re trying to learn to speak Russian, listening to a Russian radio station would enhance your efforts.
Whether you were born in France and yearn to hear the language spoken by French people or you are trying to learn about a new culture, listening to a French radio station would make your efforts more enjoyable. As mentioned above, access to global radio stations is free on many websites. Most of these sites give you choices as to what you’d like to listen to. You can listen to talk radio shows, local news, and weather for any city, sports news for any country or city, or just music from the city or country of your choosing.
How to Get Started
Search for internet radio stations or services that provide multiple choices. Good search phrases for this include:

Listen to radio stations worldwide
Global radio stations
Internet radio

Multiple choices will come up depending on exactly what you typed in the browser. Some of these will be paid services like Amazon Music Unlimited. Though they do offer 30 days of free music, at some point you’ll have to start paying to listen. Of course, a paid service will offer other perks like being able to listen using your Echo device. These are Alexa voice-controlled devices that make it easy to hear your favorite tunes from Spain, India or anyplace in the world.
If you’re not ready to sign up for a paid service, you’ll also find many free services like Pandora, Screamer, TuneIn, and Jango. Most of these allow you to search for your favorite artist, search by genre, or search by specific song/artist titles. You might be looking for the latest Hip Hop music or some good music for your workout routine. Simply click on something that peaks your interests and listens. If you don’t like what you hear, use the back button to return to the original page.
At Pandora, you create your own personal “station” by choosing favorite artists or genres of music such as country music. You can add favorite tunes or artists as you desire. Pandora offers ad-free listening for around $5 per month. This type of “radio station” does not include local news and weather; it’s just music.
Tips for Success
With so much cultural, musical, and lifestyle information available through radio stations, there’s no reason not to become an avid listener. You can broaden your musical tastes or just find out what’s going on today in Rome simply by tuning into an Internet radio station. However, there are many other reasons to listen – become better informed about what’s going on in the world, or track new emerging technology in Southeast Asia.
Since there are so many choices now available, select a station or service based on what you’d like to accomplish. If you simply want to listen to music, then Pandora or Jango are both good choices. If you want to listen to an actual radio station, then Screamer and TuneIn are good ideas. Most stations and services offer ad-free content for an additional charge. You may have to pay extra for specific content, such as comedy programming.
The interface for many worldwide radio stations will allow you to manage volume control, play, stop or resume listening. They may also have an information box that will tell you what song/artist is currently playing. You can tag a song or a station as a “favorite” so that it’s easy to return there.
Improving your Sound Quality
With music, sound quality is usually important. That’s where many computers and laptops fall short. You may have to spend over $1,000 to get a computer with a decent sound card. If you are unable to afford this, there are workarounds. Amazon and other online sellers, offer devices that allow you to hook your computer up to external speakers.
External Speakers
To find out more about this, simply search online for “how to hook up my computer to external speakers” and other similar phrases. Usually, it’s just a matter of wiring your computer to a device like a Lepai LP2020 amplifier and then wiring that device to your external speakers. You can also purchase external speakers made specifically for this purpose. These speakers will have a 3.5mm jack or USB plug that can be plugged directly into the laptop or computer.
Of course, all computers have a headphone jack. For about $100 you can buy headphones with amazing sound quality. This will make your listening experience more personal and intimate. This is a good idea when you have others in the family or home who may not want to listen to, say, Latvian Folk Music.