By Peter Hales on November 8, 2011
As Daylight Savings Time comes to an end, many will rejoice for the extra hour of sleep and getting to wake up in the daylight again. However, that joy dissipates once the sun sets and they’re still at the office.
Great things that come with this time of year; who doesn’t love watching a football game in a blizzard (other than Raiders fans)? Seriously though, it can be difficult to stay motivated as the seasons change and the days grow shorter, colder and grayer.
Here are five ways to avoid the motivational doldrums brought on by the annual shift of the earth’s axis.
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Posted in Business Tips | Tagged daylight savings time, entrepreneur, productivity, Small Business Tips |
By Peter Hales on November 2, 2011
The Kindle Fire is set to release in two weeks, and looks to be a real contender in the world of tablets. Whether you prefer an iPad, an Android tablet, or one of the handful of other tablet devices, the Kindle Fire will clearly boost the number of tablet users. One analyst has estimated that 5 million Kindle Fires will be shipped in Q4 of this year in addition to Apple shipping an estimated 12 million iPad 2s per quarter globally.
Combine an increase in tablet sales with the popularity of browsing the Internet from smartphones and you have a lot of potential visitors coming to your website from something other than a traditional computer.
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Posted in Improve Your Website, Small Business Tips | Tagged Google Analytics, iPad, Kindle Fire, Mobile, Tablet |
By Peter Hales on October 27, 2011
One of our customers recently asked us on Facebook how they can tell whether a call is coming directly to their phone or being forwarded to them from their FreedomVoice service. This is a question we get a lot, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to review some of our call screening features that can help you differentiate business calls from personal calls.
WebLink, your online control panel, allows you to easily customize your different call screening features to choose how calls are presented to you upon answering. To do so, log in to WebLink, click on the ‘Settings’ tab and then under ‘Call Delivery’, click ‘Call Announcement’.
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Posted in Call Forwarding, Features | Tagged Call Announcement, Call Screening, Caller ID Announce |
By Peter Hales on October 24, 2011
Note: This post is intended for FreedomVoice customers using our FreedomIQ hosted VoIP phone system. Not a FreedomIQ customer? Check out how upgrading to our hosted VoIP platform can help your business at www.FreedomIQ.com.
We recently published a guide on how to configure FreedomIQ service on the Counterpath Bria iOS app (also available in the Android Market). Now we want to go over some of the benefits that this handy little app can offer.
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Posted in Features, Softphones | Tagged Android, Bria, Counterpath, Hosted VoIP, ios, smartphone, Softphone, VoIP |
By Peter Hales on October 3, 2011
With more people working from home, it’s important to make sure your home office can be a distraction-free place for organized and efficient work.
So before you pull out the measuring tape and hammer, here are a few questions to help you create a killer home workspace:
What type of space do you need?
Make a list of everything you’ll need to do for your job. If you will have a lot of paperwork or other tasks that demand extra space, take note of it.
Will you be taking care of a child during work hours?
Your children are more important than your work, but that doesn’t mean they should be interrupting your workflow. Create a fun and safe environment for them that you can monitor while you work.
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Posted in Business Tips, Small Business Tips, Telecommuting | Tagged Home office, Telecommuting, Virtual Phone System, work from home, Workshifting, Workspace |
By Peter Hales on September 28, 2011
Are you overwhelmed with your workload? It may be time to hire some help.
The smaller your business, the more important it is to hire the right person on your first attempt. Making the wrong hire, especially in a small business, will cost your company a lot of time and money. These tips will prevent you from making some common mistakes and land the perfect candidate to help your business grow on the first try.
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Posted in Business Tips, Small Business Tips | Tagged Candidate, Employee, Hire, Small Business Tips |
By Peter Hales on September 22, 2011
If you’re a FreedomVoice customer, you may have noticed FreedomVoice has liked your fan page and started following you on Twitter. We want to know more about our customers and their businesses so that we can better connect online. However, we’ve noticed a lot of small businesses don’t have a Facebook fan page but are instead using personal profiles for business connections.
We think having a personal profile is great; there’s no better way to stay connected to family and friends online. For a business though, a fan page has tremendous benefits:
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Posted in Business Tips, Facebook, Social Media | Tagged Facebook, Facebook promotions, Fan page, Insights, Like, Small Business Tips, Social Media, Vanity URL |
By Peter Hales on September 20, 2011
This post is intended for FreedomVoice customers using our FreedomIQ hosted VoIP phone system. Not a FreedomIQ customer? Check out how upgrading to our hosted VoIP platform can help your business at www.FreedomIQ.com.
By downloading the Bria app from Apple’s App Store, you can take your VoIP phone system on the go with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and either a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.
Just follow these steps!
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Posted in Features, Products, Softphones, VoIP Phone Systems | Tagged Android, Apple App Store, Bria, Counterpath, iPad, iPad 2, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mobile, SIP, Softphone |
By Peter Hales on September 14, 2011
Once again the topic of work-life balance has been in the news. Recently, a federal judge in New York ruled in the Bloomberg discrimination case that, “The law does not mandate work-life balance,” nor does it, “require companies to ignore and stop valuing ultimate dedication, however unhealthy that may be for family life.” So there you have it, businesses don’t have to value work-life balance for their employees. But just because you don’t have to do something, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it anyway.
More people than ever before are finding it difficult to maintain a happy medium in managing their work and personal lives. One answer to this problem has been a steady increase in employers allowing their workers to get tasks done outside of a traditional office space. Whether you know it as telecommuting, teleworking, or workshifting, this practice can have a tremendously positive impact on employee happiness… and your profits.
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Posted in Small Business Tips, Telecommuting | Tagged Bloomberg, Business Tips, discrimination, flex work, New York, Small Business Tips, Telecommuting, work-life balance, workshift |
