January 2016

All posts from January 2016

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Free project management: Organise your working life with Trello

At WHYPAY? we believe that effective business tools shouldn’t cost the Earth, which is why we set out to make the best free conferencing service out there. This got us thinking: if you can get conference calls for no cost, what other great services can you get for free? That is why we have scoured the web to find the best free services to help your business and to bring them to you weekly.

This week we look at a very visual way of organising your work with Trello.

Visual organisation

Trello was originally created by Fog Creek software back in 2011 as a solution to high level planning issues. Officially released at TechCrunch Disrupt in September of the same year it had already amassed 500,000 users by the following summer and had created one adorable husky spokes hound. Now split into its own company, Trello, Inc, has grown from strength to strength and recently hit the 10m user landmark.

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AdminFree project management: Organise your working life with Trello
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What does expanding Twitter to 10k characters mean to businesses?

Rumours are quickly spreading that in the next couple of months, Twitter will be increasing its character limit from 140 to almost 100 times that, with 10,000 seeming the likeliest figure – that is what the limit for Direct Messages was raised to, after all. Many of Twitter’s committed users were far from overjoyed by the news, but is their reaction justified? And how different are the consequences for personal accounts, compared with those representing businesses?

For many, it seems to be a step closer to Facebook, meaning perhaps that social media strategies will change, and become less diverse. There would be a greater allowance for the longer essays which tend to find their place on Facebook, or blogs, replacing the sharp, witty, eye-catching lines that Twitter called for.

Are our social networks converging?

Of course, this suggests perhaps a lack of concern with the desires of regular Twitter users, which could result in more users following through with their threats to leave the social network. This could be a reason for businesses to worry that much of their target audience will suddenly fall out of their reach, impacting on the success of their marketing and the spread of their brand. But in reality, the results may be quite the opposite.

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AdminWhat does expanding Twitter to 10k characters mean to businesses?
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Free survey development with SurveyMonkey

At WHYPAY? we believe that effective business tools shouldn’t cost the Earth, which is why we set out to make the best free conferencing service out there. This got us thinking: if you can get conference calls for no cost, what other great services can you get for free? That is why we have scoured the web to find the best free services to help your business and to bring them to you weekly.

In this instalment, we check out one of the best tools for getting user data on the internet – SurveyMonkey

 

Using data to improve your business

Gathering and using data is one of the key skills utilised by any successful company, influencing every decision from the smallest stationery request to the biggest multi million pound value proposals. A company that does not take the time to research available data will simply be using guesswork, and this can lead to some disastrous consequences.

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AdminFree survey development with SurveyMonkey
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Manchester wins £10m for the Internet of Things

Manchester has recently triumphed over 22 entries across 34 cities, winning a government-backed competition with a prize of a £10m government grant to become a world leader in smart-city technology. Innovate UK’s Internet of Things competition aimed to find the best proposal for using smart technology to improve the public service’s within a city. The winner, Manchester’s CityVerve Project, has great plans for the £10m fund, which will propel the UK to the forefront of adoption of Internet of Things technology around the world, hopefully inspiring other cities to follow its lead.

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AdminManchester wins £10m for the Internet of Things
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Free workflow management: Keeping your team on track with Asana

At WHYPAY? we believe that effective business tools shouldn’t cost the Earth, which is why we set out to make the best free conferencing service out there. This got us thinking: if you can get conference calls for no cost, what other great services can you get for free? That’s why we’ve scoured the web to find the best free services to help your business and to bring them to you weekly.

This week we look at a tool to help improve how you track work and come together as a team with Asana.

A digital future for task management

Every company needs a way to manage its projects and optimise its work. Throughout the years, there have been many ways of doing this, from cork board duty rotas to daily team briefings. While these methods are tried and tested, they can be quite time consuming and also limited in their application.

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AdminFree workflow management: Keeping your team on track with Asana
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What is LiFi?

A buzz is quickly growing around the term ‘LiFi’, but what is it actually all about? The quick version is, it’s a much, much, much faster version of WiFi – about 100 times faster, in fact, reaching up to 224GB/s. Li-Fi is an abbreviated form of ‘Light Fidelity’, which is the term given to this particular wireless connection. As its name suggests, it is an optical wireless communication, using visible light, infra-red, and near ultra-violet in the place of radio frequency waves. This means it can carry a great deal more information. In normal Visible Light Communication, LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are switched on and off rapidly – too rapidly for a human to notice. However, LiFi would involve keeping the LEDs switched on all the time, although they could be dim enough to be impossible to perceive by the naked eye. This, of course, means that LiFi will be a relatively energy efficient mode of communication.

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AdminWhat is LiFi?
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Free email marketing service: Reaching out to your audience with MailChimp

At WHYPAY? we believe that effective business tools shouldn’t cost the Earth, which is why we set out to make the best free conferencing service out there. This got us thinking: if you can get conference calls for no cost, what other great services can you get for free? That is why we have scoured the web to find the best free services to help your business and to bring them to you weekly.

Our first entry into this series for 2016 is MailChimp, possibly the best free tool for creating mass email campaigns.

Why emails are still important

Email remains one of the cheapest and best ways to get a message to a large user base. With the ability to create highly personalised content, presented using magazine quality design, embed rich media and track links, the humble email has evolved significantly from its early days as a simple text based communication. By cultivating a well managed mailing list from your business, it can also be the channel which is easiest to get people to join.

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AdminFree email marketing service: Reaching out to your audience with MailChimp
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Using social to add to telemarketing campaigns

Telemarketing has proven itself to be an incredibly useful tool in generating business and keeping customers loyal. Similarly, a lot of businesses have learned to harness the power of social media and blogs extremely effectively. So, for many people, the next logical progression has been to combine these two considerable forces to create an impressive, proactive marketing strategy.

Increasing company reputation and sales

With this combination, you can ensure that your name, brand, and philosophy are well known to your prospective customers before you contact them directly, as they will be familiar with your online social media presence.

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AdminUsing social to add to telemarketing campaigns