Image by Damon Duncan via Flickr

The Better Business Bureau has put together a list of 5 considerations for small businesses as they get involved with social networking.

Five Tips for Ensuring Social Media Success in 2010

Better Business Bureau recommends that small business owners ease into the waters thoughtfully when planning to launch a social media strategy; otherwise, they risk abandoning the ship in frustration.Small businesses are shifting their marketing strategy away from expensive ad buys and are increasingly looking toward social media engagement as the less expensive alternative. According to a recent survey by VerticalResponse, Inc., 70 percent of small to medium-sized businesses plan to increase their use of social media in 2010. At the same time, 79 percent say they will not run television ads and 70 percent say they will not make radio buys.

“Small business owners are taking a hard look at their marketing budgets and traditional advertising is becoming too much of a burden in these lean economic times,” said Sheryl Bilbrey, San Diego BBB President/CEO. “Adopting a comprehensive, but manageable, social media strategy can be an inexpensive yet effective way to improve customer relations and spread the word about your business.”

We’ve posted before about how small businesses and home businesses can use social networking sites to their advantage. It does require an investment of time and dedication as well as patience. Results won’t be seen over night. It’s a commitment we make with the understanding that involvement with the community can yield positive results if we engage our customers honestly and transparently.

BBB offers the following advice to small business owners who want to start promoting their company online through social media:

Don’t Get in Over Your Head - If you’re a small business owner who is also the marketing department, the worst thing you could do is launch a large, unmanageable strategy that takes up too much time and ends up neglected. You don’t have to do it all at once.

Create and Share Information – Social media is about engagement, and creating and sharing content is key to connecting with customers and other industry leaders. You may not realize it, but you, as a small business owner, are an expert and have sound advice and informed opinions to share.

Keep everything connected – Once you’ve created your page on Facebook, or established your blog or Twitter account or other online presences, cross-promote your content so that the same message is going out across every site. (This is very easy to do as the ability to share your content with each platform is built right into Twitter and Facebook – Jack)

Engage in the Conversation –An online conversation is taking place right now about your business, your industry or issues affecting your community.

Engage with Customers – Your customers are talking about you online whether you like it or not on their blogs, consumer-focused Web sites and on review sites like Yelp, Yahoo! Local and CitySearch.

Read the full article and see other helpful tips for the SOHO business owner at the Better Business Bureau’s site.

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InkCartridges

Cleo then

It’s Cleo’s 2nd birthday.

Our adorable greeter joined CW San Diego in August of 2008 when she was just 5 months old.

Cleo now

Bring your pup and stop by to wish her a Happy Birthday.

When you click on a button to print, there is a sequence of events that take place:

1. The software application you are using sends the data to be printed to the printer driver.
2. The driver translates the data into a format that the printer can understand and checks to see that the printer is online and available to print.
3. The data is sent by the driver from the computer to the printer via the connection interface (parallel, USB, etc.).
4. The printer receives the data from the computer. It stores a certain amount of data in a buffer. The buffer can range from 512 KB random access memory (RAM) to 16 MB RAM, depending on the model. Buffers are useful because they allow the computer to finish with the printing process quickly, instead of having to wait for the actual page to print. A large buffer can hold a complex document or several basic documents.
5. If the printer has been idle for a period of time, it will normally go through a short clean cycle to make sure that the print head(s) are clean. Once the clean cycle is complete, the printer is ready to begin printing.
6. The control circuitry activates the paper feed stepper motor. This engages the rollers, which feed a sheet of paper from the paper tray/feeder into the printer. A small trigger mechanism in the tray/feeder is depressed when there is paper in the tray or feeder. If the trigger is not depressed, the printer lights up the “Out of Paper” LED and sends an alert to the computer.
7. Once the paper is fed into the printer and positioned at the start of the page, the print head stepper motor uses the belt to move the print head assembly across the page. The motor pauses for the merest fraction of a second each time that the print head sprays dots of ink on the page and then moves a tiny bit before stopping again. This stepping happens so fast that it seems like a continuous motion.
8. Multiple dots are made at each stop. It sprays the CMYK colors in precise amounts to make any other color imaginable.
9. At the end of each complete pass, the paper feed stepper motor advances the paper a fraction of an inch. Depending on the inkjet model, the print head is reset to the beginning side of the page, or, in most cases, simply reverses direction and begins to move back across the page as it prints.
10. This process continues until the page is printed. The time it takes to print a page can vary widely from printer to printer. It will also vary based on the complexity of the page and size of any images on the page. For example, a printer may be able to print 16 pages per minute (PPM) of black text but take a couple of minutes to print one, full-color, page-sized image.
11. Once the printing is complete, the print head is parked. The paper feed stepper motor spins the rollers to finish pushing the completed page into the output tray. Most printers today use inks that are very fast-drying, so that you can immediately pick up the sheet without smudging it.

(Courtesy of How Stuff Works)

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Image by GRP Partners via CrunchBase

Mashable is a site I read nearly every day. It always has great tips for bloggers and web content producers.

Mark Suster,  a Partner at GRP Partners, a Venture Capital firm in Los Angeles, posted an article today that should be read and considered by every SOHO business person. He offers good points to ponder if you’re involved with or considering starting a blog for your business. Below are his primary points, but you really should read the full article.

1. Be authentic

You need to find a “voice” that is authentically yours.

2. Be transparent

The best way to establish your voice is to be transparent. Be willing to talk like a human being.

3. Get inside your readers’ minds

…you need to think about who is in the audience and what they want to hear.

4. Solicit feedback

…the best way to build an audience over time is to engage with them…

5. Don’t be offensive or take big public risks

…unless your company revolves around taking stands on controversial issues, it’s best to leave your political commentary at home.

6. Have fun

…if writing a blog becomes a chore for you it will show.

You might want to sign up to follow Mashable on Google Buzz or Twitter or Friendfeed (they practice what they preach) so you can keep up on what’s happening on the networked web.

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Image by Jared Klett via Flickr

A customer the other day asked if we would go out of business if the major printer manufacturers developed a printer that didn’t use ink or toner.

I told him that no, we would be in no danger of going out of business. We know this because the inkless printing “revolution” began around two years ago and has yet to make any significant impact on consumers.

Zink is perhaps the best known application of inkless printing. Polaroid has also explored the concept of printing without ink. For an overview of how inkless printing works, check out howstuffworks.com.

The problem with the current state of inkless printing is the very thing that makes it possible, the paper. Just about anywhere you go in America there is a store that sells ink and/or toner cartridges. No matter where you live you can buy paper for your printer. But what happens if you’re in need of the special ink-embossed paper for your inkless printer and the only way you can get it is on the internet. No major problem if you’re at home. But what if you’re on vacation or visiting relatives? Will the supplier ship to a temporary address? How long will you have to stay in one place in order to get the paper shipped to you?

And what if the majority of printing you do is receipts, recipes and email? Is it worth paying a premium price for ink-embedded paper for those mundane tasks?

Also consider the inkless printer. Most of the designs envision a 4″x6″ form factor, meaning if you want to make an 8.5″x11″ print you’ll need to export your images to a flash memory card and transfer them to a full-sized printer.

Inkless printing may indeed be the future but it’s not ready for primetime just yet. Even when it is, many users will be sticking to their “old fashioned” ink and toner printers for quite a while. We see this in technology every day. Windows XP is still the most popular version of the Windows operating system in use today even though two newer versions, Vista and Windows 7, have been introduced since XP was released. Many individuals and businesses operate on the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” principle. They’ve gotten used to XP and see no compelling reason to upgrade, especially when that requires buying newer hardware and having to reinstall programs.

CWSD will be supporting those who are still using ink and toner printers for many years to come. We still have customers using some of the very first HP laser printers designed for home use.

If anything our customer base is growing rapidly. Last year was our most profitable year yet, and this year is starting off just as strong. Businesses that once were content to pay for expensive service contracts with office supply stores or printer manufacturers have had to re-examine their budgets and face the fact that they can no longer justify paying a premium price for something that they could just as easily buy from us without sacrificing quality yet save 35% or more in cost.

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Where's Waldo?

Then we start adding shortcuts to programs and websites, installed programs install an icon on the desktop and soon our image is buried beneath a bunch of distracting images. When there’s no organization to the desktop shortcuts it often takes longer to find the icon you want there than it would be to simply open the Start menu.

Here’s a tip that I’ve used for quite a while that both frees up your desktop image and makes finding program shortcuts easier and quicker.

The first step is to right-click on the desktop and choose View, then uncheck the option to Show Desktop Icons.

Now you have an uncluttered view of your desktop.

Next, right-click on any open space on the taskbar (to the right of the Windows Start button), select Toolbars and select Desktop.

Now you have a pop-up menu of every icons and its associated program on the taskbar.

One last step adds a degree of organization to your Desktop menu.I’ll use my personal method as an example. You can organize your menu to meet your needs.

Using Windows Explorer, I open the Desktop folder. I right-click anywhere in the window and select New then select Folder (do not select NewFolder in the first window). I then create folders for Apps, System, Games, Office, Reference and so forth. Finally I left-click on each icon and drag it to an appropriate folder.

Being more organized increases efficiency. Being able to enjoy your desktop image may relieve stress. I’d say either of those is a good reason to get rid of your disorganized desktop today.

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Image by greenlagirl via Flickr

While it’s obvious we reuse ink and toner cartridges, other items we reuse on a daily basis might not be so obvious. I say that because it seems not too many of our customers return these items with their cartridges when they come in to buy filled ones.

To help us keep our costs as low as possible and thus to be able to pass along the lowest possible prices to you, please remember to retain bring back the following when you come in the next time:

• Cartridge boxes, both ink and laser (we can only reuse boxes that haven’t been written on or damaged)
• Plastic clips on the front of color ink cartridges
• Plastic caps on Canon cartridges
• Silver bags on laser cartridges
• Anti-static bags on Epson ink cartridges

We appreciate your efforts in helping us keep down costs and furthering the practice of reuse and recycling.

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Image via Wikipedia

Reusing ink cartridges benefits both the environment and your pocketbook, but there can occasionally be an issue with a reused cartridge that causes it to not give out ink or fail to be noticed by your printer.

The following tips are generic and may not apply to your particular printer. If the cartridges you purchase from us are not performing to your expectations and the following suggestions either don’t work or don’t apply, please call us for specific solutions to your problem.

“My printer says the cartridge is low on ink or empty when I first put it in.”

Some printers are able to detect a cartridge that has been in another printer. This ability is provided by the software in the printer and cannot generally be over-ridden. The electronics on the reused cartridge isn’t resetting the page counter in the printer, and that page counter is the only way the printer has to know how much ink the cartridge contains. You can usually ignore these warnings of low or no ink and print normally. You will have to monitor the quality of your prints to know when the ink cartridge is running low since the printer won’t warn you. To dismiss these warnings, click the “OK” button until the dialog box goes away. Sometimes checking the “Don’t display this dialog again” option in the warning window will prevent the printer from popping up the same warning every time you start to print.

“My cartridge seems to have dried out and won’t print properly even though I’m sure there’s still ink in it.”

The first thing to do in these cases is to run the printer’s built-in cleaning process. You shouldn’t run it more than once as it uses a lot of ink. If that doesn’t produced the desired result, take a paper towel and slightly dampen it and place it on a surface that won’t be discolored or damaged by ink. Tile is a good surface. Hold the cartridge with the print head against the paper towel for about a minute. Since water is a larger molecule than ink, you should start to see a bloom of ink form around the print head. This is the water wicking out the ink. Usually this is enough to moisten the print head and get the ink flowing again if the only problem was ink dried on the print head. If the cartridge still isn’t printing correctly, bring it back to us and we’ll either fix or replace it.

“I bought the right cartridge for my printer but it doesn’t fit.”

We get a phone call like this about once a week; it’s not as rare a problem as you might expect. The usual cause is the failure to remove the tape and/or clip from the cartridge prior to installation. We use a very light adhesive tape over the printhead  on black inkjet cartridges to protect them from damage or even the casual touch and we combine the tape with a plastic clip on color cartridges. The clip is intended to prevent color mixing at the printhead and to keep air from getting into the printhead. When removing the tape, be sure to only remove the light adhesive tape. Do not attempt to remove the brass electronics strip that constitutes the printhead. This will guarantee the cartridge can never be used again. We like to say that if you can’t remove the tape with your fingers, you’re probably trying to remove the wrong thing. Pliers are not required to remove the tape.

“My photos look dull using your cartridges.”

First, make sure you aren’t printing photos in “draft” mode. Check the settings in “printer properties” and be sure you have “Best” or “Photo” selected for the print quality. Second, for the best possible results using our cartridges, be sure you’re using the photo paper recommended by your printer’s manufacturer. Inks are formulated to work with certain types of photo paper. Saturation and drying time are particular to the recommended paper. Printing photos on ordinary copy paper will result in dull colors and saturated paper.

For the very best results when printing very important photos, we recommend you use the manufacturer’s paper and ink. Because we have to manufacture our ink using different components than the OEM ink to avoid legal complications, we cannot make the same claims as the manufacturers do about photo quality and longevity. Our inks are not archival quality inks, and that, usually combined with acid-free paper, is required to attain the promises made by the manufacturers as to photo quality and their claims that their ink won’t fade for 100 years.

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Image by osde8info via Flickr

Many printer manufacturers these days are offering their customers an option when it comes to cartridge volume; newer printers often accept both low yield and high yield cartridges. High yield, sometimes labeled as XL, cartridges contain twice to three times as much ink or toner as the low yield version. If you do a lot of printing, an XL cartridge will last longer and reduce the number of times a month you have to come in for refills.

HP is leading other manufacturers in offering high yield ink and toner cartridges. They currently offer XL versions of their #60, #74 & 75, #88, #901, #920 and #940 ink cartridges and many of their laser cartridges (denoted by an “X” at the end of the cartridge number; C7115x, the high yield version of the C7115A). A few other manufacturers have followed suit, but HP has the largest selection of high yield cartridges.

If you print frequently or in large quantities you should consider purchasing XL or high yield cartridges for your printer if they are available. They may cost a bit more up front, but your overall cost-per-page will be lower. You will also reduce the risk of running out of ink or toner in the middle of a large print job.

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