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Showing posts from March, 2019

Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr

The Best Online Poll Apps and Social Media Polls in 2019

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Want to learn if your users prefer Android to iOS? If your event should serve coffee or tea? Or if your followers are dog or cat people? You need a poll: a simple, one-question survey with limited answer options. Here, we'll explore how you can make a poll on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and present you with our picks for the five best web-based polling apps. Need a survey app instead? A survey casts a much wider net, allowing you to ask dozens of different questions. A poll, on the other hand, is used to quickly gather feedback on one question. Check out our roundup of the best survey builder apps if you're looking to ask more complex questions or a series of questions. How to Make a Social Media Poll Perhaps the most difficult part of creating a poll is making sure people actually respond. That's what makes social media perfect for polls: It offers a built-in community of possible respondents. And Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all offer polling tools that qui

The Best Appointment Scheduling Apps for 2019

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If you run a business that relies on client appointments, you know how much effort it takes to plan and manage the calendar. Clients, customers, or patients contact you asking for an appointment, and you have to figure out when it can work. It only gets more complicated when you have to slot in emergency bookings, reschedule someone on short notice, or cut your losses for no-shows. There's no need to do this work manually, however, because appointment scheduling apps can do it for you, and they can do it with greater ease and fewer headaches. What is an Appointment Scheduling App? Appointment scheduling apps are business tools that allow clients to book, reschedule, and cancel appointments through a web interface. When clients want to make an appointment, they go to your business's website, Facebook page, or anywhere else the technology is supported, and choose an available date and time. It's just like making a restaurant reservation online. The difference, from the busi

The 8 Best Email Apps for Android in 2019

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When was the last time you cursed your phone for being too small to display a picture properly or record a keystroke correctly? Six inches of screen isn't much real estate to be productive, and yet 75 percent of us are using our phones to manage our email. If you fall into that category and use an Android phone, there are hundreds of email clients to choose from in the Google Play store. You could throw in the towel and use the app that came preinstalled on your phone, but stock Android apps will never live up to the competition. Trust us, we checked. After putting 50 of the most promising Android email apps through the wringer, we've narrowed the list down to the best eight. What Makes a Great Android Email App? A mobile email client needs to nail the basics: connecting to third-party domains, sending and receiving messages, searching your inbox, managing contacts, and keeping everything organized. Every app has a different method for achieving these basic email needs, so

The 9 Best Email Apps for iPhone and iPad in 2019

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Many a tech blog headline and bold entrepreneur have announced that [insert app name here] will kill email. But like a wicked witch trying to kill a fairy tale princess, these new apps all fall short: Email is here to stay. You may be happy with a web app like Gmail when you're at your computer, but when you're emailing from your iPhone or iPad, you'll want a dedicated app for the job. We've tested the most popular iOS email apps, and here we'll present the best in breed. What Makes a Great iPhone and iPad Email App? For starters, we're only looking at fully featured email clients, not apps designed to help you quickly sort mail or get to inbox zero. An email client is—like the Mail app already installed on your iPhone—an app that you can use to access your email account, regardless of what service you actually use. With one or two exceptions, we only considered apps that supported all the major email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail, and IMA

How to Manage Multiple Google Accounts

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If you only have one Google account, we suggest you do everything you can to keep it that way. Managing multiple Google accounts is kind of a nightmare, and there's no simple or efficient way to merge multiple Google accounts into one. But if it's too late and you already have multiple Google accounts—a personal and school account, accounts that reflect your maiden and married names, or several work accounts—it's not all bad news. There may be no easy way to merge all of your accounts into one, but there are several tools and tactics you can use to manage multiple Gmail accounts or manage all your Google accounts more efficiently. Managing Multiple Google Accounts If you're at your wit's end trying to manage your Google accounts, consider the following options to find a more streamlined solution. Click on each suggestion for a how-to along with the pros and cons of the solution. Try these Gmail-specific tools if you only want to manage multiple Gmail accounts