Social Media Optimization (SMO) - Does your Business need it?

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the latest buzz word for marketing professional, so what is SMO? Is it important for your website to be optimized or enabled for Social media interactions?

With Facebook (FB) eating a major chunk of internet where people are posting comments, pictures, videos and everything they like or dislike and their friends interact and creating a whole new wave of online shopping or influencing the buying decision of the consumer or friends.

This is a new world just like what we had in early 2000's when SEO was the buzz word and people were trying to get their website optimized and attract traffic, now it's time for SMO so you can engage your fans, shoppers, consumers or friends to stay in touch and grow your fan base or customer base.

So what is Social Media Optimization and what sites should we target? We highly recommend the following social media websites that needs to be integrated with your websites.

1. FaceBook
2. Google Plus
3. Twitter
4. Blogs
5 YouTube
6. Bookmarking websites such as Digg and others
7. Amazon Wishlist
8. Others - there is always others category

Facebook - Increases your social interaction to the level you have wouldn't imagine, your website and products get viral, you add more friends, fans and create a brand. Facebook has largest social fans/friends and the leader in social media enabling Companies to push their brands and products by engaging them throughout the sales cycle of discovery, sales and feedback.

Examples:
Branding: We have FB integration implemented for Hips and Curves and since then they have gotten more likes on their products and they are able to brand their products on Social media.
Product Decision: Another way to use FB likes is by asking your shoppers or fans to decide which product is worth building and StyleFactory uses FB for product decision whether to build it or not.
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Google Plus - Next big thing after Facebook is the new Google Plus (G+) get your business account established and start populating with fresh news, updates and build a fan base so more and more people G+ or plus your website links this will all add into Google's Search algorithm for higher ranking.

This is going to get big,bigger than Facebook since Google is incorporating the Google Plus into their search engine algorithm so having a G+ pages just like FB pages is important so you can have the G+ button on your website or shopping site and all likes or plus would show up on your Google+ pages, we have setup InfoSourcing G+ page go ahead Plus it.

OneStopFeed Google+ pages account, so you get the idea go ahead and create your own business page and start to populate with posts and share them all over the website so you can engage more with your fans/followers, this will eventually show up on Google's search results.


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Twitter - Any tweets is highly recommended to keep your fans updates about the latest product or something that you found or discovered or something that keeps them engaged and again fresh content is impt for search engines.

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Blogs - Same thing as tweets just that you can post pictures, content rich description targeting keywords and keyphrase helps in SEO

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YouTube - Any videos that can go viral or help your shoppers make the right decision post it.

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Amazon Wishlist- This caught our attention Amazon introduced "Add to Amazon wish list" button so it's easy for shoppers to make their wishlist in common location and then get to it and shop off that list on any other sites. How cool is that?

Check out Amazon Wish list button working on Hips and Curves website
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If your Ecommerce business then you should take a close look at optimizing your website for search engines and enabling your website with social elements, we could help you customize your website, enable social media optimization SMO for sites that are powered by Interprise Suite Ecommerce.

Interprise Suite Ver 6.0 Release Candidate 4 (RC4) - Update

The new version IS 6.0 RC4 seems pretty rock solid with installation and features. The new install has Card Scanning SDK which I wasn't quite sure and avoided not to install however the install won't go further if we don't install and ended up installing, other than that installation was a breeze.

New Features found
1. Under Customer Tab - New button called Associate Company Information - Not sure what it does but it's out there, any update on this ?
2. CRM tab - Lead drop down - Scan to Lead option looks like a new feature to scan your business cards and convert them to leads nice feature I guess this is where the Card scanning SDK was required, anyways it didn't work either
3. Inventory tab - External Cart Import Wizard - Plugin from eShopconnect try it with caution it will crash entire IS
4. Inventory tab - Bin Location wizard - Does this mean we can now allocate our stock to Location - Zone and Bin?? Couldn't figure out quite what it does or how to use it.
5. No changes in Item attribute feature

6. A new template look and feel for eCommerce website, it's way better than the earlier ones and it looks kind of neat and ready to use out of the box with few changes to images and colors.

Overall it's a good build, my first stab at it I didn't experience any errors or issues by running through entire process of creating leads, customer, quote, order and invoice and reversing the entry with RMA, Memo and running a customer statement just worked flawlessly.

Good job IS team, let's get the RC5 or the final build and get the ISE source code and SDK ready so we can test with some real data by migrating from older version.

Visit our website for more information about Interprise offerings and services

Case Study: Trusted Pet Pharmacy Allivet's Ecommerce solution

Allivet Pet Pharmacy Case Study - Nov 10th 2011

We are delighted to announce another successful migration of website from Volusion to Interprise Suite ECommerce.
Allivet, a trusted pet pharmacy online etailer selling pet vitamins and supplements were faced with challenges to increase their online presence and compete with big guys such as 1800Pet Meds and others.
Allivet used Interprise ECommerce for their Shopping cart solution so they could finally have a powerful back-end software to publish their catalog and channelize their one source.

Allivet were looking for complete Ecommerce solution provider who could make a difference in their online business and find the perfect match with InfoSourcing for their website customization, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and multi-channel marketing to compete against the big guys.

We at InfoSourcing love customers who have products to sell to consumers and our expertise was called in to get their organic search results higher, migrate them to newer solution, integrate their online ad solutions and multi-channel marketing.

Allivet, most trusted Pet Pharmacy since 1992! has been in the business of providing pet medications,Farm and Ranch tools and veterinary supplies for more than 14-years, and have a client base made of both domestic and international customers.

We offered our innovative SEO Dashboard solution that automates your entire product catalog with breeze and ensure your website is fully optimized for search engines. We extended our services in migrating their old website to new with 301 redirects, website submissions and targeting Pay-per-click campaigns and shopping feeds program through www.OneStopFeed.com

Organic results are soaring with increase in traffic for the holidays. For all your online pet medication visit www.Allivet.com trusted source for pet pharmacy.

For all your Interprise Suite Ecommerce customization, plugins, SEO, Shopping feeds and Multi-Channel Marketing services we cover it all - ECommerce 360 visit us at InfoSourcing 

Holiday Shopping Starts Now, Are You Ready To Grab Attention?

We are now officially entering the biggest season of "Holiday Shopping" starting from Halloween season till New Year's Eve, online sales will soar high during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, every consumer/shopper would be looking for the best deals on the internet.

If you are not ready you might miss the biggest event of the year, so get ready for the shopping mania.

If you currently operate an  E-commerce website/store then you need to have your product catalog submitted to Comparison Shopping engines mainly "Google Products", "Bing Shopping" and "The Find" Shopping engines.

If you are wondering why we are showcasing only 3 engines when there are 50 others comparison shopping engines? Well as a business owner myself and working with several small and medium business throughout US for last 10 yrs we noticed our customers like "Free", so we list the top 3 free comparison shopping engines that can send tons of traffic and increase your online sales conversions.

Google, Bing and TheFind Shopping engines is absolutely free you don't have to pay for any clicks made on their website and traffic is pushed to your website unlike other paid price engines such as Pricegrabber.com, Shop.com, Shopzilla.com, so why not take advantage of free and submit your data feed to Google, Bing and TheFind and start getting free traffic for this holiday season.

We at InfoSourcing have kick started our OneStopFeed.Com Multi-channel marketing program for Interprise customers, we made it simple and easy to integrate your shopping feeds from Interprise to all these engines. You can subscribe to our feed program and install our Interprise plugins for Version 5.0 and 6.0, configure and generate feeds and we will handle the rest.

Your feed will be submitted weekly/Monthly to these engines and get the latest products to shoppers, few our customers have already started to see the spike in their online traffic and sales, our program also tracks your website traffic through Google Analytics tool (another free tool to use, i love free).

You will be able to start generating traffic within few days of subscribing to our feed program, take advantage this holiday season and Subscribe for as low as $59 per month.

Visit www.OneStopFeed.com for submitting your product shopping feeds to free shopping engines Google, Bing Shopping and TheFind.com.

4th Quarter - This Week, this year 2011 - New Product and Services for Consumers

October 1st week marks the beginning of the 4th quarter and the most important quarter for business, this is when the largest online shopping sales happens and this part of the year most people shop the most due to holidays and also due to the fact it's financial year ending and organizations with sufficient budget would like use their allocated funds for their inventory.

Consumer technology Companies understand the magic 4th quarter and they are launching their new products and services to consumers and business to capture the  market share, here are few worth noting down

• Apple's iPhone 5G
• Android's new operating system
• Microsoft Mango
• Facebook Timeline
• Google Analytics
• Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet
• Interprise Suite ERP Software Ver 6.0

Apple's new iPhone 5G features the next generation of mobile computing and consumer driven features, Android iPhone's competitor is also releasing it's new OS partnered with Samsung to compete in mobile space along with Microsoft Mango mobile version.

In the tablet war Amazon introduced its new tablet for the masses Kindle Fire new kid on the block and it's prices are affordable priced at $199 compared to $499 for iPad and Samsung tabs.

Facebook the social media giant is unveiling the timeline feature update to 800 million users the largest online user base and also rumors of  introducing paid plans for users who have large fan base business and prominent people would be their biggest audience.

Google Analytics has rolled out a new product updates with real time updates of traffic instead of 24 hr delay restrictions it had before, with this change they are now offering Enterprise analytics and offering at larger clients who can afford $150k per yr.

Interprise Solutions maker of ERP software for small and medium business is launching their new version 6.0 to small and medium business world wide, with its new features it will now directly compete with other leading ERP brands such as NetSuite, Everest, SAP Business One, TradePoint, Sage, MS Dynamics and Quickbooks and business might see the value when they compare Interprise Suite with other brands.

We are seeing innovation on all fronts targeting consumers and the market is flooded with new products, new services and only the strongest will survive and as a business owner you need to capitalize by using the right technology and services to compete.

Get your wish lists, gift cards, shopping bags ready for a roller coaster ride of the yr 2011.

Which ERP Software Fits Your Business - NetSuite, Interprise Suite or Everest?

Why Interprise Suite should be your next ERP Software? 

If you are in the market for evaluating ERP software for small and medium business then you would have run into several different companies, products and lots of options and variations and wondering which software is going to fit my business and what's the best choice? Whom should we trust? Is this Company good? Or they stable or are they gonna go bankrupt? Should I spend $100,000 or $10,000?

What is right and what's wrong? Well we hear this concerns from several business owners in retail, wholesale, distribution and etail customers so we decided to highlight some of the competitors and the reason for us to partner with specific ERP vendors and why business should decide to choose Interprise Suite versus other ERP software's?

We have done all the research in evaluating the next best ERP for Small and medium business considering the fact that Small and Medium is vaguely defined and also each business have their own budget constraints, here are few that we have shortlisted and reason why we like one of below the most.

• Interprise Suite - Been in market since 2003 onwards with new management take over in 2010
• Everest -Been in market since 1998 however is declining since its latest acquisition in 2010
• NetSuite - Market leader in ERP software but priced highly after 2nd yr and moving away from small business or those who can't afford $10,000 
• ABAS - Not heard of 
• Acumatica - ERP vendor their ecommerce or POS solution is not comparable they are more focus like other ERP such as Sage or MS Dynamics, not focused on eBusiness
• Enterprise IQ (IQMS) - Not heard much abt, they have unique licensing options

We have done very detailed comparison of ERP software's in SMB sector module-module comparison btwn Interprise Suite Vs Everest and NetSuite and we find these 3 software's worthy of considering as fully integrated ERP software with Accounting, Sales, Purchases, Inventory, Purchasing, CRM, POS, EDI and other options. Click here to read more about the ERP comparisons 

Stability of Companies:

1. NetSuite - More stable is what we feel coz it's listed on Nasdaq and backed by Oracle so obviously we all tend to feel comfortable dealing with Companies that are listed as a stable Company.

2. Everest Software - Not listed but had 4 Venture Captials invest in millions and was recently sold to Versata who acquired Everest and its customer base on short sale and cut its entire work force and outsourced everything since then customers are jumping ship which is very clear the Company is viewed as "Not stable" with high support prices.

3. Interprise Suite - Not listed on Nasadaq however it did go through acquisition from Taylor Corp couple of yrs back and since then it was re-acquired by private investors who were also users of Interprise software so they can continue the progress of ERP development and to market its offerings, since Mar 2010 they had exponential growth in software in terms of ERP features and customer base, with it's new version 6.0 it's going to be tough contender for NetSuite.

I don't want so sound like i'm pitching for Interprise as the greatest software or perfect software for business, I have been in software development for more than 15+ yrs and have worked in ERP systems for more than 12+ yrs and have seen Companies risen and fallen. Every software has it's own  distinctive competencies and feature sets, also it's own issues, bugs and fixes or constraints in it's growth.One Size doesn't fit all and no software is perfect. You need to observe the Company and its trends in software development.

NetSuite is not profitable still since their expense is equal to their revenue, they are also trying to move away from smaller deals which was their core business Read more about this article which highlights the small business being avoided by NetSuite

Everest - Lots of our customers ask is Everest a stable Company are they going to be in business next yr or they gonna go bankrupt, do I need to be on Support contract? Our answers is the same we aren't sure since the recent acquisition and SMB research group have done an in-depth article about Everest Software and its future plans.

Now Interprise Suite, within last 1 yr the following things have happened 

1. Launched new website www.InterpriseSolutions.com after take over

2. 1000+ new users signed up on their community

3. Their daily traffic to website is higher as per the Alexa reports. Alexa Traffic Rank is 318,206 and reputation of 45 

4. Here is an email we recd from their top management with regards to future plans 

Our focus has not changed over the past 8 years.  We are committed to helping small businesses operate more effectively and efficiently while providing the best ROI in the industry.  We have been investing heavily in upgrading and improving our existing products (6.0), investing in creating new products and platforms for the future (POS/InterpriseTouch), investing in building an open community (we are closing in on 2,000 community members), investing in building an education portal for our customers (Still a few months away but coming along - http://university.interprisesolutions.com/), investing creating a dynamic new website for prospects, customers and partners (http://next.interprisesolutions.com/), investing in our new Cloud environment and investing in new and exciting services such as the Connected Business Network.

5. We are re-seller for Interprise from past 5 yrs and have moved several customers from Everest and NetSuite to Interprise Suite and also customized several eCommerce websites

6. Interprise had its 2011 User conference in Las Vegas on Aug 23rd More about it here 

7. 50+ re-sellers signed up for reselling their ERP products

8. Pricing options for a fully integrated ERP software with ECommerce + source code + Unlimited websites costs $995 per user or $99 per user OnCloud ($69 each additional user)

9. New POS built on open source technology SilverTouch which enables to build software apps on any platform that support silverlight like android devices or iPad's.

10. Community of developers, 3rd party developers, resellers, certification programs all helping the end users

As you see there are various factors while evaluating the ERP software, too many choices can spoil the fun, working with an expert always helps you to narrow down your choices and hear both sides of the story unlike the sales rep who wants to sell software and make commission and really not bother about your business or whether you are happy with your solution, long term relationship is key in such engagements.

Feel free to comment on this post and share it with others, if you want to discuss more about ERP software give us a buzz we will be more than happy to guide you not sell the software, but purely FREE information.

Are you ready for Mobile traffic?

A report by ABI Research found that mobile online shopping in the United States rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. The same survey predicted that mobile would bring in $119 billion by 2015. - Source: Mashable


So more and more consumers get their hands on smart phone such as iPhone and Android devices they have the mobility to shop online or compare products and price or even just look up for hot deals. Having an eCommerce website is a must if you targeting online shoppers but having mobile ready site makes it even more important to facilitate those shoppers who are researching your products or ready to buy in the shortest time available during holiday seasons. 


Interprise Solutions is launching its mobile solution this Holiday season and a sneak preview of it's mobile solution can be seen on their blog posted Sep 2nd by Gary. We will keep you updated on features, how it works, whether it can be customized for your mobile business solution, stay tuned ...