Many small businesses find themselves asking this question at some point, and there are many different answers that might solve this riddle.  In this post I am going to discuss ways that you can avoid this statement (at least for online presence reasons).  

One of the first things you need to decide when you are going to take your business online, either to get your name out there or to actually sell products and services, is what platform is going to reach the maximum amount of current and potential customers.  Unfortunately, there is not a simple answer to this question.  It really depends who your customers are and knowing how they access the Internet and what portals they use to find products and services.  Older customers will still go to sites like Facebook, Google and more traditional sources to gather information, while younger ones tend to rely more on Twitter, YouTube and various other social sites and apps that are hard to pin down.  This wide array of sources doesn't mean that you can't reach everyone you want, it will just take a bit more time and effort to extend your online presence to multiple channels.  The good news is there are ways to tie many of these platforms together, so you are not just redoing the same work over and over again.  The trick is knowing which sites are worth the investment (both in time and money), and which ones would be better to leave behind.

Many small businesses have utilized Facebook as a way to reach their customers for several years now.  It is an extremely popular, global site and relatively cheap to set up and maintain.  But, Facebook is losing its popularity with younger generations.  In fact, it lost 2.8 million subscribers under the age of 25 in 2018, and these trends are expected to continue, if not accelerate in the coming years.  If you are relying on Facebook alone to reach your customers, you could be missing out on many potential customers who have left.  This will be true for many of the popular social media platforms going forward.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't use them, it just means you are going to need to be more nimble and able to switch platforms quickly without completely redoing your online info.  The answer to this may be to create something that is not shiny and new, but to use tried and true methods that have been around as long as the Internet.

Creating a fully functional website with an easy to access domain name can be used as your central hub for all your information, products and services.  It is easy to maintain, relatively inexpensive and you can link back to it from any existing or new social media platform very quickly.  Instead of trying to maintain this information in five or six different places, just house it in one place that you have complete control over, and when changes need to be made you do it once.  Having a modern website that looks good on laptops and computers and will also be optimized to work on mobile devices is still a necessity for most businesses.  If you have a current website, you need to make sure it looks good on phones and tablets.  Going forward, this is where most people are going to access it.  

Thanks for reading, and as always if you would like help creating or maintaining your website and other online platforms, or if you just need some advice on what to use call us at (402) 669-8029 or visit us online at cebtechnology.net.

Desktop computers and laptops are much less expensive than they were 20-30 years ago and this has led many individuals to see them as more "disposable" or feel that it is not worth the money to repair when you can just get a new one for roughly the same money.  In this post I hope to show that there are other costs to replacing an existing desktop or laptop, and that with a little maintenance you may not find yourself in the position of having to decide whether or not to buy.

Let's start with maintenance.  No reasonable person would buy a new car and then not change the oil, tires, or other essential parts for 3-4 years and wonder why it didn't hold up well.  Computers are no different, if you do routine maintenance and upgrades, most desktop and laptop computers can be expected to work well past what a lot of people would consider a normal lifetime.  Some people prefer to do the work themselves (just like cars), but many others would prefer a professional to handle the work.  We can help with all of your routine maintenance and upgrades here at CEB Technology Solutions.  Most of this maintenance really doesn't need to be done more than once a year, so the costs are not going to be outrageous.  If you let problems build up over time, that is when it becomes a tough call between fixing or scrapping.  Check out our home and small business maintenance services.

While replacing an aging computer may seem like the best option sometimes, you also have to consider the hassle of setting up and re-establishing all of your info from your old computer to a new one.  Migrating files, photos, passwords and other information can be difficult and time consuming.  There are software programs and cloud based services that can help with this, but it still will require time and effort.  Sometimes simple things like cleaning unused files off the hard drive, moving photos/videos to a cloud service or external storage drive, or upgrading memory can make your old computer run like new.  These are fairly inexpensive things that we can do for you and you would be surprised how much difference they can make on your technology.

Stay tuned for more posts on simplifying the technology  in your life.