Author: Zack Duncan

Temporary Technology Rental Solutions For Your Small Business!

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When you own a small business, it can be difficult having the technology you want or need whenever you go to a trade show, conference, or convention. Hauling your own technology across the country can be a heavy burden and might end up costing you more than you can afford if something gets lost or broken. When it comes to situations like these, the best solution is going with a technology rental solution. Renting your technology allows you to have exactly what you need when and where you need it while also saving money in the process. Here are some of the different products and services you can expect when you rent technology from Rentacomputer.com.

Desktop Rentals

Desktop rentals allow you to rent everything from a brand new Windows 10 desktop to the latest iMac or Mac Pro from Apple. Looking for an All-in-One? No problem. Desktop rentals are perfect for when you need a significant amount of computing power in a stationary location. The best thing about a desktop rental from Rentacomputer.com is that your PC will be set up, tested, and working to maximum performance before you ever even need it thanks to local delivery and professional installation from a certified technician!

Laptop Rentals

Laptop rentals are the perfect solution if you need both computing power and mobility. Rentacomputer.com has a plethora of laptop rentals from Windows, MacBook Pros, and even MacBook Airs. The best thing about renting a laptop for your event is the fact that if you need certain specifications or a certain software installed on your laptop then Rentacomputer.com will handle it. Anything you need will be pre-installed on your device and ready for your use when you arrive at your event.

Tablet Rentals

Tablet rentals include Apple’s highly popular iPad models, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab models, Windows’ Surface tablets, and any other brand or model you could possibly want. Tablet rentals are perfect if you need to have team members at your event walking around while staying connected or if you need to set up stations for visitors to your booth to take surveys. Like desktop and laptop rentals, tablet rentals from Rentacomputer.com can be pre-loaded with specific software or even specific apps, like your company’s own app, relieving you of another thing to worry about.

Aside from attending events, conventions, trade shows, etc… some small business users also sometimes need temporary office solutions. However, you’re not going to go out and buy all the equipment you need for a temporary office, that doesn’t make any financial sense. They’re called temporary offices for a reason, you only need to use them for a specified amount of time. That is why companies, like Rentacomputer.com, offer temporary office solutions. Some of the most useful rentals that are offered for temporary offices include:

Copier Rentals

Rentacomputer.com offers multifarious standalone, all-in-one, and desktop copier rentals that can suit any and every need. Copier rentals are perfect for temporary offices when you need to have all the access that a normal office has in a temporary location. Another reason a lot of small business owners use copier rentals is for tax season. Tax season is one of the busiest times of the year for small business owners and one of the busiest times of the year for copier rentals.

Fax Machine Rentals

You might be asking yourself, “People still use fax machines?” That’s a valid question. Fax machines have gone out of style in normal, everyday settings thanks to things like email. However, there are still industries that need fax machines for certain situations. That is where fax machine rentals are the perfect solution. Let’s be honest, it is highly unlikely that the amount of time you will be using a fax machine will warrant the need to purchase one and have it on hand 24/7. If you need a fax machine then renting one for the exact amount of time you need it is the smartest choice.

Printer Rentals

A printer rental is another useful temporary office solution. Printer rentals are perfect if you have a big project that requires printing out a large amount of pages of information. Printer rentals from Rentacomputer.com come in a variety of styles including Deskjet, Inkjet, and multi-functional printers. Printer rentals are perfect not just for temporary office solutions but also for trade shows and events. When used at a trade show or event, printer rentals allow you to print out things on the spot to give to attendees and visitors to your booth.

Whether you’re attending a trade show, conference, or convention or you’re setting up a temporary office, technology rental solutions from Rentacomputer.com can really make a difference. Temporary needs require temporary solutions and nobody does it better than Rentacomputer.com. With service nationwide and local, professional technicians the service you get from Rentacomputer.com can’t be matched! If you need temporary technology for your small business then contact Rentacomputer.com today by visiting us online, calling us at 800-736-8772, texting us at 908-485-7368, emailing us at rentals@rentacomputer.com, or getting a direct quote from our website!

How Your Seminars Can Benefit From Laptop And Tablet Rentals

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Lots of companies hold seminars for many different reasons. These seminars could be used to promote their products to potential clients or could be employee seminars where companies teach employees about new policies and procedures that will soon be implemented. Regardless of the reason, the ability for those in attendance of the seminar to interact with the presenter and the presentation is imperative. That is why a lot of companies hosting seminars find it wise that everyone in attendance have access to something like a laptop or a tablet. As a result, it’s common that businesses rent this technology in this situation. Here are a few reasons that a business would want to rent laptops or tablets for their seminars.

Essential Software Pre-Installed

When people bring their own laptops or tablets, you can run into a software problem. There might be specific types of software that your company is going to utilize during the seminar presentation. When attendees bring their own equipment, it won’t be of much use to them if they don’t have the compatible software installed. However, when you rent laptops or tablets from a professional rental company, this problem can be circumvented. When you rent the technology, the company you are renting from can ensure that every single piece of equipment that you rent from them can have the appropriate software pre-installed on them. This will guarantee that every single person at your seminar will be able to follow along with the presentation without any problems.

Perfect For Audience Members

When you rent all the technology you need for your audience members, you make things a lot easier for them. There’s no guarantee that everyone attending your seminar will have their own laptop or tablet, which is why renting them ensures that everyone at the seminar has the technology they need. In addition to that, attendees will probably be a lot happier knowing that they will not have to cart around their own laptops or tablets. It can be a real hassle taking a laptop or tablet through airport security and onto a plane and it is even worse when you pack that technology in your luggage and it gets broken in transit or your luggage is lost! Renting laptops and tablets for your seminar attendees completely eliminates these hassles and makes your attendees much happier and your seminar much more enjoyable and accessible.

The Latest Technology

Probably the best reason for renting laptops or tablets for your seminar is the fact that you are getting the latest technology currently available. Most rental companies offer the newest technology on the market for rent, meaning that you and your attendees can have cutting-edge technology right at your fingertips. This also means that if you have a specific brand or model that you want or need, you are almost guaranteed to get it. Not only will your attendees appreciate having high-end technology at their fingertips but your business will also make quite a good impression, especially if there are a lot of new and potential customers that will be in attendance.

When hosting a seminar, it is always a good idea to rent things like laptops or tablets for your attendees. Making sure everyone has the right technology to interact with the presentation, the correct software and the latest technology available, renting really is your best bet. Rentacomputer.com has a full line of laptop and tablet rentals  that are perfect for seminars. If you want the latest technology for your seminar, contact Rentacomputer.com today by calling 800-736-8772, texting 908-485-7368, or emailing rentals@rentacomputer.com today!

Are You Prepared For A Hard Drive Failure?

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A hard drive failure is one of the worst things that can happen. When your hard drive crashes, you potentially lose a lot of important data. Pictures, documents, downloads, and other saved files could be gone forever. So what do you do? How do you handle something that is potentially catastrophic like this? Well, there are a few steps you can take, like being prepared, making backup discs, knowing your local computer shop or just trading out your old hard drive for a solid state drive. It is imperative that you know what to do when your hard drive fails and this list of potential solutions should be something to consider. Continue reading on the ComputerServiceNow Blog.

Do you need full-service tech support in Middletown, or anywhere in Southwest Ohio? Computer Service Now has been serving the Middletown area for over 30 years. Contact CSN today for IT consulting, managed IT service, computer service and repair, web services, networking services, security and more! Call 877-422-1907.

Temporary Technology Saves Money When Staff Fluctuates

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If you’re a small business owner then you know how quickly your staffing numbers can fluctuate. Seasonal employees are vital for some businesses, causing employment numbers to rise and fall in a short amount of time. These fluctuations are common during the holidays and during tax season when increased employment is needed for a short amount of time. However, this change in employment could cost you a lot of money if you don’t plan accordingly.

If your company uses seasonal employees or experiences fluctuations in staffing then you should look into short-term technology rentals. These fluctuations in staffing sometimes bring a fluctuation in technology needs. If your employees have a reliance on certain types of technology then you can probably guarantee that when you hire extra employees you will need extra equipment, like laptops, tablets, desktops, and even copiers. If you want to know more about how technology rentals can save you time and money when staff fluctuates then continue reading here!

Easy Ways To Set Small Business Goals

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Have you ever felt like you are not moving things forward in your business? If you have then it is probably because you aren’t measuring yourself against your business goals. Don’t be another small business owner who doesn’t set goals because “you’ll never end up achieving them” or just backing out on your goals altogether. If this sounds like you then you need to shift your entire way of thinking when it comes to setting goals. Taking the time to set goals and following through on them is an investment that pays off immensely in the long run. If you are wondering what it is that you can do to realistically look at your business and create goals then follow these tips.

Create A Long-Term Plan

Focusing on long-term goals in a certain time-frame is crucial. These goals have a place in your overall goal setting though you really need to focus on setting clear, attainable goals in the short-term as well. Take college, for example. When you start off as an undergrad, you set the goal of attaining your bachelor’s degree before going on to pursue a master’s. Your goal roadmap should have goals that can be achieved sooner rather than later, which will help you achieve your long-term goals. Creating these goals could also assist you in realizing your vision even better.

Stay Focused

Setting goals is great and all, but you also need to make serious efforts to attain those goals. If you’re going to be developing something like content, then you should put aside one day a week to do specifically that. Be productive. Set deadlines. It is so easy to get distracted or discouraged so it is imperative that you stay focused as much as possible. One of the best ways to keep on track is to eliminate or avoid distractions whenever and wherever possible.

Be Mindful Of Your Current Situation

Take a good, long look at where you are currently and ask yourself this: “Is this where I want to be?” Is is crucial that you are 100% clear with yourself about your current situation, especially when it comes to thinks like money, accounts payable, sales pipelines, and processes. As soon as you have established what your current situation is like, you can then look forward to the future and the goals you have set for it.

One Big Picture – Lots Of Smaller Pieces

You need to make some short-term tasks that you want to achieve for the next year. Monthly and weekly sales goals can help you move closer to your revenue goals. Set a goal for increasing things like cold calls, posts on social media, and direct outreach if you are looking to increase sales. Trying to generate more traffic to your website? Create a content development system and start an editorial calendar. Trying to get more subscribers? Develop a new, free download for your website. It will be impossible for you to achieve your goals if you don’t take any steps towards doing so.

Hard Work

There’s nothing quite like some good old-fashioned hard work. And it is this hard work that really determines your outcome. A lot of small business owners spend a lot of time working on their day-to-day activities, refusing to put enough time and resources towards achieving their professional goals. These people are the same ones surprised that their business has failed or their goals have been left behind yet again. The amount of energy you put towards a goal and the likelihood of you accomplishing that goal go hand-in-hand. Set your annual goals first, then your monthly goals, and then your weekly or daily goals. Once everything is organized you will start to see a difference in your business.

What Have We Learned?

If you’re having a hard time setting goals, or an even harder time sticking to those goals and accomplishing them, you’re not alone. But just because this is an issue with other small business owners doesn’t mean it has to be an issue with you. Look over these tips, understand them, and then put them into practice with your own small business. I promise, if you really put an effort into your goals, you will find them accomplished more often than not.

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How To Speed Up Virtual Meetings

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A lot of meetings are now taking place using tools like Skype or Google Hangouts. This is really great in a lot of ways and can make your life a little bit easier. The downside, though, is that it can also be a royal pain in the butt. When meeting with multiple people in one video conference, there are going to be some technical difficulties. Someone’s microphone won’t work, someone will accidentally hit the mute button and someone’s camera won’t work. You could get 20 minutes into the meeting before you even get the chance to speak about anything important, and by that time everyone is already aggravated.

Things get even more complicated when you are meeting with people in other countries. Language barriers and cultural differences can cause even more issues.

With a little bit of planning ahead of time, you can generally make these virtual meetings a little bit more productive. You just have to make sure that everyone feels accomplished, respected, and everyone feels like you are closer as a team.

1. Be Fair When Planning Meetings

Everyone runs on a different schedule. So planning around EVERYONE can be a little tough. But, you have to understand that it isn’t exactly fair to make one teammate miss something important to them at the same time every Thursday just because that is when it is the most convenient for yourself. Get with everyone, discuss a time in advance, and make sure that no one is sacrificing any more than anyone else.

2. Discuss The Meeting Ahead Of Time

When you are scheduling a meeting, make sure everyone knows exactly what is going to be discussed, and exactly what goal you are trying to achieve at the end of the discussion. It is really easy for people to get off track, especially in groups. If everyone has a clear understanding ahead of time, this shouldn’t be an issue, and staying focused should be much easier.

3. Take Culture Into Consideration

You might want to jump on the video call and jump straight to business without thinking too much, but if you are dealing with people from other countries then you should familiarize yourself with business practices in that culture. You don’t want to accidentally offend someone, or be offended by them when you shouldn’t be. That would be a downer.

4. Set The Rules

Before the meeting takes place, you should tell all team members to avoid side conversations or doing other things during the meeting. It is also good to remind them to not speak too fast, and to speak clearly. This will make everything go so much faster.

5. Pay Attention To Body Language

It is really easy for two people to run the show during a video chat. But the last thing you want to do is to make someone feel left out or unimportant. If you can tell someone has something on their mind, but they are trying to stay polite and quiet, talk to them directly and give them a chance to be a part of the group. Just a little bit of effort can go a long way.

There are lots of ways that a virtual meeting can go wrong. But there are an equal amount of ways that they can be super helpful. If you follow these 5 steps, I know you will be able to pull off a successful business meeting from the comfort of your own home or office.

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10 Qualities Of A Creative Leader

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Creative Leadership is Key to GrowthWhen you look at the leaders of today, what do you see? Creativity, adaptability, and innovation are a few of the things these people have in common. I’m not talking about CEOs or billionaires. No, I’m talking about actual leaders. These people have a calling for creativity, a burning desire for innovation, and adaptability is a personal trait. Titles like CEO, COO, President, or General Manager are just that, titles.

A lot of top professionals have a hard time being creative. These positions come with too many responsibilities and constituencies that these people have to worry about. When you have to focus on turning a profit every 12 weeks, cutting costs to keep the shareholders happy, and watching your back to make sure you keep your job it can be hard to keep your eyes on the horizon.

A job title doesn’t automatically give a person courage, charisma, creativity, adaptability, or any other special trait. These things are personal traits that take many forms. If you work in a field like human resources, accounting, project management, operations, logistics, or any other specialty field doesn’t mean that you should sell yourself short on the creativity spectrum. On the other hand, if you are an employee, a supplier, a freelancer, a coach, or a consultant then the opportunity to change your organization and your own career is right in front of you.

So what do you need to do? Well for starters you should probably have a strong affection for your company as well as your clients, especially considering the fact that creativity is something special that you give to others. You really need to focus on the impact your company could have and the growth that can be enjoyed by both you and your clients.

You know what happens when you have creative leadership? Your job becomes more meaningful and gives you increased visibility. Obviously the best way to start is with something small. Complete a project early, come up with some creative and alternative plans, and try to add some unexpected value whenever possible. Do some sentiment analysis or qualitative research. This is a great way of providing new perspectives that could potentially lead to new solutions.

Have you ever heard of David Oglivy? Well, he was one of the original Mad Men (step aside John Hamm, this guy is the real deal), a real ad man. Well Oglivy adopted 10 qualities that he saw in creative leaders and they are:

  • High standards of personal ethics.
  • Big people, without pettiness.
  • Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.
  • Brilliant brains – not safe plodders.
  • A capacity for hard work and midnight oil.
  • Charisma – charm and persuasiveness.
  • A streak of unorthodoxy – creative innovators.
  • The courage to make tough decisions.
  • Inspiring enthusiasts – with trust and gusto.
  • A sense of humor.

Creativity is One Characteristic of a Good LeaderAre you looking to increase the reality of the possibilities of your career or business? Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? Pick one of these ten qualities. Take one a week for ten weeks. Demonstrate that quality in every single way possible in order to demonstrate which quality you are working on. After the ten weeks is up you will have turned yourself, your business, and even your clients into entirely new entities, all for the better I might add.

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The Friendliest States And Cities To Small Businesses

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Small businesses make up the backbone of our country. They exist in every single state in America, though not ever single state is friendly to these entrepreneurs. But that isn’t the case for every city and state. Thumbtack recently released the data from their fourth annual Small Business Friendliness Survey, which ranks which states and cities are the friendliest to small businesses.

Ranking in at the number one most friendliest city to small businesses is Manchester, New Hampshire, according to the small business owners who operate there. To add even more praise to the state, New Hampshire also ranked as the number two most friendliest state to small businesses, just behind Texas.

What’s interesting is the fact that the rest of America’s Northeast was considered the most unfriendliest grouping of states in the entire country, according to the survey. Utah and Colorado join Texas and New Hampshire as being very friendly to small businesses whereas California, Connecticut, and Illinois joined the Northeast states, all receiving a score of “F”.

Chief Economist of Thumbtack Jon Lieber stated that whether a city or state is friendly or not to small businesses comes from a plethora of primary considerations. “What most influences a business owner’s perception is the presence of training programs, as well as events that allow networking,” Lieber added.

In terms of training, this usually refers how easy it is for small businesses to obtain online information that regards rules and regulations that pertain to how small businesses must operate in that city or state. “Websites matter,” Lieber says. So basically what he’s saying is that entrepreneurs and small business owners do not want stress or hassle when it comes to gathering information on how to properly file things like local taxes. In addition to that, opportunities to network are also important. This is due mainly because of the isolation felt by many of the small businesses currently operating in the United States.

One more factor that determines whether or not a state or city is friendly to small businesses is determining whether or not a city or state is the ease of regulatory compliance. A key compliance issue for small businesses was licensing. Cities and states that require certain professionals to obtain a license did not automatically make them unfriendly. However, if the licensing was not carefully monitored then there is the liability of increasing perceived unfriendliness. Licensed professionals do not really like it when an unlicensed competitor gains a competitive advantage.

Thumbtack is an online service that connects local small businesses with customers. These businesses can range from anything like plumbers and house painters to therapists, physical trainers and more. Small businesses are able to compete for customers that are interested in their services through the use of a bidding system. As for the Friendliness survey, nearly 18,000 U.S.-based small business owners participated by providing their rating of both their state and their city governments on a wide array of factors. Over a dozen different metrics were used by Thumbtack to evaluate states and cities against each other.

So, if you’re thinking of starting a small business where you live I would advise you to take a look at Thumbtack’s survey to determine how easy or hard it is going to be for you to get your startup off the ground where you live.

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Five Free Tools To Score Content

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Right now, having good content is the key to the success of your website. Keyword research isn’t enough for SEO anymore, and we need any tool we can get that will show us what Google’s search engine actually likes, and what it doesn’t like. Unfortunately, that has never been made super clear. That is where this list of really great tools comes into play. In a world where content is king, you need to be able to make yourself the king of content.

SerpScape

This is a pretty new website. They claim to look at 40 million SERPs on a rolling basis. The only other ones that look at that many for free would be SEMrush and SpyFu. It’s not the best, but it is useful and worth checking out!

SpyFu

SpyFu says that they index 4 billion results across 64 million domains across the United States and the UK. They don’t say how they define the results, though. Free users only get to see the related results from the top 10, but they do show the number of related terms they have found for the page. Even if it only shows you the top 10 though, who else do you really need to be looking at?

Get a Quote on a Smartphone Rental for Your Event from Rentacomputer!

MarketMuse

This company does offer a free version of their service with an option to upgrade to one of their paid plans. The developers are really trying new things when it comes to graph technology and finding gaps in topic relatedness, so it’s a little bit different that the other tools.

You can copy and paste from a page with images and any other media into their blog research tool and check out scoring holistic content for all the pages under one domain. This way, you can find different interesting topics that no one else is writing about, giving you the upper hand.

Clarity Grader

This is a tool you can use to judge the readability of your content. If you have a general interest website, no one wants to feel like they are reading a college essay you wrote to impress the professor who is failing you. It will tell you when a sentence is too long, and use different algorithms to determine the overall readability of an article you are writing. Pretty neat. Of course, wordcounter.net does the same thing… But no matter what you write, it tends to say you are writing at a college level. Currently, it says I’m writing at an 11th-grade level. It only switched to that after I wrote the last three sentences… Interesting.

Nibler

Nibler finds the average number of words on a page, which is a comprehensive coverage mentioned by the Search Metrics Report. The tool can not single out the length of one page, but it can give you useful metrics for pages alongside another single page.

So there you have it! If you’re looking to better the content on your web pages then these 5 tools will definitely help you with that. Plus, the fact that they’re completely free isn’t too bad of a deal either.

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The Importance Of Local SEO To Your Small Business

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Local Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an important benefit that a lot of marketers and businesses take extreme advantage of. While SEO, in general, is important, local SEO will continually be significant for enterprise companies for the following reasonings:

It’s a Way to Generate Profits
If you follow these processes and steps correctly, local SEO will not only expose your business online but will also make you more profit. If you get the top spot of search engine results, then this will dramatically and immediately increase traffic for your website.

A recent study showed that 78% of local mobile searches and 61% of local laptop searches resulted in offline purchases. In just the U.S., there are 7 billion different and unique local searches monthly. So if you use local SEO, make sure you’re posting the right content to the right client base, so it drives online searches to your business.

Mobile and Wearable Tech is Growing
Showing in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan, there are more Google searches that take place on a mobile device rather than a PC. Now that there are more and more wearable devices coming out these days, like smartwatches, then realistically there will be more searches made on the go. Therefore, using local SEO will only benefit you since local searches will become more frequent.

CEO of HostGator Adam Farra says, “Society today is already transitioning from PCs to mobile Internet usage, so local SEO will be a necessity, not a ‘nice to have’ in the very near future.”

It’s a Way to Build Links and Share Social Media
Another major reason for using local SEO is the opportunity to connect two business firms together. It creates a potential partnership between the two and helps with social sharing as well.

Marketers can build and share their links with local search engines like Yahoo Local, YP, Google Places, Foursquare, Yelp and Bing Places. By doing this, it could help your business, as well as another business, grow and meet new clients. Meeting with local bloggers or other website owners could change your way of thinking in your business in a more positive manner. You could even plan an event or new business idea with them for new, different profit-making strategies.

It’s a Way to Extend Your Business

Your website is actually another location for your business and with the help of local SEO, you’re basically helping users connect with your business. It helps easily locate and study your website and also helps update it with info and more content which is important in growing your business in the future.

TouchBistro, an iPad POS app for restaurants, used its website to show its partnership with Uber and also provided a $20 promotional credit to customers who ate at TouchBistro affiliated restaurants in Toronto. Restaurants that participated were given promotional cards with codes to give to customers, who then had to download the Uber app to receive their $20 credit.

You Expose Yourself to Local People
The absolute main reasoning for using local SEO is that it targets the people within the area of your established business. This helps small business owners who just started their enterprises if they use SEO.

Smaller businesses can use online resources to advertise in local classifieds, such as using Angie’s List, Craigslist, or Yelp. If you use sites like these, make sure you use high-quality videos and images or other important items that advertise your business.

Using these steps and processes with local SEO will benefit you and your business or new business. Constantly adding or changing the content on your webpage will help keep it up to date as well as help provide your clients with a better understanding of what your services, products and promotions provide.

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