16 Online Resources for Preparing the Perfect Thanksgiving

Whether you plan to whip up a lavish feast for your in-laws or stick with the kids table, there are always ways to prepare for Thanksgiving. The tips below can help absorb some of the holiday stress, even if all you plan to do is stuff your face and watch football.

Read on to discover 16 online resources that can help plan a successful and fulfilling Thanksgiving holiday.

1. Invites: Before you even start planning the menu, make sure to send out a memorable invite or reminder card. Try exploring Someecards if you’re up for something witty and bold. If not, an interactive card is sure to keep guests on their toes for the big reunion.

2. Food Prep: Practice your cooking skills in advance by viewing the Food Network’s Thanksgiving Live! show on Nov. 20. Experts will offer tips, solutions and recipes for cooking the best meals. Act quickly to add your own questions or to tune in live via Skype.

3. Travel: Whether you’re traveling 10 or 3,000 miles for turkey day, it’s important that you make travel cheap and efficient. Use the GasBuddy mobile app to discover the cheapest gasoline prices in your vicinity.

4. Décor: As the leaves begin to fall and the weather chills outside, you’re concerned with making sure it’s warm and cozy inside. If you don’t have a fireplace, there’s an app for that. Then spice it up with a variety of DIY centerpieces that feature mother nature’s finest elements. Finally, make sure each person is accounted for by personalizing your table’s place settings.

5. Cooking: It’s turkey time! Are you sure you know what you’re doing? If not, Butterball has the best tips, like how to pick and cook a turkey, complete with videos and step-by-step guides — as well as a telephone helpline for last-minute kitchen emergencies. Still lost? This interactive quiz from Bon Appetit helps plan your meal depending on timeframe and number of guests.

6. Vegetarian: There are plenty of healthy and meatless alternatives for those PETA or calorie-conscious guests. Or try a non-traditional protein option, like pork or roast beef.

7. Entertainment: Instead of zoning out in front of a football game or answering the same old questions from Aunt Kathy, try a playing a game that involves everyone. Go on a scavenger hunt, or play a game like Fictionary – which bring out the competition in my family.

8. Leftovers: Rather than waste that half-eaten turkey, prepare it for a variety of meals over the following week.

Amy Burke

8 Steps to Take Your Brick and Mortar Business Online

The Internet is here to stay, no doubt about it. Still, many small businesses haven’t moved online. Some may not feel the need yet. Others may be scared because the territory is unfamiliar. Whatever the case may be, below are some simple steps you can take to move your brick-and-mortar business online—something you must do if you want to be able to compete in the long run. Your customers are online. Your competitors are online or moving there soon. Don’t get left behind.

1. Get found.

Many businesses invest money in building a website in order to have an online presence and then stop there. In the offline world if you put up a business in a well-trafficked area of town, you’ll get visitors. They see the building and stop by. On the Internet, it’s a different story. Once your site is built, you still need to put significant effort into getting found.

Get listed on Google Places. Get listed in local directories. Get listed in industry directories. Learn the basics of search engine optimization or hire someone to do that work for you.

2. Get leads, not just traffic.

Another area where many people goof up online is in lead generation. After you build your website and start driving traffic, your job is to turn that traffic into leads. Ideally most pages of your website should have a lead capture mechanism. You need to offer something of value to your visitors in exchange for their email address or other contact information. If you don’t, you’ll lose a lot of your traffic. You need to develop a list-building mentality. Build a list of leads with every activity you engage in. Then, follow up with that list. Email marketing systems can help you do this in systematic ways.

3. Use email marketing to tell people about your business.

Recently, proponents of new marketing techniques have bashed email marketing, claiming that the medium is dying. This is far from the truth. Research firm ForeSee Results published a study early this year that was conducted during the 2010 holiday shopping season. They asked people who made purchases online about what influenced their visit to ecommerce sites.

As you can see in the study, the overwhelming majority (64 percent) stated that they prefer to hear about sales and promotions through emails. When engaging in email marketing, make sure you follow  best practices and provide value to your leads instead of bugging them with sales messages all the time. Use email to build real relationships with your leads, not bother them.

4. Know that text messaging is not just for teenagers.

Many brick-and-mortar businesses are successfully using SMS marketing (text message marketing) to capture leads and follow up. You can have your store visitors opt into text message promotions by texting a keyword to an SMS short code. You can follow up with these people in the same way you do with email. You can even use text messaging to capture email addresses.

The world is going mobile—don’t miss out on these emerging opportunities.

5. Use QR codes in fun and creative ways.

You have offline customers. Eventually, you want to be able to communicate with them online as well. QR codes are barcodes that can be scanned with a cell phone to send people to a particular website. QR codes on direct mail pieces, your store window, your checkout desk and other strategic areas can give you an opportunity to move offline traffic online.

Keep in mind that QR codes are used by cell phone users. So drive them to mobile-friendly pages where you offer something in order to capture their contact information.

6. Use online partners–they can be huge assets.

You may have been slow to get your business online, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer forever. Most likely you know other local business owners who made the transition earlier. They may already be getting significant amounts of traffic. Hunt down the people who are doing well online and set up a way for them to drive traffic to you and you to them.

Complementary businesses can set up referral or affiliate programs to drive traffic to each other at appropriate points in the sales cycle. Using partners can jumpstart your online business significantly.

7. Give your customers an online account portal.

We’re all getting used to managing our accounts online. We can do this with our banks, our cell phone accounts, our utilities, etc. But do you offer a way for your customers to manage their accounts with you online? For those of you who provide recurring services (pool cleaning, landscaping, legal retainer, etc.), providing a portal where customers can manage their accounts online makes working with you more convenient for them.

That’s really what the Internet is all about – convenience. The more of it you give, the more your customers will love you.

8. Get social, maybe.

Social media is a booming arena for online marketing.  If used correctly, it can provide a great stream of online traffic for your business. It also is a great way to listen and engage with customers. But I say “maybe” here because I see many small businesses wasting way too much time trying to figure out how to make social media work. The truth is, it’s not for everybody.

If your target audience is social, then you do need to figure it out. If you want to get into social media, I suggest you read my Small Business Trends post on The Social Media Money Formula.  It will show you how to actually tie social media efforts to increased sales, instead of wasting time getting “friends” and “followers.”

One last point to consider is that there is a lot of hype on the Internet. Like most things, Internet hype is usually based on some amount of truth. The key is to decipher the hype about the latest trends. Adopt only the trends that make sense for your business, and make sure the tactics you use make a difference to the bottom line. If not, you’re wasting your time.

Of course there are many other things to consider when getting started online, but these steps will help you get started in a meaningful way.

Tyler Garns

Phone scammers target PC users with phony virus reports

Summary: Online con artists are targeting PC users worldwide in a brazen scam. It starts with a phone call from a “tech support specialist” who warns that your computer is infected with a virus. To fix things, all you have to do is give the caller remote access to your PC. Here’s what happens next.

An old social-engineering scam appears to have taken on new life lately, targeting PC users worldwide.

Ironically, the scam doesn’t use a computer at all—at least, not initially. Instead, it starts with a phone call from someone who claims to be affiliated with Microsoft or another legitimate company or government agency.

The caller then asks for the primary computer user in the house, who is told: “Your computer has downloaded a virus.” And, of course, the caller is ready and willing to fix the problem. All you have to do is navigate to a web site, click a link to install some remote-control software, and allow the “technician” to get to work.

The perps are using legitimate remote-assistance software, like the Ammyy Admin program from Ammyy Software Development, which posted a warning that included some reports the company has received from scam victims:

“I got call from an India based consultant who said to me that he is calling from a govt. organisation in Melbourne, Australia. He made me to log into my computer to track some files and without advising me he wanted me to download a software application from ammyy.com and get remotely connected to a technician to delete some files…”

“I was recently called by what I thought was my internet service provider technician who used Ammyy to gain remote access to my computer - after I stupidly granted him that permission. It turns out that he was nothing to do with my internet service provider. When I became suspicious and began questioning him he said he would show me who he was and opened a website of a company - the web site triggered my virus software and I then demanded that the remote access be terminated…”

The scam has been around for a few years. Charles Arthur at the Guardian UK wrote about a similar scam last year, noting that it had been “going on quietly since 2008 but has abruptly grown in scale this year.” He wrote about it again in March 2011.

In June of this year, Microsoft published a warning about the scams, including results from a survey it conducted in the U.K., Ireland, U.S. and Canada. The survey showed that across all four countries, 15 percent of those surveyed reported having received one of these phony support calls.

Of those who received a call, 22 percent, or 3 percent of the total survey sample, were deceived into following the scammers’ instructions, which ranged from permitting remote access to their computer and downloading software code provided by the criminals to providing credit card information and making a purchase.

The vast majority (79 percent) of people deceived in this way suffered some sort of financial loss. Seventeen percent said they had money taken from their accounts, 19 percent reported compromised passwords and 17 percent were victims of identity fraud. More than half (53 percent) said they suffered subsequent computer problems.

The latest outbreak appears to be another wave, judging from the sudden increase in complaints I’ve seen recently.

I’ve heard from Windows users and legitimate support specialists who’ve seen this scam in action in Australia, Canada, and the UK. Recent reports from Microsoft indicate that the scammers have widened their net and are now working in languages other than English, targeting Windows users in Poland and the Czech Republic.

I also got one reliable report from an extremely trustworthy source: my mother.

A caller with a thick accent tried to run this scam on my mom, who peppered the caller with questions. What’s your name? What’s your company’s name again? What’s your phone number? (She raised six kids. She’s used to social engineering attempts.)

My mom’s Caller ID said the call originated from 999-910-0132; the caller claimed to be from a company that sounded something like Alert Center, and she gave a callback number of 609-531-0750.

If you plug those numbers into a search engine, you’ll find that they lead to a group of companies using identical website templates under different names, including TechResolve, Itek Assist, and—bingo—AlertSoft. A company with the unimaginative name Custom Design Firm, at the same address in Kolkata, India, also offers custom web-design and search-optimization services at exorbitant prices.

My mom eventually hung up on the scammers, but others haven’t been so lucky. If a victim falls for the scam, the next step involves a credit card, naturally, as this victim reported:

Posed as troubleshooter, got into my system, used a “safe code” to get into my computer. Claimed my machine has been hacked into and infected with a virus. Tom and John, heavy Asian accents. Wanted to install “lifelong protection” for $130. I balked. They have my name and number and have been calling incessantly. I’m concerned that they might have planted something in my computer that allows them access.

Indeed, that’s a legitimate concern. Once a victim has granted an intruder remote access, it’s impossible to tell exactly what sort of damage they’ve done. If you know someone who has fallen for this scam, you should assume their computer has been compromised and respond appropriately.

Most readers of this blog are sophisticated computer users who would laugh out loud at an attempt like this. But you probably have friends, family members, or clients who could use a heads-up on this one. If you get a call from someone claiming to have detected a virus on your PC, just hang up.

 

By Ed Bott

Cool Tools from the Web this week

iRig Mic - the camera on the iPhone just keeps getting better to the point where I needed to get a good external mic to use it as an on the fly recorder. This is the first one I found that does the trick.

Curebit - Nice little platform that helps you create campaigns that get your customers to refer your business in social networks.

Find Your Archetype - this little tool from Brand House Agency uses the teaching of Carl Jung to allow you to drill down and discover the personality of your brand - are you a rebel or a hero?

John Jantsch

Google+ & facebook? +1 or -1

Like oil and water or like peanut butter and jelly? Google+, the search giant’s new social network, has everyone in the tech industry speculating about whether it’s "the Facebook Killer."

The death of MySpace seems to prove that people have room in their lives for only one social network, one profile page. After all, how many different places do you need to announce your favorite TV shows? How many different places do you need to share your witty thoughts?

On the other hand, Twitter proved that "social" can come in different forms--and 140 characters is more appropriate for some witty thoughts than for others. Twitter also allows users to link certain posts to their Facebook page if they wish, meaning that if the social networks could restrain themselves from treating social networking as a zero-sum game, everyone might win.

Of course, Google and Facebook haven't played nice lately, and they probably won't now. Google has tried to index public Facebook pages for its searches, inciting the ire of Facebook, which earlier this year hired a PR company to pitch Google-negative stories to the press. And Facebook's recent partnering with Skype to compete with Google+’s Hangouts suggests that each Internet giant has the other in its crosshairs.

Theory 1: They Can Coexist Independently

Though all-out war between the two companies seems imminent (if it hasn't already begun), Google’s executive chairman (and former CEO as of this April) Eric Schmidt thinks that there’s more than enough room for the two companies to exist independently. According to a July 7 Reuter’s article, Schmidt said that Google+ will succeed just as Facebook and Twitter have because demand for entry into Google+ is high, and because Hangouts--Google’s multiperson video chat feature--is very popular with younger users.

The response is a familiar one from Schmidt, who told 60 Minutes back in 2005 that Google believed it could coexist with Microsoft’s relatively new Bing search client. Because of Google’s size and search accuracy, the company never seems to break a sweat in public, insisting that identical services can exist in tandem. But that talk might just be a PR ploy: Google and Microsoft do compete head-to-head for search advertising dollars, just as Facebook and Google+ will in the social network arena. In June, the Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust probe into Google’s dealings, concerned that the company may exercise too much control over what we see on the Web.

Related Slideshow: 10 Google+ Tips for Beginners

Despite their face-off, both Google and Facebook have massive user bases (and a massive potential user base in the case of Google+) so it’s entirely likely that the two can and will coexist. Smaller companies such as LiveChat, which builds software for companies to offer customer service through video chat, are expecting both social networks to succeed and thrive, and are strategizing accordingly. Mariusz Cieply, the CEO of LiveChat, says that his company hopes to offer its services through both Facebook and Google+ in the near future, so that companies can, for example, provide post-sales tech support through video over Facebook or Google Hangouts. “It will be great to have both Facebook and Google Plus,“ Cieply says. “We will start with Facebook first, but we see a huge opportunity with Google Hangouts.”

The idea that Google+ and Facebook can offer people different types of social media and therefore coexist without endless hostilities isn’t crazy. People have created channels on YouTube, profiles on Twitter, AIM screen names, Flikr albums, and Tumblr pages. Surely there’s room for one more?

If Tom from MySpace, and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, are on Google+ then maybe everyone can get along after all.

Theory 2: They Can Coexist Only If They’re Willing to Work Together

Many industry experts believe that the ability of Google+ and Facebook to coexist will depend on how well the two companies connect with one another. Jason Shellen, head of AIM products at AOL, sees the Google+ vs. Facebook battle as a familiar story--after all, AIM coexisted with MSN messenger, and now is trying to reinvent itself to compete with Facebook chat and Gchat (the Google Mail chat client) by allowing users to set up video chats without any login or account beyond an AOL-generated URL, and AIM hopes that that URL will be shared and embedded on Facebook and Google+ walls.

“We’ve made it so you can go to Gchat and add an AIM buddy,” Shellen says of AIM’s coexistence strategy. “We federate and talk together; sometimes this false walled-garden thing doesn’t need to be that difficult.” Certainly that worked for Twitter, whose hashtags and 140-character tweets can be linked to just about every other social media hub, from Facebook to YouTube channels.

In this respect, however, Google+ is at a disadvantage. In the same recent Reuters article mentioned earlier, Google’s Schmidt admitted that talks with Facebook to allow importation of friends from Facebook to Google ended in an impasse, and talks with Twitter to integrate that service also broke down. That leaves Google+ a little less convenient for people who like to link their profiles together.

But the other loser in Google’s failed “Facebook integration” talks is Facebook, because Google has a huge user base (including people who use Gmail, Google Checkouts, or Picasa, for example), and Facebook has been butting up against a lot of negative press lately that could increase Facebook users' willingness to switch to Google+ if they have to choose one or the other..

Theory 3: There Can Be Only One Survivor

The "One Social Network to Rule Them All" mentality might be right as consumers get smarter about how to deal with social media. Judy Shapiro, a blogger for AdAge and the CEO of EngageSimply, a technology marketing firm, says that both Facebook and Google+ are in a war, and consumers will choose the victor based on privacy or on how well they can turn the social network off. “Google+ is just Google's attempt to be Facebook, and Facebook is doing its share to become Google,” Shapiro says.

In the beginning, Google had search and a way to make money through ads, and Facebook had social data. Google seems to feel that the best way to improve the accuracy of its search results is to integrate social data, something it tried to do back in 2010 when it acquired Aardvark, a company that gave feedback to questions based on the preferences of the asker's identifiable friends and followers. For its part, Facebook has gradually built an onsite platform that allows advertisers to send targeted ads based on users’ personal and preference data. It has also established a partnership with Bing to help generate revenue from all of that social data.

But Shapiro argues that the convergence in what Google and Facebook can do might not merely create a mass exodus of users from one social network to the other; it might ensure their mutual destruction. “The more precisely a network can target us [in terms of ad-sales] the more resistant we become to it,” she says. “If you marry the strength of the search that Google has with behavioral base of social media that Facebook has, that's a one-two punch. But our privacy becomes the collateral damage.” Eventually we might get smart enough to seek alternatives that let us share information with friends and family, and yet avoid sharing it with companies that have an abiding interest in monetizing our data.

By Megan Geuss

Cool Tools for the web

Tools, links and services we found this week

Submit My Press Release - Online press release submission tool that does a great job integrating social media.

SizeUp - Interesting startup that aims to provide research and data on large list of industries by city. Could be a nice way for small organizations to get some big data.

MailPow - This service allows you to create cards with sound. Kind of like the musical birthday idea but you get to do it for your business. They also have an option that allows you to record a message on a card by card basis to make each one a personal message.

John Jantsch