Simple Alternatives to Powerpoint for Presentatinos

1. Prezi: Creating visual metaphors.
Instead of working with the traditional scrolling slide presentation, Prezi delivers zoomable, visual metaphors. It begins with a template which is a single image like a tree, a mountain or a map. From there, you define your slides by choosing sections of the image. Fill in your text, add images or video to each section.
When you present a Prezi show, you don't move from left to right. Instead, each click triggers a camera zoom to each of your sections.
Prezi can be useful for presenting interconnected ideas or nonlinear information such as a portfolio of past projects. It can also work well for presenting interconnected ideas. If you don't mind making your presentations public, you can use Prezi online or download the iPad app for free. For $4.92 a month, you can keep your presentations private, add your own logo and get more storage space. For $13.29 a month you can also work offline with Prezi desktop.

2. PowToon: Let cartoons do the talking.
PowToons are like animated infographics. You build your presentation using a library of cartoon characters that can walk, scream, wave and point. Combine the characters with cartoon props, basic shapes and text effects for a unique and humorous presentation.
PowToons can be handy for presenting an overview of your company at a trade show booth or the front page of your website. It works best for simple, bold concepts so keep it light and skip the small details.
The free membership allows you to create unlimited presentations under five minutes. But you can only upload them to YouTube they come with a PowToon watermark. To download and remove the branding, you can pay $8 per use or upgrade to the $19 pro account which also allows you to create presentations up to 15 minutes.
3. PreZent for iPad: Industry meets art.
With PreZent for the iPad, you can seamlessly combine still photos and videos to create a final product that looks like a digital art book. When you flip the pages, the videos start and stop automatically so they feel more like moving images than clips.
Another unique feature is the ability to add supporting pages to any section of the presentation. For example, a page that includes an ad your company produced might include a supporting page with a montage of behind the scenes photos or outtake videos.
At $8.99, PreZent can be most useful for anyone who uses a visual portfolio to sell their work, like graphic artists, photographers or filmmakers. But it can be tricky to use. All of the elements in your presentation have to be created using photo and video editing software on a computer, then imported to your iPad via iTunes. That includes resizing and converting assets to PreZent's precise standards so you'll need at least a basic understanding of editing software in order to use the tool.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226612#ixzz2SuY14JZZ

10 ways to Add Pinterest to Your Marketing Strategy

Pinterest may be the third largest social media site after Facebook and Twitter, but it's still a relative newcomer to the scene. Businesses are actively searching to create boards and pins that inspire customers and promote their brands. From integrating with other social media to pin placement to image creation, there is a learning curve for many companies getting started on Pinterest.

The infographic below, from my new book, Ultimate Guide To Pinterest For Business (Entrepreneur Press, 2013) provides the 10 best ways to promote your business using Pinterest:

 

Click to Enlarge (+)

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226590#ixzz2SoGdMDhF

What can a Autoresponder do for you?

Click on the link to help with your Autoresponder needs and more!

http://www.pureleverage.com/launch/2?id=joingeo

1. Turn anonymous website visitors into subscribers.

When people you don’t know visit your website for the first time, the best ways to start a communication line with these visitors is to offer them something of value in exchange for them giving you their name and email address. This can be a free report, a no-obligation consultation, a trial offer or anything that has a high perceived value and is high quality. Once a visitor has subscribed to your autoresponder you can continue to send them email messages forever, or until they say to stop.

2. Build long term relationships with subscribers with little effort.

Since you can write automated messages in advance and schedule the messages to go out to your subscriber list automatically on any date you specify and any time of day that you specify, your messages can reach all of your subscribers with very little effort on your part. The autoresponder does all the work for you automatically 24/7. When subscribers hear from you on a regular basis you build an expectation that they will continue to hear from you in the future.

3. Enable continuous marketing without hiring more people.

Since an autoresponder is sending marketing messages out to your prospects and customers on a regular basis, you won’t need to hire more people to do this. This will save you marketing dollars and you will get a better return on your investment in the marketing department.

4. Follow-up flawlessly without missing a single customer.

Let’s face it, it’s tough to follow-up with everybody that you meet. By using an autoresponder to send out marketing messages about your business, it will never miss a single prospect or customer who is subscribed to your list. They will always get the messages you send to them.

5. Generate repeat sales due to constant communication.

People who like to do business with you will likely do business with you on a regular basis. Especially if you have products or services that they purchase frequently. By using this automatic messaging system that communicates about your products and services, your customers will be reminded to buy what they need from you on a regular basis – automatically. There’s nothing better than an automated selling tool for a business!

6. Lead more subscribers to your blog or website.

In these messages that you send to your subscribers you can direct them to your blog, your website, your video channel, and your series of articles that you write. All of these different channels that display information about you and your business are helpful. If you have things in your business the people want, then they will want to know about how to acquire these offerings of your business. An autoresponder message can direct them to the exact place they need to be to find out the information they need to make the buying decision.

7. Obtain measurable results.

Autoresponders have built-in measuring devices which will let you know where your subscribers are located. You can also find out which messages are read by the most subscribers and format future messages to get more readers to open them. You can find out when the best time of the day is to send messages to your subscribers so that they read them right away. The autoresponder will keep track of the number of new subscribers each day. Using these results, you can decide what future information and messages you will send to your subscribers.

8. Ensure better e-mail delivery.

Autoresponders are specially designed to get the e-mails that are in the autoresponder system delivered on time to all of your subscriber list. These specialized autoresponder systems work better than other e-mail delivery systems. Therefore you can be confident that your messages are getting delivered to your subscribers.

9. Brand yourself with all the e-mails.

You can brand yourself and your company in your e-mails that you are sending to your subscribers by adding your logo, your tagline, your physical address, your phone number, and anything else that you want to keep emphasis on about your business in the minds of your subscribers.

10. Allows you to easily duplicate your efforts.

You can duplicate all of these tasks once you’ve done them one time for one list. You can have different lists for groups of subscribers in other categories, for different product lines, other services, or any other reason why you would want to have a separate list to send messages to separate subscribers.

Benefits from Running a Home-Based Business

If you are one of the more than 18.3 million (according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) to 38 million (according to the U.S. Census) home-based businesses in the United States, you'll be happy to know that special tax rules apply to you. Here's how you can make the most of your home-based business tax status.

1.

Deduct some of your personal housing costs as a business expense.

If you meet two tests in the tax law, you can deduct a portion of your personal expenses of operating from your home as a business expense. This includes your rent if you lease or your mortgage interest and real estate taxes if you own your home, as well as utilities, insurance, repairs and other costs.

To be a deductible home office:

• Your home must be (1) your principal place of business (or a place where you do administrative chores, such as scheduling and recordkeeping, and you have no other fixed business location) or (2) a place to meet or deal with customers, clients and patients on a regular basis (telephoning customers from home isn't enough).
• You have to use the space regularly and exclusively for business (except in two special situations). This means you can't use the kitchen table as your desk by day and feed your family there at night. You don't need to use an entire room or even have a physical partition to denote the portion of a room used for business.

Generally, you deduct a portion of the expenses of a home. For example, if your home is 3,000 square feet and you use a 300-square-foot room as your office, then 10 percent of each expense of the home becomes part of the home-office deduction. You can add to this any direct expenses for the office, such as painting it.

Tip: It's helpful to take a photo of your office and keep it with your tax records in case the IRS questions your setup.

2

Rely on special rules to write off some costs of your home.

Usually, you have to use space exclusively for business in order to take a deduction. However, the exclusive use requirement doesn't apply and you can claim a home-office deduction if your home is used:

• As a day-care facility to watch children, elderly people, or persons who are unable to care for themselves because of a physical or mental disability, and you meet any state licensing requirements.
• Storage for inventory or sample products for your home-based business.

3

Deduct local traveling costs from your doorstep.

If you use your car or truck to go from home to a business location, your mileage from home and back becomes a tax-deductible expense once you establish your home as your place of business. Business driving can include such activities as driving to:

• Customers, clients or patients
• Vendors or suppliers
• The bank to deposit a fee
• An office supply company to purchase toner for your printer

Tip: As with any use of a vehicle, keep a record of your business driving as required by the tax law.

4

Easily write off the cost of your computer.

Usually, if you use a computer for both personal and business purposes, you have to track business usage because first-year expensing (the Sec. 179 deduction) and accelerated depreciation is allowed for the cost of "listed property" only if business usage exceeds 50 percent of total usage -- a computer is listed property. But once you establish a home office, you don't have to keep a log because a computer used in a regular business establishment (the home office) is not considered listed property.

For example, if you buy a computer for your home office in 2010 for, say, $2,500, you may qualify to deduct the full cost as a first-year expense deduction because the computer is used in a regular business establishment.

5

Consider the impact of a home office when you sell your home.

If you own your home, claiming a home-office deduction doesn't reduce the capital gains exclusion you can take on the sale of your home. You can exclude gain up to $250,000 ($500,000 on a joint return) as long as you've owned and used the home as your principal residence for at least two of the five years preceding the date of sale. Claiming a home-office deduction doesn't affect this exclusion.

However, any depreciation you claimed in the years you took a home-office deduction is "recaptured" in the year you sell the home. "Recapture" means reporting the depreciation as a gain taxed at a 25 percent rate.

Tip: You can't choose not to claim depreciation you're entitled to because you'll still have to recapture it on a sale, so you might as well deduct depreciation when you can.

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/2011/04/05/home-based-business-tax-deductions-5-things-you-need-to-know/

Starting up your Business

At Science, we are fortunate enough to meet hundreds of entrepreneurs each year. And as you might imagine, we sit through a lot of early-stage pitches -- some good, most…horrible. There's no doubt that confidence is often key -- but maybe not for the reasons you expect. Although I've met many great entrepreneurs who lack external confidence and a great many lesser entrepreneurs who have confidence in spades, I can say without a doubt that the confident entrepreneurs often walk away with funding. It doesn't mean their businesses are better or their skills superior. Rather, it simply means that they are confident selling themselves and their vision. When you invest in someone with confidence, you're investing in someone who can typically get investors on her side and sell her vision to the staff. Importantly, that entrepreneur will likely also have a better chance of selling the business to a buyer in the future. The best example of this is an entrepreneur who I met in Los Angeles right after raised a very early, very big $10 million round before the company was started. Over drinks with his new investor, the entrepreneur boasted about having lost venture investors more than $100 million in the past five years, and once again he couldn't believe that someone just gave him $10 million. I pulled the new investor aside and asked if he was crazy, considering the startup's track record of losses. He said he was confident in the entrepreneur's abilities in this business. Subscribe to RSS Young Entrepreneur Preparing for Its First Space Trip, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Breaks Sound Barrier Obama’s 3 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs on How to Live the American Dream 6 Tips for Building a Strong Founding Team Should You Name Drop Another Startup? Change the Rules: 5 Ways to Bring Mission Into Your Business Read more on Young Entrepreneur » Within two years, the entrepreneur sold that company, raised more money and started another. I cannot attest to the quality of his businesses, but I can speak to his high level of confidence and the fact that he seems to be on point. So with that in mind, here are a few tried and true tips for ensuring the room reads your confidence: 1. Commit yourself. There is nothing more compelling than an entrepreneur that is going to execute her dream regardless of funding. While this sounds like an impossible feat for some, the most driven entrepreneurs I've met are committed to seeing their dream through no matter what. They won't let a lack of money stand in their way. Related: Tech Savvy and Awkward: How To Communicate With Confidence (Video) 2. Be genuine. I tend to hear pitches that are tailored to what the entrepreneur thinks the market, the investor or I want to hear. If you're going after a need that you feel personally and have intimate experience with, that alone is often a signal toward success. Out of Science's ten deals last year, the one with the most activity was around a business that had started in the entrepreneur's home. He built the company himself, and we partnered with him to scale it up. When I asked the venture capitalists that would later fund the company why they were so excited about that deal in particular, they referenced the entrepreneur's personal experience of building the business to fit his need and his drive to do it regardless of the money. Related: Want to Charm Customers or Clients? Channel Your Inner Politician 3. Know thyself. As investors and advisors, we realize no single person embodies all the skills necessary to take a business from startup to scale. But the one skill we can count on is self- assessment. If you have an entrepreneur that realizes what they are and aren't good at, it signals someone whose goal is not to centralize power and operational responsibility underneath themselves. This is someone who understands their own weak spots and is open to hiring for those positions. At the end of the day, the goal needs to go before the role. You may not be the right CEO in the long run, but, if you can admit your weaknesses and get people smarter than you in those other roles, you will have a much higher chance of succeeding than those who put title first. Read more: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/startingup/startup-finance/the-importance-of-being-confident-3-tips-to-startup-success/#ixzz2SefDTVQi

Finding Where to Market and Connect with Consumer

Fish where the fish are. You should know who your ideal customer is. (Marketers might call this a target persona.) But where are these people? Which social networks do they use? What publications do they read? What communities are they part of? Where do they go for information? A fisherman would plan to hang out by the right pool. How do you find it? Ask, don't assume. Too often, only sales and customer service reps talk to real, live customers; marketers tend not to interact directly with the people they are targeting. So change that: Survey folks on your e-mail or mailing list. Invite customers to a meal. Or, just pick up the phone. Shoot where the pheasant will be. In other words, be there before the sale. You can apply this concept (based loosely on Wayne Gretzky's comment, "Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been") in numerous ways. I think of it as anticipating your customers' needs and serving them before they even know they need you. How do you do this? By answering both the questions they have and those they should have when they're looking to buy. For example, check out a few blog posts from Yale Appliance and Lighting: "The Four Best Steam Ovens"; "Quietest Dishwasher by Decibel Rating"; "How to Clean Your Gas Grill." Notice how the titles read like the contents of Consumer Reports? CEO Steve Sheinkopf is positioning his Boston appliance company as not just a retailer, but a resource. He's shooting where the pheasant will be. He's there before the sale. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Can you stand one more animal analogy? This one is from George Orwell's classic Animal Farm. I'm invoking it to underscore the concept that while customers may vary and may lurk in many places around the web--Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, discussion groups--some customers are better than others. Most have constrained budgets and limited resources. So focus your efforts on the channels and platforms and segments that will yield the most for you. Not rocket science, certainly. But in an age when digital tools and platforms and apps are expanding at a rapid rate (anyone care to join Sir Paul and me on Vine?), it's worth mentioning. Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226124#ixzz2SWoZ5YiT Use a source like the one below to better connect your business! http://www.pureleverage.com/launch/6?id=joingeo

Stocks Rising A Positive Sign

Click on the link below to read up on the news.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/strong-us-jobs-report-sends-132338126.html