Home » All posts

TURN GMAIL INTO CRM SYSTEM USING STREAK

Posted by Cyber Shaft Saturday, June 30, 2012 0 comments



If you use Gmail for business, and particularly if you are in sales, you probably find that your inbox gets pretty overcrowded at times. You might even miss the CRM facilities of Microsoft Outlook at times (if you've ever used it you'll know that Outlook is still the market leading email client, and for good reasons). The folders and labels functionality in Gmail just cannot compare.

There is a tool that lets you extend Gmail and turn it into a CRM-like system, however. It's called Streak and it allows you to organise your leads into pipelines, so you can keep track of the current status of all your prospects, leads and clients, and get access to all the context you need at a glance - without ever having to leave your inbox to refer to another application.

Here are step by step instructions:

  • You will need Google Chrome installed before you can start using the Streak extension to manage your sales leads. Access the related download link for this article and download, then install, the excellent Google Chrome browser if you have not already done so. You will also need an active Gmail account, so browse to https://mail.google.com and register if you're not currently a Gmail user.

  • Using Google Chrome, access the Streak homepage and click Add to Chrome. Click Confirm when the installation dialog appears to add the extension to your browser. The Streak setup wizard appears after a few seconds.

  • In the project setup window, select Sales/CRM and click Done.

  • Click OK when prompted to create your first Box. A Box is a logical partition inside your Sales/CRM pipeline, which you should use to associate with a single client, sale or project. Access your Gmail inbox and open the first email thread you would like to place into a Box.

  • Click the Boxes button on the Gmail toolbar and choose Create New Box. Enter a meaningful name for the Box, such as the client or project name, and click Create. That email conversation is now associated with the new Box within your Sales/CRM pipeline.

  • To view your Sales/CRM pipeline, click the Pipelines option on the left hand side of the Gmail interface (where the folders are usually listed) and choose Sales/CRM. Your Sales/CRM pipeline is shown within the main Gmail panel, with the first Box you just created present.

  • Note the various columns available for each Box where you can add tracking information for that lead/prospect. In the Stage column, you can specify the Box as Lead, Contacted, Pitched, Demo, Negotiating or Closed using the dropdown menu.

  • Add manual values into the Assigned To, Deal Size and Notes fields as required.

  • Repeat steps 4 - 8 for every scenario you want to track using Streak. Your Sales/CRM pipeline will begin to grow, giving you an at-a-glance overview of everything in your workload - which can be invaluable during busy periods of extreme contention.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM BLOG

Posted by Cyber Shaft 0 comments


         
Many people who write blogs today simply want to share their opinion on something. But then there are the business-minded folks, who have found a way to use blogs, or Web logs, to bring in a little extra cash too.

If you're interested in taking it further — blogging for bucks, if you will — here are five strategies that could turn your blog into a moneymaker.

Sell advertising

This is likely the most common means of leveraging a blog to generate income. If yours happens to become a well-known blog, or one that is well-received in a particular niche, it's always possible to sell ad space on your own. For Bing Blogs and services such as Google's AdSense or BlogAds, bloggers can establish ad programs. AdSense's — which lets you select several ads that are consistent with the content of your blog — pays you based on how many readers click on the ads for further information. Even better, it's free. BlogAds, on the other hand, hooks bloggers up with would-be advertisers and levies a commission in return for any ad placements that result. "The nice thing, too, is that the ads are relatively unobtrusive," says Scott Allen, co-author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.

Help sell others' products

Here is another click-through opportunity. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. One popular choice is Amazon.com. If, for instance, you offer book reviews or even just mention a book in passing in your blog, an affiliate program provides a means for your readers to click directly from your blog to Amazon to obtain further information about the book. If they break out the checkbook or charge card, you get paid as well.

Solicit Contributions

Not every blog-related income opportunity involves hawking goods or services. As Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, consider relying on the kindness of strangers. Ask for contributions. If, for instance, your small-business blog supports a cause or issue in some fashion — say you repeatedly mention tax reform, health care or some other topic — you can always ask for reader support. Even if you've attracted a group of regular followers who simply enjoy reading what you have to say, they may be willing to underwrite their loyalty with a little financial help. Programs such as PayPal make it easy to establish a simple on-site contribution collection button. "There are lots of worthy 'cause' blogs that would qualify for donations from grateful members of the blog community," says Las Vegas communications consultant Ned Barnett.

Market your services in your blog

Many people associate blogs exclusively with a cyberspace-based soapbox — a place to shout your opinions and little more than that. Granted, blogs are an ideal venue to share your thoughts with others, but don't overlook their capacity to generate new business as well. When appropriate, work in references to what you do and, in turn, what you may be able to offer any would-be client or customer who may be reading your blog. That can spread your opinion and your business moxie at the same time."Instead of short commentaries that begin a dialogue with readers, as many blogs do, I write the equivalent of journal articles that demonstrate my abilities, strategies and perspectives on specific issues," Barnett says. "When it resonates, it means money. Since starting this approach, I have generated three new paying clients and brought in about $10,000 on revenue — directly attributable to specific blogs."

Use a blog to deepen your existing customer relations

Nor does any marketing material inserted in blog content have to be limited to bringing in completely new business. By using a blog to regularly communicate with existing clients as well as other readers, you can take advantage of the opportunity to fully inform them about everything your business does. That may expand your readers' understanding of the full scope of your products or services."My blog has helped existing clients determine the range of my skills and services," says Ted Demopoulos of Demopoulos Associates, a Durham, N.H. consulting and training concern. "One client who had only used me for training in the past was surprised at my range of expertise and is now using me for a consulting project. Another who only used me on technical projects is now considering me for a more business-oriented project."

CLOUD COMPUTING

Posted by Cyber Shaft Friday, June 29, 2012 0 comments



Cloud computing has leveled the playing field, enabling small businesses to have computer hardware and software systems that rival those of major corporations.  The entrance of Microsoft and Apple into the cloud market has only served to raise awareness for these types of services.

But for many small businesses the whole idea of “the cloud” is still confusing. Sure they understand the basics behind it but many don’t realize the benefits nor do they know how to go about moving to the cloud.

“The cloud is increasingly popular with SMBs because it allows access to more powerful applications, more quickly and at lower cost than ever before,” says Josh Waldo, director of SMB marketing at Microsoft. What’s more moving to the cloud can save a small business money by helping to reduce overhead and costs associated with physical hardware and software.

What is the Cloud?

In essence cloud computing is the ability to access computer hardware and software from the Internet. Instead of a small business housing a server for email or security or a storage system on-site, the small business would pay a monthly fee to access a data center’s hardware via the Internet. Same goes with software whether it's email, a customer relationship management program or a Web hosting application. Small businesses can also access their documents and presentations via the cloud enabling employees in different locations to collaborate as if they were sitting next to each other. “The three tenants of the cloud is economic benefits, flexibility and responsiveness,” says Tim Crawford, CIO of All Covered, an information technology services company focused on the small business market.  For a small business the benefits will either be one or a combination of the three, he says.

Take flexibility. Some small businesses, particularly ones that have peaks and troughs in business demand, need the flexibility to increase their computer systems when demand is high and to reduce it when business is slow. Being on the cloud means the company can order up more processing power and storage space on a need to use basis. If a small business had its own hardware in house it would take weeks to order and install an additional server. Same goes for responsiveness. Small businesses launching a new product would want to quickly increase their computer systems to handle the demand but may not necessarily have the time to order a new server and wait a couple of weeks for it to come in. On the economic front, Ron Braatz, founder of LiftOff, an information technology services company, says small businesses can save a significant amount of money. In addition to not having to pay for computer hardware, moving to the cloud means a small business may not need to hire a full time IT professional to manage the systems.  Not to mention a small business will save on the electricity required to run the systems.

 “Some of my clients save 60 percent to 70 percent on the cloud versus building an on premise email system,” says Braatz.  According to Braatz, for small businesses just getting their toes wet with cloud computing, the easiest thing to do is to move their email system to the cloud.  “It makes the most sense because it’s a mission critical application for many organizations which don’t have the IT resources to babysit a server inside the office 24 hours a day,” he says. While small businesses may express concerns that moving their critical systems and applications to the cloud will make their data more vulnerable to a potential breach, experts says that moving to the cloud often times will make the data and applications more secure.“People choose on premise servers because they think they can secure it better than a hosting provider,” says Braatz.“Most organizations are lucky if they have a single firewall in place where a hosted place has multi layers of security.”

Choosing a Cloud service provider

Moving to the cloud affords small businesses a lot of benefits but it’s not without negatives. For one thing, when a company moves to the cloud it gives up control of their systems which could come as a shock to some business owners. According to Crawford at All Covered to reduce that potential shock, he says a small business should go with a provider that will meet all the needs of the business and one in which the company feels secure with. Since there are a slew of cloud providers popping up just about every day, Crawford says the small business has to do its homework on the providers before choosing one.

“It’s not just a transaction,” says Crawford. “You have to trust that provider has your interest top of mind,” which means making sure the provider understands what your business is trying to do and what the provider can and can’t do.

A small business shouldn’t move to the cloud for the sake of moving to the cloud either, adds Braatz. He says a move to the cloud should be prompted by a need for a new email system, because the company has aging hardware or wants to collaborate better with far flung employees. “Once you establish the need then look at your options in the cloud,” he says.

4 WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG

Posted by Cyber Shaft Wednesday, June 27, 2012 0 comments



Since now your blog is ready  and you are making regular posts on it,now you want traffic on your blog or website.There are many ways how you can drive traffic to your blog.More and more traffic you get, the more popular your blog becomes. Here are some ways how you can drive traffic to your blog.

Blog commenting

Leaving relevant comments on other people’s blogs with a link back to your site is a great way to get traffic.

Firstly you need to find relevant blogs to comment on. You need to seek out the active blogs in your niche – the ones which get lots of traffic, are posted to regularly, and which are seen as an authority source in your niche. If the last post was made 6 months ago then it’s probably best to look elsewhere! Carefully consider how many comments each post is getting – if there are lots of comments it’s a sure sign of an active blog.

You can obviously find blogs using Google but here are couple of other ways:
- BloggerForum (http://www.bloggerforum.com)
- Technorati (http://www.technorati.com)

Once you’ve found some blogs, look for posts which you can contribute to. Find topics that you can make an intelligent response to and then add to the discussion. This is the most important thing – using blog commenting to drive traffic is a great method to use, yet many people use it in the wrong way by simply posting one line comments such as 'great post.' This a.) doesn't do you credibility any favours (and therefore people are unlikely to check out your link) and b.) it's blatant spam. By using blog commenting to engage in the original post, you'll come across as an interesting person, and most importantly as someone who has a valued opinion on the topic. This makes people perceive you as an expert.

Join in the discussions. Question the original post, or add some extra information. I wouldn’t advise posting your link in the actual body of your comment. Instead what you need to do is enter your website address into the field provided when you make your comment. When people read it, if they then click on your name they will be taken to your blog.

As an additional point blog commenting is great for building backlinks. 

Submitting Your Blog to Directories

There are hundreds of web directories which you can submit your blog to and the majority are free. Once again submitting to directories will help you get traffic in two ways, as people will find you by looking through the directories, and you will also be creating backlinks to your blog, which will help your rank in the search engines. It can be a painful process submitting to directories one by one, and you WILL need to submit your blogs to hundreds of them in order to make an impact on your traffic. I am going to recommend a free directory submitter to you which will save you a lot of time:

http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/

There is also paid directory submission software out there that is very reasonably priced.

Submitting RSS Feeds & Pinging

One of the great benefits of Wordpress is that it automatically creates an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed for your blog. When a person subscribes to your RSS feed the content comes to the reader, rather than the reader having to go to the content. Submitting your RSS feeds to a variety of places will help the search rankings. Once again there are a variety of paid options to submit your RSS feed to various Feeders, or you can submit your RSS feed to the list found here: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rsssubmission.htm

Pinging:

There are lots of sites which show all the recently published materials on the web. They scan blogs on a regular basis to ascertain whether there is anything new on there. If you can, you should ping every blog post you create.

There are some great free services like:

http://www.pingomatic.com
http://autopinger.com/
http://www.pingthatblog.com/

Social Bookmarking Every Post

Again social bookmarking will get you traffic from the search engines, as well as the people who came across your blog from actively browsing the social bookmarking site. Many people use social bookmarking sites like search engines as they are great for helping people find relevant content…

You can submit bookmarks to multiple sites at once using the free tools at http://www.onlywire.com and http://www.socialposter.com

Another good traffic tip here is to pay people a few cents to make your bookmarks more popular, for example adding extra Diggs through sites like http://www.shorttask.com and https://www.mturk.com/.

WORDPRESS THEMES FOR BLOGGING

Posted by Cyber Shaft Monday, June 25, 2012 0 comments



If you want to setup your blog and are ready with all your stuff !!!

But still you are confused with your themes.Do you want a Better theme for your blog ,then here is link for you by which you will be able to get many themes.

You may choose any one of themand start blogging.

These themes are made by Themedy Thesis & Genesis club here is the link Click Here.  

Cyberoam VPN Secures Comprehensively

Posted by Cyber Shaft 0 comments



VPNs, whether they use PPTP, L2TP, IPSec or SSL technologies, offer competitive advantage to businesses of all sizes, specifically because of their global coverage and the relative ease with which they can be extended to create extranets. This helps in enhancing productivity of a company’s resources through secure connectivity, anywhere and anytime. 

Cyberoam is one such integrated security solution that offers VPN feature on its UTM appliances, giving flexibility of PPTP, L2TP, IPSec or SSL VPN technologies, compared to dedicated VPN appliances. The VPNC-certified Cyberoam VPN communicates with most third party VPNs, making it compatible with existing network infrastructures and providing secure access with remote workers, partners, suppliers and customers.

Why  the Need for VPN?

Before we delve any further on VPNs and especially how it secures organizations, it is important to understand why VPNs are essential to businesses today. Before the Internet, for computer A to talk to computer B located in different offices, cities or even countries telephone lines - physical wire connection were used. For security reasons, it was ensued that only two computers used that line, so a vendor was given the contract to “lease” that circuit. However, this network was expensive, not scalable and dependent on the local vendor who provided the service. With the advent of the Internet, there was no need of physical connections. As long as each computer can reach the internet, information is shared using “virtual” network created by local ISP, across the internet. A VPN works much like a hard-wired network systems. It gives the owner the ability to share information with others on their network by means of a private, exclusive link that is created by a method other than hard-wires or leased lines; usually via the public internet. 



How Cyberoam UTM provides secure remote access through  its VPN

  • Cyberoam scans L2TP, PPTP, IPSec and SSL VPN traffic for malware, spam, intrusions and inappropriate content to ensure secure endpoints and network. They ensure that the conventional VPN security is not subverted and used against the organization that it ought to serve.
  • Cyberoam also subjects the VPN traffic to Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) scan. This feature sanctifies the traffic by detecting and eliminating any threats lurking in it. Taking the VPN user's identity in to account the IPS policies can be customized. The IPS and firewall combination easily thwart any attempts to launch a DoS attack over VPN.
  • A VPN connection is a door to a LAN, and should only be open to specific resources that are required as per a person's work requirements. Cyberoam's Granular Access Policy control feature offers exactly that. Companies can provide access to employees only for specific resources, based on their identity and job requirements. This feature is especially helpful in case of SSLVPN, where the person can remotely access the LAN resources even from smart hand-held devices or over insecure networks, with minimal client side configuration.
  • To ensure compliance over VPN, it is crucial to have centralized management that generates comprehensive event reporting, proactive alerts, rapid forensic analyses and complete audit trails. Cyberoam integrates identity-based security reporting which simplifies administration, helps gap identification, spotting anomalous activity, and facilitates regulatory compliance audits.

Cyberoam VPN offers Threat Free Tunnelling

In VPN the same modus operandi that is used to provide security can be used to subvert it. The very design of VPN ensures that the content is secure in transit but unsecure endpoints can defeat the VPN security. Unsecure extended LANs and VPN access points can lead to a VPN transmitting a malware instead. Thus it may be securely transmitting malware instead of legitimate data. 

Thus, cyber criminals have been increasingly subverting VPNs to spread malwares instead. But Cyberoam offers a unique solution through its layer 8 technology that enables complete visibility inside the tunnel without disrupting the security of the tunnel. Cyberoam UTM's Threat Free Tunnelling (TFT) security is driven by the premise that the perimeter / endpoint of any functionally accessible network, is inherently insecure. The TFT secures by establishing intelligent layer of secure remote access driven by Identity based policy controls, enforced authentication, gateway firewall, granular access policy, and gateway threat and malware protection by integrating VPN and UTM (Unified Threat Management) functionalities. 

Author's bio
Puja Mahendru is a member of internet security team at cyberoam who writes on varied topics like VPN. She keeps a eye on vulnerable areas on Internet and suggest how to over come them. She is of strong opinion that every organization should invest in SSL VPN to secure its data.



BLOGGING-WRITING TIPS

Posted by Cyber Shaft 0 comments



Now if your blog has been setup its time to add content to your blog.Content is the main and the most important thing of your blog.Content is the key to making money from your blog.You can have all the widgets, plugins, bells and whistles, but if your content doesn't make people stick around, then it's all for nothing. 

Write It Yourself and Give It Your Personality 

If you can write a letter, you can write a blog post. That is a good mindset to have – think about your readers as friends, who you are writing a letter to. You will want to make them laugh, recommend a product that has helped you and infuse your personality throughout the letter.

How can you fill your content with your personality?

Let your reader know your story. Let them into your life by providing snippets of information. This will show your reader that you are human – a human that they can relate to. People love reading stories, so make sure your blog posts have some. This can be the story of how you achieved something, how you overcame something, how you developed your interest in your topic and stuff like that. Of course, with stories like these you can also ask your readers to share their stories as well, so everyone can learn from each other. That interactivity should be the ultimate aim in your blog writing endeavours, and is hard to achieve unless you write the content yourself.

  • Other types of stories can include things happening around you -
  • A conversation you might have overheard and how it relates to your blog topic
  • Your take on something happening in the news, and how it affects you
  • Something you read that gave you a brain wave
  • What your children did to make you laugh and how it reminds you of the important things in life
  • Things that you tell your friends


Keep a notepad with you at all times and jot down anything interesting that happens to
you.
Can you relate that interesting snippet to something in your blog (even if it is a really tedious link, as this will make your readers smile)? Will it make your readers see you as more human?

Those are the secrets to good content on your blog.

Outsource Your Blog Posts

If the thought of writing and even rewriting scares you to death, then you can consider outsourcing. It can take a while to find a good writer, but find one and it can be a massive time saver. Probably the best ways to find good writers is to ask for recommendations, or take a trip to the Warrior Forum (http://www.warriorforum.com), where there are plenty of writers waiting for an exciting new writing opportunity like yours. If the person is any good you’ll be able to see it by the comments they are getting and the feedback from other forum members.

Auto Blog Content

If you want a REALLY hands off approach there are several plugins out there which will automatically post content to your blog. Plugins such as AutoBlogged take content from RSS or Atom Feeds and posts it to your blog. Cool huh!

Extra Content Tip: Putting Video in Your Blog

Everyone loves videos. Adding videos will make your readers stay on your blog for longer – and they are great for traffic too. You can either create your own videos or you can find a good related video on YouTube, which you can embed into a blog post.


Copyright © 2012 CYBER SHAFT. All rights reserved.

Super SEO created by Blogger Tuts | Published by GalleryBloggerTemplates.com