BatchBook Blog
Archive for Tag
Our panel “Friends with Business Benefits: How Integrations Sell Apps” made it through the first round for SXSW11! We’ll be speaking with some of our favorite Small Business Web folks and other integration fans about why integrated apps are the way to go for companies and for customers.
Here’s a description of the panel, should be a fun one!
“The Small Business Web now has over 100 web app companies all serving the small business market. Together, we’re re-writing the rules for traditional business development and building the market for small business software through integrations.
So how has it not devolved into fisticuffs and mayhem? And why does integration help both the consumers and the vendors who are building the applications?
Members of the Small Business Web will discuss the power of the open API, why customers buy apps that integrate, how they are embracing their competition and why sometimes even they have to remember to “Hug It Out” as they work together to define the future of the Small Business Web.”
We need your help in making our dream of a Small Business Web panel a reality by giving us your vote*, your Tweets, your love etc. Vote for our panel and hopefully we’ll see you in Austin in March.
*You’ll need to sign in or create an account at the SXSW site to vote.
Tweet This Post
Tags: Community, events, small business web, SXSW
We’re excitedly preparing to attend to Chicago-based events later this month. The first, Start-up Weekend, takes place June 
25-27 at the Illinois Technology Association. Here, aspiring entrepreneurs get together on Friday to come up with an idea, form teams to build it, and present at the end of the weekend. We love being around folks who are filled with ideas and just starting out (both Pamela and I are on the advisory board for Providence’s own Betaspring accelerator project) so I’m really looking forward to what the teams come up with.
We’re also hoping to sponsoring one attendee, so if you know some one in Chicago who wants to attend, let us know! Be warned, this person will receive our unconditional public support!
On June 26th, we’re also sponsoring Chicago’s first Freelance Camp. Freelance camp is an unconference environment where a bunch of people get together to learn from one another: in this case, people either working as freelancers or building products/services that support the freelance market.
From their website:
Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking (oh no, the buzzwords are attacking!), unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, DC and more.
At Freelance Camp, we’ll be hanging out and doing cool stuff with some of our favorite Small Business Web partners: MOO cards, FreshBooks Formstack and MailChimp will all be there as well. We always have fun when we get together and hope you’ll be there to join us! See you in Chicago…
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchblue, chicago, Community, freelance camp, freshbooks, mailchimp, moo, small business web
Now that the weather’s finally getting nicer, more people heading outside to do their thing. A pleasant way to spend some time might be to grab your laptop and head outdoors, fire up the wi-fi and ice up a glass of coffeemilk to check out some recent BatchBlue press. Relaxing AND informative!
BatchBook & Google Apps Marketplace
Our big news of the month was that we were one of the 50 companies selected to launch in the new Google Apps Marketplace. As one of only two New England companies selected, we were excited to be a part of it and our local Providence Business News was there to cover our big moment.
Our friends at Small Business Trends also wrote a post on the Google Apps Marketplace launch, “Getting to Know the Google Apps Marketplace“, which gives a nice overview on how the services there can benefit SMB owners.
Small Business Web Directory
We launched the new version of the Small Business Web Directory at SXSW last month, which a quite a few folks wrote about. There was great write-up in Inc. magazine by Howard Greenstein, who was nice enough to attend our SXSBW party in spite of being sick.
Web Worker Daily helped us announce the Directory to the world, as did BusinessWeek AND ReadWriteWeb. Thanks, guys! These are some of our favorite resources for small business owners and we’re really glad they found the Directory newsworthy.
There’s also a video of a slightly tired me talking about the launch of the directory on My San Antonio.com. Get that woman some coffee 
Beloved BatchBook Customers
Of course, my personal favorite category, for whom our bell tolls etc…posts from our customers about how they are using BatchBook, why they like it, and how it’s made life easier for them.
Big Thinking for Small Business: At first he liked us a little, now he likes us a lot. And all because of the simple TLC we give our BatchBook peeps. We can’t help it, we’re crazy for customer service.
Three Great CRM Tools for Small Business: We always love when someone calls US their favorite!
AMEX OPEN Forum: An excellent post on Quick Customer Touchpoints by the consistent bringer of awesomeness Chris Brogan includes a mention of BatchBook. We really like the ideas he expresses here about why staying in contact is so important in the age of social media, especially because it fits so nicely with some of what we’re doing with our upcoming re-design of BatchBook.
So that’s just a sample of some of what’s been written about us lately. Have you written a post about how you’re using BatchBook, or seen one we might have missed? Let us know, we’re happy to include it here and on our press page.
Happy organizing!
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Customer Service, google, google apps, google apps marketplace, google marketplace, ReadWriteWeb, small business trends, small business web, WebWorkerDaily
Recognizing our "Most Connected Customer" Brandon Dunlap at the SXSBW Happy Hour
In preparing for the launch of the new Small Business Web Directory and for the SXSBW (South by Small Business Web!) party that we co-sponsored at SXSW last week, we came across someone who we think just might be our “most connected” customer, Brandon Dunlap from Brightfly, Inc. Brandon uses several of the Small Business Web members applications to run his business.
We were delighted to bring Brandon to the party as our Special Guest of Honor and showered him with all sorts of hip and useful schwag from the thirteen sponsoring companies of the party.
Here’s Brandon’s story:
Very well-connected
Brandon Dunlap, managing director of research at Brightfly, Inc., logged nearly 100,000 air miles last year crisscrossing the country for business meetings, conferences and other professional events. He is constantly networking, which in turn helps the research and consultancy firm grow its contact base by thousands each year.
To foster and grow all of these relationships, Brightfly relies on a number of solutions offered by The Small Business Web, an open collective of businesses aimed at connecting Web applications to help small businesses bloom and grow. The integrated solutions, which work together through their open APIs, help Brightfly maintain mountains of contact data and more efficiently and personally stay engaged with each person.
“Being a relationship-driven company, we don’t have a sales team managing all of our data. without the help of BatchBlue, this would be an arduous task. The companies of The Small Business Web give us a single point to manage all the ways we get in touch with our friends and colleagues in the field,” said Dunlap. “Since The Small Business Web solutions can ‘talk’ with each other, I can get back to people faster, even while I am on the road. The time savings are phenomenal.”
For example, Dunlap might collect a batch of business cards while at a information security conference in San Francisco and send them off to Shoeboxed before he gets on a plane to return home to Texas. Once back in the office, he can take all of the contact data that can be scanned and digitized by Shoeboxed and seamlessly enter it into his BatchBook social CRM account by BatchBlue. BatchBook enables him to tag each person by what event he met them at, what types of materials they requested or any other follow-up or other identifiers. He can then build and manage e-mail lists using MailChimp, another Small Business Web partner, to stay in touch with contacts with key research developments as they occur. Recently, Brightfly has kicked off a Competitive Compliance survey project leveraging the relationship between MailChimp and Small Business Web member SurveyGizmo to glean research insights from leaders in the information security and audit field.
Data in Brightfly’s is also imported into a Freshbooks account for recurring invoices, while Small Business Web partner Clarity helps Dunlap and others try to forecast and look for trends in their revenue streams.
“Everything in our business is done on personal connections. For everyone on my team to share all that information in one location and to be able to pivot across that data is huge,” said Dunlap. “The Small Business Web network of solutions helps us maintain currency and relevancy with all the individuals we need to contact at a price and service level better than a single-source solution.”
It was great to meet Brandon in person and be able to learn first-hand how the Small Business Web is helping small businesses like his succeed.
What about you? Are you using multiple web apps to help your small business bloom and grow? Let us know, we want to hear from you!
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchbook, freshbooks, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSWi
Today, live from the action at SXSWi in Austin, we launched the new version of The Small Business Web. This site has grown from a single page put together on the fly at last year’s SXSW, to a full-blown Directory that includes categories, screen shots, pricing info, links to integration information and more.
Helping small businesses navigate and use technology has always been part of BatchBlue’s mission. It’s why we write our “Blue Papers“, it’s why we started the Twitter chat for small business owners #SBBUZZ and it’s the reason we’re now so excited about the new Directory. We think it will be very useful for folks looking for ways to grow and manage their businesses using some of the best tools out there.
Here’s a short video our friends at MailChimp put together to help explain what the Small Business Web is all about:
We hope you will make many good connections through the new Small Business Web Directory. We look forward to helping you hook them all up.
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchblue, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSW, SXSWi
Older Entries
