But the cost to Small Business in time and money can be prohibitive.

Images are needed for:

• Web sites
• Digital marketing Catalogues
• Even for HTML email campaigns
• As well as traditional media advertising

Not having images or having low quality images can seriously detract from a Small Businesses Marketing effort.  Detraction that in a competitive market can directly impact on sales.

A key cost driver is often the high volume of product images needed

Many small businesses, particularly rental and hire can have hundred’s if not thousands of products.  Hence paying to have each product photographed is literally cost prohibitive.

Taking adhoc images or using supplier product photographs can create an inconsistent image appearance.

Images with different sizes, backgrounds, borders, orientations etc when placed on a web site or catalogue can look terrible.

Creating a negative perception in the client’s/ prospects mind.

The issue becomes how to create consistent looking photographs/ images that enhance your brand’s advertising appeal and impact regardless of the advertising medium.

Creating Low Cost Quality Product Photo’s

However there are some very effective ways of creating your own consistent high quality images.

Creating you own in-house photography studio is actually far easier than your think.

In a series of step by step video’s you can see how to create these product photographs.

We have collated these from YouTube and all are accessible on our YouTube channel – how to photograph your own products

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Welcome to the Thumbs Down Edition of my review of the week in tech.

Each week I’m picking out the things that I thought were a stupid idea, a bad thing to happen or just payed out on a tech company deservedly that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

I missed out on doing this weekly review on time as it was all hands on deck in Making Life Ezy putting the final touches on HireEzy 2.1 before release that week.  We’re all done now and everything is back to normal.

This week in Thumbs Down I found myself highlighting Google‘s lamo attempt to control the internet and picking out a HUGE problem with Apple‘s new operating system which deletes all user data.  Yeah, you read that right – and people whinge about Windows.  Gosh.

• Haha – Google Wave – Early Impressions: Too Much Effort & Unintuitive http://tinyurl.com/yzhn4st

I’ve blogged before about how I think Google Wave is/will be stupid, worthless and pointless.  But don’t just take my word for it, other people are saying it too – as evidenced by this article.  Don’t know what Google Wave is?  Well, who cares.  If you do, it’s supposed to be an email/twitter/instant messaging alternative – replacement, whatever.  C’mon Google, you employ 20,000 of the smartest people on earth and not one of you can figure out that most people won’t want to ditch email because they can barely breathe without having access to it. #FAIL

• Interesting read, if you’re a geek – YouTube‘s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net http://tinyurl.com/yfhcuuv

Well, I know most of you aren’t geeks and won’t read the article, so I’ll paraphrase here to outline why I thought this article was interesting – basically, Google has a direct optical fibre connection to the core movers and shakers that make the internet connect to everybody (in fact, I read recently that Google accounts for 6% of all internet traffic in the word at the moment, an astounding statistic for a company that didn’t exist 10 years ago), which means that Google don’t need to pay for internet traffic.  So, all of those YouTube videos are just beaming out of the place with the computer infrastructure built into the rest of Google’s fortress of computer power, essentially making what most people would think to be an extremely expensive operation in pushing out online video actually cost them basically nothing to run – all those ad impressions are pure profit.  This is an amazing contrast to an organisation like Facebook, which spends $1 million a month of infrastructure to make their service super snappy and fast for users.  What the article goes on to detail is how Google hold so much power already, that instead of internet providers charging places like Google to have direct access to each other so that company’s internet users their their site quicker, Google are so powerful that they can charge internet companies to have better direct access to them to provide their services faster to their users.  In the next 3 years this will be a huge debate in the US as their government is trying to regulate this stuff and don’t really know how to approach it properly.  Public outcry ensures.  It’ll be an interesting development.

• LAME – Google enters the e-book arena http://bit.ly/wFDAM

I’m sure if I stood in a newsagent taking pictures of each page of a magazine so I could read it later without having to buy the magazine in the first place I’d be chased down the street by the shop owner and probably have the cops called on me.  Google send people to libraries to scan books digially, build a whole online book store full of inventory and they call it a “business“.  This is criminal.  That’s all I have to say.

• WOW Mac Users should read this – Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data http://bit.ly/10PdGD

So, being the good samaritan that I am, I’ll give you Mac users this tip – don’t allow anonymous logins on your computer.  You’ll have your login that you use and just keep using that – don’t switch to another user and use the anonymous feature, as what happens is that you’ll go to log back into your computer as you and everything will be gone.  Yeah, it’s pretty awful and embarassing problem.  I tweeted this last week and I’m not sure if Apple have patched this problem yet but keep your eyes peeled on the Apple Software Update feature – last I read Apple were looking to put out a 10.6.1 update that addresses this and other problems.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Confessions of a Google Wave Fanboy (elasticvapor.com)
• Weekly Wrapup: Google Wave, Real-Time Web Trends, And More… (readwriteweb.com)
• Facebook Wave: Why Facebook Should Clone Google Wave (mashable.com)
• VIDEO: Google Wave Gets Explained (mashable.com)

The tough times create the business circumstances that foster necessity. Businesses are forced to be both more creative and at the same time more brutal in their decision making. Innovative ideas whether:

• market solutions,
• business models or
• technology will be created.

Whilst many of the ideas in this post are applicable across all business sectors, the focus of this article is on the Equipment Hire and Rental market.

Social Media as Basis of Innovation Ideas

The range of ideas that may be implemented can not be predicted. However it can be confidently predicted social media will form the basis of many innovations, around areas such as:

• Revenue Improvement: Marketing areas such as lead generation, customer service, customer retention;
• Cost Reduction: In marketing budgets by reducing expenditure on traditional marketing methods
• Mitigation of Risk: Such as in areas like Product Damages and Safety through use of YouTube, see post.

At the end of this post is a series of examples of how to use each of the major Social marketing tools.

Where to Look for the Innovative Ideas?

Where will the innovation emerge from, large corporations or small rental or hire business?

Let’s look to what has happened over the last thirty years as an indicator of what may happen. Consider this, that since 1980, Corporations have completely lost their monopoly on new ideas. This change in innovation sources ended the era of IP monopolization.  We are no longer in the era when “feudal lords” (i.e., a small handful of large “old economy” companies) controlled all the (intellectual) property and those who were without property had no rights. [1]

In 1980, Corporations accounted for 80% of all innovation (research and development outcome), they now account for under 20%. The beneficiaries have been small to medium sized companies who now account for 80% of innovations.

A key trend emerging in the knowledge economy is the change in the sources innovation. Prior to the 1980’s, large corporations dominated US research and development, with over 80% being undertaken by companies with more than 5000 employees. However since 1980, this has completely inverted, with small companies accounting for almost all the growth in R&D. [2]

Hire Rental Industry Innovation

The discussion above may not sound applicable to the Rental and Hire Industry but it is. For example in the 1980’s only the large Corporations could afford the innovation R & D expense of developing computing based management systems. Such rental software or hire software management systems are now powerful and affordable to businesses of all sizes.

Importantly though even more powerful tools such as Social Media are available (in may cases freely) to any business.

Innovation in the use of these tools is not constrained by not having financial resources but more by the extent of the will and imagination of companies.

It is in the area of will that the true constraint may appear. Major Brands have demonstrated in some instances a reluctance to engage in social media for fear of losing control of their brand. This is understandable as the brand is an asset that could well appear on the balance sheet. Hence taking avoiding perceived risks with the brand is understandable. Numerous articles in this subject.

Smaller hire and rental businesses whether though the pressure of necessity or less attachment to a brand are therefore more likely to undertake innovative social marketing ideas.

So if you are looking for new innovative ideas in the equipment hire and rental industry look to the Small business sector rather than corporations – the results may surprise you.   Below is a list of how equipment hire and rental  can use of each of the main social marketing tools.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies.  Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics

Marketing via Twitter

How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter

Marketing via Facebook

Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s

Marketing via YouTube

How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media

Marketing via WordPress

Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog

Hire and Rental Companies are increasingly finding Twitter as a brilliant lead generation tool.

Specifically in pointing people towards their Web Sites, Blogs or even You Tube sites.

Some studies have shown traffic increases of up to 100% using Twitter.

HireEzy 2.1 – complete hire and rental business software – includes in built Twitter integration which when combined with the fully integrated online web store and blog option, provides hire and rental companies with a powerful simple to use digital marketing platform.

Not sure how to develop your Twitter marketing plan for your business?

Then read this excellent article.

Twitter Launches “Twitter 101″ Step One Of The Business Plan

Posted using ShareThis

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics

Marketing via Twitter

How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter

Marketing via Facebook

Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s

Marketing via YouTube

How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media

Marketing via WordPress

Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog