The use of Customer Relationship Management software, also known as CRM, has been on the rise for small businesses over the past few years. But we’ve also seen some issues for small business owners.

If you’ve got your contacts in your CRM or similar software, where’s the connection between that platform and your email, which is where most of us do the bulk of our daily interactions with customers?

Infusionsoft, an online marketing software provider,  just announced the arrival of Infusionsoft Sync for Gmail to address the connection between CRM and employees’ daily email usage to interact with customers.

Infusionsoft Gmail Integration

Richard Tripp, chief product officer at Infusionsoft, said the problem the company wanted to help marketers and marketing staff in small businesses with, was that disconnect between CRM and their email:

Many of our customers who use Gmail have encountered a roadblock when trying to streamline processes between their email and calendar management, and Infusionsoft. They've been asking to have access to contact information, calendar syncing and the ability to trigger sales automation from inside Gmail.

The free Gmail integration, which was acquired from an Infusionsoft Marketplace Partner, Benji Rabhan and the team at AutomationCore, provides immediate visibility into appointments, centralized contacts and communications within Gmail, and better interactions with clients.  It works with Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Streamlined Customer Communications

Here’s an example of how the Infusionsoft Gmail integration works.

Let’s say a marketer didn’t use this integration. She’s got her CRM with all her client data and contact information, which she manually transferred to the CRM platform. If she has a task to complete for the client, she opens her project management platform, like Basecamp, and sets up the task and due date. She knows she needs to follow up to an email by the end of the week, so she makes an item on her Google Calendar. And because she has a quick question best addressed by phone, she has to open her CRM program to get the client’s phone number (it’s not in an email).

You can see in this example, this process involves a lot of switching between programs and wasting a lot of time.

The Infusionsoft Gmail integration aims to deal with that.  Here’s an example with the integration to illustrate how it works:

Ms. Marketer logs into her Infusionsoft account directly from her Gmail sidebar. She opens an email from a client, and up pops the corresponding profile from the CRM software. She can add or review tasks that relate to this client, as well as see what opportunities she may be able to work on. She can see what tasks or appointments are pending, and do any followup that the CRM alerts her is needed. She’s got all of the client’s contact info there too, so she doesn’t have to hunt for that phone number. It is all in one place.

Tapping into the Small Business Mindset

A year and a half ago, when I covered Infusionsoft’s social media components, the company was servicing just over 8,000 small businesses. That number has grown to 50,000 small business users spread across 70 countries.

The post Infusionsoft Gmail Integration is Now Available appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Does your retail or ecommerce business sell American-made products? Then you might have an edge with consumers—if you know how to market these products right. A recent Harris Interactive study shows Americans of both genders, all political parties and all ages care about buying American (PDF).

These days, "Made in America" isn't as clear-cut as it used to be. Most Americans are aware that products branded with American labels may be made in overseas factories or assembled here with parts made overseas. Three-fourths of consumers say being manufactured in the U.S. is crucial for them to consider it "made in America." Half say being made by an American company or having parts manufactured in the U.S. is what matters. Only one-fourth cared whether a product was designed by an American.

Although buying American matters to all age groups, older respondents (age 48-plus) were the most likely to say it's important to do so. Women also placed greater importance on buying American than men do. Perhaps surprisingly, three-fourths of both Republicans and Democrats say buying American is important, compared to just 60 percent of independents.

Keeping jobs in the U.S. is the biggest reason respondents give for wanting to buy American-made products as cited by 66 percent of respondents. Supporting U.S. companies was cited by 56 percent, and patriotism by 45 percent.

There were also some fear-based reasons for buying American. Nearly half buy American because they're worried about the safety of products made overseas, while 45 percent worry about the quality. In addition, 39 percent are concerned about the human rights of the foreign workers who make these products, while 32 percent worry about the environmental impact of products made outside the U.S.

The bigger the purchase, it seems, the more importance people attach to buying American. So if you sell American-made appliances, furniture or cars, know that between 70 and 75 percent of people believe buying those products is important or very important. Seventy-two percent say the same about apparel.

Clearly, if you sell anything made in America, you need to let your customers know:

Be Specific

Your marketing should explain to what degree the product is made in America (assembled in the U.S.? Made with parts manufactured in the U.S.?).

Appeal to Emotion

What will customers accomplish by buying your products?  Protecting U.S. jobs? Helping the environment? Feeling confident their new clothing wasn't made by child labor?

Tell Your Story

Share why you think it's important to buy American. If you actually manufacture your own product here, even better. You're not only a Made in America story, but an entrepreneurial success story to boot.

America Photo via Shutterstock

The post Why Made In America Still Matters appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Brother USA has introduced a new line of printers aimed at the small business market. They are designed to offer a high quality, inexpensive printing option. According to a study by Brother last year, businesses can save up to 60% on costs otherwise spent making trips to the local copy center, by printing in-house.

The new MFC-9000 series of desktop printers has a compact size at around 2-feet square. Depending on the model, it can print from 19 to 23 color pages per minute, at a high resolution of 600 x 2400 dpi.

The printers are also all-in-ones offering fax, scan and copying, in addition to printing.  They can hold up to 250 sheets of paper at a time.

One of the most interesting things is how much smarter printers are getting these days. These new smart printers include a 3.7" color touchscreen display. From it you can access social media and file-sharing accounts to print directly from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Evernote, Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive and Box — saving time because you don't have to convert or move files first. The printers also have wireless printing capabilities, including the ability to print directly from a smartphone.

Brother touts the toner in this line as "high capacity" for less money. The company says it will reduce the cost per color copy by 7.5 percent compared with the cost of using standard toner. Inasmuch as the major cost of printing is the materials, especially toner, a machine that uses lower cost toner could over the long run cut costs considerably.

The printer line starts at $399 and tops out at under $450 MSRP.

The pricing and features may make the machines attractive to small businesses that do a lot of printing of catalogs, booklets and other marketing materials where capacity, speed, cost and appearance matter.

The printers use less than two watts of power when not in use and automatically power off. Such energy-saving features have become important for green-minded businesses besides saving on operating costs.

Brother International Corporation is a provider of productivity products for offices. The company has had a presence as Brother USA in the United States since 1954.

Image: Brother video still

The post Brother’s Smart Printers Rival the Local Copy Center appeared first on Small Business Trends.

If you don’t create it, there’s nothing to be found. And you do want to be found right?

This is a follow up from The Emergence and Explosion of Blogs, Blogging and Bloggers. The numbers don’t lie and they tell an even more compelling story for the future.

Consider these current insights about the blogosphere from Blogging.org:

• Primary content marketing tool.
• Major revenue producer for key online blog companies.
• Key part of corporate online branding and culture.
• Vehicle of self expression for anyone with a passion or niche.
• Social media allows blogs and bloggers to build bridges and reach.

We’ve come a long way baby, in a short time, with the blogosphere and it will continue to be an unfolding and enduring communication activity.  It’s not an option any more, it’s a best practice and a content linchpin in today’s sales, marketing and branding process. Blogging is not only for companies, but the leaders that run them and the independent bloggers who represent various content niches, products and services.

More compelling 2012 data, which should make blogging more of a commitment and priority:

• 60% of businesses have a blog.
• 77% of internet users read blogs.
• 61% of consumers made a purchase off a blog recommendation.
• 71% report better visibility.
• 329 million people view  a blog monthly.

In working with small businesses, entrepreneurs and professional consultants, on starting, developing and upgrading their blog activities, many tell me they just don’t think they can’t do it. What they really need is a better outline, plan and process they can follow.

If you can have a conversation with someone, then you can write a blog. Blogging is a more personal take on a subject that welcomes the personality of it’s writer. That is actually why people not only like blogs, but follow the bloggers who write them.

Be a better blogger and writer with these 7 easy steps that can help you get focused, write better and deliver your blog to stand out, get noticed and be remembered more.

7 Steps to Become a Better Blogger and Writer

1. Make a Decision and a Commitment to Blog

Invest in and create a branded WordPress blogsite or add a blog page to your existing WordPress website. There are sites that offer free options, but make sure you hire a professional to customize them, so they look good. WordPress.com, Blogger.com and Wix.com all offer lot’s of templates and options to fit your style and industry.

2. Schedule Time Into Your Day and Week to Write

Part of the commitment must be to set aside time to write daily if possible, or at least 2-3 times per week if you can in the best place and time of day where you are most inspired and focused. Go to your place, muse, think and write.

3. Brainstorm Yourself

What are your 5 key areas of expertise and 10 more that compliment those key ones? Who is your target audience and who are you writing for and speaking to? What expertise can you share with them?

Start and keep a blog idea journal and notebook with you at all times. Use your daily and real life experiences to generate ideas. Here are 16 tools To help you come up with blog ideas.

4. Create an Outline for Titles and Topics Based on Your Top Content Categories

Research your topics via Google, Bing or your industry using specific keywords and always use the most current studies and research. Write a 5-7-9-12 word, branded keyword title that has some snap and alliteration to it. Develop 3-5 content bullet points for your post so it flows with a beginning, middle and end. Study the blog posts you enjoy reading and notice their outline and process.

5. Develop the Outline and Content Points

Find the heart, soul and sweet spot of the topic content, so that it fulfills the promise of the title. Develop the content of your outline with your take, knowledge and expertise. What do you want your readers to remember and get out of the post?

It's your expertise so feature it. By following your outline, you take people through a process of thought.

6. Accessorize Your Post So That it Snaps, Pops and Engages

Using visual enhancements, great quotes and compelling statistics can increase opens and engagement by 65%. Accessorizing your blog posts with memorable titles, trending  topics, videos, images, podcasts links, infographics, case studies and white papers can all add major value to the readers experience and retention.

7. Deliver, Ship, Publish and Promote

Create an integrated marketing approach using all the top delivery tactics you are currently using: Facebook,  LinkedIn, Twitter, You Tube, Pinterest, Google+, podcasting, eMarketing, video. Check out the top content marketing tactics and don’t forget to Google yourself to see how you are doing.

Practice, practice, practice. Be consistent and stay true to your point of view and your authenticity.

People are hungry for good blogs, bloggers and content and are willing to share them and promote them. If you have something to say and offer, there is an audience for it and people will find you. Build your blog fans by being consistent.

Start, continue or take it up a notch and remember to use your blog to educate, inform, inspire and yes – sell.

Where’s your favorite place to muse and write?

Blog Photo via Shutterstock

The post Become a Better Blogger and Writer in 7 Easy Steps appeared first on Small Business Trends.

If you are frustrated by slow file uploads to the cloud or find them slowing down your business, Minbox believes it has a solution that will have you saying it’s “freaking fast.”

Last week, Minbox.com was launched as a free app available for Mac devices. The new so-called “lightweight” service for your mobile devices allows you to upload files to your cloud on Minbox from your Mac.

At launch, Minbox claims to be #freakingfast and up to twice as fast at file uploads as its competitor, Dropbox, and any other cloud service.

“With all due respect to sync services like Dropbox, the industry needs a lightweight alternative for direct transfer. Minbox gets it done at groundbreaking speeds,” Minbox founder and CEO Alexander Mimran said last week.

Minbox will import your Contacts lists stored on your Mac or Google account. When sending files, the built-in contact list saves time.

Minbox offers unlimited file upload, i.e., there are no limits on the size of the file you’re uploading to the cloud or the number of files. However, for some there is a drawback:  files in the Minbox cloud are purged after 30 days.

Minbox in the beginning is targeting professionals who work with images and videos – such as photographers, videographers and designers — who need to send them to clients, co-workers  and partners for review or one-time download.  For them, speed is a real issue.  The app allows users to leaf through the uploaded files that are presented in a gallery optimized for viewing on mobile devices (pictured above). Minbox says it is geared to a “creative professional who sends large files on a daily basis.”

A “Pro” version of Minbox is expected to launch in the coming months. The Pro version will store files permanently.

Until the Pro version is launched, Minbox will be of limited value if you need permanent storage.

But creative professionals who need fast and unlimited file upload, and place files online only for a short time until they are picked up, will get value from the current version.  For everyone else it’s a solution to watch for the future.  The company’s website has more information.

Minbox, based in San Francisco, recently raised $800,000 in angel investment, reports The Next Web.

This piece was corrected from the original due to a misspelling of the company name during the editing process.

Image: Minbox

The post Minbox Touts Faster Uploads Than Dropbox in Cloud Storage appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Halsey Minor, who co-founded CNET, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Minor was a mega-millionaire who once was pegged by Fortune magazine, back in 1999, as having a net worth of $350 million.  Now his net worth could be negative $90 million, according to a Wall Street Journal blog post.  He even owes money to his former executive assistant.

CNET was sold to CBS in 2008 for $1.8 Billion, although Minor had left years earlier before the DotCom bust of 2000.  Minor, who is a relative of Admiral Halsey, also was a tech investor who picked some winners.  One was acquired by Google and became Google Voice. Minor was also an investor in Salesforce.com.

CNET, Salesforce, Google Voice — clearly the man is a tech genius who knows how to identify tech’s next big thing. He made a fortune by the time he was in his thirties. So what went wrong?

Minor’s financial troubles seem to stem from expenditures and investments that later proved disastrous.

He bought expensive real estate. Case in point: a house in posh Bel Air that he bought for $20 million and put back on the market a year later for $12.9 million.

Then there was the house in Presidio Heights, San Francisco, that he bought for another $22 million — and claims to have put in another $15 million in improvements.  There was other real estate, too, including the Landmark Hotel, Charlottesville, Virginia, that he was developing for $31 million — among other properties.

Let’s not forget the race horse. He paid $3 million for a Kentucky Derby contender that went lame before the big race.

And then there was the expensive artwork. He bought millions of dollars of artwork at Sotheby’s auction house, and then was sued for not paying for it.  One of the paintings in question was Peaceable Kingdom (pictured above), by artist Edward Hicks.  Minor ended up in litigation, lost and paid $6.6. million to Sotheby’s.

And now he’s bankrupt.

I don’t write about Minor to gloat about someone else’s misfortune. On the contrary, “there but for the grace of God go I” is more of my sentiment in such situations.

But it does suggest two points for entrepreneurs to take away from this saga of “tech millionaire goes bankrupt:”

• You can be a genius in one area and be a huge success — but get out of your element and it could be a completely different story.  When it comes to diversifying, walk carefully.  On the one hand, diversifying can reduce risks inherent in over-relying on a single area. But get too far afield from what you know best in your business, and it increases different kinds of risks.
• Financial independence is not so much about how much you make — it’s about how you spend it.  Even multimillionaires can spend it all foolishly.  Cost control in business, in government and in your personal finances is important. Don’t be the one who goes bankrupt.

Image: Peaceable Kingdom

The post Co-Founder of CNET Goes Bankrupt: 2 Lessons for Entrepreneurs appeared first on Small Business Trends.

“Hybrids” is a hot category in 2013. Hybrids are tablets that double as laptops or desktops. They are still portable like a tablet, but larger than traditional tablets and come with keyboards.  Hewlett-Packard is introducing its third tablet laptop hybrid.

HP plans release in August of a 13.3-inch tablet laptop hybrid based on Windows — called the Split x2.

At about 9 x 13 inches, the device offers a 13.3 inch display screen.   Obviously, it is going to be heavier than smaller tablets. With the keyboard it weighs under 4.85 pounds, but weighs “only” 2.3 pounds as a tablet. Still, that’s light enough to carry around with one hand.

Like many newer tablets, it comes with two cameras: an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 1080 pixel front-facing camera.

You can connect with WiFi. Bluetooth, MicroSD reader, USB and audio jacks make for this device ‘s diversity and usefulness.

The Split x2 is an upgrade to the ENVY x2, HP’s first Windows tablet laptop hybrid introduced last year, reports NDTV Gadgets. The Split x2 replaces the Atom processor of the ENVY x2 with a choice of a 3rd Generation Intel Core i3 or i5 processor. The screen is larger, too, with 1366 x 768 resolution.   The additional functionality also costs more. Cost of the new tablet laptop hybrid is $799.99 MSRP compared with $649.99 for the ENVY x2.

Tablet Laptop Hybrid – Business Appeal?

This hybrid tablet — HP calls them a “2-in-1″ — comes out of the HP Consumer products group, but we’ve noticed that hybrids tend to get a second look from business users. Professionals want the mobility and fun of a tablet but really need a keyboard to make the device functional for work purposes. Also, Windows 8 systems hold special appeal for business users who may need to work on PowerPoint, Excel or Word files. That can be difficult if not impossible on a traditional touch tablet using a non-Windows operating system.

“What we’ve done this time is take that whole x2 approach and adapted it to something that gives you even more performance and more capability,” said David Conrad, Director of Product Management at Hewlett-Packard in a video about the new device.

“But then we’ve also added one more thing, which is storage,” he said.

The earlier ENVY x2 offered 128 GB of solid state drive storage in the tablet. The Split x2 includes that memory plus an additional 500 GB of hard drive storage in the keyboard dock, said Conrad.

HP also recently introduced a 10.1″ Android hybrid, the SlateBook x2, priced to rival the iPad. Other brands have introduced tablet and laptop/desktop combinations to the market, too.

After some struggles in recent years, HP, one of the largest computer companies, has experienced a bit of a turnaround with sales higher than expected in the second quarter of 2013.

Image: HP

The post HP to Introduce Another Tablet Laptop Hybrid, Using Windows appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Did you know that your Facebook updates are never going to be seen by 100% of your fans in your newsfeed? Instead, only 2% to 48% will see them.  Yet, Mari Smith, who has been called the Queen of Facebook, still says Facebook has value for small businesses. She offers several highly specific tips in this interview about Facebook for small businesses.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends:  Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got to be what a lot of people call the ‘Queen of Facebook?’

Mari Smith: Throughout my entire career, I’ve had a deep passion for people and technology. Since 1999, I’ve been deeply immersed in the world of eCommerce, Internet marketing. I was an online marketing consultant for a long number of years. Then, in 2007, Facebook just fell into my lap. I was chosen to be on the data team of an app. It was really a defining moment in my life. I just fell in love with Facebook. Within weeks I became an evangelist.

Small Business Trends:  When did you know Facebook was going to be important for small businesses?  

Mari Smith: From a small business marketing standpoint, to me, it’s all about relationships. One of my blogs is called The New Relationship Marketing. Relationship marketing is about fostering those relationships which you can start through social media, through Facebook, through Twitter, and then ultimately – you might meet people in person.

It’s really a matter of strategically thinking through what content you are posting through your personal profile and your public fan page in a manner that people are – top of mind. They may think, ‘Gosh, I really need to go and buy a new dress or a wedding cake or whatever different people do.’  You are top of their mind because they have built this relationship with you and you’re in their news feed, sharing valuable content and sparking interest with little personal goodies.

Small Business Trends: Can you rate, on a scale of one to ten, how successful small businesses have been when it comes to leveraging the power of Facebook to help grow their business?

Mari Smith: I would say the vast majority of small businesses are probably somewhere around a three or a four on that scale, unfortunately. I think the main reason is that Facebook is in a ‘pay to play’ mode. They have to make money; that’s just the way it is. It’s just the algorithm that’s at play. You might buy ads in order to build a fan base, which is a terrific use of your advertising dollars, but then people are like, ‘Well, we’re only going to display and post to a percentage of fans.’ Your posts are never going to be seen by 100% of your fans in your newsfeed. It could be anywhere from 2% to 48%. I think at one time years ago, it was at 16%.

One thing to keep in mind as a small business owner is that just because you have 1,000 fans, all 1,000 of those people are not seeing your posts. It could be a fraction of those. You have promoted posts and there are sponsored posts. There are just a lot of complex features in there that you can buy. But unless you know what you’re doing, you might be wasting your money. You might not be getting a good ROI – return on investment.

I think where people struggle is that there’s these complex features and there’s a lot of change. Facebook is always changing their features. If we can back up a second and take complexity out of the picture and look at the fundamentals of small business success, you see that a lot of it comes with not really knowing, ‘Why am I on Facebook in the first place?’  What am I trying to do here? Am I trying to just generate fans and get better sentiment for my brand or actually sell product or improve customer service or just get visibility?’

I would recommend that most small businesses approach Facebook marketing from the standpoint of generating email leads and gently guiding people to cross into your funnel, your e-mail list, your blog, your website and looking into your offers.

Small Business Trends:  What percentage of small businesses are actually able to do direct commerce on Facebook? Is that even in the equation for most businesses?

Mari Smith: It is. In fact, there’s a whole factor of online commerce, called Facebook Commerce. There are new sites and there are services and platforms that are popping up all the time. I just came across a new one recently called Bionic and they have an app that you can add an IQ Offer. You can put up an offer that’s maybe 50% off for the next 24 hours. Then you can drive people there through an ad, for example. People can click on that and purchase right away through PayPal. So, for the small business owner, that’s a way to instantly monetize an offer.

Facebook actually has an offers feature. You click the button and you claim it. Just because somebody’s claimed it doesn’t mean that money has actually passed hands, not yet.

Commerce is still in its infancy. I think we’ve got another couple of years yet where people are really starting to feel more comfortable getting their credit card out. With PayPal, there’s a trust already existing there, which is great. Someone getting their credit card out and saying, ‘I feel happy to buy this right off of Facebook’ is in it’s early days yet.

Small Business Trends: Do you feel that small businesses are leveraging Facebook with the right expectations?

Mari Smith: A lot of people that I talk to, a lot of small business owners, come to Facebook as the Holy Grail. They think that they’ve got over a billion members and there are stories of people making millions of dollars through Facebook marketing. Many of them are spending money to make that money with ads, which is quite frankly the most incredible targeted demographics that your money can buy; far better than any other advertising product and I don’t have any agenda saying that. It’s just a fact.

One thing that small business owners could do with Facebook is build up their email list. Put up your email list with 1,000 people, and they’re from other sources, not necessarily through Facebook. You can take that database and upload it to Facebook using what’s called the Power Editor. Upload their own data base and Facebook is going to go and search their site and match profiles with your database. Maybe only half of them will match and that’s okay.

Now you have this set of almost 500 people and you can find out lots more information. You can actually segment your database and get a ton of information as a result of matching them. You can place ads. You can advertise to people on your own database. It’s called Custom Audience. Then you can do something that’s called Look Alike Audience, which means that Facebook will then gather up an audience of people that you can advertise to that would have never known about you, are not on your list, are not your fan, but they look similar to your current database. That’s cool, right?

Small Business Trends:  If you were a small business going on Facebook to build a list, what kind of content may work best when you’re trying to do it from that perspective?

Mari Smith: I have this rule, basically 80/20. So, talk to the fans with no agenda value, the 80%. When I say no agenda value, that means OPC – other people’s content. You’re sharing a mix of your content, articles, resources, tools and then 20% of the time, you’re going to ask for the sale. You’re going to ask for the lead.

One of my favorite ways is through a webinar. I gather my fans and drag them over to an option page, where I capture the email address and that’s where I’m going to periodically do that, I don’t do that all the time. I do it maybe once a quarter. I’ll do an initiative, where I’m gathering up, where I’m doing an offer. So, that’s just something to keep in mind is that you don’t have to be asking for the sale all the time. But you have to have it strategically mapped out in your marketing calendar for the year, as to when you are going to do offers and promotions and do them in spurts.

That will add tons of value on a regular basis; ideally once a day. Even if it’s just one post a day or maybe two posts a day on Facebook; on your fan page. That would be plenty; that would be sufficient.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned something about a webinar?

Mari Smith: It’s coming up on Tuesday, June 4th. It’s called Seven Steps to Facebook Success. It’s 90 minutes, a live stream webinar. I’m going to be on camera and broadcasting from a studio in San Diego, live and interactive. We will record it in case folks can’t make it and they can just find links to that at MariSmith.com.

This interview on Facebook for small businesses is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

The post Mari Smith on How Small Businesses Can Use Facebook appeared first on Small Business Trends.

You know, when you think about it, being in front can be downright dangerous.

Cutting edge?

Great. But have some band-aids handy just in case.

Pioneering?

OK, but if the Oregon Trail taught us anything, it’s that pioneer life isn’t all fun an games. (Measles, snakebite, dysentery…)

And of course…

Ahead of the curve?

Awesome. Just maybe give a glance behind you every so often.

The post Ahead of the Curve? Watch Out appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Isn’t it time to expand your knowledge, and make new connections? You can do that by attending an event.  Or bring marketing visibility to your business. You can do that through seeking out an award. Or how about earning some cash or services – by participating in a contest.   Below is a hand-picked selection of events, awards and contests for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  To see the entire list, please visit the Small Business Events Calendar.

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

7 Steps to Facebook Success – How to Make Money on the World’s #1 Social Network
June 04, 2013, Online

If you’ve been feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the constant changes and tweaks on Facebook, and you’ve been struggling to measure a real monetary result from your Facebook marketing efforts – you’re not alone! On this free mega online event, Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith will share her own 7-Step Facebook Marketing Success Plan that’s packed with money-making tips for YOU to turn the world’s most popular social network into the TOP source of quality leads and paying customers for your business! It’s free — register today and save your seat!

Making Money Online: Ecommerce Done Right with John Lawson
June 25, 2013, New York, NY

After this live workshop, you’ll be ready to immediately build your own online eBay or Amazon store, source products for it, and start selling. You’ll learn how to market your online store strategically using social media, SEO, mobile and more.

Join John Lawson, award winning Social Commerce Strategist, American Express featured businessman, author, and founder of 3rd Power Outlet – an online clothing retail outlet that has exceeded $25 million in sales.
John will be sharing his practical, down-to-earth methods for building your own ecommerce business from the ground up in this two part workshop, packed with resources, tips, and how-to instruction.
Discount Code
SBTRENDS ( $25 off)

WBENC National Conference & Business Fair
June 26, 2013, Minneapolis, MN

The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) will convene 3,500 decision makers from the nation’s leading corporations, government entities and women’s business enterprises (WBEs) to generate business together and stimulate economic growth at the 2013 WBENC National Conference & Business Fair in Minneapolis, MN, June 25-27, 2013.

Big Awards for Business
August 14, 2013, Online

The Big Awards started with a mission of recognizing real talent and performance. Real business people, those with experience and knowledge, judge the Big Awards. Request an entry kit today and submit your nomination by August 14, 2013.
Discount Code
SBT50 ($50.00 off)

More Events

• Growth Strategies Seminar, by Enterprise Funding (Register at 888-715-9594)
  June 04, 2013, Rancho Cucamonga, CA
• Strategies for Raising Growth Capital in Volatile Markets
  June 04, 2013, Online
• Build Up Your Business: Growth By Design
  June 05, 2013, New York, NY
• Search at eBay Webinar for Small Business Owners
  June 05, 2013, Online
• SEO Pros: Hangout on Social Media and Marketing
  June 05, 2013, Online
• CT Business Expo
  June 06, 2013, Hartford, CT
• “The New Entrepreneurz” Presentation
  June 06, 2013, New York, NY
• Breakfast Session: Display advertising has evolved!
  June 06, 2013, London, UK
• 4th Annual MACs Women’s Entrepreneur Summit
  June 08, 2013, New York, NY
• Win to the Winth Power Workshop
  June 09, 2013, New York, NY
• The Inc. Leadership Forum
  June 10, 2013, San Diego, CA
• How Your Personal Credit Score Can Affect You in Business
  June 12, 2013, Pittsburgh, PA
• Business Webinar: I Survived and Dominated The Crisis
  June 12, 2013, Online
• Social Media Strategies Summit 2013
  June 12, 2013, New York, NY
• ChallengeHER
  June 12, 2013, Phoenix, AZ
• Veteran Entrepreneur Training Symposium
  June 13, 2013, Reno, NV
• Future Energy New York
  June 13, 2013, New York City
• National Small Business Week
  June 17, 2013, Washington, DC
• Web.com Small Business Forum – Raleigh
  June 20, 2013, Raleigh, NC

More Contests and Awards

• CNBC Prime’s Crowd Rules $50,000 Challenge
  June 03, 2013, Online
• CrowdIt Launch Challenge
  June 04, 2013, Online
• 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women
  June 28, 2013, Online
• eMinutes $2,500 Entrepreneurs Contest
  June 30, 2013, Online
• Huggies MomInspired Grant Program
  July 31, 2013, Online
• 2013 Big Awards for Business
  August 14, 2013, Online
• The Citi Salutes: Realizing Your Dream Business Competition
  November 08, 2013, Online

This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends and SmallBizTechnology.

The post Check Out One of These Events or Awards for Your Small Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

We are so excited about our new Small Business Events Calendar.  This is a public calendar for the small business community.  We invite you to share your events on it.

How It Works

Events – and Awards and Contests, too – On the Events Calendar (pictured above) we include not only events such as conferences, webinars, Hangouts … but we also include small business contests and awards.  Since contests and awards are deadline-driven, they lend themselves to calendar listings.

It is FAST to submit an event – We wanted to keep it simple… and make it easy. It takes under 2 minutes to submit an event for a free listing.  Go here to submit an event.

Basic events listings are FREE – There’s no charge for listing a small business event.

More visibility for those who want it — Want to include a description of the event?  What about a discount code, an event hashtag, a logo, and a direct link to the registration page?  Want more visibility at the top of the page? All those things are available for Premium listings, which cost just $99.

No irrelevant events –  One of our main gripes with public calendars is that they quickly get overrun with irrelevant events and, well, spam.  Small business is the ONLY niche we serve – we are 100% focused on it. We wanted only high-quality events that fit squarely into that niche.  Every event is reviewed by a human being. Most events are reviewed within a few hours – but please allow up to 24 hours. You will receive an email when your event is approved.

Events get wide visibility -  This is a joint effort with Ramon Ray and his SmallBizTechnology.com site, and events get publicized in both sites.  Since both sites serve the same audience — small business — it made sense to join forces.

Put an Events Calendar on your site – Would you like to display small business events on your website?  Then grab the code for one of our embeddable events units.  There’s a convenient sidebar widget, and a full-page version.

Weekly events posts – Each week on Saturday we highlight upcoming events by issuing a roundup article. This appears on Small Business Trends and also SmallBizTechnology.com. If you have an event coming up within the next 30 days, and you want to get it in the week’s roundup, be sure to submit it by Friday 9 am EST, the cutoff.

Back Story Behind The Calendar

It’s based on proprietary technology – The events calendar was conceived and built by our Technology team here at Small Business Trends.  In the past we had a third-party calendar, but it had limitations and couldn’t be automated (more on that below).  So we decided to replace it.

Over a period of months, we looked at many third party calendars and online events services.  We studied all the  WordPress events plugins.  None of them was quite right for our purposes.  We ended up starting with an events plugin, but customizing it extensively.

A case of automation –  We don’t talk a lot about our technology here at Small Business Trends. But one of our outside advisors has recommended we open up and share the “Small Business Trends story” more.

In the past two years we’ve invested heavily in our backend systems. To say that we run WordPress doesn’t even scratch the surface.  WordPress is at the core, but this site is heavily customized.

Efficiency is crucial in your business, I’m sure.  It is certainly is in ours.

We’ve built backend systems with an eye toward automating repetitive manual activities as much as possible. We’re a small team. Our company is profitable and totally self-funded. Through automation we’ve freed up our precious human resources to focus on “value-add” activities — ones that require intelligence and talent. The grunt work we let technology handle.

The Events Calendar system is an example of automation.  For instance, the weekly events posts are automatically pulled from the events calendar database — and don’t need to be manually entered.  The posts simply need to be reviewed and the first paragraph customized.

Cost savings of $7,500 – It will save at least $7,500 annually in labor costs.

In the past, we’d manually create weekly events and contests posts.  Those took a ton of time.  People would email us information about events, and our extended team (including someone from SmallBizTechnology.com) would have to dig for the information among several inboxes. We’d manually grab images and load them.  We’d search event sites for descriptions and edit them.  We’d also separately load the events into our previous events calendar – another duplication of effort.

We’ve gone from spending 3.5 hours a week on events, to spending less than 30 minutes. That’s a savings of three hours a week.  In a year’s time, it adds up.

Scaling for growth – Automation is crucial to scale a business for growth. All that manual work wasn’t such a big deal when the site was smaller. But as a business grows, manual activities multiply. They bury you.

Without automation, we wouldn’t be able to offer all the features to the small business community that we serve.

Let us know what you think about the Events Calendar system, and if there’s anything we can do to improve it, in the comments below.

The post Review of the Small Business Events Calendar: Can We Improve It? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

This week in small business news, the “hybrids” march on… hybrid tablet laptops, that is.  Plus, there are new opportunities in book and app publishing.  And a small printer that’s smart, impresses.

The Small Business Trends editorial team brings you news stories important to small business owners and what they mean to you.

Tech Tools

HP introduces yet another tablet laptop hybrid. “Hybrid” seems to be the trend this year with so many of them appearing in the market. This is not the first hybrid offering from HP this year, but it seems like the most business oriented. Called the Split x2, it features a 13.3 inch display screen, runs on Windows and is due out in August.

Save on a trip to the print center with Brother smart printers. Brother USA has introduced a new line of printers designed to help small business owners complete more printing tasks in-house – especially for high-volumes where high quality is needed. The printers are compact, with “high capacity” toner creating better quality printed materials for less money.

Upload your files faster. Minbox offers a solution the company says is much faster than Dropbox or other similar applications. In fact, it’s #freakingfast, the company says.  Right now it’s mostly of value for graphics designers, photographers and videographers who routinely deal with very large files they need to share with co-workers, clients partners and others.

Infusionsoft now has a sync for Gmail. Customer Relationship Software is nothing new for small businesses. Now one company is integrating its CRM platform with email. The combination is meant to seamlessly connect the software you use to keep track of your customers with the service you use most often to communicate day to day.

Publishing

Changes at a major book distributor offer opportunities for small publishers. If youself-publish or are an “indie” publisher, particularly one using print on demand, there may be opportunities opening up to get your titles into brick-and-mortar bookstores. Baker & Taylor, a major distributor, is making some interesting changes.

Amazon introduces a marketplace for fan fiction. The online retailer is creating a new business model in an unusual field. Those interested in writing fiction based on popular TV shows like Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries can now earn some money from their work. Is there a business model here?

Does your small business have an app? A recent presentation at Google’s I/O event revealed the growing market for in-app purchases and subscription business models. Both the Google Play store and Apple Store show impressive revenue growth. Is this an opportunity for your business?

Social Media

Only 2 to 48 percent of what you post on Facebook will be seen by fans. But Mari Smith, who has been dubbed the “Queen of Facebook,” suggests the social networking site is still a great tool to market your small business. To do this most effectively, use what Smith calls the 80/20 rule when posting ontent.

Entrepreneurs can no longer afford to ignore Google Plus. Content marketer Amie Marse shares some interesting stats. Of the world’s 100 top brands, only 72 have Google Plus accounts. Of those, only 40 percent update their account regularly. Here are five reasons Marse says your business should be using the Google social site.

The problem with social media.  In this post, marketer John Follis laments the concerns small businesses have over social media’s effectiveness. But is this the whole story?

Book Reviews

Will your business be part of the revolution? “The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics to Crush The Competition” looks at a new trend. Pierre DeBois reviews the book and gives a look at how gamification is used to engage your company and customers.

Add some guilty pleasures to your summer reading. Business book junkies also read other kinds of books.  Small Business Trends book editor Ivana Taylor shares eight titles you won’t want to leave off your list for reading at the beach or on vacation.  Self help titles abound!!!

Services

TaskRabbit helps businesses find temporary help. Small businesses now have another source for recruiting temporary help. TaskRabbit will expand its services once primarily used by people seeking help for odd jobs.  It will be best for businesses that are looking for local help for simple projects, in our view.  Check out TaskRabbit for Business and determine whether it will help your company.

CorpNet offers to help manage your corporate compliance. Keeping up with state corporate filing requirements can be a challenge. CorpNet just launched a service aimed at helping. The free service can help your business stay up to date — and not incur penalities.

Marketing

Artists market work with Grumpy Cat brand. The Grumpy Cat phenomenon has gone viral on the Web. Now, a group of artists is using it as a method for marketing their work. We’ve included a small sample of Grumpy Cat art for your viewing pleasure.

A recent study shows American products still have appeal. Rieva Lesonky shares details from the Harris Interactive report. The study shows Americans of both genders and all political parties and ages are interested in buying American. If you sell American products, how do you let customers know?

Don’t let celebrities steal your star power on Google. Ann Smarty looks at a unique problem for online reputation management. Smarty makes some suggestions for what to do if you share a name with a celebrity and how it can affect your reputation on Google.

What is a SERP? If your business has an online component, this is something you must understand — especially if you communicate with SEO professionals. The acronym stands for "search engine results page." Find out what it means and why it is important.

Management

Getting things done. In remarks at a recent recent InfusionCon conference, productivity guru David Allen had these tips for getting tasks completed when you have too much on your plate. Get stuff out of your head, and onto paper.

Family leave is a two-edged sword. Rieva Lesonsky looks at the question of whether you should offer family leave in your business. Statistics show dads are far less likely to take the leave, even if it is offered. The question is whether you can afford it if they do.

“The Internship” — lighthearted summer movie about Google and generations. Some complain this movie is a giant product placement for Google. But we think online enthusiasts will be fascinated by this look into the work culture at Google.    Watch the trailer and read the overview.

Entrepreneurship

NFIB says businesses still need more credit. Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, explores what seems an ongoing problem in the small business community. If your business is having similar problems, read on.

CNET co-founder goes bankrupt. The plight of Halsey Minor, co-founder of CNET and an investor in Salesforce.com and a company which became Google Voice, is a cautionary tale. Small Business Trends founder Anita Campbell looks at Halsey’s successes, missteps and what other entrepreneurs can learn.

Bookstore, Shutterstock

The post Top Small Business News Stories for the End of May appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Read a paragraph on analytics or follow an infographic on the challenges of software-as-a-service, and you'll find the term “big data.”  Business models are being upended, thanks to a digital environment related to Big Data.   So what's at stake, especially for small businesses that are discovering as much competitive use of data as larger corporations?

Authors Viktor Mayer-Schroenberger and Kenneth Cukier have set out to answer that and more in Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think.  Mayer-Schroenberger is a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, and author of several books.  His most recent is Delete the Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Cukier is a prominent commentator and the data editor at The Economist.  Both authors have produced numerous writings and articles on the subject of analysis from the perspective of many industries, organizations and situations.

I picked up a copy of this big data book at Barnes and Noble. I wanted to see how well the authors sum up today’s digital data environment.

Adding to the Big Data Discussion in a Simple Way

Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier attempt to simplify the background behind the book's theme. Essentially, Big Data is a perspective on the "datification" of things – processes that can be recorded as data, helping society to understand how data is growing and being collected.  Ten chapters are named with one word titles, such as Now, Correlation and Messy.  These, along with the stories contained within the chapters, are meant to illuminate the impact data has on societal problems and business opportunities.

Data is no longer just to confirm or disprove a hypothesis.  Instead, organizations must accept some messiness with data – i.e. being less concerned about exactness and instead, broadening what events influence causality in an occurrence:

"Big data transforms how we understand and explore the world. In the age of small data, we were driven by hypotheses about how the world worked, which we then attempted to validate by collecting and analyzing data. In the future, our understanding will be driven more by the abundance of data rather than hypotheses."

This “no-more-sample-size” idea is similar to Wired Editor Chris Anderson's assertions about the "end of theory.” In fact, the authors do look at the debate Anderson raised when he declared that hypothesizing and modeling from small data sizes were becoming obsolete.

Other takes on the data revolution include some twists on well known subjects, such as Steve Jobs' choices of treatment for his cancer and Amazon's investment in data to understand customer purchase behavior.  Avid technology readers may have read these examples before, but they may be new to those with cursory familiarity with tech happenings.  There are some interesting data applications, such as Con Edison's effort to prevent exploding manhole cover incidents in New York City, as well as FlyOnTime.us, an open data application.

The enormity of the data created certainly permits new solutions, but it also yields new challenges.  At first blush, small business owners reading this book may feel they will bear the lion's share of challenges (reading the chapter on Amazon may not bring warm and fuzzy memories to local bookstores).

But Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier expect the middle-sized companies to be on the chopping block – either scale by data or staying small and nimble.  Along those lines, the subject matter expert has become less influential in many industries:

"In media, the content that gets created and publicized on websites like Huffington Post, Gawker and Fobres is regularly determined by data, not just the judgement of human editors…. Jeff Bezos got rid of in-house book reviewers at Amazon when the data showed that algorithmic recommendations drove more sales.  This means the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace are changing.”

Small business readers may not feel that the material relates actionable ideas to their environment. The book gives a short historical context to the big data subject, with notes indicating references within the past 10 years or so.  But there's no IT-level discussion on databases and nothing on planning management – at least in relationship to technological features. Readers expecting noSQL vs SQL debates should look elsewhere.

The most thought-provocative perspective the book gives to small business owners is an alert to how the utility of technology has evolved. This differs from any age-old debates on the viability of a technology, a debate that can hinder budget considerations.   Instead of focusing on whether email is better than social media, business strategists should be more alert to trends in their marketing to develop useful associations between a marketing medium and customer response.

It's this kind of thought process Big Data encourages. Thus the book's ultimate value lies in stories told about how organizations are accepting data and modeling solutions that improves operations.

The chapters on Risk and Control take the concepts to further realistic scenarios. These chapters cover the topic of privacy with the latest outlooks and are probably the most actionable in discerning what to do with tech.  Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier outline a definition of profiling vs. selecting suitable predictors of customer behavior. But they take the right step in outlining societal complications, such as "penalties based on propensities", which they call "nauseating."  The authors also note the rise of the algorithmists – professionals with math, science and computer science backgrounds to help assure accountability for the very systems we create:

"We envision algorithmists as providing a market-oriented approach to problems like these that may head off more intrusive forms of regulation…. To ensure that people are protected at the same time as the technology is promoted, we must not let big data develop beyond the reach of human ability to shape the technology."

The authors convey a hopeful tone in their writing, as well as pragmatism tone for potential future outcomes from big data research.

But for today's business climate, reading Big Data will help innovative small businesses to think differently about the causation of human behavior and how that behavior is recorded.  Improving services or unleashing new ones can be better considered.  There are other books that go deeper into the debate about sample size and correlation, but as a primer for business, Big Data works to make a misunderstood topic more understandable.

The post The Revolution with Big Data appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Tumblr has added sponsored posts to its Web dashboard, and not all users are happy. Some are saying “told you so,” believing the move is somehow related to Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr.

In an official post on the Tumblr blog, VP of Sales Lee Brown explained, “Since we launched our first sponsored post on Tumblr Radar one year ago, we've been proud to see our partners bring their most creative work to Tumblr. Their posts have already earned more than 10 million likes and reblogs.”

“Today, we'll start to bring sponsored posts to your Dashboard on the Web. Just like in our mobile apps, these posts will simply blend in with the posts from the blogs you follow,” Brown wrote.

Tumblr sponsored posts will be designated with a little dollar symbol in the upper right hand corner of the post.

The Push to Monetize Tumblr

For the uninitiated … the dashboard is the place you see when you log in to your own Tumblr account. It’s where you see posts of those you follow, or ones that Tumblr suggests.

In that respect it’s similar to the Twitter stream or the Facebook newsfeed. Inasmuch as sponsored content has infiltrated those areas on Twitter and Facebook, it’s hardly surprising that Tumblr has followed suit.

Nor is the concept of sponsored posts new to Tumblr. This recent announcement is merely an expansion of the number of places where you will see sponsored posts. As Lee noted, the platform launched its first sponsored posts a year ago on Tumblr Radar, which is the company’s Tumblr account.

In the Small Business Trends Tumblr dashboard we already see small sponsored ads from the Radar blog, on the right siderail (see image above with red arrows pointing to a sponsored message). We did not show you the new sponsored posts in the main column — simply because we have yet to see any in our dashboard stream.

This move would expand sponsored posts to appear not just on the siderail, but also in the main column mixed in with other posts of Tumblr blogs you follow.

This is in addition to sponsored posts that Tumblr introduced to its mobile app last month.

Reaction to Tumblr Sponsored Posts

TechCrunch reports that Tumblr founder David Karp had always planned to use sponsored posts to eventually monetize the site.

Nevertheless, some users blamed the change on the recent announcement that Yahoo would be acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 Billion.

Others seemed simply not to care:

The post Tumblr Introduces Sponsored Posts to Dashboard, Some Users Complain appeared first on Small Business Trends.

What is a database? A database is an organized collection of information. Small businesses can use databases in a number of different ways. A database can help you organize information about your customers and clients. A database can contain information about your product inventory. A database can track sales, expenses and other financial information.

What is a database NOT?

The purpose of a database is to help your business stay organized and keep information easily accessible. But it isn't a magic solution to all your data concerns.

First, you need to collect and input the data into a database.

Second, you need to organize and extract information from a database so that it is usable.

For that you typically need a software program to help organize data, extract it, move it, and use it.

Database Versus Spreadsheet

A lot of small businesses are heavy users of Microsoft Excel or Google spreadsheets.  A spreadsheet may seem similar to a database.  But a spreadsheet is not nearly as powerful as a database for large volumes of information.  Also, getting information into and out of spreadsheets can be clunky.  You may have to do a lot of manual data entry. And you can’t easily manipulate the data — i.e., analyze it, move it into other applications, or run reports with it.

Databases can make your organization much more efficient and give management valuable insights.  They help make sense of your information. They can help you make your products and services more valuable. They can help you sell more.

For example, if you own an online store, you could use a database for your website to keep track of customer data, purchases, prices, and other information. This can be transferred directly into your accounting system — saving you the time to collect the data, find the corresponding spreadsheet, and input the data yourself.  With sophisticated software, this data could be used on the fly to make suggestions for additional purchases.  The data can also help you manage inventory levels, to know when inventory is getting low or when something is out of stock.

Databases for Non-Technical Business People

For small business owners and non-IT staff, databases really need to be wrapped up in a software program to be useful.  Unless we are in technology roles, most of us won’t be coding and tapping directly into a MySQL database.

Online software services we use today have some kind of database built into them. An accounting software program or an ecommerce application, will have a database inside it. That’s great if you need a standard accounting program or ecommerce store.

But what about the parts of your business with unique workflows?  Or processes that are unique to your business?

That’s where non-technical database applications come in today.  With one of the business-friendly databases (sometimes called desktop databases), you can set up and customize a database specific to your business and your workflow — and you don’t need to be a coder.

Microsoft Access is one.   Intuit's QuickBase is another that is reasonably friendly for non-IT staff, and you can even use it to create mobile apps.  Filemaker is a third popular choice, and it’s especially popular for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

These kinds of business-friendly databases can be used to house, track and use data that you might not find an off-the-shelf software program to do.  You can use them to create customized executive dashboards.  But you don’t have to hire a software developer.

Using a desktop database application is like developing custom software applications for your business, without the complexity and programming expense.

Database Photo via Shutterstock

The post What is a Database? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Memorable events don't just happen.  Organizing and holding an event takes planning. Whether it’s a conference, seminar or a customer appreciation day, and whether you have three weeks to plan or an entire year, your event's success is in the details. We’ve collected 42 small business event planning tips from the experts, including some of the organizers of the annual Small Business Influencer Awards.

Small Business Event Planning: What to Do First

1. Decide upon your target audience before anything else.  The first step — before you do anything else — should be to clearly define who your target audience is. From this all the other decisions will fall into place in terms of format, content, prices, location etc. This structured approach will also help you to stay focused on achieving specific goals and not allowing the scope to become too broad or watered down.

2. Make a list of details — everything including lighting and public transportation, to content and refreshments.  When you decide to have an event, everything matters. From program content and lighting to transportation and parking — everything counts. And your audience will attribute everything to you and…your brand.  Making a list will ensure you don’t overlook things.

3. Have a clear business purpose for holding the event.  Before you can begin planning a successful event, be clear on why you are doing it in the first place, because every decision after that should support your main goal. Is it lead generation? Is it to create awareness of your company or a particular product?  Is is to develop customer loyalty? Or do you simply want to make money (which is okay too)?  And make sure the team is aware of the purpose, so that you don’t have “scope creep.”

4. Watch out for other industry events when scheduling.  Check the calendar. Make sure you don't schedule your event on or too close to holidays or popular vacation times. It's just as important to check for other events that your target attendees might be going to.

5. Be flexible with changes in size, location and other details.  As you get into the event planning process, you may find that your event changes in size, location, and many other ways than you originally envisioned. This is natural and perfectly fine as long as you don't lose sight of the reason you're doing all this work in the first place.  Some flexibility is necessary.

6. Know your limitations. We all know the goal is to throw a great live event. To that end, we also have to be aware of what we can or cannot realistically do — be it budget … or time-wise. If you decide to throw a live event in a week's time, plan for a more intimate affair. If it's a big event, prepare several months ahead. If the budget is small, you may have to counterbalance with creativity and a lot of do-it-yourself work.

7. Create SMART goals. Always start with strategy. Just like building any business, great events start with a strong, thoughtful and measurable strategy. Live events are an amazing way to share your brand, connect with your target market, get feedback on your product (and more!), but you need to know what you are trying to achieve. Stick with SMART goals and outline what you are aiming for. Then make sure that you proceed in line with reaching these goals.

Budget: How to Pay For Your Event

8. Develop a “financing plan” for your event, and estimate the numbers. Know how you are going to pay for the event. Most events are funded by sponsorships, ticket sales, internal marketing budgets — or a combination of all three. When you create your budget for the event, you'll need to estimate how much money you can realistically raise from each area. Before you book your venue or sign any contracts, it's a good idea to start signing sponsors first, or selling advance tickets to make sure there is enough interest in your idea to fund it.

9. Create an expense budget  - and save money through “in-kind” sponsor donations.  Events tend to cost more than the average small business owner thinks — primarily in regards to the venue and food and beverage. Remember to price out all the permits and licenses you will need as well. (This is where an event planner can help you avoid headaches.)  Make a comprehensive list of all the expenses and then highlight areas where you think sponsors can play a role to offer something “in kind.” The more you work with other brands and partners to host your events, the more you can save.

10. Consider crowdfunding as a new option to raise money for an event.  If this is your first time running events, use crowdfunding platforms to ease the risk. By publishing your events on these platforms attendees will need to pledge for tickets for the event to take place. If the minimum number of attendees required is not met the event does not take place.

Marketing: Getting People to Attend

11. You’ll need a DETAILED marketing plan. Create a marketing plan for the event. The more organized you are, the more professional your event will be.

12. Be tireless in your efforts or your event will fail.  If you don't want to be at your event alone … then market, market, market, market … and market some more.

13. Define good reason(s) for people to show up.  What's the draw for attendees? You need to define WHAT you're doing at the event that will bring those target attendees in the door. For a consumer product it might be a party with entertainment and product demos and freebies. For a business crowd it might be educational content or an exciting, well-known expert speaker. Whatever it is, don't lose the connection with why you want this particular audience clamoring to get in.

14. Lay out in writing why your target market should attend – don’t assume the benefits are obvious. When promoting an event be sure to tell your target market what they will learn, who they will meet and why they should be there. Don't assume your friends will tell their friends. If you are using speakers, give them advertising copy so that they can promote the event to their audiences.

15. Learn how to talk to the media. Journalists are very busy and always on deadline … they don't have time to hear a sales pitch. Let them know that the information exists and — for future stories — that you are an expert in that field. Include that information when you reach out.

16. Use Twitter hashtags. Twitter is terrific for promoting events and for creating a sense of online community around an event. Set up a unique hashtag early on. Search Twitter first to make sure it’s not already in use. Put the hashtag right on the event website, and if you use the Tweet button for sharing on the site, work the hashtag right into the premade verbiage. When people tweet, it promotes the event automatically on Twitter.

17. Use online social pre-events to promote the main event.  To build interest in your event, trying holding a Google Hangout or a Twitter chat a few weeks before the main event. Invite a few of your speakers to participate in the online social event. Give a preview of what’s to come at the main event, by doing some discussion of what speakers will cover, or highlight the activities. It generates anticipation.

18. Buy advertising on social media networks.   Buying advertising on social networks is often overlooked by small events. Social advertising platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter above all) offer in depth targeting options that can significantly help to reach our target audience in our geographical location. The good news is that no large budgets are required and ticket sales can be easily measured.

19. Use YouTube to promote your event. YouTube is the second search engine worldwide after Google. Uploading videos from our previous events or interviews with our speakers/performers is a great way to convince prospective attendees to click on buy. Video provides significant visual cues thus impacting heavily on our decision making process. With events we always feel the risk of not knowing what will happen, video eases that tension.

20. Create an awesome low-budget promotional video. A little creativity with some poster board, a royalty-free music clip, and a good smartphone video camera will create a fun video to help publicize what’s to come.  Here’s a good video example, that did just that on a shoestring budget, to promote a small business event.

21. Get local bloggers involved.  Be smart with bloggers. Involving local bloggers to participate at the event is usually a great strategy to gain audience before, during and after the event. Bloggers usually count on a wide reach and do not usually follow traditional media rules.

22. Leverage event registration platforms like Meetup. Use existing platforms. If this is your first attempt at running an event and you lack the skills to promote it, have a look at Meetup.com. Other than offering a suite to manage events online, Meetup is a great referrer for relevant audience in your area. It also features registration and RSVP management capabilities that are particularly handy if you are inexperienced.

23. Use online registration. The easier way to scare people away is by having analog registration (faxes, bank draft or at the door only). Offer online registration to secure as many attendees as soon as possible, that will help to forecast numbers and release budget soon.

24. Get listed on sites catering to your group. Once you know who you want to attend, the next step is to put yourself in front of them. There are websites that specialize in listing events nationally (e.g. Meetup, Lanyrd) and locally so start there and research which are the most appropriate to get listed on.

25. Offer local partners incentives to promote you. Press releases sent to the relevant media outlets will help generate news buzz and you could look at getting media (online and offline) involved as partners. They get exposure at your event in return for publicizing it. If they don't want to get involved at that level, approach them with the idea of running a competition for their readers to win tickets.

26. Make it easy on your speakers to publicize to their followers. If you have any experts/speakers attending,  encourage them to publicize their attendance to their social media followers/email subscribers.

27. Give early bird incentives. Early bird tickets at a cheaper rate are a great way to get early sign ups by giving people an incentive to act now rather than wait and forget.

Team: Who Is Going to Help?

28. Delegate responsibilities.  No matter the size of your business, always try to delegate responsibilities. Having one person in charge of every detail typically doesn't work out well. Whenever possible, let people take control of the areas they most enjoy. For example, let the foodie in your company handle the catering details. The more someone enjoys their responsibilities, the more likely they will carry them out with success.

29. Follow up – and follow up again.  Check in early and often. Though no one wants to be micromanaged, make sure that employees and vendors are on track with their event duties. As long as people know you expect updates from time to time, they are less likely to become frustrated when you call or email for one.

30. Sponsors are royalty – make sure they feel like it.  If you have sponsors — treat them like kings. They fund your event and enable you to do it (if that's your business model). Be very clear before the event what they will get as sponsors.

31. Always underestimate turnout, for sponsors. If you think you can get 100 attendees, base your sponsorship pitch on a lower estimate — especially if this is your first event. It's better to give sponsors a pleasant surprise than a disappointing one.

32. Ask people what they think, and be ready for feedback good or bad. Ask for critiques. If you've done half a decent job, you'll get lots of kudos. Say thanks, but then ask for the CRITIQUE and be ready for it.

33. Have a skilled social media team cover your event.  Don’t forget a social media team. While not imperative for every event or industry, more and more events are focusing on harnessing the viral power of their audience. If your audience is tweeting, Facebooking and taking pictures on Instagram — you should be doing the same and you will need a trained team to execute.

34. Look for vendors who serve your niche and are willing to get involved. The best vendors you can work with are those who are familiar with small business culture. Look for vendors who work with small businesses frequently or who would get involved on a bigger level than their role.

Event Day:  Pulling It Off

35. Set expectations carefully – then deliver. Ensure that the audience has a GREAT (not good) experience; and that you give them what they expected from attending.

36. Attitude is contagious.  Your guests in large part will play off your attitude and dynamics during the event. Lead by example and have a good time.

37. Let crowd reaction be your barometer.  Read the audience during the event. Ask people how they are doing. If things are going great, and if they are not, you'll know.

38. Always ask yourself: How is this relevant to attendees?  Make sure you are offering content that is relevant to over 80% of the audience. The audience must walk away with tangible tactics to improve their business and career … and they must feel the speaker's energy. Speaking about your business and what you do — without offering the audience what THEY need — is a waste of time and money for all.

39. As the master of ceremonies or a speaker – practice.  You know your business, but do not assume that you know how to put on a presentation. Practice giving your presentation, answering questions and handling difficult and confrontational members of the audience. The more prepared you are the better.

40. Look your best. Look the part… be comfortable but fashion forward. Even if you are an accountant or lawyer, choose your most distinctive suit or tie. People remember how comfortable you are in your own skin.

Contingency Plan: What to Do When Things Go Wrong

41.  Imagine the event, step by step, and make a 2-column list: what could go wrong in one column, and your contingency plan in the second.  Be prepared for the unexpected. Maybe the sound system fails. Maybe your keynote presenter bails. Can you cope and move on?

42. Be ready to lend a hand to fill any gaps. Although planning ahead is a great formula for success, it is never enough. Something unexpected always comes up. Thus, it pays to put in a little extra elbow grease for extenuating circumstances. This applies to catering arrangements, printing requirements, guest accommodations, weather forecasts, entertainment and more. 

A big thanks to the experts contributing to the above small business event planning tips:

— Matt Telfer, Marketing Manager for Heart Internet and blogger at Marketing Nerd  Tips 1, 24, 25, 26, 27

— Beth Silver, Managing Director, Doubet Consulting Tips 2, 11, 14, 15, 38, 39, 40

— Laura Leites, Event Planner and Owner, L2 Event Production Tips 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 31

— Joy Go, Internet Marketing and Affiliate Program Manager, Day 2 Day Printing Tips 6, 28, 29, 36, 42

— Liz King, CEO, Chief Event Specialist, Liz King Events Tips 7, 9, 33, 34

— Julius Solaris, event industry speaker and editor of Event Manager Blog Tips 10, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23

— Ramon Ray, Technology Evangelist and Editor of Small Biz Technology Tips 12, 30, 32, 35, 37, 41

— Anita Campbell, Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends Tips 16, 17, 20 

Shutterstock:  Plan, Budget, Empty,  Banquet, Team, Embarrassed

The post 42 Tips For Producing A Memorable Small Business Event appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The weather is finally warm enough to where I've created my outdoor patio space.  And that means that it's summer reading time!  A cool drink, my feet up and I'm going to be reading these books all summer long.  The Small Business Trends Book Review team has already read and reviewed some of them and others are currently on our reading list.

So take a look at these short write-ups and see if they belong on your summer business book list as well.

I was lucky enough to see Dan Heath (@Heathbrothers) speak about the insightful and simple decision making process that anyone can use for both personal and business decisions.  In fact, that's where I got my copy of this book.

Like their previous books; Made to Stick and Switch, Decisive is written in an engaging style that's easy to read. Decisive is loaded with lots of wonderful examples of familiar brands and how they made both good and bad decisions.  Here's a teaser – Remember the old story about David Lee Roth and his insane request for having all the brown M&Ms removed?  It's true.

But you'll want to read the book to find out the method behind the madness.

An enthusiastic referral from a fellow business book junkie convinced me to buy this book by Jonah Berger (@J1Berger) and I have been referring it to anyone who asked me about how to generate word-of-mouth for their business.

This is a fabulous summer read because it has all the ingredients – fun stories about brands you've heard of and other small businesses that have creatively tripped the triggers that make us want to share and spread the word about businesses and products we love.

Brian Solis (@BrianSolis) is at it again.  The Future of Business is the ideal summer read because it's what I call a "thinking book."  This is a beautiful hardbound book with plenty of full-color graphics that illustrate Solis' points about the ongoing and increasing importance of creating meaningful experiences for your customers that gets them hooked and keeps them coming back for more.

Here are just a few of the points you'll ponder: Why experiences matter to your nosiness, what's the importance of brand in a world of "Digital Darwinism" and how to marry customer experience with leadership.

Definitely a book loaded with big thoughts for small business.

Rock Your Business: What You and Your Company Can Learn from the Business of Rock and Roll
by David Fishof and Michael Levin

What's summer without Rock 'n' Roll?  I'm not even going to contemplate it.  Instead, I'm going to sit down and read my review copy of Rock Your Business.  David Fishof (@DFishof) is the Founder of the Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camps that have been a huge hit with music fans who dream of getting on stage with their favorite rock stars.

In this hot summer read, you'll pick up the strategies that rock stars use to launch them from garage band to household name.  Rock Your Business covers all the business basics, from how to create a business plan to writing out the perfect pitch.

What can be better than using your love of rock and roll to grow your business?

Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business 
by Pamela Ryckman

If you're a guy, you're probably thinking about passing on this book.  I can respect that.  But Stiletto Network brings to light a very interesting trend; women collaborating, working together and leveraging their collective wisdom to succeed both individually and together.

I'm not at all prudish, but I have to admit that some of these women's networking group names really piqued my interest; "Power Bitches," "Brazen Hussies," and "S.L.U.T.S (Successful Ladies Under Tremendous Pressure).  With names like that, can you really afford to ignore their impact on small business?

Pamela Rykman (@PamelaRykman) is a New York Times author.  So you know the writing is good and engaging.  If you're a woman business owner, you might be inspired to start your own brain trust.  And the guys will certainly get a peek inside what my husband likes to call "The Women's Mysteries" – of business.

Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs 
by Larry Keeley, Helen Walters, Ryan Pikkel and Brian Quinn

This is yet another beautifully designed book, full of colorful graphics that enhance the content and make it a lot easier to read and understand.  I really love the principle of this book that innovation and success happen by design.

The authors, who are highly qualified strategists, prove their knowledge inside the pages of this book.  Innovation is a complex topic and the text and graphics guide the reader through the authors process rather effortlessly.

This is a highly heady topic brought down to earth in manageable, understandable and doable chunks.

Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals 
by Corey Sommers and David Jenkins

How many times have you heard that PowerPoint is "out?"  Whiteboard Selling is saying exactly that, but not because PowerPoint is bad, but because PowerPoint can disconnect you from engaging with your customers.

The authors point out how powerful standing in front of a whiteboard can be in building the relationship between salesperson and customer.  More importantly than the message, however, is the fact that this book also offers mini tutorials and training on how to use the whiteboard in a variety of selling situations to pull out specific customer needs.

I received a review copy of this book but would have bought it on my own.  In fact, if you're a fan of Back of the Napkin  and Blah Blah, Blah, this is a book you'll want to read as well.

There you have my summer business book reading list.  What's on your reading list this summer?

The post 7 Best Business Books for Summer Reading appeared first on Small Business Trends.

A recent survey shows 39 percent of small businesses are now seeing a return on investment from their social media use. The survey also shows that almost half (49 percent) of the more than 1,200 businesses surveyed by Manta increased their time spent with social media in the first quarter of 2013.

Despite this, the mainstream media continues to focus on the 61 percent of businesses that have seen no return on their social media activities.

If you’re in this second group, experts and social media marketers say there could be many reasons why. Below are 10 possibilities.

10 Reasons Social Media Is Not Working for You

You’ve Got Other Problems in Your Business- Inc.com

Some companies complain because many of their social media comments are negative. But Carrie Kerpen, co-founder and CEO of Likeable Media, argues there may be a good reason for that. Social media acts like a mirror reflecting back your company’s image as customers see you. If you don’t like what you see, change the things your business does that create that image.

You’re Not Using Social Sites Effectively- Socialized Communications

For example, Shane Gibson insists LinkedIn alone includes over 200 million professional listings, including every Fortune 500 company and government organization. You should be using this social network to grow your business through increased sales and customer retention. If you aren’t doing so yet, Gibson and his team have put together a step-by-step video to show you how.

You’re Not Using Social Media to Forge Connections- Blondish.net

Web designer Nile Flores of Centralia, Illinois, argues social media is not always just about making sales. Sometimes it is about forging connections with others who have an interest in what you do. For example, building a relationship with others online who find you trustworthy can boost your reputation. And connecting with other business owners who offer services that compliment yours can lead to profitable partnerships.

You’re Ignoring the Facebook 80/20 Rule- Small Business Trends

One of the most popular social media networks online is also one of the most misunderstood, at least by small businesses. Mari Smith, often called the “Queen of Facebook” has this simple advice – always use the 80/20 rule when engaging with your audience. This means 80 percent of the time sharing a mix of other people’s and your own content with no sales agenda. Then spend just 20 percent of your time asking for the sale or lead.

You’re Not Measuring ROI to Find Out What Works- Urooj Kazi

Even though you may not use social media primarily for sales, it’s true some businesses do. If you want to figure out the return on a sponsored Facebook post, for example, there are some easy ways to do it. Business writer Kazi has some simple suggestions to measure and gauge response.

You’re Getting Distracted by the Metrics- Easy M6

Social media sites from Facebook to Twitter provide huge amounts of metrics that can prove quite helpful when measuring response to your social media efforts. But Lithuanian blogger Liudas Butkus recommends avoiding too much preoccupation with these metrics. The real question is whether your social media sites are driving traffic to your website, resulting in sales.

You’re Not Answering the Right Questions- SteamFeed

If you’re new to social media marketing, there’s no need to go it alone. There’s plenty of experience out there to draw from, so start by looking at what’s worked for others. DJ Thistle shares this post with responses from top social media marketers in his community to some of the most often asked questions. Check out the post and see if yours are answered here.

You’re Not Being Consistent Enough- Jenn’s Trends

If content is king, consistency is queen, says marketing expert Jenn Herman. Consistency will increase the effectiveness of your social media efforts. But how do you develop that consistency with so many other things that need doing in your business? It may be a challenge, but Herman suggests five tips for becoming more consistent in your social media efforts.

You’re Not Focusing on the Right Tools- Idea Sprouts

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Some will provide better results for your business than others. In this post, social media marketer Allison Semancik makes the case for Pinterest. Semancik insists the social site known for its highly visual content is responsible for 28 percent of the leads she has received through social media. Take a look at the overall breakdown.

You’re Not Tailoring Your Message for Your Audience- SearchBlogger

It may make sense to broadcast the same content over all the social platforms where you have a presence. Sharing the same content over multiple channels assures it is seen by all, builds momentum on all your channels and maximizes the use of content it may have taken you time and effort to create. The downside, says blogger Jamie Fairbairn, is that you annoy your followers and aren’t really tailoring your message to the very different audiences of each community.

Social Media Photo via Shutterstock

The post 10 Reasons Social Media Isn’t Working for You appeared first on Small Business Trends.

We love our smartphones, laptops and tablets but while new technology is thrilling for consumers, it presents new challenges for brands. In the early days of online marketing, you could simply set up a website and frame your content in any way you wanted.

Now that Internet users are going mobile and have their own customization options, chances are that they won't stumble across your site on their own. This is why it's so important for brands to invest their content on a variety of social platforms. You need to be able to push your content around without having it tied down to your domain.

Consider how Internet users spend their time:

• 22 percent on social media
• 21 percent on searches
• 20 percent browsing content
• 19 percent reading emails
• 13 percent multimedia sites
• 5 percent online shopping

With user attention diversified through so many platforms, doesn’t it make sense to diversify your content as well? Unfortunately, posting content to a variety of platforms takes time and strategic planning. To alleviate this problem, many brands rely on auto-content posting to automate their social media.

But did you know that using auto-content could decrease your social media likes by up to 70 percent? Also, consider the fact that the ratio of social media views to shares is 9 to 1. When all statistics are considered, social media marketing isn’t going to become any easier as users continue splintering into different niches.

This is why brands must focus their efforts on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. While Internet users are continuously browsing the Web wherever they want, social media platforms unite users onto a single stage.

And yes, social media marketing is extremely effective:

• 77 percent of business-to-consumer companies have earned new customers through their Facebook presence.
• 43 percent of business-to-business companies have earned business through Facebook.
• 34 percent of businesses testify that they’ve generated leads through Twitter.

What Does This Mean?

With audiences splintering into specific niches online, we know that social media marketing is the best way to reach a mass of consumers. However, with so many social media platforms, it's tempting to automate social media marketing to save time and post on more sites. But this is the worst strategy possible.

Instead of auto-content posting, brands should use custom social media campaigns. By targeting users specific to Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, you are maximizing the effectiveness of your content. Not only do you see a greater ROI (return on investment), you also create a stronger presence for your business online.

Yes, customized content requires more time or even a financial investment, but it works. Research has shown that posts that are more interesting and that are clearly customized increase exposure to both the post and the page. Remember that using creative, custom content for social media marketing results in:

• Customer engagement
• Increased reach
• Trust
• Higher traffic
• Sales

The post Why Every Brand Needs Custom Social Media Marketing appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Samsung, which is known for its large smartphones, is now going smaller.  Samsung is expected to launch a lower end — and smaller — version of its Galaxy S4 smartphone in June.

Aptly called the Galaxy S4 Mini, the new phone is also expected to be cheaper than the $649.99 retail price.

Details have emerged about the new Galaxy S4 Mini phone in recent days.  BGR India reports on some of the technical specs of the new phone.  CNET provides a side by side comparison with the Galaxy S4 Mini.

The image above is the best way to understand the size of the new mini phone. Ut will be 4.91 by 2.41 inches and have a 4.3-inch display screen.

Internally too, the Galaxy S4 Mini will possess slightly less punch, with a 1.7 GHz dual-core processor compared to the 1.9 GHz quad-core of its big brother, and about 8GB of capacity and 1.5GB RAM compared to the 16 to 64 GB of capacity and 2GB RAM of the larger phone. But other features on the phone are comparable, with memory on both devices expandable up to 64 GB.

If you’re interested in photo and video capabilities, the new Galaxy S4 Mini features an 8-megapixel rear camera compared to the 13-megapixel camera with HD quality video of the larger phone. The front facing camera is 1.9 megapixels, not too much of a downgrade from the 2 megapixels of the front facing camera for the Galaxy S4.

The camera is expected to be a less costly option for users who want a slightly smaller smartphone and don’t mind the slightly lower capacity.

See an overview and comparison of the Galaxy S4 Mini with other Samsung models in the video below from Three.

The post Samsung Goes Smaller, With the Galaxy S4 Mini appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Many small businesses are finally beginning to master using the anchor tag (a clickable link that takes you directly to a specific area of a page). This is a great way to improve navigation and give credit to outside sources that you quote in your content, not to mention the SEO benefits.

How the Anchor Tag Works

The anchor tag is essentially a tag that you can attach to a word or a phrase (exactly like you would a normal internal or external link), except it brings readers down to a different section of the page as opposed to another webpage. You're essentially creating a unique URL within the same page when you use this tag. Consider the following example:

If you click on any of the headings in the "contents" box, it will jump you right down to that section without you ever having to leave the page or scroll down to find it.

The Benefits of Using the Anchor Tag

There are really three main benefits when it comes to using the anchor tag:

1. No Scrolling. The biggest benefit to the anchor tag is not forcing your visitors to scroll down tons of information to find a particular section. This can get daunting, and depending on just how much content is on the page, it can be very difficult to find a certain section amidst all the content.
2. Organization. This helps webmasters keep things in order. Instead of having to create several different webpages or splitting up a document, you can keep it all in one place.
3. Search Engine Use. Google sometimes uses this tag to help send a user to a specific section of your webpage, which helps make things easier for users. This isn't overly common, but Ann Smarty of My Blog Guest offered the following screenshot as an example on SEOChat:

The name anchor works great if you're publishing a tutorial, a study or anything with a fairly large table of contents. Wikipedia is a great place to find examples of the anchor tag in use.

How to Get Started Using the Anchor Tag

Fortunately, using the anchor tag is actually very simple. It's all about using a series of different HTML codes which might remind you of the normal HTML linking tag you're used to using. The steps are as follows:

1. Open your text editor and figure out where you want to insert the name anchor tag. You can do this anywhere—a heading (most common), a word, a phrase, etc.
2. Insert the anchor tag around the text you're going to link (the same way you would any type of link). The code looks like this:

<a name="title of the section"></a>

1. Once you have created the anchor tag around the word, phrase, or heading that you would like, you will want to link to this URL in your content. The tag is similar to the coding you're used to, except it is preceded by a # sign. You should open the HTML version of your content and insert the following tag:

<a href="#title of the section">text</a>

The anchor tag isn't quite as popular as many other types of linking and is easy to miss if you're a startup, but it's a great way to help keep things easy for your visitor. It's easy to implement and it's never too late to get started.

Have you used the anchor tag in the past? Did you find it successful?

Photo Credit: the-seo-site.com

The post What is the Anchor Tag and When Should You Use it? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Freelancer.com, a site for outsourcing projects, allows businesses to post contests to get freelancers to compete for design projects.  And now, it’s no longer limiting contests just to design projects — you can post a contest for programmers, writers, mobile app developers, and more.

On the Freelancer.com contest page you can now create contests for categories like “websites IT and software,” “mobile,” “writing,” “data entry,” “product sourcing and manufacturing,” “sales and marketing,” and “business, accounting and legal.”

This means that if you need a piece of software code written or some articles written, you can establish a contest and see which freelancer does the best job.

To set up a contest, you fill out an online form and set a “prize” for the end project.  Prizes for design contests can start as low as $30 and average around $500.

For example, small business owner Justin Lang, of Caringbah, Sydney, created a contest using Freelancer.com that allowed him to select from over 900 designs.

“Not only was the contest useful for getting a great logo but I was able to make contact and sort through hundreds of freelancers for projects that I will do in the future,” Lang was quoted as saying in a prepared company release.

Of course, those who compete in the contests are often small business people, too. They are generally freelancers attempting to win jobs, clients and perhaps long-term business relationships with the sponsors.

Best Practices for Freelance Contests

Contests like the ones hosted by Freelancer.com and competing sites are controversial.  Graphic designers and other freelancers whose businesses are dependent upon getting paid for completed work, sometimes view contests as doing work on spec.

A post from Creative Bloq looks at the concern that some contests are nothing more than spec work. Freelancers can spend a lot of time on spec work, but unless they win the contest, they’ve spent their time on non-income producing work. Since most freelancers are one-man operations, that limits the time left for paid work.

Another post at Freelance Switch explores which of these contests represent a legitimate opportunity to showcase abilities versus spec work. To avoid doing spec work, Thursday Bram writes that contests should involve a pitch and perhaps a portion of sample work, along with the promise of pay for any future stages of the project.

For small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to find a freelancer through a contest, keep in mind what’s reasonable to expect from the freelancer.  For large projects, such as writing every page of your entire website’s copy, you may want to structure your contest to ask for a sample of 2 or 3 pages.  Attach a small prize to the sample.  Then you and the prize winner can outline a follow-on project for writing the rest of the pages.

Contests have become popular for straight-forward design projects. It remains to be seen how well the contest model works for larger or multi-phase types of projects.

The post Freelancer.com Expands Contests To Let You Find Writers, Programmers, More appeared first on Small Business Trends.

To obtain the capital they need to finance their business operations, some micro-business owners tap the equity in their homes by drawing on home equity lines of credit. But in recent years, this strategy has become more difficult for business owners, as banks have cut back on home equity lending.

Seventeen percent of businesses with less than $100,000 in sales use home equity lines of credit for business purposes, Barlow Research's October 2012 Small Office/Home Office Opportunity study – a random sample of 100,000 small businesses with less than $100,000 in sales listed in Dun and Bradstreet – reveals.

That's surprisingly high. The Federal Reserve's 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances reveals, that 18 percent of the self-employed don't own their own homes, so they can't get home equity lines of credit. The National Federation Independent Business's 2011 Annual Finance Survey shows that only 44 percent of businesses with fewer than 20 employees have a line of credit, whether drawn on their home or otherwise. Together these numbers suggest that just under half (47 percent) of micro business owners with homes and lines of credit made use of home equity to get the credit line.

In absolute terms, a lot of micro enterprises use home equity lines of credit for business purposes. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that there were approximately 25 million businesses with less than $100,000 in revenue in operation in the United States in 2008, the latest year data are available. Given Barlow Research's estimate of the fraction with home equity lines of credit used for business purposes, that translates to more than 4 million micro business owners.

These 4 million business owners have had a tough time with their financing strategy in recent years because of the declining home equity loan market. According to the Federal Reserve of New York's Quarterly Report on Household Credit, the number of home equity lines of credit fell from 23.9 to 18.7 million between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2012. Moreover, the amount of credit available on home equity lines of credit declined 39.3, and the balance on these loans 24.1 percent, percent in inflation adjusted terms, over the same period.

As I have argued before, small business credit markets are linked with the housing market. During the housing market boom, micro business owners had an easier time getting credit for their companies because they could tap rising home equity levels. Since housing prices have deflated, however, and banks have cut back on home equity loans, microbusiness owners who used home equity to finance operations have found credit more difficult to get. If policy makers want to help ensure that microbusiness owners have access to sufficient credit, then they need to keep a careful watch on the housing market.

Home Loan Photo via Shutterstock

The post The Micro Business Home Equity Loan Crunch appeared first on Small Business Trends.

After women joined the employed, they had two choices – to stay at home and manage their families or to become part of the workforce and manage their jobs. Things have undergone a significant change and nowadays, women are increasingly choosing the third path – staying at home and managing their work independently.

Women entrepreneurs – the concept is nothing new. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the first woman to be inducted into South Carolina’s Business Hall of Fame, took over the management of her father's plantations as early as 1739, where she developed indigo as one of its most important cash crops. And today, there are a dearth of women led businesses.

What prompts a woman to take up the challenge of becoming a successful entrepreneur? The main reason is the flexibility that being your own boss offers. Below I have shared a few tips for today’s women entrepreneurs.

10 Tips for Women Entrepreneurs to Stay on Track

Take Up Something You Have a Passion For

Even the best idea cannot translate into a successful business if you are not passionate about it. You need to focus on the area of work you love as only then will you put in the required effort to build a business based on it. If you do not have an interest in designer wear, it is a bad idea to start a haute couture business.

Trust Your Instincts

Facts and stats may help you prepare the groundwork. But they may not work at every step. It is a good idea to rely on your instincts at times and many successful entrepreneurs, male and female, can vouch for this. This does not mean that you ignore all of the feedback you receive. Remain open-minded to positive opinions as well as the negative ones.

Prepare a Business Plan

A sailor is lost without a map. Similarly, an entrepreneur is lost without a business plan. If you do not have a business plan yet, it is high time to create one. It will set the steps you need to follow to succeed. It will also convince investors that you are serious about your endeavor.

Hoard the Cash

Life is not a bed of roses and neither is business. Keep in mind, there will be ups and downs from day one. It is important to accumulate as much cash as possible before you take the first step. You will need it to keep you and your business afloat for a while once you enter the world of the self-employed.

Learn as Much as Possible About Finances

It is always best to hire an accountant to work with you when you first start a business, man or woman. It is also important to learn about taxes and related matters to ensure that they do not become a problem for you later on down the line.

Know Your Target Customers

Who do you target to sell to? For example, if you are into haute couture, you need to focus on the modern day fashion conscious female. Create contacts and conduct surveys to know all that you need to know about your customers. This will help you learn to address their needs/wants and provide suitable products/services.

Build Relationships with Outsourcing Partners

For a majority of new entrepreneurs, it may be best to outsource the tasks that take up too much time and effort and yet, are not related to your core business area. Keep in mind that the providers are your partners; they work with you, not for you.

Set Realistic Goals

If you think that you are going to earn profits within a week of starting a business, you are not on track. Many times, new businesses take months or even years to get back the cash originally invested. Take one step at a time and set achievable goals. Nothing beats hard work.

Be Helpful

The best and easiest way to get help from others is to help them first. A business is as much about value creation as it is about profits. Contribute in any way you can. Introduce people to each other, create write-ups, suggest important events and do everything to extend help.

Most Importantly – Believe in Yourself

There is no secret to success for the self-employed. The only thing that works is a good combination of planning and hard work. Whatever you do, don't give up. A business can experience highs and lows. Just don't let them discourage you into quitting.

A woman has the best chances of success as an entrepreneur if she knows how to create the right balance. It is necessary to plan well and involve people who will be honest and supportive throughout the ups and downs of your new business.

Track Photo via Shutterstock

The post 10 Tips for Women Entrepreneurs to Stay on Track appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Internet Explorer remains the dominant Internet browser among its competitors like Firefox, Chrome and Safari — at least according to one measure.  And IE’s market share continues to grow.

In May, Internet Explorer (IE) gained slightly, and now has almost 56 percent of market share, according to the latest data from Net Applications, which tracks page views on Web browsers worldwide.

By comparison, Firefox and Google Chrome released new versions in the last month, but each still lags far behind Internet Explorer. Firefox was able to chip away somewhat at IE’s market dominance and at the same time, distance itself from Chrome.

Firefox is the second choice, with about 21 percent of all users. Chrome comes in third at nearly 16 percent. Safari is the leading Mac browser at just under 6 percent of the overall market.

However, not everyone agrees with the Net Application numbers.

One major service, StatCounter, lists Chrome as the most popular browser. StatCounter’s breakdown of browser market share is: Chrome at 41  percent, IE at about 28  percent, Firefox at about 20 percent and Safari at around 8 percent.

The difference is in where the two services get their data, and how they count it.  As The Next Web notes, Net Applications counts unique users,  whereas StatCounter counts page views, for determining browser share:

“Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month. The service monitors some 40,000 Web sites for its clients.  StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than page views.”

Wikipedia has more on competing browser market share numbers, for those who need a statistics fix.

So what can you do with this information?  Keep it in mind for purposes of your website design.  Validate that your website or Web application is properly viewable in the most popular browsers, especially recent versions.

Cross check  against your own website analytics, too.  Individual audiences may vary.  If the vast majority of your Web visitors use Chrome, for instance, it would be foolish not to have an optimized experience for them in Chrome.

Internet Photo via Shutterstock

The post Internet Explorer Remains Dominant Browser appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Twitter was the first social media network that made influencers more reachable. It has never been easier to pitch to someone who can make an impact (and thus become influential as well). Knowing who influences your potential customers and winning their trust is gold… yet it’s not easy.

The first step in influencer marketing is identifying those influential people who are already interacting with you: Those are your most effective targets because you have already managed to get their attention.

Below are 7 free tools I am using to interact with influencers who know me or are familiar with what I do.

Find Twitter Influencers Interacting with Your Content

1. Who Tweeted Me

Influence measure: Number of followers

Who Tweeted Me is a new tool from Hubspot that finds all people who tweeted your pages and sorts them by number of followers. You can thank them with one click as well:

2. Topsy

Influence measure: Topsy influence

Topsy is another good tool to try here especially since its browser bookmarklet has made it so easy to get the data: Topsy Trackbacks (to install, simply drag it to your browser bookmarks toolbar) – simply click it when you are reading the page you want to analyze and you’ll be taken to Topsy results. Now scroll through results until you see “Influential” or “Highly Influential” flags:

Find Twitter Influencers Interacting with You

3. Commun.it

Influence measure: Ratio of followers / following

Commun.it is an absolutely awesome tool for keeping track of Twitter users who have recently interacted with you:

• You will see the list of *recent* interactions with Twitter influencers.
• You will be able to see if you interacted back (track “unreplied status”).
• You will see if you follow that Twitter influencer.
• You will be able to load more information on each Twitter influencer in the next column.
• You can rate results by “Highest rating” to see MOST influential users who have ever interacted with you.
• You will be able to see how much impact each of the influencer’s tweets made (number “interactions” of the tweet = replies + retweets).

That’s one of the most robust influencer-management Twitter tools I have ever used.

4. Klout

Influence measure: Klout score

New Klout“Moments” feature is another interactions manager you need to look into. You can control which “Klout” score users who have recently interacted with you have.

You can interact with your influencer’s interactions (I know that sounds funny, by the way) by replying (e.g. to thank) and retweeting right from the Klout page:

5. Kred

Influence measure: Kred score

Kred is another free tool that will list your recent interactions and sort them by its own score called “Kred.” To thank users you can “Kred” them:

Find Twitter Influencers Following You

6. Friend or Follow

Influence measure: Number of followers

Friend or Follow is an interesting tool that, among other features, grabs all your “fans” (people who follow you but who you are not following back) and sorts by the number of followers. You can follow them back right from that page as well:

I like it that it shows “verified icon” overlaying the Twitter avatar which makes it easier to find “real” influencers following you.

7. Fruji

Influence measure: Number of followers

Fruji is another great option here. What I like most about this tool is that it breaks your followers into groups by the number of followers. Another cool thing is the YAS Factor (You Are Special), indicating a higher chance of that person noticing your tweets.

What other free tools are you using to interact with Twitter influencers in your network?

The post 7 Free Tools to Find Twitter Influencers Who Interact with You appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Yahoo Mail Classic users who’ve been clinging to the Classic interface now need to conform to a recent update in order to access their email.

Yahoo Mail’s Help Center informed users of the Classic or non-updated interface Sunday that they would need to update their mail platform to a new version introduced late last year as of the beginning of this week. Along with adopting the new interface, Mail users will also have to agree to the site’s new Communications Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Those who are worried about Yahoo scanning their emails are not going to be pleased with the new policy. Yahoo is suggesting users not happy with the policy either transfer their e-mail elsewhere or simply close their accounts. The new policy allows Yahoo to scan email content so it can generate ads specifically geared to the user.

According to TechCrunch.com, Yahoo has only made mention of the new usage terms and privacy policy through the Help site and in emails sent to users.

“This includes the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content, which Yahoo! uses to deliver product features, relevant advertising and abuse protection,” the site states on the Help page.

Users can opt out of the ads generated via the content scans, but Yahoo will still be scanning email content.

Smiley Photo via Shutterstock

The post Yahoo Mail Classic Users Forced to Update, Accept Content Scans appeared first on Small Business Trends.

I was looking back at the topics I've covered here on Small Business Trends recently and had to laugh. Based on what I've written about management issues, you might think I'm a total softy. Well, that's kind of because I am. But I also recognize that being too nice as a business owner or manager can backfire on your company.

Are you in danger of being too nice?

There are many reasons behind "nice girl/nice guy" syndrome. Maybe you're too nice because you want everyone to like you. (I have a feeling women business owners are more likely to fall prey to this syndrome than men are.) Maybe you felt faceless as an employee at a big corporation and part of wanting to start your own business was creating a place where everyone had close personal relationships. Maybe you hated how your last boss treated you and vowed that your employees would feel "like family." Or maybe you just aren't confrontational, so you give in with a smile, rather than face up to problematic employees.

Unfortunately, being too nice can have many negative consequences for your business.

Some employees will take advantage of you and stop pulling their weight or doing their jobs. That means your business isn't as profitable and productive as it can be. Worse, when employees see others getting away with things, it snowballs and leads to either poor behavior (as everyone starts flaking off) or poor attitudes (as the employees picking up the slack resent the others who they see as getting special treatment).

Ultimately, you could end up facing a lawsuit. Not to mention, if you're the one picking up the slack, you'll start feeling resentful yourself and eventually burn out—and that's not good for anyone.

So how can you stop being Mr./Ms. Nice Guy?

Assess

Take a step back and assess whether your policies, decisions and attitudes are negatively affecting your business. You might need to enlist an outside party, like your significant other or an advisor, or another manager in your business to give you their unvarnished opinion.

If your customer service manager says something like, "Yeah, you always give people time off when they ask without checking the schedule first and it really messes us up," then you might have a problem.

Put the Business First

It's great to let employees have flexibility and it also helps attract and retain new employees. But be sure you know where to draw the line so that business doesn't suffer.

If you're struggling to make this shift, remind yourself that keeping your business healthy and thriving is what pays your employee's salaries. So ultimately, you're doing them no favors when you weaken the company by being overly nice.

Set New Rules

I know many of you chafe at "rules," and I'm not saying employees need to fill out a form in triplicate to go to a doctor's appointment. It’s just that there needs to be some type of system other than, "Go ask the boss who always says yes."

Maybe only X number of people can work at home on any given day (rotate days among the staff so everyone gets a fair shot). Or maybe people need to ask a few days ahead if they can leave work early to see their kid's school play (rather than informing you as they run out the door).

Know What Really Matters

There's a difference between the employee asking to take a long lunch to go to an exercise class and the one asking to work at home so she can take care of her dying mother.

Know when to bend the rules, even if it puts your business in a bind. Employees will never forget it.

Doormat Photo via Shutterstock

The post Are You Being Too Nice for Your Own Good? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

With so much content being published on a daily basis, it's no wonder that content creators and marketers are always looking for ways to make their online content twang. Not the annoying type of twang, though. Think more along the lines of a guitar – content that resonates and sticks with you like a good, catchy song.

Though he never wrote for the Internet, Mark Twain's writings have the twang of Southern charm and timelessness. Ask anyone what the Great American Novel is and I bet they're going to answer “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

Collective wit and power is what made Twain's writing so memorable. By incorporating some of his techniques into your content creation, you'll be on your way to making your content resonate with readers.

Mark Twain suggests, "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."

In other words, sometimes it takes you writing a piece to completion before you realize the point or meat of it. Once you know your point, you can revise the piece to focus on that point clearly from the get-go. Keep in mind that revision doesn't mean that you have to re-write the whole thing. Some online content needs to be tweaked while other content will require a total over-haul. Either way, you won't know until you've "finished."

"I don't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

When writing online content, it can be tempting to keyword stuff or focus on SEO practices. However, focusing on true value and meaning for your readers is what will make your content successful – and oftentimes shorter. Practicing good word economy is difficult. It's easier to write 400 words of fluff than 200 words of meaningful content, but the latter is what drives subscriptions and repeat readers. And that's what we all want.

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement…Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

Mark Twain is absolutely right on this. Remember, the Internet is shifting toward short form online content, folks. Writing that is clean and crisp is much more effective. It also gives your brand a distinguished voice that readers will appreciate. Better yet, instead of a "glittering paragraph," glittering one-liners make incredible social media fodder.

By taking Mark Twain's advice into account, online content creators will have a better shot at garnering a loyal online readership. Tweak your online content like Twain.

The post How to Make Your Online Content “Twang” with Mark Twain appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Salesforce.com is acquiring marketing software company ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. This is Salesforce.com's biggest acquisition in its history.  It also makes Salesforce a player when it comes to marketing software.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com chairman and CEO, emphasized the importance of software in marketing. He said in a prepared release, "The CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017."

ExactTarget is an email marketing and marketing communications software provider. Its 6,000 clients include brands such as Nike and Coke.

The acquisition fills a void in Salesforce.com's marketing offerings. Salesforce.com previously acquired Buddy Media and Radian6, gaining a foothold in social-media marketing software. But up until now it has lacked a full-range marketing suite that goes beyond social media marketing.  ExactTarget — with its emphasis on email marketing, marketing automation and mobile marketing — fills a large gap in what was missing.

CRM analyst Paul Greenberg writes at ZDNet, "What makes this one of salesforce’s most important acquisitions ever is Marc Benioff’s proclamation last August on the Q2 2012 financial results that the Marketing Cloud is their next 'billion dollar' … business. That was a lot of pressure for a company that had only a strong social media monitoring platform and a Facebook advertising platform under the rubric 'Marketing Cloud' and nothing else, even though what they did have was outstanding quality within its class."

Now, analysts say, Salesforce.com has much more of what it needs to offer customers a broader “marketing cloud” — instead of a narrower “social marketing cloud.”

Aimed at Enterprise Market, But Can Benefit SMBs

This acquisition is mostly about the enterprise market. But eventually it can benefit small and midsized businesses that are developing an appetite for marketing software.

According to analyst Brent Leary, Salesforce.com's marketing offerings up until now largely have been aimed at enterprise buyers. Larger companies have demanded solutions because they face increasing complexity in marketing.

"But SMBs also face a complex marketing environment," he says.

"As I see more SMBs looking to change the way they market to today’s customers, I also see them taking advantage of social, mobile, and cloud technologies," Leary wrote in an article earlier this year in CRM Magazine.

The subtext here is that there’s benefit for the SMB market, ultimately.  That’s because ExactTarget had earlier acquired Pardot, a marketing automation software suitable for small to midsize business. This means Salesforce.com will gain marketing automation software for SMBs in the 25 – 500 employee size category, Leary says.

Salesforce is paying a 52 percent premium on ExactTarget's share price. ExactTarget had $292 million in revenue last year, with a $21 million loss.  The transaction is expected to close by July 31, 2013.

The post Salesforce.com Acquires ExactTarget, Fills Void In Marketing Offerings appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are you interested in growing your business in a global economy?

Today, nearly 96 percent of consumers and over two-thirds of the world’s purchasing power reside outside the United States. Small businesses now constitute 34 percent of total export dollars, and comprise approximately 97.8 percent of all exporters.

If you're considering exporting as a way to expand and grow your business in new markets, where should you start?

Well, there are a number of free government tools, resources and programs that can help you plan your strategy, market to overseas customers, find buyers and finance your exports. A great place to start is Export.gov. The site brings together resources from across the U.S. Government to assist American businesses in planning their international sales strategies and succeed in today's global marketplace. It's a great one-stop resource to help you navigate exporting and get the right help as you go.

Below are six essential steps any potential small business exporter should follow as they get started.

6 Steps to Help You Get Started in Exporting

1. Determine Your Readiness

From committing staff and resources to developing an international marketing plan, is your business really ready to start exporting? Take this online questionnaire from BusinessUSA.gov and see how your business rates in terms of its exporting readiness. The tool also serves up useful resources based on your responses and readiness.

Once you register with Export.gov, you can start planning your entry with market research tools, track global demand for your product and more.

2. Get Free Advice

Ready to explore more? Contact your local U.S. Export Assistance Center. These centers provide free training and counseling to export-ready small businesses. There are 165 offices nationwide and overseas, staffed by pros who can offer in-depth industry and trade counseling and access to a variety of services, including financing programs and connections to international buyers.

You can also find the names of local and international U.S. Commercial Service Trade Specialists, in the United States or overseas.

3. Conduct Market Research

What potential does your product have to sell in a particular international market? Who's the competition? Are there any barriers to trade?

Using Export.gov's market research guides and tools like Trade Stats, you can take a step-by-step, structured approach to doing your research and identifying potential target markets.

4. Create an Export Business Plan

Here's another great free government tool that can help you plan your export strategy – the Small Business Export Planner. The planner is customizable and can be worked through as your exporting activities grow.

In addition, Export.gov also offers a free sample outline of an international business plan.

5. Find Potential Buyers

The government can even help you locate and connect with potential buyers overseas. Opportunities range from meeting foreign buyer delegations at select U.S. trade shows to signing up for a foreign trade mission or trade show overseas. Export.gov will even help you with your marketing efforts.

6. Finance Your Exports

Whether you are entering the export market, looking to upgrade your equipment or facilities in preparation for exporting, or even help your international buyers do business with you—there are a number of U.S. government financing program that can help.

Use BusinessUSA.gov's Financing Wizard (select "Exports" in the third step) for a breakdown of financing programs from across the federal government.

Export Photo via Shutterstock

The post 6 Steps to Help You Get Started in Exporting appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Cloud computing or "the cloud" is one of today's hottest computing concepts.

It's increasingly how small and midsize businesses take advantage of automation and improve operations and effectiveness. The Cloud makes it easier for the distributed workforce, with remote employees, to operate as a team and share information. The Cloud provides a central place for proprietary databases and applications.

It saves money too, because the Cloud typically requires less investment in capital equipment. Computing operations can be hosted virtually in a central data center, reducing maintenance costs of maintaining equipment on premises.

And the cloud is also an integral element of backup and disaster recovery plans for many organizations. If one location is inaccessible (such as when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast U.S. last year), organizations with cloud-based backup systems can continue operating with minimal or no interruptions.

But how does your organization connect to cloud applications and data stored in the cloud?  We don’t mean how individual users connect necessarily, but rather how your network connection is set up to pass information among your systems and access applications.

You may think there's only one practical choice: use a regular Internet connection. Many small companies start out that way.

But one of the trends we are noticing is that a dedicated Ethernet connection for accessing the Cloud, is now within reach for smaller businesses. In the past these dedicated networks and connections were available mainly for large enterprises — and too pricey for smaller businesses. On top of that, they were often complex to set up and maintain.

But as technology takes on a central role in smaller organizations, and demand for secure access increases, ISPs are coming out with new offerings at price points designed for small and midsized companies. And not only is the price within reach, but the setup and maintenance can be outsourced now to your ISP.

Here are some advantages of a dedicated Ethernet network to access your cloud assets:

Security

As we’ve pointed out before, small businesses are now being targeted by cyber attackers. Smaller organizations are perceived as soft targets.

Let’s say you need to back up sensitive customer data to your cloud system. With public Internet connections, there is greater risk of intrusion. Information is passed along a route in the public Internet, and your service provider probably will not take responsibility for an intrusion that happens with another company along the way. Dedicated Ethernet connections are more secure by their nature, because that “handing off” of data through the public Internet doesn’t happen.

Losses Minimized, Opportunities Gained

In the above scenario, less security means more potential liability for your company. A security incident can mean considerable expense to investigate, mitigate issues, notify customers, and potentially pay damages — not to mention a public relations nightmare in the making.

Also, if your company is involved as a subcontractor to a larger organization, you may be required by contract or policy to take certain security steps, or indemnify against them. If you company is not able to meet security requirements, you may not be able to take advantage of opportunities.

Less Complexity

There was a time when setting up an Ethernet connection to the cloud would have been challenging. But today they are much less complex.

You can basically outsource the private Ethernet connection. An ISP that is set up to serve business clients can deliver a more-or-less “plug and play” dedicated network, meeting your requirements, to connect to the cloud.  You don’t have to support the Ethernet connection either — ongoing support gets handled by your service provider.

Reliability and Availability

When your cloud assets are mission critical, reliability and availability are key issues.  Ethernet is typically based on fiber and can be switched to a redundant path almost instantly, eliminating interruptions.  Public Internet connections can’t guarantee that your systems will be available consistently with the level of performance needed.

With a dedicated Ethernet network, your offsite cloud data and applications can offer the same level of performance as if they were  located within your local are network, but still maintaining the advantages of cloud computing.

Shutterstock, Ethernet fiber

The post Reaching the Cloud: Dedicated Ethernet vs Public Internet Connections appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Cell phones have practically become part of our anatomies. We show off our newest cell phone like it was a new baby. We carry them everywhere. We cannot live without them, as consumers, but especially as business owners. Mobile phones are mission critical. The Pew Internet project reports that 29 percent of cell owners describe their cell phone as "something they can't imagine living without.”

Forty five percent of American adults are smartphone owners. My guess is that a good portion of those must be business owners. Smartphones supercharge your productivity. But they also supercharge your cell phone bill. If you have been searching for options, this review is for you. StraightTalk, a provider of prepaid wireless service, provided a short term loaner iPhone 5 for this review.

My purpose in this review is not to extol the virtues of the iPhone 5 — the awesomeness of Apple’s latest phone is not to be under-rated, though. It is a sweet and powerful device and you don’t need my recommendation if you are already an Apple fan. However, if you are not, StraightTalk has a variety of phones on their prepaid plans.

The purpose of this review is to highlight that there are other options to have an affordable cell phone plan without a long-term contract and the subsidized phone you usually get along with a long-term contract.

Here’s a quick look below at my “cell phone minutes” dashboard. If I had the $30 plan, I’m sure it would show more detail. You can also top up your prepaid balance here, of course.

The benefits of prepaid:

• No long term contracts. You go month-to-month.
• Generally, lower monthly cost.
• You can buy an unlocked phone and move from one provider to another. It does take some patience and tech chops, however. For example, the elegant Nexus 4 phone from Google is reportedly possible to put on the StraightTalk service. I’ve read mixed results, though.
• Smaller carriers score better in the customer satisfaction arena, as reported by the American Customer Satisfaction Index that rates the wireless phone industry (among others).
• You can walk into a Walmart and many other retailers, and buy a phone and a plan.

The downside of prepaid:

• You have to buy a phone at full price. There is no major carrier subsidizing your phone for you with free or low prices to entice you. The loaner iPhone 5 retails for about $650. However, to be fair, if you crunch out major carrier plans that are usually more per month, you will likely find that you are paying more over that two-year contract.  
• Month-to-month prepaid plans can be a bit confusing. Your minutes run out in 30 days usually.
• In this case, there was no report on calls made or received. I would like to see a way to pull that kind of report. It would help with some tax requirements, I’m sure.

StraightTalk (owned by TracFone) offers two plans:

1. The "ALL YOU NEED" plan for $30 a month to receive 1000 minutes, 1000 text or multimedia messages, 30 MB of data transfer for data phones and 411 calls at no additional charge. $30 per month.
2. The unlimited plan for $45 a month to receive unlimited talk, text and data nationwide anytime with calls to 411 at no additional charge.  There is an international version of this for $60/month.

Overall, I find the no-contract, prepaid type phone carriers to be one of the best ways to save money in my small business. Although StraightTalk provided a loaner phone, I did not receive any special customer treatment. I found the signup process to be painless and had good customer support throughout my review period.

StraightTalk offers a range of smartphones (and not so smart ones, too — feature phones) starting from free. There were a few nice LG Optimus phones for $149, a Blackberry Curve for $129, and a Samsung Galaxy Precedent for $79.

And for those of you that fall into the category of describing your cell phone as something you “can't imagine living without” as I’d mentioned previously, here are 4 ways to tell if you are addicted to your iPhone 5.

Just in case you’ve been sleeping with your phone and are beginning to wonder if that is a problem….

The post StraightTalk: Are Prepaid Cell Phone Plans Good For Small Business? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

For a fledgling entrepreneur, there’s no greater feeling than building a strong customer base. But after collecting repeat business and expanding to new demographics, what’s the next client frontier?

Almost any customer product or service can be repositioned to tap into the business of business-to-business, and the big risk can reap exponential rewards.

We asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invitation-only organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs, the following question about the cubicle clientele:

“What’s your best sales tip for B2B companies?”

Here's what YEC community members had to say:

1. Focus on Existing Clients and Relationships

“In a B2B business, your best clients and relationships will come from networking and referrals from existing clients. Maintaining your visibility at industry events, get-togethers, parties and trade shows is key. The highest-quality and most loyal clients will most often come from personal relationships, rather than traditional advertising.” ~ Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands

2. Realize Buyers Are Not Always Users

“B2B sales are exciting because of the scale — one order could be worth 1,000 B2C sales. However, there is one major difference: Often, the buyer is not the end user! While the benefits of your product to an employee are critical, an equally important part of your story must be explaining to the buyer how your product is going to make his or her life easier.” ~ Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

3. Leave the Building

“Y Scouts, an executive search firm, was recently written up in Social Media Examiner as a B2B sales and marketing case study. The premise of their approach was to get out of the building to develop long-term relationships with their target audience. They did this through a photo tour around their value proposition.” ~ Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

4. Add Value Outside Your Product or Service

“Help build continual value by asking questions, listening and making valued recommendations for other vendor partners that can help your prospects and clients. Even consider making a sheet with your logo that lists other vendors, as these businesses might need a trusted introduction to them (bankers, IT consultants, accountants, health benefit brokers and commercial insurance). “ ~ Darrah Brustein, Finance Whiz Kids | Equitable Payments

5. Stress the Value in Your Product/Service

“Businesses place an extreme importance on value over anything else. If your product or service can make their lives easier or improve their business, then they'll see the value in it. During your sales meeting, don't worry so much about "wowing" them; instead, present a simple and straightforward value proposition that makes their decision easy.” ~ Charles Bogoian, Kenai Sports, LLC

6. Stop Thinking Like a Marketer

“When I first launched my B2B software startup, all of my financial modeling included marketing activities that would generate amazing results. As it turns out, it is much harder to market to businesses than consumers. The best tip I can share based on experience: Invest in outbound sales prospecting. I built a call center that makes hundreds of calls a day and have achieved incredible results. “ ~ Justin Spring, BringShare, Inc.

7. Have Numbers on Hand

“Any B2B sale is based on your client wanting to improve his own company. If you can show numbers, particularly numbers reflecting the bottom line, you’re going to make it clear why a new client should work with you. Numbers won’t be everything in the sale, but they’ll provide an easy way to clear out the more common objections.” ~ Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

8. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

“If you want the universe to work in your favor, you've got to do something different than what you're already doing. Meet people, talk to them, share ideas, write, blog, exchange ideas and speak at conferences. Create conversations and let them foster. Most of business life is routine, and that is what you need to break from for serendipity to embrace you.” ~ Rahul Varshneya, Arkenea

9. Don’t Sell; Instead, Educate Your Buyer

“So you’ve got an amazing product and would be doing the world a disservice if you didn’t do everything in your power to get it out there, right? But here’s the thing: No one likes the “hard sell.” Instead, find people for whom the product is a fit by asking key qualifying questions. After that, offer them something free (e.g., an eBook) that gives value but also shows your product’s benefits.” ~ Matthew Ackerson, Saber Blast

10. Hook More Prospects With Bait

“Copywriting legend Bob Bly says simply adding a free bait piece to your offer (e.g., a free white paper, free special report, free software, etc.) can double your response rates to ads and mailings versus using the same copy without the free information offer. Our experience confirms Bly’s statement: The more you emphasize the offer, the greater the response.” ~ Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits

Businesss to Business Photo via Shutterstock

The post How to Transition Into the Big Business of B2B appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Asus is planning to introduce an economical Android tablet that could rival the Google Nexus 7 tablet, and keep the company trending upward in the tablet market. The new Asus Android tablet — the Memo Pad HD7 — was announced at an event in Taiwan earlier this week.

Probably the most attention-grabbing feature of the Memo Pad HD7 is its price tag. An 8GB model will be sold for $129. A 16GB version will sell for $149.

In keeping with newer tablets, it will have two cameras.  InformationWeek reports the Memo Pad HD7 will have a 5 megapixel rear camera in addition to a 1.2 megapixel front-facing lens to complement its 1280 x 800 screen.

DigitalTrends reports the 8GB model will likely only be available in “emerging markets.”  But the more stocked model is still a bargain at its price. The Nexus 7 with 16GB sells for $50 higher than the expected price for the comparable-stocked Memo Pad HD7.

The Memo Pad HD7 comes in four body colors:  black, white, shocking pink, and lime green.

Tablet makers have been focusing on camera technology and early reviews tend to agree that the 5 MP add-on from Asus is better than the camera situation of the Nexus 7, one the best Android tablet deals last year. In addition to the other products Asus expects to launch in July with the Memo Pad HD7, the company is likely pitching for a bigger share of the tablet and other device markets, and doing so by keeping its prices competitive.

Asus made a big splash in the tablet market in 2012, and while it did not have the top-selling device like Google, its sales of these devices jumped more than 400 percent, according to AndroidCommunity.  Asus was the fourth-leading seller of tablets in 2012.

The 7-inch tablet size has proved popular for its obvious advantages.  It’s very mobile — light weight and small enough to slip into a coat pocket or ladies’ purse.  The price is nice, too, with some available under $200. Yet, the screen is easier to read and use as a touchpad keyboard, than a typical 4-inch smartphone.

Small tablets are not the best choices for doing heavy-duty work such as creating documents and manipulating spreadsheets.  But they are handy devices if your tablet budget is low and you just need something to keep your business flowing (i.e., deal with email, messaging and use some apps) while out of the office for a few hours or even a couple of days on a short business trip.

This video of the Memo HD7 shows how compact and portable it is:

Image: Asus

The post New Asus Android Tablet Will Retail for Under $150 appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Social Media Photo via Shutterstock

The social media landscape and its importance in the larger marketing strategy of business are growing all the time. It's not just the Big 4, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, that are acting as branding mouthpieces of B2B and B2C brands. Other social media channels are also making their presence count. Case in point being Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.

The number of active users across different social media channels boggles the mind. As of September 2012, Facebook had 1 Billion active users and a relatively new social media phenomenon like Pinterest has over 20 million active users and counting. You know where I am heading. Businesses can no longer afford to pick and choose from the various social networks available. Each one of them has its own unique selling proposition.

While Twitter is a great platform for professional branding using personal communication, Facebook helps businesses provide a comprehensive social media message replete with pictures, videos and all kinds of textual content.  If you want to directly take your brand to industry professionals, a presence on LinkedIn is a must and Google+ is a coming together of tremendous benefits that Google brings to the table. If you are looking for sales ready users, Pinterest is the platform to beat.

Monitoring Social Media Channels

Use Multiple Social Media Channels

Today you can't do without well-rounded social media presence. All channels are interrelated and each of these channels is a touch point in your customer conversion funnel. There are social media channels that support traffic generation, while there are others that manage your business's reputation, and there are still others that help you identify potential leads.

You can't afford to ignore any one of them. The mix of social media channels that you prefer to work with can differ depending on your business's niche but there is no doubt that you can't ignore the use of multiple social media channels to drive business profitability.

Social Media Overload Photo via Shutterstock

Problem of Plenty

If you want your social media presence to deliver value, you need to be able to make sense of all the turbulence and frothiness associated with social media. Social media can offer incisive customer insights, identify critical buying behavior patterns, improve customer services and increase customer retention. But only if you are able to monitor social media and track all your social media channels and analyze and evaluate their results. You must be able to organize and manage your social accounts seamlessly to ensure the continued success of your social media presence.

The idea is to control your social work flow, identify the actionable intelligence from the word clouds and automated reports that are more of distraction than anything else. This is a huge challenge.

It's a challenge because your business's presence is spread across diverse social media channels. Your presence on different social networks like Facebook, Twitter etc. will be tracked using diverse metrics and will yield different results.

For example, if you are evaluating your YouTube presence, performance metrics like video views, audience retention (amount of video watched by target audience), number of subscribers, ratio of views to number of user interactions come into play. On the other hand, the performance of your Twitter presence is dependent on metrics like follower count, number or retweets, comparison with peers and others.

The sheer diversity of metrics makes monitoring a real challenge.

Does the Answer Lie in Social Media Monitoring Tools?

The simple answer is that it does.

But, there is a problem here. No, the problem isn't the quality of the available tools but the sheer number of different social media monitoring tools available in the market. Most of us end up using different tools for different social media channels. In such cases, what we are essentially doing is using different dashboards to track different results, a recipe for disaster, if there was one.

To keep track of all the results and social data pouring in from different dashboards is a situation made in hell and something that cannot be kept up with for any amount of time. So should we use them or shouldn't we?

Of course, we should and this isn't a debatable point but the focus must be on using a single dashboard for keeping track of all your social media channels and monitor social media from one place.

Social Media Hub Photo via Shutterstock

Benefits of Following the Single Dashboard Strategy

Monitoring social media business metrics from a single command center allows you to take control of all your business data from one place. You don't have to access different tools every morning to see how your business is doing. You can simply create a customized dashboard to track all the information you want.

A business analytics tool like Cyfe is a good example of a one-stop dashboard that helps you track business performance form a single place. Apart from getting brand-specific Facebook Insights data you also get access to YouTube Analytics, Twitter Analytics, Google Trends information and a range of other social and search data and all this from a single location.

As the assimilation, evaluation, and analysis of all information about your brand performance on different social channels takes from one place, you get a clearer picture of your brand presence and its engagement with its target customers at various levels. You can make better sense of all the actionable intelligence at your disposal. You spend less time monitoring social media results scattered all across the Web, and more time using this data to improve your social media presence.

It Just Makes Good Sense

You don't have to be a genius to realize monitoring social media data using a single dashboard is way better than using different social media monitoring tools to track your social media presence. It just makes better sense.

The post Monitoring Your Social Media Channels From One Place is a Good Idea appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Prepare for an invasion of six-second video clips. The Vine app is now available for Android.

Vine is the very popular app launched by Twitter at the beginning of the year. It allows users to record short videos and post them to Twitter. And until Monday, only iPhone and iPad users could get Vine.

A post on the Twitter blog announced Monday that the app will now be available for Android devices. If iOS users are any indication, it will be a hugely popular download for Android too.

Twitter says 13 million users have downloaded the Vine app for iOS and that 12 million Vine video clips are posted to Twitter every day. As users become more familiar with the concept, offerings have gotten better and more creative. The app is already being touted and used by many as a marketing tool.

The introduction of the Vine app for Android will have its hiccups. Already, some users have logged negative reviews for the Android app, specifically that a device’s front-facing camera does not work with Vine and that the audio is not in sync with the video. Some features available on the Android app are not currently on the iOS version, and vice versa.

In its blog post, Twitter says, “Over the coming weeks, you'll see frequent updates with new features — including front-facing camera, search, mentions and hashtags, and the ability to share to Facebook.”

The post Vine App Now Available for Android Devices appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Ever since Google introduced Google Maps, Mike Blumenthal was there to study its impact on small business.   He is one of the world's top experts on Google Local Plus (Places), a blogger at "Understanding Google Maps and Local Search, founder at LocalU and an all around good guy.

Remarkable for the fact that he spent thousands of hours helping small business owners with their listings on Google’s Places for Business. If local search was hockey, he would be Wayne Gretzky. We are grateful that he found the time to answer some questions for us.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends:  A lot of small business owners are confused about Google Local (Places) Plus and Google+ for Business. What’s the simplest way to make a distinction between these and what does it mean for their success in Google's local ecosystem?

Mike Blumenthal: Google has totally confused the branding of their local products. In the end, everyone will have a Google+ Page for local that will be either social or not. For the most part, the page will be managed from the new Google Places for Business interface.

One of the issues is that most businesses do not understand that their listing at Google is a search result. And that Google gives the business the privilege of adding some trusted data to that listing from either the Places Dashboard or from Google +.

Sometimes Google doesn’t trust the business provided data (or rather their algorhythm doesn’t) and they change it. But in the end, the result is the same regardless of where the data is given to Google. And the result will show up wherever Google wants to show local results; the main search results page, the Plus environment, Maps, Apps, Google Earth… wherever.

It is a time of great transition in both the product and the branding. Essentially the name Places is going away and being replaced for the consumer with local Google+ Pages.

Small Business Trends: You have seen everything that can be seen in local search. Where do small businesses usually fail? What about corporations?

Mike Blumenthal:  It is amazing to me that the most common failures I see at both levels is a failure to consistently brand your locations. Google essentially respects and honors brands at a local level with their search product. Brand is the strategy.

Google needs to see a consistent footprint for each business to highlight the brand properly. To do that, they use what we call NAP – name, address and phone – to accurately track, review relevance and ranking information about each location. Businesses both big and small seem to have a hard time keeping their NAP the same everywhere. One name, one phone number and one address always presented the same. It seems that there is always this desire to somehow improve on your NAP by using call tracking numbers or futzing with the business name.

My advice: Don’t do that.

What is shocking is that I see this with national brands, as well, and they should know better.

Small Business Trends: If you had a business that was underperforming in local search, but had no obvious issues, what 3 things would you do?

Mike Blumenthal:  1) Look for violations that would cause the listing to be de-listed or ranked lower.

2) Check for duplicate listings.

3) See if Google has changed the area being shown in the search results.

4) Determine whether the issue is organic or local in nature.

Small Business Trends: We have noticed Google giving small business owners more support recently and even opening up phone lines. Is this another experiment or their new strategy?

Mike Blumenthal:  Google seems to have come to the realization that getting the last few details correct in local can not reasonably be done by machine. I think we will see a stronger commitment going forward to providing businesses with answers to their questions.

Small Business Trends: How do you see local changing in the future? What can small businesses do to prepare?

Mike Blumenthal:  Well, the obvious change is happening now. Or at least the trend is clear now. Both couch surfing with the iPad/tablets and true mobile with smartphones are changing local. The best thing that small businesses can do is to upgrade their website with responsive design so that it handles both tablet and phone screen sizes well.

Context is everything and Google will be able to tell a lot about a person that is using their phone. If you look into the near future, I see things like universal geo fencing…. that is the ability of folks like Google to know when a person crosses into their physical space.

As for preparation for that? Be sure that you are doing local search – great website, great citation building, keeping customers happy and getting reviews, figuring out how to earn links, etc.

Small Business Trends: Do You See Google trying to monetize local outside of PPC (pay per click)?

Mike Blumenthal:  Absolutely. Their new Google for Business Dashboard is set up for them to easily add new billable functionality. Some of that has already been added in beta form like Offers.

But I see that Google could easily move into very sophisticated couponing, loyalty programs and much, much more.

Small Business Trends: What would be your advice for small businesses with more than one location?

Mike Blumenthal:  First, build a great website and get it ranking well.  Second, be sure to create dedicated and well optimized landing pages with rich snippets for each location that you reference at Google and across the Web. Third, find citation opportunities that scale. That is easier said than done.

Small Business Trends: Any advice for ranking in more than one city with just one location?

Mike Blumenthal:  Google local search is all about geography. Having a location in the city of search is critical. If a nearby city is so important, then you have two choices.

1) Open a real location in that city;

2) Really optimize your local pages organically for that location/keyword combo so that they show ABOVE the pack results. That isn’t easy and it’s roughly akin to playing to an inside straight in poker.

Small Business Trends: How do you play safe with reviews? Every article about reviews advises some sort of solicitation. Google says you shouldn’t do it. What do you say?

Mike Blumenthal:  Google has loosened up their definition of solicitation.

Don't set up a computer or tablet device in your place of business for customers to leave reviews on site. Consider printing out a QR code or sending a reminder e-mail so customers can review on their own time.

Google has made it clear that you can use email to communicate to your customers and ask for a review. But Google is funny and they are not showing a lot of reviews that trigger their new review filter. It is not inconceivable down the road that they would look at speed or volume of reviews as a trigger for a review take down. So you want to modulate the rate at which you get Google reviews.

I do think that businesses need to rethink the “metrics” by which they measure their success in this area. It really shouldn’t be about getting the most reviews, it should be about having the happiest customers.

A process that I like to recommend to business owners is the Survey/Review cycle. You ask every customer to go to some sort of online survey about how satisfied they were with your services on a 1 to 5 scale. If they respond with a 4 or 5 they are sent on to being asked to leave a review. If they answer 1,2 or 3 they are referred to customer service and an attempt is made to increase their satisfaction. Once they are happy, the process starts again.

This may reduce the total number of reviews but it has several very real benefits:

1. Unhappy customers are caught early in the post sale cycle, so you can intervene before they leave a scathing review online.

2. You are able to track and measure customer satisfaction over a period of time and make improvements if necessary.

3. The happy customers will be the ones that ultimately leave the reviews.

Small Business Trends:  Mike, thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions.

The post Google Local Plus “101″ Primer With Local Search Expert Mike Blumenthal appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The deadline for technology companies to compete in CRM Idol is fast approaching.  Monday, June 10, 2013 is the entry deadline.

CRM Idol takes a broad view of what constitutes CRM technology — it’s a competition to discover the most promising new marketing-related technologies.  Here is a sampling of the kinds of technology that may qualify:

• CRM applications
• Marketing Automation
• ocial Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Sales Force Automation
• Sales Intelligence
• Sales Optimization
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Operations
• Customer Service
• Web Self-Service
• Customer Experience Management (CEM, CXM)
• Social Media Monitoring
• Customer Analytics
• Enterprise Feedback Management
• Reputation Management/Engine
• Innovation Management

Companies must have less than $12 million in revenue and have been founded less than seven years ago.

"The submissions for this competition keep getting better and better," said Paul Greenberg, CRM Idol founder. "Every year we see great companies committed to innovation in the CRM space, and I'm sure this year will be no different."

Once submissions are in, those who meet requirements will be announced June 20. After product demonstrations, interviews, and voting by judges and the public, the CRM Idol 2013 winners will be announced Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013.

This is the third year for the CRM Idol competition.   Eight former participants in the competition have been acquired, with many others enjoying increased visibility and great success.  Former winners and participants cite CRM Idol as an important differentiator with both prospects and investors.

The primary judges for CRM Idol 2013 for the Americas include industry experts Brent Leary, co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials LLC, Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal of Beagle Research, Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder at ThinkJar LLC, Jesus Hoyos, partner and co-founder of Solvis Consulting, and Paul Greenberg, managing principal at the 56 Group.

Winners of the competition will be awarded with consulting hours from the judging panel, the opportunity to pitch to investing partners including Bain Capital Ventures, publicity with leading industry publications, and technology licenses with valuable tools including Salesforce.com, Infusionsoft, and Marketo.

Go here for complete rules.  To submit a nomination, request a submission form by emailing:  request@crmidol.com

The post CRM Idol Competition – Get Nominations In By June 10 appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Apple continues to lead the pack in the U.S. as a smartphone make.   To iPhone users, that’s probably not a surprise.  iPhone users tend to be loyal fans.

More than 39 percent of mobile subscribers in the 3 month average ending April used Apple smartphones, comScore reports. That’s more than any other smartphone maker.

And popularity is growing.  April’s figures are a 1.4 percent increase over Apple’s share of the market as measured in January. The company’s market share in this category actually increased by nearly a full percentage point over its closest competitor, Samsung.

Here is how the rest of the smartphone market breaks down:

Samsung was next, with 22 percent of the market, up just over half a percentage point since January. These figures could change in favor of Samsung if the company sees customers confidently buying its Galaxy S4 smartphone or its competitively priced Galaxy S4 Mini (when it’s released).

Phone makes HTC (9.7%), Motorola (8.6%), and LG (7%) follow.

Android Leads, If Measured By Operating Platform

If you count by operating platforms — instead of phone makers — the story is different.

Google’s Android continues to dominate in the smartphone operating system market. This market is measured by the number of subscribers using the Android operating system, versus a particular make of phone.

According to comScore’s MobiLens service, over half of the 138.5 million smartphone users in the U.S. have phones running Google’s Android platform. But Android’s lead among operating systems decreased nearly two full percentage points from January to April.

Apple’s iOS, of course, is next at 39% and saw a 1.4 percent increase as mentioned above.

BlackBerry and Windows phones’ market shares each dropped a bit, less than a percentage point over the same period, according to the MobiLens survey.

MobiLens gets its information from a nationwide sample of smartphone subscribers over the age of 13. Only primary mobile phone numbers are used to collect data.

Shutterstock, smartphone

The post iPhones Grow in Popularity, But Android Platform Still Leads appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Foursquare is following the lead of other social media sites with more promoted posts,  this time courting small businesses. The pilot program allows small businesses to pay for promoted listings which would appear to Foursquare users when those users are near a business’s location.

Based on a report about Foursquare Local Updates we published last year, the service appears similar to one the company rolled out then — with some obvious differences. The existing feature allows small businesses to send messages about deals, specials, new items or any other pertinent information to Foursquare users who were already loyal customers.

Now, for a fee, under this new program, small businesses will be able to reach Foursquare users who might not be customers yet.

One difference, of course, is the new Foursquare promoted listings would allow small businesses to reach out and lure in new customers more  proactively. This way, you can make potential customers aware of your business for the first time.

And of course, the new service is fee-based – you have to pay for promoted listings.  The fee is cost-per-action based, meaning the merchant pays only if someone taps on the promotion or checks in.  The existing Local Updates and Specials are free.

The new promoted listings are marked with the word “Promoted” next to them.

So far the new program appears to be a test or pilot program.  Foursquare is already working on promotions with select small businesses in the New York City area.

AdAge.com reports Foursquare is allowing small business advertisers to select certain criteria based on user account profiles. That way, a fine dining restaurant, for example, could find customers who express an interest in restaurants via their profiles or through their previous check-ins.

KFC, Radioshack and several other national brands have been using this form of advertising on Foursquare for some time.  This latest Foursquare promoted listings advertising feature is now being rolled out to small businesses in a limited fashion in New York City, according to AdAge.com.

Over 1,000,000 businesses use the Foursquare merchant platform today — a ready pool of potential advertisers for Foursquare to tap into.

The post Foursquare Jumps on Paid Promotions Bandwagon with Small Biz Pilot appeared first on Small Business Trends.

With the rise of mobile, social and the cloud, you are also seeing the rise of subscription model businesses. A model of business built on building long-term customer relationships, and not on one-off transactions. Companies like The Tie Society, who don't sell you ties, but a subscription to wear a tie for a while, ship it back, and then where another tie for a while. Or the Dollar Shave Club, where you get razor blades sent to your house each month so you never have to go to a store for razors again. These subscription-based companies have to continually provide value to keep people signed up, or else they're out of business. One of the more popular subscription-based offerings is the Amazon Prime Membership – Amazon.com's $79/year service that allows you free 2-day shipping on pretty much everything they offer.

In this interview, my featured guest, R.J. Hottovy of Morningstar, discusses the findings of his recent report on how Amazon Prime members are worth eight times as much to the company than non Prime customers. And how building a subscription-based membership program can drive revenue and create an army of loyal customers that keep competitors away.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a bit about your personal background?

R.J. Hottovy: I am a senior eCommerce analyst at Morning Star. I also am the Global Director of Consumer Equity Research and I am responsible for a team that covers three hundred equities with 100 of those either in Europe or Asia or closer to our teams in Sydney, Australia and Shenzhen, China as part of Morningstar’s global equity research coverage.

I’ve been covering the eCommerce space for over a decade at this point and it’s been one of the most disruptive forces in retail since the advent of warehouse clubs in the early 90′s.

Small Business Trends: One of things that I want to talk to you about is the effect the Amazon Prime Membership has had?

R.J. Hottovy: Amazon, in particular, is one of the more debated stocks in the consumer universe. I think most people would recognize the tremendous growth; with cumulative average revenue growth averaging above 25% the last three years. So no one can deny that this is a tremendously fast growing company.

But the question – with operating margins contracting from 5%, three years ago to essentially just 1% this past year on a reported GAAP basis – is, ‘Can Amazon monetize this growth?’ Because without that, the growth becomes a moot point.

I started building some frameworks on how Amazon can monetize its growth. Some things that caught my eye are its digital content through its Kindle ecosystem, Amazon Web Services and the idea of Fulfillment by Amazon. One of the things that was under appreciated in the market was the fact that Amazon Prime, in its own right, was a pretty meaningful building block of profitability for this company. Something that, as it gets more and more members, not only increases top line revenues, but can also be profitable.

Small Business Trends: You estimated at the end of 2012 that there were roughly 10 million Amazon prime members. That number dramatically jumps in the last couple of years to around 25 million?

R.J. Hottovy: That’s approximately where we see things going as of 2017. Granted, there's a lot of different variables at play. We feel there is a reasonable assumption of where this program can grow. I think that the idea of having Amazon Prime trial memberships that go long with a Kindle Fire purchase is going to help. I think the idea of adding substantial content – both video as well as some book and magazine content to the membership – is going to go a long way.

But I think at the end of the day, what’s been the selling point of this program is just the idea of having access to a wide set of products that you can get to your doorstep within a couple of days at low prices.

I think that is a combination of things which is going to help you draw more people to Amazon and entice them to become Prime members.

Small Business Trends: The other thing from an Amazon perspective is the impact that this program seems to have on buying patterns and behaviors. Your research pointed out that the average Prime member spends a little over twice the amount of the average Amazon shopper?

R.J. Hottovy: This study was done in partnership with a company called Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. What we found is that, generally speaking, last year Prime members spent about twice as much as non Prime members. They spent about $1,200 dollars compared to $600 for non Prime members. What’s also interesting is that the average person shopping online last year spent approximately $1,000. What that says to us it that Prime members generate more incremental revenue per than non Prime shoppers. They are doing most of their online shopping on Amazon as opposed to going to other sites. Prime members generate more income.

To us that’s interesting because that shows that Amazon has a powerful network effect it and has become a destination for consumers – that they have to be on that site. I think that’s powerful and shows that Amazon is protecting it's customer base with it’s Prime membership program.

Small Business Trends: You actually say that a Prime member is eight times as valuable to Amazon as a non primer?

R.J. Hottovy: That is correct. They are driving a significant portion of the overall revenue. I think the interesting thing to is tying in this whole idea around, ‘Can Amazon be profitable?’ What we found doing the analysis is we broke down every line item that Amazon has. We pointed out that an average Prime customer brings in $700 in incremental revenue. When you include the $79 membership fee, what we found is that Amazon is actually generating about $80 in incremental profit on that revenue that they take in from a Prime member which is an operating margin of about 8%.

Now that compares to Amazon's overall operating margin of 1%. The difference there is because Amazon is investing a lot in technology and a lot of investments in fulfillment centers, etc. What we’ve found, if you isolate them and take a look at the incoming revenue and the incremental cost of a Prime member, they are quite profitable.

As Prime membership grows over time, that gives a very good indication that Amazon can, in fact, monetize their growth.

Small Business Trends: One of the things that stood out to me is an article where you were interviewed for Wired titled, “Why Amazon Prime Can Soon Cost You Next to Nothing.” Can Amazon actually drop down the cost of a membership to next to nothing and still make it profitable?

R.J. Hottovy: I think it has the flexibility to make adjustments to the Amazon Prime pricing structure. Looking at potential different uses such as having a lower price membership for somebody who is just accessing Prime for video. I think that’s an alternative. I think that this is potentially an opportunity to upscale.

We’ve been able to be more confident that Amazon Prime is actually profitable. I think that really speaks to the overall value of the proposition it is bringing.

Small Business Trends: How does this impact the rest of the online retail industry or retail in general?

R.J. Hottovy: It’s going to be very difficult to compete with Amazon. Particularly those stores in commoditized categories like, clothes, electronics, toys, etc. because, by those companies having a physical storefront, Amazon can maintain a pretty significant price leadership. Even with online sales tax collection, Amazon can still undercut these companies and consumers will flock to the lowest price.

This is the whole idea of show rooming. Where consumers will potentially go out to BestBuy, play with the items so they can understand a little bit better and then go make a purchase elsewhere. The only way that retailers get to compete with Amazon is to essentially match prices — to keep people from making an ultimate purchase on Amazon. At the same time, they'd be doing so at the expense of the margins they maintain and it will make it a lot less possible for these retailers to stay in business.

Small Business Trends: Where can people people learn more about the research you’ve done on the subject?

R.J. Hottovy: For people interested in learning more about the research we’ve done, you can go MorningStar.com.

This interview on subscription based membership programs is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

The post R.J. Hottovy of Morningstar on Amazon Prime’s Lessons in Creating Loyal Customers appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Sometimes when you’re stuck for an idea, the best way to get unstuck is to paint yourself into a corner.

This cartoon, for example, came out of a particularly poor writing day. I spent probably a good 3 hours alternating between staring blankly – and taking little naps. (All that staring really drains you.) I finally broke through when I imagined a guy with a guitar in a meeting. What would he say? Why does he have the guitar?

That seemed to loosen things up in my head a bit and I got this cartoon, which, incidentally, is one of my recent favorites.

It reads even funnier if you imagine it in a southern drawl.

The post Hard Times Call For A Fast Talking, Guitar Playing CEO appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Going to an event such as a conference, or tuning in to a webinar or Hangout is a great way to learn something to improve your business and build your competitive edge. Events — even online events — are excellent networking opportunities.  Attend one today.

Oh, and don’t miss our list of small business awards and contests.

For a complete list of events, contests and awards for small businesses, or to submit your own, visit the Small Business Events Calendar.

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

Making Money Online: Ecommerce Done Right with John Lawson
June 25, 2013, New York, NY

After this live workshop, you’ll be ready to immediately build your own online eBay or Amazon store, source products for it, and start selling. You’ll learn how to market your online store strategically using social media, SEO, mobile and more.

Join John Lawson, award winning Social Commerce Strategist, American Express featured businessman, author, and founder of 3rd Power Outlet – an online clothing retail outlet that has exceeded $25 million in sales.
John will be sharing his practical, down-to-earth methods for building your own ecommerce business from the ground up in this two part workshop, packed with resources, tips, and how-to instruction.
Discount Code
SBTRENDS ( $25 off)

WBENC National Conference & Business Fair
June 26, 2013, Minneapolis, MN

The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) will convene 3,500 decision makers from the nation’s leading corporations, government entities and women’s business enterprises (WBEs) to generate business together and stimulate economic growth at the 2013 WBENC National Conference & Business Fair in Minneapolis, MN, June 25-27, 2013.

Big Awards for Business
August 14, 2013, Online

The Big Awards started with a mission of recognizing real talent and performance. Real business people, those with experience and knowledge, judge the Big Awards. Request an entry kit today and submit your nomination by August 14, 2013.
Discount Code
SBT50 ($50.00 off)

More Small Business Events

• Win to the Winth Power Workshop
  June 09, 2013, New York, NY
• The Inc. Leadership Forum
  June 10, 2013, San Diego, CA
• Webinar: How to Get Your Business to Rank Well in Google
  June 11, 2013, Online
• SBVEZ Biz Incentives – Online Vouchering Training, Legislative Update
  June 11, 2013, San Bernardino, CA
• How Your Personal Credit Score Can Affect You in Business
  June 12, 2013, Pittsburgh, PA
• Business Webinar: I Survived and Dominated The Crisis
  June 12, 2013, Online
• Social Media Strategies Summit 2013
  June 12, 2013, New York, NY
• ChallengeHER
  June 12, 2013, Phoenix, AZ
• Veteran Entrepreneur Training Symposium
  June 13, 2013, Reno, NV
• Future Energy New York
  June 13, 2013, New York City
• National Small Business Week
  June 17, 2013, Washington, DC
• Web.com Small Business Forum – Raleigh
  June 20, 2013, Raleigh, NC
• Creative Freelancer conference
  June 22, 2013, San Francisco, CA
• Spark and Hustle Tour – Boston
  June 24, 2013, Boston, MA
• Learn about Backup and Recovery over Lunch
  June 26, 2013, Westlake Village, CA
• Selling to Why: Brain Based Selling
  June 26, 2013, New York City
• Financing and Sustaining Growth: When and How
  June 27, 2013, Online
• Tech Meet the Media
  June 27, 2013, New York City
• Digital Domination Summit
  June 28, 2013, Online

More Small Business Awards and Contests

• Adecco Small Business Big Dreams Contest
  June 16, 2013, Online
• 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women
  June 28, 2013, Online
• DMACC Small Business Awards
  June 28, 2013, Des Moines, IA
• eMinutes $2,500 Entrepreneurs Contest
  June 30, 2013, Online
• Huggies MomInspired Grant Program
  July 31, 2013, Online
• 2013 Big Awards for Business
  August 14, 2013, Online
• The Citi Salutes: Realizing Your Dream Business Competition
  November 08, 2013, Online

This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends and SmallBizTechnology.

The post Go To One of These Events and Improve Your Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Smaller smartphones, cheaper tablets, and Vine for Android — they’re all top stories for small businesses this week.

You’ll also learn about a new acquisition by sales and CRM software giant Salesforce.com that adds email marketing and marketing communications to the company’s offerings.

As always, the Small Business Trends editorial team gives you the news important to small businesses — and puts it into context for what it means to you.

Tech

iPhone grows ever more popular. The iPhone is the most popular make of smartphone, with 39% using an iPhone. But Google’s Android platform dominates, with over half of the market using Android on various makes. That snapshot of the U.S. smartphone market is courtesy the latest report from comScore. Smartphones are increasingly important to small business owners and entrepreneurs who must stay mobile. Which is your favorite and why?

Asus introduces Android tablet for under $150. It’s an economical 7-inch tablet. Called the Memo HD7, it will include a 16 GB device for just $149. The new tablet features two cameras and comes in the colors black, white, shocking pink and lime green. It’s an economical solution for small business users who need a mobile device when out of the office — although it’s not suitable to be your full-time computing device.

Internet Explorer stays on top in the world of browsers. If you have a small business website, you may be interested in what browser your visitors are viewing it with. Internet Explorer continues to dominate the online browser world with 56 percent of the market — at least by one measure. Firefox is the next most popular choice of Web surfers. See the full rundown to discover what browser your visitors might be using.

Samsung takes it down a notch with the Galaxy S4 Mini. It’s not only a smaller smartphone, it’s also a cheaper one. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini is a smaller version of the Galaxy S4. The device is 4.91 by 2.41 inches and has a 4.3-inch display screen. It is expected to cost less than the bigger phone, too.

Small businesses learn to use the anchor tag on websites. Do you use the anchor tag on your website? The tag is a clickable link. It takes you directly to a specific area of a page. Here is how you can use it for your business from Amanda DiSilvestro, writer for Viral Content Buzz.

What is a database? Entrepreneurs must often know tech basics these days as tech tools have become so important for building a company. You may think you know what a database is and is not. But we suspect we may offer some useful new information about a variety of tool called the “desktop database.”  Annie Pilon has details.

Google Local Plus offers neat benefits for local marketing.  SEO pro Vedran Tomic at SEO Rabbit chats with Mike Blumenthal, one of the world’s foremost experts in Google Maps, local search and the Google Plus Local service. Blumenthal offers a Google Plus Local 101 guide to making this tool work for your business. A must read for businesses that get most of their customers from their local area and want to do a better job attracting them online.

Social Media

Vine is out on Android. For all the Android users out there who have been waiting to use the Vine short-video application, the time has come. Since Twitter introduced the app on iOS in October 2012, 13 million users have downloaded it. And, an estimated 12 million Vine videos are posted to Twitter daily. How can the service help your business communicate?

Foursquare expands paid promotions to select small businesses. Right now Foursquare is working with small businesses in New York City. The location-based social network will help these businesses target new customers or perhaps customers that have been away from your business for a while, based on a cost-per-action fee structure.

Sponsored posts get a bigger footprint on Tumblr, appearing in the dashboard. And some Tumblr fans are none too happy. But before you go blaming Yahoo, which announced it would acquire the social blogging site a few weeks ago, read this.

Social media monitoring comes of age. From Facebook to Twitter, from LinkedIn to Google Plus and more, social media sites today abound. Each could offer a different value for your business, says Pratik Dholakiya, lead Strategist at E2M Solutions. The key is to learn how to monitor the many places your business has a social media presence. Here is the latest on how to go about it.

Entrepreneurship

Tip: Being too nice in business can be a bad thing. No one says you have to be a meanie all the time. But Rieva Lesonsky, President and Founder of GrowBiz Media, says there is such a thing as being too nice for your own good or for the good of your business. Here Lesonsky offers some ways to evaluate and to change course if necessary.

Subscription-based business models flourish. Today, business success is less about individual sales than maintaining customer relationships. Take Amazon’s Prime Membership, a $79 per year subscription giving you free two-day shipping on pretty much anything Amazon sells. Analyst Brent Leary interviews R.J. Hottovy of Morningstar about the value of building subscription-based membership programs in business.

Finance

Getting home equity for micro businesses becomes harder. In fact, Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, reports the number of home equity loans lines of credit dropped from 23.9 to 18.7 million between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2012.

Services

Salesforce.com fits ExactTarget into its marketing puzzle. Salesforce.com has announced acquisition of ExactTarget, an email marketing and marketing communications software provider. The deal fills a gap in Salesforce.com’s offerings by providing the company with something much closer to a full-range marketing suite.

Prepaid cell phone plans offer options for small businesses. There’s no question cell phones, particularly smartphones, are important for the entrepreneur or small business owner. Prepaid wireless phone plans offer options small businesses might want to consider — and they differ from traditional multi-year mobile phone contracts. TJ McCue offers a review of one such plan.

Freelancer.com expands contests for services. The site already offers a way to hire freelancers for small businesses. It allows small businesses to create contests for design projects, for example, and lets business owners pick from submissions. The site is expanding its contest offerings — you can now structure contests for writing projects, software projects, and more. However, structuring such projects requires extra thought.

Yahoo retires its classic email. If you had some Yahoo Classic email accounts hanging around for business, they’re likely gone now. This week, Yahoo announced it would require any remaining account holders to either change over to update to the new Yahoo email or close their accounts. The update comes with a new Communications Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Planning

42 tips to consider for a successful business event. There are so many kinds of events and so many ways a business can benefit from them. But planing them can be a chore and overwhelming if you aren’t prepared. Here is some advice from the pros that can help you do it better.

Shutterstock: News on tablet

The post Top Small Business Stories for the Beginning of June appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Tina Engler didn't set out to start a multimillion dollar publishing company when she began writing romance novels in the late 1990s.

She just wanted to write the kind of books she wanted to read. Those kinds of books weren't widely available from popular authors at the time.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, when she couldn’t find what she wanted on the market — she created it.

Engler, who is best known to romance novel fans under her pen name Jaid Black, happened on — some say invented — a niche.  The niche was erotic romance novels.

Engler’s novels were rejected at first by traditional publishers.  That’s because she shunned the typical euphemisms used in romance novels, instead using explicit language paired up with a romance story line.  Publishers at the time said her descriptions were too graphic.

Those rejections just spurred her on to publish her own stories electronically.  She built a website herself and sold stories as PDFs at first.

Soon she was publishing stories written by other authors, too.  Voila, she had moved from author to become a publisher.

Today her company, Ellora’s Cave, grosses about $15 million per year and sells nearly 200,000 books each month.

Engler’s mother, Patricia Marks, is the CEO, although Engler is still the majority owner.   The company also produces an annual conference for romance fans, called Romanticon, now in its fifth year.

Expanding far beyond the days when Engler offered one book that she had written, Ellora’s Cave now has over 800 authors. A number of authors make in the six figures and at least one, Laurann Dohner, reportedly will make 7 figures this year — proving there’s money in writing and in publishing.

Books are now sold as ebooks and print books, through booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble — and through  the company’s own website.

The company even has its own male models for cover shots — shots that will seem risque to those outside of the romance publishing industry.  The company, headquartered in Ohio, has even trademarked a name for erotic romance: “Romantica.”

Publishing Electronically – Before the Kindle

The company sold books electronically long before there was a Kindle e-reader.  Marks tells their startup story in an interview at Publisher’s Weekly:

Ellora's Cave started out selling e-books with a PayPal account. Engler, Marks said, would stay up late e-mailing stories to her customers. By 2001, Engler had set up a Web site with a shopping cart and began publishing other writers. As revenues began to rise, Marks — she calls herself an "overbearing mom" (with a business degree) — was watching and helping out where she could. "I helped her set up spreadsheets and figure out royalty payments and other stuff. By 2003 she was making enough money to hire me," she said.

By the time the Kindle came along and got popular, Ellora's Cave already had annual sales in the millions.

The Kindle, however, added to the company's success.  "The popularity of the Kindle has undoubtedly affected our revenue for the better and made us even stronger," Engler said.

Ellora’s Cave still focuses primarily on ebooks. It also sells print-on-demand paperbacks.

While growth in ebook sales has slowed somewhat in the past year, there’s still plenty of runway.  A report from the American Association of Publishers and Book Industry Study Group concluded that ebook sales made up 20% of net sales in publishing in 2012, compared to 15% in 2011.

And romance fiction is huge. The Romance Writers of America estimates romance fiction sales from 2012 to be about $1.3 billion.

The erotic romance genre got wider attention in the past two years with the mainstream popularity of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”  But Engler said the book hasn't had much impact on her company. "The only thing Fifty Shades did was bring the media up to speed on what readers were already buying," she said.

Advice for Authors and Entrepreneurs

The Ellora’s Cave startup story is all about a “follow your instincts” approach and a refusal to be held back by traditional standards.  It’s disruptive innovation brought to fiction writing.

It’s also about being “real.”  The unusual culture of Ellora’s Cave, and the personality of its owner, come through in the company’s communications, its deep red website, its annual conference, and in everything they do.  It’s not a plain-vanilla business.  It doesn’t try to be a conservative corporate publisher.  So it stands out.  It’s memorable.

For authors who are considering self-publishing or selling e-books, Engler aka Jaid Black has some advice.  She says that it is important to not just fall in line with what is popular at the time. Instead, find, invent or expand on a genre that has the potential for demand but very little supply.

For entrepreneurs, she offers this advice about differentiating: "If you can find a new spin on the market, your chance of success is higher than the person who tries to imitate what’s already out there.”

You also need focus. "Do one thing and do it well," she said. "Don’t expand into new territory until you have the first one conquered and claimed."

The post Entrepreneur Creates Publishing Powerhouse With Niche Romance Novels appeared first on Small Business Trends.

When Margie Zable Fisher of Zable Fisher Public Relations shared an interview here on Small Business Trends with Built To Sell author John Warrillow, she noted the idea of the service firm trap – an over-focus on hourly rates instead of packages.

In fact, pricing is just one of the traps along the way to developing professional services.

For those who need to break the traps, rejoice.  Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed & How Your Firm Can Too by David Kuhlman offers tips to improve your professional services beyond smaller jobs and services.

I received a review copy the book from the publisher SelectBooks, and I was pleased with Kuhlman's blend of insights and supporting material.  Kuhlman has advised numerous senior leaders at prominent professional firms for over 25 years.

When Your Perception of Professional Service Grows Up

Kuhlman's approach to the material is applicable to small businesses growing up. He examines the operations in a professional firm, highlighting opportunities.

The chapters particularly highlight fallacies and truths. If you are running a professional firm, you'll quickly learn why some ideas may not be all that they are on paper.

Take strategic advantage, for example. Professional firms believe that their people provide a strategic advantage, but Kuhlman cautions on how and why such assets can be really difficult to develop, noting:

“Most professional firms are good at creating professionals, particular in the process of forming principals, but not as good at creating ‘business people’ …. The process of becoming a complete, fully functioning Actuary or Forensic accountant or Lawyer leaves little time and energy for breadth of knowledge.”

Kuhlman works to broaden the reader's knowledge, to put mere ideas into workable outlooks that lead to workable solutions.

With a textbook-like tone, Kuhlman reveals graphs, charts and terms that shows the value service firms can bring to customers.   The end result is a better plan for strategy, from execution of customer service to pricing fees.

Top Grade Ideas for Top Professionals

Three aspects of a business model are outlined and are well worth a read if your business plan needs adjusting.  These are introduced early in the book:

• Client Value Proposition (essentially what is the deficit the client experiences without the service)
• Client Service Model (the delivery of service)
• Performance Envelope (the environment in which a firm is best equipped to compete — and my favorite term in the book)

As you can tell from the phrase  ”Performance Envelope,”  you can expect the terms throughout the book to inspire meaningful concepts, not just sales-speak or overly technical jibber-jabber.  Readers from professional firms undergoing growth and who have some years of experience will not read a dumbed-down thought.

The chapter "Resource Deployment" was among the most applicable material. It offers pragmatic approaches to managing people and time.  There are graphs throughout, but the terminology introduced in the chapter explains what can happen as a professional firm operates.  The concept behind leverage, for example, is that value from firm operations varies according to who performs the tasks.

Processes in Leading Firms are also explained against what a client can experience, so the reader can understand why some practices may not be all that they are on paper. There's also a game theory sensibility with respect to workplace concerns. The chapter of meritocracy notes what can be encountered despite principal claims that merit is a factor for workplace success.   Read how Kuhlman applies his experience to note a potential challenge to senior principals:

“Senior principals represent a unique challenge to the firm's sense of meritocracy.  In this sense "senior" does mean oldest or closest to retirement rather than senior in terms of status or contribution — and therein lies the problem. Different principals follow different paths toward their inevitable departure from their firm. Some principals begin to slow down and contribute less in current economic terms.…  Other principals continue to deliver big results, commanding large clients and significant revenue streams. These principals play a dominant role in the firm's economic and client life, influencing the fates of a large proportion of the firm's personnel…. Senior principals who remain dominant represent a different sort of cultural challenge: they soak up opportunities that could more productively be used to enable other up-and-coming principals.”

The viewpoints made this book a really enjoyable resource. A lot of phrases were just eye-catching such as this one:

"No major initiative can be so fully specified that it will survive a collision with actual facts and circumstances on the ground."

Comments like this are linguistically interesting – a few were a challenge to digest, but not overwhelming on the second read.  But overall every suggestion supports the main thesis:  assets can take time to develop.

Who Could Benefit From Reading Leading Firms?

Legal and financial professionals with dreams of their own firm are certainly the audience for this book. But its appeal does not stop there.

Other businesses whose clients receive professional services can gain insight.

Startups with the latest B2B software-as-a-service application can gain some sensibility about the conditions experienced at professional service firms it intends to sell to.    There is no silver bullet, but your strategy for working with a professional firm can be better refined after reading Kuhlman's views.

A quick aside:  Those professionals having launched a professional service should also consider reading the book Service Innovation.   It provides some ideas on how to frame service plans to match what you are seeing in the field. The combo can give you some ideas on not only how to be innovative, but what business skill sets your firm would need to deliver the result.

Read Leading Firms to explore how your professional service firm can avoid most traps and to understand what it truly means to lead.

The post Is Your Professional Service Among "Leading Firms?" appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Content marketing and social selling are all the rage lately. But in order to actually take those terms to heart and do them takes a lot of diligence and powerful tools. This review is for a new service, Little Bird, that is a search engine to find influencers. They start with the content and tie into the social graph (the stream of one individual as well as others in that topic area) to determine who you should listen to.

Little Bird is the best tool I have found for finding experts on a particular topic. Sure, I can do a Twitter search, but that’s pretty limited and just brings up people who put the term in their bio or a recent tweet. But what if you want to find people with real expertise, with real influence? You could look at their Klout score, but that’s still slightly suspect, frankly. The only way I have found is Little Bird. You start by running reports on particular topics, as you see in the screenshot below, then you can drill down further.

This blog post by one of the Founders, Marshall Kirkpatrick, is an excellent overview of why you’d want to try it out: I Found the Leaders in My Field, Now What?

In a nutshell, Little Bird can help you:

• Find new leaders to follow.
• Create an influencer engagement game plan.
• Discover your freshest connections.
• Find top people to reach out to by Twitter Direct Message.
• Research someone else's connections.

You can see below some of the topic experts Little Bird found for me on Customer Satisfaction. These are a few of the people who are Most Followed:

 What I Really Like:

• You can discover influencer connections on multiple social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and more.)
• Cool visualizations to explore topical communities (I couldn’t do this on my own, with my trial plan, but Marshall walked me through a detailed demo).
• See how you compare with a topic of interest. For example, I wanted to see how well I am engaging in the customer satisfaction space for my new site: Satisfaction Scale. I found that I still have a long way to go as you can see below.

Then I asked Little Bird to compare me to this topic of Customer Satisfaction with its 72 experts. It found that I was not following as many as I would have hoped. But, the great thing is — it helps me to engage with those people. Not in this case, but some of them might be prospects or good people to blog about or whatever reason you have for finding experts.

What I Would Like to See:

• When you do the compare function and it brings up the experts you are following and not following, it would be great to hover over the profile photo and simply add the person to your Twitter following. As it works right now, nothing happens on hover, but it does take you to the Twitter site which is a slow way to follow new people. You can see the people in other function areas by hovering, but still it takes you offsite.

Overall, if you are in the marketing, sales or communication space, Little Bird is an invaluable tool. There’s a 7-day free trial, after you get into the private beta, then it is $50/month for an individual plan and $250/month for a small business plan.

The post Did a “Little Bird” Talk to You About Social Selling? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

What is RSS?

RSS has been plagued by geeky terminology in the past. We’re going to explain it here in business terms — and why it’s still important.

Usually when someone gives a definition of RSS it reads something like this:   The acronym “RSS” stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication.

Uh, that really helps explain RSS, doesn’t it?  :)

We prefer to explain it this way:  RSS feeds give readers a method to keep up with their favorite blogs, news sites and other websites.  Anyone can choose the sites they wish to subscribe to, and then get updates in one centralized location.

In essence, RSS allows the content to come to you. That means you do not actually have to go to each blog or website individually when you want to view new updates they’ve published.

What do I use RSS for?

That depends on whether you are consuming content created by other sites, or you are the website or blog owner.

As a consumer of content:

Much like magazine or newspaper subscriptions, RSS brings the content to you as the person reading it.  You’re not limited to reading in a feed reader.   For instance, using a tool like IFTTT or FeedBurner, you can trigger an email to be sent to you whenever your favorite site updates.

For business owners, there are plenty of blogs and news sites, such as Small Business Trends, that contain useful information and tips that you can subscribe to.  We give instructions for how to subscribe a little later (below).

As a website owner or blogger:

For bloggers and website owners, RSS is a good Web marketing tool.

It is a means to create a loyal repeat following.  It helps you grow your site by keeping you top of mind with your readers.  Here at Small Business Trends we have many thousands of subscribers who get a daily email of fresh content we’ve published.  That’s in addition to subscribers to our weekly newsletters.

As a blog owner or website owner, it’s up to you to create and publicize your RSS feed.  Most blogging software makes this easy on the blog owner, because the software automatically creates RSS feeds.  WordPress, for example, is one content management system that automatically creates an RSS feed for the site.

Here’s an interesting factoid about WordPress and RSS feeds. You can generate a feed for any page in your WordPress  site simply by adding “/feed” at the the URL of a WordPress site.

You can also update your social networks (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) automatically from an RSS feed using a tool like TwitterFeed.  This saves you time.

As a consumer of content, how do I subscribe?

RSS feeds can be read using an RSS reader or read app.  Reader examples include Feedly, The Old Reader, and NewsBlur. There are also desktop and mobile apps that deliver RSS feeds such as NetNewsWire and Flipboard.  Get Prismatic is another interesting reader app.

One of the most popular readers, Google Reader, is in the process of being shut down.

Once you've chosen a reader app or service to use, you can then choose blogs and other sites to subscribe to. Each reader has a slightly different process for subscribing.

You’ll need to find a Web URL for the RSS feed.  The easiest way to tell if a website has an RSS feed is to find the orange icon — pictured above– somewhere on a website page (often in the header, sidebar or footer).  On some sites, such as large news sites, you might need to find a page with “Subscribe” options, as the site may offer different RSS feeds for different types of content.

Then right click on the RSS icon and choose “copy link address” or similar command.

Many sites offer RSS feeds through FeedBurner, a service of Google that makes RSS feeds prettier and more user-friendly.  FeedBurner-converted feeds often contain a link that will allow you to select your reader and subscribe with one click.

Is RSS dead? No!

Google has not invested in improving FeedBurner, its RSS “convert-to-pretty” service, in a long time. Then Google made the decision to shut down its popular Google Reader service.

Those two factors have led some to predict the death of RSS itself.  For instance, at One North, one person writes, “I've always had a hard time convincing people outside our industry to use RSS. The best explanation I could offer was to compare it to Twitter.”

It may be true that end users are not subscribing to RSS feeds in feedreaders as much these days.

But it’s also true that RSS is everywhere whether people realize it or not.

One way to think of RSS is like plumbing.  It works behind the scenes.  It’s the pipes that make content portable on the Web.  RSS is still a key way that content published on one site can be seen (either in full or perhaps with just a headline and short snippet) in other places. For instance, RSS is how a lot of content gets fed to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in the first place.

Popular publications like Small Business Trends get considerable traffic from people who read in feedreaders or emails.  A recent 30-day period saw 292,000 views of RSS content, and 449,000 clicks back to the site.  Not too shabby for something some claim is dying ….

Keep in mind, that’s based on FeedBurner statistics.  FeedBurner mainly tracks Google Reader stats these days. Over 90% of our subscribers according to FeedBurner are Google Reader, but many newer services don’t appear to be tracked.  If that’s true, then the impact of RSS is understated.

Some worry about scraper sites picking up your content and using it via RSS feeds. John Battelle, Chairman of Federated Media (an advertising partner of ours) attempted to shut off full feeds for his content several months ago. He then  relented based on his audience feedback — the article and its comments are good reading.

Despite rumors of its death, RSS is alive and well on the Web today — working behind the scenes.  One day it may be replaced.  But until there’s a widespread and easy-to-use replacement format, RSS is still important.

RSS Photo via Shutterstock

The post What is RSS? And Is It Still Important? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

One of my best friends referred me to the book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now after we debated about technology's impact on society.

Are our lives better now with the technology that has become widespread?

Are we "better people" because we can share information so readily and instantaneously?

Those questions are particularly poignant when we think about the potential usage of gadgets and capabilities developed just in the last year. Google Glass.  The spread of mobile apps.  The anticipation of an automated driving car.

You can even look at the Amy's Bakery Company debacle. Despite the eruption of opinions in that instance, one has to ponder the gigantic effort a small business can face when its reputation is in the combined hands of new tech — social media — and established tech —  television.

The book's author Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff) has more than a light interest in tech-induced behavior. An award winning social critic, Rushkoff has written numerous books examining societal views of technology. The life questions in his latest book can inspire small business owners to assess their own beliefs on what is making their business and lives better for themselves, their associates, their employees and the family and friends who support them.

Is This the Life We Really Want?

According to Rushkoff, we made poor assumptions about how our lifestyle would change with technology.  We thought we would be "futurists" – making the right predictions that matter.

Instead, we have found no zen state with the events that occur through technological usage.  Instead, Rushkoff notes, we have constant distractions, presuming that the information we have immediately before us is urgent.

The end result is a narrative collapse — losing a linear progression of events that forms a story.   We use narratives to tell the story about important events in our lives, let alone our business.  Today, our environment assimilates bits and pieces of information, producing outcomes that demand personal vigilance and management.

In addition to narrative collapse, Rushkoff summarizes other tenets to our digital environment:

• Digiphrenia:How technology lets us be in more than one place and be more than one “self” at the same time.
• Overwinding: Condensing large time periods into much smaller ones.
• Fractalnoia: Making sense of our world entirely in the present tense, by drawing connections between things – sometimes inappropriately.
• Apocalypto: The intolerance for presentism leads us to fantasize a grand finale.

Within these titles, Rushkoff makes relatively good distinctions on the core symptoms of his societal diagnosis and notes the offshoots from the outlined tenets.  Digiphrenia is meant to distinguish value from fragmented waste – the pay off is to not treat "data flows and databases interchangeably," for example.

That ability to distinguish value flows well into topics about our society as a whole.  Check out how Rushkoff cites the Occupy Wall Street movement as a parallel to narrative collapse – with no goals from a narrative collapse, societal movements appear more frantic and extreme, sending a seemingly never-ending message stream instead of establishing an achievement.

It is not about winning some debate and going home. Rather, as the product of decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability…. Occupy Wall Street is not a movement that wins and ends; it is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion and creates as many questions as it does answers.

As I see today's analytics adopt more real time features, I do appreciate what Rushkoff sees. He outlines consequences that business can use as a starting point to understand if personnel are unnaturally aligned or if goals to integrate technology are unsustainable and unattainable.

Read Rushkoff's citation of jet lag as an early example of an advancement impacting physiology:

But no matter how well technology overcame the limits of natural time, our bodies had difficulty keeping up….  Back in the 1950s, for example, when jet passenger service was still quite novel, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles flew to Egypt to negotiate the Aswan Dam treaty. His minders assumed he would sleep on the plane, and they scheduled his first meeting after they arrived. He was incapable of thinking straight, his compromised perceptual and negotiating skills were overtaxed, and he failed utterly. The USSR won the contract instead, and many still blame this one episode of jet lag for provoking the Cold War.

In its own way Present Shock extends the dialog highlighted in Against The Machineby Lee Siegel, but with less cynicism about how information is created. Siegel cautioned on the internet's destructive nature to obscure promises of free expression and independence. Rushkoff counters by having the reader note the tradeoffs, bullish that the reader will pick up the alarms:

Instead of attempting to retrain the body to match the artificial rhythms of our digital technologies and their artifacts we can instead use our digital technologies to reschedule our lives in a manner consistent with our physiology…. Technology may have given us the choice to defeat our natural rhythms, but we then built a society and economic order around these choices, making them seemingly irreversible.

Much of the content is meant to appeal to readers who are not accustomed to reviewing code or software development, so a developer may not feel the book speaks to them.

But if you are reading other business books on technology you will imagine some useful parallels. Rushkoff's discussion on reduced critical thinking parallels cautions being on customer service "autopilot" as Chris Zane warns in his book Reinventing The Wheel.  He highlights the always-on philosophy that works well for "many businesses" , while "our digital selves are distributed across every device, platform, and network."

Rushkoff is a proactive critic – he shuttered his Facebook page, critical of its sponsored stories feature and subsequent data usage.   I think after reading this book you'll become pretty proactive in setting your own technological strategy.

The post Present Shock: Taking A Moment to Review the Future appeared first on Small Business Trends.