In 2004, James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds to describe the way that groups can aggregate information and use it to make decisions more effectively than an individual. The example often cited was that a crowd was able to guess the weight of a slaughtered ox more effectively than individual experts, when the crowd’s guesses were averaged together. However, not all small businesses need an ‘intelligent crowd.’ Sometimes what's needed is the brute force of a large group of people, all working on an uncomplicated, repetitive task that humans can do but computers can’t.

Amazon, the folks who bring you books and other things via their online site, created a service called “Mechanical Turk” that allows people to create such “Human Intelligence Tasks”, and parcel out the actions to any workers that show up to do the task. Users have to take a ‘test’ to prove that they can do the work, and then they work on as many or as few assignments as they want to.

One challenge, however, is that the quality of individual workers can vary, and you, the job creator, are responsible for your own quality control. Enter CrowdFlower.com Luke Biewald, Founder and CEO, told me that in a previous role, he occasionally needed a bunch of people to quickly check local results for search engine Powerset (now part of Microsoft’s Bing team), but he couldn’t just hire and fire them overnight. He started using Mechanical Turk to parcel out tasks, but found the quality of the results would vary depending on who did the tasks.

Luke and his partners made a decision to create Crowdflower. Their website redundantly assigns tasks to different workers. They then test the results. If multiple workers agree on a result, it gives a higher degree of confidence about the quality of the work. Crowdflower works “on top of” sites like Mechanical Turk, even splitting work across different crowd sourcing sites.

Why farm out this kind of work? Luke described a wedding photography company that assigns a task of looking at pictures, labeling them (Is the Bride in this photo?), and then asks “does this seem like a good photo that someone would want?” The photographer doesn’t have to look through a bunch of pictures to judge brightness, or focus, and he also gets a result “bride and groom in the photo.”

Christian Wiklund Founder & CEO Skout, Inc. (warning- dating site, not all images are appropriate for a business office), a mobile-focused location-based dating site said “One thing that we have to do is content moderation – making sure there’s no copyrighted or explicit material on our site. We used to do this manually, but as we’re growing, we either have to hire more people in our operations team, or outsource this in some way. Crowdflower provided a cheap alternative. All our content uploads go to Crowdflower, and we get back an ‘approved’ or ‘not approved’ message. This works out really well for us. We did side by side manual approval to Crowdflower’s work force, and they were basically equivalent.This kind of work has to be done by people, and this solution is saving us money and time."

Crowdflower marks up 33% on top of the cost of the crowdsourcing sites. The company recently took a $1MM angel funding round.

How could you use a ‘crowd’ to solve your problems? Give some feedback below.

One thing most startups and small businesses don’t have enough of is sick days. It is something that I'm personally very aware of, having had to take a sick day in my business today. When it’s your business, it is tough to “take a day off” when you typically work eight days a week. It especially hurts if taking that day means your business isn’t moving forward.

While I don’t want this column to harp on the health care debate in Washington, Terri Lonier, President at WorkingSolo.com, told me she believes “The Entrepreneurial Spirit would be unleashed in the US if we had better access to health care. Of course there are economic consequences, but in my experience, people who are ready to run their own firms stay as W2 workers due to challenges getting insurance. Illness underscores the reality that many entrepreneurs are their business. They should have contingency plans in place for someone to fill in for client or customer obligations when they’re not able to."

Elizabeth Brooks, managing partner of Str.ate.gy knows about that "plan b." She has a small team, but she's the creative lead on almost all her projects, and many can't move ahead without her input. "The world stops when you are incapacitated. I've had the situation where I had a minor outpatient procedure, but had no idea if I would be on painkillers, or how long it would take for me to recover." She had people who she trusted completely, but "It is always difficult when it is a creative decision since no one will make it the same as you would. Creatives are often very 'type A' and hard to relinquish control - but you need to have that backup person." She advises that for each initiative, for each item, hand it to the person on your team with the most appropriate background. Or, give it to someone who you trust as a partner who you work with often. "You have to have faith in your ability to choose great staff, or great partners. Having been a corporate executive helped me learn to do that."

Mark Tafoya, owner of the Remarkable Palate personal chef service , and co-owner of the Culinary Media Network
said the biggest problem is “you’re the guy. If you are sick, you can’t work. On the media side of my business I could work from home, but as a Personal Chef, it’s irresponsible for me to cook for others when I’m not healthy. I pass the job to someone else, and end up losing the money from that day’s gig, but it is the right thing to do. The benefit of being a chef, though, is that I’m much more aware of being clean, and I wash my hands all the time. I actually am getting sick less often.”

What's your plan B? Let us know in the comments.

Today I’m privileged to speak at the NY XPO for Business, which is an expo with classes and seminars for small and mid-sized businesses from all over the NY area. They’re expecting 30,000 people or more. (Notes from my panel on Social Media for Small Businesses with be on my business’ website.)

I’m going to be looking out for trade show booths, good and bad, and have posted a few pictures (bad booth, good booth). When you spend thousands of dollars for a booth at a trade show – what are you doing to attract people into the booth? Will your signage have your logo, the name of your company and your tagline or motto? Great. But what about telling people what your company does? I’m often amazed by companies who spend money for large signs telling you they’re the “Industry’s Leading Solution Provider” or the “Top In Our Field.” Which field? What Industry? What are you solving?

When I’ve been to really large trade shows, done at Javits in NYC or the Los Vegas Convention Center, I’ve always come away a little shell shocked. It is overwhelming to walk literally miles of aisles trying to find a booth with a company that solves a problem or provides a new service I didn’t know about. The booths tend to blend together. Therefore, what you put on your sign is very important and relevant. Ask someone who's not in your industry to look at your design and see if they can explain what your booth is for just by looking at the signage.

Once prospects are in the booth, someone knowledgeable should be there to help them. Having ‘rent-a-booth’ people often isn’t usually helpful for closing sales. Those folks may be attractive, or extra bodies, but they probably don’t know your industry or your business. They can do little more than get leads that you hope you can follow up - they can't usually qualify the lead. Use those people to help prospects fill forms, do very light hospitality, and move them to your sales person. Having your actual employees, who can turn contacts into warm leads, which turn into sales, will maximize the value of what you’ve spent. What are your trade show tips? Comment below, please.

Small business trade shows are always exciting for me because I get to interact with lots of startups and business owners, and find out what they want from my column. I hope people will talk to me after my panel and let me know. Feel free to tell me more about your business in the comments below – and let me know what I should be writing about for you.

When you read about companies that have great service, such as Zappos, you read about passion, and a desire to put the customer first. I've heard Tony Hsieh says Zappos is a customer service company that happens to sell shoes. If you want to grow like crazy and have your customers love you, you have to do the right thing - set up your company and corporate culture to focus on service from day one.

It's not easy. You're out making your products, raising capital, or finding the right supplier or accountant, and sometimes the customer problems seem like, well, problems. That is exactly where a leader steps in and declares problems to be opportunities.

For example, our lawn service recently burned our lawn and our neighbor's lawn with chemicals. We had to argue that they had done it, and that they should make it right. The clue was the fact that the brown streaks stopped at the property line with a neighbor who doesn't use that service. There was an opportunity for the owner to apologize and immediately make things right. He eventually did, but you can be sure my neighbor is already talking with other lawn companies, offering them not one but two new customers for next year if they can give us a good deal. And we'll be looking for customers who've used them and getting recommendations.

Today I'm off to cover the Blog World Expo in Vegas. I needed reprints of my business cards. I contacted the firm I used the last time, which I won't name, but which promises a quick turn around. They delivered on time, but the cards were all cut wrong, with a 1/16 or 1/8 inch white line in the colored bar at the bottom of my cards (see photo).

I've spent several hours via email arguing that they should reprint and overnight them. They want to charge me for the overnight shipping. I say, correct your mistake and make me the customer advocate. If they did that, their name would be here in the column and they would look like heroes.

I was recently at a client's site, and their customer service manager told me "We think of every problem reported as a gift. It is an opportunity to make our products better, and to keep a customer." Wow. I want to work there, don't you? It is one of the best things I've heard in a long time. Of course, I don't know how it plays out in real life, but noting that this company is in a highly regulated industry where their problems are tracked by government agencies, I suspect it is more than lip service.

Who gives you great service? What do you do to make sure your customers are happy? Share your ideas below, please.

When I wrote 5 questions for a Start-up Accelerator two weeks ago, I only spoke to the incubator side of the equation. This week, I spoke to Dave Lifson, an entrepreneur whose company went through the program this past summer. Dave was formerly a product manager at Etsy, and his partners Chris Maguire and Hiam Schoppik were 2 of Etsy’s cofounders. So, they had some previous experience in a start-up mode, and had credibility for creating a large site that had traction.

Dave told me his primary motivation for joining DreamIt was money. They had raised just a few thousand dollars from friends and family for their small company, Waffl.com, which helps Bed and Breakfast and innkeepers with technology and online marketing. Waffl lets these small inns create very good looking, search optimized promotion pages and more.

However, now that the team has been through the accelerator/incubator experience, “The money mattered much less than the experience value. For example, we worked with the law firm, racked up thousands of dollars in fees, but they were covered.” Lifson also said that the experience gave them credibility with other angel investors and early stage venture funds. Finally, they learned a great deal about skills they were lacking such as Sales and Business Development. “We now understand price elasticity and how to create surveys to see what prices people are willing to pay for a service.”

Additionally, a few weeks into the incubator experience, Lifson, Maguire and Schoppik had switched direction. They still manage Waffl, but ended up spending most of their summer creating Postling, a tool to help the innkeepers they met at Waffl (as well as any other small business) promote themselves in many forms of Social Media. A small business can create their own blog posts, and have those posts promoted via Facebook and Twitter. The posts can also flow to blogging services like Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace and TypePad, and even more importantly, comments flow back to the Postling dashboard. So, in one place, a small business with limited time and resources can manage their social media presences.

The Postling team recently added a feature that allows postings at a certain time. So, a small business owner can schedule a blog post for 10am, with Twitter and Facebook promotion at 10:05am and again later in the day. That way, if the business owner is busy at the register or speaking with a client, their information still goes out on time.

There are more good things coming to Postling, according to the team, much of it from what they learned from their Waffl customers and experiences at DreamIt’s Start-up Accelerator.

Is an incubator right for your business? Ask your questions below.

The incubator or accelerator concept for start-ups is simple. Wikipedia initially defines Business incubators as “programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services.” The question for a young start-up becomes “what is the value of working with an incubator – and what are the tradeoffs?”

I spoke with Steve Barsh, a managing partner of Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures and a Project Faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, about how DreamIt works with Startups. (I also had the privilege of speaking to this summer’s group back in August. )

Howard Greenstein.: What’s the role of an accelerator/incubator?

Steve Barsh: The number one blended role is to help them refine their idea and de-risk it. Entrepreneurs run around with assumptions, thinking that everyone is going to want their product or service. Most business ideas are based on three to five key assumptions. How do you test and remove risk from those assumptions as quickly and as capital efficient as possible? By turning assumptions into knowledge as quickly and cheaply as you can. Build a product or service, release it to the world, and get it out to your market and test metrics. That way you de risk. Figure out “What did I learn?” and then iterate.

Another way of doing it is to speak to your target market first, before you build anything. There is no need to build software to test entrepreneur’s assumptions. Ask your market and you’ll get requirements you didn’t know about, including feedback and reactions.

HG: What resources can a company get from an incubator?

SB: The most important thing is a mentor, a been-there done that entrepreneur who can help you through the process. Another critical resource is a speaker series that is very pragmatically focused with tips, tricks and help that companies can use to take action immediately. Professional support like accountants and attorneys and office space are usually included. Don’t minimize the ideation time, bouncing thoughts off others. The teams cross pollinate and work together and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Finally, they provide some working capital -“mac and cheese money” – so you don’t worry about paying the rent and eating. We take pressure off so you can focus on ideas.

HG: What are some of the tradeoffs?

SB: It will be a lot more intense – people describe it as “working out at the gym vs. working out at home.” Everyone is watching; so you lift more, work harder. You’re in a more competitive situation – if another group met with business prospects, you feel pressure to meet with business prospects. Another tradeoff is a some of your company’s equity. For some of the entrepreneurs, they had to move to Philly for the summer, find a sublet and just work - like boot camp for 3 months.

You can learn more about the start-ups Dreamit worked with this past summer on their Demo Day page. In the next few weeks, I hope to have one of the ‘graduating’ company’s feedback on their experience. Did you work with an incubator? Share your story below.

Promotions can be a powerful marketing tool that can bring you in new customers and keep your loyal ones happy. But, when there's a 'buy one get one free' offer - remember - you, the business owner is the one paying for the "free" item. So you have to ensure YOU Get value too. I spoke with Bryan Heathman who's an expert in online promotion and converting prospects to customers. He told me "The fundamental question you have to ask when you're doing a promotion is: 'What offer will evoke an emotional response from your audience?'"

Heyman would know. Several years ago, he started a company called iPromotions, running online promotions campaigns, and has run hundreds of these for large and small advertisers. His book "Conversion Marketing" and his research into the topic comes from his experience in these campaigns.

When you consider promotions for you company, Heathman says "If you are an IT consultant helping small businesses create office networks, you would use a different promotional vehicle than would an owner of a hair salon." The trick is to visualize the target audience, figure out what offers they respond to, and then pick tool to evoke emotional response. How? Take a look at self interest motivators of audience vs the business motivators of that audience. If you’re that IT consultant selling $10k servers to a large company, you can offer 2 types of promotional offers. One would be $500 in free cables required to setup the server. But, there's no value to the purchasing manager as individual even if he’ll need the cables. Instead, consider offering a free fly-fishing rod if the purchaser lives in an area where that sport is popular. The 2nd offer is more of an emotional response item, and may generate more sales.

I asked Heathman "How do you test the emotional response and see how people will react?" He told me "The size of your organization will determine your appetite for testing and measuring campaigns. For a small company, call up customers and ask which promotional offers they like. This is inexpensive and may be quick and effective. If you do have a team, you can try things like A|B pay-per-click testing using Google Ad Words, or try different offers to different customers."

If you're not sure where to start, Heathman's "promotional tools worksheet" lets you evaluate which offers might work for you. Has promotion and conversion worked for you? Let us know how in the comments.

A movie magnate was once quoted as saying "If you can’t fit your idea on the back of a business card, you don’t have a clear idea." Brevity is popular these days – try Twitter. And then there’s the somewhat timeless metaphor – entrepreneur writes out her ideas during a meeting on the back of a cocktail napkin – and success soon follows. There's entrepreneurial wisdom in brevity.

As a marketing and PR veteran for over 20 years, Robyn Levin found the Entrepreneurs and startup marketing teams she was coaching were missing a simple way and brief way to create a focused marketing strategy.
Often, in meetings with them, she would grab a napkin to sketch out ideas. She wondered how often this occurred, and started considering the characteristics of the napkin. Clearly, there’s limited space, so there is only room for core ideas. Less, in this case, is more.

“I started giving seminars and handing out branded napkins on which attendees could create their plans.” Now Levin has an Ebook – the Cocktail Napkin Marketing Plan that lets entrepreneurs answer a series of questions, and the results are filled into a one–sheet template. (I guess cocktail napkins don’t really fit through a pc printer.) “The intent of the plan” says Levin "is to get entrepreneurs clear, focused and ready to take action." The result is a one–year time line with quarterly strategies that the entrepreneur can follow.

Levin notes that some older entrepreneurs are not as comfortable with the new technologies for marketing. They may be overwhelmed or confused by Internet tools like Facebook. She suggests that to market today you have to “understand traditional and new media, and how important it is to integrate the two types.” Clearly, Levin does this, selling e-books, blogging, creating webinars, and using word of mouth. She also does in person speaking and bootcamps for training.

What are some core take-aways Levin can give to Entrepreneurs and Startups? “People who are new to marketing or advertising often give it one or two tries and then give up. They don’t realize how many times you may have to do something in order to get people to take action. Like Covey says, Begin with the End in mind. A strategy is very important and without it you may be throwing money away. You may have to reach out 5 to 7 times before people will take action.”

How do you create your marketing strategy? The comments are open below.

In two recent discussions with a small business owner and a PR firm about many of the things I've recently covered in this column, a big concern that came up was time.
"How much time will it take me to create a good social media presence?" Great question. The answer is, of course,"it depends."

When I spoke to Mark LePage last year in Building Success by Blogging he mentioned that he spends 10-12 hours a week on bloggin, separate from his standard marketing efforts.

If one goes by the old adage that an entrepreneur should spend about 20% of her time marketing, Mark might be spending more time when you factor in blogging and standard marketing (or working 80 hours a week).

Sometimes, though, the social media efforts really require some focus and organization. Use tools such as Google Reader to organize RSS feeds from websites you care about, so you don't have to check each site separately. Create Bookmarks in your browser to remind you to check important sites (like your competitors, industry trade association sites, The Startup Toolkit, etc.).

Social Media Consultant Chris Brogan notes how much work he does in "How Many Chores Does It All Add". Chris' thoughts are great, but more focused on the high-end social media user. However, the things in his comments below the post can also give you great ideas.

If you're using Twitter, consider tools that help manage your incoming messages, such as TweetDeck, CoTweet, PeopleBrowsr, or just look at the @Replies tab on your home page more than your regular page to see if people are talking about you or your company. Don't forget to search twitter for mentions of your company or industry as well.
(Disclosure: in the past I have done some consulting for CoTweet, but am not currently doing so.)
If you have a blog, make sure new comments are set to come to you in email, so you can respond to them. Make a time, in the morning or afternoon, to check your social presences, such as a facebook fan page, myspace page, or whatever you're using. Check it then don't watch it all day. It is true that Social Media can take a lot of time, and we'd all probably be looking at pictures of our friends on the beach than doing the hard work of running our businesses. But if you make specific appointment times and use those times to check in, respond to questions, and post new content for your customers and fans, you'll be able to manage the time and be more effective.

What methods are you using? Share them in the comments below.

One of the most important tools any entrepreneur has is her network, and it that network can help you to be “more nimble while being less capital intensive.” So says Krista Canfield, Career Expert and Spokesperson for the business social network LinkedIn. She’d talking about how to use your contacts to leverage what you have into what you need. “Sometimes you can tap into your network and find answers or resources quickly so you can spend your time working on your business.” When you can activate your network, you can achieve more than you could have alone, as Tina Hill showed us just a few weeks ago in 5 Ways to Connect with Customers and Buyers.

LinkedIn is a 6 year old social network intended to help people make better use of their professional networks while allowing you to help people you trust in return. In practice, though, many people aren’t using LinkedIn to its full potential, so Krista gave me several tips which I’ll share over the next few weeks.

How can your startup business get the most value from LinkedIn? Krista said it depends on your goals. For a lot of small businesses, they get the most utility out of LinkedIn Answers. “Many businesses use Answers as a think tank – a way of asking your network for help about a question or business problem. If you don’t' have a network you can make your question public, and everyone can chime in. You can get answers from anyone - over 45MM users – who can help you connect with other professionals.”

When you login to LinkedIn and look at your Answers page, you’ll see questions from your own network. You can also browse all the different subject areas and see if there are things you can answer yourself. Answering the questions can be a key to generating your own business leads, or to finding new connections.

Krista noted “Always be really transparent and tell people who you are when you respond. For example, if you're a travel agent, and someone asks travel related questions, respond with tips and tools, regardless of whether you are going to get the business.” Be generous with advice and answers, as this will improve your reputation. Then people will think of you when they want to specifically use your services.

We’ll have more LinkedIn tips in a few weeks. Please share your tips in the comments.