http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ Howard Greenstein is a Social Media Strategist and Evangelist, and President of the Harbrooke Group, which specializes in helping companies communicate with their customers using the latest Web technologies. Read full bio. en-us 2009-11-18T13:07:07-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/11/are_you_for_real.html When we meet people in person, there are often clues as to the person’s identity, and sometimes there are real life tokens of identification. But when we connect online, those clues often don’t exist, leading us to wonder if the person is really who they say they are? What makes a merchant or a connection online real? There are some basic steps, like having your Facebook or Twitter pages link back to a page on your official company site that, in turn, notes your official presence on those social sites. But for some people, that’s not enough. This is one of the problems that PeoplePond.com is trying to solve. When someone from a social network connects with you, how do you know that this particular “John Smith” is the John Smith who you met at the chamber of commerce meeting, or at college? PeoplePond http://peoplepond.com president Theron McCollough told me they have 2 products. “PeoplePond is a Brand and Identity management tool. There’s lots of noise on the net, this is a place where people can have their own jump-off point. It’s all the information that you want others to see, and a very robust living document for you. Since People are acting like corporations, and corporations are trying to be like people (making one-to-one connections), CompanyPond http://www.companypond.com/ creates a profile for all company online presences, with links to all the people who are legitimately part of your company.” Follow the links and you can verify that this is Theron, who works for PeoplePond, and it’s confirmed on the company page. Tools are also available to show this information on Facebook and blogging platforms. Here’s an example of Roderick Peterson, who has a verified profile. And, Fort Wayne Web Design lists Chad Pollitt on it’s company page as one of its’ employees, via his PeoplePond profile. McCullough told me the sites help startups and small businesses because “Having all your web presences listed in one place helps you manage them more effectively and helps you market and promote more effectively. If we look at building trust online – this helps show that you are who you say you are, everywhere you are online.” If you want people to have a higher level of confidence that you are who you say you are, for a fee your information is run through a 3rd party verification process improving the odds that it’s you – though this verification is not as extensive as a credit check. PeoplePond provides a badge that shows you’ve been verified, and you can put it on your website. In the future, McCollough said, they’ll be “Pushing identity account ownership beyond the PeoplePond site." Additionally, having this profile may help your search engine rankings as it aggregates information about you, and points to all the places you ‘exist’ online. This could be helpful for a new company starting out and trying to build their name and search rank, as well as for a professional trying to improve where their own name shows up on search results. What things do you do to show your customers you are really behind your own Facebook, Twitter, or Blog page? Share in the comments below. 6579@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-11-18T13:07:07-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/11/the_workforce_of_crowds.html 6544@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-11-04T16:11:53-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/10/entreprenur_vs_flu_whats_plan_1.html 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. 6522@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-10-28T15:31:14-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/10/trade_show_advice_for_startups.html 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. 6481@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-10-21T11:19:43-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/10/customer_serivce_do_the_right.html 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. 6465@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-10-14T17:10:00-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/10/an_incubator_graduate_postling.html 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. 6439@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-10-07T15:53:59-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/09/5_questions_for_a_startup_acce_1.html 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. 6372@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-09-23T15:59:57-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/09/when_considering_promtion_thin.html 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. 6345@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-09-16T16:12:16-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/09/marketing_keep_it_brief.html 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. 6328@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-09-09T21:10:53-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/08/social_media_for_small_busines.html 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. 6294@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-08-28T16:00:10-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/08/activating_your_business_netwo_1.html 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. 6232@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-08-19T15:58:59-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/08/how_affiliate_marketing_can_cr.html At the Startup Toolkit I look for tools that help you, the startup team, manage, sell, promote or market more effectively. This week, I attended the Affiliate Summit East 09, with the intent of learning more about Affiliate Marketing (also called Performance Marketing), and how it might help your business. The industry is made up of over 200k affiliate partners and more than 5000 advertisers. Affiliate Marketing has been around for many years on the net. Inc covered it in 2001, Affiliate Advertising: Friend to the Bottom Line and 2004's Start a Sales-Based Affiliate Program. But of course, things have changed a lot in the last few years. “Think of Affiliate as another sales channel” says Jim Kukral of TheBizWebCoach.com. “It is a way to obtain leads or sales, and monetize those referrals in a way that uses tracking technology to give people credit for the sales they sent you, and to make sure those referrals get paid.” There are opportunities for affiliates to send direct sales to a site, or to pass leads. Many people have seen,the Amazon.com affiliate program. People put a link to a book on their website, with some special code that Amazon provides, and if someone buys the book via that site, the owner get a small percentage. Why leave it to Amazon? You can have people selling your goods on their site too. Lead passing is different. Think of a widget on a car enthusiast site that passes a potential car buyer’s name and address to a lead aggregator. A car dealer might want to purchase that lead, and the lead generator gets a percentage. Who should create an affiliate program? Wade Tonkin of GTO Management, a company that is an “outsourced program manager" which creates an affiliate program on your behalf and manages it for you, notes “Retail is an obvious fit. The affiliate gets a percentage of the sale they’ve sent to the site. As a merchant, you define what you pay for – a lead, or an actual closed sale in your shopping cart.” Brook Schaaf of Schaaf Consulting and a member of board of the industry’s first not-for-profit trade association, the Performance Marketing Alliance suggests that companies must be of a certain size to really benefit from creating an affiliate program. “If you’re selling a million dollars of goods a year, and affiliate sales generate an additional 10% of sales, there are going to be fees for the affiliate network, and time spent creating the program and integrating it into your own e-commerce site. It may or may not be worth the additional $100k.” Schaaf’s group tends to work with companies that already sell $5M or more a year. But networks such as ShareASale.com let a small merchant do self-service creation of an affiliate program, track the referrals, and pay the affiliates for helping you sell. This business is huge – over 3000 attendees visited the Affiliate Summit this week, and there were 2 floors of booths promoting networks and programs. Before you start an affiliate program, know that there have been a lot of problems with fraudulent leads and link inflation in the past. “Quality is important,” notes Schaaf, “so you should work with services that guarantee to vet your leads and sales for quality.” There’s a famous quote about half the money spent on advertising being wasted – if only you knew which half. Affiliate is a way to track and manage that spending so it is clear how payments relate to sales or tangible leads. Kukral and Tonkin suggest any new business considering creating a program do substantial research. A few good blogs to read are “ABestWeb.com” and “AffiliateTip.com”. The Affiliate Summit West is in January in Las Vegas if you want to immerse yourself in learning and potential partners. 6217@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-08-12T16:09:00-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/08/5_ways_to_connect_with_custome_1.html I'd like to point out a business owner who is living much of the advice I'm writing in this column relating to sales and marketing. Tina Hill of Kidzsack is a mom-preneur and inventor, and she's using many different ways to connect with customers as well as buyers. Previously Hill was a fashion designer, and after time out of the workforce, she was inspired to create Kidzsack because her kids needed a product like it. She also wanted an outlet for her creativity. Hill created Kidzsack, an "eco-friendly backpack and a craft project for kids." In order to sell her product, Tina has to reach business owners and merchandisers. She's taken to doing much of her own promotion and marketing herself in different ways from online to the phone to in-person networking. Using Tina as a model, here are 5 ways (plus a bonus way) you can promote your start up business more effectively - and obtain sales in the process. Connect online One of Hill's key tools is LinkedIn. When she got an order from a Zoo, she went on LinkedIn and connected to the rep, and then worked creating a relationship. Recently she sent him a message, and he bought a new order of products. Hill also sells to resorts, so she joined several resort professionals discussion groups. There she found and connected to resort buyers, which directly led to sales. When DrToy.com gave Kidzsack a "Best Vacation Product Award" Hill put up a press release under the news topic in several of her groups. Buyers got right back to her. Her advice: "Use Groups and reach out to members as a way to find buyers who wouldn't know the product otherwise." Find Writers and Bloggers interested in Your Industry To help promote her product to end customers, Hill often reaches out directly to Bloggers who cover kid products. Hill told me "A lot of people read blogs and they shouldn’t be underestimated…one person reads it and then tells two people who then tell three…and so on." Clearly she understands the power of social sharing, and how blogs and other online platforms encourage readers to share content, which can lead to sales. Another good place to find writers? Watch the "Help a Reporter" list. I sourced this article via that list. Pick up the phone Tina said "Cold Calling is old fashioned but it’s still the No. 1 way I’ve been getting my sales. People still like dealing with people directly and developing a relationship on the phone and not just by e-mail. E-mail is great for follow ups but I always make an initial first call." I ran that by the "Queen of Cold Calling" Wendy Weiss and she agreed. "Cold calling works. The number one mistake that most cold callers make is to not prepare effectively for their calls. It's a myth to say that cold calling is a numbers game--it's not. Cold calling is a preparation, strategy and skills game." Find people in person So often, we know someone who knows someone who can help us, but we don't work our network effectively. Tina sent an email to hundreds of friends and contacts asking for help getting her on TV. "Talk with your friends because everyone knows someone. I reached out to friends and asked 'Who knows someone on TV'? A really good friend knew an anchor on CBS, and they used Kidzsack for their'EcoFriendly must-have products.' " Have an Effective Website Hill's website has everything that's needed to find out more about her product, and she says people look at it first, before they contact her. While it is a good site, I'll take a writer's prerogative to suggest a few improvements. The "Where to Find Us" tab on the site is trying to be 3 pages in one. It is acting as the "News" page for the site, the "Where to Buy" for retail, and the "How to Contact a Sales Rep" page, and in doing so it is too busy. Tina would be better off having a "Where to Find Us" page that is for consumers, segmented by State and then Town so it is a bit easier to find the product. The other items deserve their own pages too, so News could show on the "About" page. There also should be a clear link on the home page for wholesale buyers to contact Kidzsack. Use Online Sites to get Business Support In addition to reading this column (Thanks) Tina uses small business owner communities www.mommymillionaire.com and www.mominventors.com because "they give tips, have discussions, and help in every way possible. I have made friends on these social networks that have helped me with leads as well as product liability insurance advice (reducing my costs significantly)." Mommy Millionaire got her four or five good friends from the website, and they've helped her shape her business. There are community sites like these for many industries. Use your search engine to find one and become involved. What are some of the suggestions you have? Please leave comments below. 6201@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-08-05T17:11:37-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/07/_a_useful_way_to.html One of the big challenges in any work place is paper. When many entrepreneurs leave a big company and start their own shops, they vow to cut out paper. It is always easier said than done. Where’s the IT department to create the form in a start up business? Where’s the quality assurance team to test it?Anyware, a company in the mobile application development space for over 12 years understands this problem and has developed a package called “reformXT” that lets your employees fill out forms on their mobile devices. They currently support Palm (runs on Palm Classic on thePRE), Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and, in about a month, iPhone. Acting product manager Mark Jones and marketing manager April Sailsbury shared with me an example of a pizza chain who wanted employees to efficiently be able to order supplies from the distributor. An employee with a mobile phone or wireless device could go into the kitchen, freezer, and stockroom and analyze the inventory, clicking on different items he feels need to be ordered. When the order is done, it is submitted and can be retrieved at chain headquarters as a separate order, or as one line in a spreadsheet. The central group could then bulk order their products and have the appropriate ingredients sent to the individual stores. I gave them a different example. Say a saleswoman is out in the field and wants to rapidly take orders based on inventory already available – how could she do that? Jones told me “If you want real time inventory you can work with the “reformXT Companion” to update form information from your own database.” Our saleswoman could fill the form on her blackberry and submit it while still on the customer site. As she looked through the specific items, she could see updated inventory numbers to let the customer know what is in stock and what might take longer (or offer a substitute product). Small companies shouldn't fear creating their own forms – if you can fill out a basic web form, you can create your own form with reformXT. The product runs as “Software as a Service” – on their website. Your employees mobile phones access their servers for the forms, and you get the data via email. The reformXT software is free to try out and create forms, but costs per transaction of forms can range from a few cents to a dollar per form submitted, depending on your usage package. You buy batches of transactions and can save when you buy in bulk. Cost out how much time it takes when employees are filling out paper and then retyping it – could you make the switch to mobile, on-the-go entry? Comments are welcome below. 6182@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-07-29T16:07:27-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/start-up/2009/07/sharing_content_using_rss_can.html I’ve been writing about having a small business website in 8 Options to Quickly Build a Web Presence for your Startup, about using a blog to promote your business in Building Success By Blogging: An Architect's Story and even about Smart Blogging Strategies. Today we’re going to explore the magic of a technology called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS lets you publish content on your site, and have other people easily view it on many other sites. For example, you could add this column to a program called a “feed reader” and then every time it is published, you would see it in your feed. You’d click on the “Feed button.” You’ll be presented with choices – you could add the feed to your Google,Yahoo, or AOL custom home pages, or take the ‘raw’ version of the feed and add it to a program like News Gator http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/default.aspx which lets you read feeds on mobile, in windows or mac, and even within your Outlook inbox. If you added the feed to your Google homepage it would look like this: Or to your Google reader, it would appear like this. As an entrepreneur, using a reader can help you control your information flow and find useful content. As a marketer, creating feeds can amplify your marketing efforts. PRESSfeed is a company that specializes in helping PR and Marketing people and small business owners who are not technically oriented get fresh content on their own sites easily, and distribute their content it to other sites. Sally Falkow, Co-Founder of PRESSfeed, told me “Our system makes their content more visible and gets their messages to more audiences which they may not have reached. For example, for a construction industry client that does water-scapes, paving and pool surrounds, PRESSfeed got them onto the first page of Google for their search terms. When they added content regarding a new geographic location, these showed up in the targeted searches.” In another case, a phone integrator client’s feed got added by other site, a Hispanic business site, and soon they got called by journalist from a different business magazine. Once content is in a feed, it is easy for customers who like your product to share it via sites like Delicious, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and even post links in Facebook. According to Falkow, within 3-6 months, the feed can be a top driver traffic to website. And Google software engineer Matt Cutss has said many times that adding fresh content in a feed helps get a site better search engine ranking. “It is such an easy way to spread and distribute your content – why wouldn’t you put your content in a feed?” asks Falkow. She also notes from recently conducted research she performed that only 14% of top entrepreneurs are using feeds on their news content – so there’s an opportunity to differentiate. Besides PRESSfeed, an easy way to have your content available in a feed is to have a blog – you can find out more about how to do that in 8 Options to Quickly build your web presence. 6113@http://blog.inc.com/start-up/ 2009-07-22T15:59:03-05:00