We all know our world is changing rapidly (who can believe that in 2003, YouTube did not exist? Nor did Facebook or iPhones or geolocation). Competition in the current economy is fierce, the rules and technology keep changing and if you don’t continually reevaluate your systems and management, I’m sorry to say you increase your chances of failure.  You cannot stay competitive, regardless of your business, if you do not stay caught up on the newest research, trends, and laws in business. From time to time, I will point you towards some of the best books and sites to stay abreast of small business and technology news. Devote 15 minutes each day to reading something to increase your general business knowledge.

Books:

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard:. I found this book incredibly encouraging. It turns out humans really are capable of great change, and if humans are, then so are organizations. Focus on examining and then repeating successes and not on avoiding failure.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: Yes, I’ve talked about this one before. Have you read it? If you have even a single employee (or child), you must read this book.

Presentation Zen:   One of the most popular posts ever presented on this site was called Snooze Proof Your Power Point Presentation. There’s a reason why! We know our presentations are often dull. Presentation Zen helps you engage your audience by not resorting to reading a list of bullet points to them.

WordPress for Dummies: If you want to save money and build a dynamic blog/site, you’ll need a guide. This is the best and this brand new edition is about to release.

The Complete Guide to Email Marketing: Email marketing is a routine part of business now. Whether you are simply announcing special promotions or you are writing an informative newsletter, you will need some help. This book is highly rated and will give you the information you need to write effective headlines, build an email list and not violate any spam laws.

Magazines:

Harvard Business Review Yes. It is expensive. But some of the greatest business minds in the world contribute to this publication. Get it from the library if you don’t want to buy it.

Wired. It isn’t just technology. It is cutting-edge business and trends. And it has a killer iPad app!

Fast Company. Cheap subscription. Great community and site. Engaging and informative business writing.

You can find websites/blogs that are associated with nearly all of these materials as well. Stay educated, stay ahead! What do YOU read that I overlooked?

I’ve relayed a lot of information to you about small business issues: marketing, branding, legalities, human resources and management. I think it is time for a summary of the key components you should really be sure you are aware of and practicing. You should be building a business and not a job and your business should support your personal dreams. Here are ten things every small business owner should know and act on:

1. What your USP is and why it’s important. If you don’t know what makes your business unique in some way and why customers should come to you and not your competitor, than how should they? Nail this down.

2. That you must have aptitude in addition to passion. Passion is important but if you are out of your league in terms of skills, your business may be sunk. Make sure new endeavors do not involve a huge learning curve. Passion, aptitude and USP are the ways to success!

3. That marketing no longer goes one way-it must be relational. Billboards, yellow page and newspaper ads are one way marketing. People demand more these days. Blogs, websites, video, podcasts, social media, in-person networking and exemplary customer service are the way your potential customers want to be approached.

4. How to use a video camera and why it’s important. Smartphones and tablet computers like the iPad are changing our world. Are you going to keep up or are you going to be left behind? Grab a video camera and tell a story. Get your nearest teenager to help with editing if necessary. But take this important next step.

5. How to incorporate time off to stay innovative. The first few years of starting and operating your new business were probably grueling and you may have set bad personal habits during that time. You must incorporate healthy habits including adequate sleep and time off to continue to innovate and thrive.

6.  What truly motivates employees. It is the rare employee in a rare position who is motivated by just money and/or discipline. Do you know how to motivate your team?

7. What are your calls to action? If a viewer of your website or printed material is not encouraged to DO something, they leave. End of story. Is there a newsletter sign up, a video to watch, something to encourage comments or a special promotion. Do you even know what a “call to action” is? Time to brush up on this!

8. How to measure and compare marketing efforts and why it is important. You have to have a system of measuring so you know if you are wasting your marketing dollars on a particular campaign or method. Don’t run one, run several and always measure their success or failure. Be prepared to try something different as needed.

9. Who should be on your personal success team. Your team should include a top-notch mentor or coach, a qualified CPA and attorney you trust. Additionally, you should have a strong relationship with your banker.

10. What customers want.  They want to be noticed, cared for and have one or all of their problems solved. That is really it in a nutshell. In what ways could you do this better? Always be looking for the answer to that and you will always be ahead of your competitors.

QR codes are everywhere, but if you are like many people, you haven’t really noticed them on all kinds of products and in various places. QR=”quick response” and the Japanese are the creative force behind them. Developed back in 1994, they are exploding in all kinds of ways. I recently stopped to look into a shop and noticed one of these codes on their window. With a smart phone QR code app, I could scan this (they’ve signed up with Google Places) and get all kinds of information about the store! Right there… When a QR code is used in this way, it is called “mobile tagging”.

While QR codes were originally designed to identify parts in automobiles, their use has been growing daily as an ideal partner for the web and smart phones. You can find QR codes on business cards, on promotional and marketing products, on physical property (as mentioned above), geolocation tagging is using QR codes and many companies are offering discounts to folks who scan their code.

How can you get a QR code for your business? It is surprisingly easy.There are several online QR code generators and they vary.  Kaywa is offers you the QR code image that links to your website and not much more. Stickybits allows you to print out QR code stickers (and offer your code on a lot of other products like apparel as well!) and incorporates social networking. iCandy allows you to generate and then track and view stats when your code is scanned.

Take a few moments and consider how you might use a QR code for your small business, do a bit of online research into other companies practices, and then go and generate one!

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Video marketing is one of the key things I’ve been encouraging you to try. Nothing gives your potential customer a better understanding of what your business is and what you do than video. With the ability to incorporate emotionally enticing storytelling, share free information, search engines love it, and its ease of viewing on smart phones and tablets like the iPad, it is a smart marketing move for any small business.

But once you’ve filmed and edited your video, where should it go? Seems obvious but it isn’t.

If you have a blog or website, record a greeting to your visitors to put on the front page. Always make sure your settings allow viewers to mute you if they want or need to. Add a link to this video to your email signature and incorporate your topical videos into your blog posts.

Search engines LOVE video, with preference going to YouTube so be sure to develop a YouTube channel for your business. All videos on every site should have keywords listed just like your blog posts and web site do.

Vimeo is second to YouTube for video on the Web. Many people think the viewing quality is better, particularly for high-definition (HD).

Flickr was formerly just a photo-sharing/storage site, but added video capability last year and so will help you pop up in search engine rankings for images as well as content.

Viddler has some nice features for commenting but is essentially another YouTube or Vimeo. Like other sites, it allows you to customize your page and player with business logo, color schemes and fonts.

Don’t forget to incorporate your videos into social media spots, particularly Facebook (MySpace is good if you happen to be an artist or musician-otherwise it is not necessary).

Finally, here are several more sites you might consider uploading to: Mixx, VideoJug, MegaVideo, and Blinkx.

Location-based (also known as geolocation) services and social networking are the newest rage in relationship marketing. If you are a bricks and mortar business and you are not taking advantage of being registered on all of these geolocation social networking sites, you are missing out on a way to do three things essentially for free (less incentives you offer*):

1. Encourage traffic through offering visitors who check-in special deals.

2. Monitor location-based social networking traffic and reviews via site stats and individual members’ reviews/tips.

3. Reward loyalty by offering unique deals to individuals who frequent your establishment.

Location-based social networks allow users to “check-in” usually via a smart phone application. Depending on the site, visitors to your business can earn points and/or direct rewards, like a discount for checking in. They also provide reviews and tips to other members about your business (good parking spots, best time to shop, good menu items, etc.).

Foursquare is the most popular of the biggest three geolocation networking services. The pinnacle of being a Foursquare individual member is becoming Mayor of a location. Mayors are the individuals with the most check-ins at a specific location (your nearest Starbucks undoubtedly has a “mayor”). Mayors are generously courted with special deals* and individuals grapple to be the new mayor of popular establishments. As with the other two sites, members provide feedback and input about businesses they check in at.

Gowalla is similar to Foursquare’s location-based network with less emphasis on checking in the most (i.e. becoming Mayor) and more on attracting a larger number of unique visitors by offering deals that are more democratic. This Tech Crunch article gives you a clear idea on how this is done.

Yelp. Yelp came into the “check-in” system late, but now also offers this feature. It is really more of a review service for all types of businesses including restaurants, banks, gas stations, drugstores and more. You can also search special offers in the area you are in. Part of the brilliance of this is a business can check and then respond to poor reviews, thereby attempting to fix a customer service problem publicly.

Go to each of these sites and register your business. Offer a special. Test it and see how it works. No harm, no foul. Report back to our readers your results!

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Managing Online Opinions

When you start a small business blog that centers around your business, you can stumble and falter when it comes to knowing what to write about. One of the secrets to a lively blog that develops your search engine ranking is consistency. But that can be problematic when you have no idea what to write about.

Let’s say you are Jim and Dave’s Auto Body Shop and your marketing consultant (aka “me”) has suggested you start a blog. How are you going to write 2-3 blog posts per week (or more) of 150-400 words and not run out of content? Here are some suggestions:

1. First, go to Google’s keyword tool and enter your business type, eg. “heating and plumbing”, “office supplies”, “auto mechanic”, “hair stylist” and copy/paste every single one of those keywords into a spreadsheet. I used “auto body” and came up with 100 phrases.

2. Comb through those for ideas. Auto body results include paint, estimates, fiberglass, restoration, supplies, DIY, dent repair, collisions, classic cars, detailing, technicians.

3. You can reenter some of these terms to fuel even more topics, but in using JUST Google keyword tools, a small business owner could write about:

• the different paint options for vehicles
• how do auto body shops estimate their services
• how to find a reputable auto body shop
• best resources fo classic car restoration
• how to DIY for small dings, scratches (video would be great for this)
• trendy paint colors
• what to do if you’ve had a collision
• how to detail your own car

(I could keep going)

4. The next helpful step is to set up Google Alerts for some key topics like “auto industry”, “auto repair”, “highway safety” and have results sent to you daily. Google will comb cyberspace for the most relevant news stories and blog posts about your topics. These will invariably spark some ideas for blog posts of your own.

5. Do a Google blog search for blogs about your target words. You can check out auto body results here. I use Evernote and Google Reader to track posts/articles of interest online.

6. Keep notes of your customers FAQ’s (frequently asked questions) and write blog posts with the answers.

There’s no doubt that there are days you are going to feel more challenged to come up with content. Writers with the world at their feet struggle, so why shouldn’t you when you are dealing with a niche’ market? Use these tools and you will find it much easier to stay consistent with your blogging.

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Building Your Online Presence

Facebook, despite all the recent hoopla over privacy, continues to expand its applications and features and online shops  has some promise for you retailers. Lest anyone forget recent Facebook stats, I’ll remind you again: Facebook has 400 million registered users- 200 million of which get on every single day! Originally I was only aware of Storefront Social, but doing research for this post revealed several others. All are applications that allow you to set up or attach an e-commerce site directly on Facebook. In fact, there’s some discussion on whether it is possible that Facebook will become the next huge online shopping mall, ala Amazon and Ebay.

Setting up a few products as a trial run seems like it would be an easy-to-implement idea for retailers who have and want to build up their online presence. All of the sites, including Storefront Social, Payvment, and Big Commerce’s Facebook app seem straightforward and fairly easy to use. Of all of these, Payvment is the most complicated BUT it also allows you to accept PayPal which can improve sales. Big Commerce’s app requires you to have THEIR shopping cart/ e-commerce system to tie into Facebook. All in all, my vote is for Storefront Social which allows you to link directly to your existing e-commerce site and add product inexpensively (36 items for $4.95 per month-total, not per item). My only “beef” is that the tab is called Storefront versus a call-to-action like Shop Now!

So in the spirit of multiple marketing doorways, if you already have an existing e-commerce site, I’d love to hear if you’re considering or have implemented a shopping feature on Facebook?

Here is a Payvment FB storefront: New Hope Beads.

Here is a Storefront Social FB storefront: The Boutique Mommy

Here is a Big Commerce FB storefront: Mint & Berry

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Build Relationships to Build Sales

No business is perfect, yours and mine included. And while I think we strive to do our very best work and serve our customers well 100% of the time, we can’t control every situation or any interaction. “Back in the day” you might face an angry visit from a customer or a call or letter. You knew who they were and you could respond. In the world of online review sites and social networks, a company can take a beating and never know who the angry party is (or if their complaint is warranted).

Customers can leave reviews on a whole host of sites and you should set up a Google Alert with your company name so you can monitor these comments. You should also set up a search column for Twitter and do a periodic review of Facebook for comments. Knowing what is going on (reputation management) is half the battle.

If you come across a complaint, DON’T IGNORE IT. Attempt to take the party to a private venue like direct mail/message in Twitter or Facebook or email if you have that. Get them out of public view if possible. And then, ask if you can make a phone call to them.

Get more information. Thoroughly investigate the issue. This is an amazing chance for real feedback and this angry customer may be voicing what many others have not. The others simply don’t do business with you again. Learning what the problem is could, in fact, be the best thing that happened to your business long-term – if you take action.

Ask how you can make amends. Don’t just throw a coupon their way. That may not be what they need. Do your best to meet their request AND ask for a second chance. You grow more loyalty by resolving an issue than if you’d never had an issue to resolve! Encourage them to let readers know that they were cared for satisfactorily, but don’t make it about that.

It is a new world folks! Social media, augmented reality apps, video and email all allow customers to have a voice and visibility they’ve never had before. Use this to your advantage and learn from your mistakes. ALL of your customers will be better off.

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Use Twitter More Effectively

Are you making the most out of every single opportunity to expose your business to new customers? Have you brainstormed every conceivable way to leverage your content, your logo, your products, your services, your staff, your commercials, your photographs, your existing customers? Here’s a punch list of 10 things you could do RIGHT NOW to generate new exposure:

1. Take some candid shots around your business place. Put them up on Flickr. Make friends with others on Flickr.

2. Give your staff company t-shirts with your logo and tag line on them. Let them wear these on Fridays and encourage them to go out to lunch! (Buy their lunch occasionally to encourage this. They are, after all, walking billboards).

3. If you give any speeches or talks at civic events, your kid’s career day, anything, get it videotaped (this does not have to be professionally done!) and put it up on YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler-and your website. If you’ve paid for a commercial, add it there as well.

4. Get stickers printed up with your logo and tag line, especially if it is a cool logo. Slap them on everything, include a few with orders you ship for kids to use, use them to seal envelopes.

5. Turn your hobbies into ways to expose your business. If you gather with other photographers, have a great leather jacket made with your company logo imprinted. If you race motorcycles, brand your bike. If you watch birds, wear that shirt. Prepare to have a conversation about your business.

6. Promote your clients. Share their stories. Tell folks about their businesses. Always have case studies in mind of where your company did really awesome work.

7. Do a direct mailing to customers who have “slacked off”. Remind them you are still out there and you miss their business. Add a one-time coupon just for them.

8. Always offer “fries” (as in “do you want fries with that?”). On your e-commerce site with “you might also like”, in your store (fabric protector by the register of a furniture store, batteries in an office supply store, touch up kits in an auto/body shop), in person. Ask or offer what you want!

9. Leverage articles, press, blog posts and any other written content across other platforms: Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Ezine articles, Stumble Upon.

10. Consider advertising in new and unexpected places: blogs, mobile, cable, Facebook, iPad. Measure and measure again to see if the cost is worth it.

Any ideas we missed? Share them here or on our Facebook page.

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