Perhaps the biggest thing since Google, Facebook is a social epidemic that began on college campuses as a way for students to “connect.”  Facebook is now 150 million users strong in 170 countries represented by 35 languages and growing strong (FB grew 85% in 2008).  Within the past year facebook has targeted the private sector for its newest pool of users.  With the new service titled “pages”, which provides a presence for an organization, product, or public personality in the realm of facebook.  For a business, this presents many possibilities, possibilities that are cost effective and possibly addicting.  A series of facebook blog posts ensues covering the Facebook Revolution. Let’s get started on getting started.

Before heading over to facebook you should consider what is achievable through an account on facebook:

• Connecting With Customers – Facebook brings B2C communication to a new level of direct communication.  Reviews can be written, discussions started, and comments made about your business.  Communication in facebook is mutual, fun and comfortable for both parties.

• Informing Customers – “Fans”, the facebook equivalent to customers, to your page will receive updates whenever you post them.  Perhaps your business now offers a new product line; post it on facebook and inform your “fans” instantaneously.

• Brand Management - Your facebook page is an extension of your brand.  By adding information, photos, updates, videos, and applications your page acts as the digital version of your brand which users may interact with.  Facebook personifies your brand and allows extra value to be attached to your brand.

• Brand Awareness - Creating a business account allows other users of facebook to subscribe to your page as a “fan.”  Gaining fans is the facebook equivalent to creating brand awareness.  A bonus to generating fans is that once someone becomes a fan, a link to your page is then displayed on their page; viral campaign anyone???

These 4 things are just the tip of the benefits-facebook-provides-iceberg.  Social media is a young and undiscovered business phenomenon with its full potential yet to be realized.  You may feel overwhelmed by the size of facebook at first, but you must remember to start small and build your page’s elements one by one. Follow this link to start a page for your business.  Complete the forms and be prepared for your journey into facebook.

Stay tuned as we continue our facebook journey next with the wall and finding friends!

We will now begin a blog entry discussing the benefits of blogging.  Yes, this is a blog on blogging, *gasp*.  Do not fret; the universe will most likely not collapse upon itself but there exists a strong possibility of meeting the bizzaro world version of yourself later today.  Let us travel back to 1998 to the conception of the “blogosphere” as we know it.  In that year only a handful of blogs existed on the internet.  These sites, coined “weblogs” by Jorn Barger, were essentially online journals for motivated individuals.  For a unique glimpse to the early days of blogging check out this list of blogs existing in the year 2000.  Fast forward 10 years and writing a blog is America’s newest favorite past-time with an estimate by Wired magazine stating nine blogs being created every minute.  Some estimates placed the number of blogs world wide to be close to 100 million with many more readers in 2008.

Of these 100 million blogs, many bloggers are not very committed to their blog and their target audience consists mainly of friends and family.  Furthermore, many blogs are concerned with the blogger’s hobbies and/or interest.  Lastly we have the part of the blogosphere, which this blog exists in, the business sector.  The blog is a useful tool for any and all types of business.  The blog creates a dialog with customers and stakeholders that can be extremely useful in generating value.  Also, the blog becomes a tool for attracting visitors to your website which may lead to future opportunities.

As you ponder starting a blog, there a few things to consider; the host of your blog, your blogs content and attracting readers.  Many avenues for hosting blogs exist online, check out this database to pick the right one for you. On a side note, these are all third party blog hosts and will not be hosted within your website. In order to have the blog be internal to your site you will need to contact your webhost to set that up.  Now onto the next step, deciding what the heck you are going to write about.  To start off, maybe write a small introduction explaining your business and welcoming visitors to your company’s blog.  Remember the blog is a conversation and can be funny and witty.  Also remember to keep the posts succinct and to the point, unlike this post.  Once you have a post or two published online you will want to attract readers for these posts.  Try an email to your contacts directing them to your brand new blog.  Also, make sure the blog has a link on your company’s homepage so potential customers can read about your business.  Another suggestion is to network your blog in the blogosphere.  Check out blog database sites like Blogarama and blog search engines such as Technorati and Google blog search to read other users blogs, generate ideas and find inspiration.

One final word of advice before you take the step toward a successful blog, have fun with the blog.  A blog is meant to be conversational and informative.  Imagine yourself at a networking event using the same language you would use while writing a memo or press release.  Chances are that you will not be the life of the party.  Now picture the guy making jokes and capturing people’s attention.  You want your blog to be funny, informative and interesting just like the fun guy at the party.  So sit back, relax, and get ready to blog!

When you chose your last personal email address how much thought did you put into it? Did you sit down and try to incorporate your interests or perhaps you just made a scrambled variation of your name and your birth date.  Or perhaps you jammed the keys and chose a randomized email like aljdfd@hotmail.com.  Obviously, most people want emails to be a digital extension of themselves just as with screen names and avatars.

This concept of personalized email addresses may also be applied in the business world.  Email in current times is as necessary for a business’s success as oxygen is necessary for life on Earth.  Multitudes of options exist for the type of email service and account, however that is beyond the scope of this post. For more information on email provider and their services check out www.emailaddresses.com, which has a comprehensive review of most email providers on the web.

Choosing the right domain name is beneficial for multiple reasons.  First, brand recognition can be generated through your email address.  Having your brand represented in your email address is like handing out business cards each time you email.  Customers see your brand name and through repetition remember your business.  Including your business name in the domain name is the most common way to do this:  service@business.com.

Which leads to our next point, having a memorable email address puts your business in the foreground of customer’s minds.  Having a creative and personalized email address will help your brand stand out even more.  Personalize the address based on how the account services the customer.  For example, a pizza delivery email address might be something like hotpies@pizza.com.  The key is to be unique and relative to your business’s service to the customer.

Lastly, the more viable and creative your email address the less likely your emails will be viewed as spam.  According to Jason Baer of Convince & Convert, 43% of email users use the “From” part of an email to judge emails as spam or not.  Spam, if you are unaware, is not the delicious deli meat but, rather, the devil in terms of emailing marketing.  Being labeled as spam is like having a rough break up.  The spam label totally shuts your business out of the customer’s inbox and puts your emails on a straight track to the trash bin.  Personalizing your email address and building rapport with customers can avoid having your emails labeled as spam.  Also be sure to check out this list of keywords that spam filters look for to avoid the pitfalls of spam.

So business owners, be aware of your email addresses.  Remember how they may help or hurt your email marketing campaigns and keep the customer in mind.  Good luck and happy emailing!

Photo thanks to marii ii

Q, Mike and I facilitated a focus group yesterday- the objective of which was to find out what small business owners want to know about technology, websites, the whole works. The group ranged from self appointed “power users” to two guys just starting out on the long road to becoming tech-savvy.

I was not surprised that it was the less tech-minded members of the forum that provided us with the best fodder for our upcoming “Business Technology 101” seminar. The questions posed for Q and Mike reminded us how confusing all the tech terms can sound. One young woman in the focus group commented that when her developers did take the time to explain all the intimidating terms and acronyms, 9 times out of 10 she knew exactly what they were talking about—she just lacked the techno verbage.

The terms themselves become the missing links in conversations. PPC? SEO? Huh? When Q and Vinh were training me for this job, I had to interrupt them every 7 or 8 words or so to get explanations. One day Vinh instructed me to make a “lightbox.” I glanced up to the ceiling dubiously, highly doubting that Vinh really needed me to mount a ladder and tamper with the fluorescent office lights.

Sometimes those in the tech fields forget how to communicate with “laypeople,” if you will. After the focus group, Q, Mike and I decided that a glossary of key terms was first on the agenda for the seminar presentation we’ll be giving in April.

The focus group was an excellent reminder to Q and Mike that the terms and acronyms, while efficient between two people that speak the language, can immediately raise hackles and put up walls between two people who both actually have the capacity to fully understand what a lightbox is. (It’s an online storage area for photos, p.s.)

Photo thanks to Don Jopi

My Baba reuses teabags. She hordes bacon grease in tin cans in her freezer, and she uses old butter wrappers to grease cooking pans. When Baba raised her six children in the post-depression era, she used cloth diapers for all of them.

What the big car companies and fortune 500s are just starting to do, my grandmother has been doing her whole life.

Though she doesn’t know it, Baba is greener than most of us. While Oprah and Katie Couric are hosting how-to-seminars on saving water by doing your dishes in the shower, Baba has been quietly watering her plants with dehumidifier water for decades.

Though she may not know it, most of Baba’s money saving techniques are also green. And in an economy that is eerily reminiscent of ’29, we all could take a page from her book.

So what can your small business do? Besides implementing “Walk to Work Wednesdays” savvy businesses are reducing their paper trails.

With Email Blasts, paper newsletters are becoming obsolete. I know, it’s a little scary when you can’t physically see the newsletters going out, when you can’t lick (or re-use, as Baba does) all those stamps yourself, but when you are able to track your readership online for a fraction of the cost of paper mailings, your wallet and your tongue will thank you.

Email Blasts allow businesses to track how many people are opening and reading their enewletters, providing an amazing insight that never existed with paper mailings. Email newsletters build loyal customers, because most enewsletters are opt-in. It’s an interest thing. And interested customers mean repeat customers, which means increased revenue for you.

Besides saving money, Email Blasts are kind to the environment. They render obsolete paper mailings’ dependence on logging for paper, and gasoline for transport. Instead, thousands of copies of your message are sent instantly around the globe leaving a minimal carbon footprint.

Though Baba has, to my knowledge, never used a computer in her life, I know she would approve, and probably blast her 100th birthday invites out online.

 

 

“uhhh…what the hell is this thing?”

 

Perhaps the coolest thing on the internet, that’s what.

 

TimeMachiner is a simple little app that lets you send email to the future. You enter the message, the recipient, and the time and date you want your message to be delivered. TimeMachiner stores your message until the time you’ve chosen then sends it out.

 

There are a ton of useful ways you can use TimeMachiner. You can send reminders of important dates to yourself, email all of your contacts “Happy Birthday!” in one sitting, or write a time capsule email to yourself five years from now.

 

Web 2.0 geeks are launching new email applications almost daily, but this is the coolest one I’ve come across.

 

If you know of any others, leave ‘em in a comment.

 

Happy Stumbling!

 

Photo thanks to rileyroxx.

• The businessman who could benefit most from your blogging skills doesn’t know how to use an RSS reader.
• The company owner who needs SEO got his website on a whim as a favor to a friend.
• The best way to communicate with your clients is a blog, but none of them read them.

The biggest problem with the internet today?

The people who need it don’t have it, and most people who have it don’t know what it can do.

So perhaps a blog isn’t the best way to communicate with the mostly newbie market. Our clients and prospectives, for the most part, don’t read blogs. So why write one?

Because they will soon. The market for online services isn’t just growing, it’s growing UP. And it pays to be first.

18-year-old kids who learned HTML from MySpace, or 23-year-olds who can type 60 words a minute from instant messaging for 4 hours a day during their teen years will become the 40-year-old entrepreneurs you know today.

Many people don’t think of it like this, something I’m guilty of. They think of their market as it exists now, and consequently have a really hard time seeing their individual clients turning themselves into tech-heads.

They probably never will change, but their replacements will be very different. And they’ll expect you to be connected to the internet, and have a website that communicates what you do effectively.

Do you have one?

SEO, SEM, RSS, oh my!

 

Newbies just like you flinch when they see these scary acronyms. Sure you can read about what they are on Wikipedia, but what can they do for your business?

 

Lucky for you, VQC just built a Squidoo page about online business basics. I explain all the buzzwords and how they make your business profitable online.

 

You’ll find a ton of info there already. And if you have any other questions or suggestions about techie stuff, just email me.

 

If you like our Squidoo lens, rate it well! I’ll return the favor if you have one.

 

* 999,996 more entries coming soon.

 

Photo thanks to frankh.

 

Jenn, Q, Idris and I attended the Elizabethtown College Job and Internship Fair last month. We met a bunch of college kids, nearly all of whom were extremely bright and personable. While I was talking to these young people (who already had some killer, relevant experiences) I was reminded of my internship days.

 

I got to thinking, what has been the most valuable thing I got from my internships and first few jobs?

 

For me, it wasn’t the experience, a line on my résumé, or even the list of contacts I met.

 

The most important thing I learned from my first couple jobs is:

 

The best way to work.

 

It took me four years of college to figure out the most efficient way for me to write a paper (write for an hour, do something else, write for another hour). It’s taken me nearly as long to recognize my best working environment. It’s different for everyone:

 

• Are you happiest alone at your desk, plugging away at a task unbothered by others?

 

• Or maybe you like sitting calmly in a meeting, bouncing ideas off of your teammates?

 

• Maybe the highlight of your week being cooped up with 4 or 5 coworkers, in a room, with a deadline, pressed for time to come up with a complicated strategy for a picky client.

 

Whatever it is, figure it out and stick with it.

 

For me it comes as a mixture of a couple things. My best thinking comes in the planning stage with a deadline and a team around me. When it comes to actually sitting down and doing the work, as long as I have my headphones on and Pandora blasting I can work just about anywhere.

 

What’s the best way you work?

 

Photo thanks to orangeacid.

 

My friend Chris plays football for Monmouth University in New Jersey. I planned to attend his last game and went to the Monmouth Hawks Football website to find the schedule. The left-hand side menu bar has links like:

 

• Roster
• Hall of Fame
• Marketing

 

Under the marketing tab there’s information about “Promotional Events,” “Hawks in the Community,” and the student-generated “Shadow Nation” fan club.

 

Now I know most organizations (including VQC) do promotional events, most of which are geared to help the community in some way. But should they be marketed as marketing?

 

Granted,

 

• Their purpose IS marketing
• The funding comes from the marketing budget
• Marketing professionals probably oversee them.

 

But actually referring to the programs as marketing to the public?

 

It seems insincere. Marketing isn’t supposed to look like marketing. When it is, it comes across as disingenuous.

 

Marketing works best when called something else. Every action a business takes has the accepted benefit plus an ulterior motive, like

 

• Sales calls
  • Motive: add an account
  • Marketing: “Match your needs to our expertise”

   

• Charity work
  • Motive: get press
  • Marketing: “Improve society”

   

• Infomercial ads:
  • Motive: get you to buy cheap trinkets
  • Marketing: “SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS BY CALLING NOW!“

 

These exercises usually work because they massage people’s sensibilities. People like being catered to, appreciate when a business helps to improve society and want to do basic tasks more easily.

 

But when the groups offering these services come out and say “we’re doing this to market to you,” it breaks the illusion.

 

Imagine if a sales rep called and said, “Your name is on my list and I’d like to make some money off of you.” Or a company at a benefit had a sign saying “LOCAL NEWS! Interview us.” Or an infomercial: “We’ll tell you every possible way this thing can help you, but it’ll break in three months.”

 

Is any of your customer communication breaking the illusion?