Too much news and other business information to manage? Get Google! In this Webinar, Ray Sidney-Smith, Digital Strategist, soon-to-be author of the book, Google Your Small Business, and president of W3 Consulting will be presenting a how-to overview of Google Reader (the Google RSS “blog” feed reader that’s not just for blogs anymore!), followed by Q&A, to manage your small business news and related information in a way you can pay attention to your industry news, competitors, consume and syndicate relevant content to your staff and your target audience.
Have a question that you’d like answered ? Ask us or post a message @w3consulting #googlebeyond and we’ll try to answer your question!
Streamlining on the Web can decrease costs, increase revenue, enhance your marketing efforts and brand, be community-spirited, motivate your employees, AND help the environment altogether. In this workshop, W3 Workshops is going to show you how. There’s no time like the present to creating a better bottom line by doing good.
What you will learn:
*How small businesses can achieve great rewards like big corporate giants through “green” initiatives.
*What the small business trends are in sustainable “green” business best practices (a/k/a green business, eco-friendly business, natural capitalism, eco-capitalism and the list goes on).
*Why you want to green your business.
*What Green Performance Objectives are.
*What steps do you take to implement your green programs/initiatives.
*Avoiding pitfalls, like “greenwashing” and substandard green practices.
*How to reap your green ($) rewards from your green efforts.
Who will benefit:
*Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, solopreneurs
*Executive assistants
*Office managers, Human Resources professionals
*Administrative assistants, Secretaries
*IT staff
Picture this: you walk into your neighborhood café. You order your large, no-whip-soy-mocha coffee beverage of choice. Then, you proceed to pay for your designer café experience when you see a small sign on the counter. The display asks you to use your smartphone to scan this black-and-white puzzle image to give you the nutritional facts for the drink you just ordered. “Okay,” you say. I’d like to know that. Well, then you realize you have no idea how your mobile phone actually scans the strange-looking code. You pay for your purchase and head to the office.
You don’t know how many times I’ve heard about this same confused response from consumers as I travel the country’s main streets. And, I hear the same bemoaning from small business retailers who have put QR codes on a variety of marketing materials. As a Small Business owner, it’s key that you understand some of the basics of any new technology you use for marketing (tactics) and the marketing strategy you must design to make these new Web and mobile technologies effective.
What is a QR code? And, how do I read and create a QR code?
In its most basic sense, a QR (quick response) code is just a two-dimensional barcode. The scanner (which encompasses a mobile device with software that someone uses to read the code) gets data from both the X and Y axis of the barcode. The Universal Product Code (UPC) barcodes you’re used to seeing scanned at the grocery store are just one-dimensional and read along an X axis of the barcode.
I recommend that the best way to learn about QR codes is to scan them as you see them with your own smartphone to see what they do and how you interact with them. That starts with having a smartphone; I recommend this Google Galaxy Nexus if you don’t have a smartphone yet. There are several applications for most smartphones on the market (and are typically free). Some have more frills than others, but since we already have too many options in the world here are the best apps I’ve found on each major mobile platform:
Symbian devices (Nokia phones, mostly) | BeeTagg QR Reader.
Remarkably, you can usually scan the 1D barcodes on most products at the store or home and you can have Google display information you might be seeking about them, including price comparisons. (Caveat Small Business owner: customers are doing this in your shops by picking up your products off of the shelf and seeing if Amazon or big box retailers around you are less expensive.) So, once installed, you hit the streets and start looking for QR codes to scan. You’ll learn so much about what’s good, and what’s not good about QR codes in short speed.
Next, once you’re familiar with QR codes as a user, you’ll want to jump over to generating some QR codes for your business. While there are many reputable QR code generators to create for personal use and sharing, say at your neighborhood association’s upcoming potluck dinner, there is a very specific requirement for generating QR codes for business purposes. When it comes to marketing strategy on the Web, it’s all about the data (so see #4 below when you get there). So, you will want to use a service such as Bitly’s URL shortening service or Google’s URL Shortener, Goo.gl, to create your QR codes. Here’s how:
Make sure that you have signed into either service with your account (and if you don’t have one, sign up for a free account at Bitly, which I recommend signing up separately the manual way–not with Facebook or Twitter–with your work email address, or Google).
Now, you’ll have the opportunity to paste any URL on the Internet into the fields offered by the service (see below).
Once you’ve created your shortened URL, you’re going to copy-and-paste your new short URL to the Web browser address field.
In Goo.gl, you’re going to add a plus sign (+) to the end of your short URL, so for example, if your short URL was http://goo.gl/dwHw8 you’d simply now add + to make it http://goo.gl/dwHw8+ and it will take you to a new page with a QR code. You right-click and save the image to your computer.
In Bitly, you’re going to add “.qrcode” to the end of your short URL. In the case of my newly created short URL, https://bitly.com/NspAW2, will become https://bitly.com/NspAW2.qrcode to reveal a QR code for me to right-click on for saving the image to my computer.
That’s it. You have your QR codes and you’re ready to print and place them on marketing collateral. And, as stated above, the most important reason we chose Bitly and Google to create our short URLs is for the analytics tools that are built directly into them. If you add that plus sign (+) to the end of any Goo.gl or Bitly short URL, it will take you to a web traffic statistics page that tells you how many and where from came scans of your QR code.
So, now that you’re capable of creating QR codes for each marketing collateral item or fixed location you’d like to track scans, you’re ready to think about the marketing strategy.
Why aren’t my QR codes working?
So, now back to my beginning vignette at the coffee shop. What went wrong there? If you’re using the QR codes generated by any reputable program or website as I described above, it’s not the technology that’s gone awry. Nope, it’s the strategy. Business cards and print media advertisements and radio spots and QR codes are only as good as the planning that goes on behind them. So, what’s a busy Small Business owner to do? Read on.
First, ask yourself the reason for using QR codes. Mobile technology moves at lightning speeds of innovation. And, you want to make sure your business isn’t beaten to the purchase punchline by your competition (or by the greater market), right? So, you’re using this technology to enable your current customers to generate repeat business and to incentivize your potential target audience to make that first purchase. Some of your customers and target audience won’t understand the technology. Guess what? It’s your job to educate them. That means you need to have information on your marketing collateral or available on your website explaining (a) what the QR code is, (b) how to get software to scan the barcodes, and (c) what’s in it for scanning it.
In the vein of what’s in it for them?, you must really think about what the QR code is leading your client to do. Some of the things a QR code can do are:
launch your website (main page or specific Web page on your site) or your blog (or a specific post);
launch the marketplace or store directly to download your mobile app;
launch your company’s mobile Web app (hopefully written in HTML5 to take advantage of the smartphone’s geolocation and calling capabilities);
launch an app on the smartphone that might provide a service while I’m standing in a specific location (such as, launching the Foursquare application so that I can “check-in” and gain access to a Special Offer if I make a purchase);
open a document that displays information;
play a video that gives an introduction, explanation or tutorial of your product/service;
post a tweet from a Twitter profile with 140 characters of your choosing; and,
opens up your eCommerce site, a specific product page or checkout cart with your product/service already added so your customer can immediately pay and go.
The beauty is that with a little creativity and some understanding of your customers’ and potential audiences’ needs, these functionalities can really help you (increasing revenue or decreasing costs) and your target market (improving your customer service or product/service performance while providing more convenience).
Next, sometimes you have to encourage, coax and possibly flatter your clientele into doing what you want. This is where incentives can really work well. Sometimes an incentive is as easy as a good call-to-action. “SKIP THE LINE! SCAN THIS QR CODE AND CHECKOUT YOURSELF.” In a long line at a store, if I could scan a QR code that launched your mobile Web app (which let me then scan all the products in my cart) and checkout online, I would happily skip the line. Then I would walk up to a clerk who checked my online receipt and away I went. While, other customers may need a bit more. If you’re attempting to get me to download something, make sure to tell me there’s a bonus deal on the last page of the download. Or, if not a bonus deal, offer a special discount, exclusive content or access that is only capable by using that QR code. Again, be imaginative while understanding your market.
On the vein of understanding your market, one QR code limitation to overcome is a practical matter. I can’t understand why QR codes don’t list the short URL to where the scan leads if it’s a Web address. There are many times that I’m in the subway (which may not have cellular service) or other rural environments without a sufficient signal. In those cases, I can’t do what the QR code wants me to right then and there rendering it useless. As well, I might be in a hurry and I’m not going to wrench my smartphone buried in my pants pocket to open up an app that takes 10-20 seconds to launch, then scan the QR code and finally get to what you want me to see or do. By then, I’ve missed my bus or train, or the person behind me will be honking at me to pay attention to the road! I’m just not that patient (or an unsafe driver) and I have longer than average-length patience. If you just put the short URL below the barcode, I would have memorized it or scrawled it down on my receipt and when I was in a more controlled setting with sufficient Web access, I’d go to the short URL and engage with your company. If it’s capable of being done, please put your short URLs beneath your QR codes. Your customers (and I) will thank you.
Finally, QR codes are really meant for fixed locations but they’ve been expanded to also be placed on marketing collateral that moves. If you have them on a fixed location, you know where they’ve been scanned. Period. Your data are specific to location and you don’t need to guess. But, what if you put your only QR code for business card, flyer, rack card, front door of your shop or office, and on your employee’s uniform shirts? Well, now you have a problem. Your business card you likely want to help the person scanning quickly access your contact information and download it into his or her smartphone. On the other hand, the front door of your shop or office should really take me to your Google+ Local (formerly Google Places) page with your hours of operation. And, your flyer advertising your upcoming sidewalk sale should take you to information about what will be there and special offers for coming out to it. However, one QR code cannot do all those things. Enter multiple QR codes. Each QR codes is simple enough to make, which you learned how to do in the section above. And, now you know that each piece of marketing collateral has a different purpose and therefore needs a separate QR code. You are now a QR code marketing strategy expert. Good luck with your mobile marketing campaigns!
And, how do I get a beautiful QR code?
So, now that you know the basis of a good mobile marketing campaign strategy that includes QR codes, you should probably learn how to make the QR codes branded. I hosted the first presentation in our ongoing Webinar series for W3 Consulting and we covered manipulating QR codes to help make them look a little less, let’s say, ugly. 😉
Here’s the archive of the Webinar: Beautifying QR Codes. And, here’s a video addendum to one of our attendee’s questions about rounding corners in QR codes: Rounding Corners of QR Codes Using GIMP.
If you are savvy about social networking, you know that Pinterest is all the rage lately. But, do we really know what Pinterest is? According to its website, the social media site is a “Virtual Pinboard” that “lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” The About page talks of using the service to plan weddings, redecorate your home and organize recipes–a far cry from a platform that contemplated a business use down the road. However, as with everyone on the Web today, if it’s free and you can create a community around your product, service or industry, businesses flock there trying to push their wares. Pinterest has struggled to manage the change, but certain business users have stuck with it as the platform addresses these missing functionalities for marketing purposes. I’m going to try to contextualize what makes Pinterest so appealing to people, what I see as a challenge for Pinterest’s growth, and then what aspects of the service are positive for Small Business retailers on Pinterest. From there, you can make your decision whether investing in Pinterest is right for you and your business.
OUR TROUBLE WITH PRETTY PICTURES
Our attentional deficits as humans are on the rise, and Pinterest is capitalizing on that reality. (We all have some level of distractibility so I’m not talking about ADHD.) What to me seems as pixel-deep substance, much of the Internet is filled with rubbish that soaks up our attention and focus, leaving a wake of cerebral collateral damage convincing us that we need to continue consuming all these pretty pictures as real, substantive thoughts. As a Small Business, should you be capitalizing on this reality? Yes. Should you work personally and professionally to also combat it for the long-term? In my humble opinion, yes. If you want your target audience to continue an ongoing, lasting relationship with you and your brand, you must re-teach solidarity with deep, though-provoking content.
TERMS OF SERVICE / COPYRIGHT ISSUES
And, just another note of caution before I move on to marketing. Pinterest received most of its recent popularity thanks to its notoriety over its stance on copyright about the content you “pin” (i.e., post or publish) on the Pinterest. It’s position even in its new Terms of Service is that content you post to Pinterest is theirs to use and possibly not yours to share elsewhere, even though you retain the “Intellectual Property” rights. Yikes! Red flag.
Here’s the original copyright clause:
Pinterest Content and Member Content License
Subject to your compliance with the terms and conditions of these Terms, Cold Brew Labs grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license, without the right to sublicense, to access, view, download and print any Pinterest Content solely for your personal and non-commercial purposes. Subject to your compliance with the terms and conditions of these Terms, Cold Brew Labs grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license, without the right to sublicense, to access and view any Member Content solely for your personal and internal business purposes. You will not use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast or otherwise exploit the Site, Application, Services, or Site Content except as expressly permitted in these Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise under any intellectual property rights owned or controlled by Cold Brew Labs or its licensors, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted in these Terms.
As you can see, you give Cold Brew Labs (the company behind Pinterest) a far-reaching ability to use your content and then the next paragraph of the Terms gives oddly most of those cascading rights to other Members on the site. There are some extra obtuse and unreasonable clauses about accessing the service through other sites, and one clause (at least in my interpretation) prohibits commercial marketing on the platform altogether.
The new Terms of Service says explicitly that “you retain all of your rights in all of the User Content you post to our Service.” In addition, you give a right to Pinterest and users to use your “User Content” also. Finally, even if you leave the service, your User Content may live on for a very long time afterward. However, this is a dramatic improvement that went into effect on April 6, 2012, over the old Terms of Service. If you intend on (or are now) using the service, I recommend that you give the full Pinterest Terms of Service a thorough review, and perhaps put it in front of your business attorney if it gives you concern.
VALUE FOR SMALL BUSINESS RETAIL MARKETING
Considering all the above, is marketing on Pinterest worth it? If you’re a Small Business Retailer, there is undoubtedly something addictive about the visual qualities and the community on Pinterest. Like Instagram, Foodspotting, Friendsheet (a Facebook mashup that visually displays your Newsfeed pictures very Pinterest-ly), Color, Path and many others, pictures speak a thousand words to consumers. The growth of the network is impressive considering it doesn’t have big money backing the platform and it’s been growing in basic silence (which means it has had time to work bugs and adapt to its community). And then the network exploded quite recently in the number of users. (You can see in the image how dramatically Google+ looks against Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter in terms of the speed of growth in under seven months since it launched, so I’d definitely not pass on syndicating that content on Google’s network as well via a business +page.) Back on Pinterest, if you’re looking to drive traffic to your eCommerce-enabled website, use boards as a virtual store catalog of your products to drive traffic for sales. If your business is not an easily photograph-ready or visually-appealing product base, you’ll need to get creative to make all the pinning worth it.
The Pinterest community is dominated by women from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties living in the Midwest. If this is your demographic, go for it! If it’s not your target audience, think about whether it could be as they seem to be a fairly educated population that make an average of 50-75,000$ per year, so they have money to spend on your products. If this were my demographic as a small business retailer, I’d make sure to get pictures of my customers using, interacting and giving feedback about my product so that I could pin them on Pinterest. This will not only get your customers engaged in marketing your business to their network but it will also help with market research and product development.
And, speaking of market research, it seems as though the data points to users predominantly interested in Crafts, Gifts, Hobbies/Leisure, Interior Design, Fashion Designers/Collections. I don’t think this limits you if you happen not to fit into one of those top interests on the site, but I would definitely appeal to the mindset of an audience that values those topics, by re-pinning content on occasion that incorporates your product(s) with those interests in mind. For example, if I were a local hardware store, I’d make sure to post tons of home renovation project ideas, photos of customers’ designs, as well as finished and in-progress stages of their creation using your products. I’d scour Pinterest for great examples while consistently (though in a 10:1 ratio (content to sales)) make your target audience know those items are available at your store or via your eCommerce website for purchase.
While some will laud Pinterest as the next big thing, others will tell you to leave Pinterest in the dust and head to other sites like StumbleUpon (which I’ll blog about in the future) that drive keyword-based traffic. I take a balanced perspective on anything that’s getting such a great amount of engagement with consumers as well as attention from major media and corporate brands. First, use the platform personally for a few weeks and see if it makes sense for you; if it does, it’ll likely make sense how you can convert it over for marketing purposes. Next, create a sustainable strategy that fits into the rest of your marketing plan for the next twelve months and break it down into manageable chunks to execute. Finally, give the Pinterest tactics at least six months to settle in and make sure you are measuring everything you can as it relates to traffic and engagement of your target audience on Pinterest, your website, email marketing, and elsewhere you’re directing them from your interactions. At the end of the day, the platform doesn’t really matter so much as knowing that it must thrive for the benefit of your customers and your business equally.
If you’re like most Small Business owners, your Facebook Page stood the same way today as it will tomorrow. However, Facebook has changed your Page to the new Timeline format whether you, I or your customers like it or not. Actually, they did so on March 31, 2012. Facebook is not where I engage my target audiences primarily so all I do is typically syndicate curated content and self-published content to our Facebook Page (like my blog posts and tweets), but for many Small Business owners it is currently their main Social Media hub. (My Facebook Page with all of 26+ Likes would have stayed the same, except that I posted a coverphoto to my Facebook Page in anticipation of writing this post today.) I am writing this article to educate you about the good, the bad and the ugly (sorry, there’s not much good here) of Facebook Timeline, in hopes of providing you with a small business strategy to leverage the change to benefit your bottom line.
ADVANTAGES
Let’s start off with the good. As the statistics from this recent Webinar hosted by HubSpot and presented by Chris Luo of Facebook [PDF] notes, Facebook Timelines can really benefit certain kinds of business with its “a picture is worth a thousand words” perspective. You can really hone in on your business’ value through focus on making your complex processes easily understood and making them into simple infographics or a storyboard for your target audience. As a consumer, I want to know how you source your materials, what’s new in stock, or how you manufacture your product if I’m interested in your business, and now you can show me in a beautiful chronological format.
DISADVANTAGES
As I noted in my recent comment to the Mashable article, “3 Reasons Facebook Brand Pages Are Good for Businesses,” Facebook doesn’t have consumers or brands’ best interests in mind with the changes they’re making. They have their bottom line so that they appeal to their new shareholders as their company becomes engrained in the Wall Street market of Old World economics. No offense against investment brokers and big-time financiers on Wall Street, but over here on Main Street, we have relationships that are far more than money in our businesses since so many small businesses are family-owned and operated, invest in our communities and depend upon healthy referral relationships with other local businesses to survive and thrive. Social Media is a great democratizing agent and Facebook is asking the wrong people to grow their business by wedding themselves to big business and big money. Okay, so enough waxing philosophical. I’ll give you the plain reasons why Facebook Timeline disadvantages many of us:
You will have to make time to post lots of substantive, rich images and videos to captivate your target audience if you intend on making any impact;
Posting at least daily is requisite now (whether curated or original content) or you won’t get enough penetration on the valuable and fleeting attention of the Newsfeed of your customers;
If your business is not photo- or video-friendly (think about oncologists, waste management services, accountants, lawyers and more that have to depend upon stock imagery as opposed to images of their clients, products or services), you’re out of luck. More on this later.
Become very well-aware of the rules surrounding what you can and cannot post as a coverphoto. Your coverphoto has some very strict rules about its content; see Facebook’s Help response to whether a coverphoto can continue explicit sales copy or information. As well, coverphoto images are really difficult. If you’re not tech-savvy, you should reach out to your graphic designer or Web developer ASAP. I rarely like to tell people that you can not do-it-yourself (DIY), but in this case, DIY-ers beware! If you don’t understand pixelation, a PNG from a JPG from a GIF, and how compression works in photo files, you’re going to be frustrated and end up with bad coverphotos.
TIMELINE STRATEGY
Your business must tell a captivating story that appeals to your potential customer. Then it must repeat that story’s theme again and again with new stories about your product or service with your customer as the protagonist. Answer their question: what’s in it for me? Here’s a simple, yet effective strategy to make good use of the Timeline platform for great storytelling if you’re currently using (or planning to use) Facebook as your Social Media hub:
Get photo- and video-friendly. Over the next couple of months, talk to your photographer and videographer friends, your graphic designer and other creative professionals. If you have a camera built into your phone, you’ve probably got all the equipment you need. As the great photographer, Ken Rockwell, once wrote, “the camera’s only job is to get out of the way of making photographs.” I’m assured by experts say the same goes for video.
Get your coverphoto up and syndicate all your Social Media activity to the Facebook Timeline, especially your blog. Wait? Blog? What? You don’t have one! Exactly. If you don’t have a blog as a Small Business, and you’re using Facebook, you are wasting your time. I know this is counter to many Social Media and other Web “gurus” but would you rather own your business or rent it from a large corporation which can shut it down at any time? Well, that’s how Facebook operates. If Facebook goes away, your Social Web presence goes away and you lose it all without recourse. But, since I’m writing assuming that you’re going to continue with Facebook Pages, back on the coverphoto. See my advice above about reaching out to your creative professionals to get that coverphoto up with a few extras to be able to change them at least monthly (and weekly if you have regular retail sales or new products going into your store). I like the idea for retail shops to have 12 coverphotos themed for seasons or holidays, and use the Timeline photos and videos posting as new stock, sales and other offerings come up so your audience can get the first notification of it there on your Facebook Page.
If you’re a professional services business and you’re not photo- or video-friendly, launch your blog. I recommend that you look at using WordPress and not worry so much about visual branding until you’ve gotten the basics of consistently posting content. Create a calendar and map out who’s creating content and when, then block out the time in your calendar required to make it happen. Further, find other bloggers that are marketing alliances and engage (comment/respond) on their blog posts weekly to daily. Prioritize this time; it’s worth it.
Diversify content. Back on Timeline, continue to post diversified, substantive content consistently (with the five types of recommended content being photos, videos, text-based posts, questions/polls, and curated content with links to pages on your website and others) on Facebook telling the stories of your business.
Add your Founding Story. Think of this as a more robust “About Us” page on your business’ website.
Schedule time to visit your Admin Panel. At least weekly or perhaps more, log into your Admin Panel and review your statistics. Why weekly or more often? Because you’ll be posting daily, remember? 😉 It’s imperative that you stay on the pulse of traffic and see how that traffic and engagement are performing at driving customers to your website. As you see what works, capitalize on that data.
IN BRIEF
Facebook is here to stay for a while; I give them another five years of popularity. They have lots of Web traffic and lots of users who are likely also your consumers. Facebook Page Timelines is here, new and slightly daunting. However, quoting The Beatles iconic lyrics, “with a little help from [your] friends,” you’ll get through this and survive to see Facebook change yet again. Be consistent with your Social Media content and your customers will thank you with their engagement, community support, and purchases. Oh, and Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will Social Media build you a sales pipeline of any great magnitude until you’ve proven your mettle in the sea of abandoned Facebook Pages.
Related articles
How Facebook’s New Features Affect Your Business | Social Media Today http://ow.ly/a2r1g
10 Reasons Business Blogging is Better than Facebook [Infographic] | Social Media Today http://ow.ly/a2r3K
Earlier in March I had the opportunity to work at +Alexandria Small Business Development Center to present a workshop entitled, Google+ for Small Business. Registrations filled the workshop space capacity within a few hours of Alexandria SBDC pushing out a notification to its clients; a waiting list has formed and if all the stars align, I’ll be doing the workshop again for Alexandria SBDC in the coming weeks. And, while the attendees of the workshop have the last say on the efficacy of the training, I’d like to think the workshop was a success on many levels. So, to keep the momentum going for the workshop participants, I placed my thinking cap on and brainstormed ideas on how to continue reinforcing the value of Google+ for their businesses after the workshop. After many good and not-so-good ideas that I mindmapped, I came up with a short list and shopped the idea around a few colleagues and the staff of Alexandria SBDC.
I concluded that two Google+ Hangouts where I invited only the workshop attendees were the answer; one for Google+ basics where attendees can tell their stories–successes and challenges–and another for Google+ intermediates where we can delve slightly deeper into the Google+ ecosystem beyond the material that we could cover in the workshop. Oh, so what is a Hangout? Check out the video below for a great video by Google explaining the concept. In short, it’s a way for you to interact by video (with audio) with up to 10 other Google+ users from your computer, smartphone or mobile device. You can even share Google Docs that are being live-edited, share your screen, and type live among the Google+ Hangout participants.
While I’ve been in dozens of Google+ Hangouts, both personally and professionally, this will be the first time we’re officially hosting a Hangout. I’m hopeful that these will go well and we can plan to host more on a variety of Web and digital technology topics. We may even be able to start doing training for Google+ right within the network!
Below is a video of the power of Google+ Hangouts. Of course, we won’t be trying the mobile power of Google+ Hangouts (or our singing voices for that matter) for this first Hangout session. However, just think of the power that Google+ Hangouts could unleash for your Small Business if you implemented this technology at the core of your company’s operations and marketing infrastructure!
If you’re a Small Business owner or marketing professional in a small business, you undoubtedly find yourself at a point where you go to networking events and keep running into the same people over and over again. The monotony is not only mind-numbing but it’s also bad for sales as you’re not building new leads for your “trusted referral partner” network by seeing the same folks all the time. Well, worry no further as Meetup™ is here! Er, they’ve been here for more than a decade, but we won’t mind that little detail. So, what is Meetup and why does it matter to Small Business marketing?
MEETUP, THE MOVEMENT
September 11th changed the world; strangers helped strangers that day in remarkable ways Scott Heiferman recognized. He wanted to keep that momentum going and it became the inspiration for Meetup.com. Meetup, according to their own website, is:
Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.
Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.
I enjoy seeing the “Do something • Learn something • Share something • Change something” motto when you visit Meetup.com before logging in, and that’s the essence of what makes the platform so versatile. I feel like they should add “in real life!” to that message because that’s the key component to what I think Meetup does. It bridges the digital-analog divide so many of us face today with digital (email, phone and text message) and Social Media communications as our primary business contact throughout the workday (and perhaps even more so in our personal lives, trying to stay in touch with family and friends with ever-increasing work hours and workloads). All the Meetups are live, in-person group meetings coalesced around a shared interest. And, what does this have to do with your Small Business marketing efforts you ask? Read on!
SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING WITH MEETUP
Whether you’re trying to build your Small Business brand, increase sales to your local boutique or retail shop, or want to learn how to build a smartphone app, there’s a community of not only your target audience on Meetup but also like-minded small business entrepreneurs getting together to help you! That’s the power of Meetup! These meetings are usually free (though I believe in the give-what-you-can model since it does cost Meetup Organizers to create a Meetup group on Meetup.com and other administrative costs, plus the value of their time), you can see who’s going, and you can ask questions, share and collaborate before and after the get-together through Meetup.com.
I know that today with the proliferation of Web marketing, it’s easy to think that focusing as much of your resources on your Web presence is important but even I (a Web and digital business strategist) think that all the Web has to offer is worth nothing if it doesn’t make our physical, real world lives better! So, sign up for a Meetup account today, type in your industry, professional, service or product (or a current challenge facing your business), and RSVP for a Meetup in your community soon! You’ll be glad you did.
Here are ten of the most serious consequences suffered by owners who neglect to prepare their businesses for future sale or transfer (or, “exit planning”).
The sole owner dies or becomes permanently disabled, but has insufficient (or no) life disability insurance, no business succession plan, and no estate plan.
The business experiences a sudden, catastrophic loss and all of the owner’s financial eggs are in the business.
There is no comprehensive buy-sell agreement between partners and one of them dies, or, the partners have an irreconcilable falling out; both of these situations commonly result in litigation.
The business is hit with a massive and legitimate legal claim and there is no asset protection in place.
The company’s key employee quits, taking the best customers and employees with him, and the company has no non-compete agreement to prevent his actions.
The owner wants to retire and sell the business to a family member but there is not enough time to make the transfer and pay minimal taxes.
The owner has selected a capable non-family heir apparent but doesn’t have a succession plan in place and can’t realistically fund the transfer.
The dream buyer comes along unexpectedly and makes an offer that can’t be refused, but the owner can’t make the sale because of the prohibitive tax cost and a complete absence of independent retirement income.
An agreement to sell is made with the dream buyer because the owner has the tax and retirement income issues covered, but the buyer reduces the offer after finding aged accounts receivable and owner loans on the books. In short, the company’s books were not in order.
The business is struck by an unforeseeable set-back; it lacks financial planning and an exit strategy, as well as the in-place support from legal/financial advisors needed to help it weather the storm.
Guest Post by Lou Kastelic of Jordan Crandus.
Jordan-Crandus, P.A. is a primary business consulting firm specializing in the small to mid size company market where we have been assisting our clients since 1979. Our consultants provide investment-banking services representing buyers and sellers of businesses,advice on mergers and acquisitions, and assistance with enhancement programs to increase cash flow. We also provide business valuations for those looking to exit business ownership, mergers and acquisitions, employee stock ownership trusts, divorces, estate planning, buy/sell agreements, and any of the many other reasons appraisals are needed.
And, speaking of market research, it seems as though the data points to users predominantly interested in Crafts, Gifts, Hobbies/Leisure, Interior Design, Fashion Designers/Collections. I don’t think this limits you if you happen not to fit into one of those top interests on the site, but I would definitely appeal to the mindset of an audience that values those topics, by re-pinning content on occasion that incorporates your product(s) with those interests in mind. For example, if I were a local hardware store, I’d make sure to post tons of home renovation project ideas, photos of customers’ designs, as well as finished and in-progress stages of their creation using your products. I’d scour Pinterest for great examples while consistently (though in a 10:1 ratio (content to sales)) make your target audience know those items are available at your store or via your eCommerce website for purchase.
If you’re a 
