Category: Blog

SBA Assistance for Women-Owned Businesses
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The SBA is a useful resource for small businesses. If there is an office in your area, please take advantage of their services. If meeting face-to-face is difficult, peruse the information they have available online.

If your business is woman-owned and you need business, marketing or financial assistance, then you should visit the “Women-Owned Businesses” area of the Small Business Association’s (SBA) website. Useful information includes:

Starting Your Business

  •  Writing a Business Plan
  •  Registering a Business
  •  Licenses & Permits
  •  Laws & Regulations
  •  Preparing Business Taxes

Growing Your Business

  • Hiring Employees
  • Employee Benefits
  • Employee Incentives
  • Marketing a Business
  • Exporting

Financing Your Business

  • Estimating Start-up Costs
  • Financing Basics

Mentoring & Training

  • Find a Business Mentor
  • Online Training
  • Finding Local Resources
  • Learning about the WOSB Program

Don’t be afraid to seek help when you need it. Use the SBA and their resources whenever you need them. They can help your business grow.

Are Your Company’s Social Media Accounts Safe?
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I use Hootsuite regularly. It helps speed the sharing process to all of my social media accounts. What I enjoy most are the informative blogs I receive in my inbox from Hootsuite.

Most recently, they shared, “7 Ways to Hack-Proof Your Company’s Social Media.” The company highlighted was Burger King. They shared how their Twitter account was hacked. The perpetrators renamed it McDonald’s and the background image was replaced with Fish McBites. (I can sense a bit of smiling and giggling right now!) They went on to share a similar incident that happened with Jeep.

So… what can you do to keep your company’s social media safe?

HootSuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes provides this:

  • Get creative with passwords
  • Centralize social media channels
  • Put a buffer between you and the bad guys
  • Control who can post messages using limited permissions.

For each tip, he provides greater detail in his blog. You can read it in its entirety here.

If you aren’t using Hootsuite, why not give it a try. It will save you a lot of time when sharing your valuable content.

When you do, let me know what you think.

Do You Have a Marketing Plan?
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I have to admit, when I first started, I didn’t. All I wanted to do was start doing what I loved to do. I figured if someone referred me, and that person referred me, then I was good. Well, that does work, but I soon realized that I needed more.

It takes a lot for me to tear away from the day-to-day and do what need to be done. I knew I had to complete a business plan, but didn’t have the time. When a business plan writing contest came about, I quickly signed up. I didn’t expect to win, place or show, all I wanted to do was complete it.

Within that document, I had to include how I planned to market my business. Sometimes what is required in the business plan is not enough. Luckily, the “Business Owners’ Toolkit” offers great advice on how to draft a separate marketing plan.

There are four marketing components in your business plan – Marketing 101 – product, price, place and promotion.

  • How will you market your business, product or services?
  • Have you conducted any marketing analysis? Are there enough people in your area or on the Internet interested or willing to purchase what you have to offer?
  • Do you have a marketing strategy? Do you know how you plan to get your products or services into the hands of your customers?
  • Have you developed marketing and sales plans? How will you reach your customers to market your products? What type of advertising will you use (print, broadcast, Internet)?

The Business Owners’ Toolkit goes into detail about how to develop a strong marketing plan. It also provides a sample plan(s) for you to use as a guide while developing yours. Read what they have to offer in full here – http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/sbg/startup/planning/business-plan-marketing-component.aspx.

While you are there, also check out the marketing tab. There is information on product development, Internet marketing, advertising, public relations and a lot more.

You will be amazed at how much information is there.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

How to Avoid Work-Life Burn Out
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Last week I wrote the blog, “Don’t Burn the Candle at Both Ends.” I talked about taking time out of your busy schedule to take care of yourself.

While reading Entrepreneur Online, I stumbled upon this video, “How to Avoid Getting Burned Out.” Business Coach Ann Mehl discusses how entrepreneurs can figure out their work-life balance. Mehl is not a big proponent of work-life balance, she says it’s BS. However, she does propose getting three parts into your life: your inner self, work and other (family, volunteerism, exercise). She calls it, “Managing where your attention is…”

Here’s the video where she explains it further.

This is great advice and cannot be reiterated enough.

Take time for yourself, even if it’s five to ten minutes during your busy day. I often take a quick nap when I get home…before I do anything else that usually involves running the children to their appointments and helping with homework. They know that I need that down time. It refreshes me to carry out the rest of the evening, which is about seven more hours before bedtime.

Try it…and let me know what you think.

Use Creative Visuals to Market Your Business
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“One picture is worth ten thousand words.” –Chinese Proverb

This phrase is often bandied about but it’s very true. Provide a picture, be it real or imagined and often no words are necessary.

If you are often on social media, you have seen many images used to create buzz or to generate conversations around the content. You can do the same thing with a few of these tips.

The popular blog, Social Media Examiner, developed a list on “26 Ways to Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing“. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Add Text to Your Photosvis
  • Create a Collage
  • Generate Leads with Facebook Photos
  • Use Infographics
  • Use Landing Pages and Keep them Simple
  • Make Certain Every Blog Post Has at Least One Pinnable Image
  • Use Word Photos
  • Use Quotes (as I did at the beginning of this blog)

To see the full list of 26, and how to use them effectively, read it right here – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-visual-social-media-marketing-strategy/.

If you have a strategy not listed in the 26, please share. We would be happy to update this and include it in this blog.

Social Media Content Accessibility Wars – Who Is Winning?
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Somebody’s got to win. Somebody’s got to lose. In the current wars between sharing social media across platforms, the loser is often you – the user.

First, LinkedIn stopped sharing tweets on user profiles in order to comply with Twitter’s API rules, which meant no more streaming of Twitter posts within your LinkedIn profile.

Then, there was the feud between Twitter and Instagram and more recently Facebook and Vine.

A few days ago I read an article on Business Insider detailing how TweetDeck was discontinuing support for their Facebook integration which means that TweekDeck users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.

Won’t somebody please play nice?! It’s making the word “share” all the more difficult.

I use Hootsuite (similar to TweetDeck ) on a regular basis. This social media management system allows me to share content across multiple social media accounts. What’s going to happen when one of my profiles is cut off from Hootsuite?

To read more about this drama and how it could affect your social media strategy, visit the blog from Ryan Holmes, the CEO of Hootsuite – “Why Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Put Up Roadblocks to Each Others’ Content.” It’s a good informational article that explains the “Whys” and how to fix it. http://www.businessinsider.com/fragmentation-in-the-social-media-war-2013-4

This Just In! All New Twitter for Businesses
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Twitter re-launched Twitter for Business. This new site gives businesses more information on how to grow their business, even if it is only just 140 characters at a time.

The revamped Twitter website provides information on mastering the Twitter basics – building your community and marketing to the masses. The site shares success stories – by industry and business size – and provides a self-service area for placing ads and using web-marketing tools.

Twitter 101 provides information on how Twitter can help your business. With the Glossary, you can also stay up-to-date with frequently used jargon.

The site also allows you to learn how to engage your customers by establishing your brand personality, writing good tweets and sharing photos, videos and content.

To learn more about the new Twitter for Business – visit https://business.twitter.com.

After that, watch, “What can your business do…in just 140 characters?”

http://youtu.be/BGirUZq1WtQ

Once you’re finished, let me know what you think.

 

How Nonprofits Can Get Donated Software
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Are you a nonprofit on a budget? Not enough money for office software, computers, peripherals, etc.? If your organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or library, you probably qualify for donated software and other technology from top brands such as Microsoft, Intuit, Adobe, and Cisco. Donations are from more than 40 TechSoup donor partners.

Visit this page to How to Join and How to Get Donations. TechSoup is not a product reseller our outlet. All products are generously discounted or donated by TechSoup partners in support of the nonprofit community.

Visit their “Get Product Donations” page to browse the 450+ technology product donations available to nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup.

Check it out. You maybe able to receive free or nearly free products that can be very beneficial to your organization or library.

How an Enterprising Author Sold a Million Self-Published Books
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I have to admit, when I first saw this blog’s title, I had to read it. It took me back to high school when I wrote It’s About Time. It was a short story for a school project. It was at that moment that I knew that one day I would be a “best-selling author.”

The path to that title has had its twists, turns, stops and starts. I get my almost “best-selling author” fix from writing for a magazine and running a public relations business. This article gave me the additional push I needed to dust off the novel I began over ten years ago and make plans to complete it.

As mentioned, I can see how all seven strategies work for the million seller author and the entrepreneur. The most valuable takeaways for me: Mine your experience – I never thought that my life was any different from anyone else’s, but it is, Put in the hours – when the creative juices start flowing, the sun comes up and it’s hard to stop, Be generous – Be More Visible is a free pocket book (also in ebook version). Let me know you want one, and it’s yours and Accelerate when you build momentum.

Read how CJ sold millions and let me know what you think…

 

Don’t Burn the Candle at Both Ends
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Starting and running your own business can be very challenging. Many people think that they need to work around the clock, 24/7. That’s not true and, to be honest, it’s not good for you or your business.

Some people say, “There really isn’t enough time in a day.” Really, there is. You just need to plan out each day to make sure there is work/life balance.

Burning the candle at both ends can burn you out. There’s nothing worse than being self-employed and bored with your own business.  It can happen if you are living and breathing your business each and every second of the day. If you are, you need a break.

Here are a few tips:

  1. Go sit somewhere quiet, let your mind relax and just think. Think about what’s really important and go from there. You may have worked a regular nine to five job for someone else. Why not work your own business nine to five. Find an “end point” for your day and stop there. If one of Facebook’s top executive Sheryl Sandburg can be home for dinner everyday, so can and should you. If your son’s basketball game is at 6pm – go! Don’t say, “I have too much work to do.” STOP, go… and  enjoy yourself and your family. Believe it or not, it will all be there when you go back to work at 9am. And, who knows… you may have left a problem behind, that you found an answer to while you were out enjoying yourself. Take it from those who have looked back with regret and said, “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” You don’t want to be that person.
  2. Schedule work on your calendar from nine to five and nothing business-related after that. Of course there may be a few exceptions, hosting a business executive for dinner or celebrating a co-worker’s going away party. As a rule, cut the work at five – or a time that works best BEFORE seven.
  3. Create a “to-do” list each day so you will know from where to begin the next day.
  4. Delegate. For the control freaks, this may be a hard one, but one that is necessary. Let someone else take over a few of the “to-do” items. Free yourself from the tactical work and work on strategy. In the end, you will have more rather than fewer hours.

Your brain and your business needs time to relax. Everything not done today, will be there tomorrow waiting for your fresh eyes and rested mind.

A happy owner makes a happy business…and probably a prosperous one too.

Three Tips for Branding Your Growing Business
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Branding…the new buzz word for business.

What does it really mean to “brand” your business?

There are a lot of ways to brand your business. In this video from Entrepreneur Online, Branding Specialist Erika Napoletano offers advice on how to get your customers to see you and your business as the solution to their problems.

Her three branding tips don’t talk about logos, taglines or colors. She says,

  1. Know why you do what you do
  2. Know who you would never work with
  3. Stay true to yourself and be you…everyone else is already taken

These are all easy for me. I started Visibility Marketing Inc. because I enjoyed doing exactly what the tagline says, “making you more visible.” It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. It began simple enough, with writing positive feature articles. The feedback I received let me know that there was a hunger, a market out there where people wanted a reprieve from the negative stories they often hear and read about. They wanted to read about the positive people and the positive things there were doing to make this world better.

Early in my career, one of my first customers was the epitome of number two. I learned a lot from him. Most importantly, I can now easily identify the people I will never work.

Lastly, before I signed the papers for VMI, I read about, paid attention and listened to many entrepreneurs. I still do. I am a lifelong student of business and will always be. However, I know that though I’ve learned a lot from others, I can never be like them. I can only be me. It’s the only me I can be. I’ve learned to be dynamic, with the ability to change when necessary, make critical decisions and a lot of mistakes. As in life, business is cyclical, it has its ups and downs. Hang in there long enough and you will experience more ups in your entrepreneurial journey.

Big “ups” to you as you continue to forge your way to branding you.

 

Cameras and Twitter…The New Weapons of Choice
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Here’s the scenario: You are sitting at a business conference chit-chatting with a business colleague about something between the “boys.” Someone in front of you overhears your conversation, takes offense, shoots you and your friend (with her cell phone camera), tweets your photo with a comment about you and your friend’s conversation and now, your career is dead (hers too).

What was not expected was how quickly the tweet went viral, that it would get back to your boss and that you would lose the job you love because unbeknownst to you, you violated the conference’s Code of Conduct. You’re not sure you even read it.

adria richards twitter

The shooter and twitterer didn’t see her pink slip coming either.

This scenario actually happened last week between Adria Richards, developer evangelist at SendGrid and developer Alex Reid of PlayHaven. To read the full story, click here…

Big Brother is here and watching your every move. With cameras on every cell phone, it’s hard to get away from Big Brother. What bothers me is that we’re not safe anywhere. Where are the rights of the individual who just happens to have a yuk-em-up conversation with friends?

Now, I’m not defending Mr. Reid. He and his friend should have carefully chosen their words. However, I’m wondering if Ms. Richards, warned the two that they were offending her. From the article, it seems she just turned around, pointed, shot and tweeted.

There are many lessons in this scenario. A few are:

  1. Always be on your best behavior on company time…no matter where you are.
  2. Always read, read and read again your company’s and any other’s participation agreement. Apparently, these Codes of Conduct are taken seriously.
  3. Always be on your best behavior, period.
  4. Big Brother is always watching…

Do I think anyone should have been fired? No. Everyone should at least get one warning. This social media world in which we now live is so new. We’re all getting used to it.

The age-old sexism issue that Ms. Richards cried is real and may be growing stronger. From the looks of the photo, she was out-numbered. Hers is a field where few women dare to tread. Is it because of sexism? Ms. Richards had a right to be offended. She had a right to voice her discomfort. But, did she have the right to take a photo of Mr. Reid and tweet it without his permission?

What do you think?