When it comes to marketing, one of the most essential ingredients for success is time.  Over my 18 years as a marketer, I have never heard the words “Quick . . . market this!” nor have I uttered them to someone else.   People who market for a living understand the concept of time, and realize things like web hits, social networking followers, and article mentions are earned through months (if not years) of hard work and dedication—not some secret technique or automated tool that can be purchased for $9.99 a month.

Building a high-quality direct email database is no different.  Regardless of what many fly-by-night list vendors and list appending companies claim, there is no substitute for time when it comes to growing an internal email list.  High-quality email addresses are earned (not purchased) through three things: good planning, great execution, and the elimination of critical mistakes.  If your company is interested in steadily increasing both the size and quality of its corporate email database over time, below are five proven strategies for doing so.

List-Building Tip #1: Trade Knowledge for Contact Information

As e-commerce sites become easier to set up and operate, marketing people are getting increasingly more greedy.  Five years ago, it was rare to see a marketing initiative drive people directly to a shopping cart.  But these days, the majority of marketing campaigns end up with the recipient staring straight into the face of an “Add to Cart” button.  These types of campaigns might generate a few quick sales, but they do nothing for an internal email database.  Instead of exclusively running direct-to-sale initiatives, try offering a free article, white paper or template once in awhile.  If the topic is relevant and timely, people will gladly trade their contact information for your knowledge.  And the best part?  In terms of general clickthroughs, “free knowledge” campaigns regularly outperform direct-to-sale initiatives by as much as 7 to 1.  Yes, really.

List-Building Tip #2: Encourage Pass-Alongs

Nearly six years ago when I met the entrepreneur I work for today, one of the first marketing-related statements she made to me was ” If you want someone to pass on your marketing, why don’t you just ask them?”  At the time I had a good laugh to myself at the naivety of her marketing ‘perspective.’  But as embarrassed as I am to admit it now, she was right.  Simply asking people (in writing or verbally) to pass your marketing information to a friend, colleague or co-worker actually works. In fact, I have personally seen an increase in campaign response of between 15 and 50 percent, simply by putting the words “Please pass along to a friend!” in emails, newsletters, catalogs and print advertisements.  And of course, an increase in general marketing responses means more clicks, more reads, more downloads, and ultimately more qualified email addresses in your database.

List-Building Tip #3: Ask People for Their Input

One of the best and fastest ways to fill your email database with qualified and loyal contacts is also one of the simplest: ask people what they think.  Developing a new technology product?  Put out a request for beta testers. Writing a new book? Recruit some reviewers.  Trying out a new marketing angle? Assemble an online focus group.  Although I’ve done these things hundreds of times, it still amazes me how much effort people are willing to give companies in exchange for a few free products or complimentary services—or something as simple as a public “Thank You.”  And when your initiative is over, your company will be left not only with improved products and services, but with a group of dedicated and highly motivated email contacts who actually look forward to receiving updates from you.

List-Building Tip #4: Find Good Lists . . . and Rent Them

As counter-intuitive as this may sound, using high quality, industry-specific email lists is a great way to build your own internal database.  Is there a popular magazine, newsletter or educational portal in your industry?  If so, consider allocating a portion of your marketing budget to renting their contact list once in awhile.  With a good list and the right offer (see #1 above for more details) I have seen companies effectively ‘transfer’ up to 10% of the contacts in a rented, industry-specific rented list to their own database with as few as one email blast.

One Word of Caution: depending upon what your company actually sells, renting an email list for $350 to $500 per thousand names can be a bit on the expensive side.  Let’s do the math: if an average blast of 5,000 names costs your company between $1,750 and $2,500, the 500 new contacts your company might acquire will cost $3.50 to $5 each.  If you’re selling coffee by the cup, paying $5 for one email address might not be reasonable.  However, if your company sells enterprise-wide software solutions at $10 million apiece, handing over $5 per qualified industry contact is something your marketing department should be willing to do with a smile.

List-Building Tip #5:  Assign an Email Traffic Cop

A friend of mine recently passed along this horrifying story: a new marketing person at her company sent an e-newsletter to 3,000 people in the company’s internal list.  Realizing he had provided some inaccurate information, he fixed the newsletter and resent it 30 minutes later. Then, while testing some functions within the company’s email software, the employee accidentally sent the entire blast a third time . . . all on the same day.  Thinking they were being spammed, 490 of the 3,000 contacts opted out of the corporation’s email list.  The moral of the story?  Holding onto your existing email contacts is just as important as finding new ones.  The most effective way to avoid miscues like this is to assign an internal “owner” of your company’s email database—someone whose job it is to know who has been emailed, when they were emailed, and exactly what they were sent.  This person should also be assigned the job of processing opt-outs in a timely manner, maintaining an up-to-date “Removes” list, and making sure each email communication is unique, valuable, and expected.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Otherwise a Retweet (button at beginning of article), Stumble, Digg or Facebook mention (below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you for your support!

NOTE: This article was written as a companion piece to Eric’s article The New Rules for Direct Email Marketing, which was published in the The RainMaker Report newsletter in February of 2010.

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Now before I get too far into this, I need to make two very important points:

1. This strategy will take some time to implement.
2. If you stick with it, your results WILL improve every single month.

Translation: if you are lazy or impatient, you may stop reading immediately.

Regardless of what the sales rep at your local SEO company says, there is nothing quick, easy, or foolproof when it comes to capturing Internet traffic.  It took me nearly 9 months to reach my 1,000th article Retweet (feel free to count them) and almost one-third were acquired in months 8 and 9.  The sooner you realize actual effort will be required on your part, the more successful you will be in the long-term.

With the above in mind, here is an easy-to-follow, Twitter-based Article Marketing strategy involving our good friend, the Retweet.

Step #1: Use Your Existing Content to Fish for Retweets. If you’re a decent writer with a reasonable amount of real-world experience, chances are your blog already offers some pretty valuable content.  Using your existing articles to generate a few Retweets will allow you to not only hit the ground running, but build a Retweet base for future articles (discussed in Step #3).

Because most serious article readers use hashtags to filter content, adding one to each of your Tweets is a no-brainer.  If you write articles about gardening, end each Tweet with #gardening.  If you write about coffee, use #coffee.  Depending upon the nature of your articles, consider Tweeting an article several times during the course of a week, rotating between a handful of hashtags.  Spending some quality time at Hashtags.org will generate plenty of great options to choose from.

To further boost your chances of a Retweet, many experts (OK, mostly me) believe labeling your Tweets with the word “Article” at the beginning can increase RT frequency from article readers.  So can putting the words “RTs Welcome!” at the end.  In addition, be sure to avoid the mistake of leaving too little room at the end of each article-related Tweet.  Remember: most RT buttons add “RT @YourTwitterName” at the beginning of a Retweet, and serial Retweeters typically add comments like “Good read!” or “Nice article” to the end.  Be sure to leave room for both.

Step #2: Show Your Retweeters Some Love. Once you acquire your first few Retweeters, the next step is to hang onto them.  Like regular customers at a restaurant, Retweeters will return time and time again—as long as they are treated well.  Every time someone Retweets a link to one of your articles, is it critical that you both acknowledge their effort and return the favor by:

1. @Replying them a “Thank You.”
2. Adding them to a special Retweeter Twitter List.
3. Retweeting something of theirs.
4. Giving them at least one #FollowFriday recommendation.

In an effort to lead by example, this past week I sent over 80 Thank You messages and recommended nearly 150 people with a #FollowFriday mention. Sure, 95% of Twitter users don’t bother doing ANY of these things, but we are article marketers.  And the world expects more from us.

It is also important to note that some (but not all) of this process can be automated.  Although I used to complete all of Step #2 manually, I have recently started using a tool called SocialOomph (currently offering a Free 6-Day Trial).  SocialOomph not only handles much of this for me, but manages to find me nearly 50 targeted followers per day.  If you have some extra time, here is a Review of SocialOomph I wrote a few months back.  To this day, it’s the most valuable $29 per month I spend on article Marketing.

Step #3: Ask Your List Members to Help Distribute New Articles. Effective article marketing involves elements of both “giving” and “receiving.”  Here in Step 3 the receiving finally begins, and all of your hard work will begin to pay off . . . if you have been following the rules.  Remember that Retweeter List I asked you to start building is Step 2?  If you send each of these people a quick Direct Message on days when you release something new, odds are they will be more than willing to Retweet it to their followers.  Be sure to ask nicely, and provide a shortened version of the URL using a service like TinyURL or bit.ly (otherwise tools like SocialOomph can automatically do this for you).

Also note that Retweets often generate more Retweets, so be sure to use a good dashboard tool to filter and monitor @mentions and DMs.  People who Retweet a Retweet (does your head hurt yet?) are just as valuable as the members of your List, and should be shown the same courtesy outlined in Step #2—a Thank You, a List, an RT, and a #FollowFriday mention.

If you want to build a community around your content, there is going to be some work involved in developing an active and loyal follower base.  But a system like this can get  you going in no time.  I know this not because I’m guessing, but because this is exactly what I do every single week.

Comments? Questions?  Feel free to post a reply.  Otherwise a Retweet (button at the beginning of the article) Stumble or Digg (buttons below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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But the good news is, there are plenty of things small companies can do to make a positive impact on both search engine rankings and organic search engine traffic.  And the best part is, most of these things are easy to accomplish and absolutely free.

This posting is Part4 in a multi-part series called Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites.  Each post covers 3 SEO tips small companies can implement on their own and with very few resources.  Part 1 covered the concepts of using keyword themes to create web content, utilizing text-based navigation elements, and maximizing title tags.  Part 2 of this series discussed minimizing the use of Flash and graphics, using Meta Description tags, and submitting a search engine sitemap.  Part 3 reviewed adding a blog, actively looking for linkbacks, and starting a business-related social networking presence.  Part 4 is presented below.

SEO Tip #10: Use Social Bookmarks on Educational Content

No matter what kind of website you operate, there are always a few pages that focus on educating customers without the obligatory sales pitch—industry articles, white papers, free tips, company histories, and so on. If these pages truly provide value, why not ask visitors to recommend your educational content to others with a small social networking block like the one below?   Not only do social bookmarks drive millions (if not tens of millions) of visitors to websites every single day, but they also increase your number of backlinks AND in some cases provide additional search engine listings.

In terms of getting started with social bookmarking, the strategy is simple:  figure out which social bookmarks your site visitors will use, and offer them.  Checking out websites and blogs of companies in your industry can provide much of this information, but those of you who are short on time (or lazy) should know that most small companies will at LEAST include a Retweet button on educational content, as well as support for Diggs, Stumbles and Facebook mentions.  Above and beyond that, your choices are literally unlimited—so choose wisely.  For more information on Social Bookmarking, be sure to spend a few minutes reading one of our most popular articles of all-time, Social Bookmarking Dos and Don’ts.

SEO Tip #11: Sign Up for a (Free) Google Webmaster Tools Account

Because all entrepreneurs are good at finding free or low-cost tools to help grow their businesses, it surprises me whenever a small company owner tells me he or she doesn’t have a free Google Webmaster Tools Account.  Sure, this tool (like many others) is capable of providing website owners with too much information.  But on the flip side, you don’t actually have to look at it all—and the stuff you REALLY need is nicely presented on the same dashboard interface.  On a single screen, the uber-geeks at Google will allow site owners to view most popular search terms, number of links back to their site (and where they come from), the top 5 most important key terms within their content, which pages are officially indexed by Google, and any dead links the site might have.  Logging into Google Webmaster Tools for five minutes per day, three times per week is a great way for even the most inexperienced site owner to quickly and easily spot any changes—positive or negative—in SEO performance.

SEO Tip #12: Protect the SEO Results You’ve Already Earned

At some point around the age of 5, I noticed my dad had a bedtime routine.  Every night he would turn off the TV, grab a quick snack, then walk to the back of the house and wiggle the doorknob.  I remember asking him about this routine, and his reply was “Never go to sleep until you know the back door is locked.”  Although these words were meaningless to me back then, their value was brought to light earlier this past year, when I literally lost every bit of SEO work I had ever done.  Over the course of about a month I was banned from search engines, kicked out of multiple social networking programs, and lost my best performing links . . . all because I stopped checking the back door.

In my mad rush to build a high-traffic website, I got sloppy and let my computer become infected with a virus—a virus which eventually made its way onto the server where my website was hosted.  For about six weeks, visitors to my website were redirected to any number of shady and semi-legal offshore websites (gambling, porn, pyramid schemes, whatever), which caused my site to be banned from enough places where it eventually ceased to exist.  During the recovery process I became a member of a website security blog, and received a great 2-part recommendation from one of its primary contributors: 1) spend a few bucks on a two REALLY good virus checkers, and 2) run them BOTH in Safe Mode once per week on the computer you use to manage your website.  Today, I use Malware Bytes and SuperAntiSpyware every Friday night, and thankfully have been able to recapture at least some of my former SEO glory.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to reply to this post.  Otherwise, a Retweet (button at the very beginning of this article), Stumble, Digg or Facebook mention (below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you for your support!

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As many of my regular readers know, I have a habit of being introspective about my blogging (see 7 Reasons Why I Suck at Blogging, and What I’m Going to Do About It for more information) and would like to continue this theme by sharing a few more lessons I learned . . . the hard way.

Lesson #1: In Order to Keep Going, I Need to Believe More in What I’m Doing. After almost a year and a half as a blogger, I have come to a conclusion: writing good content is easy.  That said, writing good content when no one is reading it is the equivalent of getting kicked in the stomach.  To date, some of my best and most heart-felt articles have zero comments, no search engine rankings, and no measurable traffic.  Does this tend to de-motivate me?  Almost every single day.  But whether or not it’s true, I have convinced myself that people WANT to read what I write. If I didn’t believe this, I would be spending my 30+ hours of free time each week doing other things.  Like sleeping, for example.

Lesson #2: I Can Either Produce Good Content, or Make Money—But Not Both. As a part-time blogger with a full-time day job, I have a pretty good handle on what I can accomplish over the course of a week.  During any seven-day period I usually have enough time to write a new article, maintain my Twitter account, comment on a few blog postings, and make a design change or two on my blog.  But all of the search engine work, back linking, social networking and keyword optimization necessary to make a few bucks on my pay-per-click and affiliate ads often detracts from the quality of my writing.  And because I care more about content than I do about a quarterly $100 check from Google, I have chosen to concentrate on my writing . . . until I go broke or lose my day job.

Lesson #3: I Will Never Run Out of Ideas for Articles. Thinking back to when I first started this blog, I can’t help but laugh at how worried I was about running out of content.  Truth be told, I was so afraid of ‘going dark’ that I wrote seventeen complete articles (about 20,000 words) before I made my blog live.  Because my 4-month case of writer’s block never actually materialized, today I am sitting on enough drafts, research and backup articles to start selling term papers to MBA students ( hmm. . . ).  Was running out of ideas really ever a problem?  Nope.  But running out of time to write them all down is a daily challenge.

Lesson #4: There are Ten Times More A-Holes in the World than I Ever Imagined. When it comes to blogging, one of the most common misconceptions is that bloggers hide behind a website and write, with no consequences and very little stress.  This may be the case for some, but in my case owning and hosting a blog has put me out there for literally anyone on the planet to find . . . and screw with.  Since starting my blog in October of 2008 I have had to completely rebuild it from the ground up—three times—because of hackers.  I have also been banned from Google, kicked out of Technorati, and lost my best performing links to something called ‘open URl redirection.’  Being a blogger is not the stress-free experience most people believe it is, and I have hundreds of tech support emails to Google, Technorati and Network Solutions to prove it.

Lesson #5:  Sometimes, I Have to Ask for Things—No Matter How Uncomfortable It Might for Me. As a guy who grew up with very little, I’ve always been hesitant to ask people for things.  My parents were staunch advocates of the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” motto, which espoused things like pride and independence and self-sufficiency.  Although these were great core values as a child, in my adult years they resulted in a lonely and un-successful blogger.  It took me almost a year to realize I couldn’t build a successful blog by myself, and have since started asking for help.  When I need Retweets, I contact my Twitter followers directly.  When I’m short on article comments, I email my site members.  And when I believe an article is good enough to be published, I send it to all of the Editors I’ve come to know over the last few months.  Although asking doesn’t work every time, it’s worked well enough to generate dozens of comments, hundreds of Retweets, and four syndicated articles.  By the way . . . any chance you could push the “Retweet” button at the beginning of the article?

Lesson #6: The Only Way to Get Something From My Social Network is to Give Something First. Forging relationships has never been easy for me in person.  And surprisingly, it has been difficult online as well.  In retrospect, I now realize I spent too much social networking time selfishly trying to make the Internet work for me.  For example, I am embarrassed to admit that during my first year as a blogger I managed to get over 200 article Retweets . . . and never issued a single “Thank You.”  During that same period over 300 people took the time to comment on my articles—and again, I was non-responsive.  I also never posted comments for other bloggers, never Retweeted anything unless it was mine, and never signed up for a single RSS feed.  This overt selfishness stunted my blog’s early growth, but since making a few changes I have watched my blog post triple-digit increases in web traffic, site registrations and Twitter followers over the last few months.

Comments? Questions? Please feel free to reply to this post, and don’t forget to include a link to your website or blog—backlinks are the equivalent of SEO gold.  Otherwise a Retweet (beginning of article), Digg or Stumble (buttons below) would be very much appreciated.  Thank you for your help!

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• Assemble cross-functional Webinar teams;
• Invest in Webinar project plans;
• Involve third party vendors;
• Purchase Pay-per-Click advertising; and
• Involve telemarketing firms to follow up with attendees.

And almost immediately, something occurred to me.  With big company consultants scaring the hell out of people, it’s no wonder more small companies don’t use Webinars in their Marketing strategy.

The fact is, for a few hundred dollars and four hours worth of time, any company—regardless of size—can run a successful Webinar.  And as a first step in getting you to believe me, I would like to start by dispelling a few myths about the small company Webinar process.

Myth #1: You Have to Spend a Ton of Money.

Sure, there are a handful of massive Webinar providers who require year-long contracts and $30,000 down payments.  But for every industry giant there is a smaller provider waiting in the wings, offering the exact same features and service for a fraction of the cost and commitment.  One in particular that comes to mind is iLinc Web and Video Conferencing, where my company gets the same bells and whistles as the big guys offer—automated registration, reminder emails, free recording, unlimited events, and so on—for about $400 per month.

Myth #2: You  Need an Entire ‘Team’ of People.

Contrary to the white paper I mentioned previously, participation from Marketing, Management, Sales, Customer Service and Finance (huh?) is not required to host a successful Webinar.  In fact, to host a Webinar you really only need two things:  a presenter, and a coordinator.  And the division of work?  Simple.  The presenter creates the slides and delivers the presentation, while the coordinator works behind the scenes to set up the Webinar software, monitor the Webinar when it’s running, and handle the recorded version once it’s done.  It sounds easy . . . because it IS easy.

Myth #3: You Need to Sell Something During Your Webinar.

One of the most frequent objections I hear from small company managers who avoid using Webinars is “I’m just not good at selling things.”  However, the real question when deciding whether to host a Webinar should be “Am I good at TEACHING things?”  Due to their ridiculously low cost, Webinars shouldn’t be viewed as sales presentations, but as opportunities to collect names of people who are interested in what you have to offer.

For Example: if your company sells popsicles, the title of your Webinar shouldn’t be 10 Reasons to Buy Popsicles from My Company.  A much better approach would be to present something like The History of the Grapesickle or How to Eat a Popsicle Before it Melts All Over Your Hand.  When it comes to Webinars, educational presentations should always be chosen over dog-and-pony shows.

The point is this: if you offer some clever and interesting education in exchange for a bit of contact information, you can always follow up later.

Myth #4: A Webinar is Considered a Failure if a Large Number of People Don’t Show Up.

If there is one aspect of planning and delivering Webinars that executives have the most trouble with, it is this: about 40% of registrants will make absolutely no effort to actually attend the event. But the good news is, other than denting the ego of the speaker, these absentee registrants are completely irrelevant when it comes to evaluating the success (or failure) of a Webinar event.  Sure, a massive live audience can increase the amount of feedback and questions.  But the fact is, whether or not they actually show up, you still have their contact information—and contact information is THE most valuable piece of this entire equation.  Plus, if you are truly concerned about educating the 40% who didn’t show up, you can simply record the Webinar event (a free service provided by most Webinar platforms) and send them a link to the recorded version later.

Questions?  Comments?  Please feel free to reply to this post, and be sure to include a link back to your own website or blog . . . because linkbacks are SEO gold, people.

Otherwise,  Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Retweet (button at the top of the article), Stumble or Digg (buttons below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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In an effort to help my company continue the double-digit annual revenue growth it became accustomed to earlier in the century, I need to make some fundamental changes in the way I act, the way I work, and the way I manage.  With this in mind, during the upcoming year I resolve to do as many of the following as I possibly can:

1. Not worry about what my competitors are doing.
2. Hire smart people who care.
3. Measure everything I do.
4. Look for new customers  for my products and services.
5. Regularly share my goals with my team.
6. Reward employees who deserve it.
7. Take a multi-vitamin.
8. Become an industry expert.
9. Lead by example.
10. Take advantage of mobile technology.
11. Get more out of people who work for me.
12. Attend fewer trade shows.
13. Come up withe new product and service ideas.
14. Buy a more versatile cell phone.
15. Stop accepting mediocre work from my peers.
16. Work smarter.
17. Use more vacation days.
18. Try a few things that seem impossible.
19. Use fewer curse words.
20. Run a leaner department.
21. Talk to more customers.
22. Get up from my desk once in awhile.
23. Diversify my marketing dollars.
24. Take walks over lunch.
25. Attend fewer meetings.
26. Schedule fewer meetings.
27. Say what I think, exactly when I think it.
28. Buy a nicer pen . . . and hang onto it.
29. Waste less time arguing with people who are wrong.
30. Keep a tidier desk.
31. Maintain a list of good ideas.
32. Bring more functions in-house.
33. Think bigger.

Would you like to add your own change or resolution? Please feel free to reply to this post, and be sure to include a link back to your own website or blog (linkbacks are SEO gold, people).

Otherwise,  Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Retweet (button at the top of the article), Stumble or Digg (buttons below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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Although I happily complied with each and every request, I was always conflicted as to whether or not the process truly provided any value.  Obviously any feedback you can get from someone qualified to give it is valuable.  But does this feedback come with a price?  And are there caveats to look out for—caveats that could call into question the validity and value of the data you receive?  The answer in this situation is ‘Yes’ in both cases.  The fact is, customer satisfaction surveys often result in few major changes to the way a company does business, for the three critical reasons:

1)    Writing Good Survey Questions is Not as Easy As it Looks – Because there are entire books and semester-long MBA courses dedicated to the topic, I will mention only at a high level that it takes a trained and experienced marketing professional to write a valuable, properly structured and non-leading customer survey.  Most small companies grossly under-estimate the effect a few poorly written questions can have on the outcome of a survey, and pass off question-writing duties to marketing people who do not have the training or the experience to handle it.  The result? Wasting both time and money reacting to problems that don’t really exist.

2)    These Days, Nobody Goes Out of their Way to Tell You They’re Happy – Excluding any pre-arranged incentive for participation (i.e. free or discounted products, special coupons, and so on) the primary motivator for people who actually complete customer satisfaction surveys is, ironically, dis-satisfaction.  No matter how much work a researcher puts in trying to make surveys fun, shorter and easier to complete, the fact remains that a customer who is satisfied will rarely tell you as much, for one simple reason: customers do not feel obligated to offer feedback when your product, service or company does exactly what they expected it to do.

Let’s take a simple example from Sales.  When a sales person is delivering his or her sales pitch, there are three emotional states a prospect can be in: 1) impressed and receptive, 2) unimpressed and confrontational, or 3) indifferent.  The emotional state most conducive to closing the deal is impressed and receptive, but every great sales person knows the worst-case scenario is actually . . . indifferent.  Why? Because a sale cannot be made to someone who genuinely does not care.  In many ways, the same principle applies to return rates for customer satisfaction surveys: people who have no emotional response one way or the other (those who are truly ‘satisfied’) will simply not participate.

3)    People are Smart Enough to Know You Will Use Their Feedback to Make More Money – Although you might tell customers that completing your survey is in their best interest through things like ‘increased quality’ and ‘improved service,’ today’s customer is savvy enough to know your only objective is to increase the profitability of your company.  No matter how you spin it, most customers understand that what you are asking them to do is donate their time so you can earn a bigger paycheck.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few paragraphs explaining all of the reasons why customer satisfaction surveys do not work or are not completed.  But despite the title of this post, I do believe there are some things you can do as a marketer to improve your results:

• Get Professional Help – To avoid collecting bad information or the wrong information, give serious consideration to either hiring a consultant to assist, or contracting out the customer satisfaction surveys to a professional market research firm.  Most small companies can’t afford to have a full-time Marketing Researcher on staff, and hiring outside help is an acceptable alternative.
• Offer Tangible Incentives for Completion – To increase your completion rate, offer participants something they actually want—free services or merchandise, discounts on their next purchase, access to a special package, or something similar.  No one is going to get excited about being entered into a drawing with thousands of other people for yet another iPod Nano or a $50 gift card to your company store (see the definition of ‘Expected Value’ for more information), but a double-digit discount percentage off of their next order?  Much more tangible . . . and easier to calculate.
• Know Who Your Respondents will Be . . . and Embrace Them – As mentioned above, it is likely with any Customer Satisfaction Survey that most of your responses will come from people who are on either side of the emotional pendulum—either extremely happy or extremely angry.  Why not use this emotion to your advantage?  Actively seek feedback from these groups by writing questions that spur them to respond.  Cater to dissatisfied customers by admitting your company or product’s faults, and opening the door for them to help you address specific issues.  For happy customers, encourage them to explain exactly why their experience with your company has been so positive, and ask for advice on how to communicate their story to others.  Admitting to yourself who your real respondents will be is the first step in getting data that you can actually use.

Being an amateur Economist, I have always been a firm believer that the largest measure of customer satisfaction—and the only one that really matters—is bottom-line Revenue.  If the market is pleased with what you are doing and how you are doing it, they will purchase more of what you offer.  Conversely, if the market is unhappy with your product, your service or your approach, they will purchase less of what you offer.  The point is, when you’re running a for-profit business there is no vote or opinion that matters more than that of the economy.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to reply to this post.  Otherwise, a Retweet (handy button provided at the beginning of the post), Digg or Stumble (buttons below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you for reading!

Other Articles by This Author:

• The 4 Critical Differences Between Large Companies and Small Ones
• 5 Visually Appealing Plugins for the Lazy Blog Designer
• 5 Ethical Ways to Grow Your Corporate Email Database
• How I Became a Mediocre Blogger for Only $9.95 per Month
• The REAL Reason Banks Won’t Lend Any Money

So exactly what does marketing yourself and your accomplishments entail? Should you openly brag about yourself to your co-workers, point out every good thing you’ve ever done to your boss, and hand the owner or CEO of your small company an up-to-date resume? Not exactly. But I am hoping you understand that a little periodic self-promotion—done in a subtle way—can help you get where you want to be from a career standpoint. With that in mind, I have assembled a few of my most valuable ruls for marketing yourself and your accomplishments within your organization; no matter what you happen to do for a living.

Rule #1: Understand Your Audience. Whether you manage a marketing department, a product development department, the Accounting function or the entire operation, there is a principle for marketing yourself that is more valuable than the rest: know who you’re speaking to. Does your boss prefer to communicate via e-mail or verbally? Does she respond better to statistics or written reports? Does he get more excited to know that the company has saved money or made money? What time of day is your boss most open to a quick note or conversation? Knowing this information can do nothing but help you in the long run.

Rule #2: Establish a Regular Pattern for Your Communication. Instead of surprising your boss with a positive report when she least expects it—and is most likely to forget—establish a regular pattern of positive communication. Early afternoon on Friday is typically a good time to send a positive report, because your boss might actually have time to read and absorb it. But whatever time you choose, be consistent from week to week. In time, your supervisor will not only come to expect your “Friday Good News,” she will actually look forward to it.

Rule #3: Paint Only the Big Picture. When you finally decide to approach your manager with some positive news, be careful to not inundate him with details. Statements like “our most recent product was released 3 months early” or “employee turnover in my departments has been cut in half over the last two years” are about as detailed as you should get when it comes to your personal accomplishments. You can always offer to provide your manager with more information at a later time if requested. And there’s one more advantage to leaving out the details—it gives your boss an excuse to stop by your office for a POSITIVE conversation about your performance, which of course we all need more of these days.

Rule #4: Present the Good, but Resist the Temptation to Embellish. Once you become comfortable communicating your accomplishments to your boss on a regular basis, it actually becomes fun. But at the same time, it can be tempting to push the boundaries and blur the line between what is expected in your role and what is considered an extraordinary accomplishment. Resist the temptation to point out that you met your revenue goal for the year, or that you completed a major project on time, or that a planning document you have been working on for several months is now complete. As difficult as these activities can be, do not forget they are an expected part of your job.

Rule #5: If You Can’t Back it Up or Don’t Believe it 100%, Don’t Report It. I can’t explain why, but it has been my experience that small company owners and CEOs are inherently suspicious of good news. Maybe it’s because they’ve been burned so many times in the past. Or maybe it’s because managing by exception (only communicating with employees when there’s a problem) is a more comfortable style of management. Either way, you can be 100 percent certain that the receiver of your positive report will, from time to time, question you about it—extensively. If you’re not comfortable walking through your report step-by-step with the person who signs your paychecks, don’t bother.

Rule #6: Use Charts and Graphs—In Color. If you actually want your boss to read what you’re making available to her, try to avoid lengthy written reports, documents with paragraphs, and even reports with long sentences. Wherever possible, presenting information in a succinct, graphical-based format makes your news easy to review, understand and absorb. And in the absence of charts and graphs, don’t discount the value of a quick e-mail with a handful of short bullets. We all have a person in our lives who sends e-mail that we immediately delete or archive, because the message is usually too long to read. Don’t become that person! And using a splash of color once in awhile in your charts and graphs (don’t push it) immediately indicates to your boss that your information is important, and that you put some time and effort into assembling it.

Rule #7: Take the Opportunity to Make Your Boss Look Good. Are you looking for a sure-fire way to make your boss excited to receive your regular positive updates? Focus on providing timely, succinct and well-formatted reports she can use to enhance her reputation with HER boss or peers. As you create your reports, ask yourself this question: “Based on the content and format of this report, could my boss pass this on to the owner of my company, or to an executive from another small company?” If the answer is no, spend a little more time working on it. A good manager can obviously complete his job at a high level . . . but a good employee figures out ways to make his boss look good in the process.

Rule #8: Market Beyond Your Own Department. Here is a fact that might surprise you: your direct supervisor is not the only person you should be marketing yourself to. Although formal and written communication to anyone but your direct supervisor could land you in hot water, there is no rule against mentioning you and your departments’ successes to people outside of the department. Today’s peers could be tomorrow’s employees, managers, or even company owners—and the more people who know you’re extremely good at what you do, the better.

As a small company manager there are literally dozens of reports you are expected to maintain and turn in at any given time. But today I need you to add one more report to your regular routine—the one that highlights YOU as a great manager. If you regularly go the extra mile or continually find innovative ways to bring revenue into the company, you have the right—and the obligation—to let someone know about it. If you do something great for your company, don’t be afraid to tell someone!

Also, Social Bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Retweet (button provided above), Stumble or Digg (below) would be greatly appreciated.  And if you’re looking for a quick and easy backlink to you own site or blog, comments on this post are open as well.

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The definition of the word ‘lead,’ over and above everything else, is the single most common reason Marketing and Sales people don’t mingle at the company picnic.   And as a 17+ year marketing professional I can say with some degree of certainty that in most cases, it is our fault.  Contrary to what we learned in the 1990s, a trade show attendee who swaps a business card for a blinky pen is not something a good sales person should be interested in.  Neither is a name poached from a website, or the spouse of a friend who knows someone in the Purchasing Department at Company X.  If we as Marketing people are ever going to regain the confidence of our counterparts in Sales, we need to understand the difference between things that feed a Sales pipeline, and things that should be feeding a paper shredder.

The Name

The first and therefore least significant thing a marketing person can pass along to sales is called a Name, and is defined as follows:

General contact information, acquired from a general source, where no context is given.

Note that use of the word ‘general’ twice in the above definition is not a mistake, but rather a way to diminish the perceived value of a Name.  Marketing people acquire Names from any number of places—business card drops at a trade shows, website downloads, mailing lists, industry association member registers, and so on—but the manner in which a Name was acquired does not increase its value.  Most Sales people are savvy enough to acquire a Name on their own, and have every right to be insulted when a Marketing person attempts to give them one and pass it off as something that has potential revenue attached to it.

The Lead

The second level of inbound inquiry, and the one most people are familiar with by name, is a Lead.  The definition of a Lead—which applies to most companies and in most situations—is as follows:

The name and direct contact information of someone within your target demographic who is looking for more information,  and has given your company permission to follow up with them.

As outlined above, there are four important components that must exist before Marketing can declare something a Lead:

• Direct contact information;
• Confirmation that the Name is within your target demographic;
• A desire on behalf of the contact for more information; and
• Permission to follow up.

What happens to a Lead after Marketing receives it varies from company to company.  Some firms enter them into the Marketing ‘machine’ to receive automated follow up, some companies pass them to an Inside Sales-type of role for cultivation, and some companies pass them directly to an Outside Sales function.  But wherever they are sent, Leads are the second-most valuable thing a Marketer can uncover, with the most valuable being . . .

The Opportunity!

The third type of marketing-driven inquiry—and the most difficult one to generate—is the Opportunity.  An Opportunity is something Sales people expect, Marketing executives demand, and professional marketers rarely achieve.  The definition of an Opportunity is as follows:

The name and contact information of someone who has expressed interest in making a purchase from you, has an established budget, and is either an influencer in the decision-making process or the primary decision-maker.

Based on this definition, in order to legitimately refer to an inquiry as an Opportunity, the following three things must exist in addition to the components listed in the previous section:

1. A demonstrated need for (or want of) whatever your company has to offer;
2. Verification that the money exists to purchase what is being offered; and
3. Proof that the contact can either make the decision, or bend the ear of someone who can.

Much like the word ‘general’ when referring to a Name, the words demonstrated, verification and proof carry special meaning here.  All too often, Marketing people get caught in what I refer to as the Think-Feel-Believe Trap when passing prospects onto Sales—”I think they need what we offer, I feel the client has the money, and I believe the contact is a decision-maker.” If the prospect didn’t clearly and specifically state his or her need, budget and decision-making power, what you have is nothing more than a Lead, which will eventually a) require significantly more effort to close, and b) make your Sales Department mistrust you.

The bottom line is, filling a Sales pipeline as a marketer is about more than simply keeping the Sales staff busy.  It’s also about maintaining your reputation and credibility with the people who depend upon you for their paychecks.  The most sure-fire way to ensure a successful relationship between Marketing and Sales is for the departments to speak the same language, and hopefully this article will help.  That way, Marketing and Sales can get back to arguing about issues that REALLY matter—like why Sales people never use the standard PowerPoint templates we make, or why Marketing people refuse to create brochures for products and services that don’t actually exist.

Questions?  Comments?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, social bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Retweet (button provided above), Stumble or Digg (buttons below) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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With this in mind, a few months back I wrote and posted an article titled 5 Unbreakable Rules for Using Twitter as a Business Tool.  Surprisingly, this article is still the most popular 700 words I have ever typed into a computer.  Not because using Twitter is overly-complicated, but because using it effectively within a business context isn’t nearly as easy as it looks.  For example, Tweeting from a mobile device after draining your seventh beer might get you a laugh or two from your friends, but it has a markedly different effect among your customer base.  Twitter’s lack of a rulebook (or any real standards, for that matter) makes it tempting for us as corporate marketers to do whatever the heck we want.  But things like ethics, discipline, planning and strategy are what separate us from our neighbor who sells cleaning products out of her car.  And a few rules never hurt anybody.

After investing close to 500 more hours in the research and use of Twitter, I have come up with five additional rules that should never be broken when attempting to use Twitter as a business tool.

Rule #6: Allow Your Twitter Account to Develop a Personality. By virtue of being a social technology, Twitter is a wonderful place to show your customers and prospects a different and more personal side of your business.  Does this mean employees should be allowed to Tweet about upcoming vacations and family milestones?  Of course not.  But Tweeting in a more informal voice can go a long way in building loyalty among Twitter followers.  This is especially important at virtual companies, where customers and prospects need to be constantly reminded that there are real people behind all of the webinars, mass emails and online newsletters.

Rule #7: Follow Your Industry’s Support System. Not surprisingly, a critical component of building a successful Twitter presence for business is the actual ‘networking’ part—extending your company’s reach by finding people to follow, and identifying potential customers who are interested in following your company.  Most marketers do a great job of choosing Twitter members who have a high probability of being customers some day.  But experienced Twitter marketers will also follow people and organizations who keep their customers educated and employed.  Does your industry landscape include professional associations, educational portals, consulting companies and placement firms?  If so, you might want to follow them.  Not only will they be tempted to promote you to their followers, but they will also Retweet your news, offers and white papers once in awhile.

Rule #8: Automate the Day-to-Day Account Management. I obviously have no idea how much your company pays its marketing people.  But if it’s anything over $30 per month, an automated Twitter marketing tool might save your company a significant amount of time and money.  After just a few hours of setup time, subscription-based services like SocialOoomph (formerly TweetLater) can help your company find followers, send Tweets, and track chatter about your products and services—on multiple Twitter accounts and from a single user-interface.  In fact, some automated tools even go out of their way to appeal to marketing geeks like me by offering features such as Clout Calculations (to determine which of your followers have the most Twitter influence), customizable Friend Filters, and various other types of advanced analytics.  Most automated Twitter tools have free trials, and several allow companies to join month-to-month and cancel any time they wish.

Rule #9: Don’t Forget . . . Your Compeptitors Are ALWAYS Watching. True story: several months ago I heard through the industry grapevine that one of my company’s competitors was working on a new product.  The product was going to be positioned head-to-head with my company’s cash cow, and was expected to take a significant percentage of our market share.  After making a few phone calls and learning nothing, I decided to check the Internet.  Within a few short minutes I was able to not only confirm the rumor, but assemble most of the company’s initial rollout plan and marketing strategy.  The surprise here is not how I found this information, but where—in the Twitter account of the company’s CEO.  Over the course of several months, the CEO of my closest competitor had been giving his followers blow-by-blow strategic planning updates.  The point here?  That social networking sites come with an implied barrier of confidentiality that really doesn’t exist.  And if your people can’t keep a secret, they need to lock their profiles.

Rule #10: Build a Community

Contrary to the belief of most companies, the best way to monetize your business-related Twitter account has nothing to do with selling.  The key, which might be counter-intuitive to many, is making your followers feel involved.  Building a community among your followers through the sharing of knowledge and general communication will lead to more traffic, more activity, and eventually more sales than any 140-character ’special offer’ you could ever hope to distribute.  Tweeting links to free white papers and Webinars, using your follower base to test market products, and leveraging Twitter’s @reply function to host open debates are three great ways to jump-start your community-building efforts.  Not only will initiatives like this directly involve your followers, but it will keep them coming back . . . so you can sell them something later.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to post a comment below.  Also, Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Digg or Stumble (below) or a Retweet (handy button provided at the beginning of this post) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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So . . . once we artistically-deficient bloggers finally switch from the default blog template to something a bit more customizable, how do we add at least SOME visual appeal without having to spend $1,100 on Macromedia Creative Suite and another $2,000 learning how to use it?  Plugins, of course!  Sure, most plugins are designed to work behind the scenes by protecting our blogs from spam, managing our databases, and running our traffic reports.  But a select few can actually add things like formatting, graphic elements, and even a bit of interactivity—without tempting us to download a pirated copy of Photoshop.

With the above in mind, below are five types of plugins that can add some sorely-needed visual appeal to any blog, with very little design effort or skill involved.

PLUGIN #1: ANY SORT OF RETWEET BUTTON

Most people view Tweet-related plugins as a great way to encourage republication of blog postings (please feel free to click on mine, by the way—scroll UP).  But those of us with no design skills see this plugin and think one thing: page anchor.  Everyone knows that starting a post with a graphic or a blue bird makes your content three to five times more interesting to readers.  And more importantly, keeping a running count of your Retweets is a great way to give yourself a quick ego boost when you realize how crappy your blog design really is.  Added Bonus: buttons can often be presented in different sizes and colors for enhanced appeal.

PLUGIN #2: GOOGLE ADSENSE

Moneymaker?  Sure.  But design element?  Damn right.  Unlike Retweet buttons, Google Adsense plugins give bloggers not one, but THREE opportunities to add customizable colored squares to any post or page.  And colored squares are good.  The “Mid-Post Ad” setting in Google Adsense also gives blog readers an opportunity to briefly pause and ignore something obnoxious halfway through literally any blog posting.  Added Bonus: the perfect ‘triple-threat’ when it comes to plugins—revenue generator, design element, and content breaker-upper.

PLUGIN #3: CAPTCHA

In preparation of a Trivial Pursuit game ten years from now, you need to know that the acronym CAPTCHA actually stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.  Translation: this plugin protects our blogs from automated comment spam and iFrame injections.  But more than that, CAPTCHA almost always includes a really cool graphic with a bunch of letters and lines in it, where our blogs are most in need of a little ‘flair’—at the very bottom of the page.  Added Bonus: CAPTCHA functionality on a blog makes the owner look sophisticated.

PLUGIN #4: AN ‘ABOUT THE AUTHOR’ BLOCK

If there is one thing most blogs lack regardless of platform, it is boxes.  I love boxes.  And quite frankly, it frustrates me that you can’t just insert a box or table into a blog posting whenever you want.  That said, an About the Author plugin not only allows you to make a box in your blog, but also put your picture in it.  And who doesn’t love looking at a great headshot of themselves?  Added Bonus: will save you the trouble of creating a “Profile” page for yourself.

PLUGIN #5: SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

Depending upon which one you use, a Social Bookmarking plugin could allow the addition of between 4 and 400 icons to your blog—the equivalent of winning the lottery for any lazy blogger.  And more importantly, each of these icons is professionally designed, and completely customizable in terms of placement.  Some Social Bookmarking plugins even include a bit of animation, as evidenced by the six-pack at the bottom of this post (how cools is THAT?).  Added Bonus: use of multiple Social Media plugins will ensure even the most obscure social networking sites are forever represented on your blog.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Otherwise, Social Bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Digg, Stumble or Sphinn (below) or a Retweet (above) would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

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• Marketing Tool Review: SocialOomph, The Social Media Productivity Booster
• 15 Things I Did When My Blog Was Hacked: A Comprehensive Recovery Plan

In my never ending quest for high-value marketing tools that also allow me to sleep at night, I began experimenting with a social media productivity booster called SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater).  My experiences with this tool—positive and negative—are outlined in this article.  If this post generates a decent level of interest among readers, I plan to continue the series by investing my own money in (and subsequently writing about) other paid marketing tools and services.  With this in mind, if you have any suggestions for tools you would like to see evaluated on this website, please email me directly at eric@thesmallcompanyblog.com with your ideas.

SocialOomph: A Quick Overview

SocialOomph originally got its start as an automated friend-finder for Twitter users, and like other tools of its kind has since added dozens of new features.  Some of these features you can probably live without, and some are absolutely critical for execution of a comprehensive Twitter marketing strategy—the latter including bulk tweet uploading, @Mention and Retweet monitoring, Twitter keyword alerts, and management of multiple Twitter accounts from a single user interface.

The Professional Edition of SocialOomph (access to all features) is $29.97 per month, and prior to paying this subscription the company allows prospective monthly users a 6-Day Free Trial to test everything out.  This review will be written from the perspective of a full-blown user, who has paid his monthly fee and re-upped his subscription, which I have done multiple times.

SocialOomph: The Good

As a fundamental part of any social media productivity service, SocialOomph’s Friend Finder tool is as feature-rich and robust as I could expect to get for less than 30 bucks per month.  To satisfy my inner control freak, SocialOomph allows me to search for and filter potential friends using nearly 25 different settings—settings that include uber-nerdy stuff like Following-to-Follower Ratio,  Username Keywords, Length of Twitter Membership, and even the type of thumbnail graphic a Twitter member uses in his or her profile.

I also love the Clout Calculation, which allows me to generate a list of my Top 50 “Most Influential” followers, so I know whose butt to kiss when I need some traffic.  And of course, the Bulk Tweet Upload feature allows me to upload a virtually unlimited number of Tweets (I have yet to hit the limit, anyway) and schedule them for distribution at some time in the near or distant future.  For a person with no time to spare, these features alone are worth the price.  Aside from my three personal favorite time-savers, SocialOomph’s TweetCockPit (for managing multiple accounts) allows you to schedule @replies and DMs, send broadcast (mass-distributed) DMs, and run you own TwitterBots . . . something that happens to irritate me personally, but many of you might enjoy this feature.

SocialOomph: The Not So Good

Compared to other membership-based sites I pay money to use each month, I must admit I expected a bit more from SocialOomph’s User Interface.  Sure, all of the features work as advertised, but the main interface is a mashing together of tabs, links and ill-formatted tables that sometimes make it difficult to find exactly what I’m looking for.  It is quite obvious that this website is too busy trying to make money to improve the design of its site, but as a paying member in good standing I expect to see some big interface changes soon.

The other negative regarding SocialOomph is, unfortunately for them, something they can do nothing about—speed.  Like any other automated social networking tool, SocialOomph is constantly accessing the Twitter API . . . which means when Twitter is slow, SocialOomph is slow.  But until the owners of Twitter actually figure out a way to cash flow their idea and use the money to add more bandwidth, users across the globe will be forced to deal with the big blue “Twitter is Over Capacity!” whale dozens of times per day.

SocialOomph: The Missing

After three months of relatively intensive use, there are a few features I would like to see added to SocialOomph.  First, I would LOVE a report that analyzes my Following List, and automatically un-follows anyone who has not chosen to follow me within (for example) a week of me initially following them (note that SocialOomph does have a function that un-follows anyone who un-follows you, but what I’m referring to here is a bit different).  Second, for as much time as I spend on their site it seems only right that they allow me to customize my view—basically create my own SocialOomph desktop—so I don’t have to deal with the dozens of tabs and links I simply don’t use.

And finally, as counter-intuitive as this feature might be to the concept of social networking, I would like to see the good people at SocialOomph build a function that helps me weed out spammers and idiots—kind of like a “Friend Finder,” but in reverse.  For example, among my followers I know I have dozens of shadow accounts (where the same person owns multiple accounts and tweets the same thing for each account) and “Enroll in the Trump System of Wealth” pushers.  Quite frankly I’m tired of reading their crap, and if SocialOomph could give me a way to find and permanently block them, I might be a customer for life.

SocialOomph: Overall Impressions

Is SocialOomph the perfect social media productivity booster?  Not quite.  But as a key piece of marketing automation for bloggers and website owners, there isn’t much missing in the way of features.  Also, the owners and operators of SocialOomph deserve a HUGE amount of credit for developing and migrating their system in an ethical manner.  Not only does the site keep its members constantly updated on new Twitter usage policies, but they resist the temptation to ‘game’ the Twitter API by forcing users to grow their follower bases logically and consistently over time—versus other systems that make promises like “Gain 10,000 new followers per week!” and “Get as many followers as Oprah!”

If you’re in the process of shopping for a social media productivity tool, registering for SocialOomph’s 6-Day Free Trial is a risk-free way to get your feet wet.  And who knows: after those six days, you might find you can’t live without it either.

Comments?  Questions?  Please email me directly at eric@thesmallcompanyblog.com.  Also, social bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Digg, Stumble or Retweet would be very much appreciated.  Thank you.

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And now, I’m just pissed.

Without going into too much detail, I will tell you that in a matter of minutes I lost an entire year’s worth of work.  Ten pages, 55 posts, 19 drafts, hundreds of tags, and over 2,000 comments were gone in an instant—replaced with nothing more than a simple redirect to a Hungarian-hosted adult website, and a nasty virus (a Trojan, actually) on my computer.  Exactly how the hacker destroyed my XML data file and all of my server-side backups is a complete mystery to me; and why he did it is something I will never be able to understand.

But on the bright side, after three weeks of sleepless nights rewriting articles from memory and scouring the web for reposts,  my blog is finally live again—but not before multiple (read: five) failed attempts at go-live.  Since early October I have repeatedly brought my site back online, only to discover the hacker somehow worked his way back in each time. But this time, I think I’ve finally figured him out . . . because if I didn’t, you’d be looking at porn right now.

If I learned one thing during the recovery process, it is this:  information on preventing a blog hack is everywhere, but good information on recovering from a blog hack is nearly impossible to find.  So in the interest of helping those of you who are going through (or eventually will go through) the same thing, I would like to share my 15-step recovery strategy, in as much detail as I possibly can.  I sincerely hope this article helps you in some way—even a small piece of it—and if you have any questions PLEASE do not hesitate to email me directly at eric@thesmallcompanyblog.com.

15 Steps I Took to Recover from a Blog Hack

Step #1: Shut Down Your Blog. Immediately – Trust me when I say that this process will go MUCH more smoothly if you rip the Band-Aid off in one pull.  Sure, it’s painful to take your site completely offline, but compared to 3,000 people sending you nasty emails and putting you on a “high-risk website” list, it is best to bite the bullet up-front. And don’t just replace your home page with an “Under Construction” sign—unassign your domain.  I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, but someone with an unlimited amount of free time has control of your blog.  If you want to regain control, you need to cut off his access first.

Step #2: Clean Out Your HTDOCS Directory – As a first step in combating a hacker, some experts (e.g. Level 2 Hosting Support at Network Solutions) will recommend you uninstall your blog software.  Do not listen to these idiots.  The uninstall process might cripple your blog, but it won’t kill it.  In Wordpress especially, the uninstall process leaves dozens of files (and in some cases entire folders) completely intact.  Many of these files cannot physically be un-installed, because the hacker has either hid them or modified their file permissions.  If you really want to do this the right way, call your ISP and have them clean out your HTDOCS directory on the server side.  But however you do it, don’t leave anything lying around.

Step #3: Run a Virus Scan On Your Primary Blogging Computer – Although all of these steps are important, Step #3 is critical when it comes to preventing re-infection.  Many attacks made on blogs start with a virus on your computer—one that has very quietly picked off your FTP username and password and sent it to a third party.  This step might cost you a tiny bit of money (less than $40 total) but this is not a time to start operating on a budget.  Here is what you do: first, boot up in Safe mode.  Run a full scan of Malwarebytes, then reboot in Safe Mode.  Run a full scan of Super-Anti Spyware.  Reboot in Safe Mode.  Run CC Cleaner (CC Cleaner is freeware).  Reboot in Safe Mode.  Wash . . . rinse . . . repeat.  Also, a friendly piece of advice: do not even consider using any other virus and/or Trojan-removal products.  The virus on my computer not only crippled both Symantec and Windows Defender, but rewired them to give me false information.

Step #4: Change All of Your Blog-Related Passwords – Now that your computer is no longer spying on you, any logins you use for blogging-related purposes  MUST be changed, with no exceptions.  This includes the login for your FTP tool, the computer you use to manage your blog, your host login (Network Solutions, GoDaddy, etc.) and your blog itself—which you will be re-installing shortly.  Also, a note of caution: it is important that you not perform this step too early.  If you change your passwords before your blog is offline, your blog folder is empty and your virus scans have been run, you WILL be hacked again.  How I know this is not relevant.

Step #5: Reinstall Your Blog Software from Scratch – While your domain is still unassigned and the hacker can’t find you, re-install your blog software from the beginning.  But before you do, upgrade to the absolute latest version of whatever platform you use.  Also, resist the temptation to cut your blog live as soon as the installation is done.  You’ve still got a lot of work to do, and staying invisible is key.

Step #6: Re-Acquire and Re-Install Each of Your Plugins and Widgets from Scratch – If you’re anything like me, your happiness is dependent upon having at least 20 different plugins and widgets running on your blog.  Unfortunately, this is where your willingness to try new things bites you right in the ass—because you need to re-download, re-install and re-configure every single one of them.  Each one needs to be downloaded from a credible website, preferably the main site for your blog platform (Wordpress.org, TypePad.com, etc.).  And while you’re shopping, pick up a plugin or widget that regulary inspects your blog for malicious code and secret backdoors, like “AntiVirus” for Wordpress.

Step #7: Re-Acquire and Re-Install Your Theme from Scratch – Similar to Step #6 above, visit the branded site that developed your blog and download your theme file again before reinstalling.  Many previously uninformed people (like me) fell into the trap of acquiring a theme by typing “free blog themes” into Google, and clicked on the first few links that came up.  But did you know that many of these themes  are already pre-infected?  Now you do.  If you find a cool them on a not-so-credible website, chances are it’s been downloaded from a branded blog site and modified in some way.

Step #8: Make All of Your Theme Mods – Remember all of those really cool theme modifications you made over the last few months?  I hope so, because you’re going to have to make them again.  But this time, make a list of modifications as you go—a quick description of the modification and the template or CSS file you modified in each case is a great start.

Step #9: Turn Off Comments on All of Your Posts – If there is one thing blog platform developers do NOT want you to know, it is this: your blog’s XML database can be hacked and infected by simply entering the right combination of characters into the comment field of one of your posts.  Even if your blog is set to not display a comment until you approve it, anything—and I mean ANYTHING—typed into your blog’s comment field is still permanently written to your XML database, and occupies the same file space as your posts, tags, cagetories and other comments.  Until you see the CEO of your blog platform on MSNBC declaring that their ‘comments hole’ has been closed, turn off your comments.  And leave them off.

Step #10: Turn off Your Blog’s Search Feature – In similar fashion to the Comments Field, your blog’s Search Field is just as vulnerable to a hack.  This article from Network World does a great job of explaining how your blog site can be taken over via the Search field.  If your blog does not have a simple “On/Off” switch for search, you may need to manually remove the code from your page templates before the field actually goes away.

Step #11: Re-Upload Your Content - If you have no idea when your blog was actually infected, do not blindly re-upload an old backup XML file of your database and assume everything will be fine.  Before you load any XML data back into your blog, past the entire file into Notepad and look for phrases like “iFrame” and “redir” (redirect).  Also, check all of the “http” references within the file, and make sure you know where each link in your data file is pointing.  If you find too many scary things in your XML, or if you aren’t comfortable cleaning the file yourself, DO NOT UPLOAD IT.  Instead, it’s time to start the painful and slow process of re-creating each post thru copy and paste.  If you need to resort to this, here is a tip: start with the articles themselves, and save the comments for a day when you have less going on in your life.

Step #12: Change Your Blog’s Config File – I can’t directly speak for other platforms, but within a Wordpress  installation there will be a file named wp-config.php, which carries important information related to site cookies (and therefore site access).  Some hackers utilize this file to gain Administrator rights to your blog, but making few quick changes to your config file will invalidate all cookies on your site, and force people to re-log in using new credentials.  As someone who is not a .PHP developer, I can’t say exactly how important this step is.  But I have found this tip referenced on a number of sites where security-type nerds love to hang out.

Step #13: Turn it All Back On – The moment of truth has arrived, and now it is indeed time for you to a) cross your fingers, b) say a little prayer to whatever God you believe in, and c) make your blog live again.  Depending upon how long your blog was down, it may take some time for your site to actually show up on the web again after you re-assign your domain.  But if it takes longer than 2 hours, contact your ISP immediately.

Step #14: Create and Upload a New Sitemap – If you’re even remotely capable of following step-by-step instructions, your sitemap should have been blown away back in Step #2.   With this in mind, the search engines have likely stopped by for a visit between then and now, which means your site is sitting in the Internet penalty box known as the dreaded “unverified” bin.  Creating a new sitemap and uploading is the only way to tell Google and MSN that your blog is alive and kicking again.

Step #15: Let Your Readers Know What’s Up – For various reasons, most bloggers who get hacked are embarrassed to admit it . . . which is why articles like this are so hard to find.  But rest assured, there are tens of thousands of people out there who already went through the same thing, and all of them will be amazingly supportive of your efforts to recover.  Once your blog has been running hacker-free for a few days, let your site members and social networking followers know what happened.  Not only will this explain why you disappeared from the web, but it will encourage them to hang in there if you get hacked and have to take your site down again.

Comments?  Questions?  Please feel free to email me directly at eric@thesmallcompanyblog.com.  Otherwise a Digg, Stumble, Sphinn or Retweet (handy buttons provided) would be a great way to distribute this information to others.  Good luck, and stay safe!

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So why is our once beloved Internet turning into a place customers fear to tread?  Has the Internet joined airport bathrooms and Dancing with the Stars as things that were invented for good, but used for evil?  I believe the answer is a resounding “yes,”  primarily due to the use—or more accurately, the overuse—of four marketing-based technologies.

Technology #1: The Automated Friend Finder

Just a few days ago I was doing my twice-weekly Twitter maintenance, evaluating the new people who chose to follow me, when I noticed a Twitter account that nearly pushed me off of my chair.  This particular account was following over 96,000 people, but had only 17 followers.  Even more shocking was the fact that the account had been activated less than three days prior.  Although I didn’t think about taking a screen shot at the time, I logged back in a few minutes ago and found another account in my queue that was well on its way (See Screen Shot Below—Click to Enlarge: a pace of 1,776 follows in 5.5 hours will add 23,000 follows to this account every three days).

For many ‘professional’ marketers, automated friend finders are nothing more than an opportunity to score some quick follow-backs by mass-soliciting thousands of untargeted people per day.  In the interest of full disclosure, I need to mention that I actually use an automated friend finding tool.  It’s called SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) and I use it for three reasons: 1) it saves me time, 2) it’s cheap, and 3) it’s ethical.  Instead of attempting to ‘game’ the Twitter API by allowing me to follow tens of thousands of people per day, SocialOoomph will find a maximum of 40 in any 24-hour period.  And before it starts searching for follows on my behalf, I have to tell it who to look for.  (I actively seek to follow consultants, business bloggers, company owners, managers and business publications.)

Technology #2: Social Bookmarking

Back in May of this year, I took a great deal of heat from bloggers and web designers when I wrote and published an article titled Social Bookmarking: Dos and Don’ts.  In this article I had the nerve to suggest that maybe—just maybe—marketers would be better served narrowing the list of social bookmarking options they offer to website visitors (I suggested no more than six options be presented).  My primary argument was that web marketers were ignoring a founding principle of human behavior: a person who is given too many choices will almost never make one.  This article quickly generated dozens of flaming emails, most asking the question “What if my visitors don’t support any of the six bookmarks I choose?”  And to every emailer, I sent the same reply: “Get to know your target audience.”  (See Screen Shot to the Left—Click to Enlarge: 30 social bookmarking icons in one block?  The perfect combination of distracting and overwhelming.)

The fact is, websites and blogs were never meant to look like the front fender of Tony Stewart’s #14 car.  When marketers give website visitors this many options to bookmark content, they might as well be saying “I have no idea who you are, and I don’t actually care.”  A good marketer will know enough about his or her target audience to figure out which social bookmarking technologies they support, and which ones they don’t.

Technology #3: The Automated Comment Poster

After nearly one full year as a blogger, I am happy to say I have almost 1,000 heartfelt, well-constructed comments on my posts.  Unfortunately, I have had to sort through nearly 24,000 spam comments to find them.  Sometimes, these unwanted comments are nothing more than overt solicitations for mail order Cialis or Eastern European porn sites.  But more often than not, comments on my blog postings are Trojan horse-type sentences like “Great post—thanks for writing!” and “Wow, I never thought of it like this before!” designed only to acquire free linkbacks from my site.  (See Screen Shot Below—Click to Enlarge: If you’re going to try and steal a linkback from a blogger, PLEASE try to be more creative than this.)

Unfortunately, the misuse of automated comment posting technology fills blogs with tens of thousands of meaningless, poorly written and un-heart felt comments per day.  And sadly, it’s not just the amateurs who are at fault.  The worst offender on my blog was a guy named Bill Bartmann, who literally spammed my blog every day for two months straight, until I finally emailed him directly and asked him to stop.  Important to note here is not only the fact that Bill is stinking rich, but has appeared on CNBC’s “Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch, and with Neil Cavuto on FoxNews.  Come on, Bill, you’re better than that.

Technology #4: Affiliate Advertising

For this technology, I need to clarify something before I continue: most bloggers and website owners have earned the right to make a few bucks.  Web hosting costs money, the tools we use aren’t free, and eventually, most of us would like to get paid a little something for our time.  That said, ethical affiliate advertisers are being painted in a negative light by the underhanded ones who regularly practice techniques like link disguising, direct link tweeting, and outright click baiting.

Another major issue surrounding affiliate advertising is something I like to call ad saturation.  Case in point:  Darren Rowse, owner of problogger.net and arguably the most famous blogger on the planet, has over 20 revenue-generating links—just on his home page.  This morning I noted 13 image ads and at least 9 paid links listed as ‘resources’ or ‘recommendations’ in his footer.  Today, navigating a website or blog without clicking on an ad requires the forethought of a chess Grand Master, the alertness of an MMA fighter, and the steady hand of a heart surgeon.  This is hardly the Internet we all envisioned for ourselves ten years ago.

Questions?  Comments?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, if you enjoyed the story we would very much appreciate a Digg, Stumble, Sphinn or Retweet (handy buttons provided).  Thank You!

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In many cases, however, the biggest expenses of all are also the ones completely hidden from the naked eye of management.  Any manager with a second grade-level grasp of mathematics can figure out that the difference between a $300 flight to Chicago and a $200 flight to Chicago is a hundred bucks.  But sophisticated managers also realize that a $100 savings on a business trip is almost never the company’s top financial concern . . . nor is it even in the top 10.

There are a number of ways in which money is sucked out of a small company each year, literally undetected.  Five of the most common are outlined below.

Money-Waster #1: Under-Utilizing Employees

At a Fortune 100 company with 75,000 employees worldwide, one or two under-utilized employees can be easily overcome . . . if someone even bothers to notice.  But at a small company, just one employee who is not being maximized—in terms of workload, skill set or effort—can mean the difference between a department’s profitability and loss.  The number once concern of every small company manager should be to make sure that each employee is not only productive, but also being pushed in terms of the LEVEL of tasks and projects they are given.

Look around your company: does your Event Coordinator have a Masters Degree?  Did one of your Customer Service people oversee 25 direct reports at a previous position?  Is your Office Manager a published freelance writer in her spare time?  All small companies have employees with under-utilized or ignored skills—skills which could be used to improve the bottom line by saving the company money AND generating new revenue streams.  It is your job as a manager to find them.

Money-Waster #2: Contracting Out Functions that Could be Brought In House

Does your company spend $40,000 per year with a graphic design firm? $50,000 per year on an Accounting and HR consultant? $60,000 per year on outsourced IT services?  If so, there is a good chance your company can save money, or at least break even, by bringing these functions in-house.

As a general rule, small companies should consider bringing a function in-house whenever the annual expenditure reaches about $20,000.  At this point a company may realistically begin to weigh the pros and cons of either hiring a part-time employee to cover the function, or hiring a full-time employee who can absorb this responsibility and one or more others.  If there is one universal truth at small companies, it is this: there is ALWAYS more work to be done than you think.  Although hiring a new, salaried employee is one of the larger risks a small company can take, a lack of labor resources is easily the number one barrier to small company growth.  More often than not a new employee will pay for him or herself many times over, even in the first year of employment.

Money-Waster #3: Re-Investing in Ineffective Marketing Campaigns

Given the limited amount of time and resources (and in some cases skills) small company marketing departments possess, it is not uncommon for them to re-book and re-execute the same initiatives over and over again, with no consideration of how they are actually performing.  Do you know how many sales were generated by the trade show you attend each year?  Are you measuring response to the full-page ad your company places in the main industry rag every month?  When was the last time someone reviewed—much less changed—your Google Pay-per-Click ads?

If you have come to the realization your company purchases the same ad space, uses the same messaging or exhibits at the same trade shows year after year, it is time to demand measurement of these initiatives.  Simple metrics like inquiries, leads, downloads, clicks, names collected or even sales can be assigned to almost any kind of marketing campaign.  Once metrics are assigned, repeated instances of the same campaign can be tracked and compared over time—allowing adjustments to be made in messaging, frequency and budget.

Money-Waster #4: Adding Friends and Relatives to the Payroll

Whether your small company has 10 employees or 100, odds are good that someone on the Executive Team has championed the employment of least one friend or relative.  Small companies are littered with spouses, siblings, in-laws, children and friends from college, to a degree that would make an HR Director at a Fortune 500 company seek therapy.

In situations where the employee has specific skills that could not otherwise be acquired, this move can be extremely valuable.  But in most cases, hiring friends or relatives does a company much more harm than good.  In addition to the risk of wasting money directly (these employees are often overpaid and/or under-qualified for their positions) they can be a significant de-motivator to other employees; especially when they are brought in as management.  And even when these types of employees are not brought in at a high level, the person who made the hire rarely has the objectivity to manage them . . . or the foresight to allow someone else to do it.

Also, when personnel issues arise—and they absolutely will—the issues are seldom resolved.  Instead, the non-relative or non-friend employees are forced to suffer in silence, eventually leaving the company for less stressful work environments.  As tempting as it is to do so, hiring friends and relatives to work is almost never a good idea, unless your company goals include de-motivating employees and increasing the company’s turnover rate—neither of which make a positive impact on the bottom line.

Money-Waster #5: Tolerating Under-Performing and Negative Employees

With as much focus as small company executives put on concepts like Excellence, Dedication and Teamwork, the reality of working for a small company is often equivalent to ‘employment for life,’ meaning even employees who put forth a minimal level of effort can have their jobs as long as they want them.  Every small company has at least one: the employee who refuses to work one minute more than published hours, is completely void of any sense of urgency, and snaps whenever asked to do something not specifically listed in their job description.  At times they can be amusing, and often they make for great conversation at Happy Hour.  But they are also hurting your company in ways too numerous to count.

Although many have tried, the fact is you can’t grow a small company by filling the employee roster with people who contribute the absolute minimum—and complain while doing it.  Even if these employees have been around since the beginning, as a manager you need to understand that your company is changing; and if growth is the goal, there is no room for unmotivated, perpetually grumpy ands short-sighted employees.

Conclusion

Wasted money at a small company doesn’t always identify itself with a bright red bow and a blinking card that says “look here.”  In fact, more often than not a company can come out farther ahead in the end by better utilizing its existing resources than it can by cutting costs and expenditures.  There are a number of non-traditional ways that small companies under-use or mis-use its resources, and although this document has outlined five, there are obviously many, many more.  If you have identified a different hidden way that small companies waste money, please feel free to reply to this post.

Also . . . Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at TSCB, so a Stumble, a Digg, a Retweet, or a quick visit to one of my Google ad sponsors would be very much appreciated.  Handy buttons are provided for the first three, and the fourth is relatively easy—just follow one of the three links in the ad block in the middle of this article.  Thank you.

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Sure, I had created a handful of semi-meaningless plans while earning my MBA, but this situation was different.  I was being asked to create a comprehensive roadmap that would be used by over a dozen people to release, market, and make money on a brand new product.  And unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue where to begin.

Attempting to climb out of the hole I dug for myself, I spent the following evening at the local bookstore, flipping through everything from college textbooks to home-based business manuals.  Although I came across a number of ideas for sections to include in my plan, the closest I came to finding the parameters of a ‘standard’ marketing plan was information in a textbook on something called The Four Ps of Marketing . . . the worst over-simplification of the Marketing process ever documented in textbook form.

It was after this evening of research and several extended conversations with colleagues that I realized something: in a smaller company environment, there is no such thing as a standard marketing plan.  And over a decade later, I now understand why: because every small company executive and stakeholder who ever commissioned a marketing plan was looking for something different.

Since the research project I conducted nearly a decade and a half ago I have created hundreds of marketing plans, ranging from a single page to well over 50 pages—not counting supporting documentation.  Although each is unique in its own right, I have found over the years that the list of ‘most commonly included information’ in these plans can be narrowed down to a short list of only 12 manageable sections, as follows:

1. A High-Level Description of the Product or Service
2. A Description and Size Estimate of the Target Market
3. Competitive Differentiators
4. Proposed Marketing Messaging
5. Packaging, Pricing and/or Bundling Strategies
6. Marketing Vehicles Used
7. Required Changes to the Company Website
8. Initial Rollout Activities
9. Ongoing Marketing Initiatives
10. Projected Sales Volumes and Margins
11. Required Year 1 Marketing Budget
12. Product Development Assumptions

To further explain each of these marketing plan sections, I have created a downloadable Marketing Plan Template in PDF format, which you may take free of charge.  The file is 4 pages in length, and approximately 150k in size.  Please follow this link to download it:

tool-the-12-essential-sections-of-a-new-product-marketing-plan

In exchange for this tool, I ask only for one of four things: a Stumble, a Digg, a Retweet, or a quick visit to one of my Google ad sponsors.  Handy buttons are provided for the first three, and the fourth is relatively easy—just follow one of the three links in the ad block above the numbered list.  Thank you.

Related Articles You Might Enjoy:

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Google Adsense (www.google.com/AdSense)

Of the four programs reviewed for this article, it was no surprise that Google Adsense was by far the easiest to set up and administer.  After completing a short registration form and downloading the Adsense plugin for WordPress, I was up and running in minutes.  Their code generator for ads is simple and customizable in terms of look and feel, which made it easy to create ads (at least text-based ones) that matched the colors and fonts used in my blog.

In terms of negatives, I was almost immediately frustrated by the lack of variety in Google’s image (graphic-based) ad library, as they seem to be cycling the same three to five windows and banners on every page of my blog.  Another negative was the fact that I had very little control over which ads appear.  All decisions are made by various Google algorithms, which ‘read’ your pages and decide which ads best fit your content.  Case in point: a few months ago I wrote and posted an article called The Real Reason Banks Won’t Lend Any Money.  In this case, Google’s Adsense algorithm was smart enough to figure out the article was about banks, but too unsophisticated to determine that the article paints them in a negative light.  So predictably, all of the ads being placed into this article by Google are positive ads about . . . banks.  For a great example of Google’s inability to distinguish a positive post from a negative one, feel free to follow the link above and evaluate their ad selections on your own.

WidgetBucks (www.WidgetBucks.com)

After I was able to get a few Google Adsense placements up and running, I turned my attention to Widgetbucks—a service that came highly recommended by Darrin Rowse, the owner of ProBlogger.net and arguably one of the most famous bloggers on the planet.  Because the program came with such a heavy endorsement (WidgetBucks is one of Darrin’s Top 4 “Recommended Money Makers”) I gave it numerous chances to occupy a few slots on my blog.  But as hard as I tried to make it work, I was eventually forced to give up on the program and moved on.

For starters, the ads from WidgetBucks are the perfect combination of intrusive, obnoxious, and cheesy, pushing the limits of outdatedness to rarely seen levels.  I’m not exactly sure how, but it seems the owners of WidgetBucks figured out a way to return to the early 1990s and hire an ad designer—a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since Eddie Bauer Stores hired its last Marketing person.  The WidgetBucks placements not only scream “look at me!” but also incorporate unimaginative and attention-seeking techniques like blinking, message scrolling, image dissolve and overuse of exclamation points.   Anyone who is trying to run a credible blog will have a great deal of trouble making even one WidgetBucks placement work for their site; and based on my experience with the program, I do not plan on going back any time soon.  I hate to say it, but any recommendation of this affiliate program needs to come with a great big asterisk.

Commission Junction (www.cj.com)

Commission Junction is a website I found on my own, doing general web searches for ‘Affiliate Programs.’  After the negative experience with WidgetBucks, it didn’t take me long to realize that Commission Junction was much closer to what I (the newbie) was expecting from an Affiliate Program.  Not only do their ad placements have a clean and updated look, but Commission Junction works directly with thousands of high-profile advertisers—companies like Dell, EA Sports, Best Buy, PR Web, GoToMeeting and many, many more.  This abundance of variety not only gives me more control over the look and feel of my site, but allows me to display ads that I know (or at least believe) visitors will be interested in.  Also, during the ad selection process their easy-to-use interface told me exactly which partner ads were hot, and which individual ad sizes and products were generating real revenue for advertisers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to point out that with the exception of one, all of the 125 x 125 ads to the top right of this article are from Commission Junction.  The non-CJ ad is for SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater), a site I approached on my own because I subscribed to their product after a 6-Day Free Trial and really liked the tool.  Eventually, I see myself doing more of this—approaching individual companies instead of signing up with massive ad networks.  But it’s still early, and my long-term strategy remains to be seen.

If there is a down side to working with Commission Junction, it is that not every decision is within your control.  Sadly, GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, Dell and LegalZoom all rejected me as an advertiser, stating that my site was “not a good fit” for their products and services.  Once I’m closer to the top of the blogging food chain, I’ll probably have more appreciation for the concept of advertiser vetting.  But for now, it frustrates me to know that I’m sitting at the bottom looking up at everyone else.

Amazon.com (http://affiliate-program.amazon.com)

Much like Google Adsense, the Amazon.com Affiliate Program has been around a long time, which can be both a good and a bad thing.  On the plus side, years of operation have made this program easy to register for and easy to implement.  But on the negative side, most of the ad formats and widgets feel like the Year 2001 is trying to make an early comeback.  Overall, the focus of the Amazon.com affiliate program is pretty simple: if I drive someone to the Amazon site and they buy something—anything—I get a small percentage of the sale (about 4%).

Unfortunately, after beginning this article I have come to the conclusion that my site simply isn’t a good fit for the Amazon program.  If I owned a product-specific blog site that regularly reviewed music, books, video games or other categorically-matched products, this program could easily be the ultimate impulse-buy opportunity for my visitors (e.g. I could cross-sell a book at the end of a positive review for said book).  But going forward, most of the value for me within the Amazon program will be to use their ads to increase the general visual appeal of my site . . . which I have yet to figure out how to do.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at THE small COMPANY BLOG, so a Sphinn, Retweet, Digg or Stumble would be greatly appreciated (handy buttons provided above and below).  And obviously, a quick visit to one of our Google sponsors would be wonderful as well.  Thank you!

Other Articles by This Author:

• Is it a Lead or Not? A Marketer’s Guide to Communicating with Sales
• 33 Changes for the Small Company Manager
• Real-World Benefits of Twitter for Small Companies: Part II
• Four Marketing Technologies That Are Ruining the Internet
• 5 More Unbreakable Rules for Using Twitter as a Business Tool

“But 8 out of 10 small businesses fail, don’t they?”

And while these fateful words are still ringing in our ears, we gather up our research and financial calculations, and toss them in the back of a rarely-used drawer.

The fact that your small business dream has an 80% chance of forcing you into personal bankruptcy is scary.  But this singular statistic does not tell the entire story.  When  you have a chance, grab a piece of paper and write down 10 people at random from your friend, relative and peer network.  Once you have 10 names on your paper, go back through the list and make an ‘X’ next to the people you believe have the knowledge, motivation and passion to start a small business and keep it going.  How many ‘X’s do you have?  Odds are, you have no more than three marks on your paper.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  The fact is, 8 out of 10 small businesses fail because 8 out of 10 people who start them have no business doing so.  And why do these companies fail?  Because their newly-minted business owners continue to fall into the same three traps their predecessors did.  If you’re tired of making money for someone else and considering starting your own company, be sure to avoid these VERY common new business pitfalls.

#1:  The “I’m Good At This–I Should Do it for a Living” Trap

When I’m not working 50 hours per week at my real job or spending my nights blogging, I’m learning the art and science of barbecue.  I love barbecue, and happen to think my slow-smoked pulled pork and St. Louis-style ribs are good enough to be on the menu at any restaurant in the three-state area.  With this belief in mind I recently cleared an entire weekend to do nothing but slow-roast various meats in a 225-degree hickory pit, and realized something: I hate doing the work.  After two days of preparing, smoking, slicing and serving nearly 100 pounds of barbecue to my friends and neighbors, something finally occurred to me: hovering over a fire all day and constantly smelling like Hickory wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.  The lesson here is simple: to avoid the most common small business trap, you need to have the foresight to test-drive your business idea BEFORE you invest your life savings in it.

#2: The “I’m Going to Pursue my Passion” Trap

Although the phrase “Do what you love, and the money will follow” makes a great opening line for a commencement speech (and one hell of a bumper sticker), there is a very important fact that most business owners ignore: your ‘passion’ may or may not actually pay a living wage.  The whole point of starting a small business is to gain employment and financial independence—not to help you spend every waking moment in love with what you’re doing.  In the real-world, having fun is what hobbies are for; and successful business owners understand the difference between doing something they love, and doing something they don’t hate that also pays extremely well.

#3: The “I Can Start by Selling to My Friends and Relatives” Trap

The idea of sucking money out of friends, neighbors and relatives is no longer exclusive to pyramid schemers and MLM participants.  People who are looking to start real businesses often use social networks as a marketing ‘crutch,’ and rarely look beyond their personal contacts when planning the growth of their business.  But every budding entrepreneur needs to ask him or herself a very simple question: when my friends and relatives stop buying, how will I reach people who don’t know me yet?  The answer to this question is called a Marketing Plan, and if you don’t have one, you might as well start sending resumes to Fortune 500 companies again.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, Social Bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so Diggs, Stumbles and Retweets are very much appreciated (see the tiny button bar below).  Thank you!

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What happened after was both predictable and expected.  Companies large and small began hiring Internet marketing consultants, and adding social networking-related line items to expense budgets. Quarterly management meetings were dominated by social networking-related strategy conversations, and revenue projections were assigned to things like company blogs, FaceBook communities and Twitter accounts—projections which were turned into marketing goals.  For the first time since the invention of the corporate website, executives were excited because their destinies were finally clear: figure out a way to monetize social media!

Fast-forward to today, and the first round of reality checks are beginning to set in for some firms.  As companies continue to rack up massive amounts of time and money blogging and Tweeting and managing online communities, financially-savvy Executives are noticing something: bottom line revenues are not improving.  The question “Where is our social networking income?” is finally being asked, and the answer—as painful as it might be—is now clear.

The social networking revenue they were chasing never actually existed.

You see, something interesting is happening right before our eyes.  Business-related social networking is slowly being exposed for what it was originally meant to be: a communication channel.  A channel designed to distribute information, increase corporate visibility, and build a community around a company and its products.  A channel that can be used alongside—not in place of—things like SEM, SEO, PPC, e-commerce, direct email, telemarketing, outside sales, speaking events and trade shows.

So what is my point? That social networking is not a tool designed to generate sales, but a tool companies can use to shorten the sales cycle.  Are there a few exceptions to this?  Of course.  Part-time bloggers who make 50 bucks per month driving people from social networking sites to affiliate ads (OK, you got me . . . and feel free to click on a Google ad or buy something from Amazon while you’re here) are obviously proof that once in awhile, social networking can generate a few pennies.  But executives and marketers at REAL companies—firms with things like employees and health insurance and stock certificates—need to understand the difference between e-commerce and branding.  And social networking is much, much closer to the latter.

Questions?  Comments?  Complaints?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Or alternatively, I’ll take any sort of social bookmark you wish to give—a Digg, a Stumble or a Retweet would be very much appreciated.

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“But with the economy, it’s probably not a good time to start thinking about starting my own business.”

With the above in mind, I would like to collectively make all of the budding busines owners out there aware of one thing: you are absolutely, one-hundred percent WRONG.  The fact is, a bad economy is by far the LEAST risky time to start your own business, and below are four reasons why.

Reason #1: Great Employees are Easier to Find—and Much Less Expensive

During thriving economic periods where nearly all types of businesses are expanding, qualified and experienced people are hard to find.  In the mid-1990s, software development firms were hiring $40,000 per year, self-taught programmers right out of high school.  In the early 2000s, anyone who knew what the letters ‘HTML’ stood for was working as a webmaster or e-commerce expert.  But today, people with 20+ years of experience and multiple advanced degrees are fighting over part-time Barista jobs.  If you’re hoping to start a business that requires employees, the talent pool is full to the rim with people who want to work for your new venture.

Reason #2: Equipment and Services are Cheaper

In slow economic periods there are always great deals to be found, both in hard-line items like equipment, and soft-line items like professional services.  Within a five-mile radius of my home I have watched no less than seven (7) food service businesses close their doors this year.  At one point or another, each of these places made a significant investment in equipment.  But now their brand new counter units, refrigerators, cash registers, dishwashers and commercial-grade ovens are owned by the bank—collecting dust while waiting for someone like YOU to buy them . . . at pennies on the dollar.  Also, the rash of recent business closings has left contractors who cater to small businesses (IT services, cleaning, general construction, etc.) scrambling for customers, and looking to make great deals to acquire your business.  From personal experience, I can tell you that contracting rates have dropped by over 20% in my region, compared to rates just one year ago.

Reason #3: Existing Competitors Won’t See You Coming

During questionable economic times, market leaders have a tendency to curl up in the fetal position and wait for the bad news to pass.  But where there is chaos there is ALWAYS money to be made—and while your competitors are too busy trying to stay in business to do anything innovative, they are leaving you an opening to swoop in and offer their products and services better, faster, and cheaper.  If you truly believe you can enter a market and improve upon what is already being offered, starting a business in the middle of a rough economy is the ultimate surprise attack.

Reason #4: Customers are More Open-Minded to the Prospect of Change

When consumers see friends and relatives lose things like jobs, houses and retirement funds, they tend to become more accustomed to the fact that maybe—just maybe—there is a better way to do what they’ve been doing.  With this in mind, any customer who was formerly locked into a competitor of yours is very likely looking for a better, faster or cheaper way (see above) to live their work and personal lives.  Choppy economies force even the most loyal people to rethink their buying decisions; and if a startup business can truly offer something better, consumers will ALWAYS be willing to give the new guy a shot.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, at THE small COMPANY BLOG social bookmarks are as good as currency—so please Digg, Stumble or Retweet this article if you liked it.  Thank you!

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With the above in mind, to follow are seven (7) reality TV shows I believe are under-watched, under-marketed and under-appreciated by viewing audiences across the globe.  If you agree or disagree with anything in this article, please feel free to let me know by posting a comment.

Chopped (Food Network)

Hosted by former Queer Eye favorite Ted Allen, the concept of this show is simple: experienced chefs are given 30 minutes to create a single course (appetizer, entree or dessert) out of a basket of mystery ingredients.  But on this show, the mystery ingredients are seemingly selected at random, and include things like live sea urchin, gummy bears, collard greens and string cheese.  Minus the panel of judges who treat each contestant like they’re interviewing for the Nobel Prize (could food people PLEASE stop taking themselves so seriously?) this show is the ‘MacGyver‘ of reality TV, and definitely worth the investment of your time.

Real Estate Intervention (HGTV)

If you ever wondered what happened to all of those people who took out 80/20 loans with variable rate ARMS and used their houses as ATMs, there is good news: now you can find out.  In fact, if you have cable you can watch real estate expert Mike Aubrey deliver the un-sugar coated and financially devastating bad news to homeowners from the comfort of your living room sofa.  Real Estate Intervention is basically a ’scared straight’ for homeowners flirting with negative equity, and HGTV deserves a great deal of credit for stepping up to show the darker side of the real estate market.  Unfortunately, despite its extremely high entertainment value, this show has come too late to make any sort of positive impact.

The Ultimate Fighter (SpikeTV)

What do you get when you lock sixteen wannabe cage fighters in a Las Vegas mansion with an unlimited supply of booze and energy drink?  Broken glass, a swimming pool full of furniture, and tons of ass-kicking—wrapped in a surprisingly compelling story line.  If you like to watch underdogs win and nice guys punch bullies in the face, this is definitely the reality show you’ve been waiting for.  As an added bonus, The Ultimate Fighter is a GREAT show for couples.  While the guys enjoy the fighting, their female companions can watch an entire hour of muscular, square-jawed bad boys working out in micro-shorts.  I believe this is called a “win-win.”

UFO Hunters (The History Channel)

Featuring the publisher of UFO Magazine Bill Birnes, the show follows Bill and a team of researchers (not all of whom are believers) around the world as they investigate recent and historically significant UFO incidents.  Although much of the evidence they collect and analyze is compelling, there is unfortunately never enough to prove or disprove anything.  That said, watching Bill blame various UFO phenomena on alien-human hybrids while world-renowned scientists roll their eyes is the equivalent of entertainment gold.

Hell’s Kitchen (FOX)

Who else but world-famous chef Gordon Ramsey could get away with firing an undercooked Filet Mignon point-blank into someones chest while dropping multiple f-bombs and putting his foot thru a food service garbage can?  After nearly 10 full seasons, I still laugh every time I hear Ramsey call an aspiring restauranteur a ‘donkey’ or a ‘donut,’ but continue to be surprised by how few people actually watch Hell’s Kitchen on a regular basis.  If Gordon wasn’t the star of the show I might consider watching Top Chef on Bravo, but he is . . . so I won’t.

To Catch a Predator (MSNBC)

Since its move to MSNBC, this show seems to have lost a significant number of viewers.  But does watching the police cuff-and-stuff dirtbags who take advantage of children really EVER get old?  Of course not.  I’m hoping the Producers at MSNBC take my advice and move the show to pay-per-view, so the police will have more freedom to beat up the offenders before they arrest them.  Host Chris Hansen may be a bit slimy, but it’s comforting to know that someone is putting these scumbags away—even if it means making boatloads of money while doing it.

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team (CMT)

Unless they live in Texas, the mystique of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders usually wears off for boys some time around 7th Grade, when they finally figure out exactly what is underneath those blue blouses and white micro-shorts.  But this show is intriguing for men and women of all ages, primarily because it takes the struggles of young women and image to previously unreached levels.  If you don’t have time to add this show to your TV rotation, allow me to summarize Season 2: grizzled, over-botoxed uber-cougars telling young women they’re fat, ugly and untalented.  This MUST be why they call the Dallas Cowboys “America’s Team.”

Disagree with anything in this article?  Think I missed one of your favorite Reality TV shows?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, please keep in mind that social bookmarks are currency here, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble this article if you enjoyed it.  Or, you may take a moment to visit one of my Google ad sponsor sites.  Thank you.

NOTE TO READERS: A few months back I wrote and posted an article titled 7 Reasons Why I Suck at Blogging, and What I’m Going to Do About It.  One of the promises I made to my readers in this article was to stray from my small company roots and write something fun once in awhile.  This post is a direct result of that promise.

Other Articles by This Author:

• The Five Hidden Ways Small Companies Waste Money
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• 6 Blogging Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

Fast-forward to today, and it appears I am not exactly taking the blogosphere by storm with my 1300 Twitter followers, 2100 RSS feed subscribers and 10,000 monthly page views.  But on the bright side, there are plenty of people doing worse than me.  Hopefully.  So to celebrate my first full year of blogging I decided to take a look back, in an attempt to answer the question “How did I  become the extremely average blogger I am today?”  This roadmap is short, easy to follow, and absolutely free to anyone striving for blogger mediocrity.

Step 1: I Chose a Domain Name.

This step was not only the easiest, but also the most fun.  I spent about two hours messing around with the domain name search function at GoDaddy.com (top right-hand corner), until I finally came up with a domain that wasn’t already taken.  In retrospect, I wish I would have chosen something a bit more creative (read: less obvious).  But domain names are cheap, and I can always pluck someone else’s great idea off of the expired domain name pile some time down the road.

Step 2: I Found a Host for My Blog.

Let’s get something straight: I enjoy ogling Danica Patrick in a tank top as much as any other guy who is attracted to short, bitchy, high-maintenance women.  That said, I had some concerns that GoDaddy.com might not be able to properly host a website that doesn’t involve girl-on-girl action, cork-heeled stripper shoes or massive amounts of cleavage.  So I chose the Standard Hosting Package from Network Solutions, for the low price of $9.95 per month.  Pros: quick setup, easy FTP access, and a proactive and knowledgeable customer service department.  Cons: slow Wordpress upgrades (still forced to use v2.5), sorely inadequate web stats, and separate logins for EVERYTHING.

Step 3: I Started Writing.

For those of you who have never dipped a toe into the raging river that is the blogosphere, trust me when I say that a blogger’s three worst nightmares are as follows and in this order: 1) having your blog crash BEFORE you back it up, 2) watching your content get ripped off and monetized by some dirt bag affiliate advertiser, and 3) running out of things to say.  In an effort to avoid number 3, I cranked out two months worth of articles before I actually activated my blog, on the off-chance that a nasty case of writer’s block was headed my way.  In retrospect, this was one of the better decisions I made as a blogger.  Not because I eventually suffered from writer’s block, but because I often lack motivation to write.  Maybe this blogging thing wasn’t the best idea . . .

Step 4: I Switched to a Better Theme.

After running the wheels off of ‘Wordpress Default’ for the first six months, the blogging world literally opened up to me when a friend turned me on to Wordpress Themes.  Between hundreds of themes available for free on the Wordpress site and thousands generally downloadable on the web, I was able to find six themes centered around my favorite color orange, and narrowed it down to one that had all of the features I wasn’t getting in Wordpress Default—like configurability, a header graphic, a color palette with more than one color, and general visual appeal.  If I made one mis-step here, it was underestimating the amount of time it would take me to switch themes.  Depending upon the structure of a blog, uploading a new theme can be the equivalent of a full-scale site redesign.  Don’t ask me why I know that.

Step 5: I Installed Some Useful Plugins.

One of the best parts about using a Wordpress blog is there are literally thousands of people out there developing little pieces of functionality that can be ‘plugged in’ to your blog with very little effort.  Sure, there are plenty of stupid plugins out there (the plugin that replaces a spammer’s Avatar with a douchebag is one of my personal favorites) but there are also many with legitimate business uses. In my case I started with the All In One SEO Pack, which all joking aside has made a HUGE difference in my web traffic.  I then added plugins for Statcounter (a free web stats tool) and Sphinn (a social bookmarking site for web marketers), and finished it off with one of the most popular plugins of all time: YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin).  After running all of these together for a month or so, I eventually hacked the Sphinn plugin and added code for Retweets and Stumbles . . . which shut down my RSS Feed for 16 days, AND locked my Wordpress editor in “HTML Mode” for almost two months.  Did I mention I’m still in the process of learning PHP programming?

So in a nutshell, that’s how I did it.  If you have any additional tips for becoming a mediocre blogger in the first year, please reply to this post.  Also, please keep in mind that social bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG—so Diggs, Stumbles, Sphinns and Retweets are very much appreciated.  Or alternatively, you could take a moment to click through on one of our Google sponsor links.  Thank you.

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My Story

Back in mid-March of this year, I began to pursue the idea of borrowing a small amount of money for business purposes.  I contacted the local branch of what has been my bank for the past 18 years, and eventually two more branches in the surrounding area, until I finally received a call back 30 days later (a sign of things to come?).

My meeting at the bank was scheduled for the end of April, and by all accounts the meeting went very well.  I have a stable job, no credit card debt, money in the bank, equity in my home, and a credit score in the 800s.  I was told by the loan officer that these were all very good signs, and if anyone should be able to get a loan, it was me.  The next steps included appraisal of my assets, a check of my financial history, and a few levels of approval.  When I was reviewing the papers to start the process, the loan officer penciled in a loan closing date of June 18th, but assured me things would need to go ‘horribly wrong’ for the process to take that long.  With this in mind I signed the paperwork, locked in an interest rate, and handed over a $500 check to get the ball rolling.

Fast-forward to today (July), and you might be surprised to know that I still have not seen a dime.  The last 12 weeks have been an absolute comedy of errors, delays, and oversights on behalf of my banker and the institution he works for.  Although this is not an all-inclusive list, some of the more notable issues included the following:

• During the review of my assets the appraiser pulled the incorrect map for my primary residence, and noted that my house was in a flood zone.  Based on this information, the bank attached a requirement to my loan that I immediately acquire a VERY expensive flood insurance rider.  After making my banker aware of this obvious mistake, it took him 13 days to return my call, and another five to tell me there was nothing he could do to fix it.
• When I requested (multiple times) to see the closing summary in advance, I received the papers less than one hour before the scheduled closing.   I quickly printed the papers and reviewed them in the car on the way, only to discover the loan amount—the whole reason I went to the bank in the first place—was off by 92.5%.
• After already being scheduled for the ”worst case” closing date, I was forced to wait yet again and apply for an extension on my locked in rate, because my banker took a last-minute week of vacation.
• Regarding the previous bullet . . . when I contacted my banker’s manager and asked if he would kindly sit in on my closing so I could keep the original date, the manager quite literally laughed in my face.  Then he told me my loan was “not quite that high on his bank’s list of priorities.”

At this point, it is important to note something: I don’t bank at Pawn America.  My bank is one of the largest, healthiest, and longest-standing financial institutions in the country.  In fact, this particular bank sleepwalked through the recent “stress tests,” and has never been in serious financial trouble in its long and storied history. So this begs the question: why can’t I (or anyone else) get any money?  Based on my recent experience, and a number of conversations with employees and customers within the financial industry, I believe the answer is threefold:

Reason #1: Banks are Finally Doing All of the Things They Should Have Been Doing 15 Years Ago. Gone are the days of loan officers encouraging people to push for 80/20 loans, sign variable-rate ARMs, and use their homes as cash machines . . . while encouraging them fudge their loan applications.  Today, asset appraisals are being double-checked, employment histories are being triple-checked, and good credit ratings are no longer optional.   The downside to the consumer?  All of these checks take TIME.

Reason #2: Banks are Choosing to Remain Understaffed. At this point in time, there are statistically more people and businesses trying to get money than in any other period.  Between historically low interest rates, unheard of home buyer credits and re-fi requests from struggling families looking to rework existing loans, there are nearly THREE TIMES as many customers in the banking pipeline.  Yet for some reason, banks are not looking to hire additional staff.  Why?  To keep overhead down and stock prices up.

Reason #3: Lenders are Making Even More Stupid Mistakes than They Were Before. The lack of qualified people mentioned in #2 is causing bank employees to rush, which in turn results in an incredible number of mistakes during the loan application and approval process.  This year, among my smaller group of friends and colleagues I have seen everything from typos to gross miscalculations—some of which caused loans to completely fall apart.  The worst story?  A couple who was 9 months pregnant showed up to close on their first home and was turned away, because their banker forgot to lock in an interest rate.  Three weeks, $2,000 (unexpected) dollars and one baby later, the home is finally theirs.

It might not be fair, and it certainly isn’t right, but until interest rates move higher and the majority of foreclosure homes clear the market, you and your business must unfortunately expect slow, inaccurate and uncaring service from your lender.  And the worst part is, they will continue to collect the same outrageous fees they’ve always been collecting.

Questions?  Comments?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, please keep in mind that social bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble this article if you liked it.  Alternatively, feel free to visit one of our Google ad sponsors if social bookmarking just isn’t your thing.  Thank you!

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Idea #1: Start a Blog

Since 2001 I have been working on a Nonfiction-Business book about growing small companies.  After almost 350 completed pages, I thought I was ready to publish.  Just to be safe I started a blog, with the intent of test-marketing snippets of the book to a broader audience.  After nearly a year, I came to two startling conclusions: my idea sucked, and so did my writing style.  The bad news is, I spent seven years of my life writing about things most small company managers don’t even care about.  But on the bright side, I figured it out before I completely humiliated myself.  And, the blog I started (the one you’re reading right now) is really starting to take off as of late, with 1,300 followers on Twitter, 2,100 readers of my RSS feed, and over 20,000 page views in the last two months.

Idea #2: Turn it Into an e-Book

Although it will likely be decades before e-Books completely replace their paper-based equivalents, millions of people already prefer the electronic format over its printed counterpart.  Why not reach these early adopters by turning your book into an e-Book?  They’re easy to create, easy to buy, easy to download and easy to read.  The simplest e-Book format to master is PDF, which can be created with any number of free applications, including my personal favorite PrimoPDF.  Or, if you’re hoping to see friends and family reading your book on their slick new Amazon readers, you can visit eHow.com for a quick tutorial on converting your book to Kindle format.

Idea #3: Develop an Online Course

If your book could be used by people to learn more about a concept, topic, activity, or special period in history, you might want to consider turning your book into an online course.  Monster-sized companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Apple all offer rapid e-Learning development tools—but so do hundreds of smaller firms like Lectora, Unison/RapidIntake and MindFlash.  Depending upon the tool you choose, your book could eventually turn into a comprehensive online resource that includes not only content, but also elements like interactive exercises, quizzes, games, assessments, animations, demos and other multimedia.  And here’s the best part: online learning courses can sell anywhere from $99 for a short course (2 to 4 hours in length) up to several thousand dollars for a course in excess of 20 hours long.

Idea #4: Make an Audio Book

Much like converting your book into e-Book format, creating an audio version of your best-seller isn’t nearly as difficult as you might think.  If you or one of your friends has a relatively pleasing voice, acquiring an audio recording of your book can be done in several ways.  You can record it directly onto your hard drive in a quiet room with a nice headset (less than $100), or you can spring for a half-day of off peak time at the local recording studio for about 500 bucks.  Either way, once you have your master file you can convert it to downloadable MP3 or iTunes format with any number of free tools.  Add a website and a simple shopping cart to the mix, and people with hour-long daily commutes will be downloading your book to their portable audio devices in no time.

Idea #5: Break it Into a Series

If I have learned one thing during my 5+ years in the publishing industry, it is this: given the choice between an 80-page book for $10 and an 800-page book for $20, the vast majority of consumers will purchase the shorter book.  Sure, the longer book is a much better overall value—2.5 cents per page versus 12.5 cents per page for the shorter book—but the longer book comes with something the shorter book does not: a commitment.  People love the sense of accomplishment a quick read can give them.  If your book pushes the boundaries of reasonable length, you might want to consider breaking it into a shorter continuing series that includes individual blog postings, smaller e-Books or 15-minute Podcasts.

Idea #6: Write a Screenplay

Can you visualize your book as a movie, musical, play, sitcom or soap opera?  If so, why not convert it to screenplay format?  True story . . . a very good friend of mine had a book idea in his head for years.  One day, he and a film student acquaintance decided to convert the idea into a screenplay.  After nine months of part-time work it was ready, and the film student used a few connections to pitch the idea.  Less than a year after completing it, the two had sold the screenplay to director Clint Eastwood for well into the six figure range.  Shortly thereafter the two were attending the Hollywood movie premier, hanging out with people like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Clint Eastwood himself.  Did they make enough money on their screenplay to quit their full-time jobs and retire?  No.  But now they both carry Screenwriter’s Guild cards . . . and have one heck of a story to tell their grand kids some day.  For a bunch of free tips and information on how to convert a book into screenplay format, check out Screenwriting.info for a great primer.

Questions?  Comments?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, please remember that social bookmarks are “blogger currency” here, so Diggs, Stumbles and Retweets are very much appreciated as well!  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, please make a quick visit to one of our Google sponsor sites.  Thank you.

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Then the Internet happened.

And literally overnight, the view of Marketing’s role in a growing organization changed.  Small, innovative companies leapfrogged market leaders by realizing that building brand awareness, generating interest, making sales, and developing loyalty could be done without meeting customers face-to-face.  Hiring plans were modified to include investments in high-level marketing personnel who could build skilled and agile marketing teams.  Marketing processes were changed to leverage the latest technologies and perform functions sales people were once responsible for—reaching potential customers, sorting through them, and identifying those who are ready to purchase.  And I finally got an office, complete with a door and the most expensive computer in the building.

But although life is good for many of us, even in 2009 it seems there are a number of companies who haven’t caught up yet.  Many of you reading this article work for or manage organizations who still do not give Marketing—specifically, Internet marketing—credit for being able to do anything but send mass email and publish web pages.  If your company is having trouble getting its Internet marketing efforts off the ground, here are five steps you can take to start moving in the right direction:

Step 1: Admit That Marketing is No Longer Overhead. First and foremost, supporting a successful Internet marketing effort requires a company-wide change in attitude.  Until you begin to view the dollars spent in this area as investments and not overhead, your Internet marketing department will always be set up for failure.  Internet Marketers need to be reassured that they won’t be let go (and that their budgets won’t be scaled back) the minute business slows down.  Plus, a good Internet marketer has the ability to make a living with or without you.  So if you don’t make sure they feel like a valuable part of the organization, they’ll just leave.

Step 2: Hire a High-Level Marketing Resource First, not a Rookie. Instead of building a marketing team from the bottom up, find an experienced management-level Internet marketer first.  Companies often become enamored with marketing people who have experience in a specific industry, or who are specialists in certain types of marketing.  But in this case, your search should focus on people who are familiar with a broad range of Internet marketing initiatives, and have a track record of experimenting with new methods and technologies.

Step 3: Allow Your Internet Marketers the Freedom to Experiment. Because marketing technologies and audiences change so rapidly, it is critical that your marketing personnel have the freedom to try new things, and the reassurance to know that an occasional failure is OK—as long as a solid business case was made up front.  Not every Internet marketing campaign is going to be a hit.  But on the flip side, there are millions of dollars to be made by companies who can figure out creative ways to reach a previously untapped market.  Allowing your Internet marketing team some room to roam once in awhile will pay back your company ten times over.

Step 4: Invest in Ongoing Training and and Networking. To ensure your company is utilizing the latest in Internet marketing technology and techniques, it is critical that you support the department’s thirst for knowledge.  In the Internet marketing world, knowledge is often tightly held; passed from person to person like a Mayan legend.  Part of running an Internet marketing department is to support the transfer of this knowledge through conferences, workshops, and professional memberships in networking organizations.

Step 5: Dare to Dream. To run a successful Internet marketing department, you have to understand the rules of the game have changed.  Given the databases, techniques and technologies that Internet marketers have access to today, almost any type of marketing campaign you can envision is now a possibility.  Once your Internet marketing team is in place, don’t be afraid to challenge them by thinking big.

Conclusion

Visionary company owners and managers understand that embracing the value of Internet marketing can allow a company to reach unreachable audiences, generate a steady stream of interest, and compete with companies much larger in size.  But in order to accomplish these things, you must be prepared both mentally and financially to not only assemble an Internet marketing effort, but support it successfully for the long-term.  The fact is, there have been more marketing-related innovations in the past six weeks than there have been sales-related innovations in the past six decades.  Gaining a customer has grown far beyond phone calls and personal appearances, into a comprehensive strategy that includes multiple customer touches in dozens of different forms.

Companies from two-person shops to Fortune 500 members are driving more revenue (and significantly more margin) by shifting their outbound focus to targeted, quick-response Internet-based marketing methods like social networking, PPC, blogging, direct email, organic and paid search, e-newsletters, podcasting, webinars, portals and downloads.  And the Internet Marketers who hang out at websites like Sphinn and Search Engine Land are leading the way—pushing search, marketing and Internet technology to places your brain won’t allow you to go.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, please remember that Social Bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG—so a Stumble, Sphinn, Digg or Retweet would be greatly appreciated.  Or, if social bookmarking just isn’t your thing, please take a moment to visit one of our Google ad sponsors.  Thank you.

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But the fact is, my target audience is in there somewhere. And because of that, I need to find a way to overcome Twitter’s notoriously low clickthrough rates and get people to follow my links once in awhile.  Through extensive experimentation with multiple Twitter accounts over the better part of a year, along with a certain level of tracking and documentation, I know there are times when my Tweets perform significantly better than others.  And for the most part, I think I might know why.

Below is a list of 57 ways that may (or may not) increase your Twitter clickthrough rates.  For purposes of making this post as useful as possible, I threw in everything I could think of—strategies related to message tone, design, message construction, strategy, timing and so on; as well as some mistakes I made along the way.  Also, the items in bold are strategies I have had particularly good results with over the last few months.  If your time is limited, I would recommend trying these first.

And finally, if you believe I missed something or would like to recommend your own tip, please reply to this post and do so.  I will gladly add your tip to this list, along with a link to your blog or website should you choose to include one.  Here we go . . .

57 Ways to (Maybe) Increase Your Twitter Clickthrough Rates

1. Say something original.
2. Don’t write like a teenager.
3. Offer something of value other than your thoughts.
4. Resist the temptation to exaggerate or show false excitement.
5. Don’t use shorthand . . . spell out words.
6. Be consistently credible.
7. Use an interesting avatar.
8. Create controversy.
9. Don’t make promises or outrageous claims.
10. Figure out why YOU click on other people’s links, and do what they do.
11. Have your own take.
12. Use a call to action.
13. Respect the intelligence of your audience.
14. Develop your own style—and stick with it.
15. Avoid slang.
16. Check your spelling.
17. Experiment with Tweeting on different days and during different times.
18. Stop using cliches.
19. Cater to multiple nationalities.
20. Tweet in groups of three.
21. Don’t use industry-specific acronyms and terminology.
22. Make on point, and only one point.
23. Don’t use ALL CAPS.
24. Be sensitive to cultural issues.
25. Don’t over-use punctuation.
26. Build a following outside of Twitter.
27. Use spacing strategically.
28. Don’t sound TOO EXCITED!!!
29. Ask, but don’t beg.
30. Don’t get lazy.
31. Say the same thing multiple ways.
32. Create a Username that aligns with your focus.
33. Don’t expect a tool to do the thinking for you.
34. Remind yourself that getting ANY kind of web traffic isn’t easy.
35. Build a community.
36. Cater to people in time zones other than yours.
37. Call a specific audience to action.
38. Choose topics that people haven’t already run into the ground.
39. Stop trying to make everyone happy—become a specialist in something.
40. Break down the results of a research study.
41. Collect your own data for a survey, and publish the results.
42. Don’t Tweet because you’re bored.
43. Construct a well-written profile (people actually read these).
44. Avoid using Twitter ‘isms.’
45. Ask for honest feedback and opinions on something.
46. Don’t bombard people.
47. Keep it fresh.
48. Tweet a “Thank You” once in awhile.
49. Don’t Tweet inside jokes.
50. Check the trending topics.
51. Don’t talk down to people.
52. Use a “Tweet This” or Retweet button to increase distribution.
53. Don’t write like a Ph.D.
54. Ask people (nicely) to Retweet your stuff.
55. Go against the grain.
56. Watch how the pros Tweet.
57. Search Internet Marketing portals like Sphinn for other articles on this subject.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to post a reply.  Also, please remember this: much like cigarettes in prison, social bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG.  If you have a moment, please Digg, Stumble, Sphinn or Retweet this story if you enjoyed reading it.  We have provided handy little buttons for each.

Other Ways to Increase Your Twitter Clickthrough Rates—Submitted by TSCB Readers:

# 58. Allow your personality to come through. (Submitted by Catherine Woods, Editor of RealBusiness UK)

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With that said, my first year has also been a hectic mix of mistakes: mistakes related to technology issues, content development, website design, and various attempts at marketing myself.  Some were made due to a lack of time, some were made because I over-estimated my abilities, and some were made because I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing.  As I start my second year of blogging, I have made a promise that I will implement a few changes—seven, to be exact—in the way I approach my blogging going forward.  Hopefully, this list will be useful to others who are walking the same path.

Change #1: I’m Going to Make More Friends Online

Forging relationships has never been easy for me in person, and it has been surprsingly difficult online as well.  In retrospect, I believe my problem stems from the fact that I spent too much time during my first year trying to make the Internet work for me, and not enough time giving back.  During my second year as a blogger I need to do more commenting on other people’s posts, networking with people who are targeting the same audience, and handing out more encouragement and kudos to people who deserve it.

Change #2: I’m Going to Stay Focused on My Audience

Every once in awhile, it happens: I write a post, upload it to my blog, then read it one last time and wonder “What the hell I was thinking?”  Over the course of my first year as a blogger I got distracted a few times, and let my writing go to places my target audience wasn’t willing to follow me.  Going forward, I promise to do a better job of choosing my topics, and will ask my readers what they want instead of shoving content down their throats.

Change #3: I’m Going to Stop Watching My Web Traffic

If there were a rehab program for bloggers, there would definitely be at least one group session titled “Breaking the Addiction of Web Statistics.”  At the present time I run no less than three (3) tracking programs side-by-side, which is a huge mistake for me—not because three tracking programs is too many for me to handle, but because I spend half of my day wondering why the data they’re collecting doesn’t seem to match.  Starting today I resolve to spend more time writing than watching, and vow to not live and die minute-to-minute based on what my traffic reports say.

Change #4: I’m Going to Find a Better Filing System

At the time of this post I estimate my blog contains between 40,000 and 50,000 words of original content.  I have no idea how I managed to push out this much writing by myself, but the fact is it’s there—presented as one big list of posts in the left and right-hand columns of my blog.  This current layout frustrates me quite a bit, and I know in order to take the next step I have to come up with a better solution.  During my second year as a blogger I hope to find a new tool, or upload a new theme that makes my posts easier to find for my readers.  If you have any suggestions for me in this area, PLEASE feel free to reply to this post.

Change #5: I’m Going to Trim Down the People I Follow on Twitter

Over my first year as a blogger, I fell into the same trap many Twitter users do.  With the exception of porn sites and pyramid schemers, I literally followed back EVERYONE who followed me.  Now I realize I need to stop this practice, and significantly decrease the number of people I currently follow . . . starting with the people who Tweet me garbage.  Starting today I won’t care if I lose followers on Twitter—especially if they’re wasting my time—and will concentrate on building a community with the followers who truly add value to my world.

Change #6: I’m Going to Write Something Different Once in Awhile

Since I started writing at my current pace (two new posts per week, every single week) I have written exactly one article that could be considered off-topic: The Dumbest Marketing Campaigns of 2008.  This post had nothing to do with small company growth or strategy or marketing, but writing it felt like I took a vacation from blogging.  And I need to do more of that.  Going forward I will admit that I can’t save the world with every single post, and blow off some steam once in awhile by writing about something unrelated to small businesses.

Change #7: I’m Going to Think Bigger

During my first year as a blogger, I spent a significant portion of my time looking for a Digg or a Sphinn or a Stumble, hoping I could slowly grow readership by an extra dozen people per week. But recently it occurred to me that my goal doesn’t involve spending the rest of my life increasing my web traffic.  I want to be syndicated.  I want to see one of my articles on the home page of Slate or Fast Company or MSN some day.  My goal is to write things for large groups of people, not to drive clicks to a 150 x 150 graphic on my home page.  Ultimately, I want to write for millions of people, and unfortunately I haven’t done a darn thing in the past year to make that happen.  As of this very moment I resolve to keep my head out of the little stuff, take more chances, and not be satisfied writing for a few hundred people per week.

Would you like to share a past mistake you made as a blogger?  Have you made any adjustments or changes in the way you approach your blogging career?  Feel free to post them here, and I’ll gladly publish your story—along with your name and a link to your blog if you wish to provide one.

Also, social bookmarks are as good as cash here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Digg, Stumble or Retweet would be greatly appreciated.  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, please pay a quick visit to one our Google ad sponsors.  Thank you.

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With the above in mind, the following post will outline the four (4) most critical differences between big companies and small ones.  Please be warned: this article not based on any sort of worldwide study or market survey.  It is based on more than 17 years of first-hand experience working for companies from $2 million in annual revenue to $25 billion (that’s billion with a ‘b‘).  No matter what size of company you work for or hope to work for some day, I believe you will find some value here.

Difference #1: The People

Far and away, the most significant difference between a small company and a large one lies within the mix and variety of people who work there.  At a small company, the employee mix is both diverse and inconsistent.  Small companies are home to people who are always happy, people who are always mad, and people who ride the emotional roller coaster.  There are people who never talk, people who always talk, and people who spend most of the day with at least one foot firmly planted in their mouth.  Small companies are loaded with unattached twenty-somethings, divorced grandparents, and middle-aged people with kids—all with unique needs, unique motivations and personal lives that ultimately spill over into work.

Contrast this to the employee mix at a larger firm.  As an organization grows, employees begin to homogenize to the point where any outward ‘personality’ that exists among individuals is eventually eliminated.  Cultural expectations are set, groups begin to form, and people who no longer fit the big company ‘mold’ are forced out.  In fact, by the time a company breaks the billion dollar revenue mark, it actually becomes difficult to tell people apart as individuality is replaced with company-enforced conformity.  Employees buy the same clothes at the same stores, watch the same TV shows, and play in the same company-sponsored sports leagues as the people they work with.

Difference #2: The Environment

When you hear the phrase “big company,” the one word that immediately comes to mind is structure.  Structure in the form of policy manuals, comprehensive job descriptions, HR handbooks, management hierarchies and jam-packed meeting schedules.  By the same token, hearing the phrase “small company” almost always invokes the opposite impression: a complete lack of structure.

In contrast to a large firm, at a small company it is rare that a new employee will start on Day 1 with an accurate job description; and if they do, the description is almost always outdated after the first month.  There are a distinct lack of policy manuals and work instructions, and formal meetings are only held in emergencies or for issues related to long-term planning.  Also at small companies, the most effective employees are the ones who take risks, and learn to circumvent the management hierarchy to get things done; whereas at a larger firm, more value is given to employees who complete their tasks within the rules and without exposing the company to unnecessary risks.

Difference #3: The Money

To cut right to the chase, the critical difference in the way money is treated at big companies versus small ones can be summed up in one sentence:

Spending money that comes directly out of someone else’s pocket changes everything.

Big companies might have stockholders, but small companies have OWNERS.  Owners, by the way, who have no problem chastising an employee for spending an extra $10 per night on a hotel during their last business trip.  Knowing that every dollar you spend comes out of an owner’s bank account makes working at a small company unnecessarily stressful—especially for departments like Marketing and Sales.  Also, small companies are full of opportunities for employees to become upset and disillusioned about finances.  Have you ever been asked to tell your employees about a company-wide wage freeze, only to have the owner drive to work a few weeks later in a new Mercedes?  Small company managers have.

Difference #4: The Politics

At a big company, you usually don’t have to worry about  working for multiple bosses or married couples.  You are also rarely forced to deal with relatives of the CEO, ownership teams who have been friends since college, and spouses of executives who ask for your help with a side business.  But at small companies, these things are both commonplace and expected.  The relationships, social circles and histories at small companies often make them a nightmare to navigate politically—making the shelf-life of even the best managers a mere four or five years at the most. 

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, if you are a current member of a social bookmarking site please use the various icons on this page to Digg, Stumble or Retweet.  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your style, please pay a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors as a little “Thank You” for the article.  Your consideration is very much appreciated.

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1. Any Idiot Can Do It.  And Any Idiot Does. If you selected ten “Twitter marketers” at random and followed the links back to their websites, you would no doubt be treated to a disturbing mix of ill-conceived designs, bad formatting, poor grammar, and instructional videos shot in dark basements—four things that would get real marketing people banned from the profession for life.  Allowing anyone with an Internet connection to use Twitter for marketing purposes is like issuing driver’s licenses to 8-year olds.

2. Twitter Users Have Their Own Vocabulary—and It’s Annoying. Grown adults are typically resistant to things that require acting and communicating like a teenager, which makes Twitter and professional marketing people natural adversaries.  Having to use terms like Tweeotches (Twitter bitches), Twarma (bad Twitter karma), Twitterrhea (excessive and unwanted Tweeting), Twitterectomy (cutting Twitter out of your life for a period of time) and Twitterbation (inadvertently Tweeting yourself) are immature enough, much less the 420 other teeth-grinding terms in the Twitter vocabulary.

3. Oprah and Ashton Like It. The interesting thing about marketing people, especially Internet ones, is they love to claim they knew about something before it was considered trendy by the mainstream.  Internet marketers are the ones who like songs until they get radio play, drink micro-beers no one has ever heard of, and refuse to eat at chain restaurants.  The bottom line?  When Larry King starts Tweeting, it’s just not cool any more.

4. Pyramid Schemers and MLMers are Ruining it for Everyone Else. As of today I have just under 1,000 Twitter followers, and I follow about 1,050 people as well—the 1,000 people who follow me, and 50 bloggers and news organizations of my own choosing.  With this in mind, as I look at my Twitter inbox I count 17 Tweets out of a possible 20 offering me either a) easy money, or b) thousands of Twitter followers in a short period of time.  While Internet marketers try to run legitimate web sites designed to help companies grow, con artists and grifters make it nearly impossible for people to distinguish between our information and their spam.

5. Twitter’s Response Rates Make Direct Mail Look Interesting Again. Like many of you reading this post, I track and measure everything I do from a marketing perspective.  Through my first 100 Tweets, my response rate is exactly .21%.  As a warning, do NOT read this as 20%, or even 2% . . . this is TWO-TENTHS of one percent.  Or to put it another way: for every 1,000 followers I have, exactly TWO click through whenever I post a new article.  Two.  To match an average direct email campaign my Twitter hit rate needs to increase by 10 times, and over 100 times to meet the performance of my newsletter.

6. From a Business Perspective, Twitter is Basically a Mall with No Customers. How much time would you need to come up with the name of just ONE company who set up a Twitter account for the purpose of buying things?  A minute?  More like a month.  Among the millions of businesses on Twitter, one rule applies: everyone has an angle, and no one has any money.

7. No One Tweets Original Content. I realize stating “no one” writes original content for Twitter is a bit of an exaggeration, but anyone with a business-related Twitter account knows that 90% of the Tweets they receive are quotes from tip-a-day calendars, personal observations (”I like the color red.  Do you?”) and re-reports of breaking (and not-so-breaking) news.  On Twitter, writing from scratch is not just a lost art—it is frowned upon.

8. Twitter Users Have No Self-Discipline. Have you had your Twitter account for more than a week?  Congratulations!  You already have at least a dozen followers who  send six Tweets in rapid succession multiple times per day, or send one Tweet every 20 minutes like clockwork.  The attention-getting philosophy among businesses who use Twitter is straightforwardly annoying: create enough noise to be noticed above everyone else who is doing the same thing.

9. Everyone Follows Everyone. From an Internet marketing perspective, the biggest flaw in Twitter’s design is that in almost all cases, the only way to build a follower base is to follow others.  And when the temptation to indiscriminately follow other people is too much to resist, the most important component of target marketing—demographics—gets flushed right down the toilet.

The Honorable Mentions: 10 thru 17

Before I wrote this post I asked some fellow Internet marketers to send me a few reasons they hate Twitter, and ended up with nearly 50.  Below are a few of my favorites—some serious, some clever, and some painfully true.

10. It doesn’t have a three-letter acronym.  Ha!  (e.g. SEO, PPC, etc.).

11. Every time I see that blue bird, I want to hit it with my car.

12. Most of the people on Twitter are really ugly.

13. Too many add-on applets to maximize your experience, and I get confused very easily.

14. The hash tag search is full of spam.

15. I feel inadequate because I don’t have 5,000 followers.

16. Can’t tell if the girls are actually hot or not.

17. The dude that Tweets by farting into his office chair.  Enough said.

If you are an Internet marketer and would like to offer your own reason for hating Twitter, please reply to this post and I will add it to the list above—along with your name (or Twitter username) and a link to your site or blog if you provide them.

Also, Diggs, Sphinns, Retweets or Stumbles are appreciated as well!  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, please feel free to make a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors.  Thank you.

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[ Aside ]In 1994, Hasselhoff was scheduled to perform a televised concert from Atlantic City to jump-start his U.S. singing career. On that same night, the infamous O.J. Simpson police chase was televised live across the country. Hasselhoff has not attempted a TV concert since.

So whatever became of Universal Search?  With all of the other new and easy-to-use traffic generating technologies, should Universal Search still be on a small company’s marketing radar?  The answer to this question is a definitive “Yes,” for one important reason:

Over 90% of organic search engine traffic comes from the first page of results.

The point here is, any marketing program that allows your small company to appear on the first page of search engine results is a wonderful use of your time, regardless of how many other more “trendy” marketing channels may exist.  As a refresher for those of you who need it (I probably should have done this earlier) Universal Search is basically the integration by search engines of elements other than web pages in overall search results.  These “other elements” can include videos, images, blogs, news, book and shopping listings.

If you click on the screen shot thumbnail to the right (which I found at SubHub.com) you will see how Universal Search elements are presented during a search for the phrase “Paris Hilton.”  In addition to the standard list of 10 web pages, this particular search generated multiple listings for News, Images, Videos and Blogs about Paris Hilton—a total of TWELVE additional (and free) opportunities for exposure on the first page of results.

So how do you get there?  As a small company with limited resources, are there some relatively low-cost steps you can take to leverage the value of Universal Search?  Of course.  And here they are:

Step #1: Walk Before You Run. Prior to putting a ton of effort into Universal Search, make sure your website is optimized for organic (regular) rankings.  Maximize your title tags, work on your meta descriptions, and submit an XML sitemap to any engine that  will take one.  For more information on these specific tasks, check out Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part I and Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Website: Part II.

Step #2: Channel Surf. Because Universal Search will take information from all of a search engine’s “channels,” check each one to see what kind of exposure your site has (if any) within that specific channel.  In Google, the channels you want to focus on are Images, Video, News, Blogs and Shopping (FYI—”Blogs” is actually underneath the “News” channel).  Channels for other engines can usually be found above or near the search field.

Step 3: Take Inventory. Before your site can actually benefit from Universal Search, you need to make a comprehensive list of your company’s digital assets.  Do you have files, images, videos and news releases that aren’t showing up in universal search results?  If so, chances are these items are not tagged correctly.  Find and review the Webmaster guidelines for each search engine your small company is targeting, and make sure you are follow proper tagging rules.

Step 4: Do the Easy Stuff. In addition to tagging Universal Search items like images, videos, news releases and blogs, there are a few other clever ways to earn free space on the first page of search results.  Does your small company have a regional customer base?  Update your local business listing.  Also, figure out a way to get your company or one of its products (or possibly a key employee) a Wikipedia reference.  And of course, if your company can justify one, start a blog.  All of these are easy, and all can be done for free.

Comments?  Questions?  Feel free to reply to this post. Also, please Re-Tweet, Sphinn or Digg if you are a member of any of these wonderful social bookmarking sites.  Or if social bookmars aren’t your thing, please feel free to pay a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors.  Thanks!

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“I Made $5,000 per Week on a Social Networking Site!”

There is a reason so many people are convinced there is money to be made in social networking: because Internet con artists still claim to be able to generate six figures per year on sites like LinkedIn and FaceBook.  Sure, social networking sites have a number of great business uses like distributing news, coordinating user groups and augmenting your internal database.  But actually generating a few dollars worth of direct revenue from them—much less thousands of dollars per week—is not only unlikely, it is impossible.  Unless, of course, you own a social networking site.

“You Can Make a Great Living Working Out of Your Own Home!”

Here’s a question: if you make such a great living working at home, why do you spend 12 hours per day trying to talk other people into doing your job?  Because your home-based ‘business’ is actually a recruitment-focused pyramid scheme.  If you are considering responding to one of these work at home solicitations, be sure to read 9 Signs You’re Involved in a Pyramid Scheme first.

“I Can Show You How to Get 2,000 Twitter Followers Per Day!”

I don’t mean to ruin the mystique surrounding Twitter, but if someone dedicates an entire day to it, acquiring 2,000 followers in 24 hours isn’t exactly the equivalent of splitting the atom.  Even if you have only 15 minutes to spare, there are plenty of free or low-cost automated Twitter applets that can dig through the Twitter database and figure out which members are most likely to follow you back.  The only real thing ‘professional’ Twitter builders plan on showing you is a form to enter your credit card information.

“I Made 400% Net Profit in the Last 60 Days In Affiliate Marketing!”

Affiliate marketers are a lot like poker players.  Although two-thirds will claim they are making a living doing what they do, the  reality is less than 3 out of 100 are getting paid minimum wage for their time, much less making any sort of ‘living’ at their craft.  And if an Affiliate Marketer did figure out a system for pulling in massive amounts of cash, why would they offer to tell you about it?

Anything Related to Making ‘Big Money’ with Pay-per-Click

As I mention in a previous post, When Pay-per-Click (PPC) is a Bad Idea, PPC is the only marketing method where companies can be absolutely guaranteed to pay MORE than market value for each and every click.  In addition, Pay-per-Click advertising has been around too long for anyone to find an exploitable hole or unique strategy that would allow excessive revenue generation.  PPC should be no more than 10% of any company’s marketing budget, for a very good reason: there is very little value to be had anymore.

Questions?  Comments?  Complaints?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Or alternatively, I’ll take any sort of social bookmark you want to give—a Digg, a Sphinn, a Stumble or a Retweet would obviously be appreciated.  And of course, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing you may pay a quick visit to one of my Google ad sponsors.  Thank you!

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Before I get too far into this post, it is important we agree upon a simple definition of social bookmarking, so we’re all on the same page.  Understanding it might not line up exactly with definitions others have written, for the purposes of this article I will use this:

Social Bookmarking: any method, website or technology used by web surfers to track Internet content, or tag Internet content for others to find.

Social bookmarking can take any number of shapes and forms, including links from networking sites like Twitter and FaceBook, referrals from content-rating portals like Digg and Sphinn, and readers from blog syndication feeds like Technorati and BlogSpot.  Even the RSS feed on your own site can be considered a social bookmark if someone subscribes to it.  For a massive list of social bookmarking sites and methods, check out The Big List of Social Bookmarking and Networking Sites for over 160 choices.

With the above in mind, below are three critical Dos and Don’ts for maximizing your link building campaign thru Social Bookmarking.

Don’t . . . Give People Too Many Choices

Does your website or blog offer a primary button bar with icons for Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Del.icio.us and Digg, and a secondary bar with icons for FaceBook, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, YaHoo and Flickr?  Here’s an interesting law of human behavior: if you give people too many choices, they won’t make one.

Do . . . Narrow Your Social Bookmarking List

As an alternative to a shotgun approach, resist the temptation to sprinkle your website with colorful thumbnail graphics and scale back your social bookmarking options to a set of five, plus your RSS feed.  Limiting social bookmarking choices for visitors will not only result in more social bookmarking activity, but give readers a clearer picture of which types of traffic are most important to you.

Don’t . . . Get Lazy

One bad habit many bloggers and web designers have is getting too comfortable too quickly, and putting the social bookmarking pieces of their sites into ‘maintenance mode.’  On a growing website, social bookmarking options should be kept nearly as fresh as the content, but rarely are.

Do . . . Change it Up Once in Awhile

With nearly 200 social bookmarking options to choose from and more on the way, bloggers and website owners have no excuse to stand pat.  In terms of social bookmarking, it is very likely that the next big traffic generator for your site hasn’t even been invented yet.  How are you going to find it if you never look around?

Don’t . . . Assume All of Your Channels Are Working

Once social bookmarks are in place and traffic numbers begin to increase, it is easy to believe your social bookmarking strategy is a winner.  But chances are, most of your newly found traffic is coming from just one (or maybe two) of your social bookmarking options.

Do . . . Track What You’re Using

Like any other Internet-based marketing campaign, each social bookmarking option used on your website should be evaluated as its own stand-alone program.  No matter where your site is hosted, there is always web log data available to figure out exactly where inbound traffic is coming from.  To some degree, the free Webmaster Tools at Google and MSN can provide important pieces of the puzzle as well.

Wrapping it Up

Regardless of their size, social bookmarking icons take up premium real estate on your blog or website.  Not evaluating each social bookmark as an individual marketing investment—even though the links are free—will cost you traffic, search engine rankings, and (if applicable) affiliate marketing dollars.  If you invest the time and avoid the mistakes outlined above, your social bookmarking efforts will generate traffic you never knew existed.  And this, my friends, is the reason we read and write things like this in our spare time.

Questions?  Comments?  Complaints?  Feel free to reply to this post.  Or as an alternative, you could do me a big social bookmarking favor and use one of the icons on this site to Sphinn It, Digg It, Stumble It, Tweet It, or Join my RSS Feed! A visit to one of my Google ad sponsors would be much appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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As an aside . . . shortly before I posted this article, I paid a visit to Google to do some testing.  For each of the search phrases direct mail, direct mail marketing, direct mailing, mail marketing and direct mail marketing help, the DMA website came up on the first page of organic results.  However, the site showed up on page 3 for search engine marketing, page 9 for email marketing, page 13 for Internet marketing, and nowhere in the first 20 pages for the phrase social network marketing.

I will be the first to admit there are still a few pieces of mail I look forward to: the rebate checks, the Restoration Hardware catalogs, our monthly township newsletter, and my quarterly Social Security statement . . . which unfortunately details exactly how little money I have made during my life so far.  But other than these few items, anything I receive via mail—no matter how colorful or attractive—is dropped directly into my paper recycling bin.  As a professional marketer I don’t believe I am alone in my aversion to direct mail, and have come up with six reasons why direct mail should assume its rightful place in the Marketing Museum next to the fax machine, the printed coupon, and the trade show.

Reason #1: Mail Pieces Cost Money to Design.  With all of the advancements in software and technology, anyone with a computer can lay out an effective email, write a Twitter post, or upload a web page. But only a graphic designer with a $1,000 piece of software and a $4,000 Mac can design a direct mail piece. . . . and charge $50 an hour to do it.

Reason #2: There is No Opt-In or Spam Law for Direct Mail. The lack of any sort of direct mail legislation allows direct mailers to not only bombard people on their lists, but also sell their lists to other companies who do the exact same thing.  What is The Direct Marketing Association doing in response?  Fighting like hell to make sure ideas like the ‘Do Not Mail List’ never see the light of day.  If you have some extra money, DMA will even let you chip in for their Congressional lobbyists.

Reason #3: Stamps are Expensive. Targeted e-newsletters can be sponsored for ten cents per name. Email houses can send mass blasts for less than two cents per name.  Twitter and social networking posts are free, and so are blog entries.  And the price of postage stamps just went up.  Again.

Reason #4: Direct Mail Campaign Stats Aren’t Real Stats. Direct mailers throw around numbers like Response Rate, ROI, Shelf Life and Pass-Along Rate as if they were cold hard facts. But in reality most are nothing more than educated guesses, based on industry-wide surveys of other companies who do direct mail.  Or maybe, just maybe, the catalog I threw in the garbage WAS actually read by 3.6 other people between my kitchen counter and the trash bin?

Reason #5: Direct Mail Leaves No Room for Changes. Depending upon the industry your company is in, a direct mail piece can be outdated within days of being sent.  Publishing a price, description or sales promotion on a direct mail piece means you’re stuck with it for months, unless you want to bear the expense of re-sending a corrected version to the exact same audience.  On the other hand, web pages and downloadable PDF files can be changed and published in real-time, and updated emails can be sent—and only to the people who actually opened your first email—for pennies.

Reason #6: Our Immediate Gratification Society. 80% of the responses to an email campaign will be received within the first 24 hours.  At the end of that same period of time, your direct mail piece will still be in a bag somewhere, waiting to be sorted and placed on a stagecoach, or donkey, or mail truck, or whatever they use to deliver mail these days.

After extended discussions with a number of people who frequent this blog, I get the impression most professional marketers (if given the choice) would abandon direct mail entirely—if their companies would let them.  It frightens me to think how many of my friends and colleagues are still being pushed toward direct mail by their organizations, when cheaper and more effective channels like email, search engine optimization, blogging and social networking are readily available.  But eventually, the slumping economy will force most of them to drop direct mail as a marketing vehicle, whether they want to or not.

If you liked this article, please feel free to throw a social bookmark our way—we love Diggs, Stumbles and Retweets.  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be much appreciated as well.  Thank you for your support!

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Although many of us would love to see each new Twitter account issued with a comprehensive User Guide and Rulebook, the fact is Twitter users can pretty much do whatever the want.  Because of this complete lack of standardization (other than the 140-character limit on Tweets) businesses across the globe are using Twitter to annoy potential customers at record rates—faster than they ever could have hoped to annoy them through other, more traditional marketing channels like direct mail and direct email.

With the above in mind, below are five rules that should NEVER be broken by people trying to use Twitter for business purposes.  As with all previous posts, this particular article is not written for pyramid schemers, get rich quick experts, professional traffic whores, or the kid from Amsterdam trying to find a million Twitter followers before the end of the year.  This post is designed to help people who run REAL small companies figure out how to use Twitter—a simple, yet complicated micro blogging technology—to gain a market advantage.

Rule #1: Don’t Bombard Your Followers. Anyone who has been on Twitter for more than a week has at least one follower who sends six Tweets in rapid succession multiple times per day, or sends one Tweet every 20 minutes like clockwork.  Here’s a tip: unless you work for a national news organization, your company is NOT important enough to justify this volume of communication.  As a small company, sending one relevant piece of news to your followers per day is plenty. 

Rule #2: Only Tweet When You have Something Interesting to Say. If the extent of your Tweet is going to be a rehash of an inspirational thought from your new desk calendar, don’t bother.  Tweeting famous quotes, personal observations and headlines from ESPN’s breaking news section are are also off-limits.  Listen to mom on this one: if you don’t have something relevant to say, don’t open your mouth—or in this case, don’t type.

Rule #3: Don’t Follow People Indiscriminately. When it comes to using Twitter for business purposes, the belief there are no ”bad” followers is absolutely spot on.  Regardless of what your company does, someone voluntarily electing to hear from you might not always be good, but it is NEVER bad. The reverse, however, is not true.  Making a poor decision about who your company follows on Twitter could cost you a significant amount of fans over time. Do the math: if you run a Twitter feed for your business and choose to follow Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh, you have a 50/50 chance of offending every U.S. visitor to your Twitter site.  In the case of selecting Twitter followers, the rules of cocktail party conversation always apply: avoid politics, religion, and polarizing celebrities.

Rule #4: Avoid the Temptation to Re-Report the News. As a blogger who cranks out two or three original articles every week, I understand how difficult it can sometimes be to come up with fresh content. That said, sending your loyal followers a link to CNN’s latest article on the swine flu is a poor excuse for customer contact.  If something really big happens in the world, there is one thing you can absolutely count on when it comes to Twitter: within two minutes, everyone will already know.

Rule #5: Stop Trying to Make a Sale Every Time. Understanding all of us have bills to pay, even the best cooks in the world take the chef’s hat off every now and then.  If you condition Twitter followers to expect a sales pitch every time they hear from you, your followers will quickly build up an ‘immunity’ to your Tweets . . . and simply stop reading them.  Between sales and marketing messages, be sure to mix in a good amount of ‘no strings attached’ communications—industry facts, trivia nuggets and short “Thank You” notes for supporting your company.

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Feel free to reply to this post.  Also, as with all posts at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG.com, social bookmarks are greatly appreciated—in the form of Diggs, Stumbles or Retweets.  Or, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsor sites would be wonderful as well.  Thank you!

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The point is, as small company owners and managers it is critical we maximize our marketing dollars by executing on initiatives that actually qualify as marketing . . . something much easier said than done.  With this in mind, a few weeks ago I took it upon myself to create a NEW definition of small company marketing; one that more accurately reflected a small company’s need to a) spend wisely, and b) receive value in return for each marketing investment.  Here is what I came up with:

Small Company Marketing: any initiative used to reach customers or potential customers that either results in an immediate sale, or directly and measurably shortens the sales cycle.

To see if my definition would hold up in the real world, I tested it using some of the more traditional, big-company things people often put into the ‘marketing’ bucket.  The ten initiatives I used were as follows:

1. Collecting business cards in a fishbowl at a trade show.
2. Producing a corporate video for distribution on a website.
3. Issuing a press release announcing the hiring of a new CFO.
4. Sending a monthly customer newsletter.
5. Purchasing Pay-per-Click advertising.
6. Hosting a free speaking event.
7. Offering a free, downloadable white paper on a website.
8. Sponsoring a snack break at an industry conference.
9. Applying for and winning a “Best Places to Work” award.
10. Sending a new catalog to a rented mailing list.

Based on the definition given above, were there any initiatives here that didn’t count as ‘marketing’ in small companies?  Surprisingly, there were five.  When I applied my new definition of small company marketing to the list above, I discovered that numbers 1, 2, 3, 8 and 9 do not pass the test.  Aside from the fact that none of them directly result in sales, it would be difficult to claim they could even shorten a sales cycle.  Taken aback by my findings, I showed them to a (skeptical) big-company friend who demanded answers as to why—and how—things like collecting business cards and winning awards can’t possibly be considered ‘marketing’ initiatives at small companies.  Here is a portion of the email I sent her: 

 . . . regarding example #1, collecting business cards at a trade show might give your sales people a pile of names to follow up with, but without some sort of prequalification you can’t possibly claim these people are interested in what your company sells.  In terms of example #2, corporate videos are nice, but rarely bring potential customers one step closer to buying something. Many people consider PR part of marketing (example #3), and in some cases it can be—but your customers don’t care about your new hires.  Sticking your logo on a table tent at a trade show (example #4) is a pure branding initiative, and winning an employer award (example #5) might help you recruit better employees, but won’t generate additional business.

On the other hand, numbers 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10 do indeed qualify as marketing initiatives.  Customer newsletters keep people on your list up-to-date on new releases, special promotions and upcoming sales.  Pay-per-click drives interested parties to your website for more information and can shortening the sales cycle.  Speaking events can educate potential customers on the benefits of your products and services, white papers are designed to present the challenges your products and services help solve, and catalog mailings will prompt interested parties to call, email, and ideally order something from you.

Hope this helps

The fact is, small companies rarely have the money or the head count to pursue non-revenue generating initiatives.  But surprisingly, many small firms use a significant portion of their marketing budgets to do just that.  Until someone can convince me otherwise (feel free to do so) I am going to begin using this new definition of small company marketing, and will convince everyone I know to do the same.

Agree or disagree with anything in this article?  Feel free to post a reply.  Also, social bookmarks are as good as currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so a Digg, Stumble or Retweet would be very much appreciated.  Or, if handing out social bookmarks isn’t your thing, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would also make us happy.  Thank you!

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Also, as with all posts at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG.com, please feel free to linkback or pingback to this article—giving proper credit, of course.

Real-World Twitter Benefit #2: It Can Smooth Out Your Website Traffic

Anyone who runs a traffic dependent website designed around lead generation or a shopping cart lives and dies daily with the ups and downs of their website traffic.  I still remember the inconsistency of my first three months like it was yesterday: 2 visitors on Monday, 31 on Tuesday, zero on Wednesday and Thursday, 15 on Friday, and so on.  For me, this irregularity was mostly an inconvenience.  But if I were running a lead generation or e-commerce site, the emotional and financial stress would have been much more painful.

By offering an easy, immediate and inexpensive (read: FREE) way to drive people to a website, Twitter can help level out your traffic during off-peak periods.  If you are running a legitimate small business whose goal is to generate sales inquiries or drive people to a shopping cart, averaging three to four attention-grabbing Tweets per week is plenty.  Why not send them during otherwise off-peak times?  For example, if your website generates 80% of its overall traffic Friday thru Monday, why not lean on your loyal Twitter followers to pick up the slack during the otherwise slow middle of the week?

Although attractive perks in their own right, Twitter’s ability to level out web traffic lies not with ease of use or cost, but with the unique ability it gives companies to control the timing of marketing messages.  Using free services like Tweet Later, companies of any size can literally decide down to the second when they want marketing messages delivered to customers—which, in turn, gives companies control over WHEN their customers visit the site.  Is this Internet thing cool or what?

The fact is, healthy websites don’t have dry spells or bad weeks—and they don’t take 50% of their monthly traffic in a single afternoon.  Healthy websites have consistent traffic patterns which allow their owners to do things like trend analysis, revenue prediction and market research.  Although Twitter won’t smooth out all of your website’s traffic bumps, many companies large and small are learning it can definitely help.

Also, social bookmarks are currency here at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG, so Diggs, Stumbles and Retweets are very much appreciated.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be a very nice gesture as well.  Thank you!

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Over the last few months I have spent countless hours researching and experimenting with Twitter in an effort to answer one simple question: “Can this technology be used to make a positive impact—financial or otherwise—on a small company?“  This post will act as Part I in a series of posts (I estimate at least five total) focusing on real-world, results-driven uses for Twitter by small companies.  As with all posts at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG.com, please feel free to linkback or pingback to it—giving proper credit, of course.  If you would like to use the content of this post in its entirety on your website, please email me directly at eric@thesmallcompanyblog.com . . . and ask nicely.

Real-World Twitter Benefit #1: It Can Jump-Start Your Internal Database

Those of us who run or manage small companies understand the importance of building an internal opt-in database.  There are few things more valuable than the contact information of a potential customer who WANTS to hear from you.  But as of late, some of the more traditional list-building tactics like free downloads, online coupons and contests seem to be losing their luster.  If the recent economic downturn has caused your internal database to level off or even shrink, adding a Twitter feed to your marketing mix could be exactly what you need to start growing your contact list again. 

First and foremost, starting a Twitter feed can allow your small company to reach previously unsolicited markets.  In the case of my website, until I joined Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/TSCB/) my marketing efforts were specific to small company owners and managers, and targeted only to people located in the United States.  Since setting up my Twitter account I have expanded my web site’s reach to include the UK, Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, India, and North Africa.  In addition, I am now being followed by business magazines, Internet radio stations,  published business columnists, and multiple media groups—several of which will hopefully syndicate my content some day.  Left to my own devices, I could have never generated this level of interest in such a short period of time.

Second, setting up a company-based Twitter feed will give your organization a new channel to reach its EXISTING contacts as well.   If you’ve been in business for more than a couple of years, it is likely your core group of customers and prospects has received dozens of emails, newsletters, phone calls and direct mail pieces from your company.  Giving these loyal followers one more clever (and somewhat trendy) way to hear from you can do nothing but increase the read-rates of your marketing messages.

In terms of growing a business database through Twitter, there is one BIG red flag small companies need to be aware of: half of the people who follow your company feed will have no intention of ever buying anything from you.  The fact is, no matter how you approach your company’s Twitter strategy,  having professional ‘followers’ (who want nothing from you but a follow-back) in your list is nearly unavoidable.  But as long as you understand and accept this going in—and focus your efforts on the followers who are serious—a corporate Twitter account could be a huge benefit to your growing organization.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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With the above in mind, here are five new rules for direct email marketing in 2010 and beyond.  As with all posts at THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG.com, please feel free to throw us a social bookmark—Diggs, Stumbles and Retweets being our three favorites.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

Rule #1: Don’t Cram the Entire Message Into the Subject Line

Typing a short story into the Subject line of an email is something even my technology-inhibited grandparents are savvy enough to not do, but for some reason most companies still can’t help themselves.  Case in point: earlier this morning I received the latest edition of the Weekly Marketing Bulletin via email,  and the Subject line was:

Includes: The Top 10 Reasons Your Email Isn’t Being Delivered & How to Fix it

For those of you who aren’t willing to do it, I counted . . . there are almost 80 characters here.  If your company doesn’t already have one in place, a good rule of thumb for a Subject line is 35 to 45 characters MAXIMUM.  And as a sanity check, always send the email to yourself first, so you can see what it looks like in your Inbox.  This particular email showed up in my Inbox pane as “Includes: The Top 10 Reasons Your In…”  Hardly compelling.

Rule #2: Put the Important Information in Places People Will Read It

Anyone who has taken a marketing communications workshop in the last 5 years understands there is a pattern to how people read emails.  As I recall, the order of information from top to bottom typically goes: 1) subject line, 2) email header and sub header, 3) linked text, 4) bold text, 5) anything in a bulleted list, and 6) P.S. line, if one exists.  If the information you want to communicate isn’t in one or more of these places, there is a good chance no one will see it.

Rule #3: Take Advantage of the From Line

To this day, I can’t figure out why so many companies refuse to use a From line that makes sense.  Looking through my Deleted Items as I write this post, I see dozens of non-descript From lines like “M L”, “Info,” “EXED” and “hub1″—abbreviations which are completely meaningless to me.  At a minimum, using something like your company name in the From line will spare you from having to use it in the Subject Line, saving dozens of characters that can be allocated to an actual marketing message.

Rule #4: Scale Back Your Message Frequency

The act of someone joining your marketing list does NOT give you permission to pound their email boxes into submission.  With Direct Email there is a ‘noise threshold’ you MUST obey to prevent opt-outs—one email per three weeks for B2B, and one email per week for B2C.  When it comes to message frequency, less is definitely more.  Unfortunately, many of the people I follow on Twitter have a difficult time grasping this concept as well.  In the past week I have stopped following over 300 companies, because they believe posting four Tweets at a time—at a rate of six times per day—is an intelligent way to drive traffic back to their websites.  Here’s a tip: if you send me 24 messages per day, I won’t read any of them.  Then I’ll block you.

Rule #5: Segment Your List

If all goes well, soon you will be in possession of a 20,000 piece, opt-in email list of people who actually WANT to hear from your company on a regular basis.  But when you are, the next challenge—demographic segmentation—will be even more difficult than actually building the list.  In a perfect world, every person on your list will have the same needs and interests.  But most of us aren’t this lucky.  When your list becomes larger in size, start the segmentation process by sending subscribers a quick survey about the types of information they are interested in, giving them a small list of options to choose from.  When it is time to get even more sophisticated, dig deeper into your followers’ backgrounds.  The key to good demographics is to customize them based on your business model and what you are trying to accomplish—not to use the same job function, title, age, and gender classifications every other company in the world uses.

Comments? Questions? Please feel free to post a comment—and don’t forget to include a link back to your website (backlinks are SEO gold, people).

Otherwise a Retweet (using the button at the beginning of the article), Stumble or Digg (below) would be very much appreciated!

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But the good news is, there are plenty of things small companies can do to make a positive impact on both search engine rankings and organic search engine traffic.  And the best part of all is, most of these things are both easy to accomplish and absolutely free.

This posting is Part III in a multi-part series (I’m estimating 4 parts total) on Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites.  In each posting I will cover 3 to 4 SEO tips that small companies can implement on their own and with very few resources.  Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part I covered the concepts of Using Keyword Themes to Create Web Content, Utilizing Text-Based Navigation Elements, and Maximizing Your Title Tags.  Part II of this series covered Minimizing the Use of Flash and Graphics, Using Meta Description Tags, and Submitting a Search Engine Sitemap.  In Part III I will discuss topics related to Blogging, Linkbacks, and Social Networking.

SEO Tip #7: Start a Blog

Back in January I posted a very well-received article on the importance of blogs for small company web traffic.  This post basically stated that making a site-relevant blog entry every three or four days will eventually make your small company website rich with content and keywords, which is something search engines love.  The post also discussed using a blog as an ‘editorial column’ to say things about your products and competitors that might not otherwise be well-received on your main site.  At the risk of repeating the entire article, I will simply redirect you to it: The Importance of Blogs for Small Company Web Traffic.

SEO Tip #8: Find Sites that Will Link Back to You

If Search Engine Optimization were a quest for religious artifacts, getting websites to link back to yours is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail.  Regardless of how much content you provide or how great your website looks, search engine rankings will be less than disappointing until other websites start linking back to you.  Developers at Google, MSN and YaHoo understand a high ranking website should have lots of outbound AND inbound channels.  Is a cell phone list of 1,000 friends REALLY any good if none of them will call you back?  Of course not.  And neither is a website lacking inbound links.

So how do you fix this problem?  Every industry has at least one directory to get listed in, and one industry portal that will take an article or press release.  Also, you might consider offering a discount on your product or service to a demographic sub-group (moms, Java developers, construction workers, cycling enthusiasts, etc.) and find some related websites to post your offer for free.  And finally, if your site has a blog, you need to start submitting it to blog directories TODAY—here is comprehensive list of blog directories published by TopRankBlog.com.  Take it from someone who has walked in your shoes: the first linkbacks will be the hardest ones to get.  But if you work hard and get creative, good things will happen.

SEO Tip #9: Form a Business-Related Social Networking Group

One of the most common social networking mistakes I see is when otherwise intelligent people try to use their social networking accounts (FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) to promote a business.  Here’s a tip: unless your 10-year old daughter is selling Girl Scout Cookies, friends and relatives do NOT want to buy things from you.  As an alternative to alienating the people who love you, try setting up a separate group related to your business.  If you own a bike shop, start a group for local cycling enthusiasts.  If you operate a mail-order wine store, start a group for fans of rare vintages.  There is no small business model in the world that can support itself selling exclusively to friends and relatives of the owner.  Take a chance, and start a group that doesn’t include them.

If you liked this article, please feel free to throw a social bookmark our way—a Digg, Stumble or Retweet would be very much appreciated.  Otherwise, if social bookmarking isn’t your thing, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would make us happy as well.  Thank you!

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Below are six (6) dirty negotiation tactics my small company was recently forced to endure when attempting to sell a package of services to the Walmart corporate offices in Bentonville, Arkansas.  I feel obligated to tell you in advance that this deal eventually fell through, but only after my company refused to deliver our services for the 70% discount Walmart was demanding.  If you work for a small company, and you have an opportunity to either sell something to Walmart Corporate or get your product on the shelf in a Walmart store, I sincerely hope you can turn my experience into something a bit more positive.

Walmart Negotiation Tactic #1: Gain Your Trust

In most situations, your first contact at Walmart will be someone on the business side: a director, a mid-level department head, a product manager, or someone acting in a similar capacity.  This person will be friendly, open-minded, and presumably an advocate for your company’s best interests.  But make no mistake—much like the guy in the Mickey Mouse costume in the lobby of a Disneyland hotel, this person is part of the show which is about to unfold.

Walmart Negotiation Tactic #2: Send in the Muscle

At some point, the business person mentioned above will ask you for your ‘best price,’ which you will happily turn over.  He or she will then tell you the price looks very good, and lead you to believe (without actually lying to you) the deal is almost done.  The final hurdle, as your contact will explain, is for you to work out a few minor details with the Walmart Purchasing Department.  What your contact will fail to mention, however, is that Walmart Purchasing people are known for two very special talents: intimidation, and making grown men and women cry.

Walmart Negotiation Tactic #3: Use ‘Research’ to Justify a Lower Price

If you thought your company’s contract with Walmart was as good as signed, you are about to learn a hard lesson in the art of Walmart-style vendor-beating.  Your assigned Purchasing contact will not only attempt to slash the already negotiated price in half, but will claim he or she is in possession of actual market research that indicates your price is out of line with the current market.  Research, of course, they will not offer to share with you.

Walmart Negotiation Tactic #4: Imply That a Better Discount Will Benefit Your Company in the Long Run

I can’t say for certain that Tactic #3 and Tactic #4 appear in a specific order, but rest assured they will both be used.  And there is an important distinction that must be made here: a Walmart Purchasing person will not offer your company more business in exchange for a better discount.  They will LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE offering a discount is in your company’s long-term best interest.  At this point in the negotiation process it is critical that you as a small company ask three very important questions:

1. Will a lower price guarantee me a larger initial sale?
2. Will a lower price guarantee me additional future business with Walmart?
3. If I give you this lower price, will I be able to avoid negotiating with you next time?

The response to each of these questions, assuming you don’t hear an outright “no,” will likely be stunned silence.  Either way, you now know exactly what kind of ‘deal’ you’re getting—a one-off committment with no guarantees of future business, and the prospect of having to endure this all over again next time Walmart comes calling. 

Walmart Negotiation Tactic #5: Purchaser Escalation

Those of you who have ever tried to cancel a cell phone plan know exactly how this part of the game is played.  When you call your current cell provider to discontinue service, the representative will always transfer you to a special ‘department’ designed to process cancellations.  Of course, this ‘department’ is full of sales people who get paid to make sure you DON’T cancel your service.  The Purchasing system at Walmart is no different.  If the entry-level Purchaser can’t bring your price down, your case will be transferred to someone much more direct, aggressive, experienced, and impatient.

Dirty Negotiation Tactic #6: Branching Up

‘Branching Up’ is an unofficial term I will use to describe how Walmart works its way up your company org chart when they don’t get the price they demand.  Walmart Purchasing people have no problem going over the heads of those who are standing between them and a better discount.  In my particular case the Purchasing person attempted to jump from our Sales Department to the Founder and CEO of the company, with the intent (presumably) of casting the sales person in a negative light.  Our sales person was given no warning or other indication this was part of the Purchasing process, and no explanation as to why this was done once she found out about it.

All of what is presented above sounds rotten, icky and unethical . . . because it is.  But at the same time, I should have expected it from a company who has been sued by 1.6 million women for sexual discrimination AND by nearly 87,000 employees in 40 U.S. states for cheating them out of overtime pay.  Compared to these offenses, the manner in which Walmart’s Purchasing Department negotiates is literally child’s play.  As a result of my experience, I vow to never make a purchase from Walmart as long as I live.  Neither will my kids, my extended family, or my friends if I can figure out a way to stop them.  And many years from now, when my business skills have left me and a job at a Walmart store is the only thing preventing me from being homeless, I will sleep on the street in a cardboard box—with a smile on my face.

Disagree with this take?  Wish to defend Walmart?  Reply to this post.  Otherwise, feel free to throw a social bookmark our way (Retweets, Stumbles and Diggs are good ones) or pay a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors.  Thank you for stopping by!

Other Articles by This Author:

• 6 Blogging Lessons I Learned the Hard Way
• 6 Reasons to Stop Using Direct Mail
• Strategic Self-Promotion: 8 Rules for Marketing Yourself Internally at Your Company
• New Rules for Direct Email Marketing
• Small Company Survey: 5 Signs of a Healthy Organization

This past week I sat down with three members of the marketing team to review our Pay-per-Click stats.  Our PPC approach has always been pretty straightforward—for the past few years we have been running eight different PPC ad sets per month, for eight different products.  The budget for each ad set is $500 per month, for a total monthly Pay-per-Click spend of $4,000 (8 PPC ad sets x $500 per month = $4,000).  Although we have always been able to monitor both Clicks and Spend, at the beginning of 2009 we added the ability to track actual purchases (Revenue) made from PPC ads.  This was our first meeting since revenue tracking was made available, and prior to the meeting we had no reason to believe our Pay-per-Click ads weren’t working.  Following is a summary of our findings for Q1:

• One ad set was running at break even ($1,400 in revenue from $1,500 spent); and
• Combined revenue for the other seven ad sets was approximately $400 TOTAL.

To put it another way, as a company in Q1 we wasted just over $10,000 on Pay-per-Click ads that weren’t resulting in sales.  At this point, the decision was simple: we left the one PPC ad in place (the one that was breaking even) and redirected the remaining $3,500 per month into other marketing efforts.

After months of analyzing and researching this issue—along with the painful and expensive lesson outlined above—I am more confident than ever that Pay-per-Click advertising is simply not a good idea for small companies.  Not only is it mandatory to have the technology and the know-how to measure each dollar of revenue generated (not an easy task for a small company), but as I mentioned in my November post, Pay-per-Click is not a good value.  The fact is, the entire pricing model is based on competitive bidding, which means PPC is the one marketing method where companies can be absolutely guaranteed to pay market value for each and every click.  And once you factor in competitors, tire kickers, college kids working on research papers and people who click on things because they have nothing else to do, companies actually pay slightly LESS than market value for PPC traffic.  Small companies need to spend their time looking for opportunities to generate the most traffic at the LEAST cost, not market rates.

And finally, if the information above doesn’t convince you that Pay-per-Click dollars are wasted dollars, check this out: it’s a Heatmap of the Google Home Page from EyeTools.net.  Note the “F-shaped” hot zone at the top left-hand corner.  Unless you’re willing to pay a premium to have your PPC ads show up above the first search listing (the hottest zone on the Google Home Page) there is a good chance most people aren’t actually seeing them.  Which means any ‘branding’ benefit you might be getting from having Pay-per-Click ads displayed in the sidebar are probably fictional as well.

Like this article?  Social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided).  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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Question #1: Does Your Company Have a Diverse Product Line?

Most small companies get their start by offering a single product or service, and increasing the sales of that product or service over time.  Companies that have long-term success eventually branch out into related areas, while the rest stand pat and leave themselves exposed to things like climate changes, economic downturns, and attacks by aggressive competitors.  Why do bike shops sell skiing equipment, health clubs host their own triathlons, and Universities offer mini-MBAs for working adults?  Because if their primary business slows down, these organizations will have a revenue stream to fall back on.  Do you have a backup plan if demand for your company’s core product or service declines by 50% next year?

Question #2: Does Your Company Have a Diverse Customer Base?

Much like having a diverse product line, it is critical that small companies have a diverse customer base as well.  Are a significant portion of your company’s marketing dollars targeting the same customer demographic?  Healthy small companies market their products and services to a wide range of ages, races, income levels, job functions and geographic locations.  In the IT training area, I have seen first-hand the impact a change in demographics (a rapid influx of female customers into a traditionally male-dominated market) can have on an industry.  Companies who had previously ignored this demographic in their marketing are now years behind those who have been marketing directly to women since early in the decade. 

Question #3: Are Your Middle Managers Happy?

I am in the minority of business writers that believes employees leave small companies not because of things like ownership or benefits or pay.  Rather, I believe employees leave small companies because of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the company’s middle managers.  Middle managers are the rarely-noticed ‘go to’ people within the organization that can always be counted on to make something happen when a quick decision needs to be made.  And good middle managers know EVERYTHING about their organization—the inter-personal relationships among staff, the information back-channels, the political ramifications of executive decisions, and the job satisfaction level of every employee in the building.  If your middle managers are not happy with their jobs, it is likely that no one is.

Question #4: Does Your Company Have Low ‘Drama’ Levels?

Well-run small companies are conspicuously void of petty bitching and moaning—employee in-fighting, constant complaining to HR, minor power struggles and various other items that can only be classified as office ‘drama.’  Employees working in healthy small companies are always willing to jump across a departmental line to help out, and are given freedom by their managers to work outside the chain of command when the best interest of the organization is behind served.  If your managers spend more than 15 minutes per day putting out employee-related fires, something needs to change.

Question #5: Do Your Employees Have a High Company IQ?

Unlike their big company counterparts, successful executives at small companies understand one key principle: the more employees know about your company, the more successful your company will be.   As I discussed at length in a previous post titled Small Company Mistake #3: Not Building a Shared Corporate Vision, employees need to know not only what they are doing, but WHY they are doing it.  If small company executives make the best decisions when they can determine the impact of their decisions on the organization as a whole, why can’t this same philosophy be applied to Shipping or Customer Service or at the Reception Desk?  The most progressive and successful small companies are willing to share strategy, performance, and financial-related information with any employee who will listen.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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The post you are about to read will act as Part II in what will likely be a three-part series written specifically for budding authors.  In Part I of this series, 5 Reasons to Self-Publish Your Next Book, I covered the most compelling motivations to self-publish—some logistical, some financial, and some emotional.  In this posting I will cover the ins and outs of self-publishing, with the goal of demonstrating that self-publishing is not nearly as difficult or expensive as you might think.

With the above in mind, it is time to review the costs, difficulty and importance of four key steps in the self-publishing process: 1) Choosing a Name, 2) Incorporating Your New Business, 3) Getting Your Book Ready for Market, and 4) Finding an Affordable Printer.

Step 1: Choosing a Name for Your Publishing Company

Choosing a name for your new publishing company is by far the most fun and least expensive step in the process.  And the best part is, it’s your publishing company—so you can choose whatever name you want . . . almost.  Before you settle on a name, spend a few hours searching the web to make sure your favorites aren’t already taken by another publisher.  Also, for marketing purposes be sure to choose something that lends itself to an available URL, and that sounds good when you add “Publishing” or “Publications” to the end of it.  Both Network Solutions and GoDaddy will allow you to check URL availability for free.

Cost: $0
Difficulty: Easy
Importance: Mandatory 

Step #2: Incorporating Your New Business

If your goal is to self-publish Grandma’s favorite recipes for the next reunion, you may skip to Step 3.  But if your future plans include multiple books, online sales, and investments in assets like computers and software, you should STRONGLY consider incorporating.  For a few hundred dollars or less, websites like LegalZoom can help you set up a Subchapter-S corporation, usually in less than a month. Running your publishing company as a corporation has a number of benefits, not the least of which are the ability to write off business expenses against income from your real job, and protection of your personal assets in certain situations if you get sued.

Cost: $139 to $369 + State Fees
Difficulty: Medium
Importance: Optional (but Recommended) 

Step #3: Getting Your Book Ready for Market

There are two absolutely universal rules in the publising world:

• Books with ugly covers don’t sell; and
• No writer should be his or her own proofreader.

With these two things in mind, finding qualified and inexpensive help with these two tasks—cover design and proofreading—will be critical to your long-term success.  Not surprisingly, most authors lean heavily on their personal networks in these cases.  If you recently spent an entire weekend helping a starving artist or English major move out of an apartment, now is the time to cash in your favor.  Otherwise, if you have no applicable friends you can contact the Graphic Design and English instructors at the local community college for a student recommendation.  Not only will a student’s rate be significantly lower than hiring an experienced professional, but you might be able to get your project done for free as part of a class project, or as a resume-builder for a student looking to break into publishing.

Cost: $0 to $500 Each
Difficulty: Medium
Importance: Mandatory

Step #4: Finding an Affordable Printer

Finding someone who can print your book at a reasonable price is not as improbable as it sounds.  The fact is, there are companies out there who do nothing but print short runs of books for independent authors.  With just 30 minutes of work, I was able to find several that print books for less than $5 apiece, with very low setup fees.  One of these companies is called Keystone Digital Press, and offers an “Instant Price Quote” service where you can enter the specs of your book into an online calculator.  When I entered what I consider to be the specifications of a standard book (200 pages, 5.5″ x  8.5″, 60# paper, perfect binding, full-color cover) the system shot me a price of $4.20 per book for 100 copies.  Understanding these printers don’t offer a ton of flexibility—only 6 book sizes, 3 bindings and 2 paper weights to choose from—their prices leave you plenty of room to make money when you actually sell a book.  And although the 100-book minimums might seem intimidating at first, keep one thing in mind: if you don’t believe in your book enough to print 100 copies, you shouldn’t be doing this anyway.

Cost: About $500 for 100 Printed Copies
Difficulty: Medium
Importance: Mandatory

This wraps up Part II in my self-publishing series for aspiring authors.  If you would like to be notified when the next post in this series becomes available, be sure to either Join my RSS Feed or bookmark this page and check back often.  Also, if this post was truly helpful to you, I would love to write more about this topic—so please post feedback if you would like more content in this area.  Or, a social bookmark (Stumble, Digg or Retweet) would be great as well!

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5 Reasons to Self-Publish Your Next Book will act as Part I in what will likely be a three-part series written specifically for budding authors.  In Part II of this series I will cover exactly HOW to self-publish, and in Part III I will dive into what many consider to be the Holy Grail of the self-publishing world—marketing your own book.

With the above in mind, here are 5 reasons you should avoid traditional channels and self-publish your upcoming best-seller:

Reason #1: Self-Publishing is Not Nearly as Difficult As You Think.  If you break the process of creating a book down into smaller pieces, publishing really only involves four things: 1) writing, 2) editing, 3) designing a cover, and 4) printing.  Assuming you can handle the first one, good freelance editors and cover designers can be found online, or through a local Liberal Arts school, or even among your group of friends.  In terms of printing, every major metro area is home to at least a half-dozen shops that specialize in printing short runs of self-published books for a very reasonable price—often around $4 per copy.

Reason #2: Publishing Companies Don’t Actually Do Anything.  Any new author who signs a deal with a large publisher eventually comes to the same conclusion: “My publisher did nothing for me.”  Sure, they may have helped with a cover design and donated a few hours of editorial time, but what should you realistically expect to receive in exchange for giving up 90% of your money and 100% of your intellectual property?  Unfortunately, very little.  In most cases, all of the responsibility for marketing and promoting your book (the part you REALLY need help with) will fall squarely on your shoulders. Unless, of course, you consider being added to an already over-crowded catalog as “marketing.”

Reason #3: You Will Make More Money.  The standard royalty arrangement most publishers offer their first-time authors is between $.75 and $3.00 per copy sold, depending upon the type of book—fiction writers getting the low end of the scale, and authors of high-priced technical guides cashing in at the higher end.  But when you self-publish, your royalty arrangement is much more attractive.  In fact, it can be expressed in this easy-to-understand formula:

What You Put in Your Pocket = Sale Price – Printing Costs

In the Fiction world this formula can easily equal $5 per copy (assuming a $9 sale price and $4 to print), but where it really begins to pay big dividends is in non-fiction, where technical guides and manuals can sell for between $30 and $50 each.  Even the heaviest-hitting authors who work with publishers don’t clear $25 to $45 per book.  But hundreds of self-publishers are doing just that . . . and more.

Reason #4: You Will Spend Less Money.  After investing thousands of hours (or possibly your entire life) writing and editing a book, do you really want to spend your own money traveling to trade shows and speaking events to promote it?  This is exactly what a publisher will ask you to do . . . if they even care enough to tell you.  But if you self-publish, dozens of free or low cost marketing opportunities become available to you—opportunities we will talk more about later in this series.  And when your marketing efforts actually work and you start selling books, you won’t be forced to buy them back from the publisher first.  You can simply pull a few more out of the box in your garage.

Reason #5: A Publisher Will Never Care As Much As You Do.  When it gets right down to it, the number one complaint I hear from people who work with a publisher is ”They just don’t care about my book.”  But why should they?  These firms represent hundreds of titles, and only start to ‘care’ when an author demonstrates the ability to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.  If your book represents your life’s work, wouldn’t you rather have a publisher who is passionate about your book and has a vested interest in its success? Publishing on your own is almost always the better choice.

If you would like to be notified when the next post in this series becomes available, be sure to either Join my RSS Feed or bookmark this page and check back often.  Also, if this post was truly helpful to you, I would love to write more about this topic—so please post feedback if you would like more content in this area.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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As I scan through the stacks of marked up resumes in the drawer to my left, I estimate that over the last five years I have interviewed at least 90 people, for positions ranging from Administrative Assistant to Director/VP.  14 of these people were eventually hired, and 13 of them still work with me today.  As a self-taught Human Resources amateur, my instincts tell me this is a pretty good track record.  With this in mind, what I would like to do today is use my experience behind the interview desk to help those of you who are now sitting in front of it.

Below are three easy to follow strategies for finding—and getting—a job at a small company.  Will these tips work for you?  Maybe.  But whether or not they do, if you have an opportunity to actually try them in a real-life situation, please reply to this post and tell us what happened.

Tip #1: Talk to Your Friends Who Work at Small Companies.  When people are looking for a new job, they almost always contact their friends at large companies first.  The theory, of course, is that larger companies by sheer numbers have more ‘opportunities’ available.  But the reality is, while most of the Fortune 1000 are laying off people in previously unheard of numbers (check out LayoffBlog.com and LayoffTracker for more information) many of their smaller and more conservatively-run counterparts are either holding steady or growing.  And even if your friend’s small company is not ready to hire full-timers just yet, smaller firms are significant users of contractors and temporary employees.  Working as a part-timer until the economy turns around might not be your dream situation, but a reasonable contract rate like $25 an hour—even for half-time—is more than you will make collecting unemployment in most states.

Tip #2: ’Expand’ the Items on Your Resume.  If you want to successfully enter the small company world using a large company resume, keep one thing in mind: small company hiring managers are NOT looking for specialists.  Catching the eye of a small company hiring manager requires a resume that makes you look flexible, adaptable, and able to handle a wide variety of job functions.  If you’ve spent the last five years at a large company stuck in the same role, do your best to break that role down into as many smaller parts as you can on your resume.  Also, be sure to highlight small company ‘hot button’ experiences in your background like managing multiple priorities, dealing with two or more bosses, participating in special projects, managing teams and vendors, and measuring results.

Tip #3: Don’t Give Corporate Answers in the Interview.  When you do end up getting to the interview stage at a small company, PLEASE take this one piece of advice: tell it like it is.  Consciously fight against your years of training in politics and neutralism (remember . . . you have a backbone) and choose a side when the interviewer challenges you on a specific issue or presses you during a line of questioning.  Also, avoid dropping big company buzzwords like “value proposition,” “thought leader,” “touch points” and “leverage”—especially if you’re interviewing for a management spot.  Small companies are keenly aware of the difference between managers who just manage, and managers who actually DO things.  Bringing the interview down to a real-world kind of level will help prove that you can, and are willing to, roll up your sleeves and get some real work done.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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At the small company I currently work for, we have a competitor I will call Randy.  Randy is Founder and CEO of the second-most recognized firm in our market space (ours being first) and has spent millions of dollars over the last few years marketing directly against my company; attacking everything from our product quality to our pricing strategy to our CEO directly.  The focus of the industry we are fighting over is a technical manual that spawns hundreds of ancillary products—including software, audio books, college courses, online learning classes, and other related items in dozens of countries and dozens of languages.  Randy and the CEO of my company both publish their own version of this technical manual, and between our two companies we possess well over 95% market share.  At the present time both books are in the process of being completely rewritten, and are scheduled for much-anticipated worldwide releases during the first week of April.

On the advice of a friend, last night I spent some time setting up my first Twitter account.  After choosing a theme for my Twitter landing page and subscribing to a few news feeds, I spent the next few minutes looking for other people I knew—relatives first, then friends, then business contacts.  Although I was disappointed at the number of friends and relatives I was able to find (this is supposed to be a social networking site, after all) none of this mattered when I discovered my arch-nemesis Randy had a Twitter page.  And it was unprotected.

In just a few short minutes, the wealth of competitive information I was able to gather from Randy’s 30 or so ’Tweets’ was nothing short of astounding.  For starters, I know my recent decision to increase the marketing focus in his home city is working, because he used his Twitter account to complain about several lost local customers.  I also know what cities and organizations Randy is visting to promote his book release, and which industry experts helped him write it (I always suspected he wasn’t working alone).  But most importantly of all, I know that although Amazon.com says his new book will be released during the first week of April, Randy will never meet his deadline . . . because as of yesterday, he was still writing it.  Actually, he was technically still ‘editing’ it—which means the best he can hope to achieve on a release date is the week of April 20th.

With this single piece of knowledge, I now have a decision to make.  I can either time the announcement of my company’s book for a couple of days before Randy’s simply to be first to market (which I know would bruise his immense ego), or I can time the release of our book for the day after his, and make sure Randy and his company get less than their day in the sun.  Thank you, Twitter, for giving me choices I can work with.  After being a member of Twitter for less than 30 minutes, I was able to double (if not triple) my knowledge of my closest competitor.  And more importantly, I really didn’t work that hard for it.  Imagine what Randy must be revealing on his Facebook page . . .

With social networking sites, there is an implied barrier of confidentiality that really doesn’t exist.  In about half an hour, I was able to assemble a profile on the CEO of my company’s closest competitor.  And because I’ve been doing small company strategy for more than a decade and a half, I know how to use this information to either make money for my company, or simply push Randy’s buttons when I get bored.  If you are an owner, manager or executive at a small company in a competitive industry, you need to understand something: competitors are always watching what you do. If the social networking bug happens to bite you, be smart about what you post online—stick to the personal stuff, and lock your profile.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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Small company success is more about avoiding stupid ideas than it is about coming up with great ones.

So what are these mistakes?  Realistically there are dozens that could make any list of Top 5 (feel free to post your suggestions), but the ones I have seen made most often are outlined below.

Ownership Mistake #1: Pursuing Business Opportunities Outside of Your Company’s Core Competency

Over the last three months I have seen a coffee shop go into the retail art business, a graphic design firm try to upsell me SEO services, and a men’s haircut place promote $10 tickets to an onsite wine tasting.  Although I can respect all three attempts at generating extra revenue in a bad economy, these soon-to-fail ideas all have one thing on common—they divert money, resources and employees from the company’s core businesses.  Running a small company is a difficult job, and it is not uncommon for ownership to temporarily forget why they went into business in the first place.  But as a business owner you MUST understand your mission and motivation, and work toward that and that ONLY.  From Harvard to DeVry, every authority on business agrees: small companies need to figure out what they’re good at, and do more of it.

Ownership Mistake #2: Betting Your Entire Business on One Client

Even in a strong economy, hundreds (if not thousands) of small company owners close their businesses every year because they ignored mom’s advice: don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  Most of these companies were originally formed in a similar manner: the founder works for a large company, leaves to start a related business, and is eventually hired by their former company as a contractor or supplier.  Over time the entrepreneur adds staff, systems, an office building and a benefit plan to handle all of their new business, and before you know it the owner is sitting on a $3 million per year enterprise . . . until the large company changes suppliers.

Over time, small company owners can get used to (read: SPOILED BY) revenue from one or two large clients, and ignore the risk involved with not actively seeking new ones.  Here’s a good rule of thumb: if losing your largest client would cause you to lay off more than 5% of your employees, you are too invested in one customer.

Ownership Mistake #3: Hiring Your Friends and Relatives

Over the last 17 years I have worked at companies with Owner-Child, Owner-Spouse, Owner-Sibling and Owner-Friend management teams.  None of these scenarios—and I truly mean NONE—have ever resulted in anything positive for the organization.  As I mention in one of my free downloadable tools, hiring friends or relatives can be a significant demotivator to the rest your employees; especially when they are brought in as management. And even when these types of employees are not brought in at a high level, the person who made the hire rarely has the objectivity to properly manage a friend or relative . . . or the foresight to allow someone else to do it.  And when personnel issues arise—and they absolutely will—the issues are seldom resolved. Instead, your employees are forced to suffer in silence, eventually leaving your company for less stressful work environments.

Ownership Mistake #4: Offering Less-than-Minimum Benefits

Most people who work for small companies understand the economics of the situation, and would never expect common ‘big company’ benefits like cell phone allowances, employee stock ownership plans, paid dependent life insurance, and 100% matching on 401(k) contributions.  At the same time, you can’t attract and keep employees by offering two weeks of paid vacation, eight holidays, no dental coverage, and a health plan with monthly premiums three times the national average.  There are a lot of great employees willing to work for lesser benefits than their friends at large companies.  But there is a ‘minimum level’ of benefits in every market and in every industry.  In most cases, a local area Salary and Benefits Survey (usually compiled by the State) can tell you what that minimum level is.

Ownership Mistake #5: Thinking You Can Do Everything

Since the early 1990s, every small company owner I have worked for (or with) has admitted to me they are a “horrible day-to-day manager.”  Yet with the exception of one—my current employer—each of them insisted on doing it anyway.  Being a successful company owner takes a great deal of self-awareness when it comes to what strengths you bring to the table, and what weaknesses need to be ‘coverd up’ by allowing someone else to do your work.  If you truly believe you are the best accountant, marketer, sales person and manager at your company, chances are you’re already making this mistake.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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At this particular online University, the Marketing Director for the College of Business and Public Administration would first choose an audience she wanted to market their Online MBA Program to—mid-level IT managers, for example—and contact the University’s outside marketing agency for help in formulating strategy.  The outside agency would perform a full-scale analysis of the IT management marketplace, and prepare a detailed report for the Marketing Director which included the following:

• A list of potential print advertising targets
• A list of websites and e-newsletters for web-based advertising
• Proposed market positioning and sample messaging
• A 3-page report of competitive activity within the channel
• A list of upcoming industry trade shows and speaking events, with suggested speaking topics for various University representatives
• Sample ad designs

In addition to the above, the report would typically included a comprehensive demographic profile of the mid-level IT manager, in which average income, roles and responsibilities, career paths, buying patterns and even personality traits were outlined in detail.  The Marketing Director spent a few hours reviewing the report, selected the pieces she liked (and which fit into the budget) and turned execution of the plan back over to the outside agency.  From there, the Marketing Director received regular updates on plan performance, as well as recommendations for changes and improvements.

With all of the above in mind, do you see any potential issues or long-term problems within the marketing department for this online University?  I sure hope you do.  In fact, I would guess those of you who have spent ANY time in a smaller company spotted the problem right away.  In a nutshell, the problem is that all of the specific knowledge related to the industry, the customer and the messaging resides with an external agency.  Or, to put it a bit less politically, the Director-level marketing people at this online University are nothing more than overpaid vendor managers who have the company’s strategy fed to them by an ad agency.

Aside: If you have time, check out the blog AntiAdvertisingAgency.com for some GREAT editorial against the use of Ad Agencies.

In the early stages of running a small company, owners and managers often find it easier and less expensive to utilize outside help than to develop skills internally.  And when you consider the financial and administrative commitment involved with adding full-time employees, the leveraging of contractors, vendors and agencies is almost always the correct decision.  But at some point every growing business must face the reality that being self-sufficient enables companies to be more flexible, more innovative, and less exposed to risk than their contractor-dependent counterparts.  This is not to say that small companies should do absolutely everything for themselves.  Even when companies are pulling in tens of millions of dollars per year, there are still certain functions better left to outside parties.  But this was a company with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales, and shareholders.  They should have known the following small company lesson:

You cannot grow a small company by leaving knowledge of your market, your processes and your strategy in the hands of contractors, vendors and consultants.

The point here is that all companies, even $100 million ones, can be too small to justify bringing certain functions in-house.  But functions directly relating to strategy—like messaging, lead generation and product development—must be brought in-house early in a  company’s growth, and retained under any circumstances.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!

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Note: Regarding the ‘arrogant’ comment . . . it is not uncommon for leading SEO firms to riddle their websites with statements like “Do not contact us unless you are ready to spend at least $25,000″ and “We only respond to SERIOUS inquiries from LARGE companies.”  I don’t think use of the word ‘arrogant’ is unfair in these cases.  For a great list of ways to recognize a bad SEO firm, check out Eric Enge’s blog posting “11 Ways to Recognize a Bad SEO Firm.”

But the good news is, there are plenty of things small companies can do to make a positive impact on both search engine rankings and organic search engine traffic.  And the best part of all is, most of these things are both easy to accomplish and absolutely free.

This posting is Part II in what will be a multi-part series (I’m estimating 4 parts total) on Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites.  In each of these postings I will cover 3 to 4 SEO tips—let’s call them ’secrets’—that small companies can implement on their own and with very few resources.  Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part I covered the concepts of Using Keyword Themes to Create Web Content, Utilizing Text-Based Navigation Elements, and Maximizing Your Title Tags.  Part II will cover three more areas: 1) Minimizing the Use of Flash and Graphics, 2) Using Meta Description Tags, and 3) Submitting a Search Engine Sitemap.

SEO Tip #4: Minimize the Use of Flash and Graphics

One of my favorite one-hit wonder marketing campaigns of all-time is Amp Energy Drink’s “Walk of Shame” commercial, which I first caught on SpikeTV in early 2008.  After seeing what turned out to be the one and only commercial in the series, I jumped on my computer and tried to learn more.  But no matter what search engine I used  or what keywords I entered, I was not successful in finding Amp’s official website for the campaign until I caught the commercial a second time and wrote down the URL.  And today, almost one year later, it is still nearly impossible to find a combination of search terms that will make this site come up on the first page of results.  Why?  Because none of the words on Amp’s website for this campaign can actually be indexed by a search engine.  Every word on this site is either part of a graphical image, or trapped inside a Flash Video file.

So, is the lesson here that the person who designed this site lost his or her job?  Possibly.  But the takeaway for you as a small company owner or manager is this: avoid the temptation to ‘hide’ searchable keywords and phrases within graphic images and super-slick flash applications.  Instead, use text elements (HTML) wherever possible, and do your best to accomplish the desired effects with intelligent font and color choices.  And if you’re planning on outsourcing your website design, lean toward working with an online marketing firm instead of a graphic design house.  A marketing firm will (hopefully) understand the search engine-related implications of over-designing your website.

SEO Tip #5: Use the Meta Description Tags

Here’s a question for you: after performing a search on Google or MSN and receiving a page of results, what is the main thing that would cause you to NOT click on a listing?  Believe it or not, it probably isn’t the title—it’s the description.  Or in Website Designer terms, the Meta Description.  The Meta Description is an invisible tag ‘behind’ each of your website pages that determines how a search engine will describe your site to a searcher.  If you go to Google right now and type “Home Depot website” into the search field, the description of Home Depot’s listing within the general search results (not the paid results) is “World’s largest home improvement retailer, operating more than 1500 stores across North America.”  Did this simply show up by accident? Of course not.  Someone in the Marketing Department at The Home Depot entered the description into an invisible Meta Description tag.

Referring to the example above, why did The Home Depot choose to carefully write this description and include it as a tag on their home page?  Because if a website page does not have a defined description, the search engine will write one for it—and do a poor job in the process.  Have you ever noticed how many website descriptions are displayed by search engines as chopped up phrases like “Home   About Us   Contact Us   Terms of Use   Mailing List“?  In these cases, Google or MSN simply grabbed the text from a navigation element and used it as the web site’s description.  If you don’t want a Google or MSN robot making marketing decisions for your company, you have no choice but to use the Meta Description tag for every page on your website.

SEO Tip #6: Submit a Search Engine Sitemap

Instead of letting Google and MSN try to crawl your site on their own, wouldn’t it be great if you could tell their indexing robots where to look AND what to look at?  The good news is, you CAN do this—by submitting a Sitemap.  A Sitemap is essentially a map in XML format that is uploaded to your site’s root directory, and tells indexing robots a) which pages to look at when they visit, b) how often these pages change, and c) what the relative priority is for each page on your website.  There are dozens of websites that will help you create this sitemap for free, but my personal favorite for beginners is XML-Sitemaps.com.   As long as your website is under 500 pages, this site will create your sitemap free of charge, and there is no limit to how many times you can use it.  For those of you using WordPress as both a blog and a main website, there are also a number of free sitemap plug ins you can download from The WordPress Plugin Directory.

And just so you know, there are a few caveats to submitting a sitemap.  Most experts agree that sitemaps should be submitted no more than one time per month, and only if your site has actually changed (new pages, additional blog postings, URL name changes, etc.).  Also, file transfer access to your web site’s root directory is required.  If you need additional help or instruction on gaining access to your website’s root directory, feel free to reply to this post.

Also, social bookmarks are blogger currency, so please Retweet, Digg or Stumble (handy buttons provided) if you liked this story.  Otherwise, a quick visit to one of our Google ad sponsors would be greatly appreciated as well.  Thank you!