Looking back on this past year as a manager in a small  company, I see a mix of both good and bad.  Sure, my company was one of the few in its industry to NOT lose ground over the last 12 months (as my buddy Mike says, ”Flat is the new hypergrowth—right?”), but my performance, my decision-making and my execution were definitely far from perfect.

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!

Related Articles You Might Enjoy:

• 5 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Small Company Operation
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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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“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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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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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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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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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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Within one week of my first day, both owners stopped by my office to explain in detail their long-term visions for the company.  As part of the company’s employee orientation all  new hires were required to attended an off site lunch with the CEO, and spend an hour one-on-one with each of the company’s five Vice Presidents during their first month of employment—again to discuss company vision.  Monthly all-employee meetings were a unique combination of pep rally and stand up comedy show, where it was not uncommon to cheer small line items in the company Income Statement and mock a competitor’s recent advertising campaign in the same 10-minute time period.  And at every major financial milestone, the company would host some sort of organization-wide event to celebrate.  The goal of the company was simple, and everyone knew what it was: grow the revenues enough to go public.

As a result of this openness and shared vision, employees of the company were extremely dedicated and fiercely loyal.  People in many departments were happily working 60 to 80 hours per week (I once spent 26 straight hours in the same chair).  Employees with families were traveling for weeks at a time without complaint, and nearly everyone on the payroll had willingly forgone at least two annual salary increases in the name of keeping expenses to a minimum.  This dedication and loyalty on behalf of the employees resulted in an exponential growth period, where over the course of about six years, and in the middle of the dot com bust, the company miraculously grew from a $10 million annual business to almost $50 million.  Before the company had a chance to even think about filing its IPO paperwork with the SEC, however, a member of the Fortune 500 came along and scooped up the company for just under $100 million.  And to the delight of employees, all stock options vested immediately.

To its credit, once the acquisition was final the Fortune 500 firm left the smaller company’s business model and management structure completely in tact.  But instead of retaining the open culture, the larger company worked diligently to assimilate the 200+ new employees.  Monthly pep rallies were replaced with mandatory company meetings, which were always kicked off with a viewing of a generic corporate video.  Sharing of the financial statements during meetings was no longer allowed, and neither was laughing.  On-site owners were replaced with slow moving middle managers wearing matching corporate sweaters, and all new hire training was delivered online.  Not surprisingly, within one year of the acquisition many of the most dedicated and valuable employees left for other opportunities.  And four years after purchasing the small company, the Fortune 500 firm sold off my former employer for what was rumored to be a $50 million loss.

I still keep in touch with a number of co-workers from that company, and the consensus is the problem was a culture issue.  I happen to agree, but I believe there was a bit more to it.  Although the additional rules, processes and red tape created some stress for many of us, the Fortune 500 firm overlooked the fact that for 10+ years, employees had been working toward a shared goal (to go public) and desperately wanted the company to achieve it.  When that goal was no longer an option, no replacement vision was put in place, and it was only a matter of time before the whole thing fell apart at the seams.

Not creating a shared vision among employees is one of the most common mistakes small companies make . . . and based on the above, one that larger firms are capable of making as well.  Take a hard look around your company: is everyone in the building working toward the same goal?  And is that goal something other than “collecting a paycheck?”  The most progressive and successful small businesses understand they can make significantly more money when employees WANT them to make more money.  And building a shared vision is the best way to ensure both.

In future posts I will discuss various tools small companies use to build a shared vision—including stock options, employee ownership plans, structured profit sharing, discretionary bonuses, and several others.

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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