How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business

Advice for small businesses on using social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and how to integrate these tools into the marketing and recruiting efforts of your company.

By J.J. McCorvey | Inc. Magazine

Consider this: It wasn’t until 1997 that the Internet reached 50 million users in the United States. Facebook gained over 100 million users in the U.S. from January 2009 to January 2010, marking a 145 percent growth rate within one year, according to research by digital marketing agency iStrategy Labs. If you’re a business owner that hasn’t embraced social media networking as a major component of your success strategy, it’s due time to hop onboard.

“When you’ve got 300 million people on Facebook, that’s a huge business watering hole,” says Lon Safko, social media expert and co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, of the site’s global reach. “The profile is like an index to your company.”

While Facebook has become the most popular social media site, there are plenty of others for your company to explore. LinkedIn, for example, houses 55 million professionals seeking jobs, employees, or basic business or networking opportunities. MySpace, which allows users to tinker with music, themes, and HTML code, is targeted toward youth and teens. All of these sites have one primary thing in common: the profile.

The user profile is generally what distinguishes social networking sites from other social media platforms. It helps set the stage for building relationships with people who share the same interests, activities, or personal contacts, as opposed to primarily disseminating or digesting information feeds. This also means social networks enable companies to invite audiences to get to know its brand in a way that traditional forms of marketing or advertising can’t.

But what, exactly, are the methods that businesses should use to effectively leverage the burgeoning userbase of these sites as a tool to grow their companies? The following pages will detail what to do – and what not to do – in order to maintain a viable presence in the realm of social networking.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Developing a Social Networking
Strategy

Before opening an account and becoming active, it’s important to consider what each site offers and how you can benefit from their resources. “Take some time and really analyze what your existing social media strategy is,” says Safko. “Figure out which tools are best for your demographic.” Without a fully developed plan for your social networking activity, you could end up meandering throughout the sites and wasting a lot of time.

Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?

2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?

3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you’ll need to narrow your focus.

Got those answered? Good. Now, consider these questions:
1. Which sites do I want to take on? If you have enough staffing power to handle multiple social networking sites, that’s great. If not, it’s important to focus on one or two, or you could spread yourself too thin and fall victim to the “gaping void” perception, where you end up going days without activity. Your followers will notice.

2. Who’s going to manage my page? Would your social networking activity fall under a current employee’s responsibilities, or do you need to bring on new talent? If you ever find yourself without the staffing resources to manage your page, don’t stick your head in the sand, says Safko. “Find some interns,” he advises. “In most cases, they’ll do it for free.”

3. Who has access to my page? What type of trust level do you have established at your company? Will all of your employees have access to the social network account, or a select few? Take the time to assess the skills and character of those who can log into your page, or you may run into unsavory situations down the road – especially when dealing with former workers.

4. Who’s going to be the personality of my page? Does your company already have a public representative that usually handles speeches, press, etc.? It may be beneficial to rein in that person as the voice of your social networking site. “People buy from other people, not from other companies,” says Safko. “In order to solidify trust, pick someone to represent your brand.”

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Choosing Your Site

After you’ve answered those questions, you can choose which social networking site, or sites, would best fulfill the requirements of your strategy. Though many of the sites are similar in nature, they can all be categorized by the different purposes they serve. These are the basic types of social networking sites:

“Free for all” social sites: Some sites that fall under this category are Facebook, MySpace, Ning, and Friendster. Each of these sites primarily serve as a nexus of friends and associates who want to socialize. Ning, for example, has become popular for connecting classmates and helping to set up reunions. The profiles are usually personable, inviting, and can be customized with add-ons and apps.

Professional sites: Examples of these include LinkedIn, FastPitch, and Plaxo. The professional site can be utilized as an online professional contact database, or “rolodex,” but it’s also where people go to update employment information about themselves.

3. Industry-specific sites: These sites allow you to connect to people who are in your industry. I-Meet, for example, is specifically geared toward event planners, while ResearchGATE is a community for researchers in the science or technology field. Industry sites help you to narrow your search when looking for services, or people with skills in certain fields. You may even want a particular department of your company, such as IT or advertising, to open an account on one of these sites.

Dig Deeper: Embracing Social Networking in IT

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Setting Up Your Profile

Your profile is the online representation of your brand and company, so it’s important to know what to add and what to avoid. Here are a few tips to be mindful of as you create your profile:
1. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. Facebook profiles, for example, allow you to include things like hobbies, favorite music, etc. Including tidbits like these can make your page warmer and more personable. “Some personal information is valuable, because it may create a bond with a customer,” says Safko.

2. But not too personal. Don’t be the “TMI” poster boy or girl, (i.e. “The wife and I are on our way to have dinner – kids are with the grandparents”). Create another page that’s just yours, sans company activity.

3. Share photos and videos. Adding multimedia to your page gives flair, and offers customers an exclusive look inside your company. LinkedIn even has an add-on that allows you to post presentations and slideshows.

4. But no office party snapshots. Though the atmosphere of Facebook is still relatively laid back, you want to maintain the perception that you’re serious about your product and customers. Pictures involving Santa hats and alcohol probably shouldn’t be in your albums.

5. Set privacy settings. On most of these sites, you can control what people see on your profile, such as pictures and blog posts, and you can even limit what other people post. Depending on the nature of your company, you should consider these restrictions. Are there any embarrassing pictures of you floating around that you might not want linked to your page?

6. But don’t be a blank slate. Imagine coming across the profile of one your favorite brands, and all that’s there is a picture and headquarters location. A little disheartening, right? If and when you do enact some privacy settings, try to keep the page lively.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Marketing

Marketing through social networks isn’t as much about selling your product, as it is about engaging your followers. “A lot of people have started Facebook fan pages with no clue to how it can benefit them,” says Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing agency based in Cary, North Carolina. “You have to think above your product.” The goal of the community-based environment of social networking sites is to provide a platform for an open, honest conversation.

The companies that are most successful at converting followers into dollars are those who interact most with the users and frequently post content related to their brand. Facebook’s Fan Page is probably the best example of how you should be marketing you company through social networking sites. The page acts as an upgraded user profile for brands, companies, and organizations to be as involved as the users, and has plenty of tools to help you do so. As users become “fans” of your page, all of your activity appears in their News Feed each time they log on. There’s also a useful feature called the Insights tool, which allows you to analyze page views, the demographics of your fans, and the number of people who view (or stop viewing) your News Feed posts.

Outdoor Technology, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of clothing and gear for skiers and snowboarders, initially sold merchandise directly to retailers. But after the company began actively using their Fan Page last September, revenue from e-commerce went from zero to $25,000 in three months, says CEO Caro Krissman. The page has now amassed over 11,000 fans. “We saw Facebook as sort of a sweet spot for where our target market is,” says Krissman. “With the ability to target users in such a focused way, we felt like there really wasn’t a better forum to go about [marketing online].”

‘Fan’ features your company should be using:

1. Comment on other users’ content or profile posts. By responding to what your followers post to your profile, you show them that you appreciate their interaction. If they know they have your attention, they’ll keep coming back.

2. Ask questions on your wall. Facebook users love to be heard. It can be surprising how many responses one question can elicit. “It starts to snowball,” says Safko. “What you’ll find is that the conversation will branch off and start another one.”

3. Posting links or threads. “One thing fan pages lets you do that Web pages don’t is encourage viral spread,” says Tobin. If you have any content that you want to circulate quickly, the fan page is the perfect tool.

4. Posting relevant events. By posting upcoming events your company may be part of or hosting, you can help drive more attendees to the function. And for those who can’t come, they get a glimpse at how active your business is within the community or industry.

Social Network Promotions
Remember, it’s called a social network, not a “business network.” Coming off as a pushy or shrewd salesperson peddling a product could scare away your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections. Remember to be genuine and personal.

Here are the things you should do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:

1. Make it benefit-based. Make the customer feel that they need to participate in the promotion. Is the product or feature available for a limited time? Are you offering exclusively to your followers on a particular network?

2. Talk about new or uncommon features. Even if you have a relatively popular product, there may be some things consumers don’t know about it. What are some new or different ways it can be used?

3. Include some discounts and savings. Offering discounts on products is usually a shoe-in to grab customers’ attention. Krissman, of Outdoor Technology, says he posts promotional codes that users can fill out on the company’s website and get up to 30 percent off a product. Not only does it drive more buyers to your product, but it also brings more followers to your page.

Here are the things you shouldn’t do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:
1. Don’t continually have sales-related messages. There are other ways to promote besides selling your product. Comment or ask questions about news or topics in your industry. “They will easily ignore you or unsubscribe you if you continue to push a sale,” says Tobin.

2. Don’t set up an expectation, then cheat on it. If you announce to your followers that your purpose is to give advice, don’t turn around and start selling. “If you violate that expectation, people are going to get upset and they’re going to leave,” says Tobin. Again, make the sale subtle – how can your product help them achieve the advice you’re giving?

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Recruiting

Social recruiting is an effective way to utilize social networks to find the best candidate for any open positions at your company. While the past few years saw the rise of job boards like Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com, the growing prominence of social networks have transformed the way businesses build their best team. Instead of relying on the “come one, come all” approach, the detailed personal information contained in profiles, such as interests and job history, allows businesses to employ social networking sites to target the specific audience or skill set they want to pull from.

According to an annual social recruitment survey published by Jobvite, an online service that helps businesses consolidate the resources of social media sites, 80 percent of companies used or planned to use social networking to find and attract candidates in 2009, with LinkedIn being used by 95 percent of the respondents and Facebook usage growing from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009.

“It’s like what’s happened to the ad industry,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite and former general manager of Yahoo! HotJobs. “It used to be that you would buy a big ad to get the consumer’s attention, but more and more companies are relying on online advertising software that puts that ad right in front of them based on data, like the other ads they click on. Social recruiting is analogous to that.”

The Benefits of Social Network Recruiting
Here are some of the primary advantages that social recruiting affords small businesses:

1. Empowers your employees to distribute job information. These days, most, if not all of your employees probably have a profile on a social networking site. By enabling them to post information about open positions, you multiply your searching reach by the thousands.

2. Helps you put the passive job candidate in your crosshairs. Job boards are mostly used by people who are proactively looking for positions. But what about the perfect potential employee who may not be scouring Careerbuilder.com every day?

3. A low-cost method of finding high-quality candidates. When looking for job candidates, it takes time to sift through resumes of unqualified applicants, and many job boards charge fees to post openings. Social recruiting helps you zone in on the best candidates, for free.

Tools to Help You Socially Recruit

1. Custom searches. Searching only by name and location doesn’t cut it when looking for the perfect employee. LinkedIn has one of the most thorough searches of all the sites, allowing you to sift through profiles by company, industry, college, and even how many “degrees” you are from the person.

3. Updating your status message. When you or your employees update your statuses, it pops up on your friends’ home page, and sits atop the profile until it’s changed. “My company is looking for … ,” is sure to snag replies.

4. Linking to stories and external content. Both Facebook and LinkedIn enable users to post external content to their profiles. By linking to articles and blogs that contain positive news about your business, you show potential candidates that it’s not just your social network connections that adore your company.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Privacy and Legal Issues

Though social networking can certainly be a fun way to help you expand your company, there are plenty of issues surrounding privacy and legalities that you should always be aware of when searching for employees, and even after you’ve hired them. “The laws [regarding online privacy and or hiring online] generally apply the same [as existing state laws],” says Megan Erickson, an associate at Des Moines, Iowa-based Dickinson, Mackaman, Tyler & Hagan law firm and author of Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law. “But now that there are all these different kinds of social media, they combine to make it a very unique environment.”

Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind to help you steer clear of legal trouble when dealing with potential or current employees and social networking sites:
1. Don’t use fake profiles. Using a fake profile when adding employees to monitor their activity can constitute as an invasion of privacy, Erickson says. “That’s just asking for lots of trouble,” she says.

2. Add a social media section to your handbook. Including language about social media in your personnel policy is paramount, especially if you plan on integrating it heavily in your company’s operations.

3. Beware of existing federal and state laws. It may help to prep yourself on the many federal and state laws regarding anti-discrimination and privacy, Erickson says, so that if you do come across an employee’s wayward photo or disparaging status message, you’ll be knowlegeable about how to proceed with disciplinary action.

Resources

To learn more about using social networking sites:

• The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, by Lon Safko and David Brake, is a great guide for business owners and executives who want to use the power of social media to grow their companies. Visit the website, TheSocialMediaBible.com, to connect with other professionals looking to do the same.

• Megan Erickson’s blog, Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law, posts up-to-date news on legal issues surrounding social media sites.

• Mashable is a great resource for news, advice, and jobs concerning all things social media.

• John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, also runs a marketing blog for small businesses called Duct Tape Marketing. Check out what he says about the 7 Truths of Social Media Marketing.

Some sites to consider joining for social networking:

• Facebook: The most popular social networking site, it allows you keep up with friends, colleagues, and classmates and features a stream-lined, easy-to-use interface.

• MySpace: Geared toward the younger crowd, this interactive site lets you connect with friends and tweak your profile with extras like themes and music playlists.

• LinkedIn: This site is strictly professional, and for good reason. You can keep up with colleagues, find employees, and network with others in your field.

• Bebo: Another primarily social site for friends that allows users to express themselves through media and interactive environments.

• FastPitch: This professional site serves as a great platform for growing companies to market themselves, allowing you to post events, press, and submit keywords to increase your profile’s SEO strength.

• Friendster: A social networking site for friends that promotes connections between international users and also boasts “Fan Profiles” similar to Facebook’s.

• I-Meet : A professional site where you can establish valuable contacts and potentially save money on event planning.

How to Use Multimedia for Business Marketing

Your guide to using photo sharing, video, podcasts, mobile marketing, and other types of multimedia to broaden your company’s reach and introduce new marketing techniques.

By Lauren Folino, Michelle V. Rafter and Ryan McCarthy | Jan 25, 2010

Multimedia, such as mobile marketing, livecasting and podcasting, photo, video and file sharing, can spread the word about your company and help build brand awareness in a very unique and powerful way. These particular types of social media marketing services also has the ability to go viral quickly. Hottrix, the Las Vegas, Nevada-based iPhone app creator, became one example of a breakthrough success story when their iBeer app, which simulates chugging a mug of beer on the iPhone, became one of the most-downloaded apps in 2008, and again in 2009.

However, your company’s chances of going viral are left more to fate than skill, but that’s no reason to discount the importance of multimedia for your business. The ability of these technologies to facilitate communication between your small business and employees, your customers and potential customers, is tremendous, says Keith Nissen, principle analyst at the Scottsdale, Arizona-based market intelligence firm, In-Stat.

“When you think about [multimedia platforms] and what that’s all about, it’s about being able to communicate mass marketing messages to the device of choice on demand,” says Nissen. “I think what’s more interesting is how these tools can be used in conjunction with other multimedia tools to support the business–the marketing, the sales and promotion of their products and services. To me, that, for a small business, is probably more important than internal communication.”

Here’s a look at some of the most effective ways to leverage media, such as photos, podcasts, videos, and other types of mobile marketing.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Sharing Photos With Your Online Community.

Several online communities exist for the purpose of uploading and sharing photos over the Web, and many small businesses have learned to take advantage of these services to market their products. Here are the most common photo sharing marketing strategies.

1. Offer real-time incentives. Twitter’s TweetPhoto will automatically enable you to publish photos to your Twitter and Facebook accounts for free via mobile and Web platforms. Who needs 140 characters to describe your business when a picture is worth 1,000 words? Tweet pictures of discounted and new items or offer exclusive incentives.

2. Join like-minded communities. At no cost, Yahoo!-operated Flickr provides a useful platform for photo management and sharing. “The first thing that I tell people is that Flickr is not just a photo storage place,” says Matt McGee, independent online marketing consultant of the Tri-Cities, Washington-based, Small Business Search Marketing. “It’s a very active community centered around Flickr groups.” For example, a pet-lovers group may get a kick out of the clothing and toys created by a boutique pet store.

3. Drive traffic to your website. Pink Cake Box, a gourmet cake shop located in Denville, New Jersey, began using Flickr in 2006 to build brand identity. Co-owner Jesse Heap says that Pink Cake Box’s website receives about 300,000 unique users each month, and roughly 10 percent of those visitors are from Flickr, where the company posts photos of interesting or extreme cakes.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Hosting Videos and Webcasting.

Sharing videos over the Web is another great resource for small businesses in establishing a social media presence, particularly because of how many people are tuning in. According to a November 2009 survey released by comScore, a digital marketing research firm headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Google’s many video sites accounted for 12.2 billion videos viewed that month, including YouTube, which accounted for nearly 99 percent of the total.

Webcasting is essentially broadcasting a video or media file over the Internet using streaming media technology, which can be distributed to many simultaneous viewers at once. Done the right way, webcasts, also called video podcasts, vblogs, videocasting or Web shows, can be effective promotional tools. “It’s a cool opportunity to take people behind the scenes of a business,” says Dina Kaplan, co-founder and COO of blip.tv, a four-year-old Internet TV network. Her network airs video podcasts from hundreds of companies as diverse as the New York City Ballet to the crafter website Etsy, which broadcasts online classes. “It’s been interesting to watch, especially in the last year, how many businesses have created Web shows to promote their product or gain exposure for principals,” Kaplan says.

Shooting a video for YouTube or starting a more elaborate webcast essentially takes four basic ingredients: equipment, a theme, an online home and marketing.

1. The equipment. Very small businesses can buy a webcam or camcorder, wireless microphone and simple video editing equipment such as Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio or Final Cut Pro 7. However, a webcam limits you to filming yourself sitting in front of a computer, and that’s not very exciting, says Peter Brusso, an Anaheim, California, podcasting producer and technology marketing consultant. Instead, invest in a camcorder, preferably a “three-chip” camera that uses three computer chips to separate colors, which results in a higher quality picture, Brusso says.

2. Hire someone. If you have a bigger budget, hire a professional. Prices run from $1,000 to $15,000, according to podcast industry sources. Employment attorney Helene Wasserman created a video podcast called Employer Helpcast two years ago to market her work as a partner with Ford & Harrison LLP, a Los Angeles law firm. Wasserman uses Brusso’s company to produce video podcasts and pays $2,500 for segments that run anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. It’s worth the money, she says. “If you’re trying to market yourself as having a very professional business, you want to put your best foot forward,” she says.

3. The show. You could have the best-looking video around, but it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t do something that was interesting and consistent, says blip.tv’s Kaplan. For webcasts, stick to a regular broadcast schedule, whether that’s once a day, week or month. And keep shows short. “Your aptitude for sitting in your uncomfortable office chair atrophies after about six minutes,” she says. Be personable, says Kaplan, who advises podcasters to stick to the old news adage to show, not tell. If you run a retail business, walk around the store, and talk about new merchandise. “Talk to a customer. If you have a hardware store, show them the new hammer on sale,” she says.

4. Hosting and marketing. Once you’ve got a video in the can, upload it for free on YouTube where it can be viewed by anyone. Webcasts can also be uploaded to free or paid hosting sites such as blip.tv, iTunes or Libsyn. Where a podcast is hosted isn’t as important as spreading the word that it’s there. Wasserman’s podcasts appear on blip.tv and iTunes and cover workplace issues such as job sharing, corporate culture and managing a multi-generational workforce. Wasserman points prospective viewers to the podcast from her website and blog and by including a tagline promoting the show in her email signature. Wasserman also uses a free service that puts word-for-word transcripts of her video podcasts on the Web, where they can be searched by Google and other search engines. More people find her podcast through search engines than by visiting blip.tv or her website, and the traffic had led to speaking engagements and new work, she says. “It’s the wave of the future. For anyone who wants to use 21st century technologies, this is the way to go.”

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: 4 Good Reasons to Go Through the Trouble of Creating a Video.

1. Show how to use your product. With a slogan as simple as “Broadcast Yourself,” many YouTube users are doing just that, especially when it comes to showing how their products or services can be used. “There are countless small business owners posting how-to videos on YouTube,” says McGee. “[For instance,] here’s how to use the product; here’s how to interact with people in our service industry.”

2. Extend your client base. In December 2007, John Tuggle, a slide and blues guitar instructor based in Decatur, Georgia, began posting videos on YouTube teaching people how to play guitar because he wasn’t generating enough interest in his hometown. By February 2008, interest in his lessens grew so much that he created LearningGuitarNow.com where visitors contacted him regularly for private lessons via Skype at the rate of $25 for 30 minutes. “I just kept [talking to people] and kept putting more out, and figuring out what people wanted. Last year I pulled in almost $100,000 from the website,” said Tuggle.

3. Entertain your customers. It is quite easy to post a video simply for visitors’ enjoyment. For instance, Vimeo, a video hosting site that aims to be a “community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make,” features a ‘Videos we like’ tab. For a small business owner, posting a video for entertainment purposes stands to generate many views, which in turn may spark interest in the company and possibly lead to the purchase of products or services.

4. Provide a unique service. LiveCast, with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada, enables live video streaming directly from a cell phone, mobile Internet device, or Mac or PC, to anyone connected to the Web. For Gordon Cooper, photographer and founder of Perfect Wedding magazine, live broadcasting gives his business a unique capability. “I can have all the guests at the wedding even if they’re not at the wedding,” says Cooper. “Guest can still experience the live ceremony [from wherever they are].” Cooper is able to charge an additional $250 for this service.

Dig Deeper: Marketing Your Business on YouTube

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Podcasting

Podcasts have become such a popular marketing tool for sole proprietors and small businesses that a small army of professional producers is out there waiting to help. Here are 9 essential steps a company needs to get started:

1. Do some homework. The best way to learn about podcasting is to listen to podcasts, says Peter Brusso, an Anaheim, California, podcasting producer and technology marketing consultant. Visit directories such as RSS Player or Libsyn and look for podcasts with a similar style or subject to you want to create, Brusso says.

2. Decide on a topic. Podcasts could focus on a company’s products or services, an industry or on management or professional issues. Whatever the topic, make sure it’s related to a company’s business in some way, says Sallie Goetsch, proprietor of The Podcast Asylum, a northern California podcast producer and consultant.

3. Gather your tools. Producing a podcast requires:
• A microphone, digital audio recorder or USB headset to record podcast episodes
• Computer with sound card and high-speed Internet connection
• Audio recording and editing software, either licensed software or free open-source programs such as Audacity.

4. Be natural. When it’s time to record a podcast, organize talking points, but don’t use a script. “People don’t like being sold. The more from the heart the better,” Brusso says.

5. Build a backlog. Before going live, build up a catalog of a dozen or more episodes. Coming up with ideas is easy, Brusso says. They can spring from talking to customers, going to conventions, reading trade magazines, or following current events.

6. Be consistent. Length, professional quality, and subject matter of a company’s podcast are important but not as much as on-air consistency. Whether it’s once a day, once a week or once a month, pick a schedule and stick to it. Podcasts are like radio or TV shows: audiences expect a schedule. Disappoint them and they might not come around again, Brusso says.

7. Not a D-I-Y type? Hire a pro. Professional producers can handle the technical aspects of starting or creating a podcast. Goetsch and partners Priscilla Rice and Michele Molitor, for example, offer a small-business podcast starter package for $1,100 that covers scripting and recording three to four podcasts plus lots of extras, including finding a hosting service, setting up a podcast blog and submitting broadcasts to podcast directories. Brusso, who works with lawyers and other sole proprietors, charges $1,000 for an hour-long podcast with similar extras. But it doesn’t have to be expensive. According to Goetsch, a small businessperson could do everything themselves with an existing computer, $20 headset, free software for audio editing and creating a podcast, and host it on their existing website.

8. Find your podcast a home. Companies can physically host a podcast anywhere, including with the service they use for their website. What really matters is getting the word out that it’s there. For maximum exposure, list podcasts on directories such as PodcastAlley.com, Podcast411, Podanza or TalkShoe.

9. Forget about making money, at least not directly. Some podcasts collect revenue from advertising that podcast directories put on their sites. But that shouldn’t be why a company does it. Podcasts should be part of a company’s overall marketing strategy, Brusso says. “To get yourself known, you have to blog, optimize your Website for search engines and podcast,” he says. “If you do all three the results are phenomenal.”

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Mobile Marketing

There are 4.1 billion cellular connections worldwide, and with the prevalence of smart phones, the concept of browsing the Web from a mobile phone has gone mainstream. Consider this: Mobile phone carriers are sitting atop a trove of data – not just your name, address, and, of course, phone number but also credit card information, who your friends are, and where you’re located at this very moment. Even with privacy regulations, more of this information will become available to marketers as phones are used more like little PCs, creating opportunities for highly targeted ads and other marketing breakthroughs.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

• How exactly do I advertise on a mobile phone? The most common type of mobile ad is a display ad served on a Web page called up on a cell phone’s screen. The ads are created for the site’s mobile format and may not be the same as the ads you would see if you were browsing the site on a PC. Ads are priced on a Cost Per Mille, or CPM, basis – the price you pay for the ad to be seen 1,000 times.

• How do I buy mobile ads? Most advertisers work with mobile-ad networks, which bring together advertisers and websites that are frequently viewed by phone. Some of the larger players, which are owned by the likes of Google (AdMob), AOL (Third Screen Media) and Apple (Quattro Wireless), will act as full-service marketing shops. They handle the entire process, including technology, the creative content of mobile ads, and the ads’ placement.

• What do mobile ads cost? The cost of mobile ads varies due to the different types of ads, and different cell phone platforms. For instance, AdMob, one of the main mobile-ad networks, currently charges CPMs of $12 to $14 for iPhone banner ads.

• What about text messaging? One option is to buy or rent a short code, a five- or six-digit phone number from which you can send and receive text messages. One common way to use a short code is to publish it on a billboard or in a print ad (“Text 51234 for more information”) that encourages customers to enter a contest or participate in a poll.

• What does a short code cost? Cellit Mobile Marketing, in Chicago, and Movo, in Florida, sell short codes for $500 to $1,000 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of a few thousand dollars and a charge of 4 cents to 7 cents for each text message. You can also rent a code for as little as $225 per month. Keep in mind that technological standards vary. Nearly every phone on the market is equipped to send and receive texts, but some systems won’t let you embed complex graphics or photographs.

• How do I go after my best customers on a mobile phone? Google has expanded into the mobile world in several ways. Now, it allows companies to buy display ads – ads related to content – on the mobile Web. AdMob claims click-through rates on this type of ad of up to 3 percent, which is quite high. The company charges a cost-per-click (CPC) fee of 25 cents to 30 cents.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: 3 Tips for Making Your Mobile Campaign Successful

1. Determine your goals. Who is your target audience? How will they benefit from your message? Do you hope to generate revenue, generate interest, generate traffic to your website, or all three? Define your goals and set benchmarks for what a successful campaign would look like.

2. Choose your message. Your message should have a clear call to action. According to mobile marketing firm Punchkick Interactive, “over 90 percent of texts from SMS messaging campaigns are read by recipients, generating average response rates of 15 to 30 percent or more.” With the potential for that kind of penetration, it would help to make sure your campaign is simple, memorable, and factual. One thing every local business should be doing, says James Citron, CEO of mobile video marketing firm Mogreet, is attach keywords to their mobile campaigns that will resonate with customers in order to create brand awareness.

3. Pair your mobile marketing campaign with other social media marketing services. When Casa Del Mar, a luxury beach hotel located in Santa Monica, California, wanted to get the word out about drink specials, they doubled up on social media marketing services. The hotel posted messages on Twitter and Facebook saying, “Text CASA to 21534 and enjoy unlimited champagne or Bloodys. FREE.” Customers who texted received videos of the weekend brunch spread on their phone and received the beverage of their choice at the hotel. The end result was highly viral, with 250 redemptions.

Improving your Google Rankings

Over the past year we’ve known that Google now uses speech to text conversion. That means that they take the SPOKEN text from videos, and convert it to text.

While they won’t tell us WHY they do that, the obvious answer is that they are looking for RELEVANT CONTENT. They now use your spoken text to categorize and rank your video.

So we’ve been experimenting a bit, and we’ve discovered that in most cases you can improve your Google ranking with your websites by adding keywords in your spoken audio.

Note – Google actually publishes information about their ranking algorithm on their website. You can read it for yourself at http://www.google.com/technology/.

TIP: Remember to place your main keywords up front, and use them throughout the video. Use them in a organic or natural way, but write your script just as if you were writing a web page that you want Google to index, because with their speech to text conversion, they are applying the same algorithms as if it were just written text.

CAUTION – Just using music behind written text in a slide show does not work as well.

Remarks by the President on Small Business Jobs Proposals

11:23 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everybody.  Everybody please have a seat.

Introducing Google TV [video]

Discover Google TV. The internet giant explains its new platform that bridges the gap between TV and the web.

Watch the video and tell us what you think.

Most Common Press Release Mistakes: Avoid These Costly Press Release Errors

Common Press Release Mistakes: Avoid These Costly Press Release Errors

As one of the Internet’s largest news release distribution services, we have seen some of the best press releases on the Web. We’ve also seen some of the worst. Since your news release is competing with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other companies and organizations that are all vying for a reader’s attention, it’s best to make sure that your release is strong and free of mistakes. Remember, you won’t get a second chance to correct the negative impressions left by a poorly written release.

Here are some of the top mistakes we see in press releases:

Use of ALL CAPS – Using ALL CAPS to create emphasis and draw attention to keywords and phrases is not well used in news releases. Your press release should be written professionally and utilize proper grammatical and spelling guidelines. Let the facts and the information in your press release do the talking to excite and interest readers.

Grammatical Errors – It’s very important to proofread, edit, and proofread again so that when you submit your release you are confident that it is well-written, correctly formatted and error-free.

Lack of Content: While short is sweet, when it comes to news releases, content is king. It’s a good idea to keep things concise but not at the expense of the important details that will define your news. PRWeb recommends writing your press release between 300 and 800 words. Be sure to answer all of the “W” questions (who, what, where, when, why and how) to ensure a complete release.

Advertisements: While news releases are promotional, they definitely are not advertisements. A good news release informs in an objective voice. An advertisement tries to sell. If your news release screams “BUY ME!” then you should consider reworking it.

Hype Flags: Hype flags include an abundance of exclamation points, wild product and service claims and overabundant use of words like “best,” “FREE,” and “amazing.” Not only do you risk tripping spam filters by including these hype flags in your release, you also risk turning off readers who are looking for facts, not hype.

Direct Address: Many press release writers desire to bring the reader in by using a lot of direct address and making statements directly to the reader using words like “you,” “your” and “we.” Direct address can be a flag that a release is actually an advertisement. In addition, you lose the chance to use important keywords and phrases instead of direct address. Use a term that defines your audience such as “marketers” or “accountants” rather than “you.”

Video Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

After Google purchased Youtube.com Videos became all the rage. It used to be that only a handful of corporate websites had videos and now they are on more and more websites. The Kodak Zi8 and Flip HD allow anyone to look pretty professional with out the big expense. Videos allow you and your company an excellent way to connect with prospects and clients on a personal level.

It’s one thing to write compelling web copy that works, but it’s quite another to show a movie of yourself speaking. Personally, I was afraid of sounding stupid, looking weird or actually hurting my marketing rather than helping it. I generally think I am un-photogenic. But the more I worked with videos and spoke to professional I realized those feelings are pretty natural.

We encourage all clients to use videos and we currently recommending the Kodak Zi8 because of it’s external mic jack. We use videos on our facebook page and with our business and sales training.

Here are a few tips we would recommend from our experience.

1. Make sure you have your core message crystal clear. You need to connect empathetically with your customers and speak right to their need and the benefits you offer. If you are unclear of your focus, get help with that before doing your video.

2. If you are using a small digital camera like the Flip HD or Kodak Zi8 like I do, make sure you use good lighting it is fairly easy too, but you’ll definitely need some practice.

3. Keep it well under a minute or less. People will watch a video if it is short and quick. If it goes too long people won’t watch all the way to the end. This means you don’t have to say a lot but what you do say needs to be clear and compelling. Even 15 seconds can be good. We been on national TV and Radio where you only have 2-3 minutes to speak.

4. Make sure you smile, as this makes a huge difference in terms of connecting with people. No one can resist a good smile. Smiling is a skill so again you may need some practice.

5. Make sure you have a call to action at the end. Something that you want people to do. Buy a book; take a class; sign-up for a newsletter or whatever. Don’t lose the opportunity to let people know what to do next, but always bring in the benefits to them.

Go for it and have fun!!

When your video is done you can upload it in on YouTube.Com get the code so you can paste it on your website. Take note add your web address on the first line of the description, so people will see it.

Also I high recommend an expensive lavalier microphone for any Kodak Zi8 it ads a huge level of professionalism.

You Were Created to Succeed!
Bert Martinez

Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media

Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.

The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. “You can’t buy that exposure,” says the firm’s co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.

But Mr. AvRutick’s experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they’re highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.

“The hype right now exceeds the reality,” says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.

Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.

Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

“It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect,” says Mr. Chiagouris.

A business owner’s time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot’s Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey’s respondents say it requires more effort than expected.

To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.

Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a “patient investment.”

“My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven’t made millions of sales,” says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook. “People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago.”

Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.

“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.

As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.

“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.

Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what’s being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers’ buying decisions.

Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.

Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot’s Web site about kayaking.

Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.

“I didn’t find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Three Best Ways to Catch an Employee Thief

Three Best Ways to Catch an Employee Thief |Wall Street Journal|By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

If your small business can’t afford external auditors, security cameras or other resources for spotting employee fraud, consider doing some detective work of your own. The effort could save your firm from a significant financial loss or worse—failure.

After all, a single heist could be fatal for a small business, says Richard Hollinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Florida. Small firms typically don’t have

the financial resources to fall back on that large organizations have, he explains. (See related story, Business Owners Get Burned by Sticky Fingers.)

Employee fraud can take place right under a business owner’s nose. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an anti-fraud trade group in Austin, Texas, such activities occur on average for as long as two years before the victim organization catches on.

The phone keeps ringing. Some corrupt workers will instruct friends to repeatedly call a business and ask if the owner is on site until the answer is no, says Mark R. Doyle, chief executive of Jack L. Hayes International Inc., a provider of workplace crime-prevention services in Wesley Chapel, Fla. Once they hear those “magic” words, the friend knows it’s safe to come by and swipe merchandise under the rogue employee’s watch, he explains.

The math doesn’t add up. Two years ago, ReShonda Young noticed a subordinate at her father’s transportation company, Alpha Express LLC, had turned in a weekly time sheet with more hours than he could’ve possibly worked. That prompted Ms. Young, a manager at the Waterloo, Iowa, company, to investigate further and she discovered that the employee had been stretching his hours for months, initially to a less-noticeable extent. “I guess it got to be a little easy,” she says. Now all supervisors must review and sign workers’ time cards before they can be processed, says Ms. Young.

Money problems surface. Financial pressures are a key motivator of occupational fraud, the ACFE reports. For this reason, business owners should take note of any excessive complaining by a worker about money burdens. And if such a person’s lifestyle suddenly improves dramatically, this could signal he or she has their hand in the company’s cookie jar.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Watch Sarah Needleman video

How to Manage Multiple Business Locations

How to Manage Multiple Business Locations | Inc |By Darren Dahl | Mar 4, 2010

Thomas Friedman was onto something when he wrote his book, The World is Flat. Companies increasingly feel the need to expand their reach into new markets—both domestically and internationally—from a very early age.

One direct result of this expansion is that you may now be forced to manage multiple locations and oversee employees in distant offices—a fact that can cause quite a few challenges and headaches, says Eric Bloom, president of Manager Mechanics, a management-training firm based in Ashland, Massachusetts.

“No matter how widespread your organization becomes, you need to work hard to retain team cohesion and the philosophy that everyone is on the same team regardless of where they work,” he says.

Dig Deeper: Why You Should Expand

Managing Multiple Locations: 6 Challenges

1. Out-of-site-out-of-mind syndrome. When things get busy at your primary location, it can be hard to give your employees based at other locations the time they deserve.

2. Loss of spontaneous communications. Because you do not see your employees in the hallway or at meetings, there is very little natural or unplanned communication.

3. Attenuated logistics. Anything that cannot be sent electronically, must be mailed, which causes time delays and increased effort.

4. Complicated work assignments. It is harder to perform certain types of jobs or collaborate on them when employees are based in remote locations

5. Lack of team cohesiveness. Your team members will not know each other as well. This can easily lead to an “us-versus-them” mentality.

6. Concerns over general supervision. If you have a remote office that clients visit, it’s virtually impossible to see if your employees are arriving on time, working appropriate business hours or wearing proper business attire.

To tackle these and other challenges, then, organizational leaders need to focus on three key areas: systems, technology, and communication.

Managing Multiple Locations: Put Systems in Place

The old adage is that systems run businesses, and people run systems. “You must have systems in place to be able to standardize the quality of your communications, products and results,” says Bert Martinez, founder of Bert Martinez Communications, a business training and communications company with multiple locations. “Systems will allow you to duplicate offices and grow faster with reduce training times and supervision.”

The key is to establish clear responsibilities, boundaries, and authority, says Ann Latham, president of Uncommon Clarity, an organizational-behavior consulting firm in Easthampton, Massachusetts. “Vague responsibilities create the proverbial cracks into which everything drops,” she says. Muddy boundaries create disasters ranging from personnel problems to legal ones while insufficient authority can become a source of delay and demotivation. “An employee with everything needed to exercise good judgment except either the authority or sense of responsibility to do so is worth little,” says Lantham.

The point, then, is to make each employee’s responsibilities clear through an organizational structure combined with a system that measures each and every employee, and holds everyone accountable for delivering on their work responsibilities regardless of where they are based.

Dig Deeper: Building Systems to Manage Your Business

Managing Multiple Locations: Adopt New Technology

With the advent of the Internet, and the prolific surge in the number of collaborative tools that have spawned from it, technology has become an integral part of the backbone for any far-flung organization, says Bloom, particularly because it can help your organization cut down on business travel expenses.

While many organizations rely on custom-built software platforms and intranets as collaborative platforms, some of the most commonly-used tools by small businesses in particular are also either free, cheap or available as a software-as-a-service, which means you can access these tools over the web for a monthly fee. Some of the best and cost-effective options include:

• Google Documents, Gmail and Calendar for internal training and communication.
• Basecamp: An popular project management tool.
• Facebook : The now ubiquitous social networking tool is just as useful for business as it is for personal applications.
• Skype: The surge in VOIP technology and software means that you can communicate with remote employees cheaply and effectively.
• Salesforce.com: One of the most popular tools around, Salesforce.com allows remote sales team to collaborate in real-time on maintaining your company’s sales pipeline.

A new wrinkle in terms of technology is that many firms have begun to equip all of their employees with smart phones such as the iPhone as a way to enable them to access any web-based technology regardless of where they are, including many new applications.

Dig Deeper: The Latest Small Business Technology News

Managing Multiple Locations: Focus on Communication

Systems are a must, technology is important tool however, none of these will work with out real communication, says Martinez. “Communication is the key to collaboration with your offices, coworkers, and clients,” he says. If you neglect this aspect of running your business, you do so at your own risk, particularly in a business with multiple locations. That’s why Martinez also makes having his employees have time face-to-face a priority by having his offices take turns hosting each other once a year to enable communication between people on all levels.

Other tips for fostering communication between your employees based in the office and elsewhere include:

1. Establish full team weekly staff meetings via phone or webinar to get your whole group together.

2. If possible, have web cams so your team members can see each other.

3. Make each physical site responsible for a specific type of work, rather then assign random tasks associated with a central project.

4. When doable, have the CEO or management members personally visit each remote site on a scheduled basis, every month, for instance.

5. Establish weekly phone-based staff meetings individually with each remote group so that each physical location will get time with top management.

6. If possible, get your whole group together once or twice a year for staff meetings, brainstorming and team building.

Dig Deeper: How to Improve Your Communications Skills

Managing Multiple Locations: The Global Workforce

Managing multiple locations across the U.S. is hard enough. But when you add a new sales office or manufacturing plant overseas, says Bloom, you can actually run into a host of new challenges associated with cross-cultural communication that include:

1. Time zones. There is limited or no overlap in the standard workday.

2. Language. Even if everyone has a common language, English for example, differences in accents, language fluency, and the use of slang expressions can make communication extremely difficult, particularly on conference calls and speakerphones.

3. Social norms. Cultural differences from country to country can accidentally cause tension, embarrassment, and miscommunication.

3. Holiday schedules. Scheduled meetings, reporting deadlines, cash flows and standard business processes can be derailed or delayed based on local holiday schedules.

4. Technical connectivity. Not all countries have high-speed connectivity at all locations.

5. Labor laws. Laws regarding hiring, employee termination, hours worked, layoffs, sexual harassment differ from country to country.

6. Business-related laws, ethics, and practices. Business is conducted very differently from country to country.

7. Personal-privacy laws. In European Union member states, the laws regarding the personal use, storage, and transport of personal information are quite stringent compared with those in the U.S.

Dig Deeper: Building the Best Virtual Workforce

Managing Multiple Locations: Adapting to Different Cultures

Bloom suggests tackling these challenges by considering the following tips:

1. Find one key contact in each country that is very knowledgeable in local customs, business practices, and laws.

2. Learn to pronounce people’s names correctly.

3. Gain a basic understanding of country politics and current events.

4. Know the names of your managers and leaders in those countries and pronounce their names correctly.

5. Find ways to take advantage of the time zone differences.

6. Be respectful of the differences between people and cultures.

The bottom line in managing multiple locations, says Martinez, is to help make everyone in your company feel motivated and part of the team, regardless of where they do their work. “When your people feel good and that they matter, they will perform better,” he says.

Dig Deeper: How to Be a Lead Teams in Emerging Markets

Managing Multiple Locations: Additional Resources

Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World, by Charles Grantham, James P. Ware and Cory Williamson (AMACOM, 2007.) This book will show you how to get your company to embrace new technology, understand the ever-changing workforce, and rethink the way you structure work environments to deal with the global economy.

Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World, by Victor K. Fung, William K. Fung and Yoram (Jerry) Wind (Wharton School Publishing, 2007.) A book filled with solid tips to create a flexible organization capable of competing anywhere.

The Facility Management Handbook, by David G. Cotts Kathy O. Roper and Richard P. Payant (AMACOM, 2009.)
A great reference guide for understanding and implementing best practices for the modern workplace.

Quick! Tell Us What KUTGW Means

he Wall Street Journal | By STEPHANIE RAPOSO, AUGUST 6, 2009, 6:42 P.M. ET

Kate Washburn didn’t know what to make of the email a friend sent to her office with the abbreviation “NSFW” written at the bottom. Then she clicked through the attached sideshow, titled “Awkward Family Photos.” It included shots of a family in furry “nude” suits and of another family alongside a male walrus in a revealing pose.

After looking up NSFW on NetLingo.com—a Web site that provides definitions of Internet and texting terms—she discovered what it stood for: “Not safe for work.”

Say What?
A sampling of some popular shorthand texting terms.

* UG2BK . . . . . . . You got to be kidding
* GBTW. . . . . . . . Get back to work
* NMP . . . . . . . . . Not my problem
* PIR . . . . . . . . . . Parent in room
* GFTD. . . . . . . . . Gone for the day
* FYEO. . . . . . . . . For your eyes only
* BI5 . . . . . . . . . . Back in five minutes
* DEGT . . . . . . . . Don’t even go there
* BIL . . . . . Boss is listening
* PAW. . . . Parents are watching
* 99 . . . . . . Parents are no longer watching
* PCM . . . . Please call me
* IMS. . . . . I am sorry
* TOY. . . . . Thinking of you
* KUTGW. . Keep up the good work
* CID . . . . . Consider it done
* FWIW. . . For what it’s worth
* HAND . . . Have a nice day
* IAT . . . . . I am tired
* NRN . . . . No response necessary
* 4COL. . . . For crying out loud
* WRUD. . . What are you doing
* LMIRL. . . Let’s meet in real life
* ^5 . . . . . . High five

“If I would have known it wasn’t safe for work, I wouldn’t have taken the chance of being inappropriate,” says Ms. Washburn, 37 years old, a media consultant in Grand Rapids, Mich.

As text-messaging shorthand becomes increasingly widespread in emails, text messages and Tweets, people like Ms. Washburn are scrambling to decode it. In many offices, a working knowledge of text-speak is becoming de rigueur. And at home, parents need to know the lingo in order to keep up with—and sometimes police—their children.

One reason for the surge in texting abbreviations—more than 2,000 and counting, according to NetLingo—is the boom in social-media sites like Twitter, where messages are limited to 140 characters. Text messages, too, are limited in length, so users have developed an alphabet soup of shorthand abbreviations to save time, and their thumbs.

Taking time to learn the jargon may seem like a WOMBAT (“Waste of money, brains and time”). But with over one trillion text messages sent and received in the U.S. last year, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, you run the risk of feeling out of it if you don’t.

“If a CEO does not appear to be tech-savvy, people may start to wonder, ‘Is the company not plugged into today’s technologies also?’” says Stephanie Grayson, a corporate speech and media trainer based in New York.
Translation Sites

The confusion has given rise to a number of resources that provide English translations for terms like WRUD (“What are you doing?”) and TTYL (“Talk to you later”)—among them independent Web sites like NetLingo.com and UrbanDictionary.com and corporate ones like LG Mobile Phones’ DTXTR.com. Textapedia, a pocket guide to texting terms released last year, is sold in over 4,000 stores nationwide. NetLingo reports a 391% increase in the number of unique visitors over the past five years, while UrbanDictionary says it saw a 40% jump in its unique visitors last June from June 2008.

Both the AP Stylebook and Merriam-Webster Dictionary recognized texting shorthand for the first time in their 2009 editions, which were released in June. The AP Stylebook now includes IMO (“In my opinion”), ROFL (“Rolling on the floor laughing”) and BFF (“Best friends forever”), among others. Merriam-Webster defines LOL (“Laugh out loud”) and OMG (“Oh my God”).
Related

* Texting Truckers, Motorists on Mobiles and Other Reasons Why I Hate Driving
* Cellphones: Better Than Your Spouse and/or Alcohol
* Iowa Teen Wins Text-Messaging Championship
* Beware ‘Cellphone Elbow’
* Its Ovr: Breaking Up by Text Message

“These abbreviations have shown they are very likely to be a part of our language for a long time,” says Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster.

Branding strategist Elizabeth Kanna, 50, maintains a “Mom’s Text Talk Sheet,” a cheat sheet of over 30 textisms created and updated constantly by her three teenage daughters, on her desk at work. Ms. Kanna, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., says she refers to it daily as many of her clients prefer communicating through text shorthand like SWDYT (“So what do you think?”) and WDYM (“What do you mean?”).

Bert Martinez Communications LLC, a Houston-based consulting firm, hired a 20-year-old and two teenagers last fall to help teach texting vernacular to its staff of six. “It gave us the confidence that we could use the lingo and connect with the younger clientele on their level,” says Bert Martinez, president of the firm, which now conducts about 20% of its communication with clients via texting.

Teenagers, for their part, text in code for a reason, says Anne Mitchell, president of the Institute for Social Internet Public Policy, based in Boulder, Colo. “It is usually because they are involved in activities which they don’t want their parents to discover, such as casual sex, drugs and alcohol,” she says. Indeed, parents may be startled by such popular terms as GNOC (“Get naked on camera”), POS (“Parent over shoulder”), LMIRL (“Let’s meet in real life”) and IWSN (“I want sex now”).

OMG!!!! WSJ’s Andy JORdaN witnesses the crowning of AmErica’s top txtr. It’s LOL!

Susan Avery, senior editor at ParentDish.com, AOL’s parenting Web site, says she has observed parents becoming more concerned about not knowing what their kids are talking about. “The best thing is to embrace it and use it as a bonding experience with your child,” she says.

Shannon Snyder, a writer in Vancouver, B.C., uses DTXTR.com to monitor her children. “I don’t want my kid to be the racist or the rude kid because he’s repeating a random composition of letters he heard someone else say in school and thought it was cool,” says Ms. Snyder, 34.

The fact that 15-year-old Jack Beisel’s mother uses texting shortcuts like HBU (“How about you?”) and CIL (“Check in later”) strengthens their relationship, he says. “It makes her seem like she’s a little more understanding about modern culture,” says Mr. Beisel, who lives in Bayport, N.Y.

The consequences of misunderstanding the lingo can be mortifying. Cassandra McSparin, 23, of Jim Thorpe, Pa., knew a woman whose friend’s mother had died. The woman texted her friend: “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother passing away. LOL. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

It turns out she thought LOL meant “Lots of love.”

Write to Stephanie Raposo at Stephanie.Raposo@wsj.com

10.5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Starting A Business

The following list is derived from my experience. Based on my actions and results I retired from corporate America at the age of 28. Filed bankruptcy at 30. I’ve been involved in several successful businesses and many unsuccessful ones too.

#1 – Never let your expenses exceed your sales. Yeah, I know that’s easy to say, because you say “Jeez, that makes perfect sense, if my expenses never exceed my sales then quite honestly I’m always going to have positive revenue. I’m always going to be in the profit. Wow. That’s fundamentally smart. But c’mon Bert, it doesn’t work that way in the world. Why? When we start out we don’t have any sales yet, and so our expenses have to exceed our sales on day one.” And you’re correct. That’s true, so I want you to have a concept, a goal or even a burning desire. That you will make those days the fewest number of days absolutely possible that your expenses are exceeding your sales.

#2 – Failing to collect the money or the receivables. Question – Should you really be extending credit to people? I don’t care what business your in retail, wholesale, hospitality, legal, or whatever. Selling is what you about not carrying receivables. Don’t extend credit, get paid now! Look fewer customers that have paid you 100% are way better than having more customers when some of them didn’t pay you at all. More cash, less stress – you don’t have to be real smart to do the math.

# 3 – Failing to take care of your employees. People have say that the customer is number 1 – right? Maybe not. Well who is taking care of your customers? Your employees handle quality and service and delivery? Well if you haven’t taken care of your employees, they’re probably not going to take care of your customers very well. It’s just that simple. It’s goes without saying that if you do take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.

#4- Failing to take care of your customers. Real simple the easiest customer to get are existing customers. There is usually more profit in repeat customers than in new customers. A happy customer is a good customer a good customer refers more customers. Take care of your customers and they will take care of you.

#5 – Underestimating your competition. We can, no matter what business we’re in, we think of our competitor as dim-witted, we think of our competitor as incompetent. Remember this -our battle isn’t against them. It’s for the customer, not against our competitor. We don’t win by doing damage to the competitor. We’re not in a battle with him really. We’re in a battle for someone else. So quit thinking about the competitor and start thinking about your competitor’s customers.

#6 Inadequate capital – Now I’ve started business with no money because I had to but then you quickly come to realize that you do need money to operate. You do need capital to grow the company and get to the next level. And here are 2 rules you should remember about capital. And, just in case your not clear, capital is the money we need to fund the organization, to buy the inventory, to hire employees, to do all those things that we’re going to need to do. Well here’s are 2 rules you need to appreciate. Is that your expenses are going to be hirer than you anticipated and your revenue is going to be slower than you anticipated. Those two statements are true in 99.99% of every single business that has ever started. Well that’s what happens. It happens almost all the time. Because we are optimistic, if we weren’t optimist we wouldn’t have started a business. We over-projected what our revenues are. What I’m telling you as a practical, experienced businessman lower that number. Now if you beat, if you excel… wonderful! Find a place to spend it. But if you have shrunk it down, conservative in your projection then you might be safe.

#7 Underestimate the length of time to break even. The break even is a magic moment in the making of a business and if you don’t understand let me try to explain the concept to you. Break even is that magic point when you quit putting money into a company and the company is finally sufficient enough that it starts to pay for itself or is finally starts to pay you for having been there first.

# 8 Focusing on profits instead of on cash flow. Business people, when they first start out, they focus on profits instead of on cash flow. And I know this is going to sound like sacrilege to some people saying well,” aren’t we supposed to be all about profits? absolutely, and yes! And we want to get there as fast as we possibly can! But before we get there we have to make sure something else happens first, and that is that we always have positive cash flow. We always have enough money to pay the rent. We always have enough money to pay out employees. We always have enough money to buy more supplies, to do more marketing, that’s really crucial. That’s called cash flow. Profits will follow the cash flow I guarantee it. Now there’s a different in being profitable and having positive cash flow, you can be unprofitable where you’re actually losing a little bit of money but still have positive cash flow. I’m telling you when your first starting a business, if you have to pick between the two, now if you could have both of them, great go get both of them and that would be wonderful, but I also will tell you from experience getting both of them when your first starting out is really going to be complicated. You’re going to have to make a decision between the two. Pick cash flow when you’re first starting your business.

#9 Over estimating size of your market. Entrepreneurs are optimists and we tend to have this attitude that everyone is going to want to buy what we have – that just doesn’t sell. Get over it. Just come to understand that it’s not going to happen. So what you need to be able to do is think about Bottom Up Marketing. It isn’t how many potential, how many people are out there, it’s about what you can you really do. Bottom Up Marketing looks at your capacity. So if you’ve got 1 employee, 3 employees, 7 employees, that’s all you can handle. It doesn’t matter how many people might want your widget. You can’t handle it! So think coolly about the real size of your market and don’t ever estimate it because you can’t handle it right now. You only need enough market to handle the capacity you presently have, and if you can do that efficiently you will be profitable, and if your profitable you’ll be successful and if your successful you can grow the company again, and again, and again. Do a little research on “Bottom Up Marketing” and you have a better understanding of the concept

#10 No Advertising/Marketing plan. So how are you going to drive your sales through advertising or through sales people. You need to develop your marketing plan, you need to have enough capital to drive sales. I’ve seen to many times were entrepreneurs will invest all this money in equipment or to get the doors open only to discover they have no way to adequately drive sales.

#10.5 – Exit strategy. At one point, P.T. Barnum noticed that people were lingering too long at his exhibits. He posted signs indicating ” “This Way to the Egress”. Not knowing that “Egress” was another word for “Exit”, people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit…and ended up outside. So what am I talking about? We should start a business that we can create and build something that we can sell, transfer, dispose of, or hand off to someone else. That should be a goal maybe the first goal as you begin to vision your successful business.

Remember . . . You Were Created to Succeed!