So, what is your business buzz?

Today the buzz goes beyond those who walk into your store or encounter you online. it is about the interactions both on and off line.

I’ve recently noticed a trend of people trying to create their own buzz and it has been done poorly–and probably with reverse results from those desired.

At least it has caused me to block or remove them from some of my streams over on Facebook and Twitter.

Let’s talk about online networking for a bit.

When you are engaged in social media, it means that you are conversing back and forth with those who are connected to your accounts.

For me, this means Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn but there are others.

Here’s the thing–it is SOCIAL.

Not too long ago a bunch of people decided to network from LinkedIn over to Facebook.

Good idea but not such great results and here is why…

Facebook Braggarts

People were so busy promoting their own links that they didn’t even bother to say hello and introduce themselves.

This would be like walking into another business and saying to those gathered in it, “Hi, come on over and visit my business instead.”

First off, it is rude.

I mean, would you do that out in the real world?

Second off, why the hell would the people there care?

Obviously you are just into self-promotion and don’t give a damn about them or the person whose business you just tried to pull them from.

And, as you can tell by the actions, a lot of people don’t get that.

If you are going to participate, drop in, say hello and get to know what is going on.

I’m not always diligent about this myself but I do drop by and leave comments for those people who are other businesses that are following mine when I can.

Also, I think in most cases we can help one another so it is a good idea to do so.

I personally like discovering all these businesses and meeting people from all over the globe.

Not too long ago I had a promotion I wanted to post over in a few other business pages but I ASKED first.

This meant that I sent each business owner a private message for permission. Some said yes and some ignored the request. No biggie.

At one location, someone “reported” me to the owner who explained her policy on the wall and made everyone aware that I had received permission.

Another guy sent me an email and thanked me for being so professional while sending me his invitation to do so–he gave me permission with his blessings.

Huh? Thanks for being professional?

Wow, I just thought it was common courtesy and know that I would appreciate the same in return.

You can bet that he remembers me and I bet we will be doing some work together because of it.

Now, during my own query process, many people shared that others would shamelessly promote on their walls and a lot of the wall owners to me that they would simply remove those comments.

I usually don’t (unless they are spammy comments) but I really find that I am not interested in cultivating more of a relationship with those that take those actions.

But, it isn’t a big concern because usually, after their post, most do not show back up ever again.

Too bad because if they really were into networking there would be a benefit to everyone.

Speaking of Facebook, I copied another gal who had this idea to create a “My Website” discussion (Discussions tab) so that people can drop their links there and encourage them to spend serious time networking on the wall.

They get the link juice and promotion without being obnoxious. I look it as a win-win.

But really, I use the wall space to post things I find that would benefit those that “like” the page and then also offer specials now and again.

Makes me happy to engage people and to get to know them and I know it makes them more interested and more likely to participate.

Twitter Bugs

Then there are the Twitter clutter bugs.

How much tweeting is too much?

It depends on how you are using the Twitter stream.

For me, I usually will post special announcements a few times in a day.

However, when I ran a contest as part of a blog tour supporting another author, I put out a tweet every 3-4 hours over a week’s time to hit the different time zones of my followers (which include other countries).

However that is not my norm. Usually I will tweet something a maximum of a couple of times in a day.

I like to re-tweet interesting articles that others share and to chat now and again with other tweeps when I have a moment to comment on something they say.

My gauge for over promotion is this:

If a stream is being dominated by someone incessantly reposting a blog URL or promoting themselves, it is too much.

In that case, you become more like a spammer than someone conversing or sharing information.

Not too long ago I found a couple of people I thought were interesting and so I followed them.

They were okay for a bit, but then they got some big idea about self promotion that ended up being a lot of noise and nothing new–plus they drowned out some of the other people I was following.

Now you can use a service like Muuter but I tend to just unfollow tweeps that are clutter bugs.

If the clutter bugs have something useful, I might just put them into a list I peruse, but they don’t make it back in my main stream.

Now there are a couple of new trends I hate.

These will get you blocked or put on the spammer list I opened to identify badly behaved tweeps.

The first is to @messageme with your self-promotional bulls**t.

That is just plain bad manners.

Someone I know does that all the time.

First off, she is super self promotional. It is all about her all the time. *yawn*

Then she tweets something using the @ to send to a bunch of different people individually so she can promote her stuff to their tweeps.

Eesh.

She did a couple of bad mannered things in my stream and got booted out.

If she does it again she will be blocked.

Another annoying strategy is used by a few people who send an @messageme and say that I am not following them.

They sometimes message me from the blog to get me to follow them–but they are only trying to build followers and not develop a relationship.

They don’t contribute, don’t answer and appear for a short time before moving onto their next target.

My personal tweep practice is to follow interesting people, or those who engage with their tweeps–so chances are you won’t get me to follow you doing that.

After all, you can get me a tweet just by @messageme.

LinkedIn not Clued In

Now I have to admit that I am not the most sophisticated LinkedIn user but I do know enough that I did not sync my Twitter stream to my status updates.

I recently removed a connection because of all the clutter in the stream. The thing is, none of it was useful and it drowned out everyone else.

She wasn’t someone I really knew but was part of a group I was in. I’ve usually been conservative when it comes to adding people–and this was a reminder about why.

It doesn’t matter what social media venue you prefer, the rules are the same, add value, participate, support, and then and only then, promote.

The social media manners trend is that if it is useful, go ahead and post, share and pass it on, but be of value, be of service and quit making a lot of useless noise so you can create good buzz instead of being buggy.

Photo Courtesy: FotoGezi

Do you have a small business email account?

By small business email, I mean your private domain name email.

In many cases it might be something such as “info@yourdomainname.com” or something similar.

I thought I would cover a few mistakes small businesses make with email because they really do matter.

They are really small business email disasters.

Non-domain Email Limitations

One of the biggest mistakes I see small businesses making is that they fail to have a domain specific email.

Or perhaps they have one but they refuse to use it.

Email services such as AOL, Prodigy, Earthlink, NetZero and ‘insert your email service provider here’ pose problems for your business.

The first is that when you use specific services, they tend to keep you in their system and so don’t make it easy to manage your email.

If you decided to outsource and hire a virtual assistant, it makes it difficult (if not downright impossible) for that person to manage it.

Many are also dinosaurs when it comes to all things Internet.

Amateur
The next issue with an email that is not specific to your business is that it makes you look very amateur and makes people wonder just how professional you are.

Maybe your friends send you email from Yahoo, Hotmail, and other services but it isn’t a good idea to use those for your business.

However, where they can come in handy is for when you are active online and are not sure about posting your business email address.

For instance, I tend to use those types of email addresses for accounts I set up, alerts, blog comments, and other uses out in public where spammer or spam bots might pick them up.

It keeps by business box clean and clear for business and all my distracting and non-important email elsewhere for when I actually have a moment.

Sending or Forwarding Email Without Permission
In today’s world, it is unlawful to send business messages to groups of people unless you have permission.

I wrote about this before in, Is Your Small Business Spamming?, but I bring it up again to touch on a couple of other notes.

You should never Forward emails without permission and never CC a large list of people.

Taking such actions is poor netiquette and also exposes the emails of all those people to others.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to change my domain email address simply because people have forwarded it to others or have posted it without my permission.

If you do need to copy someone on an email, the best way to do so is to use the BC option—this sends it but “blind copies” of the email so nobody else can see the email address or snag it for questionable purposes.

Also, avoid replying to all when you click to reply to someone–otherwise you broadcast your message to a whole lot of people who also got that email.

Believe me, there are some very entertaining stories that are floating around the Internet about such mistakes.

Email Options
Now don’t freak out if you are using old school services for email.

Today you can use any mail service and simply “mask” it with your domain email address for delivery to and from the account of your choice.

For instance, many people are using Gmail by Google but set up their private domain email to arrive and depart from the panel but reads, myname@mydomain.com instead of the Gmail address.

However, if you have paid for a domain name and for hosting, you should have email capability.

Check with your service provider to see how it can be set up.

Signatures & Happy Endings
I have a number of domain email addresses and some that have been abandoned due to people abusing them or even using them illegally.

What I like about having my specific domain email addresses is that I can always customize them and direct them where ever I want—which makes email management a dream instead of a nightmare.

If you are serious about your small business, take some time to chat with your web team and get your unique domain emails set up and working.

You’ll be happier in the long run and find that this simple step will go a long way to helping your small business image and make your email management faster and easier.

Don’t forget to include your business signature at the bottom of the emails you do send out.

These can be used to help people get in touch with you, connect via social media, help share your website, or share some specials.

I’ll have to discuss this more in another post.

In the meantime, if you have a hint or tip to share, please do so in the comments!

Photo Credit: Horia Varlan

So how savvy are you when it comes to small business SEO?

If you are a business owner the true answer should be, not savvy at all.

Because unless you work doing SEO–you won’t really get it.

The good news is that you don’t really have to since you can hire a team to do it for you.

But as with everything on the web, if you are not educated about the process, you could fall for anything.

Recently, one of my mastermind buddies did a post on SEO (search engine optimization) and it got some good comments and also got me to pondering over a few things.

For instance, earlier in the year our team worked on a website that was optimized only after ages of keyword research.

The bad news was that the small business decided that it needed a review and asked for committee input at the business.

Input from people who do not know anything about an online presence or doing business online.

In their wisdom (sarcasm–in case you missed that) they collectively decided that they didn’t want the selected keywords and demanded changes.

Changes from the words people were searching and that they could rank for.

Ranking first for a term means you get 40% of all click throughs–so it matters.

Now the terms were selected after it was discovered that two large, well established companies had the same business name and were firmly entrenched in the top spots for the business name.

During my research, I actually discovered what terms his clients were using to find them–oh happy day!

But alas, they didn’t understand that.

*Sigh*

Do you argue or give the customer what he or she wants?

Exactly, but what is the point of doing optimization if someone destroys it?

Never mind, it is their money and their choice.

The next amusing project (so far anyway) is the person whose website was ranked using scandalous techniques.

Now we don’t slam the competition but to say the business was a scammer is probably an understatement.

When I checked the numerous back links, I discovered the former web design team created directory links from their domain.

Plus those links came from pages that contained NSFW (not safe for work) topics that would get traffic but that I doubt the business owner wanted to be associated with.

Also, the page content was sparse but the numerous keywords mostly ranked well–because nobody searches on the terms and so there isn’t much competition or traffic!

And of course, one of my favorites out in cyberspace was the design team that bragged about their SEO via social media.

Yes, I had to go look but discovered that the great rank was due to domain age, a couple of amazingly high PR (page rank) back links back to the site and a very low competition keyword.

Oy!

The problem with such efforts is that most people don’t know enough to determine what the differences are between good SEO and, as my mastermind pal calls it, “snake oil SEO.”

I am an avid elearner so I always go investigate, prod and poke, try new things, learn new things and then work to pass on that knowledge so it works to get the phone to ring.

My happiest moment this year (so far anyway) was the SEO gig where the client called within a week to say that his phone was ringing because of the website changes.

Yep, that  is what we like. Traffic that converts.

Not all small business SEO is easy and there are too many variables to make guarantees since the web changes regularly.

Plus site owners tend to mess up now and again.

But, if you have a good team, you will get more targeted traffic and that is what the goal is–to be found.

What you do with that after you have been found depends on a lot of things.

But that is for another post!

Perhaps you have a small business SEO story to share? Leave that comment below!

Photo Credit: Igor

How Does Your Business Garden Grow?

A small business is similar to a garden.

You have to plan it and then tend to it daily so that eventually you can reap the rewards.

A solid business doesn’t sprout overnight, it takes time.

Seeds have to be sown and nurtured.

It needs daily care.

And you have to weed out the undesirable elements.

You have to invest time and money into it.

Over time, you eventually reap the harvest of those efforts.

And others can also enjoy and benefit from the fruits of your labor!

But for some reason, people think that starting a small business is an easy task and doesn’t require planning or work.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It takes a lot of planning and a lot of work.

Getting an online presence is the same but it can also help your business grow.

Not too long ago I was chatting with some of the locals who aspire to see our town grow into its potential.

Trouble is that none of them are business owners and so they have no idea of the challenges rural businesses face.

In the town, some of the merchants don’t work together or even speak to each other–which is a problem since the town is only a block long!

But one of the biggest shortcomings is that only a few of them are online.

One just put up their page this year and the other three have pages but they don’t really work for them.

But kudos to them–at least they are online. Now, if only they had done it right…

For instance, the one company does not use a URL that has their business name–which is a mistake.

It has some random saying the owner thought was cute but that does nothing for search engine optimization (making it friendly and attractive to the search engine).

The technology is already outdated and it is hard to navigate.

Many of the businesses do not take advantage of the newest technology to help them manage their businesses nor do they use technology to keep in touch with their customers.

Now, not too far out of town a savvy business increased their revenue by using a database inventory system.

They included both products and customers and could put special orders in, monitor what was selling, and project needs for the future and so take advantage of purchasing discounts offered by some of their manufacturers.

They could determine exactly who needed what when and so leverage their dollars AND also contact their customers in a variety of ways to follow up, alert them to sales, or ask them if they might be interested in testing a new product.

Like it or not, technology is like fertile soil. When used correctly, it helps grow a good solid business garden.

Still people resist change.

So, what type of technology are you using?

Do you have an online business presence?

Consider this:

People no longer look for your business in the Yellow Pages and some industries have their heads in the sand and fail to look for the good soil that is available outside of their normal field of vision.

The area is the Internet.

Your prospects and potential clients now turn to their iPhone, Blackberry (or open their laptop) to search for the gardens online that will feed them (or at least attract them) and help them get what they need.

What I am saying is that most businesses need to expand their garden.

It probably isn’t you–because you are reading this!

However, I bet you know someone who needs an Internet gardener.

Place your heirloom seeds in rich, dark soil to get things going the right way so everyone can benefit and enjoy the garden.

I can help–so if you need assistance, give me a call.

For those of you who don’t, please leave a comment and tell us how you leverage technology and the Internet to help your garden grow!

Photo Credit: S. Alt

Are you working on or working in your business?

There is a difference but most people don’t really consider it a problem–when it is.

You see, if you are working in your business, those daily tasks and demands are going to prevent you from working on your business–which means taking your business to the next level, getting your the income level you seek and the freedom to enjoy time away from the business.

At the moment I am involved in a variety of paid forums.

I prefer them because, by default, only those willing to invest their time and money into their business (or their development) participate.

Right off the bat people are of a higher caliber and they tend to be more open minded and progressive–in some cases.

However, I was floored by a few business people who had agreed to make commitments to each other to cross promote and then decided to stop.

Their reasoning was, “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t see the value” or “I don’t need the business.”

Now as a moderator, I was shocked.

First of all it was a group commitment and not an individual business goal.

Everyone had agreed to cross promote and work together but when it came down to it, many just decided they didn’t have to reciprocate or that they did not have the time and those left were honoring their commitment without any reciprocal effort.

This illustrates an issue that I wanted to highlight and talk about because this is why many businesses never grow or why they go out of business in a short time.

Instead of working on their business they are working in their business.

When you work on your business, you take the time to network, promote and develop strategies to take the business to the next level.

That may mean that you hire someone to help you as an employee or as a subcontractor.

It may mean you plan events to attract new customers and prospects to your business and reward repeat customers.

It may mean that you plan strategic partnerships or network with related businesses in your area.

When you work in your business, it means that you are so busy with daily tasks and management of the business that you don’t have the time to look up, plan or see what the business potential might be in the future.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you have a brick and mortar business that sits on the main boulevard, a service business or an online model–the results reflect where your energy goes.

I hate to say that small businesses are often run by small minds but I see it all the time.

In fact, at last count many of the businesses in my local region have gone under for this very reason.

I am not talking about a few but about forty or more!

Now my local community is small and should ideally work together to bring customers into town.

However, they don’t do so.

In fact, they make decisions that hurt the longterm business by their short sightedness.

Even the chamber of commerce failed to have their own members attend an event they put on weekly.

NONE of the members or leaders showed up and it was no surprise that the event failed miserably.

They also recently decided to cancel the biggest income producing, largest visitor attracting and favorite media covered activity for the town.

Why? Simply because they failed to plan and did not look at alternate ways of managing the annual event to make it happen.

When you work on your business, you show up but you also plan ahead and take the extra streps to move forward–if you don’t, you’ll find yourself working in your business and stuck on a treadmill that leads no where.

When you work on your business you take advantage of leverage from other partnerships and embark on a journey that takes you beyond your present location into a terrain that offers a lot more possibilities.

So, if you are working on your business–take a moment to share how you are doing so.

If you are working in your business–tell us how you might benefit by making a change.

To do either–just leave a comment.

Photo Credit: Stitch

So my business is on Facebook–is yours?

If you answered “no” then it is time to get rolling and I’ll give you some resources at the end of this post to help you along the way.

If you answered “yes” then it is time to make sure you are tuned up for the best experience for you–and those who do business with you or who are considering doing business with you.

Now I find it funny how so many people are suddenly experts about Facebook.

Unless that person is Mari Smith (author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day)–her or she probably isn’t.

I had to chuckle when one of the pages I visited claimed to be an SEO specialist for social media accounts (places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

Their own page failed to include some of the vital things–such a a link to their website that was clickable.

Since I am active on the web and have been on it for a long time (since 1995), I tend to watch things and invest in learning.

Part of my unique perspective comes from the fact that I’ve made pretty much all my mistakes early on–and still do stupid things now and again.

However, I am pretty savvy due to my investment of time and because I’ve attended college classes and paid for online tutoring from some of the best business people on the web.

So, since I’ve been watching a lot of stupid things happen for so long, I thought I would share a few of my thoughts on Facebook mistakes many business people make.

Facebook Mistake:  Open a business account on a profile page.

The problem with this is that it is against Facebook policies and they might shut your account down.

“Facebook profiles are meant to represent a single individual. Organizations of any type are not permitted to maintain an account under the name of their organization. If you create a profile for your business, your account may be disabled …for violating our Terms of Use. If you have questions about how to best leverage your Facebook Page, please check out our Insider’s Guide or FAQ.”

If you have a profile it is simply a matter of adding a page for your business, service or product.

There are a lot more advantages to having this kind of set up but that isn’t for this post.

Facebook Mistake: Add tons of people you don’t know to your profile.

A long time ago I decided to only let family, friends, and select colleagues into my private profile.

My life is public enough and having a small group of peeps together online without the whole world snooping in was appealing.

Some people add anyone and everyone to their profiles but not me–mine is a private profile and I interact with those people.

If you look here, notice that I offer other options to people I don’t know or have not been in contact with for eons.

That page shows a list of links where people can find my public accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Another important aspect of your profile is that you are limited to how many people you allow in–which isn’t the case with public pages.

Facebook Mistake: Fail to include your business information or link on your page.

A lot of businesses don’t know that you can include a link in the sidebar of their Facebook page so people can simply click right over to your website (and you can add an application to move your visitors over to your Facebook page too.)

Please don’t make the mistake of using your Facebook business page as a website–because like anything that is not on your domain–you don’t own it.

Facebook Mistake: Fail to find ways to bring people into your fold outside of Facebook.

It is possible to customize your business page so you can collect email addresses and build your relationship with people off of Facebook.

This is vital for any business owner.

Take a look at my customized Guerrero Ink page or Mari Smith’s active Facebook page to see how attractive they can be.

Facebook Mistake: Forget that social media pages are public.

One of the things that people tend to forget is that social media interactions and sites are public!

Always be professional online because your brand is always out on the web and reflects on you and your business.

Now I’ve only included five mistakes here and I know you could probably share a few more so why not leave a comment now?

To avoid mistakes I recommend the following resources:

• Facebook Marketing An Hour A Day by Mari Smith
• Mari Smith’s Facebook Page
• Mari Smith’s Website
• FacebookMktg on Twitter
• Social Media Examiner

Above: Stop Spam–and Stop Spamming!

I manage a few different blogs and use a professional autoresponder to manage my email–which means that people can subscribe to my email list but that they have to opt-in (twice) to verify they want to receive emails from me.

Usually I send a monthly newsletter and then there are times when I have a favor to ask–rarely do I send them something that I think they would be interested in such as a product or service.

So, this week I was surprised when a person on my list reported me as a spammer.

It wasn’t a big deal but in the six years that I have maintained a list, this is the first time that has happened–and it not only confused me but also pissed me off because that person had to jump through two hoops to get anything from me anyway–and the email was soliciting their help.

Today people are confused as to what constitutes spam.

Spam is junk email–you’ve seen them, promises of Viagra or other offers (sometimes explicit emails) that clutter up your email box.

Spammers tend to buy email lists from groups or collect them with spam bots that crawl the web and pick up email addresses when they are posted on a website or appear somewhere in the code of a website.

Today there are laws that govern electronic mail–and a business needs to adhere to them.

In the past, people signed up for my emails via a sign up form at my speaking engagements but today I ask them to sign up via a form on my websites or email them an invitation to do so.

I am compliant but I can’t tell you how many businesses are not.

In fact, I have someone I know that spams me every month with an email that does not allow me to unsubscribe easily (which is also a requirement).

Now, I’ve been spammed by small businesses whose owners I never met and that think there is nothing wrong with emailing me–they are breaking the law and annoying me.

They want to sell me something, fail to target me correctly, or spam me from my blog forms because they think I will be interested–but they are seriously mistaken.

Unless they got my permission, or I actually signed up for their emails, they are spammers and if they keep up their wicked (or ignorant) ways they can actually get into trouble from the FTC.

So, is your business spamming?

You better stop and get complaint.

I’ll be exploring autoresponders soon (due to popular request) but in the meantime, check out what happened to this spammer and read the CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide for Business.

You can also check out the FTC Spam site.

And finally, do everyone a favor–don’t mark something as spam when it isn’t–just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.

In Should Small Business Do It Themselves (Websites & SEO) I talked a bit about why finding the right web design team is critical for success and how you can start with a local website design firm–but that today you have global options available to you and so are not restricted in your choices.

I promised that I would share some resources for other options and will do so in this post but I also wanted to let you know what I do.

For instance, my last blog designer was found when I kept seeing interesting looking blogs and clicked through to see who designed them and the same person kept popping up in my screen.

Eventually I hired her and she has worked on three of my blog templates including the Fawnskin Flyer.

My mastermind group laughed when I told them I was essentially a spy out on the web and that is how I find valuable tools and super online professionals.

By spy, I mean that snoop on everyone in a variety of ways.

I am always looking at code, peaking at the links to website design firms from blogs and websites that I like, reading comments and exploring the blogs of the best commenters, and I also bring a lot of things onto my computer screen via RSS feeds, social media applications, etc.

Now don’t be overwhelmed if you don’t know what any of this means–my point is that if you are surfing the web, pay attention to what you like and take a minute to explore because you can find some real gems that way.

Then there are referrals or cyber introductions that can lead to someone special.

One of my professional writing services projects had an awesome website design firm that I worked with to optimize her site content.

I was impressed and so now we work together–but I met them intially because we had a mutual client.

The client met the web designer chatting in line at a business several years ago and eventually hired the team to construct her website.

So, those are a few other ways you can stumble upon the right person.

However, you can also seek out web designers via social media sites, by searching via keywords, and by contracting them from freelance sites.

Social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook have a lot of business pages with great professionals (and savvy pros are there working the system).

You can also use Twitter Search and conduct a general search or specific search on Facebook.

The business site of choice for many might be LinkedIn because they have professional groups for designers and other freelance professionals.

Take the time to check out their connections, their online website portfolios and their recommendations.

I always encourage you to connect with someone in person prior to hiring them.

Skype is a great online tool to use if the professional is not in your area as it lets you chat–plus ou can also use video conferencing.

As far as the online resources I’ve used (and am part of) eLance, Guru and Rent-A-Coder are a few of the best but there are a variety of options out there just seek out “freelance service-you-seek” or “freelance worksites.”

Once again, I am going to suggest you take your time to find the right connection because a good, long professional relationship is ideal when it comes to all things web.

Do you have a favorite resource or another idea to add? Chime in via the comments!