The top three reasons that small business owners avoid developing their online marketing plans and stay away from social media is lack of capital, lack of time, and lack of skills. This is where a blog will fit your needs perfectly—it is relatively cheap to incorporate into your site, requires very little time, and you do not need any special technical skills or writing expertise to use it. View this guide for tips on getting started with a blog and for best practices on maintaining it.

What is most important to having a successful blog is to understand that it is like hosting a networking event on your site, around the clock. People can read what you’ve written, which should be entertaining and informative. They can also participate by asking questions and posting comments. This can become a sounding board for revealing your areas of expertise and truly helping potential customers. It can also be a place for your current customers to tout your goods or services.

The beauty of the blog is that it does not need to be a picture perfect dissertation of what you do; as a matter of fact, it is better if it is more conversational and speaks to the masses. You can also have fellow employees or business associates write posts to expand your reach. One cardinal rule of blogging is to not only start this conversation, but to respond as well—keep the interaction moving.

Learn more and get started today!

Fast forward a year later and I signed up for this new product still in beta called PeopleBrowsr (spelling is correct here) and was intrigued by its approach to monitoring your life stream. I used it a little bit over the last year and when I was in LA last week for the 140 conference I saw that PeopleBrowsr was sponsoring and Dave was there with the PeopleBrowsr team to promote its new release and demo the product.

According to their site “PeopleBrowsr is a data mine and social search engine for real time conversations. We’ve built a set of applications sitting on the data mine to monitor your brand, identify your audience, analyze tweets sentiment, filter the buzz, manage feedback, share accounts, run campaigns, track keywords, build widgets and engage across multiple social networks simultaneously.”

I find it is great for personal brand and corporate brand monitoring but I will let Dave tell you himself. Here is the interview with him and the demo in the video below:

Find out answers to all of the above and more at the Social Media Workshop sponsored by Network Solutions in Richmond, VA. Key learning points from this half-day FREE workshop include:

• Advantages of social media marketing over traditional tactics
• How to start blogging with WordPress?
• How to turn Twitter into a customer service tool?
• How to increase your Google ranking with Search Engine Optimization tricks?

Speakers to include:

• Doug Meacham Managing Consultant – Retail Delivery at IBM
• Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Strategist, Network Solutions
• Randall Windsor, Web Marketing Manager, Network Solutions
• Priya Ramesh, Director, Social Media Strategy, CRT-tanaka

Event Details:

• DATE: Friday, Nov 20th, 2009.
• VENUE: CRT-tanaka, 101 W Commerce Rd, Richmond, VA 23224
• TIME: 8:30AM – 12PM

Agenda:

• 8:30AM – 9:30AM: Light breakfast and Networking
• 9:30AM – 10:00AM: Intro to Social Media Best Practices (Doug Meacham)
• 10:00AM – 11:00AM: Maximize Customer Satisfaction Via Blogs and Twitter
• 11:00AM – 11:30AM: Importance of Search Engine Optimization
• 11:30AM – 12:00PM: Q&A

Sign up today! Limited seating available. Don’t forget to bring you laptops to take your first steps in blogging. Attendees will learn how to use the Network Solutions WordPress Hosting package for free!

Today, consumers typically begin their research for a product or service online, even if they plan to make the actual purchase in person or by phone. Local online searches are fast replacing other means of finding local companies, such as the phone book, newspapers, or other directories.

To grow your clientele, you must adjust with the times. Local search marketing offers the power of the major search engines with local directories, known as the Internet yellow pages. The search is targeted for geo-specific keywords related to your business and your community, such as “caterers in St. Louis,” or “St. Louis catering.” Many of your potential customers will use key words such as these to find area businesses and then drive to the location or make a phone call to secure the service or make the purchase.

Local search visibility is a simple and cost effective way to reach this large customer base. Because it can be time consuming, you may want to secure the help of a local search marketing expert to make sure your company is targeting the right keywords and getting included in the right locations. Another benefit is that you can take advantage of the local search marketing techniques with or without a website.

To find out more, Network Solutions offers an educational resource covering the pros and cons of local search marketing, titled, “Search Engine Optimization: Local Search Visibility Solutions Guide.” This paper will explain in greater detail how to get started, how to get help, and why this should be an important aspect of your marketing efforts.

These days there are many Software as a Service (SaaS) products out on the market. Ones for billing, ones for project management, ones for selling and customer service. There are also a few for handling your accounting needs. This is a very tough nut to crack since many are first reticent to put data into the cloud, much less their financial information, and then they have to contend with the Intuit Quickbooks ownership of the market place.

This is why I was skeptical when I heard about what Outright was planning to do but in true Agile software methodology they started with the basics and have stayed on a constant improvement path adding features and functionality incrementally. My business was evaluating the move off of Quickbooks which is used on our network and doesn’t give access to our team or accountant like the web product does. This provided me an opportunity to evaluate lots of other services (which will be for a later post).

What I liked about Outright

Two simple messages – Save Time and Save Money. You are really speaking my language. Accounting package can suck your life away because of the complexity many have and the time it takes to learn everything properly. I want my accountant to be helping me with tax planning and cash flow management not training me on how to properly enter vendors and reconcile the checkbook.

Integration with other SaaS tools – They have started with two big ones – Freshbooks and Shoeboxed. We use Freshbooks for invoicing but our expensing is done separately and shoeboxed is not a vendor of ours.

Techcrunch has a nice update on the addition of Expensify “Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once — once you’ve linked your account, they’ll keep automatically updating until you unlink them.

Killer Tax Planning Tool – One of the big areas many new entrepreneurs and freelancers screw up is in the tax area. For years they have been used to their employer taking out taxes and they just took their W-2 and did their taxes. With a new business there are all kinds of tax benefits to using expenses and also planning your cash flow so the right amount goes to the IRS quarterly so you don’t get spanked the following year with a tax bill plus penalties that make you cry and ask yourself why you are doing this in the first place.

What I didn’t like about Outright (but they can change this and innovate to fix this stuff)

No Connectivity to banking accounts – This was my deal breaker. Despite my love-hate relationship with Quickbooks some times, they do this part flawlessly and I am able to quickly go through the month and match deposits to client billing and categorize the expenses with a final reconcile button that takes me about 60-90 minutes a month to do my books.

Granted, I think I have become spoiled to this functionality because Quickbooks has been doing it for so long and I can get this online though the personal budgeting tool Mint.com so I am really kind of expecting it. Despite the enormous complexities of integration behind the scenes I am willing to wait for this but many other non-technical people who have this in other products will look for it.

Then again, this product is FREE and has some great functionality already so I can’t completely put them to task.

Tax planning only covers Schedule C – For the uninitiated, Schedule C is for a Sole Proprietorship and not partnerships or corporations. I won’t go into a business law discussion but a sole proprietorship is the most basic form a business and many firms are usually formed as LLC or Subchapter-S corporations for liability protection and tax advantages. My firm is S-Corporation and all partners get K-1’s at the end of the year that go into our tax returns.

Inability to bring in balance sheet items from previous year – You may go, huh? The plain english translation of that statement is basically this could be old receivables from customers that haven’t paid yet (or may never pay) that you will need to write off. This can offset your tax liability in a big way so your estimated taxes in the tax planner are just that – estimated. If you have complexities like this you should engage an accountant who can give you a better picture of tax planning for this year and next.

Who is this Smart Working Tool for?

I would say at this point in their life, Outright absolutely perfect for the independent contractor or freelancer who has a very simple cash-in, cash-out approach with no employees. Outright is FREE, which takes away any cost objections. Plus, if you can leverage Freshbooks and Shoeboxed to automate the sync to Outright, this can work really well. Oh yeah, did I mention that is FREE to use?

Check it out today and if you are current user of Outright, please leave a comment on your opinion of the service and if we missed anything.

I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility — I was very definitely in violation, and since I can be kind of… unmotivated when it comes to fixing things around the house, the letter was pretty much what I needed to finally goad me into action.

Now, most people have a love/hate relationship with HOAs. On the one hand, they handle administrative functions and help maintain property values by enforcing standards. On the other hand, you do give up certain rights, and people often chafe under what they consider overly restrictive, inflexible, legalistic covenants (that they’ve voluntarily agreed to abide by, remember).

Anyway, the point of this isn’t to rehash the HOA debate. Instead, I want to look at ways that HOAs might be able to use social media tools to help modify people’s behavior, as well as provide some concrete benefits that might make compliance less of a pain.

Reporting Violations: Snitching vs. Civic Duty

At the beginning of the process lies reporting and notification: Someone needs to spot the transgression, and tell the homeowner. Sure, you could do any variety of anonymous / identifiable, public / private reporting systems, but context matters, especially when you’re talking about your neighbors. A nifty e-government / Gov 2.0 citizen problem reporting tool (like mySociety’s FixMyStreet in the UK) probably wouldn’t go over so well in the HOA context, since you’re basically ratting out your neighbors (you have to live next to these people, remember), even if it is ultimately for everyone’s benefit.

Relying on social shaming (say, via a public violations bulletin board) is counterproductive: We’re talking about stuff that’s out in public (so it’s redundant — people can already see violations); private reporting is open to abuse; public reporting would probably be seen as nagging and might lead to retaliation.

This is probably one of the reasons HOAs and property management companies are popular — the nasty task of reporting violations is farmed out to a faceless entity who everyone can blame: “Hey, I don’t care that your fence is falling apart, but those nasty so-and-so’s at the management company…”

Turning Sticks into Carrots

On the other hand, maybe social collaboration tools could come into play when it’s time to fix stuff. Say a HOA does quarterly checks — the folks who document the violations could offer people a way to opt-in to partner up with other folks with similar problems. For example, do-it-yourselfers could pool resources (say, buying paint, or sharing tools), so instead of everybody individually buying stuff and having leftovers that go to waste, collaborating on a group buy so people end up paying for just what they need.

Alternately, people could band together to negotiate a group discount on repair services for stuff they can’t or don’t want to handle (say, tree services).

Nothing prevents people from doing this now, of course, but online tools make collaboration and resource-sharing a lot easier, in a way that’s more neutral and that doesn’t require anyone to stand out and call attention to themselves as a violator.

Anyway, depending on where you live, HOAs seem to be a natural target for social media-enabled services — there’s a built-in constituency based on geography and common interest; there’s an acknowledged authority to deal with that (bonus) has mechanisms for enforcement; and each HOA aggregates potential consumer demand for local services.

If you’re a small business that’s tried targeting HOAs, or have a HOA experience you’d like to share (a positive one, please — I think we’re up to our eyeballs in HOA horror stories), please leave a comment.

CLICK ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD: 15 Steps to Writing a Winning Marketing Plan

Much focus when starting a business is about putting together a great business plan. We have covered that and you can click here to download the e-book on that type of plan. However, most don’t talk about a critical component of every business – marketing.

The marketing plan is critical and I would almost do this first so you can flesh out your product value, understand the competition and price the product/service for profitability. The business plan takes components of this plan and really demonstrate the execution and operations to make the business work. But it is marketing that is the engine and analytic proof to demonstrate why your company should even exist in the first place.

You are either someone that has been doing marketing as a part of your professional career or you look at as that “thing you do to promote your business and attract customers to buy”. Regardless of where you are along that spectrum, you have arrived here because you have been charged by the CEO of the startup you work for to write a marketing plan for your business or you need to create one for your own business.

You need to not just write just any marketing plan. You need to write a Killer Marketing Plan.

One that your boss will say “awesome, let’s get started” and which will tell all those people who have been looking for a product or service like yours for a long time. This book is written for you.

Marketing plans are sexy mistresses that tempt you to include all of the coolest of campaign ideas without the sanity of budgetary constraints. While marketing is one of the more important functions of a small business, it is one that is limited by the budgets of that business and campaigns must demonstrate a return in order to justify their existence. Since I have written more marketing plans than I care to tell you, I can share with you my knowledge and experience of what has worked almost all the time, some of the time and none of the time.

While this is not the single tome on marketing plans, I hope that this helps you balance the unlimited creative ideas with the budget you have to work with and find a mix that is both innovative and results in sales.

I invite you to explore as many resources out there, some of which are mentioned at the end of this book. I don’t need to wish you luck. Just get started, get out there and crush it.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD: 15 Steps Writing a Business Plan e-book

Many of you who follow this blog are small business owners and you have either wrote your first business plan or about to start on the journey. For some it might seem like an easy task but I will bet that it seems easier to summit Mt. Ranier that finish your business plan. It is the procrastinators ultimate project to put off and the perfectionists ultimate project to endlessly tweak.

I will guess that while sitting down with all these great ideas swimming around in your head about how you are going to create the next great product or service you couldn’t wait to tell someone about your business. But when it came time to actually ask for money from someone or actually lay out how you will execute, there was a hard realization that you needed a business plan.

But you can’t write just any business plan. A Killer Business Plan.

One that even your strongest detractors will read and say “this could work” and those whose wallets you are trying to pry free of investment capital ask “where do I sign?”. This book is written for you.

After writing many business plans, many for businesses that never launched and a few that did launch and were eventually sold, I felt compelled to share my experiences and advice to save you from the rocky process of getting started so you can just start writing.

I wrote a 15 part series through the last year that addressed many issues and gave you a basic plan of action. However, I kept getting asked to put it into an e-book format for easy reading and note taking.

While this is not a end‐all book on business plans, I hope that this helps you frame your plan so you can get started and put together something that is relevant for what you are trying to accomplish.

There are many other resources out there which I have mentioned at the end of this e-book so I invite you to use this book along with those resources to build your killer business plan and be the success I know you can be.

I don’t need to wish you luck. Just get started, get out there and crush it.

In case you missed the big button up top, you can click here to download the e-book.

Read it and please leave a comment. We want to know how your business plan journey is going.

On October 5, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (”FTC”) adopted updated “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” the first revisions to the Guides since 1980.  These revised Guides will become effective on December 1, 2009.  Importantly, the updated Guides address endorsements and testimonials in “new media,” such as blogging.  Bloggers who fail to disclose that they received free products, goods or services from an advertiser may be subject to substantial penalties, although the FTC has indicated it will continue to focus its law enforcement activities on advertisers. We’ve provided here a short summary of certain key points in the FTC’s revised Guides; for the full text of the FTC’s action, see http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

What is Covered?

The Guides cover “endorsements” – “any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser.”

General Principles on Endorsements

Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences of the endorser, and may not convey any express or implied representation that would be deceptive if made by the advertiser.  When the advertisement represents that the endorser uses the endorsed product, the endorser must have been a bona fide user of it at the time the endorsement was given, and while the advertisement continues to run.  Liability may be assessed on advertisers for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or for failing to disclose material connections between themselves and their endorsers.  Endorsers may also be liable for statements made in the course of their endorsements.

Further, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. The revised Guidelines deleted a provision in the 1980 version of the Guides allowing advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical.”

Application to New Media

The development of consumer-generated new media poses new questions about how to distinguish between communications that are considered “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides and those that are not.  The FTC will consider each use of these new media on a case-by-case basis for purposes of law enforcement, similar to other advertising reviewed by the FTC.

Factors the FTC will Consider in Reviewing “New Media” Endorsements

The revised Guides articulate several factors the FTC will consider in reviewing whether consumer-generated media constitute “endorsements” within the meaning of the revised Guides.  The crux of the FTC’s review is: “whether, viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and therefore an ‘advertising message.’”  Some key factors that will be analyzed in answering this question are whether, in disseminating positive statements about a product or service, the speaker is:

• acting solely independently, in which case there is no endorsement; or
• acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent, such that the speaker’s statement is an “endorsement” that is part of an overall marketing campaign.

Some indication of “acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent” include:

• whether the speaker is compensated by the advertiser or its agent;
• whether the product or service in question was provided for free by the advertiser;
• the terms of any agreement;
• the length of the relationship;
• the previous receipt of products or services from the same or similar advertisers, or the likelihood of future receipt of such products or services; and
• the value of the items or services received.

The FTC has indicated that a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a personal blog will not be deemed to be providing an endorsement.  However, a blogger who is paid to speak about an advertiser’s product will be covered by the FTC’s endorsement Guides.  Further, if a consumer received a single unsolicited item from a manufacturer and wrote positively about it on a blog, the review is unlikely to be considered an endorsement, because of the absence of a course of dealing with that advertiser that would suggest that the consumer is disseminating a “sponsored” advertising message.  In contrast, a blogger who regularly receives free samples of products for families of young children and discusses those products on his or her blog would be required to disclose that he or she received for free the recommended items.  Also, the receipt of a single, high priced item could constitute a material connection between an advertiser and an endorser that would be required to be disclosed..

Endorsers are responsible for disclosing material connections with advertisers.  Some industry groups (such as the Word of Mouth Marketing Association) already require these disclosures in their codes of ethics.  Advertisers who sponsor endorsers must establish procedures to advise endorsers that they should make the necessary disclosure and monitor endorsers’ conduct.

Liability

An advertiser may be liable under Section 5 of the FTC Act for a blogger’s misleading statements if the advertiser initiated the process that led to these endorsements being made. Moreover, both the advertiser and the blogger are subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of the blogger’s endorsements. The FTC indicates that its law enforcement activities will continue to focus on advertisers.  However, endorsements by bloggers are now covered by the Guide and bloggers should be careful to review the revised Guide and the examples provided by the FTC.