Entrepreneur It

Risks of insecure systems

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:47:00 +0000

There are basically three overlapping types of risk that we need to worry about on systems connected to the Internet:

Bugs or misconfiguration problems in the Web server that allow unauthorized remote users to:
- Steal confidential documents not intended for their eyes.
- Execute commands on the server host machine, allowing them to modify the system.
- Gain information about the Web server's host machine that will allow them to break into the system.
- Launch denial-of-service attacks, rendering the machine temporarily unusable.
Browser-side risks, including:
- Active content that crashes the browser, damages the user's system, breaches the user's privacy, or merely creates an annoyance.
- The misuse of personal information knowingly or unknowingly provided by the end-user.
  - e.g. Identity theft or Session hijacking
Interception of network data sent between browser and server via eavesdropping. Eavesdroppers operate from any point on the path between browser and server:
- The network on the browser's side of the connection.
- The network on the server's side of the connection (including intranets).
- The client or server's Internet service provider (ISP).
- Either ISPs' regional access provider.

Some of these risks every user of the internet needs to be aware of (e.g. browser side risks and the fact that traffic can be intercepted in transit to and from the server) and others are the sole responsibility of the internet provider.

As a small business owner you need to be aware of these risks and take steps to insure that your website is not vulnerable to them - or promoting them. To do this you waill want to make sure you are using a reputable hosting provider that will monitor your site for denial of service attacks and other server side problems. You will want to make sure you use SSL to encrypt all sensitive data transmission between yourself and your users. You will want to make sure any software you use on your site (e.g. plug-ins, guest books etc) are from reputable providers so you do not pass viruses to your users. Finally, you will want to use strong passwords to log into your ftp site so that no one can "hack" your site and upload bad "viral" content or steal private programs or data from you.

On-line Payment Mechanisms

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Frequently online businesses want to be able to collect payments over the Internet. This is usually accomplished through some sort of Payment Gateway, which is is an e-commerce service that authorizes payments for e-businesses and online retailers.

It is the equivalent of a physical POS (Point-of-sale) terminal located in most retail outlets.
Payment gateways encrypt sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information passes securely between the customer and the merchant.

Payment gateways encrypt information handled through SSL. This reduces the opportunity for fraud, and adds security to the transaction process. Gateways communicate with a variety of entities, including:

The customer
The merchant (through their website)
Credit Card companies (by verifying information)
Internet Merchant accounts that relay order information from the gateway to the merchant's bank account.

There are hundreds of online payment gateway providers that allow you to process commercial transactions over the Web without compromising credit card numbers or other confidential information, they can be grouped into two different groups:

Merchant Payment Services
Personal Payment Services

The advantage of using most payment gateways is that you are not responsible for storing your customer's credit card numbers.

Merchant Payment Services

Merchant Payment Gateways use specialized software on the merchant's server to provide for secure payments across the Internet.
There are numerous Merchant Payment Gateway providers:

VeriSign Payment Services
Authorize.net

For you to use most payments via many merchant payment services you must:

Get an Internet approved merchant account from an affiliated merchant bank.
- An Internet merchant account is configured to allow you to accept "card not present" transactions which are specifically designated as originating through the Internet.
Select (or create) code that will be installed on your server that allows you to take payments on your website.
- Buy Now Buttons that send payments directly to the Merchant Payment Service
- Select a pre built shopping cart that automatically connects your Web site to the payment gateway and to a database on your server, allowing you to accept payments immediately and write orders and other customer information to your database.
Register with with the merchant payment gateway provider: The online registration guides you through the process of setting up your web page to process payments.

How the Merchant Payment Gateway works:

Step 1: The merchant submits a credit card transaction to the Merchant Payment Gateway on behalf of a customer via secure Web site connection, retail store, MOTO center or wireless device (using the buy now buttons or shopping cart provided by the merchant payment service provider).
Step 2: The Merchant Payment Gateway receives the secure transaction information and passes it via a secure connection to the Merchant Bank's Processor.
Step 3: The Merchant Bank's Processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Network (a system of financial entities that communicate to manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions).
Step 4: The Credit Card Network routes the transaction to the Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank.
Step 5: The Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank approves or declines the transaction based on the customer's available funds and passes the transaction results back to the Credit Card Network.
Step 6: The Credit Card Network relays the transaction results to the Merchant Bank's Processor.
Step 7: The Merchant Bank's Processor relays the transaction results to the Merchant Payment Gateway.
Step 8: The Merchant Payment Gateway stores the transaction results and sends them to the customer and/or the merchant. This step completes the authorization process – all in about three seconds or less!
Step 9: The Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank sends the appropriate funds for the transaction to the Credit Card Network, which passes the funds to the Merchant's Bank. The bank then deposits the funds into the merchant's bank account. This step is known as the settlement process and typically the transaction funds are deposited into your primary bank account within two to four business days.

Advantages: merchant payment services is that it provides the merchant with a fully functional, externally managed payment processing system that allows:

Risk Management – Sensitive data is stored in the payment service data center, never on your computer.
Accept a Variety of Payments – Most merchant services will allow you to accept all major credit cards, eCheck.Net (electronic checks from bank accounts), gift cards, and signature debit cards.
Manage Your Transactions – Most merchant services provide a Merchant Interface which will allow you to to monitor and control payments through your Web site.
Prevent Fraud – Many tools can help to identify suspicious transactions using fraud tools.
Receive Payments Quickly – Your funds are automatically deposited into your merchant bank account within days.
Free Help – Most services provide live technical and account support to merchants, as well as access to online documentation and user guides
While you have access to all transaction-critical information, VeriSign protects credit card data with the highest level of security, so you never have to worry about compromising your customer's sensitive credit card data.

Disadvantages: Setting up a merchant account generally requires you to pay set-up fees, monthly fees and per transaction fees which may not be cost effective for new ventures with small volumes or for small purchases, such as "pay per play" on-line video games:

Setup Fee: $99.00
Monthly Gateway Fee: $20.00
Per-Transaction Fee: $0.10

Personal Payment Services

PayPal, Amazon Payments & Google Payments enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online.
Personal payment services cater to small businesses that do not want to set-up their own online payment mechanisms.
Personal payment services cater has a number of options that allows users to quickly set-up online payment mechanisms on their Web sites:

Request Money just enter the recipient's email address and the amount you are requesting. The recipient gets an email and instructions on how to pay you using PayPal at www.paypal.com.
Buy Now Buttons Buy Now Buttons or Pay now buttons are a low-cost way for you to accept credit card and bank account payments, and can be fully integrated with your website in a few easy steps.
Subscriptions allows you to set-up subscriptions for recurring payments from customers.

On PayPal:

When a buyer clicks the Buy Now button, he will be taken to a secure PayPal payment page, where he can log in to an existing PayPal account or sign up for a new one, and quickly complete the purchase.

If you dynamically generate portions of your site, you can populate your Buy Now buttons dynamically and save time by updating the variables with information from your database. To use the button above for a different item, you would only need to edit two variables: item_name, and amount.

PayPal Shopping Cart: When you use PayPal's free Shopping Cart on your website, your customers can purchase multiple items with a single payment, browse your entire selection, and view a consolidated list of all their items before purchasing. The PayPal Shopping Cart is a low-cost way for you to accept credit card and bank account payments, and can be fully integrated with your website in a few easy steps.

When a buyer clicks the "Add to Cart" button, a new window will appear listing the contents of the buyer's PayPal Shopping Cart, including the item just added. To make the purchase, the buyer clicks "Checkout" from this window.

Personal payment services charge fees based on the type of account you set-up and how much you sell. Currently the fees for PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout are the same and are paid per transaction:

	Premier/Business Account
Open an Account	Free
Send Money	Free
Withdraw Funds	Free for US bank accounts
Add Funds	Free
Receive Funds	2.2% + $0.30 USD to 2.9% + $0.30 USD
Multiple Currency Transactions	Exchange rate includes a 2.5% fee*

Advantages: The advantages of personal payment services is that they are lower cost for small payment volumes and they are very easy to set up.

Disadvantages: The customer completes the transaction on the payment service website - which can look less professional than having your own integrated payment mechanism.

Whatever payment service you choose, it is your responsibility as an Internet merchant to use a reputable payment service that will handle credit card information with care, minimizing the likelihood that information for your customers will be lost, stolen or misused in any way.

Web Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:54:00 +0000

As an entrepreneur developing your website you need to know Who is visiting which pages? How much traffic is your site getting, How does it measure up against traffic going to similar sites? and How has your traffic changed over time (e.g. as a result of some advertising campaign)?

Web analytics is dedicated to collecting, measuring, and reporting on web and Internet data. As an entrepreneur you are concerned on-site analytics, which is targeted at understanding the journey of each user through a website. Analytics are used to record information ranging from a which pages are being visited as well as which pages garner more purchases from visitors. Analytics is the process of gathering and using statistics to:

Improve the design and content of your website
Increase conversion (orders)
Increase traffic to your site.

Web analytics is concerned with using statistics to improve the design and content of your website. Here are some things you should search inside your statistics for, when you want to decide what content to improve:

Entry pages – what are the pages used to enter your site? Do visitors continue to surf the site from these pages? For example, a link to a good article might bring a lot of users but they leave immediately after reading it. You can add text to the article which will make visitors want to continue to search your site for more information.
Exit pages – from which pages do visitors, leave your site? Check carefully to see if there is something on these pages that causes visitors to leave. Try to fix the problem and then see if there is an improvement.
Online time – how long do visitors stay on your site and at each page?

If you are using statistics to optimize your order process, here are the points you should analyze:

Conversion rate – the most important of all measurement. Do people buy (or sign up for trials or newsletters)?
- To improve conversion you need to work step by step and check improvements.
- Try also to segment the conversion by referring website, referring keywords and entry pages.
Order process segmentation – how many people proceed from shopping cart to order form?

You can use analytics to increasing amount of good visitors to your website. In order to do this you need to analyze the site statistics from the point of view of the site's target. A good visitor is someone interested in what you have to offer. Here are few steps you should take to increase the number of good visitors to your website:

Optimizing for search engines
Advertising campaigns in different sites
Advertising campaigns through email
Promoting the site in forums
Attaining links from relevant sites

You should check to see which means are best for increasing the number of good users. To find this out, you need the following statistical information:

Where did the good visitors come from (a combination of referrers, online time and conversion rate)?
Returning users – check to see which visitors return again and again.
- How did they reach you the first time?
- Is there a way to find more visitors like these?

The easiest way for an entrepreneur to get started with web analytics is to use Google Analytics . Google analytics is a great FREE tool for capturing a wide variety of web site statistics. It provides colorful charts and graphs make traffic information accessible and easy to understand. A quick weekly (or daily) check of your web traffic statistics provides feedback for how your site is doing, and helps you better understand the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts

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References

Enzo F. Cesario, Web Analytics and Your Website – What You Need to Know
http://ldfeeds.com/statistics/web-analytics-and-your-website-%e2%80%93-what-you-need-to-know/
Who visits your website? Use Google Analytics, http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/google_analytics.html
How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners, http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-use-google-analytics-for-beginners

Using Webinars for Sales and Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Webinars are online seminars or presentations used to provide information about any subject your company feels your potential customers might be interested in. They can be interactive or not. One big advantage of webinars is they presented live and then placed in archives for others to view later.

I personally have used webinars extensively for training, usually when we launch product upgrade we take the opportunity to conduct a webinar on how to the new features. We also conduct periodic webinars just to stay connected with our user base. The response to our webinars varies depending on the topic, ranging from only a few participants to fifty or more. Based on the number of registrants and attendees we have had at our webinars demonstrates that most of our users are comfortable with the technology.

During the course of the webinar, we get the opportunity to ask questions of our audience. We also record all our webinars (minus the audience interaction) and made it available on our website for people to view at their convenience. Given the positive response to the webinar and the positive feedback we have received, we believe that our webinars will increase our subscriber “stickiness.”

In addition, offering instructional content on your website can significantly increase the likelihood of visitors “returning another time to learn something more, and ultimately make a purchase.” According to Ken Zwerdling (CEO of Foreign Translations) “Some visitors just want to learn more about the service and the industry before they make the decision to [make a purchase].” Stephanie Chandler, author of From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur, agrees, saying that by adding informational content to your company’s website you have greater power to attract traffic from search engines. Chandler has built her business around the power of marketing with web content. webinars can be an important part of the instructional content you offer on your site.

While training is the most common use for webinars, they can also be used to reach your target audience and help you increase sales of services or products. Some Internet marketers use them to help teach potential customers about the products they are selling. Most webinar tools have a registration feature which allows you to identify prospects who register and then see if they actually attend the event and for how long. This can give you a pretty good feeling as to how interested a prospect is in the products you are selling.

Many Internet users are more willing to view a webinar about a subject than to just read about it. This allows Internet marketers can to use them as teasers or bait to help convert prospects. Webinars gives you a portal to provide information in a way that helps you build branding, image, and customer loyalty.

There are a wide variety of webinar tools available online and I have tried several of them. When choosing a webinar tool things to look for include the number of concurrent visitors the tool allows, polling capabilities, ability to invinte participants, require registration, track attendance and record the webinar. If you are interested in exploring how a webinar tool might be used for your organization, you might want to look at DimDim. They offer a webinar tool that is free for up to 20 participants. While the tool lacks some of the features of some of the full feature commercial tools, it is more than adequate for webinars for a small number of attendees.

I have found webinars to be a great way to connect with customers and potential customers and to build a library of content that contributes to the credibility of my company.

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References:

Free Coaching on How to Market Using Webinars http://www.squidoo.com/marketingwithwebinars
A Case for using Webinars: http://www.ctinnovations.com/blog/?p=355
Drive Sales with Tutorials http://bestwebtutor.com/wordpress/?p=383

Should you use personal payment services?

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:50:00 +0000

Personal payment services are an easy way for small businesses to take payments online. Personal payment services like PayPal, Amazon Payments & Google Payments enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online. They can provide a number of benefits to small online businesses, including:

Personal payment services cater to small businesses that do not want to set-up their own online payment mechanisms.
Personal payment services cater has a number of options that allows users to quickly set-up online payment mechanisms on their Web sites:
Send Money allows you to pay anyone with an email address.
Request Money just enter the recipient's email address and the amount you are requesting. The recipient gets an email and instructions on how to pay you using PayPal at www.paypal.com.
Buy Now Buttons Buy Now Buttons or Pay now buttons are a low-cost way for you to accept credit card and bank account payments, and can be fully integrated with your website in a few easy steps.

While there are advantages to personal payment mechanisms, there are also disadvantages. These include:

Personal payment services usually only accept debit and credit cards
Because PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout true payment gateway, there are some extra steps you need to go through in order to deposit money from your personal payment account into your bank account.
Perhaps the biggest disadvantage is that using a personal payment service establishes you as a small vendor which could negatively impact your credibility online.

For many small businesses that can’t really justify the expense of a more traditional payment gateway, however, PayPal, Amazon Payments or Google Checkout can be essential to setting-up your online business. When making a payment service decision, it is a good idea to review your business needs. Different payment options can be compared based on simplicity for you (the entrepreneur), ease of use for the customer, cost as well as any potential impact on your credibility. Compare a number of different options, and understand what would work best for your particular situation. Remember, no decision is forever, if you need to, you can add a true payment gateway at a later date as your online sales grow.

What are cookies and should you be using them?

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:45:00 +0000

A Cookie is a data file that is written on the user's computer by a program within a Web page. Cookies are often used to store information about:

- Which pages a user has viewed
- How many times a user has visited a Web site
- What information the user has entered on past visits (e.g. login name and password or customer data)
- What items a user has selected to purchase (shopping cart)
A cookie stores information in pairs of variable names and associated values. Each name/value pair is separated by a semicolon (;):
userid=mkellog;password=hello;
Information in cookies is essentially private. Cookies can only be read by the same Web site domain name or IP address that created them.

Cookies are not necessary for many informational websites. However, if you have subscription based content, are using a shopping cart or have a need to remember a user's identity from page to page. Cookies are essential. Generally, using cookies on a website requires a developer with some programming expereince in either JavaScript or in a server side language like PHP.

Writing for the web: What entrepreneurs need to know

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Creating good content for your website is the essential and most overlooked aspect of website design. Many people focus on the aesthetic aspects of a site without thinking on what they want to say an how they want to say it. Many people assume that the same words that work for print campaigns or materials can just be copied and pasted for the web, but that’s just not true. Research indicates that users read hypertext very differently than printed information. Here are four rules for writing for the web.

1. Know Your Objective

One advantage to writing for a website is that it websites are divided into a series of pages, each of which is designed to convey a specific piece of information. When writing an individual page you need to know what purpose that page serves within the overall context of the site. Once you know the objective, you’ll be able to more clearly articulate what you need to get across to your customers in your copy, and you’ll be able to eliminate any text that does not support the objective.

2. Know Your Audience

This should be the the guiding principle behind all aspects of your web design. You need to know who your customer is and what information they will be looking for on your website. Knowing your audience and understanding what they are looking for and help you with the next rule as well.

3. Keep it Short

Studies have found that the more words you add to a web page the less time people spend reading it. A general rule of thumb is to use half the words that you use in printed material when writing for the web. One study found that users only spend about 4.4 seconds on a page for every 100 words of content. That suggests that if you keep your content as short as possible. Ideally you should limit yourself to one idea per paragraph (users will usually skip over any additional ideas). Additionally, you should start your paragraphs with the conclusion, then add details.

4. Make it Scannable

According to Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox people rarely read websites word by word; instead they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites Nielsen found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. As a result you need to make your website scannable this includes:

Highlight keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
Use meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)
Use bulleted lists

5. Use Neutral/Objective Language

Research suggests that website visitors do not like sites that use a promotional writing style with boastful subjective claims ("hottest ever"). Web users are seeking straightforward honest information when they are browsing the web and are more likely to trust sites that use neutral objective language.

Customizing your writing style specifically for the web can dramatically improve the usability of your website. It can make users read more of your content, improving the likelihood users will act on the information they find.
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References:

Jacob Nielsen, How Users Read on the Web, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
Josh Catone, 5 Rules for Better Web Writing, http://mashable.com/2009/09/08/web-writing/

Making Your Web Pages Accessible

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:15:00 +0000

It is essential that websites be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. Website accessibility is required by laws and policies around the world; however, making your web pages accessible is not only a good idea, but it's good for business. People with disabilities represent an important demographic group and improving accessibility increases the likelihood you will capture this demographic group as customers.

There a few simple things that can be implemented on any website to improve its accessibility. These include:

Images & animations: Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual.
Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots.
Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid "click here."
Page organization. Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
Graphs & charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute.
Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.
Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarize.

Once you have created your website validate your site to make sure it meets accessibility guidelines. You can use tools, checklist, and guidelines available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG. Other tools you can use include:

A-Prompt "A-Prompt (Accessibility Prompt) is a software tool designed to improve the usability of HTML documents by evaluating Web pages for accessibility barriers and then providing developers with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs."
Cynthia Says "Cynthia is a web content accessibility validation solution, it is designed to identify errors in design related to Section 508 standards and the WCAG guidelines. The main purpose of this portal is to educate web site developers in the development Web Based content that is accessible to all."
The Wave Another excellent tool to check accessibility.

Testing and Validating Your Web Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:54:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems with the internet it the wide array of browsers and devices that your site can be viewed on. A website that looks lovely on your browser can look bad (very bad) on a different browser. Some of the problems you can see as you move from browser to browser may include having elements on your page overlap or having content wrap strangely. Both of these flaws can make your site difficult to use or could even hide some critical parts of you page making your site difficult to navigate.

On of the first things you can test is that your web pages are validly constructed. Having pages that are validly constructed helps improve the odds that your page will display correctly. Unfortunately, just because they validate doesn't mean they will look good in different web browsers. Here are tools to test the appearance and validate the code.

CSE HTML Validator Lite They bill it as "...the most powerful, easy to use, and user configurable HTML, XHTML, CSS, link, spelling, and accessibility checker available for Microsoft Windows." It's free, but it's fairly limited. If you're a serious designer, you should at least get the standard version (at $69).
BrowserCam It's not free and it's only cheap if you use it for one month to check out your site (if it takes longer than that...).
LynxViewer is a service that allows web authors to see what their pages will look like (sort of) when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser.

Using these tools can help you insure that your website looks good in a variety of browsers on a variety of platforms. It is the first step in an effective website testing program. Other things to test include usability testing, accessibility testing and content testing. I will discuss these types of testing in future blog posts.

Make your Tweets Valuable and People will Stick With You

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:28:00 +0000

One of the goals of companies seeking to build a presence on Twitter is to gain and keep followers. The more followers you have the greater the likelihood your Tweet will be read and passes on in the form of a retweet. However, getting and keeping followers on Twitter can be challenging. Many small companies make take shortcuts in their Twitter presence which can alienate followers and cause them to get "Unfollowed."

I recently read a very good blog post on which included seven tips on how to avoid getting unfollowed on twitter. These tips were:

1. Stop Spamming and bragging about your blog posts

Most of us have blogs and use twitter as a marketing tool to let people know the latest on our blogs. We also link the blog posts in our tweets which is the most common practice. Tweeples appreciate when you tweet about something important that will benefit twitter users as a whole. But linking the same post many times in a day is seriously considered as spam and will make you lose followers instantly. Stop that!

2. Tweet Simple and Keep it Clean

Do not curse anyone or use obscene expressions in you tweets. People follow you because they are interested in what you have got to offer. Show respect and gain respect. Doing the dirty thing will definitely jeopardize your twitter account as well as your followers count.

3 . Never Tweet on your Followers Count

All of us enjoy reaching milestones in twitter. Do not ever tweet about the number of followers you have. Do not brag on the list and the celebrities that are following you. This does more worse than good in terms of the followers count. Keep it real and take it easy.

4. Tweets are not for link sharing!

I sincerely request people (at least my readers) not to tweet JUST links. You dont expect people to just click on your links without knowing where the links will take them. It might not be spam but that is how its looked at. Twitter supports 140 characters per message and I believe that the space is sufficient for adding a title to your link. No one is bothered to click on links without knowing what it is.

5. The power of MicroBlogging

Remember, you tweet for people and not for BOTS. Twitter is called a microblog and is so much powerful because you can reach out to your audience with a single tweet. Try to maintain a friendly relationship with your followers and even send some personal tweets to them. This makes them feel special and lets them know that you care.

6. Twitter is not an Online Game!

I know its fun to tweet about every single thing you do everyday. Never use twitter as if you are playing a game. Do not tweet hundred times a day. It is always disturbing to see a single person occupy the entire timeline. Personally, I always unfollow the person who floods my twitter with tons of tweets everyday. Remember, your number of tweets do not count; its the quality and the value of your tweets that matters.

7. RT: Retweeting is good to a certain extent

Retweeting is a good practice and is encouraged too. When you share an informative tweet, it helps your followers. But using twitter is much more than just retweeting. You need to share your opinions, ideas and thoughts in your twitter and not just always retweet some other random ideas or posts you find online. Make sure that you contribute to this social media because your followers are hungry for information; the ratio of your tweets to retweets should be always more.

These tips from the "Master Mind Blogger" are some common sense ways to avoid getting unfollowed on Twitter.

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References:

Salman Ahsan, 7 Tips to Avoid getting Unfollowed on Twitter, http://mastermindblogger.com/2009/7-tips-to-avoid-getting-unfollowed-on-twitter/

Developing a Twitter Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:25:00 +0000

Twitter is an excellent tool for reaching out and connecting with people, whether it be friends, employees, customers or potential customers. When entrepreneurs consider using Twitter in their company they first need to develop a Twitter strategy. That is, they need to know what purpose Twitter is going to serve within their organization. Understanding the strategy will help you know how many resources you will need to dedicate to maintaining relationships on Twitter.

There are a number of ways a firm can use Twitter:

1) Using Twitter to help boost website traffic

This is one of the key marketing uses for Twitter. Entrepreneurs can use Twitter to introduce new products, press releases or special promotions on Twitter. If you send tweets that demonstrate real value to your followers they can re-tweet your posts, which can create significant traffic surges that can be tracked in real time. If you use a URL shortener to post your URLs on Twitter, it becomes easy to follow exactly how many Twitterers followed your Twitter link to your site.

Although brands take many different approaches to driving traffic with Twitter, one entrepreneurial venture "The Organic Dish" uses Twitter to post organic recipes, promote farmers markets and to announce new meal offerings for their ready to cook organic meal company.

2) Using Twitter to improve search rankings

One of the side effects of boosting site traffic is that it can increase the inbound links from blogs and other high quality sites which can significantly improve a site's performance on the engines. According to "Chief Marketer," marketers should think of Twitter as "an accelerated link machine; as more and more inbound links accumulate, the credibility of the marketers' site rises in step in the eyes of the search engines."

3) Using Twitter to sell seasonal merchandise and excess inventory?

You may not have thought of Twitter as a direct sales channel, but Twitter is one way to get promotions on out of season products in front of more people. This can help companies move old models and other inventory that needs to go. Some of the brands, retailers and e-tailers currently using Twitter to sell older inventory include:

Kohlsdotcom: promotes Kohls.com Deals of the Day, contests and sweepstakes, and more
OldNavyOfficial: promotes sales, offers free shipping and other special promotions, etc.
BROfficial: promotes sales and other deals for Banana Republic
MoviesUnlimited: promotes 12-hour specials and DVD preorders for the e-tailer

4) Using Twitter to improve customer relationship management efforts

One of the big benefits of Twitters is that it can allow you to engage with your customers or potential customers. You can ask customers questions on new products, proposed improvements or upgrades or to get beta testers for your products. It is an ideal tool for getting real time feedback from you customers and its value in this arena cannot be understated!

Twitter can be an amazing tool to improve your company's visibility online and to improve your interaction with customers and potential customers. However, to achieve the full benefits of Twitter companies need to use it for more than distributing static news or chatter. To gain the full benefits of Twitter you need to participate in the community, provide value and engage your followers.

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References

http://chiefmarketer.com/disciplines/online/0504-five-twitter-questions/

Good Web Design for Entrepreneurs

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:25:00 +0000

For the most part good web design is a matter of keeping your content clear, targeted and well organized. You want your site to look clean and professional. You want your site to reflect the purpose of your business not your own agenda as an entrepreneur.

My advice is to start small and build your site up as you discover a need for more content. I would build a simple web page "template" that you use for the entire site so people know what to expect when they move from page to page.

Here are the top issues you need to address when you are designing your site.

Site Navigation
Site navigation is how visitors move from one page to another to find the information they are looking for within your site. It is essential that your site navigation is as simple as possible. The last thing you want to do is make it hard for your site visitors to find the information they are looking for. One advantage entrepreneurs have is that their websites generally are smaller that that for larger more established organizations. This is a good thing because it makes it easier for you to design a site navigation system that works well.

You want your site navigation to be clear and consistent from page to page. You want to avoid anything that makes it more difficult to find the information or pages people are looking for. You should:

Avoid multiple navigation systems. It is common to see sites with a navigation bar along the top as well as down the side. This can be confusing and is usually unnecessary.

Avoid using 'mystery meat' navigation. These are strange icons do not explain themselves to visitors on menus. There's nothing wrong with using words on a navigation menu.

Great Design

Great design is not so much about how your site looks - it is about knowing what your customers are interested in providing that on your website. Before building your website you need to knwo what needs it is designed to address. Your website may be about attracting publicity; it may be a tool to increase sales; it may a way to communicate with customers or investors. It can, in fact be almost anything. Your website be designed to do its job efficiently without unnecessary decoration that can get in the way.

Writing for the web

Writing for the web is totally different than writing for print media. People generally scan websites instead of reading them. So you need to write in shorter sentences for easier reading. Use bulletted lists, headings and links to highlight the things that are important.

Use a Professional (if you can afford one)

Your website signals visitors how credible your business is. If your site looks like it was designed by an amateur customers are more likely to look elsewhere for someone to do business with. You can get a professional to create the overall design for your site but make sure you know how to add and update content (site maintenance is key).

Calls to Action

One of the most common mistakes we see on websites is a failure to incorporate a clear call to action. A call to action can be "Buy Now", "Click here for more information", "Sign up for our Newsletter", "Request a Quote." Decide what your Calls to Action are and make it very very very easy for people to execute them. If your site has been designed properly, your visitors will get a clear idea of how you can help them, so may wish to sign up for your newsletters or fill in a simple inquiry form. Calls to action are how you turn browsers into customers so don't forget them.

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References:

http://www.inplymouth.com/businessnewsindetail.asp?category=Internet&serialnumber=109

Strategic Web Development: Slideshare Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:37:00 +0000

The slideshare below provides arguments for establishing a credible web presence for small entrepreneurial firms. It discusses:

why a website is necessary,
the need for a good, well planned website that is aligned with your marketing goals,
measuring success and
using social media to extend your presence beyond the website.

It was presented at the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship this evening.

Strategic Web Development

View more presentations from dggregg.

Social Media Convergance

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Increasingly businesses are utilizing multiple social media outlets to connect with and engage customers or potential business partners. For a small business keeping up with all of the social media sites can be a daunting task. But it is possible to utilize multiple social network tools to provide a uniform face to the world.

Personally, my first problem is keeping fresh content on all of the sites my company is currently active on (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and my company blog). Here are a few ways you can manage your social media presence to minimize time spent and maximize your company's visibility and credibility online.

First: I maintain a company blog to establish myself and my company as experts in the special education data tracking domain (yes, I do two blogs). The way I manage this is to use scheduling features for my blog which allows me to write posts one or two months in advance and have them appear at regular intervals. I mix this up with writing "current" blog posts in response to events in the news to keep my content fresh and interesting. I try to never go more than a week without posting something new to my blog.

Second: I use TwitterFeed to automatically send my blog post titles and shortened URLs to Twitter. This helps me to keep my twitter feed current.

Third: I use Hoot Suite to schedule other types of posts to my twitter account including, retweets of interesting tweets I see from people I am following, re-posting the links to my past blog entries and commentary on current events that I think will be of interest to my followers. I try to post to twitter every day. Again my goal is to keep my content current - not to become one of the twitterers that posts multiple times an hour.

Fourth: I use a custom background on my twitter page to allow me to brand my twitter account and keep it consistent with the image portrayed on my company website. You can put a variety of company relevant information in the Twitter background, including logos and contact informaiton. See my Twitter profile (ddtracinfo) for an example.

Fifth: I keep my company Facebook page current using RSS Grafiti which grabs all of my blog posts and all of my Twitter tweets and puts them on the Wall for my company page. Again this helps to keep my Facebook profile current - so all I have to do is check in on the discussion board to see if people are asking questions I need to answer.

Sixth: I use Twitter to help with my business networking. I used Twitters search feature to find people interested in or involved in the disability community and followed them. Many of these people then followed me back. It is possible to invite those that follow you back to connect with you on LinkedIn to enhance the relationship. You obviously need to put the information in your Twitter account about the fact you are on LinkedIn and that you would be happy to connect.

Seventh: On LinkedIn it technically against the rules to have any personal contact info in your profile and depending on where you put it you could get your account suspended. But you can put your Twitter name in your LinkedIn account with out risk and on your Twitter account you can give people the information to connect on LinkedIn. In addition, you can invite you rLinkedIn connections to follow you on Twitter. Twitters more lenient policies on chatting with others allow you to communicate more easily.

These are very simple ideas but they do add tremendous power to your social media networking if you use them to your advantage.

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http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/07/using-twitter-to-help-your-linkedin-networking-and-vice-versa/

Using Twitter for your Small Business

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:56:00 +0000

The nice thing about social media is that small businesses can effectively uses it for a small investment of time and and a very small investment of money. One of the easiest social media tools to adopt as a small business is Twitter. Many other social media tools (like blogs and facebook) can require months of consistently contributing quality content to build a following, but on twitter, you can build a following and have an impact relatively quickly.

There are numerous uses for Twitter that a small company might be interested in. These include:

Getting market research. Twitter provides the fastest way to get feedback for your ideas, word of mouth topics, or new products.
Find leads. Using Twitter search allows you to find people talking about your industry’s key terms in real time — making Twitter an efficient way to find leads.
Build a following: If you follow key players in your industry (or in potential client industries) there is a good chance they will follow you back.

Here are some tips I have picked-up that can help a small business get started with Twitter:

Create your Twitter name today: I created a personal Twitter account to learn how to use it and then a few weeks later was ready to set-up my company Twitter account. In between those two dates someone else had signed up for my product name as their Twitter name. Twitter names are free, so sign up for yours today before someone else grabs it.
Search for key industry terms: Search for people talking about issues in your industry and if they appear credible follow them.
Observe what people are saying: It is always a good idea to observe the social norms of any social media site before jumping in and actively contributing.
Search for your name. If someone is talking about you, you need to know it!
Search for your product & company name. People will frequently post positive and negative comments about companies on Twitter. If Someone complements you you need to thank them. If they are complaining about something you need to address that complaint before it becomes a tidal wave of complaints!
Search for your competitor’s name, company or products. This can give you an idea of what people are saying about him and give you a leg up on the competition.
Search for like-minded people. This can be for local people or anywhere. Networking with others gives you a whole new circle of business contacts. You can search for terms like your city, state, niche, or anything else that might help you find people to follow that could work with you. Again this is a good source of followers as well.
Search for people who can complement what you offer. If you are great at building websites, but cannot write worth a hoot, then search for writers that might want to partner with you.

Using Twitter can take as little as a few minutes a day and it could potentially allow huge benefits for your organization.
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References

http://www.socialnetdaily.com/twitter/the-best-use-of-twitter-for-online-marketers/

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/06/02/andys-answers-3-ways-a-small-business-can-use-twitter/

Taking your LinkedIn Presence Up A Notch

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Once you have created your basic profile on LinkedIn and connected to the people you know there are a number of extra steps you can take to build your credibility within the site. The LinkedIn site allows you to do a few key things that will help you gain followers, show off your expertise and, possibly, find a new job or investors.

Start a group: Linked in allows you to create groups which can be an extremely powerful assets for your personal brand. If you start a group in an area you want to establish yourself as an expert in you are automatically portraying yourself as a leader. Groups can take time to establish, but if you deliver news content, promote helpful articles and regularly start discussions on topics that will be of interest to group members you can greatly enhance perceptions of your expertise on those topics (see Dave Taylor's Secret of Linkedin Groups for more info).

Create a Company Profile: As an entrepreneur, one of your primary focuses must be on promoting and enhancing the credibility of your company. LinkedIn supports this by allowing you to create a company profile. While LinkedIn company profiles are generally short, simply having one does make your company appear to be a real company in the eyes of people evaluating you online.

Use LinkedIn Applications: If you have a blog, then you should definitely use either the “WordPress” or “Blog Link”applications. This will show two or three of your recent blog posts on your profile. This helps you keep your profile current and (again) allows you to show off your expertise to the LinkedIn community. Other applications that can be used to demonstrate your expertise are “Slideshare Presentations” and "Box.net Files."

Update your status: Make sure that your LinkedIn status message is extremely professional because the audience is more career minded people and hiring managers.

Ask and answer questions: If someone in your network asks a question pertaining to an area that you have knowledge in, you should answer it. By participating in these types of discussions, whether you’re asking or answering them, you are perceived as a valuable contributor to your network and someone to go to if people need help.

Conclusion

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to demonstrate your expertise to individuals and companies that you might want to have a professional relationship with. Adding additional information to profile can help you expand your networks awareness of the scope of your talents. However there are some things you should think of before adding to your profile:

When asking a question, make sure it is articulate, relevant and that it is note easily answered from other sources. Close you questions once you get a good response and be sure to rate responses you get so respondents know you value their input.
When answering questions make sure that you take the time to give a thoughtful andswer that highlights your expertise.
When contributing auxiliary informaiton (e.g. via Blog Link or SlideShare) make sure it is a professional blog that will be relevant to your connections.

As with creating you initial profile (see http://dawngregg.com/news/2009/09/enhancing-your-credibility-with-linkedin.html) it is important that all the auxiliary information you contribute to LinkedIn enhance your credibility (instead of detracting from it).

References:

Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/

Building a Strategic LinkedIn Network

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:50:00 +0000

LinkedIn is all about developing your professional network that you can potentially use to improve your career or the success of your start-up. Once you have created your profile (see my last post on creating a credible profile) you will want to start to build a network of contacts that can help you build your company.

In LinkeIn your network consists of first, second and third degree connections. First degree connections are people you know and they are the center of your network. Each person connected to your direct connection makes a second degree connection and those who are linked to your second degree connections, make up your third degree connections. Your first, second and third degree contacts are visible to you and can help you with career opportunities, answer your questions or help you connect with potential employees.

Building your Network

There are a number of things you can do to start building your network of connections:

Import your contacts from Windows Live, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! and AOL. You can also search through lists of LinkenIn members that went to your college or had the same employer and invite those people to join your network.
Invite professional contacts, business partners and clients who are not LinkedIn members to set up accounts, this way your network broadens.
Get introduced. LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to contact somebody directly unless you have their email address or you hlist the same school or employer. To connect with these people you have to find a mutual connection that could forward an Introduction on your behalf. There is a limit of five Introductions per month at the free basic account!
Use InMail (if you have a paid account) to send private messages to any LinkedIn user without showing your email addresses. You can see these messages only if they are accepted by the recipient.
Promote your URL by taking your distinct LinkedIn profile URL and puting it in your email signature, on your traditional resume, on your blog, your website, your presentations, and possibly on your business card.

When asking people to connect with you on LinkedIn there are a number of best practices you should follow:

Always include a personal message that offers good reasons for making the connection.
You can put value items, free reports, links, resources, tools, and even connections in this message.
You should make sure the language of th message is professional and that it does not contain any spelling or grammar mistakes.
You should never put anything in this message re selling your products or services.
Avoid being intrusive.
Don’t send invitations to people you don’t know and don’t accept invitations from people you really don’t know (see LinkedIn Etiquette for best practices for connecting to people)
If you invite someone to LinkedIn, remember to remind that particular person under what circumstances you two have met and then you can choose to connect.

If someone decides to connect with you it is always a good idea to thank them for connecting. Again in this message you want an offer of value - what you can do for them, not a sales pitch or description of all the great products and services you think you have.

Getting References

Once you have begun to develop your network of contacts you are going to want to ask some of them to provide recommendations for you. Recommendations allow people on LinkedIn to describe why you are a good person to work with - and they appear right in your profile. You have control over what recommendations appear in your profile so if you don’t agree with the things written about you, you can reject the recommendation. The more good recommendations you can get the better you will look in the eyes of recruiters and potential investors or business partners.

Note: the ability to reject recommendations is a feature you need to be aware of when evaluating people on LinkedIn as well. Since negative information can easily be blocked by LinkedIn users, LinkedIn recommendations are a good place to start evaluating a candidate - but they are by no means a substitute for traditional channels for obtaining references.

Provide Value to Your Network

One of the principles of effective networking is to provide value to you network connections. When creating your network you likely are focusing on those connections that can potentially be of value to you - but equally important is to think of how you can be of value to them.

Once you have linked to someone try to connect with them to see if there is anything you can do for them. One way to do this is to look at their profile to see if you have any connections that they might be interested in knowing. You might also be able to identify a resource such as a website or a blog that would be of use to them. You may find that if you contact them with something that they might find useful - they will be more likely to think of you when a pottential opportunity arises.

References:

Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/
How to Use the LinkedIn Profiles of Others to Improve Your Network: http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/07/how-to-use-linkedin-the-profiles-of-others-to-improve-your-network/

Enhancing Your Credibility with LinkedIn

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:10:00 +0000

LinkedIn is currently the premier professional online networking site. Currently the site has over 47 million registered users in over 200 countries and territories around the world. According to the LinedIn website, executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies are members.

However, in conversations with many people in my personal LinkedIn network, it is apparent many of them joined LinkedIn because it is the "thing to do" and are uncertain how to leverage the site for personal and professional gain. Many people think that you should be on LinkedIn if you are looking for a job or are interested in doing hiring. But LinkedIn offers a number of benefits beyond recruiting that entrepreneurs can use to build their business, including:

Manage the information that’s publicly available about you or your company
Find and be introduced to potential clients, service providers, and subject area experts who can help you grow your company
Create and collaborate on projects, gather data, share files and solve problems
Be found for business opportunities and find potential partners
Gain new insights from discussions with likeminded professionals in private group settings
Discover inside connections that can help you close deals

There are really three primary steps to building your personal credibility with LinkedIn, today I am going to talk about how to build a credible profile.

Creating your profile

Your LinkedIn profile summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments. Your profile is your calling card on LinkeIn and many business professionals indicate it is one of the first places they check when looking for informaiton on potential employees or business partners. So, it is essential that your LinkedIn profile create a positive first impression.

To create a profile you first need to create a free LinkedIn account, then you can add a variety of information to your profile

Snapshot: An overview of your name, location, past positions, education, recommendations, and links to your websites. Use a meanigful headline under your name, this is what members see first. It defaults to your current title, but you can change this.
Status: Your status message allows you to share professional updates with your network.
Photo: Be sure to include a professional photo
Summary: This is intended to be a short paragraph summarizing your professional experience and goals. It should be engaging and short. In the first paragraph of your summary, try to say a few words about you, as well as talking about your professional experience. Be sure to include your unique abilities and differentiators, such as industry awards and honors.Include a second paragraph that discusses your career aspirations.
Specialties: List your areas of expertise.
Experience: List your professional experience, include position descriptions, what the company does, and what your main responsibilities and accomplishments were.
Education: List all of the schools you ateended, degrees received along with associated activities and honors.
Additional Information: Often overlooked, the additional informationsection can provide a richer picture of you as a person and should definitely be completed along with the other parts of the profile. It includes:
- Websites: link to up to 3 websites (e.g. personal blog, company website). Instead of leaving each title (for each link) as “My Website,” you should change them to the actual title of each of your links, so that the link can be associated with the URL.
- Interests: list the things that you enjoy doing, learning about, etc
- Groups and Associations: either list professional organizations or display badges of LinkedIn groups that you are a part of
- Honors and Award

When creating your profile there ate a few things you can do to enhance your credibility and make it easier for people to find you.

Create a Custom URL: Your LinkedIn URL should appear as “http://linkedin.com/in/yourfullname.” To do this, go to your profile and click “edit” and then next to where it says “public profile,” click “edit” again. At the top, you’ll want to click “edit” one more time next to “your public profile URL,” and then type in your full name, without spacing, and click “set address.” If the unique URL is taken, then try using a period between your first and last name or use your middle initial.

Change your Headline: Your headline will automatically be displayed as the last job you’ve had, unless you change it manually. I recommend that you revise your headline provide the information you most want LinkedIn members to see. This can be the name of the job you want to have or a unique ability you want to highlight (e.g. Social Networking Expert).

Do not use your email address in your profile: It is advisable not to put your email address under your name on your profile. Putting the email address there, make people aware that you are willing to connect with just about anyone which could damage your credibility. It also makes your email address available to spam emailers, something most people want to avoid doing. It is better to leave the email address out and have people interested in contacting your go through InMail or a mutual friend in order to get in contact with you.

Maximize your Specialties Section of your Profile: The summary section of your LinkedIn profile is the one place where you get to showcase your (our your business's) talents. The secret to maximizing your summary is use the “specialties” section of the summary to list any unique or extensive skills that may be superior to your competition. Use this section to set yourself (and your company) apart.

As an example, check out my LinkedIn profile: View Dawn Gregg's profile

Conclusion

Your LinkedIn profile needs to be completely professional and absolutely flawless because people will be using it to evaluate you and your company. It is essential to keep your profile up-to-date so you are always creating the best possible impression on anyone that may want to do business with you.

References:

Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/
Maximizing the Specialties Section of Your LinkedIn Profile http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/09/maximizing-the-specialties-section-of-your-linkedin-profile/

Changing Face of News Coverage: Twitter and Balloon Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:43:00 +0000

As I sit in my office watching the flood of tweets surrounding the disappearance of "Balloon Boy" I am struck by how the way news is transmitted is changing. Today in Ft. Collins, Colorado a six year old boy was reported to have floated away in a homemade balloon. While millions of people watched live news feed of the story, I stayed up to date with the story by following the feed on Twitter.

Like it or not, Twitter has become a way for users to experience the news. During the time the balloon was in the air and authorities were trying to figure out how to get it down balloon boy dominated the twitter stream. The 7 of the top "trending" topics on twitter were all about balloon boy and every minute each one of these topics added thousands of new tweets:

How good is twitter as an information source?:

I found out within moments of the balloon landing that it had indeed landed.
I know the balloon was a father son project and could follow links to the father's web page.
I got to see a photo of the family posing in front of the now infamous balloon.
I now know that the boy's family was on Wife Swap and could follow any number of links

The amount of background information available on the story and on the family is truly amazing. However, as the story unfolded there was a great deal of misinformation also reported on twitter.

For a while some twitterers were reporting that the boy was indeed found alive inside the balloon. Those hopeful reports later were proven false.
Many were still tweeting that there was a 6 year old trapped in a balloon long after the balloon had landed and the boy was not found inside.

One thing following a story on twitter allows that traditional media does not is the ability to interact and comment on events unfold. While many twitterers reported on what they heard about the story others used twitter to express their reaction to the story. These include prayers for the child as well as skepticism about the entire event:

Praying #balloonboy is found safe and sound.
RT @redhk: beginning to think this spotlight-loving family miiiight have something to do with this. #justsayin #balloonboy || Roger that.
#balloonboy is so grounded. For life.
hoping the #balloonboy thing was a hoax, so sad for the little boy if it wasn't.
Basket fell off of balloon #saveballoonboy
Does this picture sum it up? Seriously hoping for the best as a parent myself. http://twitpic.com/ln9p6 #saveballoonboy #balloonboy
I hope he's found soon! Someone please keep me updated! #SaveBalloonBoy
#saveballoonboy omg :( this is awful

I personally have seen posts on this topic in many different languages as people from different parts of the world engage with and comment on this story. Meanwhile, I sit in my office and wait with the rest of the world hoping for news that the boy has been found safely.

Follow-up:

The boy was found safely - but he was a top twitter trend for nearly 24 hours!

Managing your social network reputation (or eImage)

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:10:00 +0000

There is a great deal of research that has been done both in marketing and in information systems that shows that your reputation online can have a dramatic impact on the willingness of potential customers to d business with you and the prices you can charge for your goods or services (Ba and Pavlou 2002, Lee et. al. 2000, Standifird 2001, Standifird 2002). Whether or not you decide to formally launch a social media campaign to promote your company or your brand it is important for you to monitor what people are saying about you online. So you have an opportunity to contribute to the conversations that are occurring.

Entrepreneurs usually are trying to increase the visibility of their company or products. Depending on how new you company is, there may be few if any people discussing or you online. Before you begin any social media marketing campaign you need to begin by tracking the conversations that are occurring around your products and services. This will allow you to assess any changes that occur as a result of your marketing efforts.

One way to contribute to and help shape the dialog that occurs about your company is to use tools that allow you to monitor what is being said about about you online and track who is saying it.

Step 1: Sign-up for Alerts

A good place to begin is to sign up for a feed reader like Google reader or Bloglines. Feed readers aggregate syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Once you have a feed reader you can sign up for Google Alerts, RSS updates Google sends to you when they find new web pages that include the search terms that you specify. The alerts track blog posts, news articles, videos and even groups. You can set alerts on your company or product name, topic terms, or even alerts about your competitors. Google will then will notify you of stories, as they happen, so you won't miss it when someone is talking about things that are important to you online.

If you have a blog, then you will also want to claim your blog on Technorati, which is the largest blog search engine in the world. Once you register, Technorati tracks blog reactions (blogs that link to yours). Technorati allows you to subscribe to RSS alerts so that when someone blogs about you, you find out.

Step 2: Search for Social Mentions

There are a number of places where your company can be mentioned that will not appear in the Google or Technorati alerting feeds. This includes people using your name in comments on blog posts, in discussion boards, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. There are a number of tools that can help you search for and track these social mentions:

Backtype is a tool for monitoring blog comments that allows you to find, follow, and share comments from across the web.
Social Mention, Serph and Keotag are social media search engines that searches a variety of social media sources such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. It allows you to track mentions of your company, product (or competitors) across social media sources, like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Twitter etc.
boardtracker.com, Boardreader and Big Boards allow you to get instant alerts from discussion board threads citing your name.
Twitter search, Twilert and TweetBeep are tools that you can use locate your name, or other topics in Twitter messages.
If you have a lot of activity around your name you might want to use, Filtrbox, which only delivers the most relevant, credible mentions of things you need to track. Its "FiltrRank" technology scores content based on three dimensions: contextual relevance, popularity and feedback.

Most of these services allow you can subscribe to your results by either RSS or email (or both).

Using these tools you can track the amount and nature of activity surrounding your name. If the social mentions are positive you can take steps to highlight the positive. If the social mentions are negative you can take steps (promptly) to address any problems that have arisen.

Step 3: Track your Contributions

As you jump into social media you should develop a mechanism for tracking all of your company's contributions to the online social sphere. This can be challenging if you are making contributions to a variety of social network sites or if more than one person is your company is actively contributing. There are tools available for you to monitor your social media contributions allowing you to ensure that contributions are consistent with your messaging strategy.

One tool that is ideally suited to monitoring your companies social media contributions is FriendFeed, a social aggregator. Friend Feed allows you to aggregate all of your social accounts, (e.g. Delicious, Twitter, Your blog, Flickr, and YouTube) into a single easier to manage feed. FriendFeed allows you to conduct searches on your company throughout all social networks at once. It also allows you to analyze comments that people make on them.

Other tools you can use to monitor your activity on the web includes:

coComment is another tool that will help you manage your comments across the web.
Yacktrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources, such as Blogger, Digg, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, and Wordpress blogs.
You can also use Commentful and co.mments to track your social comments on the web.

Step 4: Develop your Monitoring Plan

After you’ve selected which sources you want to monitor and the tools you want to use to manage your social media campaign management you need to create a plan for for monitoring all of the sources you have identified. Your plan should include:

A schedule for how often you will to check your monitoring tools.
Who will be responsible for monitoring and updating each site or tool.

Your schedule will depend on the volume and types of comments you receive. When you start, monitoring each source once a day or week will generally be enough, but as your activity level increases you will probably need to monitor more often. This allows you to respond to people that are discussing you, network with people who are talking about topics of interest, thank people who have complimented you.

Following these four steps will allow you to stay on top of your e-Image. Contributing to and monitoring a variety of social media sources will allow you to manage your social network reputation and allow you to better project the image you want to have online.

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Ba, S., and Pavlou, P. A. "Evidence of the effect of Trust Building Technology in Electronic Markets: Price Premiums and Buyer Behavior," MIS Quarterly, (26:3), 2002, 243-268.
Lee, Z., Im, I., and Lee, S. J. "The Effect of Negative Buyer Feedback on Prices in Internet Auction Markets," in Proc. of the Twenty-first International Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane, Australia, 2000, 286-287.
Schawbel, D. "Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation," Mashable: Social MediaGuide, http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/
Standifird, S. S., "Reputation and e-commerce: eBay auctions and the asymmetrical impact of positive and negative ratings." Journal of Management, (27:3), 2001, 279-295.
Standifird, S. S. "C2C marketplaces and the Importance of Reputation Type," Electronic Markets, (12:1), 2002, 58-62.

Creating a social media campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:45:00 +0000

You have looked at the data (or read my last post) and you know you need to be out there, using social media to improve your e-image and to interact with your potential customers or investors.

The question is:
"What should you be doing?"

The answer is not simple. There are many things you can do with social media but the trick is choosing what makes the most sense for you and your start-up company. Some of the options are:

Blogs are ideal if you are in a complex environment and you have lots of information and ideas you can share with your customers.
Wikis are a good choice for publishing user guides, best practices or other documents where your customers can contribute to.
Forums are useful for complex product or service domains where users have lots of questions and having a knowledge base of questions and answers to those questions is useful.
Social networking Web sites (e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) are useful for connecting directly with your customers and creating a dialog with them about the things they like and don't like about your products or services. They are also very useful for launching specials and promotions.

Before you start

Before you adopt social media in your business it is important that you understand how these sites can work in your specific situation. You need to find out how social media is being used in your industry and among business partners and competitors (if no one in your industry is using social media yet then look at related industries).

Start Small

Once you have a feeling for how other people are using social media create a social media profile on the sites that are popular in your industry and/or in related industries. Once you create your profile it is generally wisest to begin contributing in small ways. For example, instead of creating your own blog, begin by commenting on posts and answering questions on existing blogs that are popular in your industry.

Avoid establishing your own blog, wiki, forum or social network site until you feel you understand the expectations the community has for such a site and you have the time to monitor and update the site on a regular basis.

Remember, social media is about contributing to and conversing with a community and that require a commitment. If you regularly contribution to online conversations you can develop establish an online audience over time. If you do not dedicate time to your online presence your e-image can suffer and ultimately cost customers. Nothing looks worse than a corporate blog, wiki or forum that has not been updated recently. I have seen sites that have a blog that has not been updated in years. This looks much worse than not having a blog at all (If you start a blog, wiki or forum and find you do not have time to maintain it - take it down).

Listen Actively

Even if you are not ready to actively create a blog or a wiki you still need to search for your company/product name on social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to see what people are saying about you. You will need to be prepared to respond to comments you receive online.

When responding to comments about your company or product, keep your message positive and let them know you value their input and will use it to improve. Always provide full-disclosure that you are the one representing the brand. Ask people what they think about your product. Remember, when operating in a social media environment you are there to listen and engage, not sell.

Long term Benefits

Social marketing and networking can provide a number of benefits to your company - if you have the time to invest in the social media process. It can:

increase customer loyalty
enhance branding awareness.
allow you to gather instant feedback on your products
improve sales of new products
provide evangelists that sell your products to others without even being asked.

One of the things to remember as you create your social media presence, social media is about conversations and information not selling. Be sure what ever you put out there is of value. If it is, people will pay attention to it.

Why you should use social media for your business

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Social media is increasingly the people interact with businesses and with each other. Over 60 % of Americans used Social media in September of 2008 and the number has grown dramatically since then [Cone 2008]. According to one study, people in the US expect to be able to intereact with companies using social media When asked about specific types of interactions, Americans who use social media believe [Cone 2008]:

Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
Companies should market to consumers (25%)

What does that mean for your business?

This means that your potential clients will be expecting you to be using tools like blogs, wikis, and forums on your website (or linked to your website). They will be looking for your at social networking Web sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

The question you need to ask yourself is: Are you ready to contribute to the social dialog your potential customers are increasingly turning to to discuss products and services?

If you aren't ready, how many my potential clients do you think you are losing to competitors that are engaged with social media?

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References:

Cone Finds That Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media, September 2008, available at: http://www.coneinc.com/content1182

Its not just about your website any more

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:36:00 +0000

When entrepreneurs think about building an online image for their company, they typically think in terms of their website and the content they put on it. While my last few posts clearly demonstrate that your website is important, there is so much more to a companies e-image than just what they put on their website.

Your e-image really consists of all of the information that is available when a potential customer or investor searches the Internet for information about your company or your brands. Some of this can be content you still control, like your facebook page, your blog postings, your white papers, your business and web names, your twitter messages as well as the people you friend or follow on various social media sites or link to from your website.

It is important that all of this information helps to build your credibility in the area you are doing business in. On Twitter, for example, you should be following the authorities in your field and should be tweeting on topics that will be of interest to your potential customers and business partners. However, it is important to realize that social media is different than your website and people don't use Twitter or read blogs to be sold something. Instead it is an information resource that connects them to other people. It is much better to use these resources to inform as opposed to using it to sell.

Another important aspect of your e-image is what other people are saying about you online. Tweets, facebook nessages, blog comments, forum postings and product/company review sites all allow people to comment back to and about you. Often a favorable comment from a third party is worth 100 postings from someone in your company but negative comments can be very damaging.

Running away from these public forums is not the best way to control your e-image because if you make someone mad they can post negative things about you even if you are not participating. Instead you should strive to control your online image the same way your image in person:

Provide a good product or service
Provide good customer service
Respond to emails promptly
Clearly state and honor your terms of service or return policies
Always be courteous

If you do get a negative comment online, respond to it courteously and publicly. If you did something wrong and the complaint is warranted, own up to your mistake, apologize and make some form of restitution. If the complaint is not warranted, apologize anyway but then make it clear why the client is mistaken. Research done in the eBay feedback forum has shown that negative comments have less of a negative impact if the seller responds promptly - even if the seller disagrees with the comment made.

In today's information driven world people will have lots of place to find out about you, your products and your services. Make sure you provide the information they are looking for even if they are not looking at your website.

Improving your PageRank with Google

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:35:00 +0000

With millions of pages on the Web it can be difficult to get your Web site noticed. This can be especially difficult for entrepreneurs launching a brand new website. One of the first instincts for a new website owner might be to produce a website quickly and then register it with every search engine and wait for the visitors to come. However, this strategy can wind up backfiring if your site does not portray your company in the best way possible and if your site is not optimized to appear well in search results.

If you don't optimize your site it could be weeks before the friendly Google bot returns to reindex your site after their initial visit, causing you to lose customers before they even get to your site. It is now widely accepted that if you are not listed in the first 3 pages of results from a search engine then you will not be found by that potential customer. The majority of people will simply go to a competitor's site that does appear in those results or try new search criteria assuming that they have failed to find what they are looking for.

Before you register your Web site with a Search Engine you should enhance your Web site to make sure it displays well within Search Engine results. According to Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (produced by Google) there are a few things you can do to enhance your search engine placement. Here are a few of their top suggestions:

Use Meaningful Titles:

All pages on your Web site need meaningful titles. Some search engines read only the title when indexing the Web site. The title is also what shows up in a user's favorites or bookmark list. Here is a set of title selection Dos and Don'ts

Do choose a title that communicates the content of the page
Do make sure your title is the first tag in the HEAD element of your page
Don't use titles like “untitled” or titles that have nothing to do with the content.
Don't add unnecessary keywords in your title tags
Don't use ALL CAPS titles.
Do keep your title short (if the title more than 60 characters it may be shortened in the search results).
Do minimize the use of stop words in your title (Words such as "and, on, a, the, for, to, about, are, that, were, by, of" and other auxiliary words are ignored by search engines)

Use META elements

You can use META elements to raise on your Web site listing with certain search engines. AltaVista, Excite, Inktomi and HotBot use them but some other search engines ignore them.

META Elements go in the HEAD section of the document and let you specify information about the document that is invisible to the user.
Common META elements are Author, Description, Keywords and Generator.

You should make sure to use the description META element and the keywords META element in your document. This description may be used in Google's search results (depending on the user's query) and the keywords element helps search engines classify your results. Here are some dos and don'ts for creating a good description for your web page:

Do summarize the page's content completely
Do keep your description within 160 characters
Do use unique descriptions for each page of the site too.
Don't simply make your descriptions a list of keywords for the page or site.

Here are some dos and don'ts for creating good keywords for your web page:

Do include keywords you want your page to be found under in the keywords list
Do make your keyword list targeted and specific
Don't use the same keywords on every page for your site

Google also recommends you improve the readability of your URls (words are better than numbers), use alt text and title attributes for your images and links, optimize your site navigation, and use best practices for anchor texts.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guideis an excellent resourse for entrepreneurs interested in improving their visibility on Google and other search engines. And it is free.

What information should your website include?

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn Gregg) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:07:00 +0000

There is no one size fits all solution for new businesses when it comes to deciding what content you need to put on your website. Each business is unique and the website needs to be designed to meet the unique needs of your target audience. Thus it is important that you know why you are creating the website and target information content to the primary purpose of the site.

I was recently involved in a series of research studies the looked specifically at the type of content small businesses needed to put on their sites, from a user's perspective. Not surprisingly the studies demonstrated that they type of content varied based on the primary business the company and what the purpose of the site was (Walczak & Gregg 2010, Hasley & Gregg 2008).

Companies that are selling things online must provide accurate, believable product information that includes all "important" product characteristics. For example: ingredients is an important product characteristic for specialty food sites and book reviews are very important for author and other book selling sites. Of course price is important if you are selling things but studies show that including a price can actually be detrimental for higher end service sites (e.g. law firms and medical procedures).

Companies that are using their websites for recruiting or to attract investors also need to have accurate believable information but they need to include additional corporate information that is not required for sales only sites.

Regardless of what you are using your website for you need to realize that content is king, so make sure all of the information on your site is accurate, believable and up to date.

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S. Walczak and D. Gregg, "Factors Influencing Corporate Online Identity: A New Paradigm," forthcoming Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 2009/2010.
J.P. Hasley and D. Gregg "Understanding and Managing Web Site Information Content: The WICS Method," Working Paper, July 2008.