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Top 10 Business Applications for Facebook
In it’s very generic, vanilla form, Facebook is just so-so as a business tool. Lots has been written and said about its use for business, but to me the real power comes when you hang the proper accessories, known as applications, on it and really trick it out for business and professional use.
There are thousands of application available with one click once you have a Facebook profile. But, don’t get caught up in adding every goofy dodad, just because you can. Think logically about your goals for being on Facebook and then choose the tools that will help your communicate, achieve and amplify those objectives.
Here’s a directory of Facebook applications
And, here are my favorite applications for business use.
So, I would love to hear how you have effectively used specific Facebook applications for business.
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Calling All Home Based Business Owners
Was a time when home based meant - “not really a business” but, oh how times and technology and lifestyles change. Today home based often means, choice, family, hip, fireplace, dog, freedom, serious income and a host of other very cool things.
That’s why I love that my friend Rich Sloan of StartUpNation has put so much energy into creating the HomeBased100 competition sponsored by Microsoft Office Live Small Business.
Look, if you’ve got a home based business go enter this competition and score yourself some potentially serious credibility and exposure.
Just look at these categories and tell me that this is not a fun contest
* Best Financial Performers
* Most Innovative
* Boomers Back in Business
* Greenest
* Yummiest
* Wackiest
* Grungiest
* Recession Busters
* Most Slacker Friendly
* Most Glamorous
The only category that size and performance really matter is the financial one so really anybody can enter.
You can enter your business until midnight Pacific Time on September 30, 2008. Throughout October, winners will be judged by StartupNation and a panel of judges who are each passionate about home-based business and the Top Ten categories highlighted in this year’s competition. Winners will be announced in mid-November, 2008.
Winners of the Home-Based 100 find themselves at the center of a media storm that includes recognition on national and local TV, radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on some of the largest, most influential websites on the web, MSN and StartupNation among them.
The judges’ decision-making process (did I mention I’m a judge?) will be influenced by the following factors:
* How well your business fits the category (or secondary category) for which you entered
* The quality and completeness of the description about your business and the case you make for it. Your passion, achievements, creativity, integrity and/or humor may be instrumental factors depending upon which category(s) you entered
* The popularity of your entry based on number of popular votes received
Here’s where you enter the competition that celebrates America’s best home based businesses and the people behind them.
Here’s a list of last year’s winners and high vote getters so you can get a feel for what you’re up against.
By the way sending me product samples and free services will not influence my vote but it may help the overall spread of good karma - you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.
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Using Viral Video in Small Business Marketing
I had a great visit with Bob Thacker, senior vice president of marketing and advertising at OfficeMax, for a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Bob is the inspiration behind some very clever viral campaigns of late for office supply retail giant.
I wrote earlier about the “Penny Pranks” hidden camera series of videos featuring a comedian trying to make purchases around New York City using nothing but pennies. The videos were very successful and highlighted the chain’s back to school message. I think this is a very solid example of the use of viral video that even the smallest business can follow.
Thacker is also associated with the chain’s well documented “Elf Yourself” campaign. While this campaign was far more successful in terms of traffic and awareness, it was far less tied directly to a message or theme that could help sales and much more of an attempt at brand awareness, a much tougher play for the small business. Look for the elves to return in some fashion once again in Q4!
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.
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So You Think You’re Different?
Being different, or more accurately, having a point of differentiation that matters to a market, is one of the most critical marketing strategies for the small business.
Intentionally finding and centrally communicating that point of difference is what sets the truly successful business apart from the businesses relegated to compete on price.
See, the market must have difference, a point of reference with which to compare competing businesses - that’s how decision are made. So if you don’t give them something that makes you uniquely suited to serve their needs, they will fall back to the only measurement of difference you do have - price. And, as I’ve said often - price is a terrible place to compete because there will always be someone willing to go out of business faster than you.
But what makes you different? That’s the question small business owners have a tough time with because, at the end of the day, people are a little uncomfortable really being different. So, they hang their hat of things like “solution driven blah blah” and “superior customer service” and “unique set of fill in the blank” that everyone in their industry is saying.
Don’t believe me? I dare you to take the “Sameness Test.” Go to the website of your top five competitors and copy and paste the first paragraph you find there onto a blank page. Now add the first paragraph from your site. Then black out any reference to company names and pass this document around your office and see if anyone in the office can pick your site out or identify any competitor. It’s my experience that this will probably make you laugh and cry at the same time.
Use this Sameness Test as motivation to step out and really identify some way for you to create, perfect, and communicate, in the simplest terms possible, how your business really is unique.
Don’t know where to look? Ask you customers, research your industry around the world, look for opportunities presented by your competition. You don’t always have to be the first one to create a revolutionary innovation in your industry to be different. Sometimes it’s enough to package your services differently, approach a niche market differently, price your products differently, add services to products, add products to services, create outrageous guarantees, or add some truly remarkable habit to your sales and marketing process.
Just know this, it’s OK to be different, in fact, it’s the only way you can grow.
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Maybe the Best $100 You Ever Spent
There are all kinds of ways to increase conversion on your website. You can tweak headlines, test offers and play with every single copy element to get it just right - but, at the end of the day, if the user doesn’t really get what you are trying to get them to do, you’re sunk.
Web folks have been employing something called usability testing for years. Essentially this is putting a prospect in front of your site and having them talk their way through navigating towards whatever your goal is. This is a very powerful, and frankly, necessary step for any web site to be truly successful. The problem for the typical small business is that it can also be rather expensive.
I was interviewing web conversion expert Bryan Eisenberg for an upcoming Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode and he shared a little secret with me about a firm that conduces low cost usability testing.
The site is usertesting.com and for just under $100 you can get some tremendous feedback about the user experience of your web site.
Here’s how it works:
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
New Marketing Action Planning Tool
I have been working with Palo Alto Software for almost a year now to write a marketing plan software based on the Duct Tape Marketing system.
I am thrilled to be able to announce that Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing is now ready to go.
This tool is literally ripped from the streets of the real small business world and features the practical (read non-academic) approach at the heart of Duct Tape Marketing.
I think you’ll find that we’ve taken a different approach with this release and built it to be a tool you use for planning AND action. The plans you build with Marketing Plan Pro charge you with coming back and changing and updating your plans based on results. The program gives you guidance, action steps and advice needed to implement your plan.
The program is flexible enough to be used by any size business at any point in the life of the business. We even created a simple 30-minute plan because I know that a tool like this isn’t worth much unless the user can and will use it. You can always add components to create more comprehensive plans once you get started.
Every copy of Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing ships with a copy of my book Duct Tape Marketing as well. In addition, Duct Tape Marketing Coaches around North America are available to help you create and implement your marketing plans using the software are a guide.
I have to say, it’s pretty cool having my own software title! Let me know what you think.
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Stephen M.R. Covey Talks About Trust
Stephen M.R. Covey joined me to talk about trust for the August session of the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series.
Covey is co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide and author of bestselling The SPEED of Trust
Trust is such a big issue in business and, in fact, a core component of my definition of marketing - getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you. The need for trust is such an obvious notion but I think many people take a limited view of what it really means. Covey talks about the need to both earn and give trust as equal parts of the same concept.
During our chat he share a story about a street vendor who was frustrated by the fact that he could only serve a finite number of customers because he spent so much time taking money and making change. So, as a test, he started allow the customer to pay and make change on their own. He discovered that not only could he serve many more customers over lunch, people were rarely dishonest and, in fact, tips were higher. By extending trust he built his own.
You can listen here. or subscribe now and listen via iTunes
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If You’re Not Participating in Social Media
Gone are the days when all you needed to be on the web was a web site. Today you need to think and act in terms of a total web presence. And that means if you’re not participating in social media, you’re not really online.
Consider these highlights from a wonderfully comprehensive research project developed by Universal McCann.
Source: Universal McCann Wave3 research into social media
Kind of makes you want to run out and start writing a blog, doesn’t it? Well, if doesn’t then go back and read that last point again. 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs
So, if you’ve been dragging your feet on this - or your boss or board isn’t convinced - use this research to help make your point.
Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3 View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia research) Related articles by ZemantaThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Saving the World at Work Podcast
Tim Sanders stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to talk about his new book - Saving the World at Work
Tim has written two previous books that I really enjoyed - The Likability Factor and Love is the Killer App. These books argue that bringing notions like love, nurturing and caring into the workplace is the healthiest way to grow.
Tim’s a blast to chat with and I was particularly intrigued with his notion of what makes a business “green.”
Being green isn’t just about recycling, it’s about nurturing, growing things, instead of just using them. In fact, being green has as much to do with purpose and people as it does plastic and paper.
Companies that want to lean on their greeness as a marketing advantage need to do three things, in this order:
The beauty of this somewhat expanded view is that even the smallest business can do this and make a meaningful difference.;
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.
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Small business owners are a mobile lot. Whether it’s going from job site to job site or opening up the Chinese market, the new tools available for mobile business owners are pretty amazing.
The following are a few resources you might want to consider if you find that your business takes you to other cities, countries and cultures.
So, mobile warriors - what tools have you found useful?
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Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media has created the podcast player widget to beat all podcast player widgets. This is really something that I’ve sort of looked for going on several years. There are other players that you can embed on websites and in blog post, but none have the simplicity, style and functionality of this one.
You can run the stream of your own podcast episodes or blend and feature up to 5 different shows. Personal Life Media publishes a number of shows, so obviously they are promoting that content, and frankly, depending upon your interests and focus, they have some great shows. (I need to tune in to Buddhist Geeks a little more often.)
Here’s the player for Duct Tape Marketing, feel free to click the Get button and run this on your site if you like.
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Dell just launched a pretty cool initiative called Digital Nomads. The idea is to create a content driven site that is focused on the growing numbers of people working and playing in a digital, no four walls around me, kind of way.
The content certainly features the occasional suggestion that a Dell laptop is the tool of choice for today’s digital nomad, but it’s shaping up to be so much more than that. In the spirit of full disclosure I’m providing content for the site as is Shel Holz and Phil Torrone of MakeBlog - a couple of pretty smart guys.
The site features tools and tips - I wrote this week about one of my new favorites, a Technology Enabled Jacket from SCOTTEVEST - basically a jacket with all kinds of pockets and a system for wiring things like my headphones, but then somehow still look cool.
If you like to discover hacks and gadgets to make your digital lifestyle more tuned in, check out Digital Nomads.
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There are so many good reasons for small businesses to use blogging as an essential marketing and communications tool that I can only hope my occasional examples turn the light bulbs on for those who still don’t yet see the value.
Lincoln Sign Company in Lincoln, NH - a company that makes and installs all manner of custom signs and not exactly the first kind of business you think of when you think Web2.0 - has been blogging for several years and is a great model for what a small business can do with this tool.
One of the things they recently initiated was a way to use the blog as a way to tell the complete story of a sign as it is being made in their shop.
Our new strategy can be summed up as follows; “We are not using our blog to sell signs, we are using our blog to sell the EXPERIENCE of getting a sign.”
As we create a sign in-house, we blog about it throughout the process, and it enables us to interact with our customers as a new way. We also use it as a selling point.
“At the end , you get more than a sign, you get a sign, AND the story of how that sign was made.”
We have also just started providing our customers with “Memory Boxes”. Basically paint samples, scrap materials, hand-written notes, etc. The flotsam and jetsam of making a sign
This post sums up their new approach
This is such a smart way to use content as a marketing strategy. They get great buy in from the customer as to the value of the process (my guess is they aren’t the cheapest around), they create a story that can be used over and over again and they automatically create web content that brings them search engine traffic.
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Increase List Sign-ups 327% with Testing
Testing your marketing tactics is the only real way to get better. You must try something that you think will work while always trying to prove something else will work better.
Here’s a quick example of some testing of an online tactic. I try my best to get folks to sign-up for my weekly email newsletter. It’s a part of my overall trust building and education process.
I have an email newsletter sign-up form on most of web pages - a pretty standard practice. I tested three sign-up routines to see which pulled the most subscribers.
1) Form simply resides in the left sidebar and promotes the newsletter
2) Form drops in and offers free information for sign-up
3) Sticky note drops in and offers free information for sign-up
I was not surprised that options 2 and 3 outpaced the static option 1, but I was surprised that option 3 produced twice as many sign-up as option 2 with essentially the same offer and mechanism but a more creative delivery tool. (you can see the tactic in action at www.ducttapemarketing.com)
While some people dislike the pop over technology, and it can certainly be abused, there’s no arguing it’s effectiveness in getting attention. The key, however, is that you have something valuable worth getting attention over and you make the offer as simple and unobtrusive as possible.
I use a service called AdImpact for the pop overs and I suspect some of the results are do to the somewhat unique creative, but I will use this for now and keep testing for even better results.
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I wrote recently about a great new service called Help a Reporter Out (HARO) - this service, founded by PR Geek Peter Shankman, matches journalists on a story with expert sources. Anyone can sign up to get the three daily emails full of stories just waiting for you to contribute to.
Peter’s enthusiasm and New York pace shine through on this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. (Although admittedly I had a microphone issue on this recording and Peter’s voice is a bit muffled) This is a great free tool and every small business should subscribe.
And, here’s a killer referral and networking tip. Subscribe to and read the HARO emails with two hats on. One, look for stories you could add to and two, scan through the queries thinking about any of your customers, partners, suppliers or prospects that could be offered up as resources to a journalist. If you would take 5 minutes a day sending off appropriate story ideas to your network, the referral tap will open in your direction in a matter of a few short weeks.
Remember, referrals are about trust and relationship building and nothing does that faster than showing you are thinking of others and trying to find ways to help them get what they want to succeed.
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.
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Getting Creative with Partnerships
When someone is just starting out they will ask me to give them some tips on how to get some business going quickly - after I talk about building a long-term marketing mindset - I often point them down the path of strategic partnerships. Creating the right partnership or two can create an instant and steady flow of leads.
There are some obvious ways to go with this:
A group of home services providers get together to promote actively to each other’s customers and create an entire network of providers. So, the plumber, electrician, HVAC, lawn care, roofing, and alarm company create joint marketing materials with coupons and special offers and the technicians drop it off with each call.
Or, a service business example
Accountant, Bank, Insurance, Lawyer, IT consultant and Management consultant get together and offer full day or 1/2 day of great workshops. Each invites their own customer base and gets exposure to the collective attendees.
But, what I really like, because it can create more buzz than the typical, logical relationships, is when a couple of businesses that you don’t normally think of as partners can find a creative way to mutually benefit each other.
For example:
1) I was out in Colorado last week and went to a coffee shop that offered free fly casting lessons every day out on the stream that ran behind the store. The coffee shop received business each day as families came in to get the free lesson. The lesson was held by a local fishing shop that signed up participants each day for their guided fishing tours. (The coffee shop owner even said some people just come in to watch.)
2) An IT consulting firm wanted to partner with CPAs at large firms so to get their attention they brought in a masseuse and the CPAs were treated to a back massage as they listened to the presentation. Not only did the IT firm stand out and get the attention of the sometimes reluctant CPAs, the massage business acquired new customers.
Two keys for any of these to work
1) Must target the same ideal customer
2) Must trust each other to take good care - these are referrals after all
What’s the most creative partnership you’ve witnessed or participated in? Was it successful?
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One of my most frequent mantras for small business is “Strategy Before Tactics.” In other words, you must develop a solid marketing strategy before you ever consider the what and how of the tactical side.
For me, that strategy is always based in two core ingredients - a thorough understanding and description of who makes an ideal customer for your business and a simple, yet meaningful, way to communicate how your business is different than all the others that say they do what you do.
The longer I’ve owned my own business and the longer I’ve worked with small business owners I’ve come to add a very important third element to the strategy piece, and it’s one that I think somehow must come before anything else.
This 3rd strategy element is something I call “Your Shine.” Essentially this is the illumination of your marketing and life vision in what is ultimately a highly personal and unique way.
You already know that line that separates your business and your life is so thin that without a vision for how one will serve the other, perhaps neither will serve either. And that’s what I believe holds people back from building truly remarkable businesses and equally remarkable lives.
So what does this shines thing look like? I don’t know exactly, but I do know it has nothing to do with balance. First off, balance is impossible to achieve and it’s wrong thing anyway. Building a business and a life that shines isn’t about balance, it’s more about blending the right notes to create a certain kind of dynamic harmony.
See, the beautiful thing about harmony is that only you can determine the kind of music that excites you.
Your Shine then is your personal understanding of your organization’s (substitute job if you like) higher purpose or reason for being that syncs perfectly with your personal goals and values. Okay, before you conclude that this is starting to sound a little too spiritual for your taste, let me bring it back to a simple, practical idea. You and only you can decide what “higher purpose” means, the only point I’m making is that without this driving vision or “this is why I do this” it is far too easy to get knocked off track the first time you suffer some setback or criticism of your dream.
A firm grasp of this thing I call your Shine is what gives you the courage to stay with what you believe.
Once you create Your Shine as part of your marketing strategy you may find that the other elements of your strategy, your ideal customer and your core difference, are much easier to get your arms around.
The most exciting thing I’ve witnessed when people take the time to really get this idea, is that all of a sudden marketing gets really easy, because they have a guiding light that drives every single marketing decision.
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I hope you know about and are using Google Alerts - it’s a nice way to get info delivered to your email inbox or RSS reader for specific search terms you want to monitor.
But, you can also use a number of the Google shortcuts and search parameters to create some interesting alerts.
For instance, let’s say you want to create an alert for anytime that Google picks up on someone linking to your blog. On top of being a potentially nice monitoring feature it’s also a great networking tactic. If someone is reading and linking to your blog, you might want to comment back.
For this kind of alert go to Google Alerts and put this in the search term box - link:http://www.yourblogurl.com (yourblogurl is of course the address of your blog). In the “type” box, choose comprehensive or just blog if you only want blog links. You can also select daily, weekly and as-it-happens delivery.
This is yet another one of those things you should be paying attention to and the more you can automate it the better.
You might want to revisit my Top 10 Google Shortcuts to find some more ways to track
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Amazon Trots Out More eCommerce Tools
Amazon.com recently jumped into the merchant service, transaction and ecommerce tools for small business, business under the banner of Amazon Payments.
The new services come in a variety of flavors and are aimed directly at the current undisputed leader - PayPal.com. Now PayPal is miles ahead but Amazon’s got some things no other merchant services offering does - Amazon has a trusted brand and it’s got product to put in the mix.
Any business that uses their services automatically can add, upsell and cross-sell the entire Amazon product mix from the same set of tools and I think that’s a big plus.
The offering starts with Simply Pay - the basic, put a link on your site and collect money through their system (any Amazon account holder won’t have to put account info in!)
Next up is Checkout - this is Amazon’s shopping cart offering with integrated payment and, again, the ability to add Amazon product with an Amazon Associates cut.
Don’t forget about Amazon Fulfillment too - Amazon will hang onto your product and fill and ship orders for you through the shopping cart and payment system essentially automating the entire sales fulfillment process.
Lastly we have Amazon’s developer offering called Flexible Payments - this is the tool developers can start using to make their processing scripts work with Amazon’s payment system. This is where I think they will see some great growth. Lots of 3-party software will be able to hook onto the system in pretty short order because Amazon does a better job with developers than PayPal has in the past.
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By now maybe you’ve seen the OfficeMax series of videos featuring an improv actor wandering around New York City trying make everyday purchases using just pennies. You can view a sample below.
Check out the entire Penny Pranks series on YouTube
On top of being very entertaining though, these videos are a very good example of what can be done using video. While OfficeMax used a very professional crew and director, the videos have that homemade, user generated feel that is the current expectation. But, what I like most is that the videos support and amplify an big marketing promotion - the back to school for a penny items.
Too often people set out to create the next viral hit with no real thought to how it might support a brand or promote a campaign. It’s tough to get any piece of marketing to truly go viral, most of the time you get lucky, but if you’re going to get lucky, why not make it an effective marketing tool as well!
This series has been viewed several million times and my guess is the benefit to OfficeMax has been tremendous.
