Sensible Marketing for Small Business

Tech Talk: Gear Maker Allows Customer Reviews

Discgear, a brand of CD and DVD storage cases from CD3, based in Austin, Texas, stared 18 years ago selling in malls and through distributors but has now moved its sales online to Discgear.com. Michael Brown, IT director, tells IncTechnology.com how adding a customer review feature has helped provide customers -- and the business -- with more information about the products.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What is Discgear? What is your business model?

Michael Brown: Discgear is the brand name. Our parent company is CD3 Inc. For the past 18 years, we've been innovating in designing and manufacturing DVD and CD storage cases. The difference is Discgear offers storage and protection but we also have software that goes along with it that helps you find things and keep your media organized. Our business model has changed over the years. We sell a lot more online than we use to. We started out as a couple of guys selling products in the mall. Then we started to go through a lot of distributors and independent retailers. Our largest partner is QVC and we have seen great success with that format. We also sell online and a lot of our distributors sell our products online.

Wasserman: Why is it important to get customers involved in your website?

Brown: Being in charge of the website, I wanted to stay on top of what is going on and user-generated content is on everyone's website these days. For an e-commerce site, the best first step to get user generated content on the website is a product review. It makes sense. They just purchased something from you. Let them talk about it. People appreciate what other people like them have to say. People want to trust a company, but a company can be biased in what it says about its own products. Having a customer tell you the good and sometimes the bad about a product is a very beneficial thing to have. It became obvious that we needed to have something like this added to our site.

Being the manufacturer, it also makes sense. A lot of people are starting their searches at the manufacturer's website these days. Customers may go out and check some places for better deals, but they’re starting the search more and more at the manufacturer's website.

Wasserman: What did you decide to do?

Brown: We started going around and seeing what other people were doing. We started looking at our peers and the major e-tailers that have our respect and are doing a good job. More times than not I saw Power Reviews Express on their site. That is what first introduced us to that product. We followed up with them and a couple of other review providers. But it came down to what it cost and how easy it was to start up.

Wasserman: How much did it cost and what was involved in setting it up?

Brown: It was nothing to set it up. And it costs only $80 a month. The cost is minimal compared to some of the other people providing that service. The setup was a snap. It has an online wizard where you upload a product feed and make some decisions about how you want your reviews to show up. You drop a couple lines of code on your webpage. Within an hour we could have been taking reviews, although we delayed that for about a week and went through and did some testing and made some changes. It's an online service and what they are doing is managing the reviews database for you. We set up an account drop in code specific to our account on our webpage. When someone writes a review, they look it over and make sure it has no profanity and is relevant to our site and then they send it on to us. We can look at it or we can automatically have it go onto our website. There's no overhead on our end for keeping track of the reviews.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Brown: We rolled out the service on Dec. 1, 2008. We wanted to get it up before the holidays. And within the first three or four weeks we had 100 reviews on our site. We don't have a deep product line -- we have 10 or 15 core products. We saw that as a great success, and it's given us some good feedback as well. There have been some reviews that have truthfully raised valid points and given us an opportunity to have something brought to our attention that we will probably think about for future design. It's there for good and for bad. Thankfully, we have heard more good than bad.

 

 

4 Keys to Success with Social Media

Hosting an Internet radio program over the past few years has allowed me to speak with some of the most successful social media communicators in the space.  People like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, and Brian Clark are synonymous with social media.  They’ve each amassed huge followings on their blogs and on sites like Twitter.  They are recognized experts in the social media community for their ability to connect with people on a personal level, even when they’re speaking to thousands of people at a time through social channels.

So if you’re looking to successfully leverage the power of social tools to reach people on behalf of your business and “move the crowd,” here are a few things successful people like those above have in common.

They read

One thing all the successful social media types I know do is read. In fact they are ravenous when it comes to reading, devouring up to 100 magazines a month. This includes national business publications, regional business magazines, industry trade journals, and specialty newsletters from professional organizations. Mixed in with the magazines are the handfuls of books they are reading. This typically means they are in the middle of four or five books, on an off subject with respect to their profession.

I won’t even bring up the online perusing of blogs, white papers, and e-books they also take in. They do this because of their passion to know as much as they can about their chosen area of expertise, not necessarily just to blog. But the knowledge they accumulate allows them to create valuable content that attracts people to them.

They listen

The fastest way to get people to listen to you is to listen to them.  Not just put up with the sounds coming out of their mouths, but to listen.  And listening to others is at the heart of what successful social media communicators do.  Listening and observing what people were talking about on Twitter was key to the success of Guy Kawasaki’s latest venture Alltop.com.  Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got his start with Apple many moons ago. Through his site, billed as “the online magazine rack,” Kawasaki finds out what people are talking about on Twitter in order to create a resource page of great content on the Web on the hottest topics.

Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, has a huge following on Twitter, but always seems to be directly communicating with people when they ask him a question.  And he asks people for their thoughts and opinions on a regular basis because he’s genuinely interested in what others have to say.

They share

What really strikes me about successful social media folks is their willingness to share the spotlight with others. Many of these folks have spent years writing to build audiences. This includes not only writing blog posts, but also answering numerous comments and Twitter “tweets” from their readers. The successful social media communicators also take time to help others by critiquing their writing to help them find their voice. They also use their blogs and podcasts as platforms to bring attention to people who are doing things they feel are noteworthy. And, in many cases, these popular bloggers will offer a few of their readers the opportunity to be a guest author. Liz Strauss, a social Web strategist and community builder who founded the business blogger conference SOBCon, gives out her SOB award (Successful Outstanding Blogger) each week to bloggers she thinks people should be reading. 

This might not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge honor if you think about it. It’s like an unknown getting a chance to be the opening act for a superstar, in front of a crowd you would never get on your own, but are interested in hearing you just because you’ve received a huge endorsement from someone they trust.

They have fun

Brian Clark is well known for his highly respected Copyblogger.com website, which helps people up their copywriting skills to better connect with audiences.  The site is full of great information, but what makes Clark someone to listen to goes beyond his considerable expertise.  I look forward to what Clark has to say because he’s also funny, and because he quotes lyrics from 80’s rappers Eric B. and Rakim.  And while Kawasaki is a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and serial entrepreneur, he’s got a great sense of humor. And this is readily apparent if you follow his tweets on Twitter.

Sure Liz Strauss and Chris Brogan are social media strategists and people look to them for understanding how this stuff works.  They’re also great fun to talk to.  Strauss shares her sense of humor on her blog and on Twitter to the delight of her thousands of followers.  And Brogan’s self-deprecating humor is appreciated by anyone who has a chance to  interact with him.

So if you want to be successful with your social media endeavors, do what the experts do.  Read, listen, share, and go out there and have fun!

Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. Leary is also host of a weekly radio program heard on Business Technology Radio. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at www.brentleary.com.

 

Link Bait: Giving It Away Online to Get Traffic

‘Tis better to give than to receive. That’s the philosophy behind a new marketing approach that puts a new spin on the old promotional giveaway by tying the giveaways to website visits and using them as “link bait” -- a means to attract links from blog sites and other third parties.

It can be a highly effective strategy. When Logos Bible Software, an electronic book platform and research tool for religious texts, began offering books from the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary series, the company wanted a high profile for its new offerings. So it began giving away one of the volumes -- the Matthew, Mark commentary -- on its website. (The company’s Libronix reader and search platform has always been a free download; customers traditionally pay for texts.)

“We turned it into an event,” says Dan Pritchett, vice president of marketing and business development. Because the giveaway was touted as a limited-time offer, something Pritchett always recommends, bloggers and others reacted quickly, posting items about the free book. “Hundreds of people linked to it,” he says. Ultimately, 9,425 people took advantage of the free download. “It was one of the most successful programs we’ve ever done.”

But while offering an attractive giveaway is likely to earn you lots of links, it won’t necessarily help you meet you business objectives. Deciding what specific effect you want to achieve is an important first step that will help you determine exactly how to structure your giveaway promotion. Here are some choices to consider:

Build a better mailing list: Rather than simply offering a free download, Logos gave out a coupon that would allow users to “purchase” the book from its site for a price of $0, after inputting their names and e-mail addresses. “We got almost 10,000 people to update their information with us, whether they were already customers or not,” Pritchett says. “Most gave us permission to contact them, so those are people we can go after with marketing e-mails now. We can try to sell them the rest of the series.”

Associate with a trusted brand: PayCycle, Inc., an on-demand payroll service, was looking for a way to both build visibility and educate prospective customers on the sometimes intimidating subject of payroll management. Commissioning Payroll for Dummies from the Dummies series publisher seemed the most logical choice. “We considered other options, but there was a big advantage from associating ourselves with the Dummies brand, which is so well known and trusted,” explains Jane Willis, vice president of branded business. “They stand for accessibility in complicated topics, which is exactly what we were trying to accomplish.”

Maximize links: Logos launched the Matthew, Mark giveaway with a blog post describing the book and the series in detail, and explaining how to download the free Libronix software. This allowed Logos to get “two links for the price of one,” Pritchett explains. “We asked people to link to both the blog post and the book.”

Create viral marketing: Logos’ next free giveaway will be the first issue of the company’s new Bible Study Magazine. “One way we’re promoting the magazine is by offering a free review copy to anyone who can review it anywhere. If you have a blog, a church bulletin, a newsletter, a Facebook page where you’ll post about it, we’ll send you a copy,” Pritchett says. Thus far, he says, about 160 people have requested free copies. “We have Google alerts set up, and reviews are coming in every day.”

Improve search ranking: An added value of having many web pages link to yours is that it improves your site’s search engine ranking. To get the most search engine optimization out of a link, Pritchett says, it pays to have the right “anchor text” -- the actual blue underlined text where the hyperlink resides. Search engine software uses anchor text to determine the relevancy of a linked page to a particular keyword search, so a blog post that links from “click here for your free magazine” is less valuable than one that links from “Bible Study Magazine.” Taking no chances, Logos is offering suggestions for anchor text to bloggers and others who might link to its freebies.

Start a long-term relationship with customers: “The plan is to mail other things over time, and invite prospective customers to our webinar series,” Willis notes. The invitation-only webinars cover a variety of business topics that don’t necessarily relate to payroll; one recent offering taught attendees how to create a public relations campaign with little financial outlay. “The intent is to reward existing customers and keep them loyal, and give prospective customers a taste of the service they would have with us,” she says.

Pre-sell a new product: When Logos was preparing to launch its first Mac platform, the company knew it needed to engage with Apple users, a group that had never been customers before. So Logos created a simple widget for the Mac platform where users could enter a Bible verse number, and the widget would display the verse. This time, the company allowed the widget to be distributed widely, and to be downloaded directly from shareware and freeware sites, without requiring a coupon or contact information. “Inside the widget itself was code that checked our server every day to see if we’d released the Mac software yet,” Pritchett says. “As soon as we did, the graphic on the widget changed to an ad for our new application.”

Thanks to the widget, that announcement went out to a lot of people. “Because it was free, it was picked up by hundreds of sites,” Pritchett says. “It’s been downloaded about 50,000 times.”

 

 

The Domain Name Game

What’s in a name?

When it comes to getting potential customers to visit your website, the answer is -- a whole lot more than you may realize.

A good domain name could be the difference between crummy or phenomenal traffic to a company’s website -- and the new customer contacts or sales that result. That’s leading more small businesses to buy up descriptive domain names to use in addition to their company names for their Web presence.

Descriptive domain names are Web addresses that include popular keywords people are apt to type into a search engine like Google when they are looking for a specific type of product or service. For example, if you’re Joe’s Plumbing in Prescott, Ariz., you might have a website called JoesPlumbing.com. But based on the keywords your potential customers are most likely to use to find a plumber near them, you may also use domain names like PlumbingServicesInPrescott.com, ArizonaPlumbers.com or UnplugMyDrain.com -- and have all three redirect traffic to your website.

Domain names “are virtual real estate. They’re the front door to your business,” says Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at Sedo, the online domain name marketplace.

Drawing traffic without buying ads

With the right domain name, you can get traffic to your website from people interested in what you have to offer without spending a lot on online advertising, Johnston says. For example, when Sedo customer Bice’s Florist wanted to expand, the Ft. Worth, Texas, company’s owner sold four stores and bought a variety of domains that matched floral terms. The result: sales increased by $1.5 million without a penny spent on Yahoo or Google ad networks, Johnston say.

The highest publicly disclosed price for a domain name Sedo ever brokered was $3 million for www.Vodka.com back in 2006 to a Russian company that’s using it to roll out its products in the United States. Sedo currently has 15 million domains for sale and 900,000 registered users, according to Johnston.

But many desirable domain names are available for $1,000 to $2,000, Johnston says. As with other real estate, the recession has created a buyer’s market due to a large number of speculators who previously bought up domain names and now are liquidating some of their portfolio, Johnston says. “We’re seeing some fantastic names selling for good prices,” he says.

Do’s and don’ts

According to Johnston and other SEO experts, here are some things to consider when using descriptive domain names for your business:

• Do your homework. Before spending a dime, figure out what the mostly commonly used keywords or phrases are that potential customers use to find your type of business. You can hire a SEO expert to do this, but be prepared to pay -- good ones charge into the hundreds of dollars an hour for their services. David Brown, an SEO expert and host of the SEO 101 Internet radio podcast series, suggests sitting down with a friend or family member who’s a casual Internet user and asking what words they’d use for a search. “I use my mom as an example and ask her what domain names should be,” Brown says.
• Don’t scrimp. Domain names are cheap -- unclaimed names are $10 a year to register -- so don’t just buy the specific name you want. Buy the words separated by dashes and any common misspellings. Then use redirect services such as Domain Redirect or DogBark.com to bring that traffic back to your main website. Buying up typos and misspellings also blocks cybersquatters who use monitoring services such as Compete.com to track Internet traffic and buy up misspellings and hold them for ransom, Brown says.
• Do consider giving something away. If you buy several descriptive domain names, consider setting up generic webpages to go with them and give something away -- a newsletter or list -- to people who leave their e-mail address. That way you can collect information your sales staff can follow up on. Just be up front telling people that they’ll be contacted, says Dave Conklin, president of ProspectMX, a Lancaster, Pa., Internet marketing company.
• Don’t stop at your domain name. Once they’ve clicked through, potential customers won’t hang around a website for long if it just sits there like an online brochure. If you don’t run an online store, at least have something people can sign up to receive so you can collect email addresses to potentially convert into a sale, Conklin says.

Do-it-Yourself Web Design for Small Business

Sticker shock. That’s what Terry Sullivan got when he shopped around to have a website professionally designed for his new catering business.

“I looked into it, and it was between $4,000 and $150,000… that’s pretty expensive,” says Sullivan, founder of Texas Prime Caterers near Dallas, Texas. “I had just started a business, and I didn’t want to spend that kind of money.”

So Sullivan did it himself. After obtaining a domain name and a hosting agreement through 1&1 Internet, he started building. In about nine hours, he had a basic website without e-commerce capability. Not bad for a chef with no code-writing or graphic design background.

To build his site, Sullivan used Wix, a publishing platform application that allows someone to design a website in Flash without knowing code and without using a template. Launched in 2006 as a free service, Wix now offers a $9.90/month premium service, too. Unlike the free version, the premium service offers hosting and does not carry Wix-generated advertising, explains Wix co-CEO Allon Bloch.

D-I-Y Web design grows up

Wix is one of the newer do-it-yourself Web design applications that are allowing small businesses and individuals to design or augment their own websites and social network pages cheaply and more creatively than ever before. Using Wix, users can drag and drop a wide range of content into their sites. Weebly, a rival app, uses a template and simple step-by-step instructions, as well as free domain hosting. Weebly also offers a free service, as well as a “pro account” for $3.99 a month with additional features.   

Meanwhile, inexpensive domain-name and hosting services are plentiful in the marketplace, and many of them offer sitebuilding services. Likewise, many Web design firms offer cheaper do-it-yourself options. The result is a market that makes it easier than ever for smaller companies to do everything from find a domain name to power up their site faster and more cheaply than ever before.

Wix’s Bloch notes that, between small businesses and personal users under 35, there is a growing market for technologies that let people design their own websites and personal pages. “Artists, designers, musicians, they are wanting to create their own sites,” he says. “And people under 35, their lives have been on the Internet. They want their social pages to reflect who they are.” Moreover, the technology allows people to easily update or change their sites without involving a designer, and yet another layer of expensive design, says Bloch.

But attempting to design a site that is at once professional, informative, and easy to navigate is not without risks. Sullivan admits that one client pointed out a host of spelling and grammatical errors on his catering site. “It hasn’t hurt my business any,” he says.

But for some businesses, it could.

Sometimes it pays to hire a pro

“You want your site to look professional, or you could lose business,” says Jim Dittman, co-owner of w3.com, a full-service sitebuilder site based in Birmingham, Ala. Errors in the pages, or advertising that diverts attention from your page, “isn’t considered very professional,” he warns.

Moreover, adding features such as e-commerce or database functionality can get complicated if you don’t know the ropes, experts say. “If you’re putting in an e-commerce platform, you need to know, will it work? Will it integrate with your accounting software?” asks Susan Wade, spokeswoman for Network Solutions, a Herndon, Va.-based sitebuilder firm.

Both Dittman and Wade note that professional Web design services don’t have to run in the thousands of dollars. A three- to four-page site, says Dittman, could run as little as $700.

Wade advises that users try different options out first, and really think through what they want in their site before proceeding. “No matter what option you choose, you need to have a clear idea what you want your site to do for you so you can keep costs down,” she says. “Concept spread -- that’s what will cost you.”

SIDEBAR: D-I-Y Website Design Apps to Know

Do-it-yourself website design apps becoming easier to use and more sophisticated than ever. Here are a few to keep an eye on:

• Wix: A Flash-based app that you don’t need to know Flash to use, Wix allows users to drag and drop content into their site freestyle, meaning that there’s no template in sight. Basic service is free, but users must first obtain a domain name and a hosting service, since all sites require a host. The free service features advertising. A premium service ($9.90/month) features no ads, and provides hosting. The company plans to offer domain-name search services soon.
• Weebly: Weebly’s simplicity allows users with almost no tech skills to form a website or personal page using a template. Moreover, says Weebly co-creator Dan Velti, it does not use Flash, thus making it easier for search engines attempting to index and rank the site. The app offers free domain hosting; its pro account at $3.99/month offers password protection, larger file size uploads, and an embedded audio player.
• Sprout: The Sprout app is not a sitebuilder. Instead, it allows users to trick out their existing website, blog, or page with rich media content (also known as a widget, mini-site, or mashup), such as a streaming video, real-time poll, or chat function with ease.

Now Is the Time to Start an Internet Business

A few years ago, Elissa Pignati was a brand-new mommy who wanted to preserve her baby’s handprints in a ceramic plaque. “I researched all the local crafters and only found one person who could do it, and she was a two-hour drive away.” Undeterred, Pignati called for an appointment, only to discover that the artist was on maternity leave herself, and wouldn’t be available for 10 weeks, by which time Pignati’s baby would no longer be a newborn.

Realizing she’d just discovered an unfilled market need, Pignati and her friend Jennifer Carroll started By Baby, which takes little ones’ hand and foot impressions in a non-messy medium and turns them into ceramic keepsakes. They started the business by traveling around to new parent centers and events around the Bay Area, where they live. A few months ago, they launched their website, which has already matched their in-person sales. Soon, Pignati hopes, it will account for most of their revenues. “We really want this to be our primary source for orders,” she says.

To many, 2008 seems like a dreadful time to start a new venture. The economy is tanking. High energy prices and a falling dollar have driven up the cost of just about everything, leaving customers with little disposable income. Getting credit is all but impossible. Better to hunker down, the logic goes, put off entrepreneurial plans, and wait for better times.

You’ll be missing a great opportunity if you do. For many who’ve tried it, this turns out to be the perfect time to launch a new Internet-based business. Why? Consider the following:

1. Lower costs -- Economic down times are neither better nor worse for starting a new business than boom times, according to Wil Schroter, a serial Web entrepreneur, and founder of Go BIG Network, an online community of startup companies. “The situation is just different,” he explains. “In boom times, capital is easier to get, but everything costs more. In the late 1990s, if you wanted to start an Internet business, you were probably raising $10 million. In 2002, you could start that same company for $200,000.”

These days, with tools for building websites and low-cost hosting readily available, an Internet entrepreneur can get off the ground for as little as $1,000, he says. “You can acquire customers and have a storefront at a very cheap price. With a bricks and mortar company, you would need a lot more.”

2. Little or no inventory -- Inventory is one thing you absolutely need with a storefront, but might not with an online business. Mike Faith, president and CEO of Headsets.com recently decided to start a second online business, MotionSeats, which sells special ergonomic office chairs designed to strengthen the back. Faith spent a lot of attention and money on getting a strong website design and crafting a near-irresistible free-trial guarantee but one thing he didn’t do is buy the chairs themselves upfront.

“We put the website up, waited to see what sold, and bought the first few retail,” he says. “We lost a little on each chair, but it was a lot cheaper than buying five in each color and then seeing if they sold.”

3. Less competition -- “In better economic times, you compete for everything,” Schroter says. “You compete for talent, for office space, for customers, and for attention from the media because there are so many cool startups to write about. When everyone’s running for cover, there’s much less competition.”

“There are very few people willing to spend money on marketing,” Faith adds. “That makes it a great time to be starting a business.”

4. High gas prices -- Paying more at the pump is bad for many American businesses, as well as Americans themselves. But it does mean that more people are staying home, putting off both shopping trips and vacations till prices come down. That’s good news for e-commerce, because many people are using their computers to go shopping instead.

5. More Web resources -- The Go BIG network is just one of many, many resources now available to new entrepreneurs. “The beauty of the Web is that there are so many people around the world who can help you do what you need to,” Pignati says.

Even better, the Web provides ready-made marketplaces, with customers primed to buy. “The biggest cost in any business is acquiring customers to sell to,” Schroter says. “The beauty of eBay and other such sites is they’ve done that heavy lifting for you.”

They also give you a quick and easy way to test your product or concept, he notes. “If you can’t sell your product on eBay, with millions of customers already in the store, you probably won’t be able to sell it elsewhere.”

Best of all, Schroter believes it can only get better from here. In the coming years, the Web will offer more resources, more places to connect with colleagues, and most important, more customers. “We always remind people that the Web is still in its infancy,” he says. “There are still whole generations of people who never or rarely use the Internet. We’re waiting for them to catch up.”

Imagine the size of the online market when they do.

 

 

Stop E-Mail Overload with Wikis, Blogs, and IM

E-mail is the central nervous system of most modern organizations, from startups to large corporations. Every communication, from the most important (planning for the big client meeting tomorrow) to the most trivial (fresh donuts in the kitchen) takes place through the corporate e-mail system. The results: e-mail overload and lowered productivity for the entire organization. Employees are tethered to their e-mail via BlackBerrys even over the weekend leading to communications burnout.

The biggest single reason for this is the inherent nature of e-mail itself: it is a point-to-point communication medium. The sender has to decide both the content of the message as well as whom the recipients are. If the recipient list is too large, it contributes to e-mail overload. If it is too small, that could lead to communication gaps and "informational silos" in the organization, where one group in the company doesn't really know what the other group is doing. Another problem is that each e-mail message is a single unit, making it hard to track conversations among multiple parties. Many e-mail readers thread conversations, but that is done at a syntactic rather than semantic level. Finally, putting everything in e-mail makes it difficult to build institutional memory.

We hit the e-mail wall at my company Kosmix recently. When we were less than 30 people, managing by e-mail worked reasonably well. The team was small enough that everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Frequent hallway conversations reinforced relationships.

However, once we crossed the 30-person mark, we noticed problems creeping in. We started hearing complaints of e-mail overload and too many meetings. And despite the e-mail overload and too many meetings, people still felt that there was a communication problem and a lack of visibility across teams and projects. We were straining the limits of e-mail as the sole communications mechanism.

We knew something had to be done. But what? Sri Subramaniam, our head of engineering, proposed a bold restructuring of our internal communications. He led an effort that resulted in us relying less on e-mail and more on three key Web 2.0 technologies: wikis, blogs, and instant messaging (IM). Here's how we use these technologies everyday in running our business.

Blogs

Each employee and each project has a dedicated blog. People can post as often as they wish to their personal or project blog, but they are required to post at least one weekly status update. All blogs are visible to everyone in the company. Anyone can subscribe to the feed for any particular team or individual blog. So for example, Josh in engineering can follow the blog of Mike in sales, if he's curious what Mike is up to. This results in complete 360-degree visibility throughout the organization. People can also post comments on these blogs.

Someone might post a problem they are facing, and others can post comments providing suggestions. This results in automatic grouping of conversations based on topics of interest.

The biggest advantage of the blog approach is that it is a publish/subscribe mechanism. I don't need to decide who to direct my communication to;  I just post on my blog. Anyone in the company who is interested in what I'm doing can subscribe to my blog to be notified of updates. And if someone just has a passing interest, they can always read my blog periodically without subscribing to it. This approach also breaks silos, for example, between engineering and marketing, or between marketing and sales. Sometimes the best product ideas come from sales people. And sometimes the best sales ideas come from engineers.

No one is required to read any particular blog, with two exceptions:

1. Managers are expected to read the status updates of their team members and post feedback.
2. People working on a project are expected to read each other's blogs.

The blog approach has reduced e-mail overload at Kosmix and even reduced the number of time-consuming "status update" meetings.  Most important, the blog serves as an institutional memory -- an electronic record of our business. Conversations do not get lost in the ether but are recorded and can be searched at any time in the future by new people on a project or new company employees.

Wikis

While blogs are great for status updates and discussions around ideas, they are not the best place to put items that serve as reference material: for example, documentation, specs, reports, and so on. The problem is that blogs are in reverse chronological order, and each blog can have just one author, preventing collaborative editing. For these situations, we use a wiki. The internal corporate wiki has sections corresponding to each project and each functional group in the company. Documentation, specs, and reports go into the wiki.
The other critical section on the wiki is the "team" section. Every employee has a homepage on the wiki, with a recent photo, describing their responsibilities at work and interests outside of work. As the team grows, and you see a new face at the office, this is a quick way of finding out who that person is.

Instant messaging

As Kosmix has grown, we now have people working from more than one physical location. In addition, we promote a culture of people working from home whenever it is compatible with their job responsibilities. Thus, we need a substitute for the face-to-face hallway conversations that cannot happen because someone is working from home or from another location. E-mail is not the best option because it is asynchronous and thus loses the spontaneity of a hallway chat.

IMing fills this need very well indeed. The entire Kosmix team is on IM. Each team member is required to set the "status" message on their IM client during normal sane working hours to indicate where they are working from. They can also post a "Do not disturb" message to indicate that they don't welcome interruptions at the moment. IMing leads to quick resolution of many issues without spawning interminable e-mail threads.

The effects of the communication restructuring have been immediate and very visible. They include a lot less e-mail and almost none on weekends; better communication among people; and 360 degree visibility for every member of the Kosmix team. After we instituted these changes, everyone on the team feels more productive, more knowledgeable about the company, has more spare time to spend on things outside of work.

Online Resources

We use twiki for our wiki and blog software at Kosmix. The wiki functionality in twiki is great, but it took a bit of customization work from our indefatigable Subramaniam to make it work well as a blogging platform too. We are planning to release Subramaniam's twiki tweaks as open source in the next couple of months.

Another great option for blogs is WordPress, which allows you to host blogs internal to your company. We went with twiki because of the integrated wiki/blogging solution.

We have standardized on Yahoo! Instant Messenger for instant messaging. However, the other IM products such as MSN Instant Messenger and Google Talk have comparable functionality. I would suggest you pick the one most people in your company already use for personal communication.

Anand Rajaraman is co-founder of Kosmix with consumer properties www.RightHealth.com, www.RightAutos.com and www.RightTrips.com.  He also sits on the board of several technology companies and is a consulting faculty member at the Computer Science Department of Stanford University. His latest thoughts and discussions can be found at http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky.

 

How to Collect Money Online

As buyers, we are all too familiar with those little shopping cart icons on our favorite shopping sites. But, not all shopping carts are the same. It may seem that way for the person making the purchase. For the company on the other end of the transaction, the story is much different.

When a customer makes a credit card purchase in a bricks and mortar store, he or she swipes their card to initiate a secure electronic transaction. This is called a point of sale system. In the online world, a payment gateway is the equivalent of that. The solutions available to facilitate those transactions range from one-click simplicity to the Byzantine. It all depends less on the payment gateway itself and more on which gatekeeper (merchant account provider) is chosen.

Types of merchant account providers

“For any small business starting up, the easiest way to go is PayPal. They’ve been around a long time and most likely your customers already have a PayPal account, which is a huge advantage.” says Michael Miller, author of Choosing an Online Payment Service: Google Checkout vs. PayPal (Pearson Education, 2007).

Turn key solutions like PayPal or Google Checkout may seem like the obvious choice for the new online seller. But there’s another alternative: dealing directly with a credit card processor. Most credit card processing companies typically offer bundled in services like back end integration with your website and the shopping cart navigation. However, the costs charged back to the merchant can vary wildly; sometimes cheaper than the turn key providers, sometimes much more.

Brenda Mize, owner of Beacon’s Glow, an online collectibles store and her newer ecommerce venture, The Toy Bench, skipped right over turn key merchant account services like PayPal and Google Checkout and started out with a credit card processor. In the five years that she’s been in business, she’s never looked back.

“We’ve never had one bad transaction. Our Web designer picked out the credit card processor, who waived all the up front fees. Customer service has been great. We’ve even been able to negotiate lower percentage rates. We never even considered PayPal. Their fees were astronomical when we started,” says Mize.

Miller would consider Mize an exception to the rule who cautions smaller businesses, especially those just starting out, to avoid credit card processors. “It’s very complex. With a credit card processor, fees can vary. Make sure you shop around,” says Miller.

Clearly opinions are divided when it comes to weighing all options. Here’s a look at some of the more popular solutions and the advantages and disadvantages therein.

Turn key merchant account providers

PayPal charges 2.9 percent of the sale price, plus 30 cents per transaction. It used to be much higher in their earlier days. PayPal has more than 60 million customers worldwide, operating in 190 countries. A major part of its customer base comes from its parent company, eBay. However, it’s not just the merchant account provider of choice for small businesses. Delta Airlines, CompUSA, and Overstock.com are just some of the large companies that use PayPal. “Five years ago, there was a stigma that PayPal didn’t look professional. Now it’s so popular, it’s ubiquitous,” says Miller.

• Advantages: PayPal can be as simple as embedding one click from your site to theirs to complete the sale. However, it’s scaleable too. Merchants can integrate the entire shopping cart process within their own site. It only takes about a week to set up an account and get it up and running.
• Disadvantages: Although distribution of funds back to the merchant is immediate, it is also manual. Meaning, it doesn’t happen until the merchant clears his account. PayPal then takes its cut and transfers the rest to the merchant. Miller cautions businesses to clear their accounts on a daily basis. “PayPal, especially, is very consumer friendly. So, if there’s a dispute, they tend to take the customer’s side. It doesn’t happen often, but PayPal has been known to freeze accounts until a dispute is resolved and that means everything in the account. You don’t want to risk money from other sales getting tied up in the event of a customer dispute,” warns Miller.

Google Checkout charges 2 percent of the sale, plus 20 cents per transaction. It’s a much younger service than PayPal, less than two years old and only been operating abroad for about a year. Because it’s Google, one can expect its growth to make quick gains on Pay Pal’s market share.

• Advantages: “Google Checkout is pretty much the same system as PayPal,” says Miller. However, its percentages and fees are slightly lower. Additionally if a business is already using Google Adwords, those fees are reduced, if not waived altogether. “They’re clearly using Google Checkout to drive business to Adwords,” says Miller.
• Disadvantages:  Fewer people are using it than PayPal, so there’s the risk of more lost sales from first time buyers who don’t want to bother opening a new account. Though not measurable, there is also plenty of anecdotal information from former merchant account holders online complaining of technical glitches ranging from incomplete sales, funds collected by Google and then not distributed back to the merchant, poor communication notifying merchants of a sale, etc. Whether the complaints are valid or significant, perception is reality and a dicey reputation online is reason enough for merchants to think twice before they bite on that lower rate.

Volusion is a much smaller (and newer) player in this market, with only 10,000 accounts to date. Percentage rates per transaction start at 2.17 percent of the sale   with no additional  transaction fees. This is a company to watch. Here’s why:

• Advantages:  It’s the only ecommerce solution that integrates with MySpace and Facebook, to date. Instead of that 20 to 30 cent transaction fee per sale, Volusion offers a flat monthly fee based on the number of products for sale on your site, ranging from $20 to $100 a month.
• Disadvantages: No one’s heard of it. That 2.17 percent taken out for the credit card companies is a teaser rate. No word on how high that rate can go.

Credit card processors

There are too many companies out there to mention. However merchants basically have two ways to go: dealing with the financial institutions itself or hiring a company to do it for them negotiating the best rates and using its own economy of scale to do so.

“Your bank is probably the worst place to go. You will always get the worst rate there,” says Miller.

Miller, whose wife works for a credit card processor (in the spirit of full disclosure), offers the following advantages and disadvantages to going this route:

• Advantages: There’s the potential of negotiating a lower rate, especially as the business grows selling in higher volume. Many sellers, like Mize, simply feel it looks more professional to have a customized cart than a PayPal or Google Checkout button on a site. “We also have a SSL certificate button on our site. I think it helps give our customers peace of mind,” says Mize.
• Disadvantages: Rates vary and can go up without warning, depending on the contract. There are often up front costs and monthly fees. No two merchant account providers are alike. Business owners really have to shop around for the best deal. “It’s very complex,” says Miller.

One last piece of advice for online merchants shopping around for a credit card processor, some of the likely places to get the best deals include: trade organizations, co-ops, buying groups, even Costco or Sam’s Warehouse.

 

Raising the Bar for Web Content

Back in the dinosaur days of the Web, it used to be that you could write an article, get a few of your friends to link to it, and voila -- you could “own” a topic. You could become the authoritative source for that subject, at least for awhile.

In reality, maybe it was neverthat simple.  But even so, back in the day when we had less content, it was a whole lot easier for your content to stand out on the Web.

Somewhere along the line, things changed.  It crept up on us.  I’m not exactly sure when I noticed it -- maybe a year ago, maybe longer? But now we seem to have a glut of content.

And with that glut of content, it is becoming harder to new create content that attracts the links, get visitors, and gets in the search engine rankings using the same old approaches.

Content has become easier to create

Blogs, podcasts, photos, and online video are now within the grasp of millions.  It’s gotten a whole lot easier for individuals and small businesses to create content. 

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch speaks about the explosion of content:

“Back in 2000 it was fairly hard to do things like write a blog, publish photos (don’t even think about videos back then), or share bookmarks. Today, all that stuff is easy….”

To top it off, media outlets increasingly put their material on the Web and make it available for free.  So you may not only be competing against other bloggers, but against newspapers, the Associated Press, cable TV networks, magazines, and other media. Add it all up and that’s a lot of content!

As content becomes commoditized

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 also writes about the glut of content in The Declining Value of Redundant News Content on the Web.  He uses the example of Microsoft’s withdrawal of its bid to acquire Yahoo, noting that Google at one point was tracking over 2000 stories on the topic.

He says it is a zero sum game for attention. There is finite demand for content on a particular topic.  For every time one version of content gets read, it means another version is not getting read.

The end result, he contends, is that the more content there is, the less value that individual content has -- it becomes commoditized.

He is talking about news and media outlets. But you could say the same concept applies to a small business with a blog or podcast. 

Just look around at some of the blog content you see.  For example, top 10 lists abound.  Do a search in Google for “top 10” and you get over 261 million results.

There’s the top 10 spammers, the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008, the top 10 cyber security menaces…. Time magazine even put together a compilation of 50 of the top 10 lists. Just how many top 10 articles do we need?  Better question:  just how many top 10 articles will people read?

Don’t get discouraged -- get creative

If you are a blogger or a small business owner trying to stand out on the Web inexpensively using original content, right about now you may be feeling discouraged. 

Don’t be.

My point is not to make you get all depressed and chuck it all.  Rather, I simply suggest you allocate a portion of your writing time to strategizing to create content that is original enough to stand out today.  Before you put pen to paper (er, fingers to keyboard), think about how to be original, so that you can meet the higher bar today.  The bar has gotten higher for quality Web content, but it’s not impossibly high.    

As Rex Hammock writes, that there’s always demand for quality and originality: 

“If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging … does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.”

These days you may have to give your blog posts a little more thought in order to be creative and come up with something new and different that stands out -- and that is not “useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel” to use Rex’s words.

How to stand out

The way to stand out with your content today is to be original.  Be different. Easier said than done, right?  Not really. I offer three ways to do that:

1. Focus on topic niches, rather than general topics.  Before you write that “top 10 list of marketing ideas” do a search in Google and see if there are already articles on that topic.  If so, consider how to make your article different. One good way is to go narrow and deep – because a lot of the broad and general topics have been done to death.  Narrow the topic.  Make it “top 10 marketing ideas for under $5” or “top 10 marketing ideas for home-based landscaping businesses.”
2. Write about your own experiences.  The one thing that I guarantee has not been written about ad nauseum are YOUR experiences.  Instead of writing on broad topics, write from the perspective of what you have experienced, done, learned, etc.  Only you can write that.  Want an example?  Here is an article I wrote about a true story that happened to me -- it got tons and tons of readers and links:  Hacked: It Could Never Happen to My Site (Famous Last Words).
3. Add value to the news, don’t repeat it.  Even when writing about current news articles, add value to the basic story, don’t simply regurgitate it.

Going back to Scott Karp and his article referenced above, he suggests three ways to add value to a news story, instead of just repeating it and adding to the noise:

Remember, there’s always room for quality content.  There’s always a glut of re-shuffled drivel or the “same-old, same-old.”  And as time goes on there’s more of the same old.

Before you dive in and write, think about how to be original and different and meet the higher bar for what is quality content.

Anita Campbell is a writer, speaker and radio talk show host who closely follows trends in the small business market at her site, Small Business Trends.

 

Is Your Domain Name Killing Your Business?

Putting up a website expands a small or local business’s market to the worldwide marketplace. Choosing the right domain name is crucial to helping potential customers find you -- with shorter, simpler, intuitive descriptive names ending in dot-com considered better.

However, most of the short domain names have been taken, says Douglas Shuman, senior vice president of customer marketing for Register.com, a domain name registration company. “All the four letter domains are taken. There are some five letter domains left, but they are not intuitive,” Shuman says. “You’ll probably have to settle for a long word or multiple words strung together.”

Facing the dearth of short, simple name, some companies have gotten creative with names, to ill effect. When choosing a domain name, experts warn against common mistakes, and offer advice on selecting a catchy, easy to remember name.

Here's what not to do when naming names

Common mistakes include creative spelling, using numbers, choosing unpronounceable or undecipherable names, spelling something embarrassing, or offensive by stringing words together.

• Creative spelling. The most common and damaging naming decision involve confusing spelling. Be creative, but not with spelling, says Alexandra Watkins, chief innovation officer of Eat My Words, a boutique naming firm in San Francisco. Make sure your domain is spelled the way it sounds. “If you have to spell it for customers, it’s a bad name,” Watkins says. Takkle (pronounced tackle) is a social networking site for high school sports. How many high school sports fans spell it the way it sounds and end of at Tackle.com, a site for fishing supplies? “They’re losing people and they’re annoying people,” Watkins says. If you have to spell the domain name to avoid confusion, it’s a bad name, Watkins says.
• Using "z" instead of "s," for example, simply confuses customers. "You might think you’re picking a pithy way to spell a common word, but customers are not going to remember the spelling,” Watkins says.
• Unpronounceable or indecipherable names. Using "x" as a first letter is often a recipe for confusion. Take Xobni.com. It’s inbox spelled backwards, “but nobody would get that,” Watkins says. Xobni won Eat My Words’ "Headscratcher of the Year" award last year, voted as the name most confusing and annoying.
• Inadvertently spelling something unintentional. “You have to be careful when you put all the words together, that they don’t spell something naughty,” Watkins says. Double-check the way your name appears when multiple words are strung together. A company recently registered the name “World of Art” at Register.com, Shuman says. When spelled out for the Web or print, the site’s name takes on a scatological tone: worldofart.com.

Other pointers, from Watkins: using an i or an e in front of a word makes your name look dated. Don’t make the mistake of choosing a domain just because the URL is available. Don’t use a number, as in 2guysfromitaly.com. Customers might wonder if two is a numeral, or if they should spell the word.

Choosing the right name

If your desired domain name already taken, get creative. If pandorasbox.com is taken, for example, try pandorasboxrocks.com. “I would say 90 percent of companies can use a modifier,” Watkins says.

Here are some other tips to find the right domain name:

• Shop the secondary markets. “If you want a simple domain name, you have to go to a secondary market,” says Shuman. Don’t be discouraged; even if a name is not available, it may be for sale for a reasonable price, he says. Marriedbutlonely.com just sold for $8,000, but planourwedding.com changed hands for only $750.
• Buy all the extensions. Always go for the dot-com version first, and consider buying up .net, .org, and .biz extensions. Invest in a dot-ca if planning on doing business in Canada, or a dot-tv if the business is related to video, or dot-mobi if the business may expand into the cell phone market.
• Think about misspellings and buy those domains too. "Buy alternate spelling that redirect them to the main site,” Watkins says.
• Have fun. A domain name doesn’t have to be serious. It doesn’t even have to match your name, Watkins says. “If you have it printed on your business card, that’s fine,” she says. For example, a dance studio’s site could be learntosalsa.com.
• Get your name appraised. Check with the experts on how your name will be received. Some websites, such as Nameboy.com, offer a free appraisal, basing its outcome on the number of letters, number of words, use of hyphens (a detractor), or use of numbers.