Twitter is by no means the new shortcut to venture capital, but it can be a valuable networking tool for entrepreneurs. Many quickly write it off as a time-sucking distraction with a nominal and vague pay-off—Inc. blogger Eileen P. Gunn did, initially—but Twitter is worth a second look, especially when you’re just getting going. READ MORE
Scott Kurtz was looking for a way to promote his 10-year-old Web cartoon business when he decided to broadcast himself drawing the strip, an ode to video games and the geeks who love them called PvPOnline.com. After some initial experimentation, the 38-year-old Dallas resident hit on a winning formula: he draws the strip directly onto a touch-sensitive computer screen and live streams the video and audio over a website called Ustream.tv so fans can watch him work. At first Kurtz was self conscious about sharing his creative process with the world. But once dozens and then hundreds of fans started logging on at any given time — and sticking around to chat with each other and buy the strip’s merchandise — Kurtz got a lot more comfortable with the concept. “They really are getting to know me, they’re getting invested, and that’s the X factor between a causal viewer and someone who might want to buy something,” he says. Like Kurtz, small business owners are starting to use live streaming in all aspects of their operations, including sales, marketing, and customer service. Broadcasting in real time Live streaming is like podcasting with a few major exceptions. Both consist of an audio or video segment broadcast over the Internet. But while a podcast is recorded for future download and playback, live streaming happens in the here and now. Unlike the solitary experience of listening to a podcast, broadcasters also link live streams to chat rooms and other social networking features so viewers can exchange comments with each other while they’re watching. Live streaming is taking off in and out of business circles because the equipment that’s required has become plentiful and cheap. It’s also been helped by a proliferation of Internet-based broadcasters such as Ustream, Livestream.com, and Justin.tv that small business owners can use to stream their feeds for little or nothing. In many parts of the country, companies that would rather not take on the logistics of live streaming a meeting themselves can now hire a live streaming producer or consultant to do the work for them for hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the length and complexity what’s being produced. For do-it-yourself types, a basic live stream set up doesn’t cost much. Must-haves include: A reliable high-speed Internet connection and some kind of video input — a high resolution or high-definition video camera is recommended but even a PC’s built-in webcam will do Audio from a video camera or stand alone microphone A computer with enough processing power and memory to handle upload speeds of 500 kilobytes per second for normal broadcasting or 1 megabytes per second for HD pictures Kurtz, the Web cartoonist, uses a free software program called CamTwist to stream what appears on his Mac’s monitor to Ustream, and Audio Hijack Pro, another free program that lets him stream audio from his video camera, Skype, iTunes, or another audio source. Though she can’t quantify exactly how many of Livestream.com’s 450,000 active channels are run by small businesses, the number is growing, says Deborah Kornfilt, the New York City company’s head of content and partnerships. Among them: Network Solutions, which streamed its recent GrowSmartBizConference on the network; Women’s Enterprise Network, an Ohio-based organization that runs a channel devoted to promoting women in business; and a retailer that streamed a fashion show to market its wedding dresses. “They had a contest to win a wedding gown and used live stream as an incentive to bring traffic to their site,” Kornfilt says. Like several other live stream broadcasters, Livestream.com offers a free service that’s supported by advertising, as well as premium plans with lots of extra, including a white-label player companies can put on their own website. At Livestream.com, premium plans cost $350 and $1,250 a month for additional channels and storage as well as HD-quality video. Hiring a live stream producer Businesses that would rather not do their own live streaming can hire Internet broadcasters and live event producers to do the work for them. SLL Productions in Portland, Ore., handles everything related to designing, setting up, and broadcasting an event. The firm, run by husband and wife team Mike and Cami Gebhardt, also provide extras such as conducting interviews at a company’s event and broadcasting them along with the event’s main stream. “It provides a deeper online experience for people who can’t attend” in person, Mike Gebhardt says. Joe Christiansen, owner of Blaze Streaming Media, also of Portland, thinks of himself as a virtual event coordinator, staging a client’s live stream, testing Internet access at a meeting space and capturing e-mail addresses from people who watch the live stream for the client to use for lead generation afterward. He also acts as the liaison between his client and the live stream broadcaster and provides extras that a Livestream.com or Ustream might not offer. Such customization doesn’t come cheap. Christiansen’s fee for live streaming an event runs $1,000 to $10,000. His bill to live stream an Oregon soil company’s three-hour fall meeting, including running multiple cameras and live chat was $3,500. Christiansen’s fee also included statistics on exactly how many minutes each one of the company’s customers tuned in, information sales reps will use in follow-up calls. “Times are tough and their attendance was down” but the live stream gave the company a way to connect to customers anyway, he says.
DLG Group, headquartered in Bedminster, N.J., started out in the 1960s inspecting vehicle and cargo at sea ports and handwriting reports for manufacturers and insurance companies. The Internet era allowed the company to issue those inspection reports on the same day from the field and use the data to help customers improve quality control. Upgrading to fiber-optic based Internet service today has let the business expand and offer online services for customers, CEO and President Andrew Vazquez Jr. tells IncTechnology.com. Elizabeth Wasserman: What’s your company’s story? Andrew Vazquez: The DLG Group started out as Automotive Visual Inspections (AVI) as a family business that began in the mid-1960s. My father started the business and I started working for it full time in 1980. It’s an automotive inspection business that verifies vehicles for damage for insurance purposes for imported and exported vehicles shipped overseas. Wasserman: How has your business evolved? Vazquez: One of the shipping lines came to me in the early 1980s and wanted to automate statistical information on damage for claims settlement and to improve quality control. They came to me and asked if I would assist them in developing an electronic system to do that. They would give me the programmers and I would help them design a system. Later we needed our own electronic systems and started developing our own proprietary electronic system tracking inspections, warehouse management and vehicle tracking. Taking that technology around 2004 we branched out into the vehicle logistics side of the business and launched Vehicle Logistics Solutions, which is a logistics company that works with various vehicle manufacturers in the Midwest, starting in Michigan and Ohio. But we positioned ourselves to be flexible if a customer needed a facility for short-term or long-term use to keep vehicles until they were sold. Wasserman: How did the Internet change your business? Vazquez: We started inspecting in the 1960s and 70s with a typewriter and carbon paper. If our customers in Europe received a report to settle a marine claim two months later, they were happy. In the 1980s, we were one of the first companies to use hand-held computers in the field. It helped us basically save a lot of steps. It used to be our inspectors would go out in the field and record information on paper, transpose to type back in the office, and then the report would hit the mail. Now we are able to take that electronic data and upload it immediately to our databases and send our files electronically. It saved us a lot of time and gave our customers a lot of power. The customer did not just receive data to settle claims but could actually use data for quality control of service. The quicker they could act on either a problem on their hands or the factory where the vehicle was manufactured the better. Wasserman: How did that impact your needs for Internet service? Vazquez: Back then the files weren’t as large and the bandwidth wasn’t as big. Most of the handhelds we used were more like electronic notepads. Now that the bandwidth is here and the technology is state of the art and has much better coverage, we’ve upgraded our systems and now data with photos can be transmitted in real time. Our workers can upload data and photos out in the field which means they don’t have to return to the office to file their report. Now our customers can have their report immediately. We can communicate with any employee by putting a cell phone in their hand computer equipped with a wireless card. You probably would have needed two or three times more people to do the same job we’re doing today. Right now, I have offices in seven different states and also do other projects that have to be in various states across the country. We’ve had projects in the past where we’ve had to be in 32 cities around the country each quarter. Having Verizon as our communications provider really helped. We’ve upgraded to Verizon FIOS Internet for Business, which enabled us to become an application service provider for our customers, as well. We started another business called Vehicle Inspection Network which allows our customers to use our electronic inspection and reporting systems. We give them a log on and password. We have a lot of traffic now in and out of our central office here so it’s very important that we have very good, reliable service. You can’t sell a service if your Internet is slow or weak. Wasserman: What have the results been? Vazquez: It gave me the confidence to launch the application service provider portion of the business. If I was having a problem with companies accessing our system, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. We’ve also started another new company called Hybrid Intermodal Transportation. This business is a freight distribution company. What makes it unique is that we’ve developed these specialized containers that can be loaded with freight. Today, in the automotive industry, whether they are transported by truck, rail, or vessel, vehicles are being carried in one direction and being dropped off. Many vehicle carriers or assets go back empty. It’s a waste of fuel. We’ve developed containers that we can load with freight onto these car carrier assets, creating the opportunity to fill the empty miles of the industry. We track these containers electronically with our systems.
Last year when Joe Pulizzi got serious about using Twitter to promote his business, he downloaded an add-on application for the social network called TweetDeck and configured it to send an automated greeting every time someone new started following his tweets. Almost instantly, the Cleveland, Ohio, marketing consultant’s connections let him know on Twitter any kind of automatic message is a big no-no, whether it’s an innocuous “Hi, thanks for following, how’re you doing?” or the most blatant self-promotion. “A couple people replied right away to say, Joe, this is lame, it’s basically spam,” says Pulizzi, owner of Junta42. After two weeks he shut the auto-replies off and hasn’t been tempted to use them since. If you’re using Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in your small business, the last thing you want is to alienate potential customers before they’ve even gotten to know you. So along with avoiding automated replies, industry experts and companies that have successfully navigated potential social media faux pas say it’s best to have a strategy and share it with employees who’ll be representing the business online. Though it’s a new medium, the rules of old-fashioned etiquette and common sense apply. Here are other common social media mistakes small businesses make, and what they can do instead: Posting without a plan — Going on Twitter or Facebook just because it’s there isn’t a good enough reason and could lead to sticky situations if employees post something inappropriate or inadvertently disclose confidential company information. Kent Lewis, a social media marketer and head of Anvil Media, in Portland, Ore., recalls the time an intern at a local hotel he works with was given statistics about the property’s competitors — and immediately shared the info on Twitter. “It made her look stupid,” Lewis says. “We didn’t realize we had to coach her on life, not just social media.” Before you do anything, figure out how Twitter et al fit into your company’s marketing or customer service strategy, then decide how to use social networks to get that message across and make sure employees are on board, he says. Repeating yourself — A tweet or status update to announce the latest post on the company blog, a new customer win or some other good news is okay. But broadcasting the same message over and over is not. Unfortunately some newcomers don’t figure that out and post the same tweet or status update over and over, making them look like the newbies they are, according to Lewis. Selling 24/7 — It’s okay to use social networks to plug whatever your company sells or does. It’s not okay to do it in 100 percent of the time. A one-trick pony is a major turn off. Instead, mix promotional tweets with links to industry news, and retweet interesting things people in your network are saying. Do it long enough and your connections will come to know and trust you as a voice of authority in your industry, and will be more accepting of your promotional tweets, Lewis says. Faking it – Some companies mistakenly think that no matter how many people represent their business online — whether it’s one or 20 — everyone has to tweet or post in a single voice, either through a made-up mascot or persona, or by using a certain tone or language that tows the company’s party line. That works in some cases, but it’s hard to pull off, Lewis says. The better solution is to coach employees on what is and isn’t acceptable, then let them be themselves. Farming it out — Some companies pay “ghost tweeters” or outside experts to run their social media strategy. Wrong, Lewis says. Comcast developed a huge Twitter presence by putting their best people on it for tech support, and making sure they responded quickly to customers’ problems, he says. “It was minimal cost for maximum return,” he says. Of course Lewis believes companies should hire social media consultants — he would or he wouldn’t be in business. But if you do, use them to craft a plan and train your employees, not speak for them, he says. Today all that advice makes sense to Pulizzi, the marketing strategist, who now spends a good chunk of time traveling through the United States and Europe preaching the gospel of social media. Pulizzi also recommends against solely using Twitter or Facebook to re-tweet or repeat what other people say. “To be regarded as a thought leader or solution provider, you need to have your own content,” Pulizzi says. The worst thing small businesses can do is look at Twitter and other social networks as just another sales channel. “Marketers are horrible publishers,” Pulizzi says. “They want to create content about their products and services. There’s a time and place for that, but it’s not social media. You create relationships with social media, so when people are ready to buy they look at you as a trusted resource.”
COCC, of Avon, Conn., provides information technology services to community banks and credit unions to help process checking accounts, debit card transactions, loan accounts, ATM transactions and more. The company’s use of online meetings, says vice president Brent Biernat, has allowed COCC to better service customers, avoid travel costs, and expand its offerings to existing customers. Elizabeth Wasserman: Tell me about COCC and how you use technology. Brent Biernat: COCC is a cooperative data center for financial institutions, banks, and credit unions. We provide their transaction processing for them. If you go to a community bank in Connecticut, New England, Ohio, New York, or the Northeast, there is a good chance that your transaction is being processed by COCC. We’ve been around for 40 years and have about 350 employees. Wasserman: Why did you invest in a virtual meeting service? Biernat: Every company in the world says they are very concerned about customer service, and as a cooperative we live and breathe customer service. The presidents of all these financial institutions sit on our board of directors. They fill out report cards about our service. We want to be able to stay high touch as we continue to add more credit unions. We want to be able to communicate with them more readily. And there was a great technology to enable us to do it from GoToMeeting. If you try to do this on a regular phone and conference call, you lose something. You don’t have that collaboration. Wasserman: How do you use it? Biernat: We do a lot of it with our customers. There are various reasons. We do a lot of online training with them to show them a new feature in or product or to give them an update. We use it to introduce them to a new product or show them an entire demonstration. And we also use it to do regular collaboration if we have a project going on with them. We set it up and all join together and we can have some webpages or material in front of us that everyone can see. We also use it internally if we have a lot of production items we want to review and make changes to. In the past, what we’d have to do is gather in a conference room and huddle around for a discussion with a few callers on speaker phones. We have several buildings on our campus. It wastes productivity if you’re trying to have a meeting and gather everyone in a room and you don’t realize how much time that costs when you can have an online meeting with these same folks and they can join in right from their desks. They don’t have to spend that time walking and socializing. It’s much more efficient. Wasserman: What have the results been? Biernat: Essentially, it’s saved us a significant amount of money and still helped us to maintain a very high touch with our customers. In the past, we used a rival technology and an average meeting cost us $250. We found this easier for our customers to use. We’ve saved lots in terms of travel costs alone. Every time we get in a car or on a plane it ends up costing a lot. We figure we’ve saved about $3,000 a month in travel costs. The flip side of that is that we still want to get our executives out in front of our customers so they still have meetings where they have face-to-face time but during the travel time back, they can call in and be part of the regular internal meetings or join another customer call. Wasserman: How long have you been using virtual meetings? Biernat: We’ve been using this technology for four years now. We pay a flat monthly fee per host for the service and can host unlimited meetings. We’ve really incorporated it into our overall strategy. As a financial services company, we’re always concerned about pandemic planning and we’ve made sure we’re set up for it. The virtual meetings are a piece of that. If swine flu seriously increased, it would allow us to have meetings without being face to face in a closed room.
Santa baby, slip an iTouch under the tree, for me Been an awful tough year, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. This holiday season, the little somethings that small business owners are asking Santa to slip under the tree include lightweight notebook computers, next-generation smart phones, HD cameras, and more. With the economy in the doldrums, there’s not a whole lot to celebrate this year and not a whole lot of IT money left to celebrate with. But small business owners who’ve managed to squirrel away a little of their annual computing budget to spend on themselves or their employees before Dec. 31 have a sleigh full of electronic devices to choose from. According to a very informal poll of several dozen small business owners, here are some of the most popular items on their holiday wish lists: Little laptops Sallie Goetsch, a podcast producer at The Podcast Asylum in California, wants a UMPC — an ultra-mobile PC — the latest in lightweight computing. Also known as a tablet PC, netbook or subnotebook, the devices run 13” or smaller, weigh just a couple pounds, have touch screens and/or QWERTY keyboards and come with built ins like GPS and Wi-Fi and a variety of options. Goetsch wants something to take to conferences and events and prefers a UMPC over a smart phone. “I never did learn how to type with my thumbs,” she says. “I’m trying to decide which one, the new HP? The EEE?” Joe Pulizzi, owner of Z Squared Media, a Cleveland, Ohio, content marketing firm and founder of the Junta42 content marketing blog network, wants a mini laptop too. Pulizzi has a 17” Toshiba laptop in his home office, but it’s too big for the road. “Sometimes small is better,” he says. Pulizzi has his eyeona Toshiba Portege with a 12.1” display, built-in fingerprint reader, webcam, digital card reader, and 4 USB ports. Smartphones Linda Musgrove, owner of an Aventura, Fla., trade show consulting firm called Trade Show Teacher, already has a smartphone. But that hasn’t stopped her from lusting after the HTC Touch Pro, Sprint’s Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone with a slide-out QWERTY keypad, touch screen, expandable memory, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth support. The device will do double duty, managing Musgrove’s business and “my crazy family,” she says. Nancy White, owner of Custom Interface, a Bingen, Wash., custom electronics manufacturer, treated herself to an AT&T Tilt smartphone as an early Christmas present. It hasn’t been pure love at first sight — “It takes three screens to get to speed dial” — but she does love the fact that it comes loaded with Microsoft Outlook, “so the interface with my work desktop is fantastic,” she says. Cameras and gadgets When it comes to gadgets, former newspaper photographer Jay Bryant has a soft spot for cameras. This holiday, Bryant, now business development vice president at Live World, a San Jose, Calif., social networking company, has his eye on the Kodak Zi6 Flip Cam in HD. The palm-sized device has a 2.4” screen and weighs 3.8 ounces and has built-in USB port and editing software. “I’m going to try my hand at video blogging,” Bryant says. “And I’m going to start recording some of my presentations to review them afterward to see how I can do better,” Bryant says. Plus, at a suggested retail price of $180, “it’s cheap,” he says. After Andre Preoteasa, IT director at Castle Brands got himself an Apple iPod Touch, he was the most popular guy at the New York City fine spirits distributor. “Everyone in the office is asking to use it. Everybody wants one,” Preoteasa says. “It’s literally a computer in your pocket, and a very posh one.” Reviewers have dubbed the second-generation iPod Touch the iPhone’s baby brother, with many of the same features — music and video player, Safari Web browser, email, iTunes store, etc. — minus the ability to make cell phone calls. Prices run $270 to $400 for models with 8, 16 or 32 GB flash memory. Travis Isaacson, senior director of organizational development at Access Development, a Salt Lake City, affinity marketing business, doesn’t want anything that fancy, just an iPod Classic with 120 GB of memory instead of the old 80 GB model he has now so he can squeeze in more of the business books he downloads from Audible.com. Nov Omana, managing principal at Collective HR Solutions, a San Mateo, Calif. HR industry consultant, doesn’t like it when people sitting next to him at Starbucks or on an airplane peek at his laptop screen. So this holiday his wish list includes a pair of MyVu Shades, eyewear that looks like regular sunglasses but blocks out whatever is showing on a laptop or iPod screen for everyone except the person wearing them. The $199 device, which comes with built-in earbuds, is primarily sold as a way to watch videos in private but Omana thinks it has big potential with business travelers. “The next generation may allow us to just ‘see’ each other in a virtual world or over the net no matter where we are,” he says. John Klebes, business development program manager at Sig Sauer, the Exeter, N.H. gun maker, has his eye on the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, a $200 digital pen with built in microphone, speaker, display screen and tiny camera. The Smartpen can record notes in written and audio form simultaneously when used with special “digital paper” embedded with microdots. “It sounds like a very useful tool and I wouldn’t turn down one for Christmas,” Klebes says.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, you heard a lot about the “three Cs”: content, community, and commerce. It was thought that by creating websites with a balance of all three, you had a formula for success. Then came the dot-com bust and few people had the stomach to talk about three pillars for getting rich online. Once high-flying companies were having a hard enough time just staying afloat. For a number of years the concept of “community” seemed to take the back burner. It never really went away — people just didn’t talk about community as much. During the early part of this century, larger corporations tended to focus on commerce, i.e., building out large e-commerce stores online. For entrepreneurs and smaller businesses, much of the focus in the first decade of the new millennium was placed on (1) getting a website up and running, and (2) leveraging blogs. Blogs are cheap, easy to set up, and within the ability of most people to write them. No wonder they became so popular with small biz. Blogging, of course, is largely about writing. For bloggers, the mantra soon became “content is king.” There certainly is truth to that phrase. Being found in the search engines starts with having relevant keyword-rich content. Fresh content also helps draw the interest of readers and keeps them coming back. Fast forward to 2008. An interesting trend is growing: the buzz phrase of building “community” is back in fashion. Community as part of a Web strategy is once again hot. What community is According to Forrester Research, “An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest. It’s also one of the most powerful tools a marketer can deploy for customer retention, word of mouth, and customer insight.” Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester, notes that community is related to content and commerce. He has published his community presentation on his blog. Content is part of community — that much is clear. But perhaps the distinction is that content today is not so much about one-way content being pushed out to the public. Rather, it’s about two-way conversations. That’s key to a community — that ability for people to participate and feel involved. Sage Lewis, a search engine optimization expert from Akron, Ohio and principal of SageRock, defines it for small businesses on a more basic level in a recent video. Community involves personal relationships and people, he notes. “It’s not all about technology. It’s all about people. The point is, why would people want to come? What’s in it for the visitors?” Lewis says. “We’re talking about very personal feelings, very personal topics.” What business can accomplish with community So why the growing emphasis on community? Let me focus just on small businesses and offer three observations about big changes occurring on the Web that are driving this emphasis on community. First, there are just more blogs today — and more competition. It’s tough for small businesses to compete with so many blogs and so much choice. We small business owners are realizing that it takes more than interesting articles to retain the attention of an audience. People need to feel involved. Second, search engines, especially Google, are not a reliable source of traffic. Search engines are constantly indexing new pages and constantly shifting rankings. It used to be that you could achieve a ranking for a search term and maintain that for some time. Now it’s harder to maintain that great ranking, even with a blog. Small business owners are starting to feel at the mercy of search engines, and don’t like it. Reduce your reliance on Google is now a growing chorus. One way to do that is to build your own community of loyal followers so that you are not at the mercy of Google for your online success. Third, small businesses and entrepreneurs recognize the upside of developing relationships. After all, most small businesses get the majority of their business through referrals and word of mouth. As more of our networking activity shifts online from offline, we see that we CAN create relationships online and that they lead to more business. “Community” is no longer some theoretical concept. Community is real and it can grow your business. Shouldn’t you be thinking about community? 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.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, you heard a lot about the “three Cs”: content, community, and commerce. It was thought that by creating websites with a balance of all three, you had a formula for success. Then came the dot-com bust and few people had the stomach to talk about three pillars for getting rich online. Once high-flying companies were having a hard enough time just staying afloat. For a number of years the concept of “community” seemed to take the back burner. It never really went away — people just didn’t talk about community as much. During the early part of this century, larger corporations tended to focus on commerce, i.e., building out large e-commerce stores online. For entrepreneurs and smaller businesses, much of the focus in the first decade of the new millennium was placed on (1) getting a website up and running, and (2) leveraging blogs. Blogs are cheap, easy to set up, and within the ability of most people to write them. No wonder they became so popular with small biz. Blogging, of course, is largely about writing. For bloggers, the mantra soon became “content is king.” There certainly is truth to that phrase. Being found in the search engines starts with having relevant keyword-rich content. Fresh content also helps draw the interest of readers and keeps them coming back. Fast forward to 2008. An interesting trend is growing: the buzz phrase of building “community” is back in fashion. Community as part of a Web strategy is once again hot. What community is According to Forrester Research, “An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest. It’s also one of the most powerful tools a marketer can deploy for customer retention, word of mouth, and customer insight.” Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester, notes that community is related to content and commerce. He has published his community presentation on his blog. Content is part of community — that much is clear. But perhaps the distinction is that content today is not so much about one-way content being pushed out to the public. Rather, it’s about two-way conversations. That’s key to a community — that ability for people to participate and feel involved. Sage Lewis, a search engine optimization expert from Akron, Ohio and principal of SageRock, defines it for small businesses on a more basic level in a recent video. Community involves personal relationships and people, he notes. “It’s not all about technology. It’s all about people. The point is, why would people want to come? What’s in it for the visitors?” Lewis says. “We’re talking about very personal feelings, very personal topics.” What business can accomplish with community So why the growing emphasis on community? Let me focus just on small businesses and offer three observations about big changes occurring on the Web that are driving this emphasis on community. First, there are just more blogs today — and more competition. It’s tough for small businesses to compete with so many blogs and so much choice. We small business owners are realizing that it takes more than interesting articles to retain the attention of an audience. People need to feel involved. Second, search engines, especially Google, are not a reliable source of traffic. Search engines are constantly indexing new pages and constantly shifting rankings. It used to be that you could achieve a ranking for a search term and maintain that for some time. Now it’s harder to maintain that great ranking, even with a blog. Small business owners are starting to feel at the mercy of search engines, and don’t like it. Reduce your reliance on Google is now a growing chorus. One way to do that is to build your own community of loyal followers so that you are not at the mercy of Google for your online success. Third, small businesses and entrepreneurs recognize the upside of developing relationships. After all, most small businesses get the majority of their business through referrals and word of mouth. As more of our networking activity shifts online from offline, we see that we CAN create relationships online and that they lead to more business. “Community” is no longer some theoretical concept. Community is real and it can grow your business. Shouldn’t you be thinking about community? 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.
Webcams are making headway in the workplace and not just for video conference calls. Companies are using the tiny cameras linked to desktop PCs or built into new laptops and flat panel monitors to screen job applicants, conduct virtual classes, and in some instances, monitor employees. Using webcams to check up on workers is within companies’ legal rights, to a degree. If you do, lawyers and workers’ rights advocates suggest creating monitoring policies and making sure workers know about them. Lower prices have made webcams affordable even for small businesses, and are causing a boom in the market. Worldwide sales of webcams are expected to reach $6.2 billion in 2013 from $1.2 billion in 2006, according to a 2007 report from WinterGreen Research, a British technology market researcher. At an average of $30 to $120 a pop for a stand-alone unit, that’s a lot of webcams. Price isn’t the only reason sales are up. Image capture, picture quality, sound, and software all are better than they used to be. High-end devices from Logitech, for example, record images at 30 frames per second and pictures can be enlarged to fill up an entire computer screen without getting blurry, says company spokeswoman Ha Thai. Equipment from vendors such as Logitech, Creative Labs, andAxis Technology can be used with Skype and other major instant messaging and voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) programs for video chat. Not just for videoconferencing anymore Technological advances have led to companies to use Webcams for: Conference calls — Webcams can replace expensive stand-alone videoconferencing equipment. A webcam with free Skype or other VoIP system can do the same thing for hundreds of dollars instead of thousands, according to Thai, with Logitech. Screening job applicants — Companies are using webcams to pre-screen job candidates in a different town or state. Seeing someone on a video phone call could predict how they’d present themselves on a sales call or “how they will represent your department in front of others,” says Bruce Kane, a Charlotte, N.C., professional and technology services consultant. John Hattery, a global supply chain and operations consultant with Hattery Associates in Cleveland, Ohio, once helped an executive recruiter put together a webcam-based system for interviewing prospective clients. For the recruiter, it was “cheaper just to purchase prospective candidates USB cameras rather than rent videoconference time, particularly for candidates where rental suites weren’t readily available,” Hattery says. Online learning — Companies can set up virtual classrooms for training and other online learning by combining webcams, VoIP connections, and software-as-a-service programs such as Genesys Meeting Center from Genesys Conferencing, which charges for virtual classroom space by the minute. Website content — Companies can use webcams to record podcasts or short video clips for their websites or corporate blogs. Employee monitoring: proceed with caution Along with counting keystrokes and reading e-mail, companies are using webcams to keep tabs on employees. Federal and state privacy laws prohibit companies from setting up cameras to spy on employees in bathrooms, locker rooms or other changing areas. Apart from that, employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy at work, according to lawyers and workplace rights advocates. Still, if companies are using webcams to monitor workers, they shouldn’t be heavy handed. “I could imagine scenarios where your boss might be concerned about what you’re doing” in your office with the door closed, says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J. workers’ rights advocate. “But what’s wrong with knocking? If someone’s taking three-hour naps, you could find out without having to spy on them.” To forestall misunderstandings or bad feelings, companies should put webcam monitoring policies in writing and make sure employees know about them. Employees “have to know that it’s a place of business not their home,” says Helene Wasserman, a labor attorney with Ford & Harrison LLP, in Los Angeles, who works exclusively with corporate clients. Employees have to know that “if there are video cameras you’ll be on them. If companies elect to monitor computers and website, know that your footsteps on the net will be watched.”
Hollywood superstars like Angela Bassett and Jamie Foxx are more than highly paid members of the entertainment community. They’re also heads of their own businesses, which manage those big-ticket movie deals and multi-million-dollar salaries. Like every other small to mid-size business owner, they struggle when it comes to buying computer hardware. Or at least they use to. Foxx and Bassett are just a couple of the celebrity clients that have turned to a value added reseller (VAR) called Affluent Technology (a spin-off company of the VAR Ross-Tek) to help them navigate the maze of options in buying computer hardware. Dubbed the “VAR to the stars,” Affluent Technology’s founder, Frederick Johnson is selling more than computers or even expertise. He’s selling trust. With a clientele that is especially sensitive to securing its data (away from the tabloids — for starters), Johnson has found a niche market where discretion is as necessary as a firewall. Not all business owners are quite as sensitive about their privacy as Hollywood’s A-list. However, at least to some degree, reliable service is essential. It just depends on how much or what kind of service you need. The answer to that question should determine which buying channel to use when shopping for computer hardware. “Whoever or whatever you choose, you need to develop trusted sources,” says Steve Rucinski, an Ohio-based 30-year management veteran and producer of the popular business blog, Small Business CEO. There are roughly four shopping channels to choose from. Here’s a look at the upside and downside of each. Buying online Advantages: It’s probably the best way to comparison shop and track down the best deals. Most of the websites have some sort of customer review component nowadays, which can be helpful. Regardless, computer shopping sites typically have an exhaustive amount of product information. Disadvantages: While there’s no shortage of buying information, there’s also no guarantee it’s credible either. Those five-star customer reviews may have been written by the marketing department of the product manufacturer, for all you know. Returns can be trickier than other shopping channels, as well. Buying direct-from-manufacturer Advantages: Pricing can be very competitive because there’s no expense of a middle man getting his cut or stocking a retail outlet. And, because the unit is built to your specifications, there’s no paying for features or upgrades you don’t need. “It’s a terrific way to get good prices and choose the exact equipment you want. Frankly, this is how we shop for probably 75 percent of our clients,” says David Robertson, president of Covenant Technology, an IT consulting group that works primarily with small to midsize businesses in its home town of Houston, Texas. Disadvantages: The sales people are good at highlighting what their products can do and listing its features, but not as good at advising you about your system and how one component integrate with the other. Using a VAR or systems integrator Advantages: There is a difference between the two. A VAR is a company that bundles in additional features and functions to an existing product and then resells it to their customers. VARs offer more expertise in helping customers assess their needs, pointing them to the right technologies and advising them on integration with existing systems. A systems integrator doesn’t sell the gear, but can help you target the gear you need, where to buy it for the best price and help you get it installed and in use. Disadvantages: Expertise costs money and the price is going to be built into the cost of the gear being bought. This is definitely not the route to finding the cheapest deal. For tech-savvy business owners who know exactly what they need, this is probably not the way to go. Shopping retail Advantages: For the business person who knows exactly what he or she needs, if the price is right then why not? Shopping in a brick-and-mortar store the old-fashioned way has the added advantage of giving that business owner the chance to touch the merchandise first. “If tangibly touching the computer first, before you buy it, is important to you then retail makes sense,” says Rucinski. Disadvantages: The sales staff on the floor is notoriously uneducated about the gear and it’s not just the hired help that is unsophisticated. Retail stores tend to stock the lower-end models of computer hardware because they are more competitively priced for consumers. Deciding factors Business owners looking to upgrade their computer hardware should answer the following questions before making any moves. Why is this product good for the business? Remember you are shopping for a solution to improve company workflow and not the other way around. “Don’t fall in love with the technology. They’re like shiny toys and it’s easy to lose sight whether they actually do anything for the business,” says Rucinski. It’s a big mistake to get taken in by the hype of a new piece of technology, buy it and then try to find a way to make it useful back at the office. Is there enough information to make a decision? If not, what information is missing: a better understanding of the technology, what functionalities are relevant to the business and which ones aren’t, what’s a reasonable price to pay, and how will it get serviced? Who can be trusted to advise buying decisions? Almost like a mantra, Rucinski can’t emphasize enough, “Trust the source. With all of these places to go, make trust a conscious effort, a priority,” says Rucinski. Can the business afford to pay a little more to get it? Can the business afford not to? That may be a better way to phrase the question. Remember, computers are tools and for almost all businesses today they are mission critical to daily operations. If they aren’t useful, then even at a bargain price they aren’t a bargain. Conclusion You get what you pay for. For tech-savvy business owners who know exactly what they need, including make, model, and specifications, then price is likely the only factor to consider. In that case, buying direct, bargain shopping online or through the sales circulars of a local retail outlet is the best bet. However for the business without the in-house knowledge to make informed purchasing decisions, factor in the cost of educated and trusted expertise and expect to pay a little more. In that case, hiring a systems integrator to make purchasing decisions or going to a VAR is going to serve the company best. Sidebar: Buying Mistakes to Avoid Robertson, of Covenant Technology, sees companies taking the same missteps in making their technology purchases again and again. Here are some of the classics: Impulse purchases: “They need a printer and see one while they’re out shopping for something else like office supplies. It’s a good price. But then they get back to the office and find out it’s not network-able. Or it’s a PC and it doesn’t have enough power to run all their software,” says Robertson. Not checking terms of service: Robertson says this is a big one. Business owners think they’re ahead of the game. They’ve researched the gear and targeted their needs, but nothing’s a sure thing. What’s the return policy, and under what circumstances? The attempt to solve a problem opens a can of worms. “They buy ‘part b’ to address a specific need and then realize it won’t work without ‘part a’ and ‘part c’, says Robertson. This is a recipe to back into a major upgrade over committing dollars the business isn’t prepared to spend or, worse yet, create an integration nightmare that costs downtime and resources to untangle. Looks great, but how does it work? The best piece of technology is only as good as its implementation. “For example, they buy a firewall that requires a fair amount of knowledge to install, but they don’t have the in-house expertise to do it. So the firewall sits in a box at someone’s desk, instead of on the network where it belongs,” says Robertson.
