Great advice from one of our favorite Bloggers....

Happy Sunday, Everyone!  We hope you all had a fantastic Holiday (if you celebrate it) with your loved ones.  


I came across this blog on Huffington Post today and found it very relevant. While, I don't normally post other peoples work on our blog, I found this article very engaging. I hope you joy it.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-galinsky/rethinking-how-we-learn-a_b_787688.html?ir=Business

Social Media for Small Business

Social media for small business – marketing your brand online

-Redmond Business Solutions

Investing in your brand online isn’t just about spending money, it’s about building a presence that will resound with your customers, and keep them coming back time and again.

Building your brand online will not only help build awareness and help raise your reputation, People will become invested in it and remain loyal to your brand.

Some tips to help build your brand online:

Don’t put your eggs on in one basket. It pays to build your brand through multiple channels. From an organic search perspective, make sure that your brand name and messaging is consistent in your title tags and in your meta descriptions. It’s important to also ensure that your messaging is consistent with your brand voice throughout the various channels you chose to use. By creating and being consistent with your messaging, consumers will be able to readily recognise and recall your brand. This has the potential to make you stand out when customers are ready to make an enquiry or purchase.

Plan for social media integration. As part of your strategy to bring and build your brand online, you need to know what you want your brand to say or do. How do you want to interact with your market and how do you want it to respond?

Look first at some of the tools available to help build your brand online, you need to know what is right for you – Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? LinkedIn? What about other niche blogs and forums? Determining what is right for you may take time and research to identify who and where your audience is.  It’s important to look and listen to what people are saying about you and your brand; chances are people are already talking about you even if you haven’t got a presence on these social media channels. If people aren’t talking – start conversations yourself. Look for people who are talking about things that relate to your business and join in. It’s important to understand that interaction does not mean pushing yourself on people – be conversational.

Treat online reputation building as networking. There’s not much difference between traditional networking events and networking online. They’re both about building your reputation.

Tapping into your offline contacts can help with building your online reputation. Some of these contacts are likely to already be using online strategies of their own; with the right approach they will likely help you.

Many people using online tools are willing to ‘introduce’ you to their contacts, they could mention you and show links to your website, which will also enhance your search presence.

Plan how your brand will speak. Determine how and what your audience wants to hear; mostly this will come through your initial social media activity. This will form the basis of your brand’s online tone.

In working on what your online voice will sound like, it’s important to:

• Speak with your audience, not at them – it doesn’t and shouldn’t always be about business.
• Be consistent with the way you talk online; Be conversational;
• People do business with people – have a personality for your brand.

A big thanks to my friend, Brad, for allowing me to repost this article. Excellent information on

managing client expectations and avoiding problems before they start.

Dealing with Unreasonable Customer Expectations

Posted by Brad Egeland

We all hope that customer expectations have been accurately set coming out of the sales process. Ideally, the customer will have a draft project schedule in hand, a budget (i.e., contract/price),Statement of Work (SOW), and hopefully their own list of business processes and high-level requirements that they’ve shared with sales to get to this point of the project – deal signed and complete and ready for Kickoff.

Often a customer will say “we need this project completed in ‘x’ number of weeks.” You want to accommodate the customer as much as possible. After all, they are the customer and they’re paying for it. But it’s a dangerous trap to fall into when you agree to any sort of customer proposed timeline before you have a detailed understanding of the customer’s affected business processes, the requirements of the project and the resources for the project.

The Crazy Promise

I led a project for a major airline that had been given the impression by our sales team that the implementation of an enterprise solution could be done within 90 days of Kickoff. Never mind that the configurable/customizable system…

• Had never been implemented for an airline industry customer
• Usually took 6-12 months to implement in known industries
• Was targeting UAT and deployment over major holidays when resources from both organizations were planning time off

The airline managed to coerce Sales into agreeing to basically ‘guarantee’ the 90-day implementation timeline. Remember, this is without any involvement from Project Management – I would never have agreed to the 90-day timeline if I had a say in it. The airline also put out a press release in the airline industry that they were implementing this enterprise-wide system in 90 days…no pressure!

The Project

A project that starts off with unreasonable expectations from the customer definitely does a disservice to the customer. Not only can major problems be experienced, but also other issues like timeline crisis, major scope issues, requirements changes, and budget overruns are all highly likely occurrences on a project of this nature.

In my example project, we hit the 90-day mark while still only about 2/3 of the way complete. The customer’s expectations had long since been reset, but because so much had been promised to the customer they were, needless to say, not happy during most of the engagement. We added resources, went onsite for some rapid configuration work, and therefore began to run into the very predictable budget issues along with the timeline issues we were already experiencing.

Summary

For this project, in the end the outcome was a fully implemented and workable solution. However, customer satisfaction began low and never really recovered. The original deadline was missed by 3 full months. The budget went $38,000 over and due to issues on the customer side, it was never successfully embraced and deployed in the organization and is still floundering in terms of usage and internal deployment to this day.

Customer satisfaction is everything and if your project starts out with unreasonable customer expectations, run! Seriously though…work hard to bring reality in to focus. Educate the customer; work with the customer to reset the project timeline expectations based on the known requirements. Work with them to reset the budget expectations based on the known requirements.

Also work with management in your own delivery organization to ensure that you have the proper expertise on your delivery team. At this point you want to do your best to both meet the reset customer expectations and minimize customer dissatisfaction that has likely already started due to the original expectation issues.

The Cost of Free Design Logos

A few logo design sites provide free design logos. These logo design sites offer services ranging from free business logos, free logo designs, free business card logos, free corporate logos collection, free trademark logos and free logo art. Yet the one commonality of all the logo design sites offering free design logos is that the customer generally received little of value at the risk of greater trademark liability.

Logo design sites that offer free design logos often give no thought to how greatly your company's future image will be tied to the entire company logo collection. Worst, free design logos for many companies are often used from a small group of company logo samples. Consequently, creating a corporate logo from a logo design site offering free design logos increases the possibility of your trademark logo infringing upon a company logo collection that was also created from the same free corporate logos collection. Free design logos indirectly cost your company by creating a logo that has no bearing to your particular company with the logo design probably infringing upon another trademark logo. Trademark assistance from a trademark lawyer is clearly required when getting free design logos because the potential risk of infringement is greater.

Conversely, the best logo designing draws upon the unique aspects of your corporation and corporate identity brand building. The best logo designing will not only use your company's attributes when creating a corporate logo, but particularly when creating a whole company logo collection. Great logo design will provide you with numerous examples of business logos and logo design samples from their professional logo design portfolio. The logo design company will then use your feedback to narrow the potential company logo examples to a chosen few. Trademark assistance from a trademark attorney should be sought to review a trademark search report for each sample corporate logo. A trademark attorney should then draft a trademark application for the trademark logo with the least risk of infringing upon another mark. For more information on the aspects of logo design and registering a trademark click on How to Trademark a Logo.

Ironically, paying for the best logo designing and creating a corporate logo that reflects your corporate identity brand building can actually be cheaper than trying to get free logo design once you fully examine the true costs of free logo designs.

A repost of an article we did for Mashable regarding WHY OH WHY to use Twitter.

The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter

BY Redmond business Solutions · POSTED ON MARCH 20, 2009

To be honest, my first impression ofTwitter was that it was for folks who had way too much time on their hands who narcissistically wanted to broadcast every random thought that crossed their brains.

While this may be true in some instances, there are also some very smart, professional, forward thinking people whom I respect who are using Twitter intelligently.

Yep, you heard that right–I just used the words “intelligently” and “Twitter” in the same sentence. :)

Like cell phones, email, and blackberries, Twitter is a tool that can either add value to your working life or become the perfect interruption machine, depending on how well you use it.

To keep yourself from falling into the Twitter abyss, it might help to focus on these 5 smart uses of Twitter:

She whispered into the wrong ears.
Originally uploaded by swirlingthoughts.

1. Marketing and Communication. The absolute tipping point for me taking the plunge into the Twitter pond was seeing that my friend Gavin Heaton, a very bright guy involved with the marketing/advertising world, was waxing poetic about the marketing and communications potential in Twitter.

I found this insight from Gavin in the comments of this post at The Viral Garden:

The way that you can use Twitter is what fascinates. If conversation is king then Twitter is great… watch the way David Armano uses it to instantly update his “followers” and move from conversation to action. The potential for brands is enormous.

As we continue to invest in the constantly-evolving story of our brands, then conversational enablers like Twitter will become integral. I don’t think Twitter is for everyone, but for a targeted niche (even a large one), it could be a knockout.

And from David Armano himself:

If you are interested about marketing, conversations and the ways which we communicate with each other (and how this is changing and evolving), you should at least investigate what the hoopla is all about. My recent experiences with Twitter tell me that the service is morphing due to how users want to use it. What was once initially designed to answer the question “what are you doing?”, has turned into a free-form communications service where people are having burts of shorthand conversations, sharing links and information in rapid-fire fashion…Personally, I think Twitter is a pretty powerful tool for anything involvingpromotions, events and communities.

While not many of us are marketing masterminds like these two fellas, those of us who are online entrepreneurs should always be on the lookout for new ways that we can market our businesses and create a dialogue with our target market.

I haven’t completely wrapped my brain around the marketing potential of Twitter for businesses, but my ears are perked to hear how folks in the marketing/branding sector of the blogosphere are using Twitter.

2. Microblogging. For a news blogger, the 140 character limit in Twitter can be extremely liberating. No need to labor over a post or look for the perfect image. It’s “just the facts ma’am”, and although Twitter will never replace blogging, sometimes the bare basic facts are all we need.

Folks using Twitter as a scaled down blogging platform where they provide a link to a hot fresh news item and include a few words of opinion are being very helpful at providing info and story leads and saving us time.

It’s much easier for me to get ideas for story posts by looking at a microblogger’s Twitter feed than by trudging into my Bloglines account. Good-bye RSS feed reader! (If you’d like to see what microblogging looks like, check out Techmeme’s Twitter feed.)

The extra cool thing is if you subscribe to the feed of someone who is microblogging news and you put the Twitter Timeline in the sidebar of your blog, you and all the visitors to your blog can see the steady stream of fresh news items.

Grillin Up Some Ribs
Originally uploaded by bintibee.

3. Business Networking. Twitter is a social software, so it’s super easy to meet new people and bring people together. Over the course of my first Twitter outing, I was able to easily, casually introduce two friends of mine via a light hearted Twitter session. I had actually wanted them to meet each other because I thought they could possibly do a joint venture together, but I didn’t want their first meeting to be “business-y”.

Could this initial meeting have been done via IM or phone? Yeah, sure, but not in such an informal way. The strength of Twitter in networking is that it’s like meeting someone at a backyard barbeque, as opposed to a formal business meeting or networking luncheon. The informality is a great ice breaker, and it encourages folks to let their guard down a little.

I feel like two folks who meet via Twitter (or a backyard barbeque) will be able to get comfortable with each other more quickly than if they met in a more business-y setting.

4. Breaking news & getting scoops. The first time I heard of this happening was when Duncan Riley observed that the story about ScribeFire signing Chris Finke was broken exclusively on Nick Wilson’s Twitter account.

It’s actually not that surprising that some tech news is being broken via Twitter. Twitter is informal chatting with friends, and it’s only natural that if you’ve just brokered a blog sale or you’ve just added a new member to your team that you’ll share the news with your friends.

The interesting thing about Twitter is that it feels like an intimate IM session, but it’s actually not private at all. People let their guard down on Twitter, and if you’re in the tech news reporting field you might get some juicy leads via Twitter.

The kind of news that’s likely to be broken via Twitter is tech news, and in order to scoop it you need to be Twitter watching the movers and shakers in the tech world. (In order to Twitter watch someone, just add them to your “friends” list.)

5. Streamlining your electronic inboxes. When you start using Twitter, you’ll probably find yourself using IM, social bookmarking, RSS readers and email less.

Aside from the public chat feature Twitter has, it also has a private direct messaging feature, so you could use that if you had a private message to send. You could also use Twitter direct messaging instead of email, which I’ve noticed some of my colleagues doing.

By using Twitter you may actually be able scale back on the influx of incoming information and electronic devices you use, which is something we can all appreciate.

As for those people who have been completely turned off to Twitter because of some of the more frivilous, immature uses of this global communication tool–I hear ya!

There’s only one way to deal with those annoying folks: Ignore them.

Instead, imitate the people who are using Twitter intelligently.

If you do, you just might find a new way of connecting with your target niche, scoop a story before your competitors, meet a future business partner, or streamline your arsenal of electronic communication tools.

If you’re still not convinced of the merits of Twitter, that’s fine.

Twitter is not for everyone, but if you’re the slightest bit intrigued as to why smart folks are singing the praises of Twitter, the only way you’ll ever satisfy your curiousity is to try it out for yourself.

Twitter what? Here's the answer...

An excellent article regarding Twitter by Andy Beal:

Micromedia tools such as Twitter, Plurk, and Pownce have introduced the concept of group conversations. Similar to instant messaging, Twitter allows you to send quick, short messages to hundreds of friends at once. Anyone that signs on to “follow” your Twitter profile will receive an alert—via instant message, mobile text message, or email—each time you send a new message.

How can you use services such as Twitter to build your reputation? The service is still relatively confined to early adopters, but is already showing great promise as a tool for building your brand.

Assuming that you’ve already matched your Twitter username to your personal or company brand, here are some suggestions for using Twitter to build your online reputation:

1.Start conversations with notable peers.

Don’t be the guy that jumps on Twitter, “follows” 10,000 people, then tweets “@” them every two minutes. That’s not the type of reputation you want to build for yourself.

Do be the guy that follows those that have influence and audience in your industry. You’ll learn a lot just from listening to their often unguarded comments, but if you have something valuable to add to their conversation, send them an @andybeal or @chrisbrogan, or @garyvee. If you can engage them in a conversation, they might just @ you back–alerting their thousands of followers that you’re a person worthy of their time, in the process.

2.Share valuable industry news.

If you’re the kind of person that’s always discovering breaking stories, share those with your Twitter network. Maybe you’ll “tweet” something not yet seen by a popular blogger. They may not always give you credit in their blog posts, but you can bet you’ll quickly get on their radar.

I’ve personally credited and linked to Twitter followers that gave me a “heads-up” on a breaking story and seen others credit me for sharing a story with them. How’s that for reputation building? You’ve just become the guy that keeps the top bloggers “in the know.”

3.Build your blog audience.

We all know how hard it is to build a blog’s audience. How often do you check your Feedburner stats to see if you’ve inched up or down that day? Conversely, building your following on Twitter can take much less time, and work–I’m adding up to three times as many Twitter followers each day, than blog subscribers.

OK, but how do you get your Twitter followers to start reading your blog? Er, you ask them? Well, actually, you cherry pick your best blog posts and share them with your Twitter followers–many of whom likely don’t already read or subscribe to your blog.

Tools such as Twitterfeed can automate the process for you, but be careful not to overload your Twitter followers with blog post updates–you want to build a positive reputation, remember?

4. Stay connected at conferences and trade shows.

Twitter really shines, when it’s used by conference attendees. “OMG Google’s Larry Page just farted on stage,” while fictitious, would be great fodder for the Twitterati. You may attend a conference as a complete noob, but Twitter can help you leave as a “someone.”

The next time you attend an event, look for the official Twitter account. @BlogWorld is one example of a conference that makes heavy use of Twitter. Follow the Twitter updates at your next conference and you’ll learn the location of the secret parties, or where Guy Kawasaki plans to have dinner that night. For anyone uncomfortable with networking, Twitter is a great tool to connect with other conference attendees and build your reputation without having to actually shake hands.

5. Monitor your Twitter reputation.

Monitoring Twitter for mention of your personal, or corporate, brand can save you a lot of future reputation headaches. Conversations about your brand can happen on Twitter, hours before someone decides to migrate the conversation to something more widespread, such as a blog.

Here’s a real life example. I recently had a bad experience with Office Depot. On the evening of July 14th, I posted this on Twitter:

The next day, my “Office Depot Joins the Reputation Deadpool” post went live on Marketing Pilgrim. If Office Depot were actively monitoring Twitter, it could have saved itself a huge reputation headache by resolving the situation, before I posted to my blog.

Don’t panic, you don’t have to monitor Twitter manually 24/7. You can use search.twitter.com (formerly Summize.com), TweetBeep, or Trackur to automatically alert you of any Twitter discussion involving your brand.

There are many more ways that you can use Twitter to grow your brand and manage your reputation, but it wouldn’t be fun if we’d didn’t keep the conversation going.

Can Social Media Help the Real Estate Market?

As the real estate industry looks for new ways to market and sell property during the downturn, technology firms are launching ways to use social media — like FavRav’s new Facebook referral tool – to help businesses grow.

But not everyone believes Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks can help them expand their businesses.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the social network is on track to reach 1bn users by the end of next year, while speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festivals earlier in the month. LinkedIn and Twitter also have seen tremendous growth in recent years.

FavRav said its automated platform allows small businesses, like brokerage firms that can’t afford social media experts, to promote themselves on Facebook, where existing customers, or buyers, can provide recommendations to friends and family.

“We’re really the place people come when you need a trusted referral from friends on important decisions like your first child’s pediatrician, a Realtor for your next home purchase or an insurance agent to help you protect your family,” said FavRav co-founder Bill Manos.

Also recently, technology companies like Top Producer Systems, which is operated by Move Inc., released the next generation of its product suite for real estate agents. In addition to giving agents and brokers the ability to pre-qualify leads and generate real-time market data, the new software includes the ability to capture updates, status changes and direct postings from Facebook and Twitter.

“Top Producer 8i gives real estate professionals an information-age advantage by offering a seamless integration of Facebook and Twitter feeds with instant access to the comments, needs and activities of client contacts and leads,” said Frederick Herot, vice president of customer marketing for Move Inc.

But not everyone has made the leap into social media. Topher Thiessen, who works at Reverse Market Insight, a consulting and data services provider for the mortgage industry, said Facebook and Twitter don’t play a role in their business.

“We are focused solely on business clients like banks and mortgage firms, and haven’t yet determined any real value in trying to leverage those websites,” Thiessen said.

David Puno, director of operations at Commercial Capital Fund, a commercial real estate lender, said his company is only using LinkedIn.com, a site that enables businesses and colleagues to connect with one another, as a tool for its business.

“We think Facebook and Twitter are good for some businesses, but not ours,” Puno said.

Frank Leogrande, an appraiser at Grande Appraisals in Florida, said Facebook and Twitter are virtually useless for the appraisal industry with the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) limiting contact between businesses.

“I use none of them [Facebook or Twitter] for business purposes. I am registered with all of them but the appraisal business is so HVCC regulated now that unless you are an AMC, you cannot do work with brokers anyway,” Leogrande said.

With the launch of the FavRav tool, Matthew Ferrara, CEO of Matthew Ferrara & Co., a real estate consultant, said real estate agents and brokers have always relied on referrals, and these sites, if used correctly can generate more.

“Realtors have always relied heavily on referrals to drive their business. Many realize that having a social media presence is critical, but don’t have the expertise to execute and are overwhelmed at the prospect,” Ferrara said. “Social media tools like FavRav can be a good option for realtors trying to engage potential customers and increase their social media visibility, but who don’t have the time to be a social media guru.”

Bruce Ailion, a broker with RE/MAX in Atlanta, said he works with his son to take full advantage of the interaction between social media and real estate. Like 80% of brokers, he said, he’s behind the leading edge on this aspect of the business. But recognizes a value in it.

“As a 30-plus year broker, I feel these methods of communication are essential to the future of real estate marketing,” Ailion said.