TBC Workshop Review: Social Media Success



Eve of Social Media Delivered

We had a great turnout for this morning's workshop at Texas Business Centers featuring Eve Mayer Orsburn of Social Media Delivered, a Dallas-based firm that offers consulting, training and fully managed social media services for individuals and organizations. We gained valuable insight into the world of social media marketing and how to apply it to our small businesses. The following are some basic facts Eve wanted to pass along regarding our favorite networking sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We hope you'll join us for our next event!

FACEBOOK
All the things you wanted to know about Facebook but were too embarrassed to ask.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK?
Facebook is the largest social networking site online. Users can add friends and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Businesses can also utilize Facebook to create a Company Fan Page, which is essentially a mini-website for your organization. The main advantage here is that these Fan Pages are within the same network as Facebook’s users and allow direct access to your customer base.

WHO IS ON FACEBOOK?
> Over 600 million active users across the world
> Over 41.6% of the U.S. population is on Facebook* with 50% of active users on each day
> More than 1.5 million local businesses have a Fan Page
*Updated Jan 2011 (source: Social Media Today)

POPULAR FACEBOOK PAGE EXAMPLES
> Starbucks
> Pringles
> Will Smith

WHO SHOULD HAVE A FACEBOOK FAN PAGE?
Anyone who wants to create brand awareness, especially companies with a strong Business to Consumer presence, and

How a virtual office could support your business

Virtual offices are not just a popular choice for small business owners in the US. They are quickly becoming a trend over the globe, and especially in the UK. The following article was originally posted on Bytestart, a fast-growing site run by online business specialists that provides advice for start-ups and SMEs.

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Virtual office services have sprung up over the last five years and are now being used extensively by small businesses to allow them to present a professional image to clients, and provide them with a wide range of support services, such as telephone answering and mail forwarding.

Virtual offices can provide an easy way to outsource the administrative aspects of your business. You use someone else’s business to handle the time consuming stuff that has to be done but just isn’t that important.
Typically services offered by virtual offices centre around handling your phone calls, both incoming and some outgoing for basic sales follow ups and customer enquiries. Important messages are passed to you by email or text message, or by calling you and introducing the caller. This can be a good way to cut the number of unwanted sales calls you get.

You can go further, getting them to handle email and ordering systems, and deal with your [mail]. Some virtual offices also offer full secretarial services such as typing, transcribing audio, [appointment] management and event co-ordination. And increasingly they are offering basic bookkeeping services such as invoice management, supplier management and payroll.

The beauty of the virtual office in the internet age is that you can integrate them into your business so that customers have no idea you are outsourcing. Callers dialling your phone number are greeted in your company name, with messages passed on instantly. If someone wants to book an appointment to see you, your virtual office can access your [calendar] and update it, meaning you can see new commitments instantly (including away from the office if you have a PDA or BlackBerry).

Because the services offered are fairly easy to provide there is plenty of choice in the virtual office market, and that is keeping prices low. But before you find one to help your business, here are a few things to consider.

How much are these services worth to you?
Don’t look at the price of the service. Instead work out how much is an hour of your time worth. How much money can you bring in to your business with an uninterrupted hour of selling or providing your product or service? If you can sell your time for [$50] an hour, surely it is worth outsourcing an hour of admin for [$20]?

What are the core skills of your virtual office?
Many virtual office services are based round particular core skills, with other services bolted on. For example a former [personal assistant] now working from home may be an exceptional audio typist, and only offer call handling as an extra service. It may be more sensible to use that service for typing, and find a different provider with better infrastructure for call handling.

Are they big enough to cope?
There are a lot of one man bands out there providing these services. There’s nothing wrong with a one man band, but you need to be confident they can successfully handle your business. If they have just one person answering the phones for 10 different clients, what happens when three people call at once? It’s an easy way to lose a sale. Ask difficult questions of your potential suppliers and visit their premises to see for yourself.

But are they too big?
Be careful about taking on a service that is nothing more than a call centre dressed up as a virtual office. If someone calls your business every day and speaks to a different person each time (with the usual noise of a call centre in the background), they will soon twig you are outsourcing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but most customers want to feel they are talking to someone who works for the company and can make things happen. How customers feel is more important than what’s actually happening in reality.

Article used with permission. Original article posted here.
For more no-nonsense guides for start-ups and SMEs, visit bytestart.co.uk.

Beyond the home office: raising the level of professionalism for small businesses

(ARA) - Millions of Americans are pursuing the dream of owning their own business. For those developing and growing their concept among an increasingly large field of independent business owners, the need to stand out in the crowd can't be overstated. Some small business owners are finding that the traditional idea of working out of the home needs some refreshing in order to ensure success.

"In this information age, 'work' is no longer a place; it is something you do," says Ralph Gregory, founder and CEO of Intelligent Office. "And you can do it from most anywhere with the right support services."

Consider these tips for making sure that your small business is poised to succeed.

• Prepare yourself every day. Independent business owners need to apply the same professionalism to each day that they would apply if they were going into corporate headquarters. That means setting a time schedule: requiring yourself to be to work on time, taking a lunch break and a designating an end to the day. How you dress also has an impact on your attitude, so wear appropriate professional attire. And if you are doing work from your home, make it clear to other family members that your workspace is off limits and that you shouldn't be interrupted during business hours.

• Be available to meet with customers in a professional setting. Meeting with customers at your home is often out of the question, and it blurs personal and professional lines. As well, meeting at a coffee shop or other public location can be noisy and distracting - not conducive to business. A smarter solution is to use a service like Intelligent Office, which allows you to give your business a more professional edge by providing office space or conference rooms - often in desirable, prestigious locations - for an affordable hourly rate. This virtual office space gives you the opportunity to interact with your clients in an established office building and equips you with the necessary tools for making presentations or hosting meetings for large or small groups.

• Provide professional service. If a prospective new client calls and you miss it because you're on the other line or away from your desk, you're putting your business at a disadvantage. In today's competitive business environment, you can't afford to lose an opportunity to speak to someone interested in your business. Likewise, making the right impression when you do answer the phone is important. If there's distracting noise in the background, it can cause you to lose focus, or it might give your customer doubts about your professionalism. A virtual receptionist service, like that provided by Intelligent Office's Intelligent Assistants, is an affordable alternative that provides highly professional, personalized phone answering services and a dedicated business telephone number, ensuring that your calls aren't missed and that your clients get a consistent, positive and professional impression of your business.

• Strike a balance. Maintaining a work-life balance is one of the most important parts of working independently, and, for many people, it's the reason they decided to start their own business. However, striking a good balance means that there shouldn't be too much home in your work, but also that there shouldn't be too much work in your home. Having a dedicated space to work from outside the home allows you the freedom to work independently without your work encroaching on your home.

There are plenty of independent small business owners who work from a corner of their homes or by going from café to café, but for many there is a better way to operate. By using virtual office space and virtual assistant services, small business owners can offer clients the professionalism and services that they'd expect from larger companies, but with the personal touch that sets small businesses apart.

Social marketing tools for the SMB

These days, promoting your small business without social marketing is like bowling without the bumpers on: your more traditional marketing and advertising efforts such as newspaper, television, radio, snail mail, etc. may knock some pins down, but you have a better chance of bowling a strike when you employ tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging and more.

The landscape of social media is forever changing and new avenues for promotion are created all the time. Small businesses face the daunting tasks of understanding what it is, how to make it work and in what capacity. The following are some useful articles we found that can help guide your social marketing endeavors:

How #Hashtags Can Work For You! - Vertical Response Marketing Blog - How to insert hashtags into your tweets to capture followers of certain tags, keywords and buzzwords.

30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business - SMB owner Mark Hayward shares his experience after three years of using social marketing tools.

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips - Detailed article by Ross Kimbarovsky about social media marketing strategies.

What are the advantages of a virtual office?

Virtual offices, or co-working spaces as they are sometimes referred to, are popping up all over the country. They are best suited for small businesses, start-ups or solo professionals who need a professional atmosphere to conduct business but do not need full-time space or do not care to commit to a long-term lease. Some common users of this relatively new innovation are attorneys, accountants, mobile salespeople, event planners, therapists, mediators, frequent travelers, real estate agents, networking groups and trainers.

At a basic level, facilities provide a mailing address, mail services, own telephone number, live phone answering, voicemail and a fully-furnished, private office that includes a desk, chair, computer and telephone. Use of a meeting room and/or training area depends on the location. Some centers also provide administrative support such as faxing, copying, typing, data entry and appointment setting. Others even offer the advantage of having on-site business development services, website consulting, video conferencing, bookkeeping/tax prep, and merchant services.

There are many benefits to a virtual office. In contrast to a home-office, a virtual setting, along with mailing address and phone number, may help to convey to prospective and current clients that you are a more legitimate, capable and professional business. There are significant cost advantages as well. Aside from costing less than a traditional suite because you are only paying for the amount of hours per month you anticipate using the office, you do not have any utility, internet or phone bills. In addition, virtual office facilities that offer the aforementioned business incubator-type services establish themselves as a central hub at which all business operations and development can be accomplished under one roof maximizing productivity.

A virtual office is a great place to start because it is relatively inexpensive yet professional and provides all the necessary tools for small businesses to enhance and grow. As you gain more employees, customers and revenue and find you are using the virtual office more than 30+ hours a week, it may be time to reevaluate and consider using a full-time space.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_office

As a start-up business, where do you turn to for advice?

You are a start-up entrepreneur. You are motivated and hungry for success. You have an insatiable appetite for knowledge that will help you grow, but you don't know where to turn for the answers. Experts, forums, blogs, articles, Q&As, business consultants, friends, fellow business owners and your own entrepreneurial instincts hurdle information at you at lightning speed as your brain struggles to single out the best possible solution.

You are experiencing information overload.

Take a deep breath...It is true there are a myriad of resources for start-ups and small businesses providing an extensive amount of information geared to point you in the right direction. With minimal searching, entrepreneurs can find answers to virtually any question about how to go about starting, expanding or enhancing their business. The problem therein is that the ratio of Qs to As is almost always disproportionate. The considerable variety of answers/solutions to question/problem makes it hard to choose which one to follow and hinders the decision making process.

According to Rosalind Resnick of the Wall-Street Journal, one of the top ten mistakes that start-up entrepreneurs make when starting a company is that they ask too many people for advice, resulting in delayed or half-hearted decisions from contradicting recommendations. Related to this blunder are #9: not having a business plan, and #10: over-thinking your business plan. The best advice for start-ups in this ever-expanding information era is to seek out a business incubator for counsel and development services. A business incubator provides resources and advice related to HR, marketing, financing planning and budgeting, credit establishment and ways to enhance productivity and image and partners with professionals that can aid in website hosting and management, tax preparation and bookkeeping and legal services.

Requesting the guidance of a consultant at an incubator will help set boundaries for the amount of information you are given (and your brain can ultimately process). Concise business advice will help expedite decision making and save your start-up crucial time.

Reducing Overhead in 2011 - A Caveat for Small Business Owners

Most small business owners perceive the most basic of costs (office space, utilities, phone, computer) as fixed expenses that they can do little to minimize. As an alternative to leasing office space with a long-term financial obligation, working from home seems to be the only choice. However, how does this setting affect the professional image of your business when you need to meet with clients? Is it a faux pas to use a home address on your business card? It definitely depends on the size and the industry, but using a home office may hinder your target customer’s perception of your business and its legitimacy or capability.

An alternative to consider would be a renting space at a virtual office. Compared to a traditional lease on office space, these facilities can be used on an “as-needed” basis and are fully-furnished with desk, chairs, computer, phone, internet, etc. Being able to work from a full-service physical location with a professional mailing address and pay drastically less than for a full-time suite is a huge cost advantage in itself. On top of that, throw in the added benefit of not having to pay for utilities or internet. Some virtual office centers even provide packages that include administrative services (faxing, copying, mail forwarding) and small business consulting.

Once you have done all you can to minimize your fixed costs, you can focus your attention on reducing variable expenses in other areas that may consume more time such as negotiating prices, bartering for products and services, buying used equipment, etc.