Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-12

12 Mar

Top Secret Mission: Success

12 Mar

You, and how you conduct yourself are the secrets to your business’ success

Cigarette Left on Sidewalk via Flickr by randa1thor

Cigarette Left on Sidewalk via Flickr by randa1thor

Presenting yourself for success is vitally important in everything you do.

I love the quote; “How you do anything, is how you do everything”. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, how you do it will convey to the outside world how you live your life.

Tom Peters, in his book Re-Imagine talks about the importance of paying attention to detail and design. Tom reminds me that regardless of what it is I or someone in my company is doing it should be done to such a degree of detail, precision, and design that someone from outside your company would pay good money for the service.

So it doesn’t matter if I’m leading a meeting of 20 managers, or filing papers from this morning’s work, perform each job to the best of my abilities.

This hits home for me almost daily.

I find myself so busy at times that I might be tempted to skip over certain daily tasks. However I stop myself with this quote – How I do anything is how I do everything. By doing this, I’ll immediately stop, turn around and address the task that I was about to skip over. This can be as significant as preparing for a meeting with a potential bank, or as trivial as picking up a small piece of garbage in front of the store. I have actually walked over a cigarette butt on the ground in front of my store because I was too busy, then a few seconds later, stop myself, turn around and walk back to pick it up and throw it out.

It doesn’t matter what it is, in order to become our best, we must put forth our 100% effort into everything we do, even if it is picking up a cigarette butt.

Marketing Strategies for Today’s Retailer: Out with the Old and In with the New

11 Mar

The Yays and Nays for Marketing a Small Business

Yes, Maybe or No? via Flickr from ‾olǝƃuɐ‾

Yes, Maybe or No? via Flickr from ‾olǝƃuɐ‾

Marketing is not what it used to be. What used to be all about newspaper, radio and TV advertising, is now all about internet, social media and direct mail marketing.

When you look at your own business, have you changed your marketing strategy in the past five years, or are you still trying to do the same old thing and achieve new results? In my opinion, here are a few Yays and Nays to consider:

Marketing Nays

  • Newspaper – news print readership is on the decline, yet advertising is still expensive.
  • Radio – with so many stations diluting the market, it no longer has impact.
  • TV – very expensive and too much dilution.
  • Yellow Pages – (unless yellow pages online) usage of traditional yellow pages has plummeted in recent years, replace with assorted online websites. Carrying ads on their site is also more expensive then other mediums
  • Twitter – I haven’t been able to prove the  ROI / economic value to my businesses using Twitter, yet. It can be a time suck, and reach a different market then I’m intending. But, I remain optimistic and continue testing.

Marketing Yays

  • Websites – make your website easy to find, informative, up to date and relevant.
  • Staff Blogs – builds an online community and encourages people to visit your website regularly.
  • Facebook – setup a fan page to help build an online community and to become a part of their online community. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and its an additional place to be found and push out your promotions
  • Facebook Ads – a very effective marketing tool that enables you to narrow in on a very small and specific niche in the market place. They’re also less expensive then you think
  • Google Adwords – a very effective advertising tool to get in front of people searching for something that you’re hopefully selling. If you know what you’re doing, this can be very effective. There’s lots of help available in this field if you want to outsource.
  • YouTube Segments – this can be a very effective tool for providing informative content to your customers, and using a flipcam, video can be fun and easy to create.
  • Email Campaigns – not as effective as they once were, as long as you have permission, you keep them relevant and you don’t abuse the privilege, it is still a very useful tool.  When looking at pushing out promotions, email is still king.
  • TV Listing Channel Ads – if you must do TV, then do the TV listings channel. It is more reasonably priced and you’ll get more bang for the buck.
  • Direct Mail – whether it is via email or snail mail, direct marketing to your customers works every time.  It may be time consuming, but know that the response rate on Direct is the highest of all channels.

(more…)

What Impact will the HST have on your Business?

9 Mar

piggybank by parmarpritesh's via Flickr

piggybank by parmarpritesh's via Flickr

As we prep our (Canadian) businesses for what the new HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) means for us, there’s lots of debate about how businesses will fare, adapt and implement the change to their systems, processes and financials.

I’m interested in your opinion.

Add your comments below – I’d like to know your point of view – as a consumer, business owner, politician, or anyone interested in the debate.

Links:

Other People’s Recycled News | Feb 26 – March 5

8 Mar

7 Essential Online HR Resources for Your Small Business

As a business owner, you know your product, service, market and customers. But sometimes one of the most challenging aspects of operating a business is employees. Not because the employees themselves are a challenge but because there’s so much legislation and nuance to employee relations.

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How Small Business is Using Social Media (Stats)

The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business looked at the relationship between social media and small businesses and found that the technology adoption rates in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24%.

The data comes straight from the university’s third installment to its Small Business Success Index report and is based on a December 2009 telephone survey of 500 small business owners. Adoption rate calculations are compared against a baseline report conducted in December 2008.

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Twitter when they tweet

Be aware of the buzz on your company.

If businesses know how to deal with customer queries and complaints made via Twitter and other social networks, they can improve their customer service by an order of magnitude. But companies normally deal with their customers via phone, the postal service and perhaps email. How can businesses fold these new channels into the mix?

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