Posts Tagged ‘Startups’

Leave No Business Behind: Pearls of Wisdom for Every Startup & SmallBiz

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

A few years ago we were just a couple of entrepreneurs with an idea that we felt could solve a pressing issue for small businesses.  No one really knew us and in many ways no one should have known us then since we were just starting out. Thus we had little to no street credibility.

There is a funny thing that happens as time passes (besides me longing for those care-free college days where the toughest decision was Burger King, KFC or pizza for dinner tonight?).  As the clock ticks away you gain valuable experience and insight about life, growing a startup business, the team and people around you, the market, trends, dealing with your customers and partners and for us building a product that enables small businesses to show that they are trustworthy and credible.  The experience translates into knowledge.  Therefore we continually make it a priority for our team to share with the small business community the knowledge we have gained through ups and down, good times and challenges and those inevitable growing pains all businesses must endure.  It is our way of helping the startups, small businesses and the greater community. That is frankly one of the reasons we interview our own customers so they can provide their knowledge to all of us.

So we just wanted to take the time to highlight some of our knowledge sharing we have recently done. This has been through blogs posts on some really great small business focused sites.  We, at KikScore, were very excited to be invited to provide guest posts at two fabulous and prestigious SMB focused blogs.  First is Ivana Taylor’s awesome DIY Marketers Blog.  Ivana is such a force and inspiration for small businesses (though I have to ignore she is a Steelers fan! See earlier post on my feeling toward “those fans.”).  We were truly honored to be invited to contribute to her fast growing blog. Ivana by the way has some great things launching for 2012 so please be on the look out for them.  The second is the majorly popular and growing .CO Blog called Go.CO.  Again being specifically recruited and asked to contribute to this fantastic blog has been an honor.  So we keep working hard to contribute KikScore’s thought leadership on small businesses, operating a startup, setting, creating and managing strategy and also steps to effectively market your business.

Here are links to some of the posts if you would like to check them out:

1. Are you looking for ways to use videos in your startup or small business, if so check out  5 Types of Marketing Videos Every Small Business Should Use.

2. We each face the challenge of how do we build a brand with all of the “noise” out there, here are 4 Steps to Developing a Small Business Brand.

3. Wondering how to show website visitors you are trustworthy and credible check out The Online Trust Issue – Tips to Find the Right Trust Seal for Your Small Business.

4. As we get rolling into 2012, take a step back and review these 5 Steps to Make 2012 Your Best Year for Your Business By Learning From 2011.

5. If you are looking for a path to acquiring and maintaining loyal customers here are 6 Ways to Make Better Connections with Your Customers By Paying More Attention.

6. We are living in a LinkedIn world now so make sure you are taking advantage of every opportunity to use your connections with these  Steps to Use Your Professional Network to Grow Your Business.

7. A lot of small businesses and startups just want to stick their heads in the weeds and get things done, but every business needs to take a look at these Business Strategy Tips for Small Business Owners.

8. As we all look inward at our own startups and small businesses and how we manage our teams, we can use these 5 Skills & Traits Every Entrepreneur Should Nurture for Success.

9. With everything that is on our plates for our respective businesses here are some important Steps on How to Cut Distractions & Focus More On Achieving Your Business Goals.

Well we have had quite an active few months blogging on these great small business sites.  Many thanks to each of the sites for having us and we look forward to providing more guidance on a range of items in the future.

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Posts Tagged ‘Startups’

Facebook and Twitter: Parallels and What Can SmallBiz Learn From Them?

Monday, April 18th, 2011

According to Cnet, Twitter is disorganized. Now I’m not entirely sure the article is true, but I figured that I could trust Cnet and since they included a link to a Fortune article it looks like it checks out. So, what’s going on with Twitter? Some claim they don’t, exactly, know what they’re doing. There’s a lot of speculation going on, such as some higher-ups spying. Cnet seems to speculate that Twitter is trying to emulate  The Social Network. That’s probably not the case. So, what’s really going on with Twitter?

So, Twitter has trouble amongst the higher ups. That’s not surprising. Many startups seem to have that happen especially during a meteoric rise. Remember Facebook? There was some serious chaos going on at Facebook a couple of years ago and Facebook was about the same age as Twitter is now.

However, the difference between Facebook and Twitter is that some argue that Twitter lacks a powerful visionary heading the company. Facebook has Zuckerberg, who, practically, built Facebook according to his vision.  Observers claim that Twitter does not have that. Facebook has apparently learned from it’s mistakes and has become a stronger company. Twitter is trying to get there, but some may be fearing that it doesn’t look like anyone wants to take charge.  In some ways, Twitter’s investors seem to have more influence over what the company does.

Twitter’s problem seems to be that there are too many men (they’re all male) in positions of power and from the outside at least not a single one of them has been willing to take charge. There are other issues that Twitter has to deal with too, such as the need to sustain growth, prove themselves as a sustainable revenue generating company etc. However, these issues are common for nearly every young company.

Is Twitter a service that is being kept afloat by a trend?  From the outside some say it looks pretty unstable and this management issue could distract it further. Like any company, Twitter needs practical and strong leadership. However, whoever takes that position will have to deal with another problem: balancing Twitter’s malleability, where it’s users decide what they want to do with it and what Twitter’s users want out of Twitter.  That will ultimately prove whether Twitter can succeed.

So, what can a small business learn from all of this?

First, that it’s important to have a clear plan and vision of where your company is going.

Second, make sure that there is someone who is clearly in charge and providing leadership as we discussed in a previous post about 10 leadership traits in a startup or small business.

Third, know that problems will happen. Almost nothing goes smoothly when running a business. Factor that in when making plans.

Lastly, in tough times work to pull teams together to focus on the future rather than start finger pointing about what happened in the past.  Here is a prior post we did on building the right team at a startup that discusses the importance of having a good team at your business.

What do you think about all of this?

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Posts Tagged ‘Startups’

5 Reasons that Startups & SmallBiz Must Engage Their Customers

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

For some reason, recently I have talked to a number of people that have said the same thing to me.  They basically say that their startup, small business and even enterprise company is too busy to actually engage their customers.  Or they say that engaging and talking to your customers just is not a priority.  My response boils down to this:  Are you for real? Really, your business does not have time to talk to our customers or you think talking to customers isn’t really scalable so lets just not do it? That is garbage.

So I say stop right there.  Stop spending all your time on powerpoints, writing long blog posts that no one reads, trying to figure out ways to increase prices on your customers,  writing requirements for products your customers don’t want or chasing yet other pointless task.  As entrepreneur Mark Cuban said earlier this week:  YOUR CUSTOMERS OWN YOU Without your customers your business is WORTHLESS.  Why do so many people fail to understand that basic concept?

So here are 5 reasons (and a bonus one!) why your startup or small business needs make it a priority to talk to your customers as often as possible:

1. Stop being nameless and faceless to your customers. Your customers have lots of options. They use lots of products in their daily life.  So many of these products are from companies that customers think of as people in a far away skyscraper in New York or office park in the suburbs next to Red Lobster and Taco Bell.  So be different.  Put a name to a face for your business to your customers.  When a customer uses your product they can identify with a real person instead of some random brand name.  Human nature dictates that we all crave connections and if you can make that personal connection with a customer that will immediately distinguishes your business from all the noise that is out there.

2. Start creating deeper customer relationships out of the value you provide to your customers – Your customers have decided to do business with you.  They have taken the step to pick YOU!  So what should you do?  Close the loop and show them how much it means that your customer picked your business from everyone out there.  Then build on that value you are creating for your customer in their daily life and add some deeper bonds to that relationship by seeing (or listening) first hand how customers use your product, what are their other pain points for their own business.  Actually showing that you care about your customers will go a long way because no one else really does take the steps to show that they care.  Be different by showing that you give a hoot! It is that simple.

3. Get real feedback from your customers you can act on – Building on #2, take the opportunity to use your engagement with your customers to get tangible feedback about your product, the market, your competitors and your overall customer makeup.  There is no better market research then actually talking to customers and hearing first hand what they are saying.  I know people say it takes time to do this – to get the feedback and then to act on it.  My suggestion, start small.  One interaction a day, maybe two.  The snowball effect of the feedback will help your business because you will get to see your business and product directly through the eyes of your customers!  That is just invaluable. Here is an earlier post of ours on tools to help your business get feedback.

4. Gain credibility, loyalty and capital with customers – So you are getting feedback, showing that you care and are not nameless and faceless anymore.  What does this do in the totality for your customers?  Your business starts to create brand capital by building up credibility with your customers. This begins to set yourself apart from the crowd.  That credibility with your customer then begins to be translated into a hugely valuable asset and that is customer loyalty.  The reason why – because the customer sees that you are different than the others – you actually are paying attention to them. Back to high school and what happens when the cute guy/girl is paying attention to you – you notice!  So your customers begin to notice and start to conclude your business is different than the others because you care about your customers.  Sad, but that is a rare trait these days.

5. Time devoted to these relationships will help you in tough times & customers will not be so easy to turn their back on you – This all leads up to a major punchline.  And it is this basic.  Inevitably a customer will have a negative experience with your business.  With no customer engagement, no credibility, no loyalty that has been built by your engagement efforts, you will lose that customer during that bad experience.  On the other hand, if you have taken the time to engage your customers, that customer who is having a negative experience is much more likely to give you another chance.  Also if they complain to the community, the crowd of customers that you have also engaged can step in and have your back.  None of this happens without making customer engagement a central priority and following through.

6. (Bonus) Arming your customers with reasons to talk about your businesses – This is a no brainer.  The more you engage your customers and follow up with “wow” moments – the more opportunities you give them to be your best salesperson.  More stories mean more opportunities for your customers to spread the word about your business.  What better way for you to get you more business through your brand evangelists that tell the stories of you wowing your customers.

So lets bring it back to the main argument you hear against doing all of this. Bottom line: Too few resources is a lame excuse for not engaging your customers!  Try it by starting small. Everyone on your team needs to begin every morning engaging 1-2 customers and then build from there. Send a customer a short email or catch them on Twitter.  Even a one person startup can even do this form of limited engagement.  Still dont think this is worth your time? Zappos was founded on this customer engagement philosophy and I think it worked out pretty well for them.  And oh by the way, Zappos started with this philosophy from the very earliest days when their founders responded to every customer’s email!

We would love to hear your stories of customer engagement.  Feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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Posts Tagged ‘Startups’

DC Area Friends, SmallBiz & Startups – Come to the 28Corridor Tweetup This Thurs #28ctweetup

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

I talk to the Swami on my way home nearly every night from Herndon.  No I do not talk to myself or my imaginary friend in the passenger seat (though if I had one, I would imagine I was sitting with Mike Holmgren and ask him when will the Browns return to relevance in the NFL?).  The person that I talk to is the Social Media Swami, Shashi B.  That call often begins on Route 28, right off the Dulles Toll Road and next to beautiful Dulles Airport.  We typically chat about our day, what is going on with KikScore, how Shashi’s daughter (and Kikscore intern) Mitali is enjoying college as well as a host of other things.  It allows us to catch up with each other during the nearly 40 minute drive home to our respective homes in the District and in Maryland.

So it is only fitting that Thursday, Shashi is organizing the first ever 28 Corridor Tweetup.  That would be the same 28 that we drive on every day.  For those not familiar with Route 28 in Northern Virginia, here are some “beautiful” aerial pics!  The “excuse” (as if we need one!) for the tweetup is to get together to welcome the wonderful Lisa Byrne, @dceventjunkie, to Network Solutions  (our co-sponsor from last year’s fantastic Social Commerce Camp). Lisa just started working on Shashi’s fantastic team last week.

As more folks started to tweet about the tweetup, it dawned on us that lets try to get area small businesses, startups, bloggers, nearby airport baggage handlers (bet they have some great stories!) and anyone else together to join us at Ned Devine’s in Herndon, VA for the tweetup.  So please come on out on Thursday.  We would love to see you there.  Spread the word and tell your friends.

By the way here is some extra incentive, if we get more than 30 attendees, the Swami will sing the Lady Gaga song of the crowd’s choice (I hear there are a lot of people voting for Poker Face!”).

Click here for the details on the 28 Corridor Tweetup. The hashtag by the way for Thursday’s event is #28ctweetup.

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