Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

5 Ways to Develop a Killer Brand for Your Small Business and Startup

As a small business or startup there is a constant challenge of developing a brand for your business.  Unlike large companies like Coke and Apple, small businesses and startups do not have the resources to invest the time, money and effort to build a brand through advertising.  So these businesses are left to rely on my scrappy tactics to develop and grow their brand.  Of course with all of the large, medium and small competitors, it can be difficult to elevate your small business above the noise that is out there.   Here are a few tips that can help your small business build your brand and show that you can be trusted to deliver for your customers:

1. Give Each Customers an Experience: Think about the great brand experiences that are out there today.  There are product experiences like Apple and Zappos.  Then there are city experiences like Las Vegas.  All evoke a certain type of experience when you interact with those brands (yes, I am calling Las Vegas a brand!). So when your business interacts with your customers, treat them to an experience.  What type of experience you may ask?  How about “white glove” treatment from beginning until end where you make every effort to anticipate your customer’s wants, needs and desires.  This is not an easy thing to accomplish, but just making this type of effort will ensure you try to create a good customer experience for your customers.

2. Every Interaction Should Make an Impression:  So this is taking point #1 above and breaking it down.  Think about your customer’s touch points for your business.  Now think about how you interact with your customers at every touch point.  Is it the first time they reach your website? The first time they call your office?  An email inquiry about your product or a meeting at a trade show?  A conversation over Twitter? Now try to aim to make every experience with your customers one that they will remember.  I am not advocating something over the top. I am merely advocating taking special care of the customers at every interaction with your business.  For example, talk to your customer, listen to them, and take the time to say that you value them as a customer. Always remember find a way to go the extra mile to help your customers life a little easier or happier.  That is why every email should be thought out, every entry point to your website considered so you can get into the mind of a customer and make a good impression at every point with them.

3. Help Your Customers & They Will Talk About Your Business: Building on points #1 and #2, if you make an impression and give customers a great experience, you will give your customers reasons to talk about your business, service or product.  What better way to build your brand by having your customers be your brand messengers to potential customers and leads that are out in the community.  That is why the more you go out of your way to build up credibility and trust with your customers by repeatedly beating their expectations, the easier it is for those customers to tell the world about buying from your small business.

4. Promote Your Customer’s Successes:   We have found at Kikscore one of the best ways to help ourselves and our brand is by promoting our own customers.  We have done that by finding every opportunity to promote our customers through various avenues like our blog, on Twitter and by supporting them at every opportunity.  One of ways we have done that is by giving our customers a forum on our own blog to tell their own small business success stories.  What can you do?  Take your customers’ successes and help them tell the world.  If your product, service or company was involved with that success, that is even better for you.

Bottom line: Sell yourself by promoting your own customers!

5. Always Aim for a Consistent Message & Customer Experience: One of the biggest enemies of a strong band is an inconsistent message and uneven customer experience.  Do you treat customers differently?  Is your product simple to use, but your marketing copy and help materials complex and too wordy?  How about your customer service – is it very responsive over the phone, but slow or non-existent on Twitter and Facebook?  The key is to make sure that the way that your customers interact with your business and startup is in a consistent manner across all channels.  This consistency is critical to ensure a brand that does not create mixed messages with customers.  A cohesive and consistent brand is hard to create, but it is imperative to achieve to build a great brand.

While small businesses may not have the same resources as large companies, they do still have the ability to build a strong band without paying a huge sum of money.  But the monetary investment is replaced with a huge human investment in time, effort, messaging and customer service.  That human investment if deployed carefully and deliberately across all parts of a small business or startup can pay major dividends. The trick is studying your business, your customers and the touch points and then developing a branding plan and executing on it.

These are just some of the ways to develop a great brand for your small business or startup.  Let us know if you have any tips in the comment below.

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Advertising Evolves to Become More Effective and Relevant Amidst Privacy Concerns

If you own a house in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area or any state where door-to-door soliciting is legal, there’s a good chance you’ve had your fair share of canvassers come knock on your door. If the canvasser introduced himself as Mike and tried to say something about a free estimate for windows before you told him to get lost, we’ve probably already met. Like myself years ago, most canvassers are teenagers in high-school, attracted by the commission-based pay and opportunity to work outside. A backlash against door-to-door marketing has grown as disenchanted workers and homeowners accused companies of exploiting unskilled youth labor and invading personal privacy. Minors are barred from canvassing and telemarketing in many states, according to the US Department of Labor

Since beginning college at American University, I’ve left the unfortunate trade of canvassing in favor of unpaid internships that do not induce ego rot caused by constant rejection by cold-call leads. The state of advertising has evolved since, becoming more personalized by utilizing the personal information that most Americans make available online. Cold call marketing, such as through telemarketing and canvassing, is being replaced by personalized ads on the internet. Business owners are no longer left to shoot in the dark. Facebook has pioneered this front by allowing businesses to create ads (using this simple form) that appear to users based on personal information posted in their profiles. Although I’ve discovered a few good bands through these ads, aimed specifically toward me because I like 50+ artists, most are no more relevant than anything I’d expect to hear from a telemarketer. Despite Facebook’s efforts to deliver relevant ads, promotions for Methadone treatment and Doom Metal bands still make their way to bewildered consumers.

Those who have seen Steven Speilberg’s film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report remember a scene where Tom Cruise is immediately identified by ubiquitous retina scanners when walking into a mall, and bombarded with personal advertisements. “Hey, Tom, you really look like you could use a Guinness.”

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Video

With the consistently growing presence of advertisements in our culture, this dystopia may be an accurate prediction of the future for consumers. Is Facebook already crossing the line by utilizing users’ personal information to direct advertisements? Or is this a better alternative to being harassed by telemarketers and canvassers?

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Apparently Facebook and Android do not go well together and other Social Media Risks

It’s Facebook. Again. This time it’s a vector for smartphone malware.  According to an article on PC world,  since the Android is more open source than either the iPhone or the Blackberry, it’s more prone to getting malware.  Apparently BitDefender called Facebook the largest mobile malware….Facebook has a lot of problems doesn’t it? The malware gets on the devices through bad links on Facebook, since the malware is platform independent.

So here’s a refresher on Social Media risks.

• Turns out scams are more common then we think. Twitter accounts get hacked, malicious links get posted and so does Facebook. However, both sites are trying to improve their security.
• Many people often use the same password for numerous sites. We get it, it’s hard to remember so many passwords. So, write them down on a piece of paper or in a journal(do people keep those anymore?) and stick it somewhere safe.
• Don’t give too much information out either. Those vacation plans of yours, they might be better written down in an word/excel document and stored on your computer.
• Don’t post comments when angry! (They get around) And if it’s something really bad, there will be consequences. It’s fine to say something about how your toast was burnt this morning and how you hate burnt toast, but it’s another thing to say something about your company, your significant other, etc..
• Don’t click on any funny links! See a status  update about how a friend needs money because her car got stolen in Chicago? Call them and check to see if it’s true. Most of the time, it isn’t. (This happened to me once. Turns out she really did need the money.)
• Make sure your company has a flexible Social Media security policy. Technology keeps on changing, so a flexible policy is a good policy!
• Keep up to date on the latest Social Media scams and threats. People keep coming up with new ones all the time!

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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

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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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

End of the Year Thank You to Friends of KikScore for a Great 2010

As 2010 rolls toward a quick end, we at KikScore wanted to take this time to do something that so many people sometime neglect to do.  That is to say some important thank yous.  2010 has been a year of huge successes and new beginnings for us at KikScore. That success is attributable to many factors, but much of our achievements are a result of a core set of folks including our customers, friends, colleagues, partners and advisors.

KikScore’s 2010

First a little about our 2010. We launched our core product, KikScore, to help small businesses use their trackrecord of success and reliability to show that trackrecord to shoppers that they should be trusted.  Then quickly thereafter and based on feedback we received from the community, we launched another new product for small business that do not sell online, but market their services such as consultants, contractors, servicers.  That new product allows these servicers to take their prior trackrecord and their strong history of dependability and show potential clients and leads that they are trustworthy. Yes, that was two new products in less than a year!

Beyond the new products, KikScore gained quick and significant customer acceptance with a surge in signups in 2010 by small businesses all over the world.  That acceptance was driven by a host of factors, just one being the number of key partnerships we launched throughout 2010.  We were busy launching partnerships and jointly sponsored events throughout the year that focused on our small business customer needs.  It was a blast to connect with so many small businesses, bloggers and members of the media throughout the year….the coverage was flattering too!  We even spoke at some great small business focused webinars and conferences.  Thanks Anita Campbell for your recommendation and introductions for us to speak about security and small business!

A Special Thank You

So we get to the main point of the post after some “horn blowing” by me.  Ok, I was just setting some context for visitors that are new to the site!!! We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our friends and supporters that helped us out this year.  There are too many to name each one here individually by name, but a few we really do need to have to thank including the one and only Swami Shashi B, Jill Foster, Shonali Burke, Eric A, Jason K, Harry L, Roy D, Rick Juneja, Neel K, Joe K, Steven Fisher, and so many, many more.  These are just a few great folks that helped us out.  On top of them, we have to thank our many partners, but most importantly our friends in Calgary at Shopster.

A special, special thank you goes out to all of our customers.  We really appreciate each and every one of you.  Even the customers that did not stay with us, we learned from you.  But more importantly a thank you to all of the customers that took precious time out of their busy days to send us comments, feedback or your appreciative notes about our service and what we are doing for small businesses.  Also thanks to all of those customers that gave us some great small business interviews on this blog.

Ok, not really last but thanks to each of our families, the new additions to our families and loved ones that supported us throughout this year!  Your patience during our late nights and long weekends of work on KikScore is truly appreciated.  We could not do any of this without you!

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Great Videos For Small Business & Startups from the 2010 GrowSmartBiz Conference

My wife and I were so looking forward to attend the 2010 GrowSmartBusiness Conference in Washington DC. We previously covered the reasons that the small business and startup community should have attended this event.  Unfortunately for us we had to miss the great conference due to the stomach flu making an appearance in our household.  So this post is as much for me as it is for the entire small business and startup community.

Just a simple following of the #growsmartbiz hashtag on Twitter will show you that the conference was a huge success.  But the organizers went a step further.  They have put most of the content online in the form of the speakers videos from the day.

So here is a tally of the links you should visit to watch and learn from some of the wonderful speakers from the 2010 GrowSmartBiz Conference:

1. The lunch keynote from Raul Fernandez, Chairman of ObjectVideo, Vice Chairman, Monumental Sport and Entertainment is here.

2. The marketing and innovation session was given by Barry Moltz, author of “Bust a Myth” and it was titled “How Social Media Has Made Customer Service the New Marketing.”

3. Another great session was “Reinvigorating Small Business Innovation” with small business experts Jason Falls, Steve King, Jeremy Epstein, and Duncan Alnay.

4. The final session that included the Marketing Keynote with Rohit Bhargava, Ramon Ray on 6 Rules for Tech Success, Rieva, Lesonsky, 3 Top Small Business Trends for 2011, Shonali Burke on PR & Small Business, and Jill Foster on Public Speech 2.0 in an 140 Character  World.  Check out all of these great videos here.

I sure hope we can make it next year.  What a great conference and thanks for the fantastic content!

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

4 Reasons SmallBiz & Startups Should Attend Friday's GrowSmartBiz Conference in DC

On Friday, November 5, 2010, the Second Annual GrowSmartBiz Conference will take place at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Washington DC.  If last year’s conference gives us any idea about how this year’s one will be, you can expect a full day of great tips from real subject matter experts across a wide range of topics that impact small business and startups. I have to say last year my wife (who owns a small business) and I both attended and we could not stop talking about the energy, the people we met, the important tips we learned and frankly all of the fun we had in one day.  Besides our experience going to SXSW in 2009 when I co-presented, this is hands down one of my personal favorite conferences I have attended – and I even worked the conference last year manning the “SmallBiz Answers Booth” with PR specialists, lawyers, marketers, developers and startup founders.

So here are 4 independent reasons to attend this year’s GrowSmartBiz Conference:

1. The Speakers Are Awesome and Experienced Starting with the keynotes that include Successful Entrepreneur Raul Fernandez all the way to the speakers and moderator at the four track sessions and excellent.  The speaker list includes small business, technology, social media and PR kings like Ramon Ray (recently on MSNBC), Brent Leary, Marissa Levin, Joe Libava, Steven King, Jill Foster, Shonali Burke, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Ken Yancey and Rohit Bhargava. And this is just a few of the names that will be there on Friday.  The full speaker list can be found here and Jill Foster has a great summary of the lineup on her excellent blog Live Your Talk.

2. The Topics Are Going to be Highly Informative Building off last year’s conference, the organizers this year broke the conference into four main tracks: 1) Marketing & Innovation; 2) Small Business, Government & Non-Profits; 3) Technology as a Tool for Your Business; and 4) Entrepreneur Bootcamp.  Each of these four tracks has a dense topic list that includes Socal Media Marketing, Learning How to Tell Your Business Story, How to Track and Keep Customers, 6 Rules for Tech Success and Tips for Smart Hiring Practices.  These are just some of the great topics (see full agenda)  that will help any small business and startup.

3. Great Networking Opportunities It has been reported in many places (and I have heard first hand) that small businesses would like to spend more time networking and learning from each other.  Well GrowSmartBiz took the feedback from last year;’s conference and created more opportunities for the small business attendees to network and meet each other.  This year there are multiple times during the day when you can meet the fellow attendees and also ask the speakers questions after their presentations.  More networking means more learning and more business opportunities for your business.

4. Pre-Event Happy Hour This year a night before the conference happy hour for speakers, bloggers, the media, attendees and sponsors is being organized.  This way you can start networking even before the conference begins!  Who knows your question or story may end up being referenced or mentioned on Friday by one of the speakers.  My wife’s website got mentioned last year during Ramon Ray’s presentation after he met her right before his speaking session. Here is the information on the Thursday evening Happy Hour!

These are just some of the reasons to sign up and attend on Friday.   Last year there were well over 400 attendees live in person and hundreds more that watched it streaming live from as far as Australia.

Hope to see you there! By the way, here is the signup information at the Washington Business Journal site.

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

All Things Small & Medium Business – Free Focus.com Interactive Summit on 10/28/10

On October 28, 2010 Focus.com is putting on a great FREE online interactive small business summit that is a must attend event for small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs and startups.   The agenda is jam packed with a list of heavy hitters and small business thought leaders like Fran Tarkenton (calm down Mike, we know he was your hero while you grew up in MN),  Anita Campbell, Brent Leary, Ramon Ray, the Swami Shashi Bellamkonda and many many more. The sign up information and full list of speakers and topics is available at Focus.com.   The FREE online event lasts from 11am-6pm ET.  and the range of topics is wide and covers items such as:

1) The Small Business Survival Guide;

2) Accounting and Finance Secrets;

3) Connecting with Customers through New Media Channels;

4) Socialization of the SMB;

5) Top 10 Web Marketing Strategies;

6) IT for SMBs;

7) New Revenue Streams for SMBs with Partner Marketing; and

8) Security for SMBs (Ok Mike and I are representing KikScore and are speakers for this presentation – by the way, we are not heavy weights, but just heavy!).

Anyway, this really is a very exciting online summit and is going to have a ton of valuable information for entrepreneurs.  We have to say a special thanks to Anita Campbell for recommending us to Focus to be a part of this presentation and also Courtney Sato from Focus.com who has been great with preparing for next week’s session.

So please sign up.  The event should be excellent and we are really excited about the opportunity to be a part of this great small business event next week!

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Google's Next Game Changer: Google TV?

I was reading this article in the USA Today the other day about how Google’s next big product launch this Fall is going to be Google TV.  Google TV promises to bring a more user-friendly web interface to our TVs than the consumers in this country have ever seen.  Google’s vision seems to be to offer up web content side-by-side with the same television programs that we have been watching for years. Google also plans to offer an “app store” where consumers can buy free and paid applications that can run on the set-top boxes that will also be required to use this new service.

Whenever I think of the Internet on my TV I always think of those annoying wireless keyboards and terrible user interface that I have been finding in hotel rooms for over a decade for a $5 per day fee.  I always thought that the major flaw in these systems was the terrible user experience – it is always very difficult to navigate the web on these systems because of the lack of a usable mouse and the slightly different web browsers that never seemed to support the web content I wanted to see.  Google seems to be promising a solution to these problems by simplifying the browser and keyboard and supporting all standard web technologies.

I am still going to wait until I am able to use the new Google TV interface to form my opinion but I am hopeful that if any company can successfully bring the Internet to our TVs that it is Google.  If they can convince consumers that the Internet on their TV is the same or comparable to the Internet on their PCs, then I think they have a good shot at being successful here.

On a side note, I also wanted to mention that today Skype announced that they have released a version of their product that is compatible with Android, the up and coming operating system for smart phones. Watch for the popularity of these mobile video calling applications to grow in the near future!

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Disaster? Social Media can help save the day!

Taken by Shashi Bellamkonda(yes there is a relation)

Everyone in the DC area remembers yesterday right….of course you do! Who could forget hearing, seeing or being in the flood that covered Rock Creek! (For those of you who have been living under rocks to get away from climate change or in the Denver area, you can read about it here) My father(most of you know who he is) and I were on our way to the Emergency Social Data Summit(hands up if you were there or following along on some social media website….*sees tons of hands*….good, good!) hosted by the American Red Cross when we heard that Canal Road was closed near Arizona Avenue(see map). Immediately(and he was driving by the way….the rest of you don’t text and drive!…thank you) he sent out a tweet(it wasn’t spelled properly, but it was understandable) saying that Canal Road was blocked, then later he got a reply thanking him for the help.

The conference focused on how to use social media(Twitter, Facebook, Google, Skype…etc) in times of crises and  to try and come up with a way to filter the information, get it back out into the social media network, and get it to the professionals .  There are about 6 million people using Twitter, more than 5 million use Facebook and almost everyone uses Google. That’s more information than there is water on Earth! And like water, the sheer volume is overwhelming, especially if a disaster happens. That makes it harder for the professionals(firefighters, police, medical personnel…anyone who is trained for disaster situations) to determine what information is the most relevant, needs immediate attention, can be acted on a little later…ect.

The case study most often referenced was the earthquake in Haiti. After the quake, there were texts, and tweets coming in from all over Haiti about people who needed help and where they were. Those texts and tweets got picked up by other social networks and spread all over the internet. However, many of those pieces of information were not verified and rescue crews who were following the information often went to the same place twice because there was no follow up saying that “yes, this problem has been taken care of”.

After hearing many speakers(the event was streamed live; sorry I have no idea what the weird diagram is on the right),  every table participated in a ’round table’ discussion. This was where many of the ideas about how to connect the  social media network to the already existing ‘disaster response network’ . The discussion was guided by a set of  questions; each table had a different set of questions(see the blog Emergency Social Data Summit for questions).  Our table came up with a very interesting idea for the question of what to do with the “emergency social data”(the red cross’ words , not mine) after it has been aggregated. Anyone remember the Ad Council? The group that’s responsible for public service announcements on TV and radio? Yes? No? Well, if you don’t that’s ok; I’d heard of them, but I didn’t know what they did until yesterday. Our group’s idea was to create a Social Media Ad Council, responsible for giving victims, professionals and everyone else accurate,  verified and up to date information about the disaster. There were many more speakers after that, but seeing as the ‘fun’ part of the conference was over, my father and I decided to leave.  You can participate in the ongoing conversation about the use of social media in emergencies on twitter, the red cross’ website,  the Emergency Social Data Summit blog and various other social media websites(see the red cross for more details).

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