Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

A Few Good Blogs: Our Go To Small Business Blogs KikScore Likes Part 1

There are blogs now for nearly everything under the sun. That translates to a lot of noise out there.  So how do small businesses try to figure out which resources they should use online to stay up to date on trends and to get rock solid guidance from experts?  The best way is through word of mouth and also getting recommendations from other small businesses.  So here is our list of some really good blogs that we at KikScore read:

1) Startup Nation – If you have a startup or a small business, this blog not only has great tips and resources but it also has a great list of contributors that blog about marketing, customer service, financing and all sorts of other items.  The founders even host a great weekly podcast. The site is essentially a portal of all things small business.

2) SmallBizTrends – The owner of this site Anita Campbell is a small business expert and she also has an impressive line up of contributors to her blog.  Another reason I really like her (selfish, I know!)  is because her business and network of small business sites like BizSugar are based right outside of my hometown in beautiful Akron, Ohio. Anita also hosts an assortment of webinars on marketing, financing, social media and other small business focused topics. She plain knows small business!

3) SmallBizTechnology – So this site is a must review for the content but also for its owner Ramon Ray.  Before I had met Ramon, I had heard a lot of great things about him being a hugely energentic, small business evangalist. Unlike others, Ramon is one guy who lives up to the hype and much more!  Ramon’s energy, passion and knowledge of all things small business translates into this blog.  For a quick example of Ramon’s energy, here is a session he was a part of at the GrownSmartBiz Conference that occurred in Washington DC in late Septmeber this year.  His remarks start about half way in to this session.  Check it out (the whole session is worth a review!) and add this blog to your RSS feed.  Its worth it.

4) GetElastic – If you sell anything online, this blog is a must. When you are wondering about what is the latest tool or strategy you should use for your website, what you should do to optimize keyword terms or the latest trend for merchants during the holiday season check out GetElastic.  Merchants that sell online can really use this blog to help with day to day business issues.

5) WomenGrowBusiness – This is a unqiue blog that is run by recently named DC Tech Titan.   Jill Foster has assembled an all-start cast of small business female entrepreneurs that regularly contribute fabulous content on management, HR, financing, ecommerce, consulting, startups, communication and marketing, among many other items.  I also have met Jill and she is another huge small business evangalist.  She is also a fellow Dupont Circle neighbor! Jill literally has CEOs and other entrepreneurs beating down her door to contribute to the WomenGrowBusiness blog.

Do you have a go to blog?  Let us know which one it is.

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Another Top Ten List For Small Businesses — But this one is Pretty Good

I’m not sure if David Letterman is to blame, but Top 10 lists exist for almost everything.  They are very similar to the “Idiot’s Guide” series.  They are the gimmick everyone uses to give you/your business advice.  Excuse a tangent for the moment, but I have a real problem with these Idiot’s Guides.  At first, they made sense — if you need to know how to use Microsoft Word, the title seems appropriate.  But now there are Idiot’s Guide to XMLT, or Cold Fusion.  These aren’t “Idiot’s Guides”…they are simply guides.  Sorry for that.

Ok, back to the proliferation of Top 10 lists for almost every piece of advice.  First, I think that ten pieces of advice are really too many to remember.  Just give us the most important 3 — I can remember that and, really, I’ll probably benefit the most from the Top 3.  Secondly, most of these Top 10 don’t actually have ten unique pieces of advice.  They fudge it (e.g. “Tip #8 — Remember Tip #10). 

But I came across a pretty good Top Ten list for Small Businesses — focused on the Top Ten ways a company can cross the divide from start-up to established venture.   I’d repeat them for you, but that feels like copying someone else’s homework.  But I’ll tell you my favorite tip — #2 (see, focus on the top 3 tips).  #2 is “Don’t underestimate the importance of informed intuition and gut feel.”

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Tell Us About Your Favorite Business: It's got to be better than "Free Stuff"

Here’s a picture that I took when I recently went home.  My Dad owns a commercial building in Fargo-Moorhead.  On his parking lot was a trailer with a “hand-crafted” sign that stated free-stuff.  My first question was “Dad, why do you have a trailer with a free stuff sign?”  (seems like the obvious question).  The second question was, “where’s my phone so i can take a picture of this?”.

The answer I got for Question Number 1 surprised me — instead of going through the expense of having to dispose of certain items (paint, electronics etc), my Dad figured to put out a trailer and label junk “free stuff”.  Every week he fills it up and every week people come by and pick it up.  He saves money.  I hate to admit it, but my Dad is a pretty sharp business guy.  He’s a terrible sign maker, however.

All of this is prelude to the idea of having our readers and customers submit ideas that they have had in running their business (or simply highlight a business that you think is doing a good job).  We’d prefer it be an online business, because that most applies to our readership interest, but don’t limit only to online (as good ideas are good ideas).  Also, if you happen to see a sign worse than my Dad’s free stuff sign, please also share.  That may be a new feature by itself.

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Who Ya Gonna Call for Help With Your Business? Not Ghostbusters, But Crowdsourcers

Small Business often get the  feeling they are alone on an island.  Sometime they can feel that island is haunted by competitors, new entrants, angry customers and all sorts of other folks who can scare a small business.  A small business can really feel like they are alone trying to keep their head above water managing their day to day business business.  But what about growth, what about adding product and service enhancements that your customers have been asking for over and over or that upgraded website that you know you need?  And how about all of those branding and marketing initiatives you have been hoping to spend time thinking about, creating and designing?

Enter Crowdsourcing. This is a method to get your business to address many of these issues.  Even better, typically you can use crowdsourcing to get help from individuas and suppliers with subject matter experience and at a low cost.

Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as “taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call.”  So what this means is that there are people all over the United States and in  fact the world who have skills that your business can start using immediately.  There are actually multiple websites or skill portals that are solely devoted to specific areas of a business.  At these website and skill portals, talent of all skill levels and expertise congregate and compte to provide services to small, medium and large businesses.

Here is how it works:  You posts a problem, project or an idea related to your business directly on a particular website or portal.  The crowd of folks that have an interest or a level of expertise in that problem, project or idea then give you feedback.  Then the crowd can even comment on the crowd’s feedback or your follow-up feedback to the crowd.  After this, you can ask someone from the crowd to assist you with your problem, project or idea if you decide their feedback is in line with what you would like to use.

Review Profiles of Suppliers Most of these sites have supplier and user profiles that you can review. during the exchange of feedback over a project.  The supplier profiles typically detail a supplier’s or individual’s skill set, expertise and even examples of their prior work on similar issues.  Many profiles have a feedback mechanism so you can see  feedback that has been posted from prior users of that person’s services.  This allows you to make an informed decision for your small business about what member or supplier from the crowd you want to hire.

Inc. magazine recently had a nice example of a crowdsourcing success story for small business. Another good post about how crowdsoucing is even involved with American Idol can be found here.  And even the city of San Francisco is using crowdsourcing through an application called City Sourced to address city issues.

Here are just a few crowdsourcing services that small businesses are using to help themselves.

1)99designs – Use this service if you want something designed.  Crowd members specialize in providing graphic design and logo design services.  Get your next logo or product brochure designed here.

2) Odesk – Use this service if you want to get a website designed or even if you would like to have a quick IT project such as a computer application built for your website or company. You can even get sales and marketing services, customer support and translation services here.

3) NameThis – Use this service for naming services.  So if you need to rebrand a product, create a new product name for a line you are launching or need a new catchy name for your blog, NameThis and the community there can help your business.

4) Threadless – Use this service the next time you go to a trade show and pass out some cool T-Shirts with your brand name on it.  Threadless was profiled in Inc Magazine where they described Threadless as a place where The Customer Is the Company!” The community of designers will help you design your next company shirt.

5) iStockPhoto Use this service when your business needs an inexpensive image, illustartion or video for your company brochure, website or presentation.

6) Guru – Use this service for your business to access freelancers who work on legal, finance, accounting, data entry and evenHR and payroll matters.

Remeber when using any of these crowdsourcing sites, ask a lot of questions, do your dillegence and make sure to utlize the escrow and payment milestone services that some of these sites use.  That way you can protect your business when you use these services.

So if you add these recources to the great small business tools and widgets we identified previously you can know you aren’t alone anymore on the small business island!  Start using these recourcss to beat back those ghosts and competitors.

Please share your crowdsourcing experience with us in the comments.

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Diary of a Tech Start-Up: Funding…Dance with the Devil or Not

One of the ongoing debates going on with our tech start-up is whether to seek outside investment or not.  The first point that is often made by one of us is that it is too early to be thinking about it.  Heck, we just launched the beta version of this site and are now getting our first customers…isn’t it a bit presumptive to think about asking for $$ from a stranger? 

This scenario reminds me of a scene in the greatest movie of all time — Waiting for Guffman.  Corky St. Clair is charged with directing a play about Blaine, Missourri’s history.  Corky approaches the City Council and states that the ONLY thing he needs to throw the play is “one hundred thousand dollars”.  When informed that the City’s annual budget is $100k and that includes swimming, Corky responds “there won’t be swimming in my play.”  How does this tie into our discussion for asking for outside investment?  Well, maybe it doesn’t but it’s a great movie.  No, my point is that we before we seek out investment, we need to clearly establish a need for our services and that we have a competent management team that will know what to do with the money if/when we do get it.  We can’t go in all Corky St. Clair, not having a clue as to what is a reasonable amount of investment and establish what we are going to do with the money will have a strong likelihood of showing a return on investment.  See Corky asking for money

Now comes a more pressing question.  Assuming the time is right (and we don’t ask for the entire City Council’s budget), do we seek out investment at all?  As Raj pointed out in an earlier post, there are now a lot of tools that exist that make starting and running a business very inexpensive.  To date, we’ve been self-funding KikScore and we’re pretty good at stretching a dollar.  While it would be great to have a swank office and have the ability to throw an awesome holiday party with a DJ, it may not be worth the equity and control we’d have to give up (it really depends on how good the DJ is).  We’re not alone in our thinking.  According to a recent posting on www.rockyradar.com — 84% of Inc’s Fastest Growing 500 companies never received venture capital (though many did likely get angel financing). 

Several of us on the KikScore team have been part of venture-backed companies previously.  Some of us had good experiences, some of us did not.  So, as we continue to grow our customer base and improve upon our core product, the debate within KikScore will rage — do we continue to self-fund or do we seek professional investment.  We’ll keep you updated (and we’d love to hear your thoughts about it).

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Lexis Survey Finds that Small Businesses Drink the Ratings Kool-Aid

A new survery from LexisNexis and Martindale Hubble provided a very interesting trend amoung small businesses and their use and perceptions of rating sites.  According to the survey, small businesses rely on rating and review sites — for service and product choices — at a rate that is double the average consumer.  This is in despite of the fact that these same small business owners indicate a couple of things: (1) that the normal review sites are easily biased by positive or negative reviews; and (2) the reviews can easily be faked by the businesses being reviewed.

Why do small businesses find review sites to be of such value when they can be manipulated?  Despite these short-comings, reviews allow for much needed guidance in aggregating data and sorting out, in relatively quick fashion, where to get your goods and services.  Another point that the survey reveals is what something we already know (so it’s really a stretch to say it’s “revealing” anything) — that not all ratings are created equally.  More trust is put into the rating if (a) its from a independent third party; and (b) is based, in part, on actual customer feedback (but again, for some of these review sites, it can be hard to know if the data is from real customers or the reviewed business faking the review).

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Startup Checklist for Small Businesses

As we know, most business start out small. Starting a business is a very busy time in an entrepreneur’s life. So busy that many critical steps are often overlooked. In an effort to help those small, but soon to be large, businesses identify critical areas for success, we have put together a short 10 step checklist to make sure you are covering all of your bases.

Top 10 Checklist:

1. Research the Product or Service You Seek To Sale.
2. Create a Business Plan.
3. Determine Your Capital Budget.
4. Choose and Register Your Business Name.
5. Decide on the Legal Form of Your Business.
6. Open a Company Checking Account.
7. Determine if you need any state or local licenses/permits.
8. Obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number.
9. Set up a business website and business email address.
10. Research various trust products in the marketplace to help you fast track your credibility with your potential customers.

As you may know, there are many more factors that determines a small businesses success; however, if you were to ask me what are the top 10, then you the ones above are it.

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Algorithms — They're Not Just For Big Businesses Anymore

Thanks to the internet, online buyers and sellers have access to a lot of data to help guide their buying and selling decisions.  Finding the average price of a 1984 Chevy Citation (my first car) is a couple of clicks away.  But the problem with data is that it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  As I mentioned in a previous post, online reviews often suffer from grade inflation, and determining a reliable trend really requires thousands of transactions — not really possible for individual buyers and sellers.  So though it is easier than ever to gather information, that has just resulted in information overload.  This isn’t really a unique problem.  Big businesses have faced this issue for quite some time.  What’s their answer?  Scoring models with sophisticated algorithms.  Or stated more simply, math.

Though our interest in math prevented us from being very popular in high school, it has allowed us to create complex risk models for many types of decisions that big businesses face.  So why not use our nerdy interests to help small businesses sell online and provide comfort to shoppers that would like to buy from a small business, but isn’t sure of the shopping experience he/she will face?  That’s exactly what we did.  I can’t get into the details of the scoring m0del, or others (much like the popular kids in highschool) will just steal our homework.  But in general terms, KikScore takes public information about the online business (e.g. site security, traffic, links, domain registration, privacy policies, consumer reviews) and joins it with permitted information about the business owner (e.g. financial stability, public records)  — ultimately creating a tailored recommendation of the shopping experience to be expected.  This helps potential customers feel more comfortable doing business with a lesser-known small business.  Math…leveling the playing field for online sellers and bolstering trust for online shoppers.  Take that, Geography!

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Make Me A Clown Now! While You Are At It Teach Me What to Expect When I Start Selling Online Part 2

This is the second part of the two part posting about starting to sell online. You can read the first part here.

Yes, you can be a clown and you can start selling online pretty quickly. You can even be a clown while you are selling online. The trick is to make sure you do not act like a clown when you get set up to start selling online. This post will cover some key items that every person who wants to take their business online needs to think about as they get going.

Test, Test, Test

It is painful, but you must be constantly testing changes to the website. The tests should not be wholesale changes, but should be controlled. So many people focus on getting the product line-up just right, or the purchase flows streamlined or the website to have the ideal color. The truth is you need to keep testing changes to your website. Nearly every component should be tested to see how visitors to your website interact with the website. Controlled testing is key. That is commonly known as A/B testing and here is a great summary of A/B testing. It basically means you show a change to the website to only 50% or so of the visitors and 50% of the visitors do not see the change. The analysis that is so valuable is what happens to the other 50% of visitors who see the changed website. Do they convert at a higher rate, do they stay on the website longer, do they click the new link that you added etc. This is the value of testing and more testing until you optimize the various areas of your site, but even then continued testing will help you as shoppers’ habits evolve.

Be Flexible

This may be the most important of all. To be a seller online, you need to be flexible. You may think that customers and shoppers will respond a certain way, but you need to be prepared to expect the unexpected. Inflexible folks just can not make it as merchants online.  Even better, if you are flexible and are addressing your customers needs that will create customer loyalty with your business.  Remember customers like to deal with businesses that listen to them and also take action on customer feedback. This flexibility can also lead to your customers being your best advocates through word of mouth recommendations about your business and products.  All of this from just listening to your customers and acting on their feedback!

These are just a few of the things to keep in mind. Do you have any lessons learned from your experience selling online that you want to share?

Tweet This Post

Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

KikScore.com – Online businesses check us out!

Welcome to the first post for Kikscore.com. This is the inaugural post.

If you read this blog……..all of your dreams will come true. This is the first post for the KikScore blog. Here is a brief introduction of the people, the company and the product.

People

We are 8 of us from Virginia to Washington DC to Denver that have come together to launch KikScore. This entire product was launched on nights and weekend work while working our day job so we are all pretty darn proud of pulling this product launch off. We have different skills sets from product development, business development, engineering and technology, scoring model development, legal, operations, watching movies, rooting for football teams that perpetually let us down and wanting desperately to act in a Jean Claude Van Damme-Karate movie. Watch out for our video ads….the last skill/wish may just come true!

Company

The people mentioned above make up the company the Interactive Security Group. ISG owns KikScore.com. The official movie of the company is SuperBad and Blades of Glory. For the science fiction lovers on our team, ok they get to say Star Trek is an officially movie of our Legal department.

Product

Online merchants have always had a trust problem with online shoppers. Which merchant should a shopper trust? Which merchant is a lying, stealing, mustachioed, tank-top wearing, jack booted thug that is going to steal a shoppers identity or ruin the shoppers credit. This perception of shopping in the dark has cost online merchants billions of dollars a year in lost sales.

Merchants now have the solution to the problem of showing that they are trustworthy. They also get to use public information about themselves to demonstrate that they are trustworthy to shoppers. KikScore takes a vast amount of information from multiple sources and provides it in one place for a merchant to show their shoppers that they are trustworthy. Even better, the merchant will have all of this information scored into a trust score or the KikScore. In one place, merchants will be able to demonstrate trust so that they can increase their sales!

People.Company.Product = KikScore.com

Tell us what you think……because we are here to stay.

Tweet This Post