4 Money-Saving Tips for Better Biz ID

1. Be ready to hop when opportunity knocks

I write for business websites; my husband arranges conventional and private mortgages. What Stuart and I have discovered lately is that all of us--especially, I think, the baby-boomers, who might want things to be slowing down a little--have to move a lot faster in this Big Recession than ever before. That includes considering decisions, making changes, taking in information, and serving clients. Customers expect their freebies upfront and, when they place an order, they want an immediate turnaround. Not always easy.

Stuart made a contact recently who wants to recommend him to her clientele as soon as he drops by a few biz cards--a great opportunity. But his existing cards, which we made here at the home office on our color printer--very slowly and with much agida--need to be updated.

Yesterday, experimenting with VistaPrint.com, a website where you can get free or cheap business cards printed and shipped to your door, Stuart found the site a little intimidating, but the customer service by phone was far superior to the local print shop he had consulted first.

2. Give and demand savings, better value and pleasant service

The price was also better at VistaPrint, even with shipping--because, for free, Stuart got:

• 250 cards
• 4 ink colors
• heavy, matte card stock
• front and back printing.

VistaPrint charged only for shipping--you choose 21, 14 or 7 days--the shorter the wait, the higher the rate. For under $10, Stuart will have his new cards in two weeks. The local print shop (the owner of which is in Stuart's small-biz networking group!), wanted $43 for an ugly, one-color, one-sided card. No flexibility, so a missed opportunity there.

3. Understand the marketing trade-offs on "freebies"

For paying only shipping costs on your cards, you receive some e-mail marketing. Today, Stuart received three VistaPrint e-mails, which could be irritating, except that--

• The first e-mail was an order confirmation. We're good with that.

• The second gave information about building a website that matches your cards, using VistaPrint's easy site-builder. One or both of us will definitely check that out and report back to you on our experience.

• And the final e-mail was an ad for QuickBooks for Mac, software we've been interested in for some time but haven't looked into. So, that e-mail actually provided a service.

When you give away a freebie, don't then drive people nuts in exchange. Always strive to provide something that's truly helpful. Put yourself in your customer's shoes before you send a marketing e-mail. To irritate someone is to lose a client/customer forever. Bad impressions really last...and so do good ones.

4. ID-zen: small, daily improvements on your business identity:

• No matter how small your enterprise, you must have a website and market online.

• Your website must be a neat, clean marketing machine--No typos! Restrained fonts and font sizes! Plenty of "white" space! Professional-looking colors! Excellent copy writing. Try for a look just like BIG Biz Dot Com. Visit successful sites. Choose a business-class template for your site, your card, etc.

• For in-person networking, get free biz cards. Whatever marketing materials you use (e.g., e-mails, ads), develop a graphic identity that matches: the same one or two fonts, same smallish sizes, same colors, and a simple logo.

• Don't overlook your customer-service ID--Be friendly and flexible. Try to customize your product or service to each customer, even if you don't think it's possible. Want to survive and prosper? Befriend a loyal customer today.

Hope in the Lousiest of Economic Times

Small Business Owners and Solopreneurs:

"Everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy," says Seth Godin's current blog. Seth is the author of The Bootstrapper's Bible and a top-100 blogger who knows a thing or two about business startups.

If you had parents raised during the Great Depression, as I did, it may not be so easy to think of bad times as the best of times for a starting small business. But President Obama, who is a boomer, though just barely, said something very similar to Seth's remark when the economy crashed after the election. He said that a crisis was an amazing opportunity for change.

Control Your Own Income Stream:

Everyone seems to know young people who can't find summer jobs, new grads who are underemployed, or union and manufacturing workers who lost their jobs when their industries died or relocated to Mexico or Asia. But many baby-boomers have lost their retirement savings, their job security, their health insurance, their jobs or their hope and sense of worth.

Even my friends who still are employed are worried that they've put all their eggs in one basket--a basket that could fall apart and break all their eggs. So, of course, it is a very, very good time to take your income streams into your own hands--and away from banks, pension plans, 401ks, Wall Street and large corporations--it only makes sense.

You Are a Citizen of the World:

Former in-laws of mine, who ran a successful family business, used to say, with feeling, that they'd rather own the candy store on the corner than work for somebody else. And right now, while it still takes a lot of hard work to start and grow a business, entrepreneurship is an option that is open to more people than ever before--simply because the Internet provides an avenue for business startup that involves much less capital outlay for focused and persistent solopreneurs.

And the Internet has also become a huge forum: a source of education and knowledge, community, easily identifiable niche markets (endlessly variable baskets), inexpensive marketing techniques, superb customer relationship management, multiple income streams, even hope and self-worth.

Soapbox:

Boomers are especially prepared for these lousy economic times. Many of us became survival-oriented during the cold war--when nightmares about nuclear devastation were prevalent in books, movies, political discourse, and our own dreams. We've experienced rapid, radical changes in our society, peaks of violence and crime as well as of wealth and greed--and perhaps the greatest sense of isolation since the early pioneers moved Westward.

In our hearts, we know that this is both one of the worst of times and also one of the best of times to connect with fellow citizens of the world-as-a-single-city...and to start a project.

10 Ways to Optimize Your Blog

Small Business Owners and Solopreneurs:

Time to cheer you on in your online marketing efforts. Every time it gets to feeling overwhelming, take a long, deep breath and remember what it's like to be cooped up, like a chicken, in a grey, recirculated air, blue-fluorescent-lit cubicle.

Also time for some blog-optimizing tips:

1. When you set up your blog, set it to send Pings. This is a way of spreading the word about your blog. If you've already set up your blog, go back to settings and be sure you checked Ping. If you use a web designer, ask about Ping--chances are, you're already set up.

2. Be sure your blog has an "E-mail this post" feature.

3. Install an RSS or site feed feature.

4. Go to technorati.com and register your blog.

5. Post only quality content: original, informative, authoritative, useful to customers.

6. Update your blog regularly.

7. When you decide on your topic, put yourself in your customers'/visitors shoes. What do they want/need?

8. Title your blogs, and use words key to your business function in your blog titles.

9. Keep your paragraphs short: 2-3 sentences, with white space above and below each one.

10. Developmental Goals: to link to other blogs; to comment on other blogs; to enable a wider following of your posts in every way possible.

The Soapbox:

The wave of the present and of the future is "auteurism" -- total control over your life and your work. This includes a lot of responsibility, but is also the path to freedom, originality and success. You set the goals, you make the work-life balance work for you, and you make all the decisions, even for the jobs you delegate.

b7dt48arus to you, Technorati

b7dt48arus

Appeal to Your Website Visitors

Small Business Solopreneurs:

How do you do it all? Wear all the hats? What are your time-saving solutions? How do you cope? What's your work-life balance like? (Click Comments below this post and let us know your toughest tasks, your secrets to success.)

Six Success Tips--Appealing to Your Website Visitors:

Option One: Write the article or blog yourself, keep it short, have a partner proofread it for you.

Option Two: If the idea of writing a blog every couple of days horrifies you, hire a good copywriter. (Blogs come fairly inexpensively.) For success at Option One, heed these six very good rules:

1. Strong beginning.

Begin with a startling observation, a rant, a warning -- a gripping idea that will make your visitor want to see what you will say next. Youcan even create this beginning after you've written the rest, but don't publish your post until you've nailed your strong start.

2. No-cliche copy.

That means what you post is original to you, written in your own "voice," and is never cut and pasted from "somewhere else." It also means that you do not rely on overused, virtually meaningless cliches and generalities. Keep it real.

3. Don't expect "readers."
Your visitors will be "scanners." They will read, on average, about 20% of your perfect and pristine text. So keep your paragraphs short, use subheadings and bullet points to organize your message for a scanner.

4. Single space and white space.
Single space your text, but leave loads of white space on either side of your short paragraphs that are comprised of short sentences. Why short sentences? Because that way you won't be tempted to cram in more than one idea!

5. Don't go for "impressive."

The whole blog will be very short. Your sentences will be short, and your words will be simple and short. Do express an idea that shows that you're an authority on whatever you're selling. Don't try to impress with big, bogus words. Be very, very specific. Give examples.

6. Bring on the benefits.

Remember that you are writing this for your visitors and customers, not yourself. What kinds of ideas are you going to feature? Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer. Answer his or her unspoken question, What's in it for me?

Three Ways to a Dynamic Website

Small Business Solopreneurs:

Check out theTED Talks, a video series based on great new ideas, in the sidebar under Recommended Links. The one featuring Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuro-scientist who experienced what she calls a "stroke of insight," is fascinating, easy to follow, dramatic and inspiring. Take that as my highest recommendation!

Let's get back to dynamic websites:

As a small business solopreneur, you need to spend an hour or so each day Internet marketing on your social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook) and adding new features to your website to keep it dynamic -- right in the "teeth" of the search engines.

Sound like a lot of time?

There are several ways to save time and increase efficiency:

1. One day per week, jot down 10-20 helpful, informational "tweets" of about 120 characters each (saving room to add a link to a helpful article or your own website). Choose one or two from your list each day for your network marketing and save loads of time.

2. During your Daily Marketing Hour, be sure to comment on as many blogs and social networks as possible -- getting yourself out there as an expert, and your brand out there at the same time. Don't push or hard sell -- just be the friendly, helpful expert and share your experience and knowledge.

3. One day per month, set aside a couple of hours to look over your "tweet" list and expand 12 of these ideas into short blogs: one paragraph plus 3-10 helpful bullet points. In two hours, you'll have your blogs set up for the whole month. As you post, you can add a sentence or two about something current, et voila! (If the writing process for the blogs is too intimidating, as it is for a great many people, find a freelance writer-editor to polish your ideas into publishable posts. Prices for writing blogs are usually very reasonable.)

The Soapbox:

So-called "viral" online marketing is a long-term process, perhaps even longer during a recession. But now is when the opportunities to connect exist -- and your marketing expense is certainly minimal. So hang in there, create a Web presence that is friendly, open, innovative, responsive, and flexible -- just like you. In other words, your job is to help others forget about the recession -- so it's best if you avoid over thinking something you cannot control anyway.

19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day

19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day

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What Lies Beneath Our Efforts?

Small Business Solopreneurs:

I'm going to back up a few steps. Given this week's news -- unemployment at 9.5% -- on its way, perhaps, to 10%; 6.5 million jobs lost, so far; stock market unable to hold the line; "Great Recession" gradually sinking into our collective consciousness -- what's to be done? I think all of us need to continue to prepare for the next big growth spurt!

Growth is inevitable, because life is made up of these curves: downturns and upswings. Right now, green energy and green building are the growth businesses we're aware of, and that only means there are and will be a multitude of new enterprises spawned by a new way of looking at what makes life satisfying.

What's Interesting:

Take simplification. At our house, we've figured out ways to cut our telephone bill, our property tax bill went down because residents voted down an increase in the school budget, our utility bill went down because the weather's been mild, and we're turning off power strips when not in use. We stopped delivery of the local daily paper, we don't go out to eat, see movies or concerts, or buy things. Stuart found a new cologne I like, but we didn't buy it, he goes to the mall on Saturdays and sprays it on. I discontinued one of my prescriptions and several supplements that hadn't totally proven their health benefit, and I sent Stuart out to sell an old piece of jewelry I don't wear. And none of this has been painful. It's not like we're eating cat food: we eat pricey beef hot dogs and organic baked beans! (joke) (sorta)

Neither of us is employed full time at the moment; we both freelance whenever we can get work. Neither of us qualifies for unemployment benefits -- there's no safety net for us. This involves some anxiety, interrupted sleep and stress-related health disorders. On the other hand, we are awake, alive and learning new things all the time. Stuart has expanded from real estate title closings to loan modifications to mortgage brokering. I am blogging, editing, writing, marketing, social networking, and optimizing.

What I'm thinking is:

Not only do we do whatever needs to be done, but we also try to keep a grip on what our values are, what is meaningful to us, our core values. We know we are best and most successful at what we love to do, what motivates us, what makes us feel valuable to our community. It's a bad recession, yes, and we are not only not young, we are past middle age. We know we can't retire, and we don't know how we'll pay for health care as we age. But we also know that we need to dream, to plug into what is important, and to help other people and ourselves.

Sustenance, motivation and meaning:

We've lived long enough to know that doing something "just for the money" is a poor choice. There is a balance point in the center of our talents, our motivations and our opportunities -- and that's where we want to be. Does this work have meaning for me, and can I convey that to customers? That's the question to ask. In my case, all the research shows that companies that spend on marketing during a recession come out ahead, and so I should be able to help some of those organizations, and in turn, they will help me.

Soapbox:

Values tied to work -- connection to a dream and to a community. Fear not -- join us now.