Urgency Flow

Most entrepreneurs and small businesses depend on search engine traffic, but are they leveraging search engines as well as they can? Entrepreneurs are beginning to use social media as a lens to find new products and services or innovate and add features to existing products. Social media can be an entrepreneur’s resource for ideas by listening in on amazing personal discussions from the target market the entrepreneur wants to reach and then go develop products for.

For instance, potential customers of high-quality shoes might tweet, or post to Facebook or Friendfeed about the features and benefits they want in shoes, or they might tweet about shoes with an ultra-thin insole that is also increasingly shock resistant to make them even more comfortable. As an entrepreneur looking around for a new product to create, you can use that information to research a “super-thin cushioned insole,” find out if anyone is working on such an insole and then attempt to partner with whomever is developing or creating that super-thin cushioned insole. Read more

This article was originally published on entrepreneur.com

A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensible part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information.

“You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are,” said Clara Shih, author of “The Facebook Era” (Pearson Education, 2009). “And with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services.”

Start Small

For most businesses, Facebook Pages (distinct from individual profiles and Facebook groups) are the best place to start. Pages allow businesses to collect “fans” the way celebrities, sports teams, musicians and politicians do. There are now 1.4 million Facebook Pages and they collect more than 10 million fans every day, according to the site.

Businesses can easily create a Web presence with Facebook, even if they don’t have their own Web site (most companies still should maintain a Web site to reach people who don’t use Facebook or whose employers block access to the site). Businesses can claim a vanity address so that their Facebook address reflects the business name, like www.facebook.com/Starbucks. Facebook pages can link to the company’s Web site or direct sales to e-commerce sites like Ticketmaster or Amazon. Read more

This article was originally published on nytimes.com

Let’s be clear.  Your email is not your work; it is simply a tool to help you do your work.  But like any tool it can be ineffective or even dangerous when used wrongly.  Here is how to make email your servant not your master.

1.  Check your email inbox at set intervals. Do not have your email on and active in front of you all the time.  For most people it is better to check email no more than three or four times a day.  For example you could check email at 9 am, 12 noon and 4 pm.  Then you can spend the rest of the day doing useful work.

2.  Your do-do list is more important than your email. Write all the most important things you have to do each day on your to-do list and use that to prioritise your activities.  Focus on getting the top priorities completed each day and your performance will soar.

3.  Action emails immediately. When you read your inbox action each item immediately if at all possible.  You might reply, forward, delete or file.  Do not read through your inbox over and over.  Read once and action straight away.  If you cannot action an important email then flag it for follow up – in Outlook you right click on the message and then click – follow up today.  This will give the item a red flag and you can find it easily by clicking on the flag status column.

4.  Declutter your inbox. Eliminate unnecessary emails.  Flag junk as junk or use an external filter system such as ClearMyMail to stop junk.  Unsubscribe from any newsletters that you you do not read.

5.  Maintain your contact list. Your contact list is a valuable asset that rewards attention and maintenance.  In most cases when you receive an email from a new business contact then you should add them to your contacts immediately.  Years later you might want to contact them and it is important to have their details.  It is handy to sort your contacts into different categories – social, customer, supplier etc.   Take a back-up of your contact list separately from your main computer so that you still have it even if disaster strikes.

6.  Use folders sparingly. I have a few folders for really important categories of communication.  Everything else is deleted or stays in my inbox.  Some people have hundreds of folders and put everything into one or other.  If this works for you then fine but beware of folder creep.

7.  Sync your mobile and desktop worlds. Keep your messages and contacts synchronsied between your cellphone or pda and your computer.  It is great to use quiet time while travelling to read and send messages provided your important replies are captured for future reference.

Some people use social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook as their primarycommunications tool and they are great for short casual messages.  However, email remains the tool of choice for business communications.  Sharpen the tool and use it well.  It is an essential part of your everyday productivity.

This article was originally published on lifehack.org and written by Paul Slone

Lisa Barone reports that a Citibank and Gfk Roper study found that 76 percent of small business owners don’t find social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn helpful in generating leads and business (Can SMB Owners Make Social Media Useful?, Small Business Trends).

Lisa’s take on this is that it’s not that social media isn’t or can’t be useful; it’s just that it takes so much time. The solution? Time management. You need to know why you’re using social media and plan in advance where and how you’re going to engage.

Lisa’s post is full of tips for focusing your time and energy. Planning and scheduling are key, she says, and there are many tools that can help you avoid overload and stay organized such as “Tweetdeck, HootSuite or Seesmic to help you manage conversation and schedule tweets ahead of time” and “Google Alerts via either email or RSS to keep track of social media mentions.” Read more

This article was originally published on sbinfocanada.about.com and written by Susan Ward

New social tools and online trends appear every day. As Facebook is just integrated into our lives, there is Twitter. And I bet that as soon as Twitter is fully integrated, there will be another social tool to tell people what you are doing, why, when, where and with whom. Visibility is the key, or googleable, if you like. That is, your company is not only found when the exact term ‘Johnsson Food Company’ is typed, but also as the term food, fish, supplier or whatever your company is dealing with, is typed into a search engine. Or is updated on a social network site. The utility of sites like Facebook and Twitter may well be underestimated, but they can be very useful to companies. Together with blogs, they ensure returning visitors of your sites (if well written and up to date) and may result in additional customers. Blogs describe the issues that concern the business and attract potential customers to contact the firm. The importance of being visible everywhere and write up to date content is something which is not properly implemented at many firms. Urgency Flow will help you with this step, feel free to contact us.