Google Forms Update Allows for Easier Collaboration |  |
- Google Forms Update Allows for Easier Collaboration
- 10 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Social Media Robot
- Tellagami: Bringing Storytelling Back into Fashion
- So Long Elevator Pitch Welcome Personal Branding Statement
- Taking Control of Your Online Reputation Part I: Internal Steps
- Are Banks Losing Interest in Small Business?
- Business Leadership Brings Changes at Yahoo!
| Google Forms Update Allows for Easier Collaboration Posted: 04 Feb 2013 03:00 PM PST Google Forms, the online app within Google Drive that allows users to ask questions and collect data into spreadsheets, just got an update that makes real-time collaboration between team members easier. With Google Forms, you can build questionnaires and surveys and distribute them, then the data is automatically put into a Google Drive spreadsheet. This technology isn't specifically reserved for businesses, but it's clear how it can be useful for companies or entrepreneurs looking to collect and organize data from consumers or even other team members.
With Forms, you can ask customers questions about their experiences with your company's products or services, collect general demographic information from people who visit your company's website, get RSVP's for events, and even collect opinions from employees or other team members. Now, when editing forms, you can work simultaneously with other team members and even chat with each other in a box on the right hand side, as shown in the above photo. You can also see how many other viewers are working on the same form, as well as how to add items, choose themes, view responses and a number of other functions. Previously, if multiple team members had to view and edit a document before distributing it, they would have to take turns making edits and giving feedback. This new system will allow you to simply set a time with team members to make quick edits together, giving feedback as you go. But even those working alone can enjoy some new minor editing features, including undo and redo options, keyboard shortcuts, improved copy and paste, and auto saving. You can also download a .csv file with your completed data. Most of these changes are fairly minor, but together they can help save some time and cut down on steps when working with others on creating and editing Forms. The other features of Google Forms will remain unchanged, including the ability to share forms directly through Google+ or Gmail. Other Google Drive apps include Docs, Sheets and Slides, which also allow real-time collaboration. The post Google Forms Update Allows for Easier Collaboration appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 10 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Social Media Robot Posted: 04 Feb 2013 01:00 PM PST
We’ve all seen it: tweet after tweet that look like they were cut and pasted and scheduled for every hour: “Buy my product! Click my link!” It’s a turnoff, and doesn’t do much to help you find new customers. Below are 10 ways to avoid being that type of social media robot: 1. Write 95% of Your Updates Manually There is a time and a place for automated updates. It’s perfectly acceptable to set up your blog RSS feed to automatically post to Twitter, Google + and Facebook. Just don’t make that your whole strategy. People follow brands that seem like they’re run by humans. Show that yours is by writing your tweets like — you guessed it — a person. 2. Respond to People Autotweeting anytime someone follows you does not count as a response. Find someone who’s having an interesting conversation and weigh in. Thank someone for sharing your content. Engage directly with people on social sites individually. Robots can’t do that. You’ll find that you start to build relationships this way. 3. Watch Redundancy Sure, it’s easy to copy and paste your updates and schedule them multiple times. But who said marketing was supposed to be easy? Even if you tweak your update just slightly, it shows you put in the effort to do so, and it won’t annoy your followers. 4. Aim for a Mix Here’s a little formula I use to ensure what I’m posting online is diverse enough to provide value to my followers:
I don’t go crazy with the personal stuff, but I don’t make much separation between me and my business. So it’s fine for my business followers to know I’m going kayaking over the weekend. It makes me — yep — human. 5. See What Other People Do How do those other Tweeters get tens of thousands of followers? Pay attention to their tweets to find out. If you read through their updates, you’ll see some of the elements I listed in #4. Matt Mansfield does a great job of staying on topic (content marketing) while responding to people who comment on his G+ posts. Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) rarely autotweets anything, and responds to everything sent his way. That’s why he’s got more than 22,000 followers. 6. Cut Back on Promotions Yes, you want people to click your links and buy from you. But if you constantly post links to your site, you’ll scare off potential customers. The marketplace has changed; customers no longer want you to put promos in front of them (did they ever?). They’d rather get to know you as a brand and find your promotions through other channels, like email. 7. Enough About Me – Let’s Talk About You We hear that cocktail party example a lot, and it works. If you were at a party, would you talk constantly about yourself? Maybe, but you’d turn off everyone you talked to. Same applies online. Talk about other people. Ask them questions. Pull them out of their shells. If they want to know about you and your brand, they’ll ask. 8. Be Regular…but Not Too Regular I like to take certain times of day to schedule my tweets. It’s important to me to have near-constant activity on Twitter, and less so on Facebook and other channels. At most, I schedule one tweet an hour. Usually less. Any more than that, and I’m just clogging up everyone’s Twitter stream. Aim to be present, but don’t go overboard on any one site. 9. Vary Your Updates Across Platforms It’s too easy to paste an update from Twitter onto Facebook or LinkedIn. Or better yet, click all your social icons in Hootsuite and send the same update to all. But if someone is following you on multiple channels, consider how annoying it is to see the same thing every time. Instead, mix it up slightly. You can share the same link; just post a different description on each site. This gives people a reason to connect with your brand on multiple channels. 10. Take a Break Sometimes I get over tweeted. I need a break from social media. In those cases, I schedule whatever tweets and updates I want to go out for the next few days, and I close it down. Having some space from this virtual world that often sucks me in clears my head and helps me start fresh when I return. It isn’t hard to humanize your social media updates. Put in a couple of hours a week, take advantage of scheduling updates, and you’ll see your followers number rise. Social Robot Photo via Shutterstock The post 10 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Social Media Robot appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Tellagami: Bringing Storytelling Back into Fashion Posted: 04 Feb 2013 11:00 AM PST In a world that speaks in 140 character tweets and ubiquitous texting abbreviations, Tellagami tries to revive the art of telling a good story. It is an amusing app designed for iOS that turns you into a raconteur the teller of a "gami" or a story. It's a tool that helps you tell a story, narrate an experience, or share an insight; you can even tell a joke or send a unique personalized greeting to someone. Tellagami is a spinoff of Xtranormal, a digital entertainment company that produces do-it-yourself animation software for the Web and desktop, which turns your words into an animated movie. (If you can type, you can make movies). However, Tellagami is a simpler interface with fewer features.
You select a character, the background you want, and even the clothing you want it to wear. Once the character is set up, you either speak or type to get the character to start mouthing the words. You can also pick the expressions on the animated character’s face: happy, sad, angry, surprised, silly, scared, etc.. The goal is to make it funny, raise a few laughs. You can see the type of character in the screenshot above from iTunes. I couldn’t get a screenshot from my iPad2 where I downloaded the app (user challenges). You have the option to preview it before sharing it via social networking sites or email. You can post it on Facebook; even MMS it to someone. The amusement potential is immediately obvious. A teen could tell the story of an incident in school; you could tell a pictorial story of a recent holiday; or, you could create a tutorial, make lists, create a diary, or just update your status in an interesting format. This software has obvious uses for small businesses and makers too. What I like:
What I’d like to see:
Ultimately you can tell the story – gami – of your business in a way that helps grow it. Easy sharing of your story means that you could put the word out there without much investment. Have you seen or used Xtranormal? If you have, then you’ll immediately get what Tellagami is all about. What tools are you using to create video or animation in an affordable and easy manner? The post Tellagami: Bringing Storytelling Back into Fashion appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| So Long Elevator Pitch Welcome Personal Branding Statement Posted: 04 Feb 2013 09:00 AM PST
“What do you do?” By far the question we are asked, and will be asked, the most on a daily basis when out meeting new people and expanding our networks. It’s the ultimate opportunity to make a first impression and peak someones interest. It’s the branding question whose answer most people struggle to articulate into one succinct, clear sentence that we remember. The answer to ‘what do you do’ is much more than talking about products and services. The elevator pitch was fine when the product was out front. Now we are fronting our products and services more. Creating our branding statement is the most important personal marketing activity we all need to get right. Coming Up with the Right Personal Branding Statement is a “Process of Refinement” It’s the sum total of where we are and what we are doing now, plus all the experiences and knowledge we bring from what we have done, driven by our personality, charisma and energy. Our charisma is what makes us stand out. We change and the world changes and that changes our answer over time. Things work, then they don’t work. Circumstances force us to change. Trends lead us to change. Regardless of change, articulating our core values, who we are and what we believe in shouldn’t. If you keep up with these things, you will always have what you need to update and deliver your ‘what do you do’ question:
The reason we remember is because the person, their value, message and how it is consistently delivered strikes a chord with us. One of the best resources for personal branding is Millennial Branding expert Dan Schawbel, and his Personal Branding Blog. Having a fully developed Linked In profile is also a must. Here are some great examples of brand statements that work because they grab our attention. Are you a Sales Whiz, a Career Catalyst? a Turnaround Ace? What do you do in one clear, succinct and engaging sentence? Career Branding Catalyst: I help plug in and power up personal branding for small business, entrepreneurs and professional consultants through networking, social media and content marketing so they stand out, get noticed and are remembered better. Is your personal branding statement ready? What Do You Do Photo via Shutterstock The post So Long Elevator Pitch Welcome Personal Branding Statement appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Taking Control of Your Online Reputation Part I: Internal Steps Posted: 04 Feb 2013 07:00 AM PST It was Warren Buffet (a guy who knows just a bit about succeeding in business) who once noted:
With the advent of social media, those "five minutes" have been reduced to a nanosecond. A nasty Tweet, Facebook post, comment on an article, and discussion in an online group can go viral and negatively impact a business before a CEO knows what hit them.
While most attacks to your company's reputation come from outside sources, disgruntled customers, former clients, competitors and hostile bloggers, this article will focus on the steps you can take internally to build, fortify and defend your online reputation. While there are dozens of ways to build and protect your online reputation, below are five essential steps every business should be taking: Step 1: Create a Brand Worthy of a Powerful Reputation This may sound obvious, but it is critical to focus on building a formidable reputation before you even think about protecting it. You can't make people respect your brand. You have to earn their respect. If you sell a product, make sure your product is useful, well made and fills a void. If you are a service provider, then be at the top of your game. If you aren't giving back to the community yet, start doing so today. No matter what kind of business you have, make sure you hold yourself and your team to the highest ethical standards. Another key element of building a strong reputation is developing positive relationships with your employees. Make sure you provide a workplace where employees are valued, respected and fairly compensated. Disgruntled employees often do more damage to your brand than external forces. Step 2: Identify, Train and Nurture your Brand Evangelists While it's great for the CEO to be the face of the company, many brands find it extremely effective to have multiple employees serving as official and unofficial spokespeople. Different people in your organization possess a variety of skill sets and levels of expertise. IBM actively recruits top employees to be part of their advertising and marketing campaigns. Their "I'm an IBMer" campaign has been extremely successful: Providing multiple voices not only humanizes a company, it demonstrates the breadth of knowledge and talent within the company. Step 3: Train Your Entire Team in the Effective use of Social Media Thanks to the Web, every member of your staff has the power to be a brand ambassador. That means you can take advantage of hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to spread positive messages about your company. On the flip side, the Web gives every staff member the power to be a saboteur (or worse). So long as an individual can be identified as a member of your team, everything they say online about your company reflects on your company. There are hundreds of cases of employees embarrassing their companies with inappropriate Tweets or Facebook posts. While some companies try to enforce draconian social media policies (many of which have been deemed invalid by the National Labor Relations Board), I strongly suggest that you encourage your team to actively use social media. Use social media as a team-building exercise, have contests, post photographs from the workplace or to brag about awards, new products or services. The best social media policies encourage – rather than discourage – activity on social platforms. Zappo's "be real and use your best judgment" treats employees like adults, while Ford's "play nice" is far simpler than spelling out "don't be a jerk." Step 4: Build Your Reputation through Content Marketing It is almost impossible to erase all negative comments about your brand from social media or from search engine results. Content marketing can be used to overwhelm the negative with positive. People judge a brand or an individual by weighing pros and cons. The effective use of content marketing can tip the scales in your favor. Content marketing can take many forms, from articles and white papers to videos and webinars. You need to figure out what works best for your business model and your target audience. Step 5: Reach out to the Media Earned media is a tremendous way of bolstering your business' reputation. Anyone can call themselves an expert or thought leader. It is far more convincing (and impressive) when it's someone else calling you can expert. Every business has a story (or stories) to tell. A competent public relations professional can flesh out those stories and pitch those stories to the appropriate media. A relatively small investment in public relations can pay off with big dividends, especially if your company lives up to the standards set in Step 1. In Conclusion I began this post with a quote from Warren Buffet, so I will end it with one as well:
If you have failed to take the steps necessary to bolster your company's reputation, then any attack is going to be magnified. No matter how great you are as a person or as a business, you will have your detractors. The real risk to your business' online reputation is when you fail to understand the science of building, fortifying and protecting it. When the overwhelming majority of the discussion about your business is highly positive, you are in a much better position to survive the random salvos that are sure to come. If you don't have the internal expertise to take the steps listed above, by all means either get it internally or find someone with the outside expertise to lend a hand. Your reputation should not be left in the hands of amateurs. Brand Photo via Shutterstock The post Taking Control of Your Online Reputation Part I: Internal Steps appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Are Banks Losing Interest in Small Business? Posted: 04 Feb 2013 05:00 AM PST If you think that banks are less interested in lending to small business than they used to be, you're right. In 2012, only 29 percent of all non-farm, non-residential, loans were less than $1 million, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) proxy for small business lending. But the financial crisis isn’t the primary cause of bankers’ shift away from small business lending, despite what many people have suggested. The decline in the fraction of small business loans began well before the financial meltdown. Data from the FDIC, which keeps records of bank loans to small businesses, shows that small loans (less than $1 million) to business have been a decreasing fraction of all bank loans for the past decade and a half.
Source: Created from FDIC data. As the figure above shows, the rate of decline in the small loan share accelerated in 2008 and 2009, suggesting the impact of the financial crisis. But the decline had clearly started much earlier than 2007. Because banks began to shift away from small business lending well before the financial crisis and Great Recession, post-2007 changes in the small business finance system aren't the most likely explanation for the decline. So what is? I don't know, but the experts have offered a couple of hypotheses. First, over the past fifteen years, banks have dramatically increased their securitization of loans – packaging of loans into bonds that can be sold to third parties. Small business loans are not easily securitized because the terms of the loans are heterogeneous and different banks have different underwriting standards. As a result, the desire to securitize might have led banks to reduce their small business lending relative to loans that are easier to package into securities. Second, the banking industry has consolidated over the past 15 years. Smaller banks are more likely than large banks to lend to small businesses. Therefore, the consolidation of the banking industry, and the rising average size of lenders, might account for some of the shift away from providing small business credit. Third, the banking industry has become more competitive over the past decade and a half. This competition has led banks to focus on their most profitable loans. Bigger loans tend to be more profitable than smaller ones because revenues tend to increase faster than costs as loan size increases. Because bigger loans are easier to make to bigger companies, increased competition may have led banks away from lending to small businesses. The post Are Banks Losing Interest in Small Business? appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Business Leadership Brings Changes at Yahoo! Posted: 04 Feb 2013 02:30 AM PST Business leadership is bringing changes to Yahoo! The company’s new CEO is introducing unique ideas and giving the employees a sense of purpose once again. Great leadership can transform your business too. Give it a try! Business Leadership Brings ResultsMore money. CEO Marissa Mayer is already making her influence felt at Yahoo! For example, the company recently posted its first full-year revenue increase in four years. The increase is not much by company standards, only an extra $2.4 million. Still, it shows Mayer is on the right track. Business & Leadership More direction. Mayer is also leading Yahoo! into important new business ventures. She says the company needs to forge ahead in mobile technology. Other companies have found creating a mobile business model challenging, yet Mayer believes this is the key to her Yahoo!’s future. Business Insider More customers. Mayer’s focus on mobile has brought more users to Yahoo!, but those users may not be customers just yet. First, Yahoo! must figure out a business model that will work for its mobile features. However, now that the users are here, the revenue will almost certainly follow. CNET Business Leadership Tips for YouBe inspirational. You don’t need to be a good manager in order to lead. Leadership simply requires inspiration. Entrepreneur Chris Ducker says he focuses on simply inspiring people and lets them do the rest. Ducker talks with Bernd Geropp about developing leadership skills. More Leadership, Less Management Be practical. Chris Farmer has these suggestions to follow when looking for a good leadership and management training program. Seek a program that focuses on the practical and avoid those programs that are too theoretical when your goal is to be a more effective leader in your business. Corporate Coach Group Set priorities. Leadership is all about setting priorities. Your priorities will establish your business’s success. Blogger Ian Smith shares the 10 top priorities business leaders around the world consider when running their businesses. The Smith Report Be a natural. Some people don’t need training or experience to provide business leadership, although the rest of us may need a bit of help from time to time. Blogger Melissa Krivachek shares some tips that will improve leadership even for those without the natural skills. The Frugal Entrepreneur The post Business Leadership Brings Changes at Yahoo! appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
When I wrote “
Say so long and ’au revoir’ to the elevator pitch and welcome the personal branding statement. It’s part of the AOL to Gmail, Boomer to Millennial, desk top to mobile shift.
Often, it doesn't matter whether the negative comments are true or false. If people believe them to be true and the comments aren't refuted quickly and convincingly, then it may be impossible to ever fully recover.
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