Headline This Week: Facebook Sued, Customer Privacy Issues Revisted |  |
- Headline This Week: Facebook Sued, Customer Privacy Issues Revisted
- Haiku Deck Offers PowerPoint Alternative, Fewer Features Touted
- How Creating a Company Vibe Keeps Everyone Connected To Your Purpose
- Dane Atkinson of SumAll: A Big Data Strategy That Goes Beyond Cutting and Pasting
- The Game of Tetris Looks a Lot Like Sales
| Headline This Week: Facebook Sued, Customer Privacy Issues Revisted Posted: 10 Jan 2014 04:00 PM PST
The Small Business Trends editorial team gathers the news vital to running your business. Here are this weeks top headlines. Social MediaClass action suit hits Facebook. The social media giant has been attacked before for its treatment of customer data. This time the suit may have implications for other businesses that collect and use similar information in their businesses. Instagram ads create 17 percent more brand awareness. Not every small business has access to Instagram advertising yet. And it’s uncertain whether these businesses would find a campaign affordable anyway. But one thing the latest numbers do tell us is just how effective your marketing message may be. Rate & Tax IncreasesPostage stamp increase is coming. As of Jan. 26, cost for stamps, bulk mail and packages will all be increasing. Small Business Trends publisher Anita Campbell has a breakdown with all the details. Have a look. A 15 cent tax increase could be brutal. There may be perfectly good reasons for increasing the gas tax this year. But for small businesses the change could prove extremely damaging. Figure out what it could mean to your bottom line. Amazon now collects sales tax in 19 states. Remember last year when Amazon was actively fighting the notion of collecting sales tax from customers in individual states, even apparently giving some affiliates the boot over the issue? Well, that was then and this is now. Business Apps & ToolsWhatsApp has reached 400 million members. It’s an alternative to social media (or a new kind of social media) depending how you view it. But this app has caught fire and certainly has applications for business. This app is an alternative to PowerPoint. The creators of Haiku Deck wanted to create an alternative for presentation software like PowerPoint. But in what some might see as an odd twist, they gave it less features instead of more. WordStream is improving its AdSense tool. If your small business uses AdWords, a free tool can help you spend less with better results. Small Business Trends CEO Anita Campbell has more on how the WordStream benchmarking tool has improved. Brands & CommunitiesMashable raises $13 million. There is money in independent news brands. Pete Cashmore started his business not with a VC investment, but as a blog run from his house at age 19. But that small independent startup would eventually grow to substantial size. Independent digital publishers – take heed. Airbnb reaches 10 million stays. Airbnb has done more than create a successful business model. The company is responsible for a huge economy based on temporary and long-term rentals. Though, of course, not every municipal authority is a fan. Adobe to shut down Acrobat Workspaces. They were once, and remain, a place of collaboration for many small business. But soon they will no longer exist as collaborative hubs. Read here about how handle to any files you may have left on the site before the end. Other TrendsLa Soiree shows Vaudeville as small business. The new show harkens back to an era prior to television and radio. But it also tells the story of a group of popular performers turned independent business owners. Reading Photo via Shutterstock The post Headline This Week: Facebook Sued, Customer Privacy Issues Revisted appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Haiku Deck Offers PowerPoint Alternative, Fewer Features Touted Posted: 10 Jan 2014 01:30 PM PST
Sometimes the best business ideas come from solving a problem we ourselves have experienced. That’s how Adam Tratt says the idea for Haiku Deck came to be. The application aims to create an alternative to fuller featured presentation software like PowerPoint. The idea is that fewer features might actually make it easier to create presentations by not overwhelming users with so many options. But the concept didn’t come to Tratt and his team until they were trying to dissect a business idea that went wrong, Tratt told Small Business Trends in a recent Skype conversation. Tratt says:
Fresh from a job with b0ard game startup Cranium, now owned by Hasbro, Tratt was working on a Facebook celebrity game featuring rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot. (Yeah, it ended up pretty much like you’d expect.) But what he came away with in analyzing the startup’s missteps was the realization that the hardest part had been creating a presentation on the dominant format, Microsoft’s PowerPoint. He wondered if it would be possible to build something easier to use. The result was Haiku Deck, an iPad and now Web-based app that allows users with limited technical experience to create digital slide presentations and share them via the Web and social media. Building Haiku DeckTo figure out how to build the new application, Tratt’s team started by boiling down the advice most often given for great presentations:
Here’s a quick video review of the app from one user. Tratt says the iPad app was launched around Labor Day 2012 and is now approaching one million users. A beta Web version was released more recently. Last week a new iPad version was released with translations in seven additional languages besides English and the ability to change the color of the text being used on the slides. The app is free with added presentation themes offered for an added cost. Tratt says Haiku Deck is already being used by attorneys, realtors, sales people and entrepreneurs. Image: Haiku Deck The post Haiku Deck Offers PowerPoint Alternative, Fewer Features Touted appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How Creating a Company Vibe Keeps Everyone Connected To Your Purpose Posted: 10 Jan 2014 11:00 AM PST
In the early 1970′s, Trader Joe's Founder Joe Coulombe, who owned a small chain of convenience stores in Los Angeles, began struggling from the success of his newest competitor – 7-Eleven. Coulombe began to lure customers with what was then considered specialty foods, such as Brie cheese, Dijon mustard and wild rice. Inspired by the lure of these new "exotic" foods, his love of travel, a book he was reading called Trader Horn and a trip to the Caribbean, Coulombe created the recipe for Trader Joe's grocery stores. Wanting customers to feel they were going on an excursion for food, he decked out his stores with rustic and nautical décor. He named store managers "captains" and assistant managers “first mates” and dressed employees in Hawaiian shirts. Coulombe then began creating products to take customers' taste buds on a journey around the world. Making Sure the Trader Joe's Company Vibe Stays AliveDonning that Hawaiian shirt puts Trader Joe's employees into character, reminding them that their job is to transport customers to a relaxing and lighthearted experience in the stores and with their products. Clarity and consistency at Trader Joe's – all the way down to those shirts – keeps them hiring and retaining people who find it part of their natural DNA to deliver a laid-back island vibe and a fulfilling shopping experience. Trader Joe's describes itself as:
That means that everyone's a part of the journey, from crew members in the stores to the CEO. Employee Turnover at Trader Joe's Is Only 4 PercentTrader Joe's is so emphatic about building a culture consistent with the fun of wearing that shirt that former CEO John Shields would tell new crew members that if they were not having fun at the end of their first 30 days to please resign. They don't want anyone to stay who can't "own" the vibe of the personal, lighthearted and happy service you'd get at a roadside stand for juice in the Caribbean. For example, a June 28, 2008 blogger explained how the person bagging her groceries noticed that a package of salmon wasn't sealed correctly. He swiftly sprinted to get her a sealed replacement. This is the Trader Joe's vibe. The automatic sprint to get some new fish and a smile as an extra, second piece is also then tossed into the cart. Delivering on it attracts and keeps its valuable workforce. Voluntary employee turnover is only 4 percent, the lowest in the grocery industry. So what can you do to remind employees of the vibe of your company? More important, do you have a vibe? Many beloved companies have a certain energy that defines them. At Trader Joe's, employees wear Hawaiian shirts and deck out their stores in rustic décor. The kitschy environment and attitude makes it hard to take themselves too seriously. Do you take yourself too seriously? Because even beloved companies all laugh at themselves at times. Beloved companies have a certain personality that marks them in their customers' memories. So what's your company vibe? Image: Trader Joe’s, Wikipedia The post How Creating a Company Vibe Keeps Everyone Connected To Your Purpose appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Dane Atkinson of SumAll: A Big Data Strategy That Goes Beyond Cutting and Pasting Posted: 10 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST The speed in which information is created and put up on the Web is staggering. It will only get faster as sensors and devices, people, better tools and automation combine to move us further into the Zetabyte Era (22 figure numbers). While the information being created can help us better understand if our efforts to connect with customers and prospects are actually working, getting that information from all the various sources can be a daunting, time-consuming process. Dane Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of SumAll, a free marketing analytics platform that pulls data from sources like Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Google Analytics and others, shares why it is critically important to get past the fear of big data, and embrace what it can do from a competitive advantage perspective. * * * * *
Dane Atkinson: I’m a serial entrepreneur. As a teenager I ran an ad agency and I’ve had a dozen companies since then. The company right before this one was called Squarespace which was website publishing. It’s been a long and wonderful life building stuff on the Internet. Small Business Trends: Can you talk a little bit about being a serial entrepreneur? Dane Atkinson: Entrepreneurship has some similarities at any point in time. The first company I built on the Internet was at the outset of the Internet age. You had to raise capital and the acceptance of the market and the ability to do things. I would say there is a current trend where entrepreneurship is in vogue. So a lot of people are attracted to it. It’s one of the best lifestyles you can have if you’re up for putting yourself on the knife’s edge. It definitely teaches you quickly. Not too many people should walk into it entirely blind because it is a lot of work and it does challenge you. If you’re hunting for that, it’s the best place to be. Small Business Trends: Why did you start SumAll? Dane Atkinson: Well, we had a lot of competing reasons to build this company. When we first started, we spent a lot of time just developing the culture that we thought would make for a great company. But in the last business, Squarespace, there were many moments beforehand where as a data junkie, I felt this huge frustration of just trying to understand what was happening in our business. There was a pinnacle moment. We had this public company CFO working for us and he was copying and pasting from some email and I asked what he was doing. He was copying the revenue he had from yesterday so he would have it in a spreadsheet. And he could see what the hell was happening. That seemed painfully absurd that people would have to do that, copy and paste to see what your revenue looks like on a day to day basis. It seems persistently true for a lot of businesses, not just for their revenue database but for everything. Like all the providers you use, the people who help us to build businesses these days. It created a huge amount of information in the wake of our efforts but we don’t get access to it. So we thought that a company that brought that information to bear for people who want it easily, it would be a great thing to do and probably a big category that we could enjoy for a number of years. Small Business Trends: Can you talk about the challenge of today’s entrepreneur getting a real clear picture, but having to do so with all this data spread out? Dane Atkinson: It’s a real problem actually. And we’re in a world now where data is almost a necessity. You can’t really optimize your business to run effectively unless you know what’s happening in all its different parts. If you look at the way it works for a lot of our customers, we have 125,000 businesses using us. Prior to our tool, most of them were sitting there on a Sunday night or the free moment they’ve got away from their business loading up Excel and copying and pasting from one place or another to see if that social campaign actually had an effect or if their inventory is in line with their expectations. Which isn’t to say that there’s not a lot of need for understanding of data. But the access to it certainly shouldn’t be hard to get at. I’m sure there will be other companies like us to try to make it easy for folks to see what’s happening in the world around them. Small Business Trends: Are you seeing companies being able to do a better job using a service like yours? Dane Atkinson: Our customers have been doing very well compared to the overall market. There’s some self-selection there, but just by embracing information, that very first decision has a lot of benefits. Most companies get a ten to 20 percent lift once they start to understand the KPIs they’re really striving for, the key metrics they’re trying to push, the numbers they’re trying to manage. Then having easy access to the various things that influence it, it definitely gives them greater agility. So they can see ‘I’ve had a lot of luck on Facebook getting likes, but I haven’t seen any increase in my traffic and certainly no increase in my revenue. I’ve had a little bit of luck in Instagram. I’ve seen some interesting correlating traffic and actually more interesting correlating revenue coming from it.’ You can’t piece those two things together unless the data sits next to each other. You don’t know where to attribute the increase in sales unless you’re actually able to see how those different efforts might actually link together. Small Business Trends: What are some of the results you’re seeing customers make with this kind of service in terms of better decision making? Dane Atkinson: The way things really seem to work for our customers is there's a huge time savings with people getting their hands on the data. There is that definite benefit that organizations start to run with data as part of their philosophy. That tends to make for better companies, so they get a lift there. They start to look forward and see how returning customers are actually changing their potential opportunity. They actually watch how it happens, how it affects things a lot more closely. I think there’s still a huge need for education which we’re not presently doing very well. People will get a better sense of how to really look at the data, manage it and draw decisions from it. But just having it is a big first step. And the market will mature as it gets more and more exposure to the information. It’s just not there yet. Small Business Trends: On a scale of one to ten, how ready are small businesses to take advantage of a service like yours? What do they need to do in order to really benefit the most from using it? Dane Atkinson: I think for us, we feel it’s an eight to ten desire to get at the information. People understand the pain of trying to figure things out the old-fashioned way in spreadsheets. So there’s a lot of relief just by using a tool like us, seeing the information. I would say there’s still more of a three to four for how much they’re able to take that to the next level and really start to run their business from it. What we suggest to customers is to familiarize yourself with the data and get close to it. Try to manage towards it so set some goals, bring some internal awareness to your data, share your information, get people thinking about it. That actually creates the right kind of conversations down the road which are, ‘Okay, we see these things happening. What are the questions that we can ask that make sense as to why this is going on?’ It’s an evolution for the small businesses. Our experience with small businesses is they are the smartest people in the world and the hardest working. Really like the best folks you would want to have dinner with. But they’re usually ill-equipped to figure out how to leverage information. They get there in time. I would suggest anyone who’s not using some sort of tool to understand the information around them, embrace something. Just get numbers so it’s not entirely gut instinct. Small Business Trends: I like that – put numbers in their life. That’s a good one for a business to really begin to follow because with all of this data around, you better understand some of it at least. Where can people learn more, Dane? Dane Atkinson: SumAll.com. Our site is free thanks to a lot of venture capital, so you can see if it works for you. This interview on big data strategy is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above. The post Dane Atkinson of SumAll: A Big Data Strategy That Goes Beyond Cutting and Pasting appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| The Game of Tetris Looks a Lot Like Sales Posted: 10 Jan 2014 05:00 AM PST
The idea here came from looking at a series of bars on a graph, thinking they looked a bit like a game of Tetris, and wondering if I could make that work. For the most part, I think I succeeded and this cartoon turned out well. But with a little time and distance, I look at it now and think, “You know, if he doesn’t turn it, sales would rise sooner, but then plateau for a while. Is that better? Would leaving that space underneath be bad somehow? And if he did turn it and drop it, would that bottom row disappear?” Maybe it’s best not to over think this one. The post The Game of Tetris Looks a Lot Like Sales appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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