Notes From the Desk

Promoting one’s business or group is one of the most important things to do to become successful. Unfortunately, this task usually takes a back seat to other priorities. I don’t care if you are the local high school hockey team or a multinational corporate company; there are avenues that every group should be taking to expand its viability, reach and influence in the world. If customers don’t know about your business or group, than they can’t join or purchase your merchandise. Here are five simple things you can easily do on the Internet to spread the word.

1. Start a group on LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the business version of Facebook and having an individual page is great but it doesn’t fully promote the company. Creating a group page on LinkedIn helps individuals or groups find your company. With a LinkdIn group, you can easily distribute news and other information to the public in one localized place.
2. Start a business page on Facebook: Facebook right now is the number one social networking website out there. While it is not as formal as LinkedIn, Facebook has a bigger and wider net it can toss to attract more people to your business. Also when a person joins your group on Facebook, Facebook does you the favor of promoting your business to all of that person’s friends on Facebook.
3. Create a Digg account to promote your eNews: Digg.com is a news website where the articles are submitted by the users. Users recommend news they have read on other sites to all the other Digg users. If you have been including your newsletters as part of your website this is a great tool to promote your news to new people who have not heard of your group or company.
4. Participate as a group: Recently I participated in a charity bike ride and to register you need to use a website called getmeregistered.com. With this site there are many features that people rarely use. One such feature is that you can organize a business group or organization to participate in the event. A group can be 1 person or 100 people, but the benefit is you are putting your company or group name out there for the world to see. While promoting a good cause you are also promoting your business to a new group of people.
5. Submit your website to DMOZ.org: DMOZ.org is a free online directory that you can submit your website to be listed. DMOZ.org is used by people looking for specific companies to fulfill their needs. The secondary benefit of DMOZ.org is yahoo.com, google.com, and other search engines will follow that link to your website. Thus creating a free external link back to your site, which is great for your search engine optimization.

The greatest thing about the World Wide Web is the way it levels the playing field for the little man. The web puts small businesses and Indie bands in direct competition with their larger counterparts. The bonus is that unlike TV ads or a traditional print ad, you don’t have to break the bank to compete.

Scott Terry, the lead singer of Red Wanting Blue, was talking about this subject in a recent interview. Terry commented on how bands utilize the web as a promotional tool. In the beginning everyone had their own website and would stencil it on everything from t-shirts to equipment boxes. Then with the success of people like Colbie Caillat making it big with MySpace, everyone switched from their own website to their own MySpace page and began plastering that address all over their equipment and shirts. Finally he expressed wonder of where all the self-promoting on the web would go next.

Right now we are starting to see the next phase of this self-promotion and brand identity cycle shake out with other social media options taking center stage. With all of the options out there where do you begin?

No matter what your company or group does on the web, if it is going to succeed you have to build your web identity on a solid foundation. That foundation is your website because you have complete control over the design, features, and content. This is the one place that is 100% your company. Social media sites like Facebook & MySpace are no substitute for a custom website. Social media sites only give the illusion of control, not real access to all facets of the site.

After you have laid the foundation of a great website, you should next integrate the features like a blog, online store and discussion forums. The days of hosting your blog, online store, or forum with a third party site (i.e. yoursite.blogspot.com) is over. There are too many full featured, easily customizable options out there to use a third party site. The URL for your blog, forum, or store should be yoursite.com/blog, anything else and you are really promoting the blog company and not your site.

Then there are the social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. What do you do about those sites? To put it simply, use them to your advantage. In my opinion every company should have a Twitter account, it’s too easy of a promotional option not to. When choosing social media outlets, choose wisely. If you can’t do it well, you shouldn’t do it at all. A forgotten or poorly utilized Twitter or Facebook page is quickly giving potential clients a bad taste in their mouths. Always be on the lookout for the next trend that fits your company and helps you reach your goals.

Finally, know that a positive web identity that pays its dividends isn’t something that happens on accident. It’s something you build and cultivate over time. To start, be sure to build on the solid foundation of a great website and grow from there.

Recently a former coworker of mine was telling me about her experience teaching an older colleague how to use Twitter and Facebook. Basically the lesson ended when my former coworker discovered the older gentleman didn’t care to learn. Not every businessman or woman is like this, but integrating new technology with old-world business styles is a problem many companies are going to face in the coming years.

The problem isn’t that the two business styles clash and cannot co-exist. The real problem is the presentation of the ideas. Too many young up-and-coming professionals paint their way as the only way to do business and the dinosaurs of days past need to step aside. On the flip-side, seasoned businessmen and women create an air of superiority over their new and younger counterparts. From the start, this attitude creates a rift that prevents one style of business from learning from the other.

The difference between old and new business practices is this: In the past, if you didn’t meet with a client and make the perfect presentation you didn’t get that client’s business. However, today people can create that bond through LinkdIn or Twitter and garner a client’s business without ever meeting face-to-face.

I’m not going to sit here and preach to you that one way is better than the other. Nor am I going to explain the ins and outs of both styles down to the last detail. I’ll run out of writing space and you’ll be bored to death. Instead I’ll offer a quick insight and a good example of a hybrid of these business styles (I won’t make a quasi-trendy name like Fusion  or Synergy Business either).

As I hinted at before I believe a hybrid of these two styles is what is going to help you succeed and get you the furthest in the business world. While the face-to-face meeting with every client can eat up a lot of your time, a non face-to-face relationship through Twitter or LinkdIn is easy to sever because the client is not invested in you. The perfect example of the hybrid business solution succeeding is the Obama Campaign last year. I don’t care if you voted for him or not (I didn’t). Barack Obama and his campaign infused new ideas with old ideas and created a great blend that is hard to beat. The campaign used Twitter and YouTube to reach people outside of the box and direct them to traditional meet-and-greet events. They also invited people on YouTube to submit questions and the Obama staff is still using this hybrid method today to get policy ideas supported by the public.

To wrap it up into a nice little package for everyone, just remember this: if you are too stubborn to learn, you will be a stubborn fool trying to chisel a wheel while everyone else is flying their jetpacks to work.

Recently, a friend of mine was in a job interview and was asked to explain a few things on his Facebook page that the company was curious about. The first thing they asked him was to explain the religion he had posted on his Facebook profile. Racking his brain, he tried to remember what he had posted on Facebook. It finally dawned on him that he was still listed as a “Follower of the Church of Darrell Williams.” While this may be a funny inside joke among friends, it may not be so funny to potential clients or places of employment. Is there such a thing as a personal Internet identity that is separate from your business identity? As with everything on the Internet, there is no clear-cut yes or no answer, but with a little luck we can wade through the murkiness.

First off, a good rule of thumb to think of when dealing with posting anything on the Internet is that once it’s on the Internet it is there forever. Even if you remove those comments or embarrassing photos, they are most likely still out there somewhere. With websites like archive.org you can bet that there is copy of something you posted 5 years ago.

So does this mean the end of fun on the Internet? Can I post on Facebook, Flicker or MySpace without being scared I could get fired for what I just posted? What this does mean is that you need to think twice about what you post. Students and employees throughout the country have been expelled or fired for photos or comments posted on Facebook and MySpace.

If you want to control what the public can see of your profile on the Internet, make sure to use the security settings on forums and social networks. Make it so only approved friends can view your information. But don’t forget that your friends can download the pictures from your pages and repost them, so this is no guarantee of safety.

The bottom line is the Internet and social networking sites have made the world a much smaller place. While your personal Internet identity and business Internet identity are not one yet, the lines are blurring and the day will come when what you post on the internet can and will come back to haunt you. The Internet is still a playground where you can have fun, but remember the rule of thumb, what is posted on the Internet is there forever.

Advertising products or services has become trickery in the new millennium. People can use TiVo to remove TV commercials and you can use Zinio.com to view magazines without the ads in them. So how do people reach a big audience without being filtered out? A simple answer is social media.

A great example of corporations taking advantage of social media is Burger King with their recently launched Facebook application Whopper Sacrifice. It’s a simple idea to drive people to the Burger King website and restaurants. You delete 10 friends off of Facebook and get a free Whopper.

This is a great idea to get people involved in the campaign. It’s not a stagnant commercial or ad in a magazine. It’s a living breathing advertisement people can interact with and get rewarded for taking part. And for Burger King, Whopper Sacrifice takes very little time or money to keep it running after the initial cost of building the application.

This is just one example of using social media for advertising. There are many more out there from the “Will it Blend Series” on YouTube featuring a high-end blender destroying ordinary objects to the OK Go Videos that brought the band to the main stream. It’s all about breaking the mold we have been trained to follow and discovering a new way to promote our product or services. And usually when we can do this, the outcome is cheaper and more successful than traditional advertising.