Small Business Center

Tweet by phone.  Now that caught my interest.

Voice on the Go is a new service that allows you to record a message and it accurately transcribes it into an email, a text message (SMS), or a Facebook or Twitter update. I purchased the $5.99 monthly option for this review and found it to be a fast and smooth setup.  There are no long term contracts, and you can pay-per-month.

The benefit of speaking an email/SMS or any other written message is clear:  You’ll save loads of time and get more done.  Like me, you might be concerned about the accuracy of your voice to text. I’ve used other services and had terrible, embarrassing messages sent to my customers and prospects. Voice on the Go is different and extremely accurate. I spoke a bit slower, when testing it, to make sure, but after the first few I found myself speaking normally and getting equally good results. You also will avoid the incredibly dangerous temptation to text while driving.

The service also lets you listen to your emails. I find that most people today will leave a voicemail AND then send an email with more detail. If I can listen to my messages as well that adds to my daily productivity.

Voice on the Go can also be used to update your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Having in mind how many small business owners use Twitter and Facebook as a marketing tool to promote their business, this opportunity is worth trying. Voice on the Go can be used from any mobile, so even if your mobile is not a Blackberry or an iPod, you can still take advantage of the service.

My goal in all my reviews is to maintain some emotional detachment, to create a professional review, but man this sure is cool!!  I have to admit that I was impressed and like a little kid testing the SMS portion to my friends and family who have probably now blocked my account…

What I liked about Voice on the Go:

• I was up and running in five minutes of setup.
• It lets me send an email AND sends me the voice file in .wav format. That’s great for tracking what you really said and serving for those who might use it for notes and idea capture.
• It lets you call in from any phone, but if not from your cell, you simply have to put your cell phone number in to identify your account. Allowing me to use it from a landline or Skype was a big plus. Saves cell minutes.
• Facebook updates were just as easy to setup and quick to remove, if you wanted to delete the access from Voice on the Go or from the Edit Applications area of Facebook. I liked that it worked both ways.

What could use improving?

• I couldn’t get the incoming email portion to work out of the gate with Gmail, but it could have been my settings.
• Sending a tweet to a person directly like @smallbiztrends didn’t work, but regular status updates worked fine.
• Tiny downside: The updates to Twitter or Facebook are not instant as they are on the web, but that seems reasonable to me.  So, just give it a few minutes and be patient.

If you are on the road a lot and want to leave your computer off for a little while or don’t have time to find a wifi hotspot, this service is very useful. If you are addicted to social media, this is a good enabler when you can’t get to a keyboard. If you are simply tired of typing everything, then give this service a trial run, at $5.99 a month it is hard to beat.

Online video. You see it everywhere with billions of videos served (sort of like McDonald’s minus the calories).

With Youtube becoming the second most-used search engine to Google, now has never been a time for small businesses to jump on the incredible opportunity of online video. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Cost Of Production: Your video budget no longer has to have a lot of zeros especially with the rise of high quality pocket cameras including Flip Cameras, Kodak zi8, iPhones and the webcam on your computer.

2. Easy Hosting: All kinds of easy options. If you are using it for selling, talking about your products and other major business functions, Brightcove might be a great solution. Looking to add mobile video? Check out Widget Realm. Creating awesome, engaging content? Nab more eyeballs via viddler, vimeo, youtube, and blip.tv.

3. Many Functions: Entertain, inspire, sell, recruit, add personality, have a show related around your expertise. If you think it, you can create it. One piece of advice is not just talk about you and your product but relate it more to a subject. For example, Zappos rarely talks about shoes. Instead, they talk about customer service and company culture.

4. Personality: People like doing business with people. The second best thing to face-to-face is video. Video creates a much more personal connections with your customers and clients.

5. Easily Spreadable: Like peanut butter, video in 2010 is now easily spreadable. Links can be posted to Twitter and Linkedin. Video can be uploaded Facebook. Plus you can send it out via Tube Mogul to multiple sites.

Bottom line? The opportunity is there. The eyeballs are there. Are you there?

There are staple office jokes. Graphs, meetings, computers… But one of my favorites is the good old In and Out tray.

There’s plenty to draw on here, usually showing one or both of the baskets overflowing with paperwork. But I often get bored with convention and challenge myself to come up with something unexpected in a standard scene.

The above cartoon took a good while to write (even though its wordless) and longer to draw just right, but I think you’ll agree that this guy might just be on to something.

My first thought while reading this book:

“Uh-oh, I’ve done that.  And that.  And that.  Oh – and I still do that.  Oops!”

It’s hard not to take personally the lessons learned in “37 What Were They Thinking Moments in Marketing,” by marketer Olalah Njenga.

Njenga sent me this book, offering 37 anecdotes of marketing mishaps that she experienced – and includes a disclaimer right up front that names, places and professions have been changed, and that the book isn’t intended to harm anyone’s reputation. Phew!

Did You Have a “What Were They Thinking Moment” Today?

Wondering if you’ve done anything worthy of being featured in the book?  Here are some mistakes folks made, and a few of Njenga’s thoughts:

• Wearing gym clothes to a business event – this is not the definition of business casual
• Crossing out all the information on a business card, and replacing it with all new information (the business owner had a few months to get new cards, and with the quick printing options available, this was very unprofessional)
• Trying to “pick someone’s brain” for free,  several times – it’s time to set up a paid consultation
• Bullying people in a waiting room for testimonials needed for a Website –self-explanatory
• Moving from new Twitter connection to pushy salesperson – be aware that social networking consists of creating relationships first, sales opportunities later

Some Skin in the Game

One of the chapters is titled “Skin in the Game,” and it’s an anecdote about how something went wrong because people weren’t fully committed, and didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome of an event.

In the spirit of fair play, I asked Njenga to put some “skin in the game,” and offer up to Small Business Trends readers her own “What Was She Thinking Moment.”  After all, even the best of us have these moments, right?

Njenga laughed, and readily complied.

Scene #37 ½

Olalah’s Deeply Personal “What Were You Thinking Moment”:

So You Call Yourself A Business Owner?

Like most business owners in the early stages of business, I was cash-strapped.  I had just finished a project for a client and was happy to hear that my payment would be ready immediately.  I arrived at the client’s office and she handed me a sealed white envelope with my name on it.  I happily shoved it in my purse and drove home to get a deposit ticket for my bank account.

I completed the deposit ticket and opened the sealed envelope.  The check was made payable to my company and not me personally.  In fact, it’s not fair to say made payable to my company because in fact I only had a registered DBA (doing business as).  It wasn’t an actual business.  I was a sole proprietor.

I called the client and explained that the check was made payable to my DBA and that I needed the check to be payable to me personally.  She said to come by her office in three days to pick up a replacement check.

Three days passed and as directed, I showed up at the client’s office.  She met me in the parking lot and smiled upon my arrival.  When I got out of the car she approached me quickly, smiled again, and handed me a sealed white envelope.  As I took it from her hand she said, “Olalah, if you’re going to be in business, then be a business.”

What Was I Thinking?

My bruised ego would hear those words echoing in my head for days after I finally cashed the client’s check.  Though I had been running my one-person company for nearly two years, the truth was, doing business under my name and social security number instead of doing business as a registered business in my state made a difference.  It made a difference in how checks were made payable.  It made a difference in how clients treated me.  Little did I realize, it was also making a difference in how I looked at myself.  The sobering words of “Olalah, if you’re going to be in business, then be a business,” catapulted me to the Secretary of State website where I learned what I needed in order to be considered a real business entity.

Taking money doesn’t make you a business.  The truth is, you’re not really a business unless other business professionals see you and treat you like a business.  It doesn’t matter if you are a business of one or 10 — if you are going to be in business, then be a business.

This was, in fact, the most powerful “What Was I Thinking” moment I’ve ever had.

What This Book is Really About

As someone who has been in the public relations business for years, I know that many things can make  a reputation, and just one slip-up can ruin a reputation. Is it fair?  No.  Is it true? Unfortunately, yes.

After reading this book, I realized that it’s impossible to have a business and not make mistakes.  The key take-away here is:  look at everything from your client’s point of view, and be aware of your actions at all times. And, of course, if you do realize that you made a mistake, apologize and make amends as quickly as possible.

February was a rather quiet month in the world of small business research. In fact, it’s been a pretty quiet year so far, which might just be a result of the fact that we’re only two months into it. I’m expecting things to begin to pick up next month. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at what the research tells us:

Really, It’s okay. We Don’t Bite.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released a study of the small business financing situation this month, entitled Small Business Credit In a Deep Recession. This is a great study, as one expects from the NFIB. Here, they survey small business owners to find out more about the conditions of their businesses and their credit needs in 2009.

The credit situation was certainly poor, with the number of small business owners reporting that all their credit needs were met falling by about half. The big take-away here, though, is that the most immediate economic challenge fingered by small employers was not access to credit (which came in third). Their biggest headache is much more basic:  falling or declining sales.

Which means that all the contortions of the Obama Administration to get banks and other financial institutions to make loans to small business owners seems, from this survey, to be … um … misguided. Lesson #1 for policy makers: if you want to know what small business owners need, ask them.

No Surprises, But Validation is Always Nice

Here’s something you may have heard before: your customers will like you better (and be more open to your upselling attempts) if they think you’ll go to bat for them instead of fretting about your bottom line at their expense. That’s what Forrester Research said in the wake of the release of their 2010 customer advocacy rankings.

Consumer trust in banks and insurance companies is inching back up, according to this survey, but that’s not going to matter much to most small business owners. What does matter is the larger lesson here: customer trust matters, now more than ever.

Quotable quote from Forrester’s press release, from VP and Principal Analyst Bill Doyle:

“Each year, our data shows that customers who rate their firms high on customer advocacy are more likely to consider their firms for additional products. Customers who rate their firms low on customer advocacy are most likely to say they intend to switch firms in the next year.”

If you’re in the IT business, here’s another finding from Forrester that may interest you:  more than half of IT budgets in 2010 will be devoted to software upgrades rather than to new applications, according to their Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009.

Getting specific to SMBs, 21% of them will upgrade finance and accounting software, 19% will upgrade customer relationship management software, and 18% will upgrade industry specific software.

Also, it turns out that software-as-a-service (SaaS) continues to drive the market and, in spite of the hype surrounding cloud computing and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), firms aren’t quite ready to open their wallets yet.

The moral of this story is that, until companies come out of cost-control mode, the latest gizmo is likely to sit on the shelf for another year.

It’s Been a Trial by Fire

And, finally, it’s been especially quiet over at the SBA Office of Advocacy, the primary repository of small business research in the federal government. Mostly, we saw housekeeping releases from them this month.

That said, if you’re interested in taking a quick look back over your shoulder at the trial by fire that you just passed through (which most people refer to as calendar year 2009), visit SBA Advocacy’s web site to download their Small Business Indicators: 4th Quarter 2009 (PDF). Once you have a gander at all that red ink, you’ll probably feel much better about how your business did last year.

And, if you want to keep up with how Advocacy is doing in enforcement of the Regulatory Flexibility Act and relevant other laws and executive orders, then you’ll also want to review their annual report on the same, Report on the Regulatory Flexibility Act, FY2009.

Upcoming

The third wave of the Small Business Success Index — a joint survey from Network Solutions and the University of Maryland — came out at the end of the month but I haven’t had the chance to review it.  I’ll cover it next month.

There’s a good news-bad news story about small business expansion plans in the some recent data from Discover Small Business Watch, a survey of a random sample of 750 small business owners with five or fewer employees. The good news is that things improved in January. The bad news is they got worse again in February, leaving us pretty far from where we were before the recession started and without any sort of trend towards improvement yet.

The figure below plots the answers of respondents to the monthly question about their business development spending plans since the survey began in August 2006. The blue line shows the percentage of owners planning to increase spending and the red line shows the percentage planning to decrease spending.

There was some improvement so far this year over the end of last year, but there’s still 22 percentage point gap between the fraction of owners that plan to decrease spending and the fraction that plan to increase it.

The situation with hiring plans is less clear. As the figure below shows, the share of small business owners who plan to hire jumped in January 2010 and showed a steady decrease in the fraction that plan to lay people off from August of last year through January of this year. But then things got worse again in February, with the percentage of businesses planning to hire dropping to 5 percent. As a result, we again have fewer owners planning to hire than planning to lay people off.

Moreover, we are far from the consistent pattern of more owners planning to hire than to lay off like was present from the survey’s initiation in August 2006 through August 2007. And just 5 percent of small business owners intending to add staff doesn’t bode well for improvement in the employment numbers in the small business sector any time soon.

Our daily roundup of today’s headlines about small businesses….  Tracking what people are talking about today in the world of small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Credit

• Jeff Cornwall. Current Small Business Problems Will Not be Solved Solely by Focusing on Lending, Says Report. The Entrepreneurial Mind
• Martha C. White. Obama Administration’s Small Business Loans: Will They Really Work? The Minnesota Independent
• Phyllis Furman. Loans Remain Tough for Small Business, Startups. NYDaily News
• Paul Davidson. Credit Unions Want Congress to Lift Limits on Small Business Lending — But There are Two Sides to That Story. USA Today

Healthcare

• Samuel Gregg. Why More Regulation Probably Won’t Save the Economy. National Review Online
• NFIB. Small Business Owners Want Less Political Drama Over Healthcare, More Solutions.  NFIB.com
• The Cato Institute. Why a Free Market Can Cure the Health Care Crisis. Healthcare.Cato.Org
• The Quincy Cove. Small Businesses Interviewed About High Insurance Costs. Quincycove.com

Hiring

• Intuit. Small Business Shows Signs of an Economic Rebound. Small Business Trends
• Scott Shane. But Hiring Has Not Bounced Back According to the Discover Small Business Watch.  Small Business Trends

Marketing

• Niccolinas Soto. Capitalizing on Social Media: A How-To Guide. Smallbiz Central
• John Janstch. Standing Out with — of All Things – Rockabilly.   Duct Tape Marketing
• Becky McCray. How to Track Your Daily Marketing Activity. Small Biz Survival
• Martin Lindeskog. A Great Big List of 100 Small Business Podcasts.  Small Business Trends Radio
  

Tech

• Steven Andrés. Big Fish or Small-Fry, Don’t Wind Up on a Hacker’s Hook. NetWorkWorldAsia.net
• Financial Web. Small Business Accounting Programs Can Create a Simpler Life. Internet Brands
• Hewlett Packard. Elite 7100 Small Business Desktop Increases Productivity. Small Business Trends

Operations

• Seth Godin. I Don’t Feel Like It. Inspiration for the Business Leader. Seth’s Blog
• U.S. government. Business.gov Collects 2010  Small-Business Tax Information in One Handy Place.  Business.gov

Startups

• Adam Toren. Too Much on Your Plate Can Kill Your Startup (and So Can 4 Other Things). YoungEntrepreneur.com
• Dharmesh Shah. The 10 Most Tempting Software Startup Categories. On Startups.