Raul Colon – Page 20

Get alerts from your Facebook Pages

January 27, 2011 by Raul Colon

Just as they advertise on there page HyperAlerts is the feature facebook forgot. Thanks to our friend @julito77 I was able to sign up to this service so I can get alerts periodically when someone does post something on the Multiple Facebook Pages I manage.

This feature is something that cuts down the time from when someone posts something on the Facebook page to the administrator responding.

Before I would use a dashboard in hootsuite that gave me the opportunity to look at multiple accounts at once but it was still a manual process.

Feel free to sign up for the beta version.

http://alerts.hyperinteraktiv.no/

What other features would facilitate the monitoring and use of your facebook page?

Video: Ensuring Your Customers are not Embarrassed

January 27, 2011 by Raul Colon

Solving your customers problems is one of the best ways to earn their trust.

I thought this commercial was very effective in demonstrating how Sears Optical can keep you away from being embarrassed.

In what ways do you send a clear message on how you can keep your customers out of trouble?

Starting a Business in Seven Steps by @raffel

January 26, 2011 by Raul Colon

Content and post from jimraffel.com

There are many details involved in starting a business. Here, I’ve boiled it down to the seven that I have found to be most important to continuing business success.

1. Open a checking account. The moment you make the decision to go in business for yourself, open a new checking account. Decide how much you are willing to invest (lose) giving this business idea a shot. Fund the account with that amount. By the way, your accountant is going to love you because you will not be commingling personal and business funds. Also, until you setup an accounting system you have a basic way to keep track of expenses and income.

2. Decide upon legal structure. There is no right answer for this step. I’ve been a sole proprietor, a member of an LLC and probably will have S and C corps before my career is over. This is the time to call on the professionals in your circle. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each with your accountant and attorney. Then, you can make an informed choice; a choice, by the way, that is not etched in stone.

3. Decide on an accounting system. If I was doing it over again I’d probably use something like FreshBooks.com and OutRight.com. Again you’ll want to consult with your professional support to decide on issues like; calendar year versus fiscal year; cash basis versus accrual accounting methods and other details that matter but can be worked out quickly with professional assistance.

4. Sell something. I’d actually be totally okay with this being your step number 1. There is really nothing wrong with selling first. I’ve read enough business success stories to know that getting out there and selling is the key to success. In the early days, when the founder of Sam Adams brewery wasn’t quite sure what he should be doing, he took a six pack of beer and walked into six pubs and let the bartender try the beer. It always resulted in increased distribution.

5. Spend about 10 seconds putting together basic marketing materials. I am talking about the very basics like a web-site and some business cards. It might take more than 10 seconds but honestly if you spend more than a day on this at this point in your business’ life, I think you are making a mistake. Later, when business is booming, you can hire a designer to clean up and improve upon what you’ve started.

6. Sell something else. The life blood of any business is revenue. Unless you’ve had past business successes and lots of capital (venture or otherwise) behind you, selling will be your #1 job. Early on, you will very likely sell the wrong things at the wrong prices. It’s okay as long as you protect the downside and don’t let any one transaction put you in a position that could put you out of business.

7. Decide what you should be selling. Now that you have sold a few things, decide if what you are selling is actually what you should be selling. I realize this may sound silly on the surface, but I learned early on what I could sell profitably and what I could not. Whatever your business is, you need to analyze your products and services mix often. Products that are profitable and awesome for your business today could be putting you in the red a year from now.

Once you have an ongoing concern, make sure to look at your books a minimum of once a month. I’m not talking about a glance at the financials. I’m talking about a solid hour or two of uninterrupted time figuring out what is working and what is not. Once a year, I look at all our monthly expenses and commit to cutting them by 20% no matter what. It’s never been difficult to do so.

Obviously, every startup will be different but I suspect the steps that work for you will be approximately the same. Did I miss any important ones?

Photo Credit

Learn More About the Author

Jim Raffel is the CEO at ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC a company he co-founded in 1996. Jim earned a B.S. degree in Printing Management at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986. After graduation Jim worked as a quality control manager assisting in the start-up of two 8/9 unit web presses. Jim then engaged in two years of independent consulting while developing an early version of the ColorMetrix software. The consulting assignments were diverse and took Jim to places as far away as New Zealand. Next, came a position as a special projects manager with a large web printer. Jim worked on and managed projects related to quality and productivity enhancement through the use of technology. One project alone added over two million dollars to the company bottom line. During this same period Jim earned an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management in 1994. In addition to managing the day-t0-day operations of ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC, Jim writes daily at JimRaffel.com with his unique inspirational storying telling public speaker and small business CEO perspective.

Follow him on twitter @jimraffel

Broadcasting equals less Engagement

January 25, 2011 by Raul Colon

255658719_1113bbdc97_z — Photo Credit: Flickr

Many business accounts are constantly Broadcasting their sales, accomplishments, product features, company news, and anything they can find about themselves that appears to be interesting to them. When people broadcast a message it is mainly to attract the masses not focusing on quality. Something I have found through social media is that the more you broadcast the less interaction you get.

I have outlined the reasons why some twitter business users end up broadcasting and end up with little or no interactions.

Self-Promoting products, services, and company

Many twitter business users that are new to twitter create accounts and immediately start sending messages about there products, services, and other information relevant to company and interests. I have even seen a few that go after users and beg or harass them to follow them.

Most of these users also lack interaction with other users. On the other side they feel that everyone should learn about there company but they don’t take the time to learn about the others. They fail greatly in not looking for the interests of their community and clients.

Sharing Accomplishments

It is human nature to feel you need to be recognized for your accomplishments. A good example of people that want to be recognized are the so called Social Media Experts which share a collection of names such as Guru, Evangelist, Kings, and Queen. One of the terms still up for grabs is “Swami” for those of you who want to make the recommendation to these experts feel free to recommend it to them. They are constantly bragging that they have a certain klout score or have to announce how many followers they just gained. What they don’t realize is that other people take there perspective they really don’t care about how many followers you have they are to worried about their own.

Let other people share your accomplishments you will get better results. If you feel like sharing something find a polite way to share it but don’t bombard your users with your constant accomplishments.

Hoarding Followers

When I started using twitter I confused it with other social networks. I remember when I used ICQ in the late 90’s where my objective was trying to get in contact with as much people possible just to be able to keep multiple conversations all the time.

Twitter is a micro-blogging portal very different from others in social media. It is key that you earn your following and focus on quality of contacts. The more interested your followers are to your tweets the more probable is that they can be advocates of your message or thoughts (and maybe later on your company and services).

Always look for contacts that have things in common. Many people start adding people randomly in hopes to get someone to follow them back. Even if they follow you most people might not even read your tweets. By interacting with the people you have and really taking care of your audience you will start building a community that will be well worth waiting for your follower count to rise organically.

More Attention

There are no many ways to call attention to yourself. But something you need to keep in mind is that you can do it in a negative or a positive way. People that try to hard end up sharing a negative image. When you are using twitter and/or other social media platforms it should be with the purpose of establishing relationships. To increase the opportunities to establish those relationships you should do a great job at projecting a clean and positive image.

If you need some help on getting attention to attract clients in a positive way @jimkukral’sAttention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue.

In what ways do you interact with your online communities?

How are you going to increase interaction and eliminate Broadcasting?

Social Media for Digital Artists

January 24, 2011 by Raul Colon

Guest Post by : @ricklipsett

Some time ago, my friend Joseph Garrahan told me that we should create a blog for our Digital Artists Collective: UNDOdigital. At the time I was somewhat unaware of the potential that Social Media had. I had a personal page in Facebook, and one in Myspace for UNDOdigital (which I almost never updated) but that was about it. I did not realize that Social Media could have such a positive impact (if managed well) on our Artists Collective.

Today, I can honestly say that social media works. After we created the blog, and posted a few articles, I was afraid that no one was reading. Our message was getting nowhere. The few that knew us were the only ones reading. I wanted to make sure more people knew what we were up to, so after much inner-battles, I opened up a Twitter account.

The rest came soon afterwards. As I write this, our Twitter @UNDODigital has 263 followers, our Facebook Page (Facebook.com/UNDOdigital) page shows 202 likes, plus the RSS followers of the blog (35), casual visitors, etc… I know that some of our Twitter followers also follow us on Facebook, but not all. Actually the majority of our Facebook fans are NOT on Twitter. This is without counting our YouTube followers or the people who have listened to our podcasts on Audiofarm(Audiofarm.org/UNDOdigital).

All this can be really overwhelming, I’m the first one to say it. It’s a full time job to keep up with all social media channels. I mean, not only do we add content to the blog, but we follow up through social media, email, word-of-mouth, etc…

By now, the usual person asks me: Is it worth it? What’s in it for you? Well, UNDOdigital is on its way to becoming Puerto Rico’s only/leading front for Digital Art. The more people we reach through our efforts, the closer that goal gets. Let’s say we wanted to invite people to one of our Art Shows. Normally, or rather, traditionally we would invest in some flyers and/or invitations. A catalog would also be on the works as well as many other print media to let people know of the event. We now, don’t have to kill a forest to let people know of us. Through our social sites, at the very least, 500 people (and counting) will know of it. Social media works by word-of-mouth, so you can be sure, many will re-tweet, re-send, forward, etc, etc…

Also if, say a few of our followers need to know something art-related, is more than likely that they will reach any of our 4 writers and start a conversation on the blog, or via any of the other social websites we participate in. This helps in posturing UNDOdigital as a knowledgeable community in our area of expertise: Art.

At first, we envisioned these efforts only to promote our shows. In the long run, we’ve seen how we can do more good, by promoting artists from our group and out of it, cultural/art related events, we share trends, give out wallpapers, talk about art topics, start discussions, interview artists, and so on. I guess you could say that we got in sync with what Social Media really is by accident, but we got there. We now, share like crazy.

Results. That is what you must be thinking now. Well internet is a very analytical medium. We, at UNDOdigital, know how many people have visited us, from where, which browser they use, which connection speed they use, how many links they clicked, which posts are they’re favorites, how many time our tweets have been clicked, and more. We have and know it all. This gives us complete control over what we achieve with these sites. Of course all of this is long term. After all, Social sites are like dating. And dating is a process.

About the Author

Rick Lipsett – http://www.ricklipsett.com is an Illustrator/Graphic Designer/Digital Artist. Co-Founder of UNDOdigital; Puertorican Digital Artists Community. Fan of blogs, social networks and Del Eses(http://myspace.com/deleses). You may find him on Twitter as: @ricklipsett.