Small Business Labs

Online MBA's Groupon Graphic & the Power of Content

I don't know much about the site Online MBA, but I enjoy their infographics. 

Their most recent infographic describes the history of Groupon and how it works.  Lately we've been using the word "epic" to describe Groupon's growth.  We're doing this because words like fast, enormous, explosive and amazing don't seem to good enough. 

Whatever you call it, Groupon's growth is nicely explained by the inforgraphic. 

BTW, not everyone thinks Groupon and discounting is good for small businesses.  Branding expert Laura Ries presents this point of view in her article Coupons, Groupons and Cocaine.

The 2nd topic of this post is the power of good content. 

We get lots of people offering Smallbizlabs money in exchange for paid links and/or coverage.  The main reason they do this is search engine optimization (SEO).  We have a decent Google page rank and links from our site help with SEO programs.  Our policy is not to accept these.

Online MBA has effectively gotten around our policy by creating compelling content.  They've earned the 3 links (retail value = hundreds of dollars) in this article by providing information we think our readers will find useful. 

That's the power of good content. 

Should Small Businesses Use Twitter?

The quick answer is yes -  if you see a positive return from the time and effort required to maintain a Twitter presence.  Having said that, we believe the answer will be no for most small businesses. 

The reason is simple.  A very small percentage of adult Americans are regular users of Twitter. 

A recent Pew Internet study reports that about 8% of online, adult Americans use Twitter.  Only about 75% of Americans are online, which means about 6% of all adult Americans use Twitter.

As the chart below from Pew shows, about 36% of all Twitter users check the site on a daily basis or multiple times per day.  About half check infrequently or never.

The obvious conclusion from this data is about 3% of adult Americans are active Twitter users who check the site at least once per week.  If your business serves this group, Twitter will likely be a good way to interact with your customers.

But if your small business serves a subset of the 97% of Americans who don't use Twitter on a regular basis, or the 94% that don't use Twitter at all, it's probably not going to be a good way to interact with your customers.

 
I'm starting to feel like a social media Scrooge by pointing out data like this. 

Social Media, including Twitter, can be a powerful and valuable tool for small businesses.  We strongly recommend small businesses experiment with, test and evaluate multiple forms of social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). 

But we also recommend small businesses do this with a focus on ROI and fully measure the time and expense required to maintain a social media presence.  Understand the benefits and make sure they are worth the investment required. 

Like any tool, if social media works use it.  If it doesn't work, don't let the hype and coolness associated with social media sway you into using it. 

Social Media Not Always the Answer

We've noticed a strong uptick in the number of small businesses telling us they are disappointed with their social media efforts. 

The main complaint is a lack of results.  The other issue we hear about is social media is too time consuming.

We're not the only ones hearing this.  Entrepreneur's Is It Time for You to Get Anti-Social does a nice job of describing the complaints.  Key quote:

"Amid the hype about social networks and the many positive things they can do to help businesses build a buzz come tales from the social media counterculture -- cases of trend-bucking entrepreneurs such as Wong making a strategic decision to de-emphasize social media ..."

This reaction is common with technology trends (and social trends also).  Fast growing trends almost always create a countervailing trend of people unhappy with the main trend. 

This is especially true when a technology is as over-hyped as social media.  The hype results in businesses using social media when it's not a good fit. 

This does not mean social media is not useful.  It just means it's not always useful. 

Dandelion Marketing

I moderated a marketing panel at the GrowSmartBiz conference last week.  During the session Jeremy Epstein from Never Stop Marketing presented his Dandelion Marketing concept, which I really liked. 

The name comes from the strategy dandelions employ to survive and thrive - they release lots of low cost seeds that spread to many places.  This approach improves the chances that some of the seeds survive and thrive.

Based on my backyard, this method works. 

When applied to marketing, the dandelion approach focuses on Agile Marketing - the ongoing, rapid development of marketing programs.  These programs are released and measured for results. 

Rapid feedback loops are used to decide which programs are continued and which are ended. 

Social media provides an ideal platform for dandelion marketing.  You can experiment with approaches and test for results, without having to spend a lot money.

There's a lot more to the Dandelion Marketing concept.  For more information, download the ebook by clicking here.

What are Social Magazines and Flipboard?

Flipboard is the best known of the many new entrants in a space being described as social magazines.  These are applications that allow users to organize, customize and personalize online news and social network feeds. 

Flipboard got a ton of attention at launch.  They were mentioned as a cool new application by several influential technology pundits and the resulting traffic surge crashed their site. 

Like many of the new social magazine creators, Flipboard is an iPad application.  Users input social media feeds and Flipboard turns them into attractive, print-like online magazines.  It is simple to use and organizes information from most any social network or online information feed. 

The picture below is from Flipboard's site and nicely illustrates how attractive the application is.

  

Flipboard has a really good video explaining social magazines and their use and power on their homepage.  It is well worth watching.  Social magazines is a category likely to be very successful over the next few years.

CRM Magazine's Small Business Suite CRM Winners

CRM Magazine's annual Market Awards issue is available online.  The awards are given to customer relationship management (CRM) industry leaders and includes both people and companies. 

It is one of my favorite issues of CRM because in one magazine a broad range of key CRM companies, technologies and people are covered. 

There are multiple award categories, including small business and mid-market CRM.  The small business segment winner was Salesforce.com, which won for the 2nd year in a row.

The small business segment leaders were Maximizer Software, Netsuite, Oracle and SugarCRM. 

Salesforce.com also was the mid-market winner, with Microsoft, Netsuite, Oracle and RightNow Technologies rounding out the market leaders list.

CRM Magazine also picks Rising Stars and this year's winner in the small business space is BatchBlue, makers of the BatchBook social CRM system. 

CRM software has rapidly become mission critical for small businesses.  This issue of CRM provides an easy way to explore and better understand this technology. 

Time Spent on Social Networks Exploding; Email and IM Fading

MediaPost reports on a Nielsen study showing that Americans spent 43% more time on social networks in June than they did a year ago.

Where are we finding the time?  We are using email and instant messaging less.  From the article:

"the uptick in social networks led to the 28% and 15% declines in email and instant messaging, respectively."

But despite the declines, the death of email is greatly exaggerated.  We still spend 8.3% of our online time on email and it's the most popular mobile phone application. 

According to the research, Americans now spend 36% of their online time "communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging."

We're looking forward to the next wave of Network Solutions Small Business Success Index data on small business use of social media.  It should be out in the next few weeks and shed even more light on this topic.

Privacy and Transparency in the Internet Age

Don Tapscott's Huffington Post article Why Transparency and Privacy Should Go Hand in Hand is a must read.  He highlights the growing issue of online transparency and its impact on businesses - and more importantly, on individuals.  Key quote on the impact on business:

"People and institutions interacting with firms have unprecedented access to information about corporate behavior, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information, a variety of stakeholders now scrutinize the firm like never before, informing others and organizing collective responses." 

He also points out that increased transparency is also impacting individuals:

"But the growing tsunami of data generated daily by digital interactions isn't restricted to corporations. A lot of this data pertains to individuals, and much of it is controlled by third parties. Practical obscurity - the basis for privacy norms throughout history - is fast disappearing. More and more aspects of our lives are becoming observable, linkable and identifiable by others."

He goes on to explain that we are all contributing to the decline in privacy and suggests we adjust our online behavior to limit potential damage.

This is already a huge issue that will become even bigger as more people understand the amount of personal data that is available on the Internet, and how easy it is collect, aggregate and analyze. 

Is Facebook Replacing Traditional Websites?

Yesterday's post Do Small Businesses Still Need a Website? generated more traffic and emails than usual.   The general consensus from the feedback is that despite the growth of social media, having a traditional website is still a good idea.

But the responses got me wondering if I correctly framed the issue. 

We've noticed a steady increase in the number of small businesses using Facebook as their primary or exclusive website.  They are doing this because it's cheap, easy and their customers are on Facebook.

The chart below, from eMarketer, illustrates this trend. 

  

What is interesting about this data is not that 67% of the respondents are using Facebook to drive traffic to their site; it's that a large percentage are planning on conducting business on Facebook instead of driving traffic to their traditional site. 

So the right question may not be "Do small businesses still need a traditional website?", but rather "Is Facebook becoming the only website a small business needs?"

Do Small Businesses Still Need a Website?

One of the more interesting web trends is the shift away from traditional websites. 

The dramatic growth in social media use - especially Facebook - is resulting in more small businesses choosing to use social media sites as their primary, and in some cases only, web presence.

This is not just a small business trend.  Many large corporations - especially consumer oriented companies - are shifting their web presence focus to social media. 

The idea is simple.  Fish where the fish are instead of trying to drive the fish to your pond. 

Many businesses also believe it is easier and more effective to create communities and interact with their customers on Facebook and Twitter than on their on website. 

Social media sites are also inexpensive to create and use.  Many small business owners are already familiar and comfortable with Facebook and LinkedIn.  Using social media for their business is a logical extension.   

The growing availability of business applications available via social media is another driver.  Facebook in particular has a wide range of business applications available to corporate users.  These applications tend to both easy to use and inexpensive. 

This is a controversial topic and many think it is a huge mistake not to have a traditional website.  Because of this, we thought we would provide links to both sides of this issue:

Entrepreneur's Does Your Business Still Need a Website? covers the reasons behind not having a traditional website.

Outspoken Media's 11 Reasons Your SMB Still Needs a Website provides reasons (11 of them) why you still need a traditional website.   

We think having a traditional website still makes sense for most online small businesses.  But we've also seen a lot of successful small businesses who only have a social media presence. 

This, of course, is not an either/or decision.  For most businesses it makes sense to have both a traditional website and a social media presence.  In the end, the right path depends on the needs of the individual business.