What Barbecue Can Teach You About Your Business

Summer is right around the corner, and grills across the country are being fired up for the sole purpose of indulging in that great tradition of barbecue. But like all skills, there is always room for improvement, so there must be a Barbecue University. At Barbecue University, students learn not only the basics of grilling, but also the artistry that separates the amateur griller from the grill-master. Interested in their powerhouse marketing scheme, Lisa enrolled in a class at BBQU and live-tweeted the lessons she learned, and what she discovered may surprise you.

It may not seem obvious, but many of the lessons involved in barbecuing can be applied to business practices. For example,

There’s only so much you can learn by rote in the way of barbecue, and many people attribute their skills at the grill to a mentor. So too with business: often a guide who has trodden the path before you and made his or her own mistakes can be more helpful than any manual. While mentorship can help the next generation thrive in the workplace, it can also create a bond of trust and mutual understanding that brings an interpersonal element into an otherwise un-personal setting.

As important as it is to learn lessons from past mistakes or people who have “been there first”, great achievements are nearly always founded on risk-taking, carefully calculated or otherwise. Whether it be inventing a new sauce or devising an innovative workflow, risk taking and challenging tradition can, in some circumstances, sow the seeds for great rewards.

Like all projects, though, there must be one person to spearhead a new initiative. As Lisa puts it vividly,

Another great lesson comes in the form of something many of us have been told our whole lives:

Certainly in the current economy, many people are becoming much more prudent about the way materials and resources are consumed. Quite simply, many of us can’t afford to be wasteful. Good business practice indicates that if you can put something to good use rather than throw it out, you should.

Product placement is also crucial for retail companies, and a local business in Denver donated a pit barrel to Barbecue University for instructional use. By doing so, they were able to advertise a product through demonstration and endorsement by an established institution.

Finally, one of the most important lessons came in the form of teamwork, in which students had to work as a team to barbecue a Brazilian rib roast. In grilling as in business, when everyone on a team is working toward a shared goal, the results can be spectacular, and in this case, delicious.

-Hilary Adams

Small, But Mighty – America’s Microbusinesses

This weekend, while staying at the Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis, we ran into the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), which was holding its annual conference for entrepreneurs.

Never heard of the AEO?  Yes, well, we hadn’t either.  But during the short exchange with the group, we came away impressed with their mission.

AEO is the “voice of microbusiness development in the United States,” as described in their mission statement at their website.  Microbusinesses are companies that employ five or fewer employees.  According to the AEO, if one in three microbusinesses hired just one additional employee, the United States would be at full employment.  That’s because microbusinesses make up close to 90 percent of America’s businesses.

AEO works with entrepreneurs, micro-lenders, small business development organizations, nonprofit lending organizations, and educational institutions to promote the success of microenterprise.  The nonprofit Association brings the concerns of underserved entrepreneurs to Capitol Hill and the White House.  It provides networking opportunities so microbusinesses can be supportive of each other. 

And, had we known that Daymond John was scheduled to speak at the conference, we would have changed our flights and stuck around to hear from one of the stars of ABC’s Shark Tank.  We wonder just how many of those entrepreneurs at the conference had prepared a “pitch” for John and were hoping to corner him on the elevator…

Twitter Advice -- Brief & meaningful, but also visible & accurate

By Hilary Adams

Brief but meaningful content: a site like Twitter is designed with both concepts in mind, but can really only enforce the former. With over 500 million users pouring countless thoughts, links, and photos into a 140-character, haiku-like space, a formula like the one presented in Michael Sebastian’s article "Anatomy of the Perfect Tweet" must look like a godsend; after all, if eight simple guidelines can be used to craft a tweet designed for maximum dissemination, why wouldn’t you use it?

But riddle me this: if a blogger tweets, but there’s no one around to read it, does it matter how perfectly designed it is?

The answer: Of course not. Before any business or organization can hope to make any sort of impact on Twitter, it needs to accrue followers. Sure, Twitter users can find tweets using tracked tags, but many prefer to follow specific accounts that appear directly on their Twitter feed whenever they log in. What Sebastian fails to mention in his article is that regardless of how an individual tweet is designed, if no one knows about your specific account, it’s unlikely to gain any sort of notoriety or experience mass dissemination.

So what does this mean for small businesses? Make your Twitter handle visible -- everywhere.   If you plan to use Twitter as a primary source for business updates, product launches, etc., put the Twitter logo on everything from business cards to shop window decals to signature blocks on company emails. When customers inquire about upcoming events, be sure to let them know that all of the details and updates can be found at your Twitter account. If your company caters to a more tech-savvy clientele (usually between the ages of 14-35), so much the better: this age range comprises the vast majority of personal Twitter account users.

For government agencies, the goal should be transparency and accuracy to the extent possible. Sebastian’s first pointer – including links – is especially crucial here. Because Twitter is designed for brevity, most important news updates cannot be fully explained in a single tweet, which is why the use of links to agency blogs becomes critical.

A word of caution to both: there is such a thing as tweeting too much, and it can be detrimental in the long run. As a regular user of the site, I have found that even if I like and follow a certain company, if it updates 10+ times a day with no breaking news or pertinent product information I am likely to unfollow its account. So keep it brief, yes, but especially meaningful.

On my honor: Business lessons from Girl Scout cookies

By Monica W. Wamsley

Little girls and the youngest ladies donning sashes and badges appear to have just as much business savvy as the entrepreneurial sharks on ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

“There’s more to Girl Scout Cookies than what’s in the box,” proclaims the Girl Scouts’ website.

Selling cookies teaches the young ladies five important skills for running their own lives and future businesses. The five skills are essential to leadership and general success, encouraging teamwork, critical thinking, and expanding horizons.

1. Goal Setting

She says:

“My Girl Scout friends and I figured out real goals, like how we want cookie buyers to feel when they buy a box. Or what good we can do with the money we make. … It has made me realize how good it feels to work really hard to reach a goal.”

Lessons:

Take time to review your marketing strategy. How do you want potential clients and customers to feel about your product or service? How can you achieve this? (Perhaps social media, logo redesign, targeting a specific demographic, outside counsel.)

Pay it forward: Sponsor a local event, take on an intern, or upgrade your technology.

Hard work is rewarding. You can do this.

2.  Decision Making

She says:

“I make my own decisions, like how many boxes I want to sell, how to explain to people the good that comes from buying a box of cookies, and how hard I’m working to make my goal. We all have to agree on what we’ll do with the money, which means talking it out and being okay with sometimes not getting my way. And I have to figure out how to solve problems, like what to do when one of the girls is sick and can’t help out. … There’s no looking to Mom or Dad for help.”

Lessons:

Be articulate about your goals. Don’t ask, don’t get. Persistence and consistency aid in deciding the best course for reaching your goals.

Leadership, teamwork, and delegation are vital; brainstorming together is always a great option, and reinforcing decisions once they are made is essential. We won’t always get our way in the work world, and we can’t expect to be bailed out, either.

3. Money Management

She says:

“You have to watch not just the money coming in, but the money you spend. … Now, I think twice before I buy something with my own money—or at least come up with a better reason to ask Mom for more.”

Lessons:

Cash flow, credit, invoices, billing, estimated taxes: It can be overwhelming. Setting aside time every week to review your accounts takes some stress out of the whole thing. Should you run into a problem, it’s best to find it when it’s small, rather than when it’s large.

Carefully consider your business purchases: Do you really need another iPad?

Apply for grants — and put effort into it. What great things will you do if awarded that contract? Sell yourself.

4. People Skills

She says:

“I can’t be shy. I have to speak up and look them in the eye when I’m talking. And I have to be able to explain why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

Lessons:

Confidence and articulation stand out. Businesses and projects involve risks — but they are always learning opportunities and can often yield contacts.

5. Business Ethics

She says:

“I see how important it is to keep your word all the time. And why it’s important to build trust. If I don’t do something I say I will, it ends up hurting not just me but the other girls, too.”

Lessons:

Yep, it's a big one.

People often call for more transparency and accountability in government. Being able to trust colleagues and vendors is no less important; business relationships are inextricably linked to character.

Character and reputation are two sides of the same coin. Character is who you are; reputation is who others think you are. Character will guide your goals, and reputation will affect your business relationships.

This is where small businesses can thrive: pulling their weight with coworkers and consumers, and establishing an excellent reputation.

Does your mission statement sounds like this? It is the foundation for each of the five skills that Girl Scouts learn and use as they sell cookies.

I will do my best to be

honest and fair,

friendly and helpful,

considerate and caring,

courageous and strong, and

responsible for what I say and do,

and to

respect myself and others,

respect authority,

use resources wisely,

make the world a better place, and

be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Morethan 59 million American women were Girl Scouts, and there are currently 3.2 million Girl Scouts.

Some things never go out of style. After all, who doesn’t want to make the world a better place?

(You can connect with Girl Scouts on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.)

"Brief, but meaningful" - Grabbing the attention of Gen Y

“Brief, but meaningful.”  We asked one of younger staffers to reflect on how small businesses could reach her generation – the Millennials – through social media and here’s her advice.  Quite sage, we think, for one so young! 

According to Hilary:

Convincing anyone in this day and age to switch brands or invest in an unfamiliar brand seems next to impossible, if only because of the sheer volume of advertisements and marketing schemes being deployed through every form of media. Eventually, potential customers become desensitized to the myriad internet pop-ups, Facebook sidebar ads, and even television commercials. Ads in periodicals are really only effective in fashion and cosmetic magazines, and good luck trying to reach anyone under the age of forty with newspaper ads!

For the current generation of high school and college students, as well as recent grads and young professionals, one thing almost never fails to grab our attention: Facebook notifications. Direct interaction with our Facebook profiles, either through friends’ tagged statuses and photos, wall posts, and messages take top priority for our attention and engagement. If a friend asks us to “like” a brand or artist page on Facebook, we’re more likely to do it than if a sidebar ad tells us to do the same thing. But here’s the big question:

What does it mean to “like” a page on Facebook?

Like all social interactions, one person’s intentions behind “liking” something may be entirely different from someone else’s. For example, I “like” over forty restaurants and retail stores on Facebook, only a handful of which I frequent with any sort of regularity. “Liking” a page on Facebook transmits all of that page’s status updates into the “liker’s” news feed, but who actually has time to read all of those statuses?

Some small businesses are taking a fresh tack in attempting to reach their target demographics: hiring brand ambassadors with an existing network of potential customers and a working knowledge of social networking sites– in other words, college students and recent graduates. This kind of advertising almost doesn’t feel like advertising at all for the consumers, who are seeing personal endorsements from friends and people they trust rather than flashy sidebar ads.

On the subject of hiring recent college graduates, it seems sites like LinkedIn definitely have a place, but more as a focal point of career networking and news updates rather than job hunting. On the whole, students still seem to be actively seeking jobs in more familiar forums, such as on-site career fairs at their universities, websites like USA JOBS, or direct networking with friends or family in a given professional field.

There is one other place millennials are finding career information: Twitter. Far from being just a sounding board for celebrities, Twitter is also used by working professionals to discuss upcoming projects and important advice and tips for people in the field as well as those interested in it. For example, I am interested in a career in screenwriting, so I located several of my favorite screenwriters on Twitter and started following their accounts, gaining insight into what kinds of projects they take on, what kinds of other industry professionals they work in direct contact with, and generally learning about the various challenges and benefits of working in that field. If you know someone in your chosen field that has an active professional Twitter account, it can be a great source for research.

So if you’re a small business trying to reach a millennial clientele, here’s what you might want to start doing: use brand ambassadors to establish trust within social networking communities, tailor some of your products to younger adults who tend to be more conservative with their finances, and if you’re looking to hire recent grads, try to find university career fairs to attend and set up a professional Twitter to advertise or give career advice. Keep it brief but meaningful, and you have a very good chance for success!

Super Bowl XLVII – Let the ad discussions begin!

According to Nielson, 48% of households viewed our nation's quintessential gladiator event, the highest rating yet for a Super Bowl.  We gathered to watch football, eat wonderfully spicy foods, and fixate on the much-hyped commercials.  We lit up the Twitter-sphere with about 24.1 million tweets. We carried on Facebook discussions with loved ones hundreds of miles away.  As a nation, we were engaged. 

We recognize that humor and taste are very subjective, and we know that our readers won’t necessarily agree with us about which commercials were good or bad.  We've been back and forth, adding and deleting, and finally decided on our four favorites:

•       Dodge – So God made a farmer.  This ad grabbed us and silenced us in spite of ourselves. The imagery, the rugged individualism, the sense of community and sacrifice, and even the font choice – the combination is a beautiful montage of American values.  We thought we were too sophisticated for this simple approach, but in reality, we were humbled.    
•       Tide’s holy stain. Iconoclastic with a great punch line.  We all knew where the ad was headed, but the Ravens t-shirt at the end was a fun twist and befitting of the evening’s results.
•       M&Ms – what won’t we do for love?  Love tests our limits, and this ad “exposes” the extraordinary dilemma faced by M&Ms who date.
•       William Defoe’s Faustian deal for Mercedes Benz.  Well-executed, self-deprecating humor for a luxury brand.  Defoe almost seals the deal, but our hero can have the car AND his soul.  Sweet!

Regarding the worst ads, three topped our list because they missed the mark or left us feeling like we needed a shower:

•       Budweiser’s “cool” party. Did we just enter one of Dante’s rings of hell?  People dressed in black at a party are trendy and hip? Have these advertisers ever been to cocktail party in DC on a week night?
•       Gildan Apparel’s creepy sleep-stripping.  This commercial is wrong on so many levels, and our bet is that this ad will be a one-night stand.
•       GoDaddy. Sexist, insulting, stereo-typical, and repulsive – need we say more?  The Taco Bell ad with octogenarians petting was far superior and in comparison, endearing.  Maybe it’s time for GoDaddy to grow-up…

At $3.8 - $4.0 million for a 30-second segment, are any of these ads a good investment?  Do you remember the advertisers behind the various ads?  Are you be moved to action? Did you learn something that you didn't know before? Are you more engaged with a brand, because of these commercials?  

  

Despite the potential failure of these ads to convert you, they do provide excellent fodder for discussions around the office or in the car-pool.  Thank you, advertisers, for dropping the big bucks on the ads.  You kept us entertained during power outages, engaged during a lop-sided first half, and too busy discussing the ads to worry about the calories in those great Super Bowl nachos, wings, and adult beverages.   

“World’s largest professional network” — LinkedIn and small business

By Monica W. Wamsley

As of January 2012, LinkedIn was adding an average of two new accounts per second, according to The Boston Globe, and closer to the end of 2012, LinkedIn reached 187 million users.

LinkedIn is indexed by major search engines Google and Bing, so all of that SEO stuff you’ve been reading about comes into play with the keywords you use in your LinkedIn information. In fact, LinkedIn has a very high ranking authority on Google — odds are good your LinkedIn profile will appear on the first page of results if you search for your own name.

Often referred to as “Facebook for professionals” and utilized as an online résumé, LinkedIn bridges the gap between socializing and displaying work achievements.

Getting started

An important distinction to make about LinkedIn as a network is that it tends to be more business-to-business and less business-to-customer, Small Business Computing reminds us.

In fact, Dr. Witzig is working on a paper about LinkedIn as a business-to-professional function: Small businesses can use the network to support employee morale and find and assess potential employees, clients, and donors.

For being free exposure, LinkedIn provides great resources for those looking for clients and for those who are jobseekers. Dun & Bradstreet — yes, that same D&B — recognizes the potential and did its own writeup.

Like Facebook’s business pages, LinkedIn’s company pages function much the same way and aid small businesses: information about the owner, employees who might also be on LinkedIn, skills and services, the logo, and the website. You don’t need to write yet another business profile for this network, but you shouldn’t skimp, either.

“The worst thing you can do as a small business owner is set up a LinkedIn Company Page without a robust description or overview of what your company does, then wonder why nothing is happening for you,” Krista Canfield, of LinkedIn, told Jason Keith of The Boston Globe.

Etiquette

Page-related conversation is not as robust on LinkedIn as it is on other networks — because that’s not the point of LinkedIn. Updates and posts should be industry-related and professional.

Don’t be idle, either, though. Answer messages in your inbox, join relevant groups, and participate in group forums.

Blank profiles also result in a poor impression, says Constant Contact. Make sure you fill out all sections of the profile and add a photo: Incomplete pages come across as spammy, irresponsible, and inactive, and users with a photo are seven times more likely to be contacted on the network.

On top of being professional and polite, updated and customized company and personal pages also help vendors find you in keyword searches, according to the American Express Open Forum. Wouldn’t you want to make it easier on everyone to find your business?

Those groups we mentioned earlier? Don’t try to sell yourself all the time. Use the group discussions as opportunities to help others and display your expertise. …Besides, shameless and excessive promotion will get you kicked out, and swiftly.

Two old adages come into play with recommendations: “Don’t ask, don’t get” and “What goes around comes around.” Want an endorsement? Ask for one! Writing a good review of a business partner brings you that much closer to getting one from her, too.

Engagement

Certainly, making connections is the biggest reason to spend time on LinkedIn; it is a virtual networking event.

You can connect with alumni by adding college to your personal page, with current and former coworkers by including positions, and friends and family by searching e-mails.

Join relevant groups, and participate in the discussions. It can be all too easy to join and then never even click on the link again. However, other professionals will take note of your activity, especially if it is insightful or helps others with job or internship searches. Word of mouth is just as important for professionals and, by extension, the small businesses they represent.

Sometimes, groups do require admin approval for your admission. Plenty of groups have local chapters that meet in person, too, e.g., a lot of young professionals groups. The Small Business Online Community, among the first “small business” results in a group search, boasts 21,586 members at the time of this writing.

You can stay in the loop on industry news with LinkedIn Today and the “News” tab on the mobile app, and making your own posts weekly is a great way to be connected with and exposed to your contacts. You can set up your various other feeds to automatically post to LinkedIn, but be wary of how frivolous posts appear to your customers and clients. Blog entries and press releases are the ticket to build your brand; save the personal updates for Facebook.

Many companies list job openings on LinkedIn and even encourage applicants to use LinkedIn for the process. Not only does it cut down on e-mails and paper résumés, but it takes a mere instant to click the link that leads to a profile.

There are, of course, upgraded accounts (with monthly fees) that allow access to more search results and display all users who viewed your profile, aiding in hunting, recruiting, and marketing.

Measuring

As this blog tends to recommend, track your website traffic via Google Analytics and Bitly. Was LinkedIn the source for any hits?

Lots ofWeb articles have the LinkedIn “share” button on the top or side of the page — easy to post to users’ own LinkedIn pages and share with their networks — and if you’re a business with share-able items, why not add the HTML for the button and do some tracking?

Perhaps you can measure your return on investment via the number of connections you have, the messages you receive, or how many business deals are initiated via LinkedIn. ROI for LinkedIn seems to be a bit harder to determine than for other networks, but it’s never an overnight outcome.

Conclusion

As we’ve said in the past, it is important to always have clear goals and a strategy for your social media presence. Are you looking to connect with others in your field? Find new clients? Find talent to add to your team? It is easy to fill in a few fields and lose interest, or to assume the requests to connect will come to you. If you’re clear about your goals, it’s fairly easy to get started on LinkedIn, “the world’s largest professional network.”

If you’re unsure of what to do next, contact us at Ideen for a free consultation.

Rebranding Web Moxie - It's all about the trust

Brand. Branding. Noun. Verb.   

If only it were that simple.

Recently, Ideen, LLC assisted Web Moxie (formerly Web Diva) rebrand its services through the company’s most visible medium: its website. By working closely with the client in a partnership that established trust and the free exchange of ideas, we were able to help the Web Moxie create a brand identity that was unique, refreshing, and memorable.

Rebranding requires more than just changing a logo or company name: it takes a conscious analysis of the product or services being offered and the kind of clientele that the business wants to reach.  Branding is all about the promise that a company makes and fulfills.  Branding is about trust.

When the owner of Web Moxie came to Ideen, she had already made a big first step in the rebranding process by changing the name of her company. With the help of Ideen, she developed a one-page brand summary that clearly stated each of her brand elements, a process that, while challenging, produced an end result that appeared simple and intuitive.

Next, Ideen helped revise existing text and craft new content to better reflect Web Moxie’s updated brand identity and bring life to the project. Ideen did not work directly on the graphic design of the website, but we made sure that the new look-and-feel was consistent with the client’s rebranding strategy.

And the new tag line – “Where art meets function” – succinctly captured Web Moxie’s sweet spot.  Web Moxie is masterful at providing back-end web design functions, while also capturing the graphic spirit of a client’s company.  This is Web Moxie’s promise to its clients.

By this step in the rebranding process, the partnership between Ideen and Web Moxie was steeped in trust. Working closely with the client through each step in the rebranding process, Ideen was able to support and make suggestions for the owner of Web Moxie without forcing any ideas on her. This kind of trust is crucial in every Ideen partnership, since the whole reason for rebranding is to create a visual and verbal representation of a company consistent with the client’s vision, not our own.

The process of developing Web Moxie’s new brand was not arduous or dull work for the client – creating a new brand can and should be exciting for any business. All it takes is asking the right questions to get the kind of answers that will open up worlds of possibilities for new brand ideas, making rebranding as much a process of self-discovery as a calculated business decision. We hope that by giving you this insight into our process, you will find that Ideen has the tools and expertise to guide any company through a unique and successful branding process. 

Contact us for a free consultation.

Santa and the Fiscal Cliff - A Letter from Denver

On Friday, 14 December, we had the pleasure of joining 800 Denver professionals for the 26^th Annual Economic Forecast Breakfast.  The event, sponsored by the South Metro Denver Chamber, featured a panel of CEOs and senior executives from large corporations doing business in Colorado.

As expected, the looming fiscal cliff figured prominently in the discussion. While there was the opportunity for these business leaders to rail against one side or the other, this did not happen.  Whether taxes increase or decrease, whether spending cuts occur in entitlements or the defense budget, all agreed – just get on with it.

The key point was this: make a decision. 

It’s the uncertainty of the situation that is keeping companies from investing in the future, creating jobs, and moving forward with the business of business.  The Denver Market President for Wells Fargo commented that companies are sitting on large cash reserves, unwilling to invest these funds in an ambiguous environment.

And how are small businesses fairing?  Small business lending is at a 12-year low.  Small businesses that rely on sub-contracts to the bigger companies – yes, those big companies that are staying on the sidelines until the fiscal crisis is resolved – are starving for work.

So, during the holiday season, our letter to Santa might read something like this:

Dear Santa,

Please bring us a solution that both the White House and Congress find satisfactory.  They don’t have to like it; they just have to live with it.  Make sure the solution doesn't just kick the can down the road for another six months – the can is flat and the road has ended.  If you bring us a solution, we can focus on planning for the future and kick-starting the economy.

Oh yes…and a bit of snow for Colorado’s mountains would be nice, too.

Yours,

The Denver Business Community – large and small businesses alike