You're Fired!

Now that The Apprentice has returned, it's important to remember one of the things that Mr. Trump values in a potential employee: integrity. There are many things the add up to what integrity means, including being loyal, trustworthy and telling the truth. Think about the things you want out of a business. You want to trust a business before you make a purchase and you also want to feel like you're paying a fair or less than fair price for the product or service.

There are many ways you can build your integrity in the eyes of your clients. Remember that it does take time to build a relationship with your clients so that you can show them that you are loyal, trustworthy, truthful and have integrity.

Do What You Say You Will When You Say You Will

It's really important to do what you said you would do, when you said you would. Why is this so important? Think about when someone told you they would do something and they didn't deliver. What did you think of them? Probably not very good things.

Doing things as promised makes a powerful statement to people, especially your clients or future clients. A tactic I learned from the book, The Power of Focus by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt, was to deliver as promised and tell your client, "As promised, I completed this for you." People want to be able to count on you, and when you deliver it only adds to building your character in the eyes of your client.

New Year's Resolution Check

How is your professional New Year's Resolution going? We're more than half-way through the year now and is a good time to check in and assess how your resolution is going. As far as my resolution, I have actually been doing well at my attending a networking event each month. I've met a lot of people in different circles through my resolution this year and look forward to attending at least five more networking events.

If you always do what you've always done...

I'd like to share a recent experience I had on the driving range last week. I was having a little trouble with my fade and someone walked by to offer me his extra bucket of balls and asked if he could give me some advice. He said that if you continue to have trouble (fade or draw) that you should immediately shoot your next shot the complete opposite. Why you may ask? Because you don't want to train your body to do the same thing over and over again.

Translating this principle to business, it might be better said, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." If you have a part of your business or tasks that doesn't seem to work the way you envision it, take a step back and look at the process. Can it be adjusted? What are the outside factors? Sometimes having someone not familiar with the process or situation can offer some a different perspective.

Email Blasts - Day of the Week

Today I attended a "Power of Email Marketing" seminar hosted by Paige Cahill with Constant Contact to see what's new in email marketing. In talking with some of the other attendees, one of them mentioned something to me that really caught me off guard. This gentleman said, "I used to send out emails on Friday afternoons." That shocked me because people have a shorter attention span on Fridays, especially Friday afternoons. They are thinking about the upcoming weekend. I think he's realized that there is a little bit of science behind when to send those email blasts to your distribution list.

Back in 2004 when I began my journey in marketing, one of my first responsibilities was being an editor for a newsletter with a distribution list of 1,300 contacts. Through research, our technical writer found out that the best time to send an email blast was Tuesday evening so that it would be in our contacts' email inbox to be opened Wednesday morning. Back then, most people weren't pulling up emails on phones and accessing information 24/7. Today with most mobile devices able to access email, when is the best time?

Obviously the number one goal with your email blast is to get people to open it! In general, Mondays and Fridays are out. That leaves you Tuesdays through Thursdays, but what time during the day? My suggestion is the afternoon. The morning is used to go through the emails from the previous day, what was sent overnight and preparing for your day.

Of course each business has a different target market that have different needs and habits. Think about your habits with reading emails and think about how that differs from your target market before you send your next email blast.

Social Media Guidelines for Your Employees

It's inevitable. Your employees use social media and may check their profiles at work. How do you regulate social media checking by your employees? Take the first step by stating your expectations with social media guidelines. Create a document called "Social Media Guidelines" that you can distribute to employees that lay out what your company thinks is proper social media usage at work. Why call it "guidelines" versus "rules?" Your employees will most likely be more receptive to guidelines rather than mandated rules.

To create your Social Media Guidelines document, make sure you answer the following:

• Why you're publishing the guidelines
• How is the company using social media
• What social media sites are appropriate to use at work
• What purposes are social media usage appropriate at work
• Who should employees contact if they have further specific questions

Social Media Guidelines are going to be different for every company. What you choose to do will depend on what your employees' job responsibilities are, if you offer products or services, and how concerned you are with what your employees are doing with their time at work.

In many cases, LinkedIn is the most appropriate social media site because it's a professional social media site. Not only can you showcase your employees' backgrounds but they can connect with customers that they work with. They can also see who their peers and customers are connected to.

Social Media - Personal vs. Business

If you are like many people, you have at least one social media profile. Chances are you are linked to a co-worker or maybe even your boss. Even though that profile may be a personal one, be careful what you post on those profiles. It could get you fired, or cost you a job that you are trying to get. A couple of examples are highlighted in this CNN Money brief.

How do you prevent this? Don't post anything that you wouldn't want your boss to see. You can also put high security settings on all of your personal profiles, where you can control how much people can see based on whether you are friends with them or linked to them. Chew on this: a study conducted by Proofpoint of 1,000+ employee companies, found that 17% of those companies reported having social media usage issues with their employees and 8% had fired employees for inappropriate use of social media.

Be especially careful of your venting venue if you value your job.

Social Media - Options

What are some social media options that you can use to engage your clients and customers? Let's start off with the Big Three: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

• Facebook is a place to connect with friends and family. It could be a useful tool for your consumable product and/or customer service. Suggested security level: high.
• LinkedIn is the professional version of Facebook where you can highlight your company as well as yourself. Suggested security level: low to medium.
• Twitter is a way to spread up-to-the-second information in 140 characters or less. Suggested security level: low.

After co-teaching a local "how to" social media seminar, the most frequent question had to do with what other people can see. In this digital age, information is readily available to anyone with an internet connection. If you're concerned about what others might learn about you, Google yourself. If you have a fairly common name, add your city after your name. What did you learn about yourself? Is that information you want others to see?

Email vs. Mail

Everyday we're inundated with hundreds of messages, from advertising to email to mail. In our current culture we expect to receive information instantly, so email is typically the most frequent form of communication that we use today. When you're trying to get in front of clients with a specific message, consider using good old fashion snail mail. Why? Think about the amount of mail you get compared with the amount of email receive. Snail mail competes with other snail mail less because of the lower amount that you receive. On the other hand, your email marketing will have a harder time grabbing your clients' attention because of the amount of competition.

Cha-Ching! Save Money in 2010

Last entry I wrote about making a professional New Year's Resolution. Did your New Year's Resolution overlap with one of your business goals for this year? What?!! You didn't make business goals for this year? Shame on you! At least it's still January. Back to my point, most likely your New Year's Resolution aligns with one of your business goals for your one, three, five or ten year plan. Specific to your short-term goals, I'm willing to bet that a common theme is money. How to spend less and how to get more. Let's focus on how to spend less. Here are a few tips in how to spend less:

• Track your spending. Sounds simple enough, but do you track your expenses online and/or through receipts? Sometimes by just looking at everything you spend on a regular basis (think monthly), you can see where you are unnecessarily spending. Also, sticking to a budget that you review once every six months can help you track your spending as well. You do have a budget right?
• Don't pay full price. This can be applied to many situations including your office supplies. Need to replace your printer/scanner/copier? Check out online electronics supplier Newegg.com for cheaper-than-retail prices or with the manufacturer for refurbished items. Also, if part of your business requires you to purchase books or other media, make sure to check out Half.com or Amazon.com for incredibly cheap prices.
• Be smarter about entertaining your clients. It may be harder to stop what you're doing during the day to meet a client for lunch, but it will be a lot easier on your wallet. Lunch menus are considerably cheaper than their dinner counterparts, plus there's less chance of having a drink with that steak during lunch hours. Beers and other drinks can really add up quickly too.
• Utilize guerilla marketing/advertising/PR. This includes social media! Are you getting the results you anticipated with your latest direct mail campaign? Have you tried the low-cost guerilla marketing tool social media? (Yes, in most cases, you can access a plethora of online social media tools for free, however it takes time to create and maintain your profiles. For a small business owner, time is money.) Make sure you're signed up on LinkedIn and use the Groups and Answers area on this site. This will help get your name out and help demonstrate (in Answers) that you're an expert in your field of practice.

What do you use to help save yourself and your small business money?

Professional New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year! As you're enjoying your first few days of 2010, it's time to think about New Year's Resolutions. A personal resolution isn't the only resolution you should think about. My professional New Year's Resolution for 2010 is to attend at least one networking event per month. Networking is part of the foundation in building solid relationships with your clients. Plus, you never know what information or connections your contacts have that you can leverage in connecting with your clients and future clients.

What is your professional New Year's Resolution for 2010?