Mine Your Own Business

Small Businesses and Facebook

Facebook has been a frequent topic on this blog, in fact we just did one last week an a recent upgrade to Facebook Business Pages. Now comes an article titled 3 Reasons Why Your Business Should Avoid Facebook that describes how a Facebook Business Page can be a liability rather than an asset for your small business. The article presents three reasons why it might be a good idea to avoid Facebook.

• It's Stressful for Consumers
• You're Hard to Find
• Privacy and Security

Make sure and read the  comments at the end of the article that present some more ideas on the value of Facebook for your small business.  Two comments are in favor of a Facebook Business Page and actually have some figures to back up why they feel it is certainly is an asset. One other comment presents pros and cons of your business being on Facebook. So after reading the article and the comments how do you feel about your small business and Facebook?

More Small Business Tech Advice

We did a posting earlier this year titled Small Business Tech Advice about some technologies to avoid in 2011. We've also posted frequently on such tech things as the importance of frequent computer back ups, computer security, software licensing, power backup, and many other tech topics. Now comes a new article from PCWorld that provides a pretty comprehensive list of 15 common tech mistakes that a lot of small businesses make. We won't go into the whole list here, but I have some personal experience on tip number seven, Not researching your printer so I'll focus on that one.

A technically challenged friend of mine (not that I'm a wizard by any means) recently bought a new computer and was having trouble getting his old inkjet printer to work, so he asked me for a recommendation. I suggested a laser printer for many reasons based on my personal experience. I have an 11 year old laser printer that has been incredibly reliable over the years and you never have to clean print heads with a laser printer, so reliability was a big factor in my recommendation.

Another factor is that a laser printer is more cost effective in the long run. While it is more expensive up front, the cost per copy is much less. My wife has a combination inkjet printer and scanner that I think cost us less than $150 (I've seen them on sale for under $100). Imagine my shock when I had to replace both inkjet cartridges and it cost me $80! I know you can have them refilled, but I had a bad experience with that with a different printer so I stayed away from that option.

The laser printer is a whole different story. The one I have has two different capacity toner cartridges so you can save some money by buying the high yield cartridge which will print 2400 copies. You can save additional money ($34.00 vs $54) by purchasing a recycled toner cartridge as opposed to a new one. As opposed to the refillled inkjet cartridges, I've been using these for years with absolutely no problems.

There is a great link in the article to a study PCWorld did comparing the cost per page of inkjet vs laser. Inkjets cost 4-5 cents a page while they found that lasers cost 1-2.5 cents a page. Actually, according to my calculations for my old printer using recycled toner cartridges the cost drops down to .8 cents a page.

You say you need to print color? Simple, buy one of each and only use the inkjet when you have to have color. You'll pay for the other printer very quickly with the money you save on inkjet cartridges and in addition get better quality. The whole article is a great resource of information for your small business and there are many great links to get even more information on the fifteen tips.

 

Facebook Business Page Upgrade

I'm a big believer in duct tape (sometimes referred to as hundred mile an hour tape) so when I ran across an article from Duct Tape Marketing on an upgrade to Facebook it immediately caught my attention. Many small business owners have been proactive about social media and have created a Facebook Business Page and according to the article there are some major improvements that will be implemented by March 1st. The article goes on to describe some of the most important improvements.

• iframe Tabs for pages
• Look and feel
• Operation

There are many links in the article to help any small business in upgrading their Facebook Small Business Page before the changes take effect. The article makes the point that many of the changes may mean a move to separate business and personal profiles and stresses that all the changes are fluid. Some will stay, some will change over time, and some will disappear. The main thing is now is the the time to do your homework (or in this case business work?) to make sure you take full advantage of the upcoming changes.

Valentine's Day and Procrastination

We have a chain of pharmacies here in the midwest named Walgreens which has a little bit of everything and they seem to be everywhere. In fact, I was curious and did a search by zip code and there were seven within three miles of my zip code. So what is the relationship between Walgreens, Valentine's Day, and procrastination? The answer is simple, I always get my wife a Valentine's Day card at Walgreens.

One thing I've finally learned over the years is never to wait until the last minute to pick up a card for my wife on Valentine's day. I used to make the mistake of waiting until the day before, big mistake! All the husbands were three deep or so in front of the cards and it was a mad house of men waiting to get their chance at the cards. The other thing is the cards had been picked over and it was a problem because matching envelopes were sometimes missing.

I think I've fnally learned my lesson because this year I bought my wife a card on Friday and there was only one other man looking for a card. It made the whole process much more pleasant. I was able to take my time and pick out a more thoughtful card because there was no press of men and I had more time. I think I'm finally making a little progress on my procrastination and if you have some time check out our previous posting, Help for Procrastinators that has a link at the bottom to almost 200 great quotations on procrastination.

I think I may have a little fun this afternoon and swing by the closest Walgreens and see how all the procrastinators are doing just to remind me to not put off buying a card next year.

 

A Simpler Way to Survey

Small business owners know how important customer feedback is for making sure you are satisfying your customers. Surveys are one of the best ways to determine how successful your small business is in this crucial area. The problem is getting people to take surveys since I know that I am not willing to take many of the surveys that pop up when I visit websites. The reason I don't participate in surveys very often is that frequently surveys are complicated and long and I don't want to waste time filling one out. Incentives sometimes have worked on me in the past, but a new survey tool for iPhone, iPad, and Android may make surveys more attractive for your customers so maybe incentives won't be needed.

Funnel Makes Web Surveys That Are Fun describes how the new survey tool takes care of the two issues mentioned above since the surveys are simple and short by design. This makes people more willing to take the survey. The article goes on to describe two other advantages of Funnel. One is that it relies on touching rather than clicking which the developers state is a much more natural experience. Second, later versions will also will use things only available with mobile devices such as geolocation. We saved the best for last, though, the first version is free to encourage people to try out Funnel. If you are interested, Funnel launches next week.

 

A Different Valentine’s Day Gift – Donate Blood

I’ve been donating blood on a regular basis since 1998 and am now in the habit of donating almost the maximum of six times a year. In fact before my children grew up and moved out, whenever the Red Cross would call the kids would tell me “the vampires are on the phone again” (I thought about using that for the title for this posting but decided it wasn’t very business like). Getting people to donate blood on a regular basis has got to be one of the toughest sells of any business or organization and the Red Cross came up with a great idea last year to get people to donate more frequently. They came up with Red Cross Racing where you get points for donating and can cash in the points for prizes or donate your points for the military (I did both last year).

 The program must have worked pretty well for two reasons. The first reason is that they are continuing and even expanding the program this year. The second reason is that Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center (their only competition) came out with a similar program this year. I guess the old adage “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” really is true.

 Both organizations are missing something else they could promote to possibly increase donations. They should emphasize that men that donate blood on a regular basis reduce the risk of certain kinds of cancer and heart disease. It seems that men can have too much iron in their bodies and regular blood donations can help control their iron levels. So men that donate blood on a regular basis can earn prizes and possibly improve their health. Of course the main reason to donate if you can is that there is a continuing need for blood In fact, due to the rough winter most of us are experiencing there is an especially urgent need for blood donations right now.

New Program from Facebook

Facebook Places was launched late last year for the iPhone and has since expanded so that you can use Places on touch.facebook.com or the Facebook App for  BlackBerry, Android, HP webOS or Windows Phone 7. If you're not familiar with Facebook Places and would like more information, visit the Facebook website or this article we ran across when Places was first released.  Originally there wasn't much incentive for users to use Places, but now Facebook has followed up with a beta version of a program called Facebook Deals.

How to Build Business with Facebook Deals from Entrepreneur provides a lot of informaion on Deals and why it can be such a valuable tool for any small business. The article describes how Deals offers four different types of deals.

• Individual Deal
• Friend Deal
• Loyalty Deal
• Charity Deal

Allowing four different types of deals greatly increases the options available for any small business owner. Don't miss the link at the bottom of the article that will take you to the Facebook website so you can set up Facebook Deals for your business.

A Surprising Fact about American Manufacturing

Those of you who read this blog or are familiar with Tacony Corporation know that we brought production of vacuums back to St. James, Missouri some time ago. We recently brought production  of sewing cabinets from Australia to Chicago, Illinois so we are continuing to support manufacturing in the United States. We were under the impression that China had surpassed us in manufacturing and so posted Bucking the Trend in December of last year.

Imagine our surprise when we ran across an article titled the U.S. still leads the world in manufacturing productivity that describes how America is still number one in manufacturing and that we outproduce number 2 China by a whopping 40%. I'm sure you're thinking how is this possible, after all almost everything we buy has Made in China on the box.

The article goes on to explain that the reason for this is two fold. First, U.S. manufacturers have been ranked near the top in productivity gains for the last thiry years. Second, we've also focused on producing expensive and complex goods (think health-care products, jet engines, etc.) and left low profit margin consumer electronics, clothes, toys, and shoes to other nations.

We have another example of production in the U.S. and why it hasn't moved overseas. Tacony poduces a lot of CDs and DVDs both to sell and to support our many products. Several years ago we determined that we could save a lot of money by bringing the production in house. We bought autoloading duplication equipment and two autoloading thermal printers and the savings have been substantial.

The two thermal printers are made in the U.S. so that falls into the category of expensive and complex goods mentioned above. There is another reason as well that the production is still in the U.S. as opposed to China or even Europe. I asked the vendor why no other companies had tried to copy these excellent printers. They explained that the manufacturer was very aggressive in defending their patents and that they had come up with a specific technology for high quality thermal prining on CDs and DVDs.

 

Website Design Reminder

OK, so you've gone to the trouble of creating a company website or paying someone to design one for you and you've got a great homepage that effectively communicates your site's purpose. What you may not know or had forgotten is that many of your visitors don't come in through your homepage. They probably used a search engine to find information on the products your company sells, so they landed on a page for the product or service they were searching for. An article from Entrepreneur stresses that and provides  more information on how you should design all your pages.

The article describes how your site should have a clear purpose, whether if is information about your products or selling them. Once that has been established, every page should communicate that purpose and point visitors to the intended call of action.  The article goes on to provide six Interior Page Must-Haves about half way through the posting on the right hand side of the page that give more ideas on the elements each and every page on your site should have. By following the tips in this article your whole site will be an extension of that great homepage you've created and make your site a much more effective tool.

Selling Your Business Part Two

We posted on the rather dismal prospects of selling your business during the current economic situation  with an article titled Selling Your Business. The economic situation seems to be improving slowly and so when we ran across an article from The New York Times that provided a detailed strategy for considering if it is time to sell business and how to do it we thought it was worth a second post on this topic. One sentence from the article caught my attention. "You only sell your business once."

The article suggests that any small business owner considering selling their business should ask themselves three questions:

• Can Your Business Be Sold?
• Are You Ready to Sell?
• What's Your Business Worth

The most difficult of the three question is the last one due to how different each small business is. Markets are different, locations are different, etc. The article provides some tips on coming up with a reasonable valuation of the worth of your business.

The last part of the article gives some tips on promoting the sale of your business and making sure potential buyers are qualified. This may be one of the most imporant parts of the transaction.