Mine Your Own Business

Web Site Suicide

This is not a posting on instructions on how to commit suicide posted on a Web site, although there are instructions on almost everything posted on the Internet. Actually it is an article from Business Week with Web site recommendations to avoid repelling customers from your Web site. Most articles take the approach of attracting customers to your site, so this reverse approach is something very different from the usual article.

The article makes the point that if you follow some of the tongue in cheek suggestions in the article that any small business will "succeed" in repelling customers as opposed to attracting new customers. The good news is that it also gives some recommendations on keeping customers coming back to your Web site on a regular basis.

Something Really Scary

Halloween is over, but here is something really scary. You go into work on Monday morning and turn on your computer and nothing happens or you get the dreaded blue screen of death. When was the last time you did a back up? Here is an article that describes just how important regular back up of our computer hard drives is especially if you are a small business owner. In fact, a recent poll finds that 76% of small business owners have lost information due to defective drives and that more than half never recover any of the lost data.

There are more backup options available than ever before. An external hard drive with backup software is a great option for backing up your entire system, as mentioned in  the article. You can use a thumb drive to back up essential files. There was an 8GB thumb drive advertised in a local paper for $25 this weekend so this is really a low cost option. Another backup possibility is on line backup either through your anti virus software or many of the many companies on the Internet. Just do a Google search on backup software and you will find find numerous options. One way or another, be safe and find some way to back up your data to avoid a really scary situation.

Social Media and Small Business

We did a posting on October 14th on Customer Contact Options where we mentioned social media, but focused on the best use of e-mail and actually making a phone call. We got a comment from one of our readers that they actually thought the best method of communication was some of the new social media and provided several excellent reasons.

Now Reuters reports on a recent survey of small businesses and the results were surprising. While overall use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedln have increased, three quarters of small businesses have not found such sites useful for increasing business. There are a lot of other very interesting statistics in the article about how small businesses are using company Web sites, advertising,  e-mail marketing, and other methods to increase business.

Customer Contact Options

Way back on May 27th of this year we did a posting on all the different social media options that have become available in recent years such as Twitter and Facebook (you can revisit the posting here). Now comes a good article on some ideas on the best way to contact a customer, is it a phone call, e-mail, or one of the new methods now available? The recommendation in the article is to try to determine the option that might be most appropriate for the situation or simply ask the customer.

If you're not currently using one of the new social media options, how do you decide between a phone call or e-mail?  We recently had an issue with a thermal printer that prints directly on a CD and we found that a combination of phone calls and e-mail worked the best.

We used e-mail initially to provided serial numbers, invoice numbers, and other warranty information. That way we established some documentation of the situation and we were also in different time zones so that was another consideration. E-mail is probably not the best option if the situation is very complicated or if it would take a two page e-mail.

We then used phone calls to actually speak to a person to explain some of the more complicated parts of the issue and to troubleshoot the problem with a technician. In this instance we used both options to  more efficiently resolve a very complicated issue.

More Google Tools

We did a posting on July 16th this year on a Slick new Google Tool (you can click on the link if you missed it).  Now Google announces that they have upgraded the Small Business Network to help small business owners and included a small business toolkit. The toolkit helps small business owners solve some of their largest business concerns. For some examples read the whole article here.

The article also describes how the revamped Small Business Network helps small business owners keep up on upcoming legislation and public policy issues via an e-mail sign up on the Small Business Toolkit page. As we all know (or should know) there are all kinds of government policies that can have a dramatic impact on small businesses, so make sure and check out the great links in the article. The comments at the bottom of the article are worth checking out as well.

Scary Security Alert

We all know that the Internet can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be a real problem sometimes with spam e-mail, viruses, spy ware, etc. We recently came across a scary article that describes how NACHA - the Electronics Payments Association has warned members that cybercriminals are stepping up their attempts to steal online banking credentials, such as usernames and passwords from small businesses by using some new hacking tools. NACHA is not the only association to send out such an alert, a similar one was sent out to members of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

The article then goes on to provide some of the details on how the cybercriminals are accessing usernames and passwords and thinks the reason they are targeting small businesses is their relative lack of certain security safeguards that a large corporation might employ. The really scary thing is that sometimes the comprised security is not immediately obvious so a complete takeover of a business account can take place. The stolen funds then are frequently sent overseas.

The final portion of the article describes some ways to reduce the risk of such and attack and makes some very important recommendations. The article is definitely worth reading and you can read the whole thing here. Just don't read it right before going to bed, it might give you nightmares.

Web Site Tips

Remember the Internet way back in the days of gopher, Archie, VERONICA, and JUGHEAD? A few of the major milestones of the Internet were in 1991 a new protocol based on hypertext became the World Wide Web, in 1992 Delphi became the first national commercial online service to offer Internet access to subscribers followed later by AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe. But probably one of the most important developments was in 1993 with a graphical browser named Mosaic and the rest, as they say, is history.

So what does all this have to do with Web site tips? The very brief history above just shows quickly our world has changed since the early 90's due to the explosion of the Internet and that even small businesses can reap great benefits by having an on line presence. Here is an article that gives 4 Web site errors that should be avoided and even provides some inexpensive ideas for creating your first Web site.

So do you already have a site for your business, and if not are you planning one in the near future?

Slick new Google tool

We did a posting on April 22nd on favorite computer downloads and mentioned that Google Earth was a fantastic tool. As usual, here's a link to the posting in case you want to read the original posting. Now Google has come up with a new Google Gadget (try saying that three times fast) that makes it easier for  customers find your business. The article provides a link to this particular Google Gadget so you don't have to search for it.

The second part of the article provides a link to a brief review of the gadget and the review describes how to create a Directions page to make it easy for search engines to map out you location. So not only customers, but search engines as well will find it easier to find your location if you follow their directions.

More E-mail Tips

We've done a few postings on e-mail in the past few months. On April 21st we posted about an article that focused on the importance of effectively revising an e-mail in order to make it more likely that your e-mail would actually be read. On May 12th we posted on an article on how to do more effective e-mail newsletters. Both of the postings are in the archives of Mine Your Own Business if you would like to read the original posting.

Today's posting is about another article in BusinessWeek with tips on writing e-mail that get a reaction. Why another posting on e-mail? Simply because we all know how much of the e-mail we get is ignored and because e-mail is still a very important means of communication even with all the other social media that is now available.

So what's all the Twitter about?

One definition of twitter from my ancient Webster's dictionary (copyright 1966) is "to talk in a chattering fashion", but lately the word has taken on a whole new meaning. This posting is about two articles, one from USA Today and one from a local newspaper that present two rather different viewpoints on Twitter and social networking in general.

The USA Today article provides a brief summary of all the new social networking tools on the Internet with a great deal of emphasis on how Twitter is expanding rapidly. The article from the local newspaper has a little less serious view of Twitter, saying it could follow the course of the CB radio fad of the 1970s and proposing a very interesting test to judge Twitter's staying power.

So what do you think of all the new social networking tools, will some of them become indispensable and if so what are the ones that will?