Utah Business Networking

In today’s current economy, whether you believe we have bottomed out in a recession and are now starting to move into recovery or you believe that a recession is still in full effect, managing your business’ cash flow is by far one of the most important factors that must be considered every day. It has become quite difficult for small business owners to get a loan from traditional lending sources. Even your wealthy uncle or grandpa are not so quick to lend you the additional cash to make payroll or pay your taxes.

So what can you do? Manage your cash flow. In theory this is a simple equation. Collect cash (receivables) as fast as possible and hold off making payments until the due date. Perhaps you are already doing that. Now you need to ask yourself, “What can I do to extend my cash flow cycle?” Here are a few tips:

• Talk to your vendors and see if you can change your terms. A few extra days can help ensure that there is enough cash to take advantage of your trade discount and not overdraw your bank account.
• Review the terms you have with your customers. Is there any room for you to shorten your terms? If so, make adjustments as you see fit.
• Analyze each new customer to determine their ability to pay. If you question their ability, maybe cash on delivery is the best option until a rapport is established.
• Spend the time and energy to collect on your receivables. Click here for an article that provides more tips on collections.
• Manage the float. Float is the time that it takes for mailing, processing, and clearing of checks of a related payment.
• Consider the use of a lock-box system. This can provide for a more timely deposit of receipts.
• Review your cash position at the beginning and end of each day along with your receivables and payables. Prioritize who needs to be paid, where you can take advantage of trade discounts, which customers are over their terms, and outline the tasks you need to take to collect and make payments.

As an outsourced controller and consultant for small businesses, one of the first items I look at is the cash position of a company. There is nothing more wasteful then spending hundreds of dollars in bank overdraft fees. If you are struggling with cash flow, taking the time to better manage the cycle. The money you are spending for bank fees could be used to help pay down accounts payable, taxes, or even take a draw for yourself. Remember the equation and review your specific circumstances everyday.

Written by: Charles D. McKenrick – CDM Accounting & Bookkeeping – www.CDMAccounting.com

For those of you that don’t know, there are three ways to communicate on Twitter -

1.  the broadcast tweet everyone can see

2.  the @ tweet everyone can see, but is directed at a particular person

3.  the direct message or DM.

The honest truth is there are a lot of spammers on Twitter, but they’re pretty easy to manage by creating lists or unfollowing. Direct messages on the other hand are a real dilemma. I’m using a service to autofollow people based on targeted keywords. That means I’m building a list of people to follow in hopes they will follow me back. If they don’t within a certain period of time, my software automatically unfollows.

The dilemma is during the follow, I get sent a direct message and it pops up in my email. Every single autofollow that has sent a direct message has been automatically generated or spammy. People who use Twitter ignore direct messages. I send them straight to the trash.

How can a marketer use direct messaging effectively if nobody reads them? I don’t think they can. So should we ignore this useful piece of technology? Perhaps.

I know I don’t have a direct message set up. I have seen a few interesting ones. My favorite was the one that admitted it was a bot, but invited me to connect on Facebook. I didn’t, but I still thought it was a good idea.

Matt Singley has a suggestion for Twitter, allow a separate controller for direct messages so a user can turn it off without unfollowing.

Please give your users the ability to turn direct messages on and off globally, and when on, give us the ability to select who can and cannot send us direct messages. I want to be able to follow people without them having the ability to send direct messages to me.

What do you think about direct messaging on Twitter. Have you found an effective way to use it? Do you know about it? Do you read them? Let me know in the comments.

Social Media is by far the largest and probably the most misunderstood concept of this generation. I grew up in an age where, you either walked over to someone, wrote them a letter, or called them on the phone. Personal touches were important to me. If you took the time to write, or stop by, it showed a little pride in yourself. Phone calls were kept short, and the use of please and thank you were in great abundance. Then comes Social Media, the biggest change since e-mail and IM. Just like we have seen some losses in the personal touches of the tools of the past; it is important to remember what it teaches us as a reminder for our futures. Hopefully, all of us have learned some etiquette. I have seen some mistakes from time to time and you can use this small list to clear up any confusion you might have left: Social Media is to develop relationships of trust. Social Media is supposed to be social, not a forum for pure advertising, Spam, and other annoying practices. Social Media is personal. This means you shape who you are on-line and off-line. Keep your dirty laundry to yourself, and business and family separate. Social Media is about catering to interest. Watching TV as a status makes me snore, there is no big deal about that. Social Media is collaboration. If you only post things about yourself, you are probably the only person looking at it. Social Media is open. People from all walks of life will see, and may not understand what is being portrayed. For example, sarcasm never bodes well. Social Media is about friendships. People like to hear from you about others too. Gratitude goes far. Social Media is about quality experiences. People always have a wide variety of things to do make sure their time is well spent. Social Media is about progress. It should be used to promote more than just awareness but to lead into action. Social Media is interactive. Please treat as a two-way form of communication. Social Media is about sincerity. Know words like: puffery, flattery, embellishments, and tales, yarns, and countless others and please refrain. Social Media is about creating. You create an attitude, a reputation, a look, a message, a genre, a purpose, mission, etc. (People call this branding.) Social Media is about targeting who you care about. By trying to say your audience is everyone, where in reality you are unable to touch anyone. Social Media is about truth. You can’t spin, doctor, patch or change what really happened. It is always better to say, what you will do to fix it. Social Media is a reference. What people say back to you, or whether you pay attention to them means a lot. Social Media is the future. This is an integrating function to social skills, in being able to perform in the circles that one travels. There will always be basics to remember, and the simple politeness of getting back to people. People is what makes life more enjoyable, and a little less lonely. You want to spend your time with someone who is genuine and real, not just an avatar. Put the Social back in Social Media. Take care of your followers, and they in turn will care for you.

Justin Hale loves to spend time with his wife, and three children. He is currently doing research for the Utah Shakespearean Festival. He works for EmergingPR a public relations firm for small business. To learn more about him see his profile.

The big news in politics yesterday was the contest for Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts.  Kennedy held the seat for a number of decades, but the race turned out to be quite tight in the ordinarily “blue” state.

On Monday, the Huffington Post suggested it could come down to effective use of social media.

So it’s fascinating to watch Martha Coakley’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts basically ignore new media in favor of the old playbooks that elected Ted Kennedy to the seat.

Of course there is much more to the race: Politics and platforms and personal connections are important. But didn’t Obama for America teach us that the Web has the power to push a candidate over the top? Obama also showed the importance of young people (whose communications of choice is digital).

Much like I did the other day, the author credits Barack Obama’s win in 2008 to effective use of technology; particularly Internet based technology.  He went forward with some social media numbers;

As I compare the morning before election day, @MarthaCoakley has 3,520 Twitter followers compared to @ScottBrownMA with 10,214 followers. Coakley counts 14,487 Facebook fansto Brown’s 76,700 fans. Advantage Brown by more than three to one.

Brown didn’t win the election with a three to one margin, but he did win.  Now both sides are trying to figure out why.

Brown won 52 percent to 47 percent. Turnout was exceptional for a special election in January: More voters showed up at the polls Tuesday than in any non-presidential general election in Massachusetts since 1990.

The Huffington Post credits Brown’s social media campaign and points out Coakley pretty well ignored the opportunity.

How do college students communicate? Facebook and SMS of course! Yet these two forms of communications played absolutely no formal part in the rally. The brochure that was handed out had no web addresses or social media sites. At the rally, Coakley fans were asked to vote. They were asked to volunteer at phone banks. They were asked to talk to neighbors and friends.

But were the many college students in the crowd told to talk up the Coakley campaign on Facebook, the college student communications tool of choice? No. Were people at the rally asked to tweet? No. Were they asked to join Coakley’s fan page? No.

The Coakley campaign is underestimating the importance of social media and the new rules of marketing and PR.

That strategy looks like a blueprint for political social media campaigns.  Ask and you shall receive.

This is a valuable lesson moving forward for political campaigns of all stripes.  In Utah, Democrats are seeking to unseat a non-elected Republican governor and gain the statehouse for the first time in 30 years.  If social media is any barometer, Peter Coroon’s vibrant Facebook page is out polling Herbert’s ghost town of a page 2,368 to 219.  One of these candidates “gets” social media.  One doesn’t.  Guess who I think will win in November, despite the perceived odds?  If Massachusetts can elect a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy, a Democrat leading the state of Utah isn’t farfetched.

The rhetoric is heating up on both sides after Tuesday’s loss in Massachusetts.  In an email sent out today to Democrats, Mitch Stewart wrote,

Yesterday’s disappointing election results show deep discontent with the pace of change. I know the OFA community and the President share that frustration.

We also saw what we knew to be true all along: Any change worth making is hard and will be fought at every turn. While it doesn’t take away the sting of this loss, there is no road to real change without setbacks along the way.

On the other side, Republicans are crediting the win to voter discontent with the new Presidential administration and the healthcare debate.  I submit, it’s the effective communication of issues and platforms to voters and TV ads and robo-calls are not the way to do it any more.  Advertising is advertising whether you’re a small business, big business or political business.  If the old way of advertising is failing for businesses, it’s going to fail for you too.

People are fearful of change.  They don’t like change.  In today’s advertising world, change is social media.  Don’t be afraid of social media, embrace it.  They say Google is your friend.  I say Facebook and Twitter are too.

It’s not often I give away a piece of information as critical as this, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Twice this week I was called into consult with clients by my SEM partners who only sell paid search.

They needed to know why their campaigns weren’t working.  A successful SEM campaign has three components:

1. Keyword research

2.  A compelling ad

3.  A compelling landing page.

Today I’m going to discuss the three components of a killer Google ad campaign.  You’ve already done the keyword research, so now it’s time to write that ad.

Google ads are tricky because you’ve got 75 characters to capture the reader’s attention, build trust, make an offer and get them to click through to your landing page.  That’s about half a tweet!

Here’s how you do it.

1.  Capture attention by using capital letters at the beginning of each word.  You can’t use all caps.  You can also use punctuation like a ? or !, but not bunched together.

2.  Build trust by repeating the search term in your ad title.  Google automates this for you.  Use it.

3.  Make an offer that capitalizes on the why of your business.  You’ve got two to four words to explain.  Be brief.

4.  Specific call to action.  Do you want your visitor to click through to your landing page or call you?  Let them know!

Here’s an ad I just found:

801 Phone Finder

Search Free Any 801 Number
Cell, Landline, Unpublished & More.
www.Intelius.com/ReversePhoneLookup

Does it meet the criteria I mentioned?

It repeated my search term which included 801.
It gave the “why” or unique selling proposition – cell phones, unpublished, etc.
It gave a call to action – search free.

I would have changed the link at the bottom to make the URL simple, but that’s just me.

There you have the easy and effective way to write pay-per-click (PPC) ads for Google!

Bonus:

Writing ads is trial and error, so multiple testing has to be put in place.  What kind of ads are your customers going to click on?  I don’t know!  Let’s test.  Google makes it easy and shows the best performing ads more frequently.  Be sure to write multiple ads and let your customer tell you which ones work the best.

The “what,” “why” and “how” of article marketing.

I’ll be teaching a class on article marketing this Tuesday at BetaLoft in downtown Salt Lake at 2 pm.  It’s free to attend, but space is limited.  If you’re interested, please RSVP on Meetup.comor Facebook.

Here’s what you can expect to learn:

• How to title articles for maximum impact.
• Which article submission sites to use.
• Is there a duplicate content penalty?
• The quandry of quality vs. quantity.
• How to write interesting articles that will get published through syndication.

Plus much more. Don’t miss it!

From sexy American made cars to a rotovirus vaccine, U2’s lead singer Bono covered quite the gamut of predictions for the next ten years.  The rock star and social activist penned an amazing article for the New York Times last week that identified some major macro trends we should all pay attention to.  Bono clearly has his pet projects and the one trend that really stood out to me was his comment on people power.

As Americans we’re fortunate not to live under a dictatorship or false democracy.  The Iranian elections last year and the protests that rose up afterwards are another hint the world’s people yearn to breathe free regardless of their current government.

Bono wrote:

A lot of us have seen or lived the organizational chart of the last century, in which power and influence (whether possessed by church, state or corporation) are concentrated in the uppermost point of the pyramid and pressure is exerted downward. But in this new century, and especially in some parts of the developing world, the pyramid is being inverted. Much has been written about the profits to be made at the bottom of the pyramid; less has been said about the political power there. Increasingly, the masses are sitting at the top, and their weight, via cellphones, the Web and the civil society and democracy these technologies can promote, is being felt by those who have traditionally held power. Today, the weight bears down harder when the few are corrupt or fail to deliver on the promises that earned them authority in the first place.

As a society we discuss transparency as a desirable quality.  The real life application of everybody knowing our every move is harder to transition to.  That pressure is even greater for people of power.  The most difficult position is that of a dictator in today’s world.  After the Iran elections in 2009, protesters turned to Twitter when regular Internet communication was cut.  The message was loud and clear.  Dissension can not be squelched.  If you give every man, woman and child a phone, they will communicate…positive or negative.

Fortunately in this world dictatorships and tyranny are on the downswing, but we all have to deal with someone or some company that fails to deliver on promises.  That’s the application I’d like to discuss today.

2004 was the first time social media ever impacted an American election.  It was actually a negative impact.  Remember the swiftboat blogs?  The 2008 election was won by the effective use of technology.  Some may argue it was an anti-incumbent sentiment, but I maintain the difference between Obama on the ticket and Clinton boiled down to technological strategy.

On Tuesday when Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon announces his candidacy for the Utah Governor position, you can actually attribute a portion of his decision to social media.  Besides individual pleas for him to run, two citizen activists started a Draft Peter Corroon for GovernorFacebook page.  Along with polling and the other market research one does before running for office, I can’t help but think that fan page with over 1100 members factored into his decision.

The Salt Lake Tribune thinks it helped as well because they mentioned it in their article Friday,

The mayor’s candidacy would delight Misty Fowler, who helped create the “Draft Peter Corroon for Governor in 2010″ Facebook page that now has more than 1,100 followers. “Mayor Corroon will make an absolutely amazing governor,” said Fowler, who added she and many of Corroon’s Facebook followers would readily donate money and time to the campaign.

At the time of publication, nothing had been confirmed by Corroon’s camp.  Later in the day, citizen Fowler actually broke the news on her blog and made the comment on her Facebook page “happy to have been able to get the official and verified news out before any news outlet. That made a great day better.”  Misty is just a regular person just like you or I who is simply voicing her opinion.

Social media is going to help us all become more active with government.  Government isn’t just about elections, it’s about how we live together as a community.  CNN had a terrific piece a little while ago about this -

A host of larger U.S. cities from San Francisco to New York quietly have been releasing treasure troves of public data to Web and mobile application developers.

That may sound dull. But tech geeks transform banal local government spreadsheets about train schedules, complaint systems, potholes, street lamp repairs and city garbage into useful applications for mobile phones and the Web.

The aim is to let citizens report problems to their governments more easily and accurately; and to put public information, which otherwise may be buried in file cabinets and Excel files, at the fingertips of taxpayers.

Like Bono suggested, this technology is inverting the power pyramid.

By some accounts, the trend is turning the government-voter relationship on its head and could usher in a new era of grassroots democracy.

“I see [these applications] as the death of a passive relationship with government,” said Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, a group promoting Gov 2.0 apps.

“Instead of people saying, ‘Well, it’s the government’s job to fix that’ … people are taking ownership and saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Government is us. We are government. So let’s take a responsibility and start changing things ourselves.’ “

I’ve always considered the Internet to be the “great equalizer.”  With social media products, we’re moving past equality and into influence.  This is going to be amazing for the world by making it a much better place.