Last month, we took a look at the smartphone apps that will help you save time and money with gas, GPS navigation and mapping, productivity and time tracking, contact management, note taking, travel planning, invoicing and credit card payments. This month, we will look additional categories such as marketing, finance, document management, product management, security and news.

Marketing

“Keeping in contact with our magazine clients and readers is vital and even though email is still effective, many are using social media more and more to read what is happening in real time,” says Mike Macrone, advertising rep for American Liquid Waste Magazine. “That is why Twitter and Facebook are so important to our business and since I’m always on the go, using both on my Blackberry is the best way to stay in touch.”

“Both apps were pre-installed on my Blackberry and easy to setup (just remember you need to have existing accounts with Facebook and Twitter before everything is setup).”

“Similar to email on a Blackberry, both apps are deeply integrated into the phone, which means whenever I receive a “Reply” in Twitter or someone likes one of our posts on Facebook, I receive an instant alert notifying me. This is a major positive and helps to keep me up on what is going on.”

Twitter—(free) iPhone/iPad, Android, Blackberry—Twitter makes it easy to stay up-to-date with your followers and Tweet updates that even include a photo. You have almost complete access to Twitter on your phone, meaning you can see what is trending and even search in real-time.
Review from Mike Macrone, Advertising, American Liquid Waste.

Facebook—(free) iPhone/iPad, Android, Blackberry—While Facebook does the same as Twitter, I do have one major issue with the Facebook app, which is, I can only use the app through my account and not my business ‘Page.’ This is a major stumbling block, as I want to cultivate and keep in contact with followers/friends on my business activity. Now, there is talk that Facebook is working on improving their mobile apps in the near future, so I’m looking forward to seeing things improve for more business activity.
Review from Mike Macrone, Advertising, American Liquid Waste.

LinkedIn—(free) iPhone/iPad, Andriod, Blackberry—Allows you to view your entire network as well as send and receive updates. Ranked as one of PC Magazine’s Top 10 business apps.

Finance

MSP Cost Analysis Calculator—($.99) iPhone/iPad—You can show your client their true cost of fixing something versus replacing it.

Bills Monitor—(free) iPhone—Log your bills in this app, you can track or check them, it will remind you to pay your bill after setting its reminding days. This has been billed as a top app.

Mint.com Personal Finance Tool—(free) iPhone, Android—Great reviews by Lifehacker, App Store Rewind, PC Magazine Editor’s Choice, Kiplinger’s Must-Have Money Apps. Allows you to track, budget and manage your money in one place, so you can see where you’re spending and where you can save. Open an account, add your bank, credit, loan and retirement accounts, and Mint will automatically pull in and categorize transactions. It’s safe, secure and easy to keep your finances organized.

DataMan—(free) iPhone/iPad—Track your data usage in real time and works with different carriers. Pro version gives you real-time background alerts and can alert you the moment you exceed your usage threshold. According to my account with AT&T, I used more data in a single month than DataMan said I did. I’m not sure which is correct, but I’m guessing that the data that AT&T says I used is the one that counts with them.
Review by Jennifer Taylor.

expensify.com/mobile—(free) iPhone, iPad, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry—Log mileage, file expense reports, and upload a limited number of receipts using your phone’s camera (a smart scanning system automatically extracts information like the date and the amount charged).

Abukai—($39 and up after free 30-day trail)—iPhone, Blackberry and Android—Expense reports are filed in three easy steps: take a picture of your receipt from a smartphone, submit it, and receive your finished expense report. Editor’s Choice winning app.

Document Management

LogMeIn—(free) iPhone/iPad—Access all of your computers over WiFi or 3G.

IDocuments Organizer—(free) iPhone/iPad—Allows you to manage documents, photos and information.

PocketCloud—($.99) Andriod 2.1 or higher—Allows users to create a personal cloud by providing a unified view of all your remote computers from a mobile device. It also provides for unlimited video, phone and audio transfers, opening remote files and creating or deleting folders and files.

Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite—($12.99 – on sale) iPhone—Allows you to view and edit MS Office documents.

Air Sharing—($9.99) iPhone/iPad—Allows you to use your iPhone/iPad as an external drive. You can “mount” remote file servers including Google Docs and others.

Project Management

Encamp—($9.99) iPhone—Gives you access to Basecamp’s features (project management tool) such as projects, messages, to-do lists and milestones. You can see an overview as well as your active and archived projects. You can also view files attached to your Basecamp projects.

Security

Pocket—(free) Andriod—Securely stores sensitive information such as bank information, passwords, prescriptions, locker combinations, etc. The information is only accessible via a master password that cannot be accessed locally.

CPI Security Intouch—(free app, but security packages vary) iPhone/iPad, Android, Blackberry—Allows you to arm and disarm your burglar alarm; receive email and text notifications when someone enters or leaves the room; control energy sources; monitor who is going in and out of the house; and more. If you set it up with their inTouch Video system, you can see who is going in and out of your home, office or warehouse.

News

News apps—(most are free) iPhone/iPad, Android, Blackberry—Most major newspapers and media outlets have a mobile version that will keep you up-to-date on breaking news.

If you didn’t see an app you like, then I have a website that you might want to check out. BestVendor.com is a free website that allows you to see the preferred apps and technology of your peers and other businesses. You do need a LinkedIn account to sign in and you need to share three of your favorite work apps.

Let us know if you found an app that has saved you time or money, jennifer@americanliquidwaste.com.

Story by Jennifer Taylor

Lost? Need gas? Need to invoice a customer?
There’s an app for that.

According to a study by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, small business owners who use mobile apps save an average of 5.6 hours per week. The study
also showed that employees save an average of 11.33 hours
per week.

“Hours of paper-pushing, administrative work, customer research, extra driving trips and unproductive down-time due to, for example, a lack of access to key documents, add up very quickly,” says SBE Council President and CEO Karen Kerrigan. “Mobile apps are allowing small business owners and their employees to get more time from their day and to focus on higher value work.”

The survey found that those small businesses are using:
• GPS navigation and mapping apps (68 percent)
• contact management (46 percent)
• remote document access (41 percent)
• travel planning (32 percent)
• banking and finance management (30 percent)
• social media marketing (27 percent)
• location-based services (23 percent)
• invoicing and time tracking (22 percent)
• delivery and shipment management (18 percent)
• expense tracking (17 percent) and
• processing credit card payments (13 percent).

To help navigate the thousands of apps available for businesses, we have researched and even tested some of these apps. The apps below are organized by category and will have a reviewer’s name if we were able to review it. Even if your phone isn’t listed, they may have expanded since publication. If you have an app that has saved your business time or money, then let us know by emailing Jennifer Taylor at jennifer@americanliquidwaste.com.

GAS

GasBuddy—(free) iPhone, Android, and Blackberry—Whether you have a small fleet of trucks or you just want to find the cheapest gas near you, this app is great. It shows you every gas station in your local area and its current prices per gallon.

GPS NAVIGATION AND MAPPING APPS

AroundMe—(free) iPhone and iPad—This handy app uses your phone’s GPS to locate stores around you. Need a coffee fix? Click on the Coffee Shops tab and it will find all of the coffee shops around you. Other categories include: Apple Retail Stores, Banks/ATM, Gas Stations, Restaurants and even Weather. The downside is that the categories aren’t always comprehensive particularly for restaurants. Review by Jennifer Taylor.

Client Locator—($4.99) iPhone—Once you set your destination on the map, you can see a list of clients in the area.

PRODUCTIVITY/TIME TRACKING

HoursTracker—($2.99) iPhone—Track your hours for a particular job. Simply press the “Clock In Now” button to start the timer. It does have a handy manual entry function in case
you forget. There are multiple viewing options to see where you’ve worked and for how long, and tallies your total time during that period. It has helped me track my time writing this article when I’ve remembered to use it. If you have multiple customers to see throughout the day, then it is a handy tool to have when you are billing by the hour or simply want to track your time. Review by Jennifer Taylor.

Clear—($.99) iPhone—Make a to-do list in order of importance. If something becomes more important, then you can easily slid it up. Make several lists and cross them out as you finish. I really like this app especially when I finish a task and mark it off. Review by Jennifer Taylor.

Sales on the Go Helper—($4.99 sale) iPhone—This app shows a person’s contact lists as pins on a map. It also allows you to keep a record of where you visited.

Shop Inspector—($13.99) iPhone—The default app comes with 50 tests. It allows you to take pictures and record audio. The upgrade app allows you to create your own tests. If you have an iPhone 4S, then you can dictate your audit.

CONTACT MANAGEMENT

Business Card Reader—($4.99) iPhone—Simply take a picture of a business card; the software will scan it, and its character recognition puts the right info into the right data fields for your phone’s contacts.

Business Card Reader—($9.99) Blackberry—Just take a photo of the business card and it is added to your contacts.

NOTE TAKING

Evernote—(free) iPhone, Android, and Blackberry—Gather notes, voice memos, ideas, or snapshots on your phone, and the app syncs them with your computer (PC or Mac).

The app also offers a voice-recording module and takes advantage of the iPhone’s camera to snap photos of things you want to remember. It was ranked as one of PC Magazine’s top 10 business apps.

Total Recall—($7.96) Android—Automatically or manually record calls, lectures or meetings, or leave yourself an audio note with Total Recall. The app works on most Android devices and even syncs with Evernote.

GroupMe—(free) iPhone, Android, Blackberry, even flip phones—It allows you to easily send a group text message to your staff, co-workers or members of a professional association. The messages appear as if you’re in a chat room, so everyone can see and respond to everyone else’s comments.

TRAVEL PLANNING

Kayak—(free) most phones—You may be used to the bigger sites, but my husband was able to find us a rental car at a third of the normal price. Kayak is a meta-search website that searches all of these sites at once, delivering the lowest-possible airfare in one simple click. Review by Jennifer Taylor.

CREDIT CARD PAYMENTS

iTerminal—The app is free, but an account with iTerminal will run you $25 per month, and each transaction costs 30 cents plus 2.29 percent of the total amount. It works via Wi-Fi and 3G, and it verifies credit card numbers as you enter them, giving instant feedback for approved or declined charges. The app supports all major credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Rated as one of PC World’s Top 10 business apps.

Square—(free) iPhone, iPad and Android—When you sign up, you will receive one free reader to plug into your phone. You can order additional readers or buy them from a retail store for $10 with a $10 rebate. You will pay 2.75 percent per transaction. Customers can opt to receive an email receipt. It works fairly well, but does better with iPhone 3Gs or above. Review by Jennifer Taylor.

INVOICES

FreshBooks—(free app; service has a free 30-day trial) iPhone, Android, Blackberry—You can send professional looking invoices to your clients. It automatically sends late payment notices. You can also pull your time and expenses into the invoice.

Invoice2Go—($9.99 after a free 30-day trail) iPhone/iPad—Create, preview and email professional invoices and estimates in seconds. Invoice2Go is a fast and easy way to estimate, bill, collect and report.

There are more than 20 built-in invoice styles to choose from, so it’s actually fun going through the choices, selecting your template and designing your own.

Look for part 2 in the May issue. For more detailed information, see the SBE Council study at www.sbecouncil.org.

Story by Jennifer Taylor

With the U.S. Department of Transportations’ ban on hand-held cellphone use by drivers of commercial vehicles taking effect in January, it’s important to review your driver rules and make any needed adjustments to reduce your liability.

Employers who allow their drivers to use hand-held cellphones can face penalties up to $11,000. Updating your employee handbook to include that a driver may not use a hand-held device will help you defend against a lawsuit. Encourage your drivers to pull over if they need to make a call or send a text.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 5,474 people died and almost half a million were injured during crashes with a distracted driver in 2009. They define distracted driving by someone who is “texting, using a cellphone or smartphone, eating or drinking, talking to passengers, grooming, reading (including maps), using a navigation system, watching a video, or adjusting a radio, CD player, or MP3 player.” However, texting seems to be the most distracting for a driver.

Some states hold a business owner liable any time an employee is driving a company-owned vehicle whether or not it was in the scope of their employment. Meaning that if your employee is supposed to go to a job site, but decides that he or she needs to run an errand, you are still liable if that employee has a wreck.

Over the years, if a business owner was found to have previous knowledge that an employee was unlicensed, incompetent, or had a history of reckless or drunk driving, and still allowed that employee to drive a company vehicle, then the business owner can be held liable.

If an employee has a wreck while operating a company vehicle, the employee’s cellphone habits could come into question. Investigators will certainly be interested in whether there was a cellphone in use at the time of the accident. They will look for clues at the scene of the collision. They may also investigate the driver’s cellphone records and even his history and habits to try and determine if phone use contributed to the collision. The more evidence there is that indicates that cellphone use was common for a particular driver, the more likely it will be for law enforcement or a jury to make the assumption that the company was aware of the cellphone use, did not take effective measures to stop it, and therefore contributed to the circumstances which resulted in the collision.

For your protection, it would be best to not allow those drivers to drive company vehicles or run errands on behalf of the company. Depending on the scope of their job, you may find those with undesirable records may need to be replaced by someone with a better driving record. Even if an employee is driving their own vehicle, but conducting business on behalf of the company, a business owner can still be held liable.

If your company uses smartphones for communication, you may consider a mounted device for your trucks as well as blue-tooth devices that will allow your drivers to talk hands-free if this is still an option in your state or city. Some municipalities have implemented radios for drivers who need to communicate with each other to reduce the temptation to check email, text, or other things.

However, there have been studies that have shown that hands-free cellphone use is not substantially safer than hand-held use (study conducted by VTTI). The University of Utah also concluded through their study that “using a cellphone while driving hand-held or hand-free delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08.”

Another way to help your driver avoid an accident is by making sure that your vehicles are properly maintained. A tire blowout or some other mishap could result in loss of control of the vehicle. Since the maintenance of a company vehicle is the responsibility of the business owner, failure to perform that maintenance and the negative consequences that arise from that failure is the owner’s responsibility.
You may also want to review insurance coverage for the company and the individual drivers to ensure that you have sufficient coverage in case of an accident.

Right now, special keys exist to prevent cellphone use and texting while driving. These were invented and marketed to parents to keep their teenage drivers in check, but can be used in business vehicles and commercial fleet vehicles to redirect calls and messaging and block outbound use.

The good news is that this ban, if followed, will reduce the likelihood that your drivers will be involved in an accident thereby reducing exposure to civil liability from someone getting injured or property being destroyed. It will also reduce the chances of damage to your trucks, and reduce traffic law violations which could result from driver inattention because they are paying attention to their phone instead of the speed limit, traffic lights, or traffic signs.

Story by Jennifer Taylor

It isn’t always enough to create and promote an outstanding product or service. Often, your sales approach matters just as much as what you’re selling. The most successful entrepreneurs create a connection with the customer by bringing their own personal touch to the sales process.

People buy from people they can relate to. When business owners skip out on that personal connection, they could very easily lose that prospective customer to another company, and quite possibly, one who took the time to create a relationship toward helping that prospect buy something rather than trying to just make the sale.

Here are seven tips on salesmanship that can help you develop that special rapport with potential customers:

Do as Mom & Pop would do.
If you long for the days of shopping at a local business where the owner knew your name and your family, try to emulate that experience in your own business, whatever type it may be. Remember one or two details about your customer and bring them up in conversation. For instance, if you know a customer has a son looking at colleges, ask for an update. People like to feel important, and it truly is the little things that count. Remembering little details about your customers will put you on the fast track to being viewed as a person who values them as a human being and not as a dollar sign.

Ask first, sell second.
Before you launch into a hard sell, do a little digging with your prospect. Ask some open ended questions that will allow your customer to explain what he’s looking for. Once you know that information, it’s much simpler to show how your product or service can satisfy his wants or needs. Asking the right questions is critical to relationship building, and the more skilled you are at utilizing open and closed ended questions, the stronger the relationship you will be able to create.

Master the art of courtship.
Selling is a lot like dating in that you have to woo customers and hope they return the attention. “Figure that for every 10 people you want to reach out to, three will want to set up appointments to hear more about your product,” says Mark Faust, author of Growth or Bust! Proven Turnaround Strategies to Grow Your Business.

Master the art of listening.
There’s nothing more insulting than feeling that you’re being ignored in a conversation. Asking someone a question and actually listening to the response, rather than formulating a response while the other person is speaking, is so important. In fact, small business owners may have a distinct advantage in connecting with customers because they are in touch with them so often.

Hit the pavement.
While it’s often much quicker and less stressful to email a potential customer, face-to-face meetings and networking are far more effective in creating meaningful connections. The internet and cell phones have broadened the playing field in terms of being able to access a further reaching pool of prospective customers, but the face-to-face meeting is still among the best ways for your business to establish relationships with decision makers.

Above all, be patient.
Good things come to those who wait, and like many important things in life, it takes patience to wait and develop lasting customer relationships. Fight the urge to hurry the process along. Take the time to explain how your product or service will benefit your prospective customer. Be patient as you go about cultivating this new contact. You never want to make a prospect feel rushed or hustled.

It’s January, the start of a new year, and now is a good a time as any to look back and reflect on the course your business took the previous twelve months. But it’s also a good time to put a plan in place for 2012. So, before you get lost in the details of a new social media blitz or great marketing campaign, take time to answer some very simple questions about your current plans and where you want to go with your business.

» How many customers or sales do you need to make today to turn a profit?
» How many do you need to break even?
» Do you have a system in place to generate consistent cash flow?
» How many prospects do you need in your sales pipeline to produce enough customers to make your profit margin?
» What is your profit margin?

If you can get a handle on these questions, you can get a handle on your business. And that will put you ahead of almost all business owners, and, most notably, ahead of your competition. Simply put, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and the most profitable and highest growth companies know their numbers on every level.

A harsh reality is that most business owners have no clue what their true numbers really are. They may have a gut feeling as to what they are, but they don’t really know. Why? Mainly because they’re afraid of what the numbers may reveal to them. However, to really prosper in business, you’re going to have to accept the notion that business is numbers, and by mastering your numbers, you can master your business. Here’s a little of what you need to know:

Your Numbers At The Moment
Figure out what your sales, cash flow and profit margins look like. Then begin focusing on what you can control.

What’s your best selling or projected best selling product and can you raise its price at least 10%? Do this and you’ll instantly start to boost profit margins. Afraid you can’t boost the price of your best selling product? The reality of that is, most of your customers won’t even notice the difference. And those who do will start falling off but that’s okay. They’re your lower on the totem pole, “C” and “D” type customers, whereas your “A” and “B” type customers are the good ones who’ll stick around. The C and D’ers are price conscious and will likely never be happy anyway. So let them go. Chances are, they will flock to your competition, where they will haggle about price and complain about service. Let them become someone else’s problem. That will allow you to start boost up the customer service experience with your current customer base, as well as convert new, quality prospects who come through your door.

Speaking of which, you do know how many prospects are out there for you, don’t you?

And how many would actually buy something? When you know this, you can start to manage the number known as your “sales conversion rate” with extra service and sales scripts to help guide your prospects through the sales process.

Plus, if you know you always convert 15% of prospects into a sale and you know you need 12 sales to make a profit, you can easily determine you’ll need 80 people through your doors on average to be profitable. Now your question becomes something you can act on, namely “How can I get 80 people through my doors?”

The Numbers Where You Want to Be
How much extra are you looking to make. For example, are you looking for an extra $10,000 in gross profit on a 25% profit margin? You’ll need to generate revenue of at least $40,000.

Are you a professional who charges $100 an hour and now wants to double your income? You might need to determine whether it is better for you to charge $200 over 2,000 working hours a year (highly unlikely given you can’t charge every working hour)—or charge $400 multiplied by 1,000 working hours a year (meaning you can take some time off once in a while). Now the questions become: Do you have the products, services or skill set to charge that amount? Can you reorient your marketing to target audiences both willing and able to pay that amount?

The Numbers in Your Plan of How to Get “There”
Sometimes the numbers will reveal your current skills and market conditions—or your current mix of products and services—just won’t support your targets.

Maybe you want to charge a higher rate per hour, but realize that you can’t until you add another level of product or service, or more expertise to your skill set. Or, maybe you’re the newest entrant in a category with a dozen seasoned competitors, and you’re all chasing after the same small pool of price-conscious customers. That’s not bad news—it’s a reality. But it will assist you in determining what you need to do to improve and enhance your professional skill set or to revamp your product and services mix. The numbers might show you that you can afford to hire a great salesperson and a bookkeeper while you network or leverage your greatest skills to build your business in new and innovative ways. Could you do that if you were physically in your business 12 hours a day? Probably not. But those opportunities won’t ever present themselves without a good handle on the numbers of your business.

So, do your homework before it’s assigned, so to speak, which means look at your numbers—cash flow, sales, leads, and you’ll be so far ahead of the curve you’re competition won’t even be able to see you way out there in the distance. Plus you’ll be better prepared for any challenges that inevitably arise. You’ll also be equipped to make better decisions with information that can help guide your gut—if that’s the way you prefer to do your decision making.

It may appear that certain industries are so packed with competition these days that it’s hardly worth jumping in. But don’t let a crowded market deter you. Follow one simple rule you learned as a child and your business will get noticed and hopefully, get ahead.

“One of these things is not like the other…” It is a lesson Sesame Street has been teaching and helping shape children’s minds for decades. But it is the most forgotten lesson on the small business landscape today. Apply it to your business, however, and watch your sales skyrocket.

There are two common factors in all business today that pose challenging for business owners. They are the overwhelming list of product choices and the challenge to get the consumer’s attention in a society rampant with attention deficit disorder.

A Sea of Choices
Stroll down any supermarket aisle today in America and the choice of products is overwhelming.

Need some toothpaste? You can choose tartar control, whitening with peroxide, freshening gel, sensitive teeth, baking soda whitener, all day protection, tartar and whitening, cavity prevention and many other combinations.

Starting to feel sick? Try a pain reliever, fever reducer, decongestant, sinus or stuffy nose, day or nighttime, flavors cherry or orange, tablets, capsules or liquid, flu, cough and cold, and countless combinations. Which one to choose?

According to Emily Nelson’s, April 20, 2001 article “Too Many Choices—Nine Kinds of Kleenex Tissue, Eggo Waffles in 16 Flavors; Blame Brand Managers” in the Wall Street Journal, over 31,000 products were introduced in the year 2000. The average grocery store now stocks over 40,000 products. This product explosion has led to an increased choice selection for consumers which has led to a major dilemma for small businesses to stand out.

ADD for the Consumer Set
Welcome to the age of information overload. Information is everywhere and it is not in short supply. With the internet, hundreds of channels on the TV, magazines by the thousands and loaded with advertisements, information is raining down on people in a torrent. The most limited commodity out there today is not talent, information, ideas or products—it’s attention. The ability to catch consumers’ attention and hold it is a scarce commodity.

In this attention deficient, over stimulated society most businesses miss the point. They believe if they work hard and do a good job, customers will come. Therefore, they’ve missed the fact that their marketing is exactly like their competitions’. For instance, a scan of a New York advertising directory for hundreds of carpet cleaners produced the following taglines, messages or unique sales propositions:
• We Do It All
• High Quality Carpet Cleaning
• Choose The Best
• Job Done Right
• Experience The Difference
• No Job Too Big or Small
• Number 1 in Carpet Care
• Reliable Service

Hard to know which one to choose when they all seem the same. So what is the answer to this overcrowded market dilemma? Back to Sesame Street we go.

The lesson of “One of these things is not like the others…” taught us at a young age to look for patterns and to single out the unusual. The lesson for small businesses today, then, is simple: be different, stand out and that’s the way you’ll get noticed.

In the list of carpet cleaners, which one of these things is not like the others? Zero. How can a consumer with little attention and multiple choices make a decision? The answer is that, quite often, they don’t.

A small business has a great opportunity to differentiate itself among the crowd, and here are five tips on how:

• Survey the Landscape: Compile a list of competitors’
marketing taglines and key messages. Group similar messages together for a portrait of the competitive offerings. Be sure to include indirect competitors who offer your customers an alternative choice.

• Brainstorm: Bring together a small group of advisors to brainstorm on alternative market positions. Look for ignored customer needs and simple focused ideas.

• Research the Target: After you have narrowed down your choices to a select few market positions, research the target market. Select markets that are distinct, growing and large enough size to be profitable.

• Develop the Tagline: A tagline is your one sentence pitch that briefly describes what your business does and who it’s for. Make your message stand out.

• Solicit Feedback: Talk to actual customers in the market and key industry experts for feedback. Look for the WOW factor…as in, “WOW, we need something like that!”

So the lessons we learn in childhood even pay off today. Put your business and its marketing message through the Sesame Street test and see how you stand out. Remember lack of attention and unlimited choice does not have to be your enemies. Use them as fuel to get creative and think outside the box in order to solve specific needs in your company’s market, and you’re sure to reap rewards.

First it was LinkedIn. Then it was Facebook. Now it’s Twitter. While the idea of signing up for and utilizing yet another social media tool may seem daunting, Twitter is one social media tool that business professionals utilize to promote their business in a way that is very much short and…tweet.

What is This Twitter and How Does it Work?
According to the official Twitter FAQ, “Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives.” Really, though, the possibilities are endless. Using 140 characters, friends can use Twitter to remain metaphorically close while geographically far away. People use Twitter as a micro-blogging tool, as a way to spread breaking news, or as a venue for a Twitter haiku…or two. Some people have even met their mate in the Twitterverse. Most of all, however, Twitter is the latest social media tool that can help grow your business.

As of March 2011, Twitter reported that an average of 500,000 people set up a new account each day, and, at present, 200 million users are generating over 200 million tweets every day. For your business: that translates into a lot of opportunity.

Twitter allows you to post updates, which are called tweets, as often as you’d like, using those 140 characters or less. When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets. Bottom line: Twitter is a constant stream of communication, which can be turned on or off as often as you’d like.

Everybody’s Doing It
Like Facebook, Twitter doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. Celebrities, comedians, news media outlets and even the President of the United States are all on Twitter. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a
way of driving immediate sales.”

Bestselling author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.” Twitter allows you to connect with your customers in a compact, quick, almost grassroots way.

Ways Twitter Can Help Your Business
Twitter can be used as a way to share ideas. Often called “micro-blogging,” some people use it primarily to share personal information, but many people use it professionally, as a venue to share great tidbits you’ve discovered as they relate to your business, such as a great article, a new Web site or an interesting idea. Whenever possible, include a link so your followers can view the awesomeness of your discovery along with you.

Another way to share ideas, and show your respect for others in your industry, is to “retweet” something interesting somebody else has tweeted. Twitter practically does the work for you. Select the retweet icon, which will start a new message, complete with the original user’s Twitter handle, marked with an @ symbol before it. You will either have the option to retweet the message as is or inject a tiny commentary in response to what you are retweeting. In addition, retweeting is a good way to keep generating activity on your account, especially when you’re short on time to come up with original things to tweet about.

You can also use Twitter to get your customers more engaged and involved in your business. Use it to run contests, solicit feedback and thank customers for supportive messages. Along the same lines, use Twitter to provide customer service. Make it an additional outlet to field and respond to complaints and to keep customers updated on the status of any problems you are fixing.

Tools to Help You Tweet
Twitter has a variety of support applications available designed to make your life easier while also maximizing the service to get the most for your business. Here are a few:

• TwitterFox: Firefox offers a web browser plugin that allows
you to view Tweets via a popup menu within your web browser. This very handy tool eliminates the need to constantly go to Twitter.com.

• HootSuite: This service is labeled a “social media dashboard” that allows you to schedule tweets. It also helps businesses use the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audiences, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and, of course, Twitter.

• Twitter for Facebook: If you are also on Facebook, this application forwards your Twitter updates directly to your Facebook Wall.

Twitter can be addicting, but it can also be intimidating. It’s fast paced and, for some, difficult to grasp at first. Stick with it. Try it out and do what you can until you get the hang of it. Many get tripped up on the notion that you have to read every single tweet that pops into your Twitter Feed. Don’t. The social media tool is supposed to be helpful, not overwhelming. Just let the tweets flow past you like a stream.

Working with family can be…interesting. It can bring out the best in you and your relatives, as well as the worst in your working relationships. You’re related so you should all be able to work together, right? Not necessarily. No matter what your business is, the challenges of working with family members are the same. And they’re not often easy to deal with.

Special issues crop up in family-run businesses that don’t occur anywhere else. Either that or similar issues in non-family businesses seem inflated and more intense than in a family-run company. Some of the most common issues to which I am referring are:

» Birth order: The “older brother” or “older sister” syndrome involves that sibling being viewed as more powerful or feeling more entitled due to their birth order.

» Playing favorites: Mommy or Daddy’s favorite, used to getting his or her own way, continues to be favored. Siblings often become jealous or angry.

» Fraternization rules: Some relatives and their spouses have relatives with whom they socialize and interact with outside of work. Conversely, some relatives and their spouses do not get along well with other members of the family. These feelings, both positive and negative, undoubtedly spill over into the work setting.

» Sibling rivalry: Family rivalry to succeed and be “the best” in order to gain praise from powerful or important relatives is intense, non-collaborative and, at times, destructive.

» Good old fashioned nepotism: Children of the founder get special treatment due to that relation.
These are just a few of the interpersonal dynamics that can occur in family businesses. But wait, there’s hope. There are some approaches you can take to minimize- and even erase-the negative aspects of working with family.

First and foremost, follow the golden rule: Make sure that everything that occurs, including the delegation of authority and responsibility, decision-making, promotions, rewards, demotions, praise and salary increases, is based on concrete and clearly stated knowledge, skills, abilities and personality traits. These factors must be at the very foundation of every business activity. If they’re not, the five negative dynamics mentioned above will begin to creep into your business and end up being destructive and counter-productive.

Second, leave your family issues at home. While this can often seem impossible, it must be attempted. Relatives may have grown up together, competed, collaborated, loved and hated each other at one time, but the workplace is not an environment in which you and your relatives should play out or resolve your childhood or adult dramas.

Each family member should strive to interact with other relatives involved in the business in the same neutral manner they use when interacting with non-family members. If they can’t manage to do that, it will be all too easy to bring old family hurts into the situation when trust is called in for problem solving or collaborating. If they can’t manage a non-neutral stance, expect disaster ahead for your work environment and your work outcomes.

Third, clear communication is key. There are always shortcuts in a family business, like going to a favorite relative to get an issue resolved. Invariably, this means going over or around the proper individual, and that can seem preferable, especially if the proper individual is a relative who is not well liked. That shouldn’t be allowed. And while this action also occurs in non-family encounters, it’s much easier to allow it to occur in family businesses; the inevitable result is that the individual being avoided discovers that a relative has bypassed the proper channel. When this happens, old family patterns emerge, further complicating an already complicated issue.

The best way to avoid these experiences is to drop interpersonal dislikes and deal directly with the individual involved. As mentioned before, it is crucial to treat family and non-family alike in all situations.
When you take all of these factors into consideration, family-run businesses can operate more smoothly, with increased output and decreased tensions.

For those of you who have survived startup and built a successful business, you may be wondering how to take the next step and grow your business beyond its current status. There are numerous possibilities, some of which are outlined here. Choosing the proper one (or ones) for your business will depend on the type of business you own, your available resources, and how much money, time and sweat equity you’re willing to invest all over again.

Frances McGuckin, small business expert and author of Taking Your Business to the Next Level and Business for Beginners, offers the following tips for those of you interested in diversifying your business. When looking to expand, McGuckin says, “Know why you want to grow the business and have defined reasons why expansion is the best step to take.” Once you’ve established that expanding is, in fact, the right move, “Be sure you have the management and other skills necessary to deal with a larger operation,” McGuckin adds.

There are several strategies you can put in place toward determining whether now is the right time to expand, or if it’s the right thing to do at all. Be sure to do thorough market research and a feasibility study to ensure there is a need and a niche for a larger operation. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and not duplicating their business nor undercutting them is a smart way to go, and having a staff of expert employees in all areas and providing excellent customer service are all steps that will only help to push you to the forefront of a chance at success.

Enhancing both written and verbal communication skills to speak and write in your business field can only help to serve you in expanding and growing your business. Monitoring marketing methods and results, working with a mentor and utilizing professional help with the transition, such as your accountant and lawyer, can all prove effective strategies in expanding and diversifying.

Be a superstar in your industry, be it at the local level or globally. McGuckin suggests, “Become involved in your community and become known as a business owner who cares, as well as known as “the expert” in your field.” If your business does offer products and services that span the globe—think globally, not locally. Increased market share is something that can allow your company to realize sustained growth.

However, you don’t need to acquire another business to expand globally. You just need to prime your offering for an international market, and you’ll also need a foreign distributor who’ll carry an inventory of your product and resell it in their domestic markets. You can locate foreign distributors by scouring your city or state for a foreign company with a U.S. representative. Trade groups, foreign chambers of commerce in the United States, and branches of American chambers of commerce in foreign countries are also good places to find distributors you can work with.

There are, of course, pitfalls to avoid when diversifying your business. One thing to keep in mind, says McGuckin, “Don’t think that bigger is necessarily better. Many businesses fail because they have tried expansion as a solution to not making enough profit.” Signing a lease for a larger facility before completing the necessary research and business planning, or spending too much on advertising instead of using a mix of innovative and creative marketing methods are two of the quickest ways to halt expansion before it starts.

Do you know where the money needed to expand your business is coming from? Not knowing how you’ll finance growth or not having at least a three-month or more financial emergency contingency can also stop expanding your business in its tracks. The easiest and best way to ensure that your business will survive growth, says McGuckin, lies in having a solid business plan. “Not completing a realistic business plan, not using the business plan or not adjusting it to changing circumstances can cause you to run into some serious trouble,” she says.

Having a well thought out business and marketing plan in place is essential, as well as knowing ahead of time where you will obtain financing and that the new venture can repay the loan. Above all, however, having the time, energy and passion to commit to growing your business is vital. If you lack any of those things, perhaps expansion is not the best move at this point in time.

The dictionary defines time as “the point at which things occur.” By that definition, a simplified version would be, time is when stuff gets done. In addition to being the point at which stuff happens, time is also relative, and being able to distinguish between the two is
the first step toward good time management.

There are two types of time: real time and relative time. In real time, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. All time passes equally. When someone turns 45, they are exactly 45 years old, not a minute more and not a minute less.

In relative time, all time is exactly that: relative. Time flies or drags depending on what you’re doing. Fifteen minutes of waiting to see your doctor can feel like an hour. And yet our 15-year-old children seem to have grown up in a blink.

Which time describes the world in which you really live, relative or real time?

The reason time-management tools and systems don’t work is that these systems are designed to manage real time. Real time is irrelevant. You don’t live in or even have access to real time. You live in relative time, a world in which all time flies when you are having fun or drags when you are waiting for water to boil.

The good news is that relative time is mental. It is created by you, and anything you create, you can manage. It’s time to remove any self-sabotage or self-limitation you have around “not having enough time,” or today not being “the right time” to start a business or manage your current business properly.
There are only three ways to spend time: concepts, communications and dealings. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.

As a business owner, you may be frequently interrupted and asked to be here, there and everywhere at any given time. While you cannot eliminate interruptions, you do have the power over how much time you spend on them and how much time you spend on the concepts, communications and dealings that will lead you on the path to success.

Below are some good tips to become master of your time domain:

• Carry a schedule and record all your concepts, communications and dealings for a week. This will help you see and understand how much you can get done during the course of a day and where your precious moments are going. You’ll see how much time is actually spent producing results and how much time is wasted on unproductive concepts, communications and dealings.

• Any dealing or communication that’s important to your success should have a time assigned to it. To-do lists become so long they’re unmanageable. Appointment books work. Schedule appointments with yourself and create time blocks for high-priority items. Schedule when they will begin and end, and be disciplined in keeping these appointments with yourself.

• Plan to spend at least 50 percent of your time engaged in the concepts, communications and dealings that produce most of your results.

• Schedule time for interruptions. Plan time to be pulled away from what you’re doing. Take the concept of having “office hours,” for instance. “Office hours” are simply another way of saying “planned interruptions.”

• Take five minutes before every call and task to decide what result you want to attain. This will help you know what success looks like before you start. And it will also slow time down. Take five minutes after each call and activity to determine whether your desired result was achieved. If not, what was missing? How do you put what’s missing in your next call or activity?

• Put up a “Do not disturb” sign when you absolutely have to get work done.

• Practice not answering the phone just because it’s ringing or answering e-mails just because they show up. Disconnect instant messaging. Don’t instantly give people your attention unless it’s absolutely crucial in your business to offer an immediate human response. Instead, schedule a time to return phone calls and answer e-mails.

• Block out other distractions like Facebook and other forms of social media unless you use these tools to generate business. If your will power to stay off the internet needs a jolt, try a productivity application such as Freedom (http://macfreedom.com), which, for $10, can disable your internet for up to
eight hours.

Above all, remember that it is impossible to do everything and be everywhere for everyone. But it’s also good to remember that 20 percent of your concepts, communications and dealings produce 80 percent of your results.