ShawnHessinger commented on the following stories on BizSugar
How Market Research Can Help Your Business
"Susan, I've always liked bootstrap startup advocate Greg Gianforte's concept of sales as a form of market research...and what a time saver! When launching his company RightNow Technologies, Greg reportedly cold called customer service managers with an idea for a new piece of software that automatically responded to customer queries then, if they said they didn't want it, he asked them why and added whatever extra functions they wanted to his list of features and built them into his final product. The story of Gianforte's startup adventure can be found by searching "Greg Gianforte Inc.com Start with Nothing". "LinkedIn Is Looking Great For 2009 [Stats]
"I'm very fond of LinkedIn as both a marketing and networking tool (it's very effective for business-to-business marketing especially). I wonder if, in addition to hiring full-time positions, the company will be in the market for smaller companies who provide services LinkedIn might require to grow and what the nature of those services might be."How Business Intelligence Can Improve Cash Flow For Your Small Business
"Two pretty simple pieces of advice but effective all the same. I'd enlarge on both these points by adding that you should try as often as possible to get money up front reducing collections problems and that you should try to shift as much of your business away from having large inventory as possible. This means more than just trying to move more product. It means where possible get orders in full before even purchasing your product from suppliers (think drop shopping as one example of this) or even before they are created (think anything from new software you're selling its still being designed or print on demand books and other products.) By the way, focusing on services first and then breaking into products is another way of keeping inventory (and upfront manufacturing costs) low. "Small Business Blog Marketing
"Jimmi, For online business, visitors translate to revenue whether through online advertising or prospects who may eventually become clients. Blogs bring traffic, hence blogs bring customers (or partners.) How many depends on the business and its model and how much those who visit value the service or product being offered. However, obviously, with no traffic and no customers there is no business. So blogs that bring visitors have a direct impact on revenue."STUDY: 75% of Small Businesses Are Not Engaging In Social Media
"I have very little trouble believing this is the case, Willis, and I think the main issue comes down to the question of committing the time needed to do it and do it right. I think I've said this before in other comments, but, if you throw in blogs as part of social media, probably close to 100 percent of my current business has resulted at least in part from some kind of social media marketing...even in cases where I had a previous relationship with the client! "STUDY: 75% of Small Businesses Are Not Engaging In Social Media
"Agreed. I think there may also be built in biases here based on who took the survey and what kinds of businesses they asked to participate. What if I took the same survey and included mostly Web-based businesses? I would be certain to get a very different answer."STUDY: 75% of Small Businesses Are Not Engaging In Social Media
"Ha! No, Steve. Not too frank. As always, thanks for your observations. However, as I said above, nearly 100 percent of my client base has come from social media. Not from chamber memberships or traditional networking or advertising but from social media. Now, I should probably make the point that since I'm in the blogging business this is not necessarily surprising and that since most of my clients are engaged in selling online services or attracting traffic to online communities etc. this makes perfect sense. However, the fact is that more and more entrepreneurs are seeing the value of social media and are growing their businesses in the process. I can't and WON'T say that every business can be grown this way. Any more than anyone can point to anything that will absolutely grow someone else's business. I can only say that it has definitely grown some businesses and is a viable marketing option at very low cost that many particularly online entrepreneurs cannot afford to ignore. If you would consider paying for television or newspaper advertising why would you not consider investing in social media marketing which is much less costly. Also, unlike traditional advertising, social media has the added benefit of being a business networking tool, so you can meet not only customers but future partners, too. (By the way, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you got some networking and business benefits out of your social media activity here.) I want to open this discussion to a broader audience so will be adding it to our Twitter feed @bizsugar. "Subscribe
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