On and Offline Strategies for Building Successful Relationships

Relationships are everything in life and business. Think about the past month, how many times did a relationship lead to a sale, an introduction, or an opportunity? Ivin Misner of Business Networking International (BNI) is often quoted to have said, “Givers Gain”  Corporate Alliance, a Utah-based networking organization has a key phrase I love, “People do Business with people they know, like & trust” and remind their members, “At the root of every business transaction is a relationship”. So true!!

Here’s some tips for how to succeed in building successful relationships on and offline.

Be Friendly & Sincere. Ask about Their Needs. Share Resources. Introduce them to Key Influencers, Resources, Look for ways to Help.

Keep in Touch via online resources such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, email, texting, and phone.

#1 Question to ask of yourself & others: What do you need next?

Have a clear intention. Listen & respond with possible solutions, connections, etc. Offer your best every time. Do what you say you’re going to do right away. If you don’t know how to help say, “I don’t know anyone, but I’ll be on the lookout for you.”

When someone reaches out to you, thank them. Hand written notes leave a great impression. Send holiday cards. Birthday wishes. Get to know what’s important to them. Give them little gifts. Send them links to articles they might like, etc.

ATTEND EVENTS. Connect after the event for lunch if possible or follow up with a phone call.

Join an organization! Startup Princess Chambers of Commerce, Networking Groups, BNI, etc.

Seth Godin recommends that we be active in at least 1 online community. My favorites are Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. Update daily. ALWAYS reply to people who reach out you with a request or need. Use Hootsuite.com to manage your online communities.

Get to know your consumers, and where they hang out online. Go there. Get active in conversation. Always looking for ways to SERVE by offering helpful comments, ideas, etc. don’t ever ‘pitch’ in a comment unless you’ve built and established a relationship.

Seek to get to know the high influencers in your industry. Watch for ways you can help or support them. Comment on their blog, updates, etc. Get on the phone and get to know each other better! Offer them something, introduction, take them to lunch, or offer a free ad on your site, free ticket to an event, etc. Support and cheer them on.

Identify your Key Connections 10-20 people who you want to keep in touch with on a regular basis. Check in with them and see what’s going on,  how you can help, etc. Don’t keep ’score’ on how many times you’ve helped them, etc.

In the end, you’ll have amazing relationships for a lifetime, not just for ‘business’. Some of my very best friends were met online and at events. Enjoy the opportunities ahead!

-Kelly King Anderson, Founder of Startup Princess

Want to connect with me? I’d love to. Tweet me @startupprincess

Publicity 101: 3 Steps to Becoming Your Own Publicity Guru

5 Easy Ways to Build Your Digital Reputation

President of FSB Associates, Fauzia Burke shares the following:

Social media has given us great ways to protect and build our digital reputations. Today we have the ease of searching conversations, the ability to set alerts to help us monitor our names, the constant availability of learning opportunities and more ways to communicate and interact with others. All of these tools, which were not available just a few years ago, now make it possible for us to be proactive in maintaining, building and protecting our good name. Here are five easy ways to do just that:

#1 Set Goals
I am sure you have done this already, but just in case, first do a search on Google for your name in quotation marks. It is important to see what comes up on the first page. The first page of a google search result is precious real-estate. Then set up a simple spreadsheet so you can keep track of your digital footprint. Do a little research and spend some time collecting numbers. How many Facebook followers do you have? What kind of traffic do you get on your site? Once you have the numbers you can then decide on your goals.

Are you interested in growing the numbers of links/connections/followers or do you want more one-on-one engagement? Or are you more interested in getting retweets on Twitter (which, as Guy Kawasaki said recently is “now the sincerest form of flattery”). Once the goals are in place, track the results in the spreadsheet and adjust as needed.

#2 Learn
To accomplish any of these goals, you are going to need to learn. The new world of communication is moving quickly, which naturally lends itself to a couple of advantages. First, there is a lot of room for experimentation, so use your talents and skills to communicate in your own unique way. Second, this experimentation has led to collaboration, and smart people are sharing information all the time. Make sure you make time every day for “learning.” Look over sites and information to keep up with the developments in social media. Currently I am taking part in an online conference, called Social Media Success Summit 2010 and am learning a lot. And among the many sites I visit, one of my daily stops is: PR Daily News: Public Relations news and marketing in the age of social media.

#3 Develop Content
To communicate 24/7, which is now the expectation and the norm, you need to develop different types of content. Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge and collaborate with others. However, blogging can be a big undertaking. Blogging expert Denise Wakeman recommends that you blog 3 times a week. If that is a daunting task for you, try guest blogging on an established site or blog in your industry. Another way some of my clients have developed content is through books, ebooks, whitepapers, audio recordings, slide presentations and videos.

#4 Build Relationships
Building and maintaining relationships has never been easier. Those of us in sales and marketing have always known the value of relationship building, but now everyone needs to make it a priority. Make sure you have profiles on LinkedIn, and Facebook. Twitter is a fantastic source of information, and an excellent place to learn. People on Twitter are eager and happy to help each other. To get tips on effective communication on these sites, I look to Cindy Ratzlaff who has a daily video tip along with regular blog posts on her site. Social media is an excellent way to build relationships, but don’t forget the value of face to face meetings, phone calls, hand written notes, and emails. It’s good to focus on important clients and influencers, but leave room for the “accidental” connections. Social media networking can be serendipitous, you never know which person may lead you to a new connection or client.

#5 Monitor
Social media alerts (Google or Social Mention) are a great way to monitor your name and/or industry. If something important happens in your industry you’ll know about it and can comment. If someone says something positive, a thank you goes a long way. If there is negative chatter starting up around your name or company, alerts keep you on top of it and you can jump in and take care of things quickly. I also use Addictomatic which is a great site for big picture monitoring.

There are many tools and resources now that can help us to become better communicators and better guardians of our reputations. I know it is a big undertaking, but the question to ask yourself is: If you are not investing in yourself, why should anyone else?

Fauzia Burke is the Founder and President of FSB Associates, a web publicity and social media firm specializing in creating awareness for books and authors. Founded in 1995, FSB’s mission is to give authors an opportunity to promote their work to an eager, targeted audience online. FSB is based in the NYC area.  For web publicity and social media news, follow Fauzia on a new Twitter feed: @WebSnapshot, Facebook and The Huffington Post.

For more information please visit fsbassociates.com

Editors Share Product Publicity Tips

Fairy Godmother, Publicist and Holiday Gift Guide guru Margie Zable Fisher is hard at work on her Holiday Gift Guide product publicity pitching.

Did you know that summertime is when product companies have the most opportunities to get publicity? That’s when many of the major magazines start looking for products to feature in their fourth quarter monthly publications. Many work on a four- to six-month lead time, and deadlines for product submissions are generally in July and August.

Margie has gotten hundreds of product P.R. placements, in media outlets including O Magazine, Real Simple, Daily Candy, People StyleWatch, Good Housekeeping, the Today Show and more.

She regularly speaks with the media, and shared some tips from her recent discussions with Holiday Gift Guide Editors on getting product publicity:

• Pitch your newest products, or products in colors or combinations that are new to the market; Editors always want the newest products, especially if the products have not gotten major press – they want to be the first ones to report on a product
• Discounts for readers and donations to charity are big this year; don’t lose out on P.R. placements because you are unwilling to offer these
• Low-cost products, especially under $50, are a continuing trend this year; even if your products are generally higher-priced than that, provide a smaller size or gift option in that price range, to qualify for P.R. placements. The goal is to get customers to your Website, and once they get there, they’ll have a chance to see your other products

Get a free sample Holiday Gift Guide pitch, and learn how to pitch Gift Guide editors, at http://www.profcs.com/app/?Clk=3847673.

Margie Zable Fisher is the President of Zable Fisher Public Relations, a public relations firm that works exclusively with small businesses. She offers free award-winning Public Relations tips at Zable Fisher Public Relations.

Five Simple SEO Steps to Grow Your Online Business

We’ve searched through our archives here at Startup Princess to bring you a little favorite from Sonya Klepper owner of Truly Twisted Marketing. If your SEO skills need a little brushing up then use some of Sonya’s advice to grow your online business and to stay at the top of the list. Sonya’s easy and useful SEO steps are broken up in two parts below:

Five Simple SEO Steps to Grow Your Online Business Part 1

http://startupprincess.com/five-simple-seo-steps-to-grow-your-online-business-part-1/

Five Simple SEO Steps to Grow Your Online Business Part 2

http://startupprincess.com/part-two-five-simple-seo-steps-to-grow-your-online-business/

Finding Inspiration for Invention in Life’s Major Annoyances

Guest Author, Renee Martin writes the following:

To paraphrase a well-worn idiom, annoyance is the mother of invention.

So, mompreneurs, if your revenues are dwindling and you need to develop new products or services, you might follow the example recently set by a group of “kidpreneurs” in Southern California. Jot down a list of everyday pet peeves and ask yourself: Is this an entrepreneurial opportunity?

That approach helped launch Sanitation’s Solutions Inc., which pitched its I-Flush product proposal to a panel of venture capitalists on May 21. What does the I-Flush do? It provides a solution for one of the longest-standing annoyances perpetrated by mankind: the habit of leaving the toilet seat up. The I-Flush’s pulley-based system prevents toilet users from flushing unless the toilet seat and lid are down. Sanitation’s Solutions is made up of senior high school students at the California Academy of Math and Science in Carson, Calif.

As part of a class project, seniors at the school worked in teams of nine to design products, write business plans and develop marketing campaigns. The project culminated in a presentation to a panel of venture capitalists — a group of local business people and investors who served as judges. This competition, developed by high school teacher Greg Fisher, was recently featured in the Daily Breeze newspaper.

This school exercise drives home a concept that every mompreneur needs to integrate into her everyday life: Pet peeves, whether they are yours or a prospective client’s, can translate into entrepreneurial opportunity. You just have to train yourself to think that way, and to have the commitment and patience to take full advantage whenever it’s feasible.

Consider the example that Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, set. The idea for Spanx first came to Blakely in 1998, while she was preparing for an open-mic appearance at a comedy club. At the time she was a 27-year-old office-supply sales manager who moonlighted as an amateur comic. Blakely was planning to wear a pair of white slacks and sexy sandals on stage. The annoyance she encountered while getting dressed: visible panty lines and the less-than-perfect contour of her backside. So she opted for a do-it-yourself solution. She grabbed some scissors, cut the feet out of a pair of control-top pantyhose and slipped them on. “That’s when I had my epiphany,” she says.

Blakely later researched and wrote a patent for footless pantyhose. That led to Spanx, a one-time home-based business that eventually outgrew the confines of her apartment and made her a multimillionaire. Blakely’s story is featured in a new book, The Risk Takers: 16 Women and Men Share Their Entrepreneurial Strategies for Success.

As a mompreneur, you can also use your “annoyance radar” to develop ways to improve your existing product offerings. During sales calls, really listen to prospective clients. Pose questions that will draw out what irks them about the product or services they’re already using. Use that information to exploit your competitor’s weakness and make it your strength.

This approach can also help you tap an underserved niche. You can develop products and services that are much more tailored to meeting the needs of a specific group of clients. With some savvy marketing, you can ensure that customers in a particular field come to view you as a specialist. For example, if you’re a graphic artist, you may discover a need for a bundle of products tailor-made for local architects, or restaurant owners, or ski resort operators.

Keep in mind that some market niches are just too specialized for large corporations to consider. But you as a small business owner can exploit that fact by identifying the needs and the pet peeves of people in that niche. Your business is nimble enough to quickly adapt to their specialized needs.

Remember this during your next sales call. If a prospective client starts whining, don’t tune out. Tune in and use your creativity to develop a solution that gives you an edge over your competitors.

Renee Martin was a dynamic real estate broker when she switched careers entirely, to work in community service. She became a rape counselor, a court-appointed special advocate for The Children’s Court (CASA), a director of community relations of a child abuse crisis center, and a public relations spokesperson for many community organizations. After publication of the book, she and Don coauthored, The Survival Guide for Women, she became a frequent and popular speaker at women’s seminars across the country. She is also co-author of The Risk Takers: 16 Women and Men Who Built Great Businesses Share Their Entrepreneurial Strategies For Success

Which Blog Software Should I Use?

Fairy Godmother, Laura Posey writes:

I’ve been blogging for well over two years now and have been using Typepad quite successfully.

However, after hearing David Nour speak on social networking, I’ve moved my blog to WordPressand will integrate it into my website. Here’s why…

If you are blogging or thinking of blogging, here are David’s reasons for using WordPress vs. Typepad, Blogspot, Blogger, etc.:

• It’s FREE – Let’s just get that one out of the way. You can’t beat the price.
• It integrates very easily with your website – According to David, your blog should be the center of your website and all social networking tools should point to your blog because it is the dynamic piece of your site. WP allows you to make your blog look like it is a part of your site and not just an add-on from someplace else.
• Search Engine Optimization – because your WP blog is part of your site (even having a similar URL like www.dancingelephants.net/blog), whatever you write in your blog that gets noticed by the search engines and drives people to the site. This will increase your search engine rankings for your site. For those of you who aren’t into the geeky language of SEO, that simply means more people will see your site at the top of the Google listings.
• It’s easy to use – I found the transition to WP very easy. They even have a tool that will convert an old blog from another platform over to WP and bring all your categories, keywords, etc. I took my Typepad blog into WP in just a few minutes with less than 5 clicks.

Laura Posey is the CEO of Dancing Elephants Achievement Group. She is a master at finding “hidden profit” in existing businesses. Laura uses her experience as a former nationally-recognized sales manager for a Fortune 100 insurance company and current owner of four successful businesses to guide her clients to their dream lives. If you are sure your business has more potential than it is realizing, give Laura a call at 804-254-4122. You can find more about her at www.lauraposey.com. Twitter @lauraposey

14 Strategies for What To Post on Your Blog

One of the greatest tools on the internet is to have a blog focused on your business movement – the thing you are most passionate about in your business. It’s a great way to establish credibility, visibility and your expertise in a particular area.

My clients often get excited about a blog and get it up and going and then ask, “Now what do I post?”

If you’re still a little stuck, here’s an easy checklist to keep handy:

• Long, thoughtful, provoking and inspiring articles – every now and then. You don’t want to overwhelm your blog followers with three or four blog posts a week that span several screen lengths. But once in a blue moon – go for it!
• Short thoughtful, provoking, and inspiring articles – get the difference? You don’t have to write a novel. Just a paragraph or two.
• ”How-to’s” – 3 steps, 5 secrets, 3 tips types of articles. For example, three things you need to pack for a day-long hike. Or five must-haves in your make-up kit.
• Quotes – yours or others. You can just post the quotation, or you can explain why this particular quotation is particularly inspiring to you.
• Resources – this is where you share your favorite things: books, tools, other coaches/consultants/experts.
• Quick stories about something that happened to you that highlights a perspective you believe in
• Poems or songs about your movement that would be inspiring to your tribe
• Events you are offering/leading – yes, you can even post sales-type posts in your blog. (Which is really handy when you have your blog linked to social networks.)
• Stories about your clients – their shifts, aha’s, awarenesses, why they work with you, results, profiles. Stories show what you do, much better than you just telling what it is you do.
• Updates, feedback, buzz about events you are leading, such as “The top 3 questions I’m getting from women entrepreneurs who are thinking about coming to the Business Goddess Retreat”
• Stories, themes or trends you are seeing with your clients. This article is an example; all my SpiritRICH™ clients are asking what to post on a blog!
• Free checklists – you probably have all kinds of “get started quick” type of lists – use these as special blog postings to generate credibility and expertise
• Any events where you are appearing, being interviewed, telesummits, and the like. Let people see what you’re doing!
• Photos – photos – photos! They are inspiring! Of you, your surroundings, your clients, people you are with, you and your mentors.

For a robust blog which positions you as an expert in a certain area you’ll want to aim for 2 -3 postings a week and you’ll soon have a bevy of blog postings and your tribe and fans will notice!

Last tip for blog success: I ride the wave of energy and write several postings when I’m in a particularly reflective writing mood, which I can post-date and publish later. This allows you to write while you are in the writing mode and then spread your postings over several weeks.

Most of all, let out your authentic self – your readers want to know who you are and what you are about. Writing in your authentic voice allows you to really connect with your reader.

Laura West is an award-winning online entrepreneur and president of The Center for Joyful Business. If you are ready to shift your marketing and mindset for more success with joy and ease, get your free report: Business Attraction Success Kit

Six Tips for Women Entrepreneurs

Guest Author Peri H. Pakroo J.D., writes:

More women than ever before are grabbing the reins and starting their own businesses. The number of women-owned small businesses is growing approximately twice as quickly as the national average for all start-ups.

For entrepreneurs of all stripes — women and men included — the pre-start-up phase is typically characterized by a flood of questions about what exactly it takes to make it in business. Are there different answers to these questions for men versus women? Not really. Every business needs to be based on a solid idea, aimed at a profitable market or niche, have solid systems in place, and market itself effectively. And of course, the legal and bureaucratic rules facing women entrepreneurs are exactly the same as those facing men.

But as many women business owners will tell you, the road to success for women often involves its own unique set of curves. Surveys of women business owners show that women’s business concerns tend to skew towards issues such as finding work-life balance, start-up (or expansion) financing, and marketing. The following tips address some of the issues and concerns that are most commonly faced by women entrepreneurs.

1. Start a business that works for you and fits with your personal life. There are no rules as to what a “real” business looks like. For some businesspeople, success might mean an international operation with hundreds of employees and annual revenues in the tens of millions. For others, a small consulting firm or artisan business that pays a healthy salary and allows generous personal freedom might be considered the pinnacle of success. The key is to take the time early in the planning process to consider this question and decide for yourself what your ideal vision is for your business and your personal life.

2. Don’t sweat the bureaucracy. A lot of would-be entrepreneurs, women and men alike, find themselves stuck on the verge of taking the leap into starting a business, but confused about how to tackle the legal rules of getting started. This hang-up is always grounded more in fear than reality; the truth is that clearing the bureaucratic hurdles isn’t usually big deal.

You can usually start a sole proprietorship (the legal term for a one-owner business) or a partnership (a business with more than one owner) by registering with just one government office. And for business owners who want protection from personal liability for business debts — often referred to by the legal jargon “limited liability” — the simplest corporations or limited liability companies (LLCs) require only a couple more registration tasks to complete.

Of course, there’s a lot more to launching a successful small business than dealing with bureaucratic requirements. For starters, you’ll need to have a sound business idea, and you’ll need to be able to develop good management skills to guide it to success. This is where you should put your mental energy and good ideas; don’t waste precious brain cells worrying about the legal hurdles.

3. For businesses with moderate to significant overhead, it is crucial to start the business with adequate funds. Starting a business without enough money to ride out the early lean days (described as “undercapitalization”) is the most common reason that businesses fail. Undercapitalization is less of an issue with small service-based businesses that don’t have many fixed expenses. But businesses with overhead such as rent, salaries for employees, utility bills, inventory, equipment, insurance, or other fixed costs absolutely need to plan carefully and pull together enough funding to support the fledgling business as it works up to speed.

Also, though it’s important to start your business with enough capital, that doesn’t mean that every business needs piles and piles of money to get off the ground. Plenty of mega-successful businesses were started on a shoestring: Apple Computer started in a garage; Hewlett-Packard started in the dining room of the Packard home; the list goes on and on. Generally speaking, a business that can find creative, thrifty ways to provide its product or service — especially in its early days — will typically find more success than a business that adopts a “spend more money” approach.

4. If you need start-up or expansion financing, consider sources other than traditional banks. One of the concerns most commonly cited by women entrepreneurs is difficulty finding start-up financing. And it’s little wonder: traditional banks typically don’t lend money to new ventures that don’t have a track record of success or creditworthiness. Instead of focusing on conventional big-chain banks, start-ups should instead look for local community banks, credit unions, and other local financial institutions that have a vested interest in the health of the local economy. Often, their application processes and criteria are softer than the big banks.

Two resources that women should definitely look into are Women’s Business Centers and community development financial institutions. Women’s Business Centers (WBCs) exist nationwide and focus on supporting women entrepreneurs through business training and counseling, and access to credit and capital, among other services. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs), which are certified by the U.S. Treasury, are a fast-growing segment of the business financing market specializing in loans to underserved communities and populations. CDFIs usually — but not always — have a specific focus such as improving economic opportunities in blighted communities or supporting women- or minority-owned entrepreneurs. Both WBCs and CDFIs can be especially helpful for start-ups, businesses with poor credit, and businesses seeking relatively small loans, generally up to $100,000. Even better, they often offer guidance and expertise to your business in addition to financing, which will help your chances of success.

As an example, the fabulous nonprofit where I teach entrepreneurship classes — WESST in Albuquerque — is both a WBC and a CDFI. It offers a wide range of high-quality classes on business planning, financial management, and marketing, plus offers loans and one-on-one counseling. With an organization like WESST on its side, a business gets a major boost in its chances of success.

5. Network like a social butterfly — it is one of the best ways to market your business and create profitable opportunities. Networking involves actively cultivating relationships with people, businesses, community leaders, and others who present possible opportunities for your business — not just as potential customers, but also as vendors, partners, investors, or other roles. Remember, networking is not the same thing as sales! Rather than the simple goal of making a sale, a huge goal of networking is to inform other businesspeople and influential people about what you do in hopes that they will recommend your business to their circle of contacts.

I look at networking more as a self-employed lifestyle than a specific activity. You are “networking” every time you attend an event held by a local trade association, get to know other business owners and community leaders, send an email introducing two of your contacts to each other, write a letter to the editor, participate in an online discussion group, or have lunch with another local business owner.

6. Forge relationships with contacts before you need help from them. For example, if you need the support of a local politician on an upcoming city zoning decision, you’ll have a better chance of getting the politician’s vote if he or she already knows you and thinks favorably of your business than if you place a call to his or her office out of the blue.

Peri Pakroo is a business and communications consultant, specializing in legal and start-up issues for businesses and nonprofits. She has started, participated in, and consulted with start-up businesses for 20 years. She is the author of The Women’s Small Business Start-Up Kit (Nolo) and top-selling business books. Her blog is at www.peripakroo.com. For more information, please visit www.nolo.com and follow the author on Twitter and Facebook.

Go to http://bit.ly/Nolo_WomensSmallBusinessStartUpKit to access an e-galley of The Women’s Small Business Start-Up Kit on NetGalley. It can be read on the Nook, Kindle, Sony e-reader, or on your computer.

Bookkeeping for the Rest of Us

So you made it through tax season…now what?

Every year after tax season, small business owners unanimously proclaim “next year will be better”. No more boxes of unorganized receipts, rushing to gather the necessary documents for my tax preparer, and I will not file an extension simply because I wasn’t prepared.

Fabulous – but how? Here a few tips to get you started.

1. If you don’t already have one, open a small business checking account. It is a lot easier to go through your checkbook at the end of the year and pull out business expenses if they are not co-mingled with trips to Wal-Mart for milk or gas station fill-ups on the way to drop the kids off at school. At the end of the year you will know with few exceptions that what came out of your business checking account was a legitimate business expense and what went is was income.

Several banks offer free business checking accounts. If you are doing business just under your name for now, open a separate free personal checking account at your bank – just for your business income and expenses.

2. Reconcile, Reconcile, Reconcile. You should reconcile your checking account every month. This is the best way to review your cash flow and know at the end of each month where you stand. You can use accounting software or reconcile by hand. At the end of the year you will only need to review December’s expenses because the other eleven months are already done. You can be confident that your records are clean and accurate and your tax preparer will trust the numbers you give them that much more.

3. Plan and Make it Happen. Admit to yourself that bookkeeping is a necessary evil of any business. Very few people enjoy doing it so you are not alone. Set aside one evening a month, or one afternoon a week and review that week or months business. I always do my bookkeeping on Wednesday evenings after dinner. My husband knows that it is his night to get the kids ready for bed and I can spend a few hours reviewing the check register, invoicing clients and sending thank you notes. It is now part of our routine and my business is better for it. I am more aware of where my business is financially and my CPA is grateful for the effort.

Lindsey Patrick Start this month before the receipts pile to high and you may just look forward to tax season. You are welcome to contact me at 801.362.4206 or lindseypatrick1@yahoo.com with any bookkeeping/accounting questions, I would love to help.

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