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23 Free, Web-Based Tools SMBs Are Asking for Now

18 Dec

Small Business Image

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In an informal Twitter poll, we asked our friends working at or running small and medium-sized businesses not what they could do for the Internet, but what the Internet could do for them.

We heard responses that ranged widely, running the gamut from social media marketing tools to internal team communications. Here’s a list of great resources for SMBs that meet some of the most pressing needs you experience as a business owner or entrepreneur.

Best of all, every single one of these tools can be used free of charge (some have paid options for larger businesses or for those that need more features). And all of them are web-based; that means you won’t have to install software, worry about cross-platform compatibility, take up any of your own system’s resources or have to leave work when you leave your own PC.

If you have other tools you love using that you think other SMBs could benefit from, please let us know about them in the comments.

2 Internal Chat Tools

When you want to get your employees or clients together to brainstorm, make decisions or simply run your business, instant messaging can be a huge time-saver — especially if you’re working with a distributed team or out-of-town clients and vendors. While we love programs like Skype for business chat and conference calls, it may not be installed on every machine you have to use. These web-based group chat programs solve that problem.

Zoho’s web-based chat client allows you to create and chat with groups. You can easily share your desktop with co-workers, and you can integrate your calendar for quick appointment or meeting scheduling. Best of all, Zoho’s IM service also supports all kinds of IM clients, including Yahoo and AIM.

Another good online group chat service is Gixaw. With this service, you can create a unique URL for chatting with your group. You can share files, create multiple “rooms” for different projects or departments, and even search through chat history.

2 Task Management Tools

As your business and number of employees grow, you may need a central place for delegating tasks, monitoring progress and ensuring everything gets done correctly and on time.

HiTask is a free, web-based task management tool perfect for SMBs. It has a user-friendly, easy interface for your to-do lists and for team or project management. With HiTask, you can work on recurring events, make assignments, sort tasks based on priority and more, all within a simple drag-and-drop UI.

Another great task management tool is RememberTheMilk. Don’t be fooled by its homemaker-ish name. This web app has been widely acclaimed over the past several years, and it works for individuals as well as small teams. RTM integrates with Gmail and Outlook, and the service has mobile apps for Windows, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.

8 Social Media Marketing and Monitoring Tools

One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites.

There are three great tools we’d recommend for pushing out updates to a variety of sites at once. All three have free, web-based services, and they’re great for working with teams, too. Depending on your specific needs and tastes, you could try out Hootsuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck.

If you want to see what people are saying about your company, your product, your location or your vertical in real time, try searching for relevant terms on Collecta or SocialMention.

You also have options for network-specific monitoring tools. To see how your tweets are performing, try CrowdBooster. And remember, Twitter’s official analytics product is coming soon, too. For Facebook, use that social network’s Insights dashboard for your business’s Facebook Page.

3 Bookkeeping Tools

When it comes to keeping your finances straight, there are also several free, online tools just right for SMBs.

You can try Numia.biz, accounting software made just for recording and processing small business transactions, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank balances and more. It also gives you forms for invoicing, purchases and bank reconciliation and allows you to set up customers and vendors.

The desktop version of QuickBooks is a standard feature of many SMBs. This web-based version of QuickBooks is free and perfect for the new or smaller business. You can use QuickBooks Online to create invoices, pay bills, track expenses and more.

Finally, MoneyTrackin’ is a free web app for simply and quickly tracking your revenue and expenses. You can also share budgets and collaborate with many people together on the same account. MoneyTrackin’ lets you control as many accounts as you need to and tag your transactions; the service is also available as a handy mobile web app.

5 Cloud-Based File Hosting Tools

For sharing and storing large files, Google Docs will allow you to share a wide range of files — including PDFs, spreadsheets, images and much more — free of charge for the first 1024 MB. And believe us, it can take quite a while to get to 1024 MB of content. Google Docs files are easy to keep private and easy to share with others, including clients and team members. Plus, you’ll have a relatively stable company on your side, which isn’t necessarily the case when the startup hosting your files gets bought by Facebook and shuts its doors, for example.

However, if you’d rather go the small-web-company route, there are lots of options for moving large files around the Internet.

If you just need to e-mail a large file to another person, try YouSendIt, which lets you e-mail a link for downloading files up to 2 GB. If you’d like to permanently or semi-permanently store rather than just e-mail your files, you could try Esploded, which lets you create a free account, upload your files and create groups for sharing files. There’s also Dropbox, FilesAnywhere and Box.net, all of which offer free and paid memberships, just depending on your business’s size and needs.

3 Hiring and Applicant-Tracking Tools

Last of all, as you grow, finding and hiring great new staff members becomes increasingly important and requires more of your attention — and likely greater organization.

Zoho Recruit is free for one person to use. It lets you schedule interviews, add and manage candidates, store resumes and publish job openings from within a simple but robust dashboard.

SmartRecruiters is hiring software that helps users create job ads and post them all over the web, including major job boards and social networks. You can consolidate all your applicants in one place, prescreen them online, share the best candidates with your co-workers or executives, schedule interviews and even rate the candidates all from within the app.

iKrut is an interesting free recruitment system. You can build your own recruitment microsite quickly; from there, you can list all your current job openings on this new career portal. Candidates visit the microsite to upload their résumés and cover letters for you to review. This all also allows for interview scheduling and organizing references. Microsites can be branded to match your own website, and the system has built-in messaging.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 10 Ways Business Leaders Can Turn Ideas Into Execution
- 7 Tips for Building a Better Branded App
- 9 Web Tools to Keep Your Business Running Smoothly During the Holidays
- 5 iPhone Apps For Avoiding International Business Faux Pas
- 7 Tips for Succeeding as a Social Media Strategist

Images courtesy of Flickr, in order of appearance, by danox, inlinguamanchester, esther17, tsevis, nhankamer, takashi, socialisbetter.

Reviews: Android, Box.net, Dropbox, Flickr, Google Docs, HootSuite, Internet, Seesmic, Skype, TweetDeck, Twitter, Windows, aim, gmail

More About: applicant manager, bookkeeping, business, Business Lists, chat, cloud database, free online tools, hiring, List, Lists, online tools, small business, smb, social media marketing, social monitoring tools, task management

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Facebook on Track for $2B Revenue in 2010 [REPORT]

15 Dec


Forget the $1 billion figure thrown around earlier this year; sources close to Facebook financials say the social network is close to reporting revenues of $2 billion for 2010.

If these reports are accurate, Facebook’s annual revenue would have more than doubled since last year, when the company made around $800 million.

While astronomical compared to most startups’ revenues, these figures are hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with Facebook’s advertising and virtual currency advances in the past 12 months.

The company now competes with Google for online ad dollars from major brands as well as small businesses that need targeted marketing with high ROI. In fact, Facebook serves around 50 billion display ads per month and is on track to serve 1 trillion display ads for all of 2010.

And when it comes to revenue from virtual currency — revenue that comes, in a roundabout way, directly from Facebook users themselves — Facebook is seeing more cash all the time. The blockbuster success of casual games from studios such as Zynga add up to more coin in Facebook’s coffers when users pay with Facebook Credits; for every dollar the user spends on Facebook Credits, the social network gets 30 cents.

Virtual currencies aside, the lion’s share of Facebook’s revenue still comes from advertising and marketing — a game that Facebook is really just beginning to play well.

Right now, Google and Facebook are both ramping up for an epic battle for location-based ad dollars, especially where small and medium-sized businesses are concerned. How Facebook performs in 2011 may have a lot to do with how it competes in offering a compelling and effective location-based marketing platform for businesses of all sizes.

Reviews: Facebook, Google

More About: facebook, facebook credits, Revenue

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What Does Web Design Say About Your Small Business?

13 Dec


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

If you’ve ever been horrified by the design of a small or local business website, you’re not alone. There are so many aesthetic travesties out there, and worse, many small businesses still don’t even have a website. One recent study concluded that a paltry 54% of small businesses maintain a home on the web.

Your business doesn’t need an elaborate multimedia site, but you do need an eye-pleasing and informative destination. After all, you wouldn’t (purposefully) hang an ugly sign on your storefront or office. Why would you present an ugly website to your prospects?

With this in mind, we spoke to some professional web designers about their favorite small business websites. They explained why these sites make sense for each company and why the design is an asset to their business.

Make Business Personal at First Click

Go Realty Website

Jacob Gube, a web developer and the founder/chief editor of Six Revisions, looks at North Carolina real estate firm Go Realty’s website as a way to personalize a sometimes impersonal industry.

“They put a great deal of emphasis towards humanizing the process of buying a home,” said Gube. “To most real estate companies, you’re customer record ID #67343, budget range $200,000 to $225,200, but to Go Realty, you’re the Johnsons with a baby girl named Amy. They convey this personality through their site design.”

Gube notes Go Realty’s very welcoming website that puts people first and properties second.

“The home page has a beautiful image slider that flips through photos of the people they’ve dealt with, with short descriptions of their stories. They have a Fan Mail section that flips through messages from happy clients,” said Gube. “When you see all that, as a prospective home buyer and client, you’d think, ‘Wow, these guys will take care of me.’ ”

When it comes to something as personal as purchasing a home, this is a smart design choice. While it may be the inclination of many companies to put products front and center, a page of property listings can be less inviting than a satisfied customer.

“I think for a real estate company, they have a truly unique angle and they have a web design that manages to convey their core message,” Gube noted.

Accentuate Your Products With Complementary Design

Hardgraft Image

Shopping carts and product galleries have become staples of the e-commerce landscape, but that doesn’t mean they have to look stale. If you sell attractive products, make sure they live on an attractive website.

Tim Van Damme, a freelance web developer based in Belgium who knows a thing or two about web aesthetics, cites online retailer Hardgraft as a case study in minimalism and product display.

“Their website is beautifully designed, featuring just a couple of products with large, beautiful photographs. They’re clearly targeting the more fashion-aware web nerds this way,” said Van Damme.

The site sells cases and sleeves for electronics, as well as handbags and wallets. The sleek modern products sit nicely on a clean, modern website. The presentation is complementary, and there’s nothing to distract the eye from the merchandise. A site like this expresses organization and straightforwardness — qualities your customers are always after.

“Their products are pretty expensive, yet every conference I go to I see multiple of them in the audience,” Van Damme noted.

Sell to the Right Consumers, Visually

If you’re targeting a certain customer demographic, good web design can help.

Kelli Shaver, a web app developer who specializes in user interfaces and experiences, points to Gazel, Inc., purveyors of unique, organic bath towels and robes. Its website evokes a sense of luxury that befits the customers who can afford these products.

“Clearly the site is targeting environmentally conscious consumers with expendable incomes and sophisticated tastes,” said Shaver, noting Gazel is not your typical e-commerce website. “The focus seems more on educating customers about the products than simply selling those products. The combined effect of the colors, typography, textures, and photography just feels expensive and high-quality.”

In essence, the site “feels” like the products it’s selling, and that goes a long way toward user experience, according to Shaver.

“Nearly everything about the site is inviting. Rich, warm colors and earth tones give the visitor a feeling of calm,” she said. “The slide show on the landing page, in addition to showcasing some of the company’s product, also brings in a lot of texture.”

The takeaway here should be that if your customers feel at home on your website, they’re more likely to browse and buy. That may seem obvious, but think about who your customers really are as you develop your web presence. Your web designer won’t know this, so be sure to communicate it effectively. The branding payoff can be big.

Informational Sites Don’t Have to Be Boring

SWFWMD Image

If you thought some small business websites were rough, visit a government agency online sometime. They can be notorious for bad design, poor navigation, and a general disinterest in Web 2.0 functionality.

Not so with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, says Chris Coyier, a web designer and blogger at CSS-Tricks.

“The home page is OK, but the site actually gets better and more interesting the deeper you go,” said Coyier, noting the exceptional layout of the recreation page, and the pages for individual locations administered by the department.

“The most important part they got right was thinking about what the mindset of an actual user of the site is like — in this case, me,” said Coyier. “It’s easy to browse by featured locations, type of activity, and specific regions, all of which were of interest to me, so it was fun to click around.”

This site could so easily have gone with black and white bullet lists, but instead went the extra mile to draw the user in with design.

“The aesthetics are totally appropriate for an outdoors kind of site — tans and greens and browns with flourishes of plant life,” said Coyier. “The location-specific pages are amazing. Everything I would want to see: photos, maps, specifics on what you can do, rules, etc. The visuals are great, but the information architecture is the best feature.”

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Design Trends That Small Businesses Can Use in 2011
- 10 Free WordPress Themes for Small Businesses
- 5 Beautiful Tumblr Themes for Small Businesses
- 10 Free Drupal Themes for Small Business
- 5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners

Image courtesy of Flickr, Mike Rohde.

Reviews: Flickr

More About: business, design, small business, web design, Web Development

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Google foreclosure maps

09 Dec

Barry sez,
Google Maps keeps evolving, expanding the ability to drill down into granular detail. The latest updated trick? Mapping foreclosures for sale. This great and terrible Google trick has been around at least since 2008 -- but it seems to have become much more robust earlier this year:

1. Punch any US address into Google Maps.
2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select "More")
3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for "Real Estate."
4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select "Show Options")
5. Check the box marked "Foreclosure."

I wanted to demonstrate the full extent of Foreclosures in the US, so after setting GMaps on foreclosure listings, I slowly zoomed out of the map. Voila! Most foreclosures that are for sale in the USA are now showing on your screen. (Note: This map does not reveal any of the millions of REOs that have already been sold by the banks that hold them).

Google Map Foreclosure Tricks (Thanks, Barry!)

 
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7 Tips for Succeeding as a Social Media Strategist

08 Dec


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

The role of social media is expanding rapidly and many organizations of all types are trying to stay afloat amidst the changes. Meanwhile, a small group of innovators pulls the industry onward.

In the past few years, the social media marketing role has become increasingly present, leading the way to more strategic social media programs. Enter the social media strategist.

Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, a digital strategy consulting firm, recently spoke at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit about the career path of the corporate social strategist, touching on current responsibilities and challenges, as well as the future of the role. His presentation was based on months of research funded by Altimeter, in which 140 enterprise-class social strategists across various industries were interviewed. Other online sources, such as LinkedIn and blogs, were consulted to gather job descriptions, profile work histories and catalog the ebb and flow of new hires in the social media space.

Owyang presented seven key tips for building a successful social media program and focused on how social media strategists can facilitate those successes. Read his tips below and add your thoughts in the comments.

1. Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Owyang pointed to a funny, but oh-so-true anecdote that happened while he was collecting research for this study. While interviewing a social media strategist, the phone conversation was stopped abruptly as the strategist confessed, “Jeremiah, I’ve gotta go. There are two people standing in front of my office demanding Facebook Pages.” If they didn’t get the Pages, they were going to build them on their own.

While it’s somewhat hilarious to imagine two professionals camping in front of their colleague’s office until they get their doggone Facebook Pages, it’s equally as sad to realize that these instances actually happen in the corporate world. If this is happening in your organization, take a step back, look at the chaos, take a deep breath and then do something about it.

“A proactive mindset is required,” Owyang said. “You cannot wait for the company to catch up to you. You have to go to the business units and tell them what is required [to participate in your company's social media program] before they ask you for a Facebook Page. Make a list of requirements: dialogue, ready for conversations 24/7, ongoing commitment, two-way communications. Make it clear what’s expected, before they ask you.”

Being proactive and having guidelines will help alleviate stressful moments like the one described above, where being reactive is usually status quo.

2. Be a Program Manager, Not Evangelist

As social media programs become more sophisticated, Owyang believes that employees currently in the social media evangelist roles will move on to “the next thing,” evangelizing new technologies. But with an ongoing need for social media programming, a new role for social media program managers will emerge.

“Quickly switch hats,” Owyang advises social media strategists who want to stay relevant to businesses that have evolving needs. “It’s time to take off the evangelism hat and put on the program manager hat. A new skill set is going to be required, and a program manager is responsible for resources, timelines, Gantt charts, ROI models, analytics, data modeling, resource management, project management. It’s a very different skill set than the evangelist role that we’ve seen before.”

3. Educate Your Business Units

“Educate your business units ahead of time, and give them the information that they need,” said Owyang.

He is an advocate of testing employees to measure digital and social media proficiencies, pointing to Intel’s Digital IQ test as a great example of aptitude measurement. “You can take this online test before you participate in social media and become certified in that particular program,” he said. “That’s one of the more advanced programs that we’ve seen.”

In its official Social Media Guidelines, Intel clearly defines Digital IQ training as a responsibility for all employees taking part in social media on behalf of the company.

It’s important to not only lay down guidelines, but to also provide training for employees who want to learn more and get involved in the social media program.

4. Organize for Success

Five ways companies organize their social media teams

During his presentation, Owyang presented five models in which companies organize their social media teams — decentralized, centralized, hub and spoke, dandelion and holistic, as pictured and described above. He highly recommends that social media programs be organized in hub and spoke or dandelion models in order to scale.

In the hub and spoke model, there’s typically a cross-functional team that’s serving multiple business units, with the strategists at the center of the formation — 41% of the organizations that Owyang interviewed fell under this category.

Within large companies with multiple brands or units, such as Microsoft or HP, the dandelion (or “multiple hub and spoke”) model is common, where multiple social media strategists lead individual business areas or brands across the company.

There are three steps necessary in order to reach a hub and spoke or dandelion organization, according to Owyang:

  1. “Set up governance: policies, legal, some executive buy-in.”
  2. “Roll out processes: who does what, where, when and how — a triage system. How does information flow through your company? Publish that diagram on the Internet.”
  3. “Launch an ongoing education program.”

“If you do those three things in that order, it’s very likely your company will form in hub and spoke with you in the hub,” stated Owyang.

5. Be an Enabler

It is unrealistic to think that one strategist can stay at the center of every social media effort or that he or she could even hire enough community managers to stay on top of an entire enterprise’s social activity. In light of that reality, Owyang believes that it is crucial for social media strategists to slip into the mindset of an enabler. He explains:

“Remember, social media does not scale. You cannot manage every social media program, campaign or effort. You now have to become an enabler to teach the business units to do it on their own — that’s the only way you’re going to be able to scale anyway. You become an internal consultant, an internal resource to help the entire business.”

6. Deploy Scalable Social Media Programs

Communities, advocacy programs, social media management systems (like CoTweet and HootSuite), and Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) — the practice of connecting social networks to your existing CRM system — are all worthwhile social media efforts, according to Owyang, because they are scalable.

“Dialogue does not scale,” Owyang reiterated multiple times. “One-to-one communications does not scale… You can’t possibly do it. What scales? Community programs — getting your customers to do the work for you. Advocacy programs — Microsoft MVP, Intel Insiders, SAP Mentors, Oracle Aces, Walmart Moms — those are advocacy programs, when you take your best customers and you give them a platform and let them do the work for you, and you don’t pay them. Those are scalable programs.”

While it’s important to set up channels for communication with customers, make sure your programs can expand as the company and community grow.

7. Transcend Marketing

The report found that 71% of social media programs fall under the domain of marketing or corporate communications. In order to make an impact, though, Owyang says that social media programs must transcend marketing. Strategists should take note and act accordingly.

“Over time, think about how you can be more than ‘marketing,’” suggests Owyang. “Think about how you can apply [social media] to support and service and the physical, real-world customer experience — and improve products and experiences.”

Owyang’s seven insights into succeeding as a social media strategist should have social media programs shaping up in no time. What would you add to his advice? Let us know in the comments below.

View Jeremiah Owyang’s WOMMA Summit presentation below:

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Define a Social Media Strategy for Enterprise
- Social Media Success: 5 Lessons From In-House Corporate Teams
- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of a Coworking Space
- How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue
- Beyond Viral: How Successful Marketers Are Embracing the Social Web

Image copyright of Gary Michael and courtesy of WOMMA.

Reviews: CoTweet, Facebook, HootSuite, Internet, LinkedIn, pages

More About: business, corporate social media, Corporate Social Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang, social media, social media strategist, social media strategy

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Google spends a few more million, picks up Widevine DRM software firm

05 Dec
Two acquisitions in as many days? Say it ain't so! Prior to even unboxing Phonetic Arts, Google has now snapped up Seattle-based Widevine. Truth be told, you're probably taking advantage of the company's technology without even being aware of it -- it's used in over 250 million web connected HDTVs and streamers around the globe, and it's primarily designed to thwart piracy attempts while enabling consumers to enjoy content on a wider array of devices. As these things tend to do, neither outfit is talking prices, but it's fairly obvious why El Goog would want a firm like this in its portfolio. Moreover, it's borderline comical that Viacom's pushing an appeal in order to pit Google as an anti-studio, pro-piracy monster while it's spending hard-earned cash on a DRM layer. At any rate, Google's not getting into specific plans just yet, only stating its intentions to maintain Widevine's agreements, provide support for existing and future clients as well as "building upon [the technology] to enhance both Widevine's products and its own."

Google spends a few more million, picks up Widevine DRM software firm originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  sourceThe Official Google Blog, Widevine  | Email this | Comments
 
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5 Ways to Sell Your Expertise Online

29 Nov


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, the lessons you learn are valuable. Not only will those lessons help you succeed in your core business, but that expertise has value for your peers. Sharing your expertise and becoming a thought leader in your industry can help you to attract new customers and develop lucrative, long-term business relationships.

Beyond that, however, your expertise can also be utilized as a separate revenue stream in its own right. In 2008, the folks at software company 37signals announced that they had turned their expertise into revenue streams worth more than three quarters of a million dollars in just a couple of years. Here are five ways that you can follow in their footsteps and leverage your existing expertise too.

1. Newsletters

You may already have an e-mail newsletter, and it’s probably a great tool for customer retention. There’s a lot of value in being able to reach out to customers with news about your products or services, offer discounts and provide value-added content that keeps people interested. But have you considered offering a more premium, paid newsletter? Whatever your business, you likely have expertise that people will be willing to pay for. Restaurants could offer a monthly newsletter with recipes using seasonal foods, for example, or a gym could offer a weekly newsletter with exercises and tips on staying healthy.

TinyLetter and letter.ly are two new services that allow you to quickly and easily create and sell subscription-based e-mail newsletter.

2. Consulting

The lessons and skills you’ve acquired over the course of building a successful business have immense value to your peers. People will pay for that knowledge if you offer it via a consulting service. While many startups are bootstrapped using funds raised by consulting gigs, it’s unlikely that as a busy small business owner you’ll have the time to put hours into consulting. Still, by setting aside a few hours each week or taking on a couple of consulting clients, you can build a healthy secondary revenue stream and potentially be introduced to unique investment opportunities.

One easy way to sell your advice is Ether. Ether is a web app that provides users with a toll-free 888 telephone number that forwards to your existing phone line. You set when the number is available and how much you want to charge, then you just open for business during your “office hours.”

3. E-Books

E-books are old school and they take a little more upfront investment, but they’re potentially very lucrative. 37signals pulled in $350,000 by selling downloads of its first business advice e-book, Getting Real. People could be willing to pay for your expertise, as well. A mechanic, for example, could sell a series of e-books on do-it-yourself auto and motorcycle repair. If you’re a pet groomer, what about an e-mail about caring for dogs? Think about what you know and about how it could be expanded into a 40- or 50-page book.

Once you’ve created your book, you can sell it as a PDF download using a service like DPD or PayLoadz. For a more complete, end-to-end solution, try TradeBit, which offers a marketplace, or Lulu, which can also turn your e-book into a printed book.

4. Webinars

Webinars might be the ultimate way to sell your expertise. By holding a paid webinar, you’re literally charging people to watch you talk about and demonstrate whatever it is that you have to share. Because you’re offering people access directly to you (the expert), webinars are worth the money to your peers. Software like WebEx can allow you to stream presentations, audio and video to up to 3,000 participants. You can take questions from your audience in real-time and the platform offers built-in ecommerce, so you can charge for access.

Also check out solutions from GoToMeeting and Adobe, though you’ll have to handle payment yourself.

5. Online Courses

If live events aren’t your cup of tea and static e-books don’t convey your message clearly enough, another way to sell your expertise is by offering an online course. Using an app like Litmos, Odijoo or WiZiQ, you can create and sell web-based classes that not only share your expertise but teach it step-by-step. You can include multimedia in your courses, additional reading material (maybe you could even include your e-book as required reading), and provide tests so that participants can assess their progress.

Have you ever made money by selling your expertise online?

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- The State of Small Business Online Marketing Budgets [REPORT]
- Why SMS Marketing Still Makes Sense for Small Business
- Are Groupon Stores and Do-It-Yourself Deals Worth the Risk?
- 5 Invaluable Marketing Lessons from an Epic Campaign for… Cream Cheese?
- Social Media Marketing: 5 Lessons From Business Leaders Who Get It

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mgkaya

Reviews: adobe AIR, iStockphoto

More About: adobe connect, consulting, dpd, ebooks, email newsletters, Ether, expertise, gotomeeting, letter.ly, lulu, newsletters, payloadz, small business, tinyletter, tradebit, Webex, webinars

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4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games

27 Nov


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Social games, like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and MyTown, racked up a number of high-value brand partnerships during the past year, and the social gaming industry in general is seeing huge interest from investors and consumers.

The top 10 Facebook games, for example, all have more than 10 million monthly active users each, with FarmVille leading at 62 million monthly active users, followed by FrontierVille at nearly 37 million and Zynga Poker with nearly 33 million. Granted, these are small portions of Facebook’s total network of more than 500 million users. But with a budding industry like social gaming, these are still impressive numbers, especially given the growth that these games are experiencing — all of the top 10 games were launched after 2008, with the top three games being launched after mid-2009.

The U.S. population alone is also a good indicator of user adoption — one in five Americans over the age of six have played an online social game, according to a recent study.

Increased user activity has spurred attention from investors. From an acquisition point of view, we witnesed Disney’s $763.2 million acquisition of Playdom, Electronic Arts’s $400 million acquisition of Playfish, and Google’s acquisition of Slide. Regarding investment, the big winner this year is Zynga, having now raised a total of $366 million.

Brands are taking notice and acting quickly, implementing innovative ways to advertise in social games and capitalize on the rise of virtual gaming.

Carree Syrek, a partner in social media strategy at Mindshare, a global media and marketing services company, recently spoke at ad:tech on the common misconceptions that companies have about marketing in social games. Here’s are the four concerns she discussed.

1. My Audience Doesn’t Play Social Games

Brands often look at social gaming as something that only a niche group of gamers partake in, but multiple surveys show that social gaming actually appeals to a much broader audience than most would expect. One early 2010 survey found that the average social gamer was a 43-year-old female.

“One of the biggest things that I hear when I talk to brands is ’social gamers are moms. They’re middle-aged moms,’” said Syrek. “But actually, this is not the case. Each of the games or the worlds that you’re in have very specific audiences that you wouldn’t necessarily see unless you dug a little bit deeper.”

Syrek pointed to the disparity between FarmVille and Mafia Wars demographics as an example of diversity among social gamers, as presented in the 2010 PopCap Social Gaming Research Results.

  • FarmVille pulls an audience that is 62% female, 33% of its audience is between 18 and 34 years old, and the average income is between $60,000 and $100,000. The FarmVille audience is also 84% caucasian and 7% Hispanic.
  • Mafia Wars’s audience, on the other hand, is 51% female, with 28% of the audience between 18 and 34 years old, and the average income falling below $30,000. Seventy-one percent of Mafia Wars users are caucasian, while 17% are African American.

Syrek clarified that raw numbers don’t explain the full story, pointing to index numbers as a way to better understand an audience. Index numbers are used in marketing research and indicate the strength to which a certain demographic is represented on a site or service, generally with a weighted base number of 100 representing the average Internet user.

“There are different ways to segment for ethnicity if you’re going after specific markets,” she stated. “The numbers in parentheses [as pictured above] are index numbers. So, you can see that even though, say in Mafia Wars, the African American segment is only 17% of the people who play that, their index is 198. So, you’ve got a really receptive market there that you can tap into.”

“The point is that you can actually dig deep, and you can find the proper environment for your target demographic,” stated Syrek.

Before writing off social gamers as middle-aged moms or male teenagers, be sure to look at the types of games out there and learn about their audiences — you may find that your audience is present on a few niche social games.

2. Virtual Worlds Are Not for “Serious” Companies

“I think it’s important to note that there’s a place here for everyone. It’s not just about the Jolly Green Giant being in FarmVille… it doesn’t have to be that literal, and there are spots for everyone here to play,” said Syrek.

It is a misconception that advertising in social games is only territory for entertainment brands or brands that want to be seen as “fun.” On the contrary, many serious brands were discussed during Syrek’sad:tech session.

Linda Gangeri, manager of national advertising for Volvo Cars of North America, discussed Volvo’s recent campaign on MyTown, in which Volvo’s strategy was to “leverage location-based services to deliver Volvo-branded messaging and virtual goods to people checking in to competing dealerships.”

Upon launching the Volvo S60, the Volvo marketing team decided to test virtual goods as a way to build awareness for the new vehicle.

“It was a 30-day campaign from September 1 to September 30,” explained Gangeri. During the 30-day period, 5.3 million Volvo-branded checkins were reached, 1.3 million Volvo-branded virtual goods (including a steering wheel, a wheel, the Volvo iron mark and the S60 vehicle) were delivered, and 20,000 clicks to “See the S60 in Action” were logged, for a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.5%, which is much higher than the CTRs that the rest of the marketing industry is accustomed to.

“It gave us the opportunity to dig deeper, to immerse ourselves in an environment where people are having fun [and are] engaged, and then to take branded items, embed them and expose them to this huge audience of people,” said Gangeri, happy with the results of the campaign.

3. It’s Always About Capitalism

Within social gaming, the virtual goods market is the top revenue driver for social game creators — virtual goods makes up 90% of Zynga’s revenue, for example. Social gamers are willing to buy digital goods in order to improve their positions in the games. This is great for game creators, obviously, as they are technically selling nothing. Users buy fake shovels and tractors to tend to their fake fields. There’s a lot of money in that — the U.S. virtual goods market is predicted to pass $2 billion in 2011.

While the money is certainly there, social gaming and the virtual goods market aren’t always about capitalism. In fact, Syrek mentioned four examples of social good on social gaming platforms:

  • Pet adoptions in YoVille raised $90,000 for SF/SPCA during the spring of 2009.
  • Teddy bear purchases in Mafia Wars raised more than $100,000 for Coalition for the Cure (Huntington’s Disease) in March 2010.
  • The Pandaren Monk pet in World of Warcraft generated $1.1 million in donations for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
  • To date, Zynga players have raised more than $3 million in connection with Zynga.org social partnerships, the majority of which has been directed to the welfare of women and children in Haiti.

These cases illustrate that social games could be a good route for for-profit or non-profit businesses hoping to raise a little awareness for social good projects.

4. Social Games Are a Fad

Social networking dominates most people’s time spent online, but next in line is online gaming, Nielsen reported in August. Of course, social gaming only accounts for a portion of that sector, but still, the fact that social networking and online gaming dominate online activity is a nod to the growing importance of social gaming.

Syrek pointed to the 2010 PopCap Social Gaming Research Results to validate her argument that social gaming isn’t a fad. The study found that 24% of U.S. and UK Internet users play social games at least once a week, and that most social gamers play other genres of games, including casual and hardcore games.

In another portion of the session, Manny Anekal, director of brand advertising at Zynga, illustrated that users are spending a lot of time playing social games. FarmVille users average a whopping 68 minutes of FarmVille play per day and Mafia Wars users average 52 minutes per day on the game, according to April 2010 Cisco Security Intelligence Operation data, for example. It’s no secret that social games are engaging (and addictive), but who knew users were spending so much time tending to virtual farms and brawls?

While it is admittedly difficult to decide if social gaming is truly a fad or not, data points toward its continued and growing popularity.

What are your thoughts on marketing in social games? Let us know in the comments below.

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Tim Wu on the new monopolists: a “last chapter” for The Master Switch

13 Nov
I reviewed Tim Wu's great history of media consolidation and regulatory capture The Master Switch earlier this month; now Tim says, "This piece I wrote for the Wall Street Journal is an important one. It is like a last chapter for my book."
We wouldn't fret over monopoly so much if it came with a term limit. If Facebook's rule over social networking were somehow restricted to, say, 10 years--or better, ended the moment the firm lost its technical superiority--the very idea of monopoly might seem almost wholesome. The problem is that dominant firms are like congressional incumbents and African dictators: They rarely give up even when they are clearly past their prime. Facing decline, they do everything possible to stay in power. And that's when the rest of us suffer.

AT&T's near-absolute dominion over the telephone lasted from about 1914 until the 1984 breakup, all the while delaying the advent of lower prices and innovative technologies that new entrants would eventually bring. The Hollywood studios took effective control of American film in the 1930s, and even now, weakened versions of them remain in charge. Information monopolies can have very long half-lives.

Declining information monopolists often find a lifeline of last resort in the form of Uncle Sam. The government has conferred its blessing on monopolies in information industries with unusual frequency. Sometimes this protection has yielded reciprocal benefits, with the owner of an information network offering the state something valuable in return, like warrantless wiretaps.

In the Grip of the New Monopolists

 
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Crutchfield Dermatology of Minneapolis claims copyright in everything you write, forever, to keep you from posting complaints on the net

05 Nov
An anonymous reader writes,
Crutchfield Dermatology, in the Minneapolis area, requires its patients to give them the copyright for everything they write on the Internet, in exchange for service. The provision is in an agreement called: "No Show and Cancellation Policy, Patient Satisfaction Agreement, Privacy Protection and Assignment of Copyright Policy." Basically, the company doesn't want its patients saying bad things about it on the Internet. So it demands:

"In consideration for your medical care and the additional patient protection, described above, by signing this document you or your legal ward agree to refrain from direct or indirect publication or airing of commentary about Crutchfield Dermatology and Dr. Crutchfield's practice, expertise or treatment except in the manner provided in the preceeding Patient Satisfaction Agreement Procedures. You recognize that Crutchfield Dermatology has made significant investments to develop Crutchfield Dermatology's practice and reputation for outstanding care, and that published comments on the internet or through mass correspondence may severely damage Crutchfield Dermatology's practice. By this agreement, you grant all copyright ownership in any and all published statements, comments, blog postings, and any other communication made by you outside of the Patient Satisfaction Agreement Procedures. You further agree that Cruthfield Dermatology is entitled to equitable relief to prevent the initiation or continuation of publishing or airing of such commentary regarding Crutchfield Dermatology's practice, expertise, or treatment."

Giving them copyright over things I write about them is bad enough; giving them copyright over everything I write turns me into an indentured servant. And, of course:

"Crutchfield Dermatology reserves the right to modify any policies without notice."

Crutchfield Dermatology

 
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