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Posts Tagged ‘small business’

Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers

04 Jan


Adam Kleinberg is co-founder and CEO at Traction, an interactive agency that aligns psychology with technology to create ideas that work. Catch him tweeting at @adamkleinberg and blogging at tractionco.com/blog.

The most effective ads today are experiences that provide value to customers. The biggest challenge is providing that value at scale in a world where people are empowered to consume media on their own terms through a dizzying array of gadgets, devices and doodads.

This puts marketers between a rock and a hard place.

For years, marketers have distributed messages to people with banner ads, which are like a rock that we throw at people with the dim hope that we’ll knock them upside the head. These rocks provide no value whatsoever.

Today, we’ve figured out how to create value — apps. Figuring out how to create utility is no easy path. Indeed, it is a “hard place” to reach.

But the reward is so great because with that app comes a deep and meaningful relationship with your customer — a new platform for your brand to foster long-term engagement with your target. And you are no dummy — you’ve even got a plan and a budget to drive downloads of your app. Bases are covered. What could go wrong?


We Already Have an App. What Could Go Wrong?


Application downloads look great in an ROI report, but when you take into account the proliferation of digital devices entering the market, the cost of producing unique brand experiences across all of them is exorbitant. You could spend a boatload of money creating and distributing this app only to have no one use it.

That’s what could go wrong.


Brand APIs as Value Platforms


Ironically, it is because of this proliferation of devices that the overall demand for content and utility is increasing. Brands should create value in the form of content and utility and distribute it via platforms that extend in reach beyond proprietary channels.

Apps are just channels. To establish value platforms, I propose that brands should consider creating their own APIs.

What is an API? An API, or application programming interface, is a hook. It’s one part of a software program that makes it easy for other programs to make use of a piece of its functionality or content. When APIs are made open, they can be accessed and used by anyone.

Facebook has APIs. Twitter has an API. Google has APIs out the wazoo. Why don’t brands have APIs? Well they should.

With APIs, you let other developers do your R&D for you. The benefit? You get development at scale with minimal investment. You effectively outsource risk because failures don’t cost you anything.

Brands need to think like startups. They must devise experiences that not only meet the demands of content and utility that audiences crave, but that are readily consumable in bite-sized chunks so that audiences can devour them on their own terms — and developers can serve them on theirs.

This last point is critical because it allows innovation to happen rapidly and without sustained investment.


“It Doesn’t Make Sense for My Brand”


kraft app image

“Not my brand,” you say. It’s easy to envision how brands whose core business revolves around technology or data could make use of an API. eBay has APIs that allow developers to access their database so they can create new and innovative ways to buy and sell merchandise. Netflix had more than 6,000 developers download its API to participate in its $1 million innovation competition. But what about the rest of us?

First, interfaces are becoming core to the fabric of more and more brands and products. Soon, you’ll have breakfast in the morning and there will be an interface on your refrigerator. You’ll hop in your car and there will be another interface. You drive to the airport, jump on a plane and voila… another interface. All of those interfaces are opportunities for brand APIs.

What if you sell macaroni and cheese? Kraft recently released a behemoth of an application for the iPad called Big Fork Little Fork that is filled with games, recipes and videos to help parents teach their kids about healthy eating and discover ways to do so using Kraft products. A worthy goal, but does it sell Kraft products? I downloaded it two months ago, but neither I nor my kids regularly use the app.

Imagine if Kraft released a simple API that allowed people to type in any ingredient and get back a list of healthy recipes from Kraft’s database? As new form factors emerge (like that refrigerator interface), independent developers could create new distribution mechanisms in a fraction of the time Kraft could — and without the cost.

What’s more, a company like Safeway could use that API to create its own app tied to their grocery delivery service. Customers could have all the ingredients in a selected recipe delivered to their front door. That would sell Kraft products.


APIs to Spread Utility


evian imageBrands could also create APIs to allow for the spread of utility. Here are some examples for major brands. Nike could create a “Just size it” API that allowed you to take a picture of your foot and find the perfect shoe size. How would they distribute it? Let their resellers figure that out. Evian could create a hydration API that calculated how much people really ought to drink each day and then reminded them to do so. Netflix created an API so developers could come up with better ways to make movie recommendations. Why couldn’t wine company Constellation Brands create an API so developers could come up with better ways to make wine recommendations?

Note that any of these ideas could make use of an app as a delivery mechanism for their API, but their underlying value comes first. By providing access to that value through an API, they would allow the delivery of that value to spread exponentially.

Sure, ideas aren’t always obvious or easy to come by. They never have been. That’s why some advertising works and some doesn’t. Today, ideas that actually work are even harder to devise. We must not only understand the psychology of why an idea will work, but how they will work. Rather than truly gaining an understanding of the latter, many marketers fall prey to a disease called “Shiny Object Syndrome.” They follow the pack and slip the latest shiny object into their marketing plans. Last year, it was a Facebook Page. This year, it’s an app.

Before you grab for that shiny object, ask yourself what you’re really trying to accomplish and how best to make that happen. The best answer may not be an app. It may be an API.


More Business Resources from Mashable:


- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook Insights for Small Business
- Why the Fashion Industry Is Betting Big on Branded Online Content
- Top 10 Digital Advertising Innovations of 2010
- 5 Predictions for the Public Relations Industry in 2011
- 7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun


Reviews: Apps, Facebook, Google, Twitter, iStockphoto

More About: api, App, apps, brand, business, MARKETING, small business

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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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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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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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