While talking to some friends, I asked if any of them used Twitter or Facebook.

My friend told me about Bettie’s Cakes. Bettie’s Cakes has a store in Saratoga Springs, NY and they have a double decker bus that drives around the Capitol District selling cupcakes. They use Twitter to tell people where the bus will be and when. Usually, when they pull up in a parking lot in a mall, there are already dozens of cars waiting for them. They apparently sell about 12,000 cupcakes a week with the bus. At about $2.00 each, that’s about $24,000 per week. Not bad.

The story got me interested in the power of social network marketing.

The two major social networking sites are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is a complete social system with a lot of interaction between users, called Friends. Facebook has an astonishing 500 million registered users! Twitter allows people to broadcast short text messages to as many people who want to receive them. Both systems have added cell phone integration.

How can a business use them?

Facebook

Here’s where Facebook is good for business.

Once you have an account, you can set up what Facebook calls “Pages” for your business, group, rock band, church, local government, etc. Setting up a Page is very easy. If you know how to use the internet you can set up a Page. There is no technical skill required.

You can put up very basic information about your business, such as address, the goods or services you perform, phone number, hours of operation, etc. You can also put up photos, videos, or notes on your Page.

Here’s where it gets really powerful. Once your Page is set up, ask a few of your friends to “Like” your page. Once they Like your page, they become a “fan”. Now, every time you update your Page, your fans will get a message on their Facebook home page. So, for example, if you introduce a new product, you can simply post a message about it, or put up photos, press release, or any other piece of information. Then, all of your fans will be notified in seconds.

Viral marketing

If you have a really popular product, your fans will tell their friends, and word will spread. Fast. The name for this is “viral marketing” – word spreads about your product like a virus.

There really isn’t anything else like it.

You can also interact with your fans. They can comment on your updates, and you can write back and engage in conversations, either publicly or privately.

Remember that number: 500 million.

Twitter is very popular for mobile food vendors. Like Bettie’s Cakes, they post their whereabouts on Twitter and people meet them and buy their products.

Features and benefits of using social networks for a business

Features

1. Free – Facebook, Twitter and other services are free to use.
2. Easy to use – no technical skill required.
3. Very popular – you are tapping into a huge population of active users

Benefits

1. Since these services are free, you can acquire new customers for far less money than any other marketing tool out there. Word-of-mouth is the best advertising and these services amplify word of mouth to hundreds, thousands even millions of people very quickly.

2. Easy to use – you can establish an online presence quickly without having to hire a computer geek. You can stay in control of your Pages. You don’t have to wait for your web designer to make the changes you want done right away. You can experiment with different promotions, quickly see what works and what doesn’t. If you already have a website, Facebook will bring more people to your site. If you don’t have a website, Facebook lets you get on the internet for free.  Your Facebook page will show up in search results like Google so people can find you and find out more about your company.

3. By getting on Facebook, you are joining an enormous community. And, if you’re product is attractive to them, they will spread the word for you. It can be like one big free chain mail service. Your customers are advertising for you.

Conclusion

If you don’t have a website, set up a Facebook Page right now. There is no excuse not to, unless you don’t want to make more money.

Twitter is an excellent choice for fast breaking short text messages. You can announce one day sales, or even one hour sales.

Don’t forget, your customers can “unlike” you as fast as they like you. Once they unlike you, they are no longer a fan and they won’t see your updates. So, don’t abuse the system or overload it with useless information.

You can now put one of those check reading machines in your own office and deposit your own checks.

The new service is called “Remote Check Deposit” and it’s…grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Remote check deposit let’s you scan your own checks, tally up the deposit, and send the deposit to your bank with the click of a mouse.

I’ve been using it for a week now and it’s great. I used to wait a few days if I had less than $2000 worth of checks because it’s a 45 minute round trip drive to the bank (plus gabbing time). Some people only go to the bank once a week, forfeiting all of that wonderful 0.05% interest they could be earning. (You can negotiate higher rates with your bank – ask to speak to the branch manager and whine, threaten to leave, whine some more, and whine again.)

Now, after getting the afternoon mail, I deposit all of my checks, even if the total deposit is small. I’m done in under 5 minutes and burn no gas.

I had two options: 1. Get the service from my bank, or 2. Get the service from an independent remote check deposit service provider.

My bank wanted $50 per month for the service, plus $400 for the scanner. DepositNow offered me the same service for $24.95/month plus the exact same scanner for free if I signed up for 12 months and paid the monthly fees in advance.

The service does require a credit check, there are limitations on the service which will vary from bank to bank.

DepositNow approved me for a maximum of $12,000 per day, $5,000 maximum check, and 50 checks per month for $24.95, with 50 cents per check if I run over that. This works for me. They have higher monthly fees for more checks, so pick the best deal for you.

You simply need a relatively new Windows computer with a free USB port and you are good to go.

So far this has been a great service and a real time saver. Check it out today! (No pun intended.)

(Note: I do not get any referral fees from any links on this blog. I can’t guarantee that you will be satisfied with the services from companies mentioned. They work for me, that’s all I know.)

Put up at least one page with basic information about your company, such as name, products or services offered, where to buy, address, phone, fax and email information. You can find web hosting services for as little as a few dollars per month.

Because honesty and integrity are essential ingredients of business success, you want to convey that on your website without saying so directly.  Nothing appears more dishonest than a business proclaiming that it is honest.

What to do? Provide all the relevant information visitors are looking for in plain, direct ways on your website.

Show a photo of your facilities, supply a map (you can get them for free from Google Maps or other online mapping services), include your name, address, phone, fax and email information on every page, guarantee your products or services in writing, offer money back guarantees on everything you sell. These honest actions will say more about your company than flowery adjectives.

Include descriptive adjectives on your website so search engines like Google and Bing will include your company in search results for your products and services. Don’t try to trick the search engines, just be truthful, otherwise you might get blacklisted. Their software is very, very smart.

1 and 1 Internet is a very good web hosting service company. They are inexpensive (especially for Linux hosting), reliable – I haven’t had any downtime in years, and have many easy-to-use tools for first time web users. You can build a simple, good-looking web page yourself. Just look at other websites and copy the ones you like.

If you see something really cool on a website and are wondering how they did it, just click on “View Page Source” from your browser’s toolbar and you will see the HTML code behind the site. Once you learn HTML, you’ll be able to copy elements of websites that you like to make your site more attractive.

And, if you need to learn how to build a website, just search for it with Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. You will find hundreds of good tutorials for everything from simple HTML to complex database-driven scripted websites.

Don’t forget modem users!  Many folks still use modems, so make sure your site loads quickly, even with a modem.

If you include pictures, don’t scale multi-megabyte photos using your HTML editor’s scaling command. Your visitor’s browsers still have to download the multi-megabyte image before their browser can scale the image.

Scale the image using the Gimp before inserting it into your website. Reduce the size of your images down to about 30K or so. For zooming, create a separate page with a larger photo and link to it from the original page.

So, get off your duff and build that simple site. Your business will not soar the next day, but people will be able to find you when searching the internet. We’re all needles in a haystack, so put a bright red ball on the head of your needle and get on the web today.

You can’t pay your employees, your suppliers, your landlord, or the government if your customers don’t pay you.

You can pay for credit reports from companies such as Dun & Bradstreet, and their fees are reasonable.

However, I have found a “one strike you’re out” strategy to be very effective, and better yet, free.

Common payment terms for most business to business transactions are  Net 30, Net 45, Net 60 or even, Net 90. (This means your customer has that many days to pay for the goods or services they buy from you.) My terms are Net 30. Large corporations ignore that and pay me according to their rules. I don’t acknowledge their terms, but I don’t fight it either. I know I’ll get my money. However, I will give priority to orders from faster paying customers. Life is tough, deal with it.

There are companies who pay their bills late or worse, don’t pay their bills at all. The reason? They are slimeballs. Plain and simple. Otherwise known as deadbeats.

Whenever a new customer asks to open an account, I ask them to send a list of 3 trade references and one bank reference. How they respond to this request tells me more than how their trade references respond to my requests.

They probably don’t pay their bills, either on time or at all, if:

• they don’t send the references right away
• they don’t put in fax numbers for their references, and expect me to call their references and ask for fax numbers
• they get defensive when I ask them to send the references in the first place
• all of their references are small companies in their local area
• phone or fax numbers are wrong

After I get the references, I print out a formal letter and fax it. Most companies will reply promptly as a business-to-business courtesy. Remember the rule: honesty is everything in business.

My rule for evaluating the replies is simple, all of the references that reply must state that this company pays their bills on time, and has done so for at least 5 years. I deny credit if one reference comes back with questionable results, like “usually pays 15 days late”. One strike and you’re out.

If a company can’t supply me with 3 vendors who they pay on time, every time, then they certainly are not going to pay me.

I’ve learned to be direct when I make the phone call to tell the customer they are denied. I tell them that our credit rules are strict. I play the “we’re just a small company and can’t afford to take chances” card, and ask them to use a credit card. If they argue with me, it strengthens my resolve to deny them credit. I’m like a Chinese finger – the harder they pull, the tighter it gets.

I don’t accept CODs. Why not? Once bitten, twice shy.

I once had an out-of-state customer buy a $3000 product from us. He had applied for credit but was denied. He declined to use a credit card. I approved COD. Mistake. He cancelled the COD check while it was in the mail to me.

This customer was a subcontractor for a large corporation. When my bank informed me that the check bounced, I called the customer. No answer. Day after day – no answer. So, I called the large corporation where my product was installed. The plant manager told me there was nothing he could do about it and I should try small claims court. That is not an option when they are thousands of miles away and I have a business to run.

I found the phone number of the corporation’s headquarters on Google Finance. I called and asked for the name of the CEO and what would be the best address to use to send him a letter. I then sent a letter telling the whole story, and explaining that his company was using stolen merchandise on their plant floor. Plain and simple. Direct.

Two weeks later I got a call from the plant manager. He asked if I had been paid yet. He then asked for the whole story. After I explained it to him, he promised he would get back to me in a week. Didn’t happen.

I called him two weeks later and got a runaround. So, I wrote another letter to the CEO, reminding him that he was still in possession of stolen property.

Three days later I got a call from the plant manager asking me to fax him a copy of the invoice and stating that they would cut a check that day. Sure enough, I got paid.

No more CODs.

Net terms are good for the customer and for the supplier. It puts extra impetus on the supplier to make sure they ship quality merchandise and it gives the customer a month to decide if they have purchased shoddy merchandise.

There can be no compromise – if they don’t pay their bills, don’t ship the goods. It is a matter of business life or business death.

PS – Use the satellite views with Google Maps or Bing Maps to view your customer’s location. You can see if they are operating out of the back of a barn, or are in a large facility.

How? By using a scriptable database management system we designed ourselves using Filemaker. I’m running my business on a 13 year old computer running an 11 year old copy of Filemaker. It’s so fast customers are impressed at how quickly we pull up their records.

Filemaker is an extremely easy-to-use database program. You write scripts by replicating the operations you would do manually. For example, you can script “File: Print” instead of using the mouse and pulldown menus.

With a Filemaker-based system, you can eliminate a payroll service, save thousands of dollars on specialized software programs, and save countless hours of tedious data entry.

Filemaker is so easy to use, non-programmers can use it to run a complete business. You just have to think of everything in terms of a database.

I’ve set up separate “tables” for General Journal, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Employees, Payroll, Inventory, etc. The General Journal and Payroll tables are annuals. All other tables are perennials.

Databases are set up as tables, records and fields. One table could contain employee information. Each record is for an employee. The fields contain data such as last name, first name, etc. All tables can be linked because Filemaker is a relational database system.

Fields can be defined with formulas, so our payroll table has a field that calculates Federal withholding based on the IRS exact calculation method.

All I do for payroll is enter the number of hours, vacation hours, and bonus, if any. I then click a button I defined which runs a script that does all 20 or so general journal entries and prints the paystub. After all employees are entered, I go into the General Journal table and click on the button making the script run for printing the days checks. I put the checks in the printer and that’s it. I still have to go to EFTPS to send Uncle Sam his money, but all the hard work is done in seconds.

My bookkeeper wrote most of the scripts. She never programmed a computer before or since. It took literally minutes for her to learn the system.

Filemaker is available for Windows and the Mac. It’s the best software investment I have ever made.

I’ve been using the Gimp for over 10 years. My most common application for it is reducing the size of digital images to make them easy to email.

Here’s what I do: 1. Transfer the image to my computer. 2. Sharpen the image by 40 percent. 3. Scale the image to 640 wide (the height is automatically adjusted) 4. Save as a new jpg file choosing 75% quality level. The resulting file is about 30 kbytes, small enough to send by email, even with a modem, and the image quality is excellent. Here’s an example:

Of course the Gimp offers thousands of additional features that enable you to do virtually anything Photoshop can do. The manuals are all online so you can read them and see samples, tutorials, even videos of the Gimp in action.

Here’s another common application of the Gimp which has saved me thousands of dollars.

I do my own product photography. I have over 100 images on my websites that would have cost anywhere from $300 to $1200 each with a professional photographer. Though my results are not as good, they are good enough for my purposes.

I use a run-of-the-mill digital camera with the built-in flash. I tape a piece of toilet paper or paper towel in front of the flash to diffuse the light a little. The background is not critical because you can just erase it in the Gimp.

My products are rectangular so the sides are not parallel in the original image. No problem. The Gimp has a “perspective tool” in the toolbox that allows you to stretch the image until the sides of the product are parallel. (In the old days, pro photographers used enormous cameras with tiltable lenses to accomplish the same thing.)

The Sharpen filter is extraordinary for sharpening up details without adding noise to the image. I use a 40 percent sharpening effect in almost all of my pictures.

Like most image editing programs, the Gimp allows you to zoom way in, feather in areas, clone other areas to correct blemishes, take out dust or scratches, etc. You can spend hours or days making a photo perfect, or spend a just a few minutes and make it really good.  One important tip: try to make the photo as perfect as possible in the camera – you’ll save hours later.

The Gimp is an example of open-source software. Open-source software is a collection of outstanding computer programs being produced by volunteers all over the world, distributed for free. I’ll have more on this in later posts.

I found a low-cost fax machine that can scan to email as well as transmit normal faxes. The machine is the Sharp FO-IS125N. The best price I found was at Amazon. Here’s a link to the product page (no commissions are earned via this link).

Not only does this machine scan to email, you can set it to email a copy of all incoming faxes to you. This is great for archiving, but also for getting your faxes when you are out of the office.

If you buy this machine, make sure you set up a separate email account for it. You can use free email services such as gmail if you like.  This machine has a bug in the firmware causing it to  download and destroy all incoming email messages. You can set the reply-to email address to your regular business email account so when people reply to your scanned email messages they’ll come to the email address of your choice.

I bought this machine out of frustration.

All business owners want to be as efficient as possible. We hate wasting time on unnecessary tasks.

These days, many of my customers and suppliers send me a form via an email attachment, expect me to print it,  fill it in or sign it, and then send it back to them via email, not fax.

This was getting to be a pain. I could scan it into my computer, compose an email message, add the attachment and send it. Too slow.

With the Sharp machine, you put in your document,  press “Scan to Email”, type in the email address on the keypad, and press “Start”. In about 3 seconds the email is sent. It’s just like sending a fax, except you type in an email address instead of a phone number.

I chose to use the pdf format, but you can also choose the tiff format.

There is an easy-to-use control panel that you access from the web browser on any computer on your local network.

I have had to send up to 15 email messages a day from paper originals. This fantastic machine has improved my productivity and lowered my costs. That’s the bottom line.

I used to pay $50-60 per phone line each month. Now I spend about $5-6 per month, per line.

I chose CallCentric VoIP service. Their low prices, quality of service and outstanding technical support have made me a very happy customer.

I followed CallCentric’s recommendation and bought my equipment from VoIP Supply, another excellent company.

There are many guides to switching from plain old telephone service (POTS) to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, so I’ll just give a basic introduction. CallCentric and VoIP Supply have more information, you can search for “voip” on the internet, or read the Wikipedia article here.

VoIP sends your telephone calls over the internet instead of over dedicated copper wires and fiber optic cables owned by the phone company. You need 1. high-speed internet service, such as DSL, Cable or Fiber, 2. a telephone adapter, such as the Linksys PAP2T, 3. Your already installed phones.

You connect the phone adapter to your router, disconnect the phone line from the phone company to your building, and then plug the phone cable from the phone adapter into any wall jack. All phones will then use the phone adapter to make calls. The phone adapter is like a mini-telephone switching system in your facility.

I plugged all of my internet and phone equipment into a uninterruptible power supply (UPS) so my service is always on.  My cable internet service has UPSs on their system so our cable stays on for at least 12 hours during a power outage.

My internet phone service has been significantly more reliable than my old phone system, which went out frequently.

CallCentric has many features that make is vastly superior to POTS. Here are some features I have grown addicted to: 1. Voicemail is sent to me via email; 2. I can block dozens of phone callers to filter out junk calls – CallCentric calls this “Call Treatments”; 3. I have my primary line redirect to my secondary line if I’m on a call. If the second line is also in use, the call goes to voicemail. There is never a busy signal.; 4. If power goes out for days (ice storms, usually) my calls are automatically routed to my cell phone.

I have a web-based control panel and can change any of these services at any time, from any location.

VoIP service is a great tool for small businesses, and also works great at home.

The money I save on phone service more than pays for my high-speed internet service. That makes good business sense to me.

McMaster’s big yellow catalog has been a staple for industrial businesses for decades.

LL Bean is the gold standard for mail order service for consumers. McMaster leaves them in the dust.

McMaster offers enormous selection, fair prices, high quality products from large and small companies all over the world, outstanding service, fast shipping, easy returns, etc. etc. etc.

If you are within one-day UPS ground shipping of a McMaster warehouse, you can order by 6pm or later and get virtually anything in their catalog the next day.

You can set up an account or pay with a credit card.

Here’s a story about how fast McMaster gets product out the door.  One time, I wanted to add something to an order. I called McMaster ten minutes after I placed the original order. I was told – “too late, the box is already on the truck”.

Most businesses have a local UPS truck come every day and pick up their packages and then take them back to the local UPS warehouse for sorting and loading onto a tractor trailer.  McMaster has UPS tractor trailers waiting at their loading docks for direct shipment to regional hubs.

If I’m buying large quantities of stainless steel screws, for example, I don’t buy them from McMaster. There are many suppliers who specialize in large quantities of certain items and will offer much better prices than McMaster. You probably won’t receive your order the next day, and it may take more than one phone call to get your order, but you will get better pricing.