Choosing Social Networking Sites Carefully

Everyone knows how big social networking is for business owners these days.  Social networking was originally intended to make it easier to maintain personal relationships, but businesses have made social networking a priority as well.  Premier sites have made it possible for businesses to grow their contact lists, manage their relationships and created the concepts of viral marketing.

Businesses of all sizes have taken part in social networking to promote their business in ways that they could never have dreamed of fifteen years ago.  Executives from all Fortune 500 companies promote their business on LinkedIn and companies with no marketing budget have the opportunity to make themselves front page news all over the country.

In order to make the most of social networking, businesses must learn to manage their social networking resources carefully.  It requires an investment of time and sometimes money just like anything else.  If a company wishes to benefit from social networking they must manage these resources carefully.

One of the mistakes that entrepreneurs often make is choosing the wrong social networks to invest in.  They end up spreading themselves too thin rather than focusing on the most appropriate sites.

Facebook is still the most popular social networking site and it’s free.  However, entrepreneurs must be careful not to make the mistake many others make investing all their time there.  Currently Facebook users are made up predominantly of people aged 25-54, with another 25% being 18-24.

In recent years more emphasis has been placed on business networking through Facebook.  Nevertheless, it is not as effective for professional networking as sites like LinkedIn, and Twitter is just as good a platform for many viral marketing programs.

A number of new sites other than LinkedIn have been created for business networking.  Some of the more popular sites include Xing and Ryze.  Xing is a great platform but it is difficult to get much of it without paying for the premium services.  Ryze is a good social network for new entrepreneurs, but it is not as popular as it was when it was first introduced.

These sites still can be worth joining even for users who aren’t interested in paying for premium memberships.   However, if they have a hard time finding and connecting with other users with the free plan, they should be careful before they invest a substantial amount of time and energy using them.

Businesses especially need to be concerned about the number of paid business networking sites that are almost completely inactive.  They exist only to continue scraping membership fees, mostly from new clients who don’t know what (or how little) they are actually getting from the services.  I won’t name any of the sites I have joined here, but I have run into a number of them.

The best rule of thumb is to focus on either the most popular networking sites or those that are most specifically targeted to a niche audience.  New businesses must always keep in mind that benefits from social networking only come with hard work.  They must approach social networking just like any other business strategy and look for the best return on their investment.

About the Author: Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

10 Inspiring Young Online Entrepreneurs

One really awesome thing about the Internet is that there’s no such thing as age discrimination when it comes to being successful.  It doesn’t matter if you’re 12 or 72 - you have just as much chance as anyone of becoming rich and famous through an online business.  To illustrate the point, here, in no particular order, are 10 young entrepreneurs who are making their dreams a reality through internet businesses.

	Jonathan Mead, 23 of IlluminatedMind.net - Full-time blogger and life coach Jonathan Mead delivers a steady dose of inspiration and how-to content on his blog, and through his popular e-books, Reclaim Your Dreams, and The Zero Hour Workweek - How I Liberated Myself From the 9 to 5 by Getting Paid to Be Me. At just 23, Jonathan has figured out the “secret formula” for becoming a successful entrepreneur by sharing his story and expertise through blogging. Twitter: @jonathanmead
	Michael Dunlop, 21 of IncomeDiary.com - Michael Dunlop started his first profitable website when he was just 16 years old.  Now, at the ripe old age of 21, Michael is truly living what he calls the Internet Lifestyle.  Michael’s blog is all about helping others achieve this same dream.  Through interviews with some of the true thought-leaders in online marketing, as well as instructional content, Michael brings great information to anyone looking to become a pro blogger. Twitter: @michaeldunlop
	Pete Cashmore, 24 of Mashable.com - From the Mashable site: “Pete Cashmore is the 24 year-old CEO and founder of Mashable.com, a Technorati Top 10 blog worldwide. He founded Mashable in a small Scottish town in 2005 at age 19. In 2009, Cashmore was chosen as one of Inc Magazine’s 30 Under 30, Forbes’ Top 25 Web Celebs and the Huffington Posts’ Top 10 Game Changers 2009.” Twitter: @petecashmore and @mashable
	Adam Horwitz, 18 of AdamHorwitz.tv - 18-year-old Adam Horwitz says on his site that he has a goal to make a million dollars a year by the time he’s 21.  All signs point to that becoming a reality.  Adam started out in Internet marketing at the age of 15 and has become an expert in the areas of affiliate marketing and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.  Now he makes money teaching others to make a living in these areas.  His blog is full of informational videos, tips, and lots of goofy stuff that might not make you a better entrepreneur, but just might make you laugh. Twitter: @AdamHorwitz
	Kevin Sproles, 25 of Volusion.com - Kevin Sproles started designing web sites at the age of 16.  After receiving lots of requests for a shopping cart solution, Kevin, with very little money and a great deal of perseverance, started coding shopping cart software.  Now, at the age of 25, his company supplies the most award-winning e-commerce solution to over online 100,000 entrepreneurs as well as major companies. Twitter: @volusion
	Gurbaksh Chahal, 27 of gWallet.com - Gurbaksh Chahal has an amazing entrepreneurial story.  After dropping out of high school in San Diego at age 16 to start ClickAgents, a performance-based ad network, he grew the company for two years, at which point it was acquired by ValueClick in a $40 million all-stock deal. His next venture, another ad network called BlueLithium, was acquired in 2007 by Yahoo! for $300 million cash.  Gurbaksh started gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media, in September of 2009.  In 2008, Gurbaksh published his memoir in a book called The Dream. Twitter: @gchahal
	Catherine Cook, 20 of myYearbook.com - Since co-founding myYearbook with her brother in 2005, at the age of 15, Catherine Cook and her team have raised over $20 million in capital and have grown the site into one of the largest US social media sites with over 20 million members.  The site makes meeting new people easy by introducing members to innovative social games that are all tied together by a single virtual currency called “Lunch Money.” Twitter: @myYearbook
	Sam Lessin, 26 of Drop.io - After graduating from Harvard, Magna Cum Laude in 2005, Sam Lessin started Drop.io.  Drop.io is a simple, private, real-time, sharing, collaboration, and presentation site where users can upload files of any kind and have the ability to access, share, and edit those files from any Internet-connected computer.  Sam is also the co-founder of SocialGreat.com, a location-based social media site with a growing user-base. Twitter: @lessin
	Ryan Allis, 26 of iContact.com - Ryan Allis is the co-founder and CEO of iContact, a leading provider of email marketing tools for small businesses.  Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in 2003 to its current size with more than 175 employees, 50,000 customers, and $28 million in annual sales, while raising $10.8 million to grow the firm.  Ryan is also the author of the book Zero to One Million, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in 2008. Twitter: @ryanallis
	Derek Johnson, 25 of Tatango.com - Derek Johnson was bit by the entrepreneur bug early in life, starting his first business of selling candy bars to fellow students at recess by the age of eight. Derek, a self proclaimed workaholic, puts in 100+ hour workweeks to help fulfill the vision of Tatango.com.  Originally launched as networkText.com in 2007, Tatango has since facilitated the sending of tens of millions of text messages to groups of varying sizes, through their simple-to-use group texting platform. Twitter: @TheDerekJohnson

Once you’ve seen these success stories, you might want to ask yourself: What can they do that you can’t? Chances are you won’t find that they have anything special, beyond a drive to succeed, the belief that it’s possible, and a willingness to work as hard and as long as it takes.  So whatever your age, whether you’re younger or older than those above, know that you too can make your dreams of business success a reality, if you’ll just go for it and keep at it through whatever may come.

30 Days to Pumped Up Blog Traffic

It’s pretty much universally accepted these days that having a blog is a smart move for any business.  And because just about everyone understands that, just about everyone (and their uncle) has a blog.  What that means is that the competition for traffic to your blog is strong and growing on a daily basis.  After all, people can only read so much every day, so they’ll naturally gravitate to the blog content that is most relevant and meaningful to them.  But even the best-written, most content-packed blogs are useless if no one sees them in the first place.  So building traffic flow to your blog is at least as important as making it stick (getting people to follow you).

Especially if you’re just getting started with blogging, building traffic can be a bewildering, and often frustrating proposition.  With all the advice out there on what to do and how to do it, how can you know what works best for you?  The truth is, you can’t know.  Mostly, you have to research and see what makes the most sense to you, then try it and adjust as you go.  And once you have the formula down… well, actually, there is no formula.  If you think you’ve found the perfect formula, don’t get too comfortable.  It will change soon enough.  All that said, below are just four simple steps you can take immediately that will begin to increase your blog traffic.  It will take time to see significant results, and you’ll have to pick and choose where to spend most of your time, but these methods (as of today) will put you on the path to more traffic within 30 days.

1. Participate in forums. Forums, like the one at YoungEntrepreneur.com, are a great way to connect with fellow business people in your field as well as blog readers.  If you target your efforts at forums within your target audience, you’ll often find hundreds or even thousands of people interested in exactly what you’re talking about in your blog.  Get involved in the forums, offer real, useful advice, and when appropriate (and not too obviously), direct people to relevant blog articles on your site.  Also include your blog URL in your signature when allowed.

2. Use social media. We’ve written extensively on this site about the benefits of using social media sites like Twitter & Facebook and others.  So without going into great detail, let’s just say once more that social media is like no other medium in its ability to reach a targeted audience in a meaningful way, at little or no expense.  If you’re not using these tools, you’re missing out on traffic that you could be gaining right now.

3. Comment on other blogs. You probably read other blogs right?  So make it a point, whenever you’re on another person’s blog page, to comment on their posts.  This will often help to build a relationship with the blog writer, which can be beneficial in many ways, and it will allow you to post a link back to your blog.  As these are pretty much always no-follow links, you won’t benefit in that way, but you will benefit from the traffic generated by people clicking on your name.  Of course that won’t happen if your comments aren’t thoughtful or interesting, so, “Nice post” won’t help much.  For more on the topic of comment marketing, read this.

4. Make sharing easy. It’s amazing how many smaller blogs don’t offer an easy way for readers to share posts with others.  Even if you don’t like Twitter, for example, or if you don’t think having a Twitter account will help your business, you have to recognize that millions of people, including most of your readers, do use Twitter.  So at the very least, install TweetMeme or Topsy buttons on your posts.  If you want to really optimize the possibilities and you’re using WordPress, SexyBookmarks is a great plugin that makes it easy for readers to share on over 80 bookmarking sites.  Whatever you use, make sure people who love your stuff can easily tell others about it.  Word of mouth is still king when it comes to getting people to look at what you have to offer.

Is there more to driving traffic to your blog? Of course there is.  We didn’t even touch on SEO, SEM, backlinks, or a thousand other tools and methods you can use.  But these four steps are some that anyone can take without having to do much research or decipher complex methodology.  And if you start using them today, you just might see pumped up traffic in 30 days or less.

Building a Brand? Join the Crowd!

Most start-ups and entrepreneurs will by now have heard of “Crowdsourcing.” It is the Web 2.0 phenomenon that sounds almost too good to be true. It’s a simple way to find hundreds, even thousands of contractors who are on hand, ready and willing to work for your company. Crowdsourcing typically involves outsourcing a range of small task to a large, undefined group of anonymous workers.

Both new and established businesses have been taking advantage of having an entire crowd of employees at their disposal, for a fraction of the cost of hiring just a few. Crowdsourcing provides a pool of workers who are willing to help companies with, for example, their marketing, social networking and branding.

Why Everyone is Crowdsourcing

Start-ups and established businesses alike are using crowdsourcing as a quick and effective way to establish their company’s brand, and companies are really starting to see the value in treating potential customers as contractors and vice-versa. Crowdsourcing allows companies to let customers design and shape the brand which the company will become. In a sort of “casting call” move, companies can open their doors and put their contracts out for anyone to claim and complete.  The advantage of this is that companies find and hook their customers right from the start, by letting them have creative input from the get go. In this regard, Crowdsourcing is a true product of Web 2.0.

Benefit from a Pool of Creativity

There’s good reason small businesses are choosing to crowdsource their projects, rather than simply outsourcing them or submitting them to a bidding site. With traditional outsourcing services, ultimately, there will only be one person doing the work. That means only one set of ideas, one mind, one source of creativity. There are numerous sites such as Amazon Mturk, Cloudcrowd, crowdSPRING and 99Designs, all of which allow companies to submit various types of projects. The companies then get to choose between a range of finished products, not simply a variety of bids.

One of the biggest advantages to using crowdsourcing is that companies benefit from the work and creativity of many for the price of one. Even if, ultimately, only one project or design is chosen.  Sites such as 99designs and crowdSPRING allow start-ups and entrepreneurs to post design projects for members to complete on.  Once the competition time is up, the buyer gets to choose the logo or design he or she likes best. This kind of competition means that there are always plenty of quality designs to choose from, so crowdsourcing is a great way for buyers to take advantage of an entire pool of creativity, inspired by competition.

Try it Before You Buy it.

Before purchasing anything of value, you always like to sample it before you turn over your hard earned cash, right? So why would something as important as your company’s brand be any different?

With crowdsourcing, you can decide on exactly what you want done, and then harness the creativity of an entire crowd to get it done right. You can name exactly what you want and how you want it done, and then sit back while a bunch of eager people get to work on it. Rather than having to choose and commit to one designer, you can cut straight to the chase and choose from the actual designs.

Most Importantly

A lot of entrepreneurs and start ups are operating on a tight budget. Crowdsourcing offers an economic solution to getting a brand out there quickly and effectively. It is a fantastic way to get a business on the map, by quickly contracting out work such as logos, banners and article writing. It is also a great way to find an entire pool of talented people willing to perform tasks for your company, and it gives designers a chance to complete in a global creative environment and to get their work recognized.

So if you’re looking for a little help with your branding, consider crowdsourcing as a resource to get it done right - for less.  Have you used crowdsourcing for branding or another part of your business? Tell us about it in the comments!

Viral Video Winner and New Contest Announcement!

One thing is for sure: If you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur, you’d have creative abilities.  Not that you have to be artistic.  Creativity comes in many forms.  Whether we’re devising new solutions to old problems, creating blog or marketing copy or designing more streamlined business processes, we entrepreneurs use creativity all the time.  Because we know that creativity is so important to entrepreneurship - and because we like to have a lot of fun, our other site, YoungEntrepreneur.com, recently ran a viral video contest.  After collecting a ton of video submissions from young entrepreneurs who we challenged to come up with a Young Entrepreneur-themed video with viral potential, we came up with a winner, to whom we awarded a $500 cash prize!

Here’s our winner!

What made this video a winner?  First of all, we think it’s hilarious!  Next, the editing is super creative, and the skit itself shows a lot of creativity.  The message in the video is actually pretty clever too.  As an entrepreneur, have you ever had to deal with someone who just didn’t get “the whole Internet thing” or how social media or other tools vital to your business worked?  We all have to some extent, even if it was a family member or friend asking when we’re going to “get a real job”!

Nick Scheidies and Josh Stevens of Next Level Ink are the two guys who put this video together.  These two personify what entrepreneurs are all about.  They’ve each founded and managed several ventures, and while still involved in other projects, they head up Next Level Ink, a Longmont, Colorado-based creative media agency, specializing in audio and video.  They’re passionate about taking each of their clients’ brands to the next level with unique, personalized, and professional media. And because they’re just getting on their feet, they’re able to do it for less.  Also, they are both self-taught when it comes to audio and video production.

Announcing a monthly Viral Video Contest!

Want to get in on the chance to win $500 cash?  We’re excited to announce that we’re kicking off an ongoing Viral Video Contest.  Each month we’ll sort through video entries to find a single winner who will win a $500 cash prize and some great exposure in an article like this one!  Here are the details:

- Create a video - Create a video with a young entrepreneur theme and upload it to YouTube.com.

- Include our logo - Include this image within your video.

-  Submit your entry - Use our contact form to submit your entry.  Just fill out all the fields, typing “Viral Video
Contest” in the Subject box, and a link to your video in the Message box.

-  Rules -

• Entry deadline is the last day of the month, with the first deadline occurring 8/31/2010.  Winner will be notified by the 15^th of the month following entry.
• We will accept one entry per contestant per month.  If you submit more than one video in a calendar month without prior approval, only the first entry will be considered.
• To be considered, your video must be young-entrepreneur-themed and must include the YoungEntrepreneur.com logo within the video.
• This contest is open to everyone, and the prize will be paid in US dollars via prepaid Visa debit card or PayPal at the winners choosing.
• It is acknowledged that judging is 100% subjective, and the decisions of the judges (us) are final.

So that’s all there is to it.  Start shooting, and get your first video to us by August 31, 2010.  You could have $500 in your hands and your business in front of thousands of readers shortly thereafter!

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