In difficult economic times, the reaction of many businesses is to panic. Rather than cutting, dropping, and/or eliminating your product lines or services, think about how you can enhance them.

Examples of this line of thinking:
1. Enhance your purpose; rethink how you define it
2. Enhance your prospects; rethink where you find them
3. Enhance your public profile; rethink how you think of others
4. Enhance your business alliances; rethink how you slice up the pie
5. Enhance your client relationships; rethink how you talk with them
6. Enhance your services; rethink where you provide them
7. Enhance your tools; rethink what you create with them
8. Enhance your market; rethink the channels of revenue
9. Enhance your digital space; rethink how people use it

Before you toss one of the essentials of your business, give the most creative people in your organization a shot at rethinking the who, what, where, when and how. If you are about completely give up, bail out, or kick to the curb one of your products or services, go to the most positive, energetic person in the building (maybe the mail guy/girl) and ask them to pull out their 64 pack of Crayola Crayons and scribble as far outside the lines as they want.

When they are done, take off the glasses of the status quo and look closely at what they have come up with. You might be surprised at how they see value in what you were about to hit the delete button on!

If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential. I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!

The rules are changing! Are you still in the game? Experts are saying that within 5 years information will be primarily collected and delivered not randomly searched and selected. What does this mean? With so many websites, blogs, and videos on the information super highway today, one can do exhaustive research on any number of topics. Recently, I was helping my oldest daughter with a book report on Norway. Within minutes, we had articles, pictures, maps, and population graphs in hand and ready to glue to her project foam board.

Imagine this: What if I could erect a temporary traffic sign on the side of the information highway that instructed all articles, images, and/or videos pertaining to my desired topic to stop and leave a copy, which is then forwarded to my desktop mailbox? I wouldn’t have to go out and do all the research. The research would just come straight to me. Not only is it what I want, it is when I want it.

You don’t have to use much imagination because this bring-it-to-me magic information detour sign not only exists, but is growing exponentially. Over the last several years, the development of RSS (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) has reached amazing height delivering information. RSS is a web feed format that is used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.

As a business owner, why is this important to me? First, the use of an RSS feed based on your industry can keep you on the forefront of innovation in your field of work and ready to adjust to market conditions. Second, creating your own channels of distributing information via blog, audio, or video will open direct lines of communication with your current clients, as well as future prospects that are already in the market for your particular goods or services.

Just having a company website on the web isn’t going to deliver thousands of new customers to your door. You must have an open line of updated information readily available. If your digital space doesn’t have a fully functioning RSS icon (the little orange button) just waiting to be clicked, this is your last at bat!

Here are a couple of resources to create your own RSS feeds:

• FeedBurner
  Advanced feed management technology that helps bloggers, podcasters, and commercial publishers get more value from the content they create.
  www.feedburner.com
• Bloglines
  Free, web-based news aggregator that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and RSS newsfeeds.
  www.bloglines.com
• Feedreader
  Windows application that reads and displays RSS newsfeeds based on XML.
  www.feedreader.com
• SharpReader
  RSS aggregator for the .NET framework.
  www.sharpreader.net
• NewsGator
  RSS news aggregator that runs in Microsoft Outlook.
  www.newsgator.com
• Google Reader
  Customizable aggregator for feeds from news sites, blogs, and other sites with a sharing facility.
  reader.google.com
• Awasu
  Free Windows RSS news-reader.
  www.awasu.com
• NewzCrawler
  Web news reader and browser which provides access to news content from different sources.
  www.newzcrawler.com
• Pluck
  Offers an Internet Explorer add-on which integrates a bookmark manager, web sharing, RSS reader, and search.
  www.pluck.com
• RSS Bandit
  An RSS/Atom aggregator for desktops written with the .NET Framework.
  www.rssbandit.org
• Radio UserLand
  Blog tool that builds a site, organizes and archives posts, and publishes content.
  radio.userland.com
• Rojo Networks
  Discover, organize, and share the wide range of dynamic RSS content on the Internet.
  www.rojo.com
• BlogBurst
  Syndication service that places your blog content on top-tier online destinations to broaden reach, increase page views, and gain visibility.
  www.blogburst.com
• PubSub
  Allows you to subscribe to queries that are then matched against newly published information from sources such as blogs, newsgroups, and SEC filings.
  www.pubsub.com
• All Headline News
  Continuously updated news and headline links from thousands of news sources. Also offers RSS feeds.
  www.allheadlinenews.com
• edgeio
  Collects and organizes classified listings published on other RSS enabled web sites or directly onto edgeio. Browse or use keyword search to find and access the RSS feed you’re looking for, or to upload your own RSS feed.
  www.edgeio.com
• RMail
  Subscription service that lets you watch an RSS subscription via email.
  www.r-mail.org
• AmphetaDesk
  Cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator.
  www.disobey.com/amphetadesk
• Feedmarker
  Free, web-based RSS/ATOM aggregator and bookmarks manager.
  www.feedmarker.com

If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential.  I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!

I could write an endless blog about this one image because it says so much about what it looks like for a business to have a digital face.  I’ll start by sharing some stats of what it means to have your best business profile on Facebook.  Check out these very interesting facts:

Facebook has some very limited stats on their own website, view here, Facebook, often updated

150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. Facebook is used in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories. Source: Mark Zuckerberg, Jan 7, 2009

Facebook has 54.5 million monthly unique visitors, says Comscore, with a growth rate in the U.S. averaged 3.8% per month over the last year. Source, Comscore via Techncrunch, Jan 13, 2009

175mm users, with 600k daily growth of users, with the fastest growing segment “45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.” Inside Facebook, Feb 15th, 2009.

Compare the dominant Facebook vs MySpace traffic, stickablilty, and engagement, Compete, Feb 27, 2009

Despite those that have over 100 friends, most only communicate with a smaller subset of friends, and the rest is broadcasting to others. Now there’s not enough data presented to see if if content actually can still spread across those that do not interact. Source originally from Facebook’s sociologist, Feb 2009

This graph from Compete data shows Facebook has more users than MySpace, note the ‘crossing of the streams’, Compete, March

Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March

“Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March.

Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries. Facebook Captures #1 Ranking in Spain for the First Time in February, comScore, April

So what does all of this data mean?  Ask a few local companies like Bianca’s Pizza & Pasta, Fermentation, Tuscan Sun Coffee, Tallahassee Student Properties, or Proctor Honda how their business has benefited by placing ads and/or creating a Facebook fan page.

What’s the difference between ads and fans?  Ads are something that appear in strategic places in the circle of your regular planned activities.  Fans are loyal friends, clients, or customers who are saying, anytime you want to let me know about your new promotions or services, please fire away!  Both methods can be effective, but the second can  have exponential results.

If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential.  I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!

SETH GODIN is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.

Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world. His books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune Best Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on the New York Times business book bestseller list.

After watching the video, here is a couple of questions:

So how does your business use Social Networking?

Have you measured any growth in your business as a result of Social Media? By what measure?

Which Social Networking site has contributed to your business?

Does the video change the way you think about Social Media? If so, how?

If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential.  I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!

Are you lying? Lying about the fact that despite the conditions of the market, your business will make it using old methods, technologies, or traditions? Maybe your boss is ignoring the need for change and you know it, but you can’t stomach telling her. Maybe your clients or customers are telling you over and over that they aren’t happy, but the cost to retool is too high. When we ignore the signs of change all around us, we are lying to ourselves that we aren’t in desperate need of innovation.

One of my favorite shows on network TV is Fox’s Lie to Me with Tim Roth. The premise of the show is based on the science of observations of micro facial expressions that are made when someone is lying. I find it absolutely fascinating that tiny muscles in one’s face can give away that someone might be hiding something. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, yet you can’t see it because you look at your face every day. Maybe you are choosing to ignore the obvious; maybe it’s time to look in the mirror to gain a different perspective. The reality is that when we look in the mirror, we only see what we want to see.

Where can you find a good mirror? Mirrors come in all shapes and sizes: Mounted on the wall; compact; stand alone; two-way; square; oval. Mirrors are tools of observation. Here’s a few mirrors utilized by proactive businesses:

• Internal Reports – Internal reports generated from your daily transactions can be helpful in pinpointing areas in need of attention or where new opportunities are forming. (Google Analytics is a fantastic web reporting tool for your website if you don’t have one already.) Most of us have tons of reports, we just don’t know how to pull out the useful data within them.
  

• Internal Survey Groups – Take a non-management member from each section, team, or department in your organization and assign the group a topic/question to observe over a given period (Nine weeks is a good benchmark). Allow your team members to meet once a week to discuss how their department process affects the selected topic/question. Assign a facilitator to each group to keep the group on target. At the end of the allotted time, have the group present their findings to a panel comprised of all levels of management/ownership. The results will surprise you!

• Client Feedback Forms – These can take many forms such as printed comment cards or electronic emails generated after specific transactions or interactions. The faster the feedback is received, the opportunity to make adjustments or corrections can be made. Delegate someone to follow through with each comment or feedback. A well constructed feedback process is essential!

• Secret Shoppers – Many restaurants and retail shops hire people to evaluate their staff and facilities, but this format can be modeled for any professional field as well. Craigslist is a good resource to find secret shoppers. Another way to secret shop is to secret shop the competition. Through emails, or phone calls, or walk-through visits, have one of your staff visit the competition and evaluate the same area or department they work in. How they are treated by someone in their own field can be very enlightening. Have them report back to their section about their experience.

• Business Consultants – If your business doesn’t have the staff resources to complete the ideas listed above, a Business Consultant is an excellent option. Assign them the task of gathering together all of the pieces of your puzzle. As an outsider looking in, business consultants have a unique perspective and are trained to observe, analyze, and to give honest feedback on your products, processes, and people. Empower them to be the facilitator or catalyst for change that you want to make.

Try This: Print this blog entry out and take it to one of your staff and have them read it aloud. Watch their face as they read it. See anything that jumps out at you? Are you in the business of observation?

The status quo isn’t going to get you there and you know it. Like Mr. Incredible, you know you have something to do but you have resigned yourself to sulking behind the three quarter walls of cubical world and watching the clock tick tock, tick tock. How many meetings do you have to attend where all they talk about is how to have more meetings? How many more ridiculous internal/corporate emails will you endure? How many more days will you wake up hitting the snooze button over and over again because you just can’t stand the idea of driving to that place? Are you going to just sit and watch other people step out and follow their dream while yours withers and rots quietly in the dark gloomy corners of your heart?

For some people it takes a catastrophic event to push them out of the inoculated world they sleepwalk through day after day. For others, like Mr. Incredible, you just come to the breaking point and say, enough is enough. How many times have you heard your friends and family point out the obvious that you were meant to do ____________ and you shrug them off? Your excuses are: It’s too late; I’ll wait until the kids grow up; other people are so much better than I am; I tried it once before and I failed miserably.

Take my advice and write whatever that negative-life-sucking-phrase is on the bottom of your shoe and wipe the pavement with it today, before you end up throwing your boss through the walls sending him crashing into the lobby. Isn’t it obvious that the current models aren’t working? It’s possible that maybe your idea is the spark that could ignite a new business model or public service to the community.

If you were to stand up, take the next step, and move towards that idea or concept you’ve been tinkering with, your life will not be the same. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone; I promise. In fact, what you might find is that there is someone else out there with the second link to the chain of events that can really make both concepts come together. Collaboration is the nemesis of greed.

We need you. If you haven’t convinced yourself yet, go pick up Seth Godin’s little book Tribes. It should send you over the edge. It did for me. There’s a new incredible business coming soon and you are starting it. Let’s talk soon.

The legend of the Sasquatch dates back to the middle eighteen hundreds. Some historians say that it was the Lummi, a Native American tribe from the Washington State area, who began telling the tales of a large 6 to 10 foot brown hairy beast weighing over 500 pounds with a 24 inch footprint.

In the 1920s, J. W. Burns, a Canadian newspaper writer, began a series of articles outlining the legend of the omnivorous beast. It was Burns who coined the name “Sasquatch.” In a very short time, the sightings and stories grew like a blizzard traveling across Canada.

The sightings weren’t limited to just the Northwest. In 1958, Andrew Genzoli from the Humboldt Times in Northern California wrote an article entitled “Bigfoot.” The article reported several sightings near a road construction site in Humboldt County. Posted in the article was a picture of a crew worker holding up a plaster mold of a huge footprint.

The scientific community has not been impressed with the proof of Sasquatch. Washington State zoologist, John Crane, was quoted in a USA Today article in 1996 saying, “There is no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than material that’s clearly been fabricated has ever been presented.”

That didn’t stop Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton from posting a video to YouTube on July 9, 2008, claiming that they had discovered the remains of a Sasquatch in a wooded field in northern Georgia.

Whether you are a skeptic or a believer, the truth is that there are still Bigfoot sightings and stories being spread throughout the country. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful tools of communication today.

If you haven’t found Twitter or simply don’t care to, it has become the digital word of mouth today. Most users find it fun and amusing to update their status or tell their story in the 140 character or less format called tweets. If I were a member of The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, I would want to have my ear to the ground listening to every status update with the keywords Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Believe it or not, leveraging this kind of specific information is not just something top secret government ninjas can do.

With simple applications like TweetDeck, anyone with a Twitter account can create multiple columns of keyword search results. Maybe it doesn’t make much sense to you, but to a company or marketing firm trying to gauge the public’s option of a certain product or topic, this categorized reporting can be the key to success, the indicator to make slight market corrections, or even to change course completely.

Here’s a list of a few companies utilizing the marketing benefits of Twitter you might recognize: Best Buy, Burger King, Comcast, Detroit Pistons, Hertz, H&R Block, Marvel, Wachovia, Rubbermaid, Starbucks, and the Tallahassee Democrat.

I’ll leave you with two questions: Have you seen Bigfoot? Are you on Twitter?

Follow me on Twitter @TallyDigitalBiz

Is your business starving? Are sales down? Are the market conditions threatening to devour your small business whole? Taking a lesson from the Brothers Grimm, many small businesses are turning to the use of digital breadcrumbs to bring their customers in. What are digital bread crumbs? They are made up of small links, pictures, videos, comments, and even Facebook status updates and tweets on Twitter.

My youngest daughter reminded me that Hansel and Gretel left the breadcrumbs because they just wanted to get back home. And that is exactly the reason why you want to leave a trail of digital crumbs for people to find your business amongst the mighty forest of the World Wide Web. Think about it this way: Hansel and Gretel had one loaf of bread and each breadcrumb they left along the way came from that original loaf. Search engines are like the animals in the forest who find the left behind crumbs, except they don’t eat them. Instead they record each one, name it, index it, and categorize it. This process creates an invisible trail, weaving its way all the way back to the original source.

Here’s an example of how this works:

Visit Tuscan Sun Coffee in Tallahassee

A local coffee shop here in Tallahassee, Tuscan Sun Coffee, opened its doors in February of 2009. (This is where the real dough starts). Shop owners David and Catherine Tune, of course, launch a website as well as opening a physical store on 8116 Killearn Plaza Circle in Tallahassee. (This is the original loaf or the original digital source.) Next, they leave crumbs on Facebook, with Dave’s profile listing Tuscan Sun Coffee as his place of employement. Tuscan Sun Coffee also has a Facebook page of its own which other members of Facebook can become a fan. Now the multiplication really starts to happen. For every Facebook member who becomes a fan of Tuscan Sun Coffee, a digital crumb is created.

The crumbs don’t stop there. One of the members from Tri3Team.com lists Tuscan Sun Coffee as one of their meeting locations, and a hyperlinked map is added (one more breadcrumb). Another link from Yellowpages.com for Tuscan Sun Coffee is created and, bam, guess what? Yes, another digital breadcrumb.

Lastly, a first-time patron of Tuscan Sun Coffee tweets (a status left on Twitter) about having found this great little coffee shop and one more crumb is sprinkled along the www trail. If you made it to the end of this article without clicking any of the underlined words, go back and click the one you find the most interesting. That’s right, you just added one more crumb.

What if the Silly Putty story took place today in our digital media age. Think of the resources the scientist would have had at his disposal. He could have made a YouTube video of his findings along the way. If you are skeptical or aren’t sure what YouTube is, here is a snapshot: In November 2006, YouTube, LLC, was bought by Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion. When it comes to searching for information, YouTube has become the most used search tool second only to Google. Many people think YouTube is only about crazy people posting silly videos of cow tipping and mud wrestling, however seminars, workshops, and public events of all topics can be found. By typing in keywords and with the simple click of a mouse, one can watch and learn about anything from the uses of Silly Putty to the latest findings on quantum physics or global warming.

Other than satisfying the hunger pains of an ego or scratching the itch of the desire to be famous, what other good might our scientist procure from his original silicone polymer? In short, he would have instant feedback from a global community. Fortune 500 companies spend millions of dollars in focus groups and demographic survey panels trying to find out how the general public will respond to their product or services. These groups are asked to give their honest opinions about function, feature, and packaging of the product. This information can make or break a product before it ever gets to market.

You are a small business owner in Tallahassee and you are ready to take off the training wheels and get out of doing circles in your driveway. You don’t have a million dollars to invest in focus groups or private surveys. So what are your options? You need feedback and you need it fast and cheap.

Here’s a sample of what that might look like:

Let’s say that you are small clothing shop like Sick Boy Vintage on West Gaines here in Tallahassee. You carry one-of-a-kind vintage clothing for MEN or WOMEN, luggage, housewares, etc… You have a few new pieces that you want to find out how the market will respond to. You would need to have a digital shop where people can visit and leave instant feedback. A real bonus would be giving these prospective fans the opportunity to purchase if they felt so inclined.

Being at the right digital space at the right digital media time is exactly what Sick Boy Vintage owner Devon Pyles has done. She started with a MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/sickboytally. With over 900 friends, she now has a great following. So how did people find Sick Boy Vintage on MySpace? They might have typed in the keywords “Vintage clothes, Tallahassee” or something similar. Just throwing up a MySpace account and posting a few pictures isn’t going to make you an overnight success. Sick Boy Vintage is passionate about everything vintage. No different than when you walk into the physical store, when you visit online you are greeted and interacted with on a very personal level.

The next step was to find a way to have the same level of exposure to a relevant group but offer visitors the opportunity to purchase amazing one-of-a-kind items, so Sick Boy Vintage launched http://www.sickboyvintage.etsy.com. With a prominent link from their MySpace page to the new Etsy.com site, visitors can take the next step if they see something they like. Within Etsy.com visitors can favorite items (Instant Feedback), message shop owners, as well as purchase items. Again, just opening the doors to a virtual shop isn’t going to turn them into the next Gap. It takes daily involvement in running the online shop just as it does a physical store front. The difference is now there are more entry points for revenue, relationships, and future growth. Involvement is key! Whether it is creating treasuries (thumbnails of you favorites from other shop owners) on Etsy.com, or being active in Keep it Sassy Tallahassee, Sick Boy Vintage is right in the middle of their neighborhood.

You can do it yourself, but it can be very lonely especially on the bad days. There is something magical about being a part of something larger. If you have reached a plateau with your current business model, keep this in mind: Being involved means being connected and that is where you and your business can zoom. In this digital media age, placement, relevance, and daily involvement in all your virtual space will position you and your business to move forward!  I would love to hear your feedback and comments, keep the conversation going!

Researching substitutes for rubber in the early 1940s, James Wright took two very different agents – boric acid and silicone oil and combined them to form a gooey rubber like material. Working for General Electric, Wright was looking for an alternative to products made with rubber. For the first couple of years no useful product was discovered for the inorganic polymer. After sending out samples to scientists all over the globe, a sample landed in the hands of a small toy store owner. The toy store owner contacted a marketing consultant to help her market the new gooey toy in her catalog of toys. Within no time the new $2 toy became her best seller next to a 50 cent box of Crayons. Despite the success, the toy store owner dropped it from the catalog.

Seeing its huge potential, the marketing consultant, already deeply in debt, borrowed $147 to buy a batch of the putty. Packaging one ounce balls of putty into small plastic eggs priced at $1, he sold 250,000 “Silly Putty” eggs within 3 days. In 1961, Silly Putty became a global success making a huge splash in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The ultimate reach of Silly Putty was landing on the Moon in 1968 courtesy of the Apollo 8 astronauts.

The characters in this story, the scientist, the small shop owner, and the marketer all made a lasting mark in American history. At a time when the economy was not at its best, each one took a risk at trying something that had never been done before. They all share the spark of entrepreneurship within their DNA.

So who do you identify with the most in the story? Are you the scientist, someone living in Tallahassee looking for ways to create what doesn’t exist but is sorely needed? Are you a Tallahassee small business owner, trying to find the most effective way to tell your unique story to the masses? Or are you the Tallahassee entrepreneur, whose passion is to find the opportunities in the marketplace and bring them to the front-page of the public?

Imagine your product or service message: Do people know how to find you? Who are your biggest fans? Can you get immediate feedback on your latest gadgets or widgets? Website visits, unique visitors, and comments are all indicators or measurements of feedback used in digital media. So why not connect them with your traditional media outlets?

Here’s one observation:

“Tallahassee.com, had more than 10.3 million page views and 565,000 unique visitors in March.” Patrick Dorsey, president and publisher of the Tallahassee Democrat.

Try searching any word plus Tallahassee in Google or Yahoo and you will surely find a search result that lists an article or blog that matches. My wife and I moved to Tallahassee in 1996 and I have never had a subscription to the local paper. Today I read the paper more than ever through Tallahassee.com. This is not a shameful plug for Tallahassee.com, rather a real world example of the evolution of the digital age we live in.

So if you are sitting back in your business or industry thinking, “I can’t wait for the good ole days to come back,” chances are they’re not. So don’t wait. Talk to someone who can help you make the jump into the digital waters. Come on in; the water’s great! Who knows you might go all the way to the Moon.com! Secret CODE: 0507