The Importance of Carrying a Business Card

By Karen Preston-Loeb

Technology has transformed business communication from email to internet. While written communication is often paperless, one piece of correspondence remains printed: the business card. And while it seems that it would be more advantageous to ping information between colleagues, it remains important to always carry a business card.

Here are some reasons why business cards are effective business tools:

Brand marketing
The business card represents your company’s brand. Not only does it convey important personal contact information such as name, title, email, website, address and phone number, but oftentimes it is also the first exposure to the overall image of the business. The company logo is prominently displayed for brand identity. The fonts used, color, texture and paper stock used also conveys a message about the type of industry represented. Specialized printing techniques can be used such as embossing, foil stamping, thermography or laminating. The business card reflects the personality of the company and gives the first impression.

Conveys professionalism and preparedness
Image is everything. Having a business card on hand gives the appearance of professionalism and shows proper planning. Being caught off-guard without a business card imparts an ill-prepared impression. Always carry a stack of business cards protected by a card case and you will convey a polished quality.

Quicker to hand a business card vs input digital information
Numerous apps exist for smartphones to transfer contact information wirelessly; however the quickest and easiest way to exchange data remains the paper business card. Multiple business cards can be handed out in seconds at a networking event versus entering data. In the fast-pace workplace, time matters and nothing beats the quick handing over of a business card for speed.

Some clients do not own digital devices
Do not rely on smartphones for transferring of contact information, because some people do not own digital devices or are not tech savvy. While the majority of our population does have a personal electronic device, some prefer not to rely on theirs. And even if digital devices are used by both parties, the applications may not be compatible. Exchange business cards and you can always follow up with an email that contains your digital contact card.

Essential in international business
With the rise of global working opportunities, doing business overseas is becoming more normal.  Business cards are not only necessary in international business in some cultures, but they are also used ceremoniously. In most Asian countries, the business card is treated with respect. It is often presented with two hands, never tossed, and should be properly placed in a holder once received—never shoved in a pocket. In Japan exchanging business cards is a ritual and considered a formal introduction to a person. Business cannot begin until business cards are exchanged as this signifies the beginning of a relationship. In India, business cards are exchanged even in non-business situations and are always presented face-up with the text facing the recipient. In the Middle East, protocol varies per country. In Bahrain, for instance, never exchange business cards with the left hand and be certain to look at the business card received carefully before putting it away.

The printed business card still dominates. At any instance, whether a networking event or at a coffee shop, the opportunity for a business connection can occur. Not having a business card on-hand could result in a lost potential client. Exchanging business cards gives the ability to follow up, providing a foot in the door for a business transaction. It also allows a personal encounter between two parties, a crucial element of creating a business connection.

5 Easy Steps to Build Your First Media Outreach Plan

By Sarah Larson

At the core of every marketing and public relations effort is the story you want to tell. We recently shared several possible story ideas for new or small business owners.

Once you have identified your story, you then have to decide what to do with it. Who will care about it? How can it benefit your business? To answer those questions effectively, you need some strategy - and if you don't have a strategy, it's time to devise one. Everything takes time and time costs money. Make sure the time you're putting into your promotional efforts doesn't go to waste. Here are some questions we ask clients to help focus their efforts:

Does this story have a personal connection to one of your team members? If so, know or find out where they grew up, where they live now, where they went to school, whether they are members of clubs or organizations, etc. Then look up:

• Local newspaper / local online site where the person grew up
• Local newspaper / local online site where the person lives now
• Alumni publications at schools the person attended
• Publications that the member groups produce - chambers of commerce and professional organizations often put out newsletters or magazines aimed at members.
• Religious or social publications

Where do most of your customers / clients come from? If the majority of your customers or clients hail from a specific audience - people who practice a particular trade, for example - find out if any specialized magazines or newsletters cater to that audience and get in touch with them. Likewise for any important new hires. If that person is a well regarded specialist in a particular field, their change of employment could be a news item for any publications that cater to that profession.

Does your business benefit from B2B relationships? If other business owners are your best referral source, you want to be in the publications they read. Look for a regional business journal operating in your area and make a habit of dropping the reporter who covers your industry a line to let them know what's going on in your shop. They appreciate being kept in the loop, even if they don't respond to every piece of information you send them.

Does your area have any independent news websites or blogs covering local business? Don't underestimate the reach of these relatively new information channels. People read them, and their editors want to hear from you.

Do you have your own website? Of course you do. But do you have a “news” section on that website? You should. And you should post your news story there. Then you should share the link to that page in your email signature (updated regularly), on your company’s social media channels, and in your company’s electronic newsletter. If you don’t have a formal newsletter, send the link to clients you think might be interested in reading about your news.

Media coverage is just one ingredient in a well-rounded public relations plan, but it is a significant one. Journalists want to tell good stories, especially about people. But they can't tell the stories they don't know about. Make it easier for them to tell your story.

6 PR Stories for Your New or Small Company

By Sarah Larson

In today’s economy, everyone is an entrepreneur - or at least, should be.

The full-time elementary school music teacher has a side gig playing piano at a local wine bar. The customer service rep at the bank makes elaborate custom birthday cakes on the weekends. And the accountant by day has launched an antiques refurbishment business.

The success of each of these endeavors will depend, in large part, on how much effort these enthusiastic entrepreneurs put into promoting their businesses. And that, in turn, depends on how effectively they employ an often overlooked, but potent, weapon in the business owner’s arsenal - public relations.

Many new and small business owners make the mistake of imagining "public relations" to be irrelevant to their business. Others think PR is something that only big companies do.

Neither is true.

Yes, big companies usually have in-house public relations teams or contract with support agencies, but small companies still engage in public relations. Maybe they don't call it that, and maybe they don't realize they're doing it -- which likely means they're doing it ineffectively -- but they're doing it.

Your company is going to do it, too - so do it well. The first place to start is by having a story to tell.

In my nearly 20 years as a journalist, I would regularly meet business owners who had great stories to tell, but they had never thought to pitch that story to a reporter. Too many people don’t see the story value in what they are doing day in and day out. If you are one of them, here are some ideas:

• Has your business celebrated an anniversary? Five, 10, 15 years in business - these are all great milestones that give a reporter a good reason to do a feature story on your business.
• Have you hired anyone new? If you’ve hired a new team member who has established credentials in your industry or community, that’s good news and worth sharing.
• Have you acquired a significant new client? With the client’s permission, and if it fits within your strategic plan, announcing a new client can be a good idea, particularly if that client comes from an industry sector in which you want to grow your business.
• Are you scheduled to speak at a conference or workshop? Sharing the news about the presentation can both help boost registration for the program - something the organizers likely would welcome - and help establish you as a thought leader on that topic.
• Have you won an award? Whether your business was voted tops in an annual survey or an individual team member was honored by a business group, awards are great to publicize.
• Are you participating in a program that has wider appeal? If your accounting firm, for example, donates time to a social services agency to help low-income clients file their tax returns, getting the word out about the program helps the agency, the firm, and the clients.

Chances are, your business has news that fits into one of these categories, and if you don’t now, you likely will sometime soon. In our next post, we look at how to get these stories in front of the people who care about them.

Chartbeat and Visual Revenue: Analytics Reporting Apps that Can Help Grow Your Small Business or Publication

By Liz Jenei

Big businesses and publications have entire backend analytics departments to help decipher real-time data. Now there’s an app for that. In this blog post we will discuss two analytic services that can help your small business grow by getting to know your readers and consumers better, what sections of your website are most appealing and what areas of your website need to be updated.

Chartbeat
Chartbeat is a company that provides real-time analytics to websites and blogs that don’t have the bandwidth or know-how to capture backend analytics specs. These real-time statistics include: load-times, how many pixels the page reader has scrolled, where users are logged in from and if the reader is actively reading the website page, idle or even typing on their keyboard. This type of information, gathered from the second the viewer is on your website, can show which areas of your website are engaging and which need work.

For example: if you have a website that has a contact form and you are noticing in the analytics that users are idling on that page for a long time before they start typing, you can deduce that perhaps you need to re-word the directions. If you see them typing immediately, then idling five minutes on the page when they scroll to submit, perhaps the Captcha is too difficult to decipher.  Through Chartbeat, finding out these problems in real-time can help you to solve problems much sooner than looking back through weekly or monthly analytics reports.

Stats given by the second can help you maximize engagement and bring potential clients to your website. Now, you not only have the ability to address site issues immediately, but you can also start to understand your page viewers more concisely. Are people in the Midwest going to your webpage more often before work? Are people on the East Coast most likely to fill out contact forms in the evening? Chartbeat can help decipher that information for you and connect you to your users on a more personal level.

Visual Revenue
When you have a website that is publishing upwards of 20+ articles a day, sometimes getting the content that will get the most reads in the right spot on the homepage is the hardest decision you may have as an editor-- Visual Revenue helps take out that guess work.

Visual Revenue is geared towards online publications. Instead of giving analytics statistics in number form, Visual Revenue gives real-time suggestions on which stories should be placed on your publication’s homepage and for how long. These suggestions are based on predictive technology and your publications’s lead editorial direction and vision.

When you have a new story or content to upload to your homepage, the Visual Revenue app makes a suggestion on where that article will get the most readership, based on predictive real-time data and your company settings. Once the suggestion is made, the editor can make a final decision for the placement and longevity of that article before making it live.

Sometimes the backend involved with your small business website or online publication can feel like you’re running a Fortune 500. As technology advances, however, some tasks (especially website analytics) can be delegated almost completely to apps. Chartbeat and Visual Revenue are two of these useful tools that companies such as USA Today, Forbes and Starbucks are taking advantage of to help maximize their website potential. The good news is, now even your small business can take advantage of these stats. 

Virtually Working or Working Virtually – The Pitfalls of Not Working in the Office

Posted by Rose Strong

My sister-in-law Jackie works for a major insurance company and has been what they term a Work-At-Home (WAH) employee for more than a decade. It came about when her mother had a stroke and needed someone around just to keep an eye on her in case she fell or needed help with her medication.

Today, 1 in 10 people work virtually, otherwise known as working from home.  With the technology drive in this country, it’s only natural that corporations and small businesses alike, take advantage of employees working virtually. It’s a savings on work space, increases productivity, cuts down on absenteeism and according to one study, the WAH employee works an average of one hour a day more than someone who works in the office.

For the employee, there are some great perks. Not having to commute to and from a job is the first advantage that comes to mind and I’ve always been jealous that my sister-in-law doesn’t have a dress code to follow and works in her pajamas for the first few hours of her work day. She also gets to start work and end her day earlier than most. She’s in her office at her computer at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., but shuts that baby down at one in the afternoon. Sweet, huh?

Now for the nitty-gritty:

What is it really like to work at home, day in and day out? Although there are great benefits to working at home, there are some downsides to being able to sit at your computer and work in your bedroom slippers.

One of the biggest obstacles that Jackie had difficulty with was the lack of social systems. Although she lived with an elderly parent those first few years, that didn’t fit the bill for the regular social skills that come with working in an office. I mean, how do you hang out at the water bowl with your cat and talk about the Monday night football game? Having others around is often essential for creativity and motivation. Without that, telecommuting can be both difficult and isolating.

Communication is also a factor when you work virtually. Only using emails and instant messaging for discussing work-related issues with your colleagues, leaves out the cues one might interpret from body language and tone of voice that we pick up in a face-to-face conversation. Also, not being in the office tends to lead to that out of sight, out of mind truism and can cause a feeling of isolation.

I admire my sister-in-law in her discipline over the years as she’s quite devoted to her routine, but for some people, maintaining a routine can be a challenge. We all have a routine when we are working outside the home: stopping for a cup of java from the local coffee shop, checking email and phone messages, chatting with co-workers about current events and office news, then, suddenly that’s all gone when you work from home.  Getting into a routine at home to keep you in sync with the office is essential.

One factor I’ve seen Jackie struggle with is that she’s home during business hours, which makes her easy prey for those pesky, yet necessary home maintenance and repair items, such as furnace cleaning, A/C maintenance, tree work, electrical and plumbing repairs. She is often at odds with her husband to get him to be present when people come to the house. Considerable interruptions and demands from children, visitors and others who impose upon someone working at home may cause getting work tasks completed to be a challenge.

Of course, these aren’t the only things that can be tricky for those working virtually, but they are some of the most common pitfalls to be aware of if you’re thinking of bringing the office home with you. Oh, and that’s another one: difficulty separating work-life and home-life. That takes some discipline and practice to balance the two, but it can be done.

Many of these difficulties can be overcome and this article by Lea Green on the PGI blog runs down a list of work-at-home snags and how to overcome them. Telework Research Network at Undress for Success.com is a group that studies the trend of working from home and has excellent resources for anyone considering working virtually or those that are already working from home.