Yesterday evening, WomenonBusiness.com published my first guest post. Thank you, Susan, for having me as a guest writer! Here’s a small excerpt to give you a taste!

For most women running a small business, constantly growing it also means cutting all unnecessary costs and trying to save whenever possible. If a fee seems a bit much for a certain service they might want to contract, they turn to the Do it Yourself/DIY approach. In most cases, doing anything yourself is not that difficult. There must be someone in your office with the skill set needed to learn how to and then do a good job at it!

While true, in most cases, this approach is counterproductive, unless you’re choosing the DIY option for services you are already offering. If you run a design agency, it would be crazy to hire someone else to design your corporate website.

I warmly invite you to head over to WomenonBusiness.com and read the entire article - DIY, the Small Business Mirage.

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When trying to reach a global market, many companies (with enough relevant examples in the IT&C industry) rely on strategic and local partners and resellers to place and sell their products and services. What they sometimes tend to overlook is that promoting the product or service is as important and can become a shared task. While initially new partners might need guidance to understand the overall strategy, your product’s top selling benefits and the type of customers you are targeting, over time then can turn into strong regional allies.

Think of a big release of a new product or service. You might draft the communication plan, have the new literature, press and blogger pitches, press release and special offers ready and then share them in due time with your partner network. They might, in turn, reach out to their customer base, press contacts and enthusiastic evangelists, boosting your promotion effort.

Of course, some will be more savvy when it comes to PR and Marketing, others might need some ongoing guidance. You could suggest how they can reach out to media outlets, how they can identify where the potential customers who need to be informed about the product or service are. If they need convincing, you need to focus on their benefits: properly communicating with customers, audiences, the press means more business coming their way. That does also mean a share of the income goes to you, but the main beneficiaries are the partners.

When considering a successful partnership, businesses need to stop thinking in terms of sales alone. Yes, how much a partner makes by selling your product is important. But can you also collaborate on increasing brand awareness, spreading the word about your product and getting more revenue for yourself and the partner in question? Can you collaborate on getting feedback from their customers to help improve your products and services and subsequently sell more, maybe even for a better price?

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Guest post by Lauren Horn

Twitter presents the opportunity for you to connect with leaders in your industry, your peers and your target audience, while generating exposure and making connections. You have not only created your account, updated information, customized the look and feel of your page, but also begun tweeting up a storm. At this point, your following base should be through the roof, but you’re not seeing the results you anticipated, so now what?

So now, it’s important to remember that your page is just another marketing tool which ultimately needs to be promoted. Step back and first reassess your content and your purpose. Are you only tweeting about your product and services? Is your messaging consistent? How involved are you in the community? Are you following your target audience? Do you engage with your current followers? Are you listed? Do you utilize hashtags? These are just some things to consider. However, there are several ways to actually build a following. Below are some tips and tricks of the trade. Continue reading

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Among 2010 predictions, plans and strategies, I ran across a very interesting and explicit definition of what marketing is, what it does and what a marketing team is expected to do. It belongs to Linda Smith, one of the authors of Women on Business. I just loved her idea of explaining what her plans and predictions are all about. It helps put things into perspective, reconnect with your thoughts and values and only then act.

Her take on marketing will shortly follow. After reading it, please make sure you read her post to find out what she thinks 2010 will bring in this line of business.

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere:

• what your business is, where it is, how to find it
• what your product/service is, what it can do for the consumer, why they need it, why they want it
• how your business differs from others that are similar – what your uniqueness’s are, what makes your business so very special
• why the consumer should/ought to exchange their precious dollars and cents for your product/service

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere in every way that people can and do receive information:

• newspapers, magazines and direct mailers – the hard copy kind, the newsprint ink that smears on your fingers and the flyers, brochures and sales letters that come in the snail mail; AND the online versions: newspapers online, magazines online and email ads that come both solicited and unsolicited
• television ads, radio ads – both via traditional tv and radio vehicles and online versions
• internet banner ads, classified ad sites, display ad boxes on social media sites
• social media relationship building
• weblogs and forums and other self-publishing arenas where messages about anything and everything under the sun, moon and stars can be shared

A business’ marketing department is usually tasked with:

• designing the message
• crafting the message delivery system
• delivering the message
• measuring the results of both the message and the delivery system

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I have a confession to make… I am extremely harsh when it comes to customer support. I’ve spent quite a while being a tech support engineer, I know how much it matters in building a great relationship with customers. So when I make my decisions about certain products or services, the quality of tech support backing them up is extremely important.  Why? It is simple. Anything can crash. No one should look for guarantees they will have no problems, they should make sure they will have help solving them when they appear. And based on my fare share of customer support talks, chats, email exchanges, I thought I’d make a top of the best ways to drive customers away.

1. Don’t pick up when they call

Definitely, this is the fastest and never dethroned method to make sure your customers will switch you for any of your competitors quicker then lightning. Continue reading

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