The Easiest Online Aids for Managing Tasks and Teams

Microsoft Project used to be the program that many turned to to get real project work done.  I always found it overkill for the smallish projects I was a part of.  Loaded up with everything you might someday want to do, the program sent me screaming down the halls, convinced I could never manage a project. The times (and so few alternatives) practically forced accommodation.

Thank god that’s no longer the case. We can now choose what fits us.  Hallelujah!  The things that matter today are 1) ease of use — since we can feel overloaded within minutes of waking up, 2) a decent calendar and project list — to see what must be tackled each day and see schedules at a glance, 3) a way to send task emails, files and status updates to folks working on tasks we assign, and 4) a chance to have it all accessible through mobile.

So, here’s what I am finding as viable tools to manage my projects.  5pmweb has a very cool, very simple interface with all of the above ($12.00 a month when you enlist new clients to post their logo instead of your own or if you fall into nonprofit status). BaseCamp — especially if your projects are milestone and article-driven ($25/month) and Dooster, which is a free version with similar functionality, soon to sport mobile as well.

These selections, by no means, cover the universe of programs out there for project management, but the three named are the ones I believe a small business or creative professional can benefit from the most.  Oh, and one more thing.  If you have a business where sending scheduled reminders about upcoming tasks can really impress clients, a dedicated task tool (more simple than the project-based tools mentions above) such as Remember the Milk can work out very nicely. If reminders are sent to clients for a purpose that matches their own, they will feel personally-considered and remember this as a business service for a long time coming. This often translates into customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Priceless.

Social Media Impact: Part 2

As mentioned in the previous post, what matters most in achieving social media impact often comes down to the degree to which you can be customer-centric, and what you can do behind the scenes to achieve it.  This post will concentrate on the second.

Here goes:

• A smart strategy for achieving connection is to curate every kind of expertise so, for example, always ask which bloggers can help your customers be smarter?  How can you encourage this group to help your customers?  Ultimately, to become increasingly relevant to a community means that you have to further that sense customers want to have re being cared for.
• Find out where Twitter really fits in.  Edison has done a study (and will be offering a webinar on April 29th) on Twitter users of America.  The main idea here:  more growth than you think in terms of overall social media participation, with the caveat if you’re not good offline, you’re not going to be great online. Check it out.
• Are you asking those who like what you do (fans and otherwise) to do anything for you? You have to ask, and then, you have to get customer DNA in your own content to really have it shared.  You can also go to where your customers are or build something where customers would be likely to talk about you.
• Instead of trying to be everything to everyone and therefore, thinking only about appropriating more to yourself and your company, think about partnering with those who can further your cause.
• Train people who can represent you to delight a customer.  This has impact.
• If you have video, put a static image of that video with a PLAY button in an email to encourage clicking through to that video.  Testimonials and direct communication by company founders and key staff can really make an impression and you don’t want to lose out on that possibility for connection.
• To become a social media maverick, take a look, from time to time, what your competitors are sharing. Look them up on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn.  It can’t hurt to know their strategy since in accepting or rejecting their approaches, it will give clarity to your own.

San Francisco Small Business Week: A Phenomenal Conference Experience

It was one of those events where I thought, maybe this is one small business conference too many, and heck, since I’ve been consulting to small businesses already in my day-to-day, probably I’d be going over old ground. Boy, was I wrong!

First, it was my attitude. It was great to get to meet so many interesting people conceiving of themselves as small business owners, something that you wouldn’t have seen in either hardier times or when social media wasn’t as prevalent a few years back. Secondly, all the presenters were incredibly forthcoming, sharing what and whom they knew. And third, there was a wealth of focused resources.

But sometimes, it is just the ideas, information and leads that come in little bits that form “aha” moments, and give you the extra energy to move forward.  Little things.  Like at a PR & Marketing presentation, I learned from the speaker, PR Specialist David Perry owner of David Perry & Associates, that one of my all time favorite books, “Writing Down to the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg was actually a great read for branding ideas.  At a branding session led by Robert Friedman, Owner of the company, FEARLESS BRANDING and found at this fearless site, I extended my learning through a set of key questions that can guide how truly differentiated branding is achieved.

Like at a mobile presentation, I learned about Mobile Spinach, that provides local coupon deals, but linked with Loopt now enables location-based discovery, and through their TasteMakers commentaries, a brief but interesting review of key places/activity you might want to check out as well. Unlike deals of the day sites, they offer a range of categories for unique businesses to advertise within (arts, gyms, events, etc), and then the opportunity for visitors to pre-select their preferred categories, not to mention leaving open a small door for non-profits who might like to shout out about their fundraising events too.  Need a mobile web design? Through Mobile Web Up, your site can be mobilized, which will come in handy if you are the type of business people are likely to look up on the go.

Like at an online tools for small businesses session presented by Suresh Khanna, a Google executive and owner of Kasa Indian Eatery in the Castro and Marina, I also learned about trend-intelligent Google’s Places, which is essentially the Local Business Center with the addition of a whole lot of new features, including QR codes, best explained through the link here.  And about the latest in what is actually working for small businesses in terms of increasing visibility (Facebook ads are not bad at all!).  Okay, you get the picture!

Social Media Impact — Some Ideas Worth Trying

Sometimes, I just want to figure out what matters most in terms of social media impact.  As messages, dire and otherwise, blast my ears, and content consumption line my days, I decided to attend an Inbound Marketing Conference moderated by Chris Brogan in San Francisco.

I walked away with two major insights.  How to be as consumer-centric as possible, and what that entails, and how to get yourself/your company ready to deliver impact.  This topic is split up into two posts.

Developing Consumer Centricity

• Always be helping has replaced always be closing — The context at the conference assumed you were selling something, and of course, with selling, this is how it is more than ever. Can’t be overgeneralized though.  If I were always helping, I’d become depleted and lose my usefulness, not to mention go broke. But within certain boundaries, building social capital and meaningful relationships (being responsive to fellow community members on social media sites) is a valuable endeavor, requiring that you focus on ways to recognize and empower others through what and how you share.
• When you want to crowd-source something, by all means, make it easy.  Crowd what? Crowd-sourcing.  Simply means enlisting your community to contribute content. Ever try Pegshot.com or hear about the Extraordinaires? The former makes it easy to share videos and photos of what’s happening where you already are.  And the latter provides the software to help you mobilize your community to contribute photo albums and maps.  Either way, you are getting people to know who you are and what you aspire to.  That willingness to crowd-source will fuel a sense of affiliation within your community.
• When you ask people to register for your e-alerts or info, manage their expectations about they are signing on to receive — how much and when.  This will let customers know you value their time from the get-go. Don’t forget to also include options for sharing (e.g., send to a friend options) within your emails.
• Always ask: what does your community really need most from you?  Don’t wander too far from that need. What is the point of your content from their perspective?   How can you most help? Come to think of it, why not come up with something actionable from every conversation you have.
• Trust comes most frequently from recommendations and you must learn to make customers a more central part of your story in order to earn those recommendations.  Check out sources of customer case studies; in all of the ones that were effective, you can be sure customers had a meaningful opportunity to contribute and loved the recognition!

Survey on Mobile Use by Ruder Finn — what’s hot

Ruder Finn’s survey recently unearthed American motivations for mobile use across the country.  What did they find?

Those of use who actively use mobile like immediacy most of all, and it’s because we want to feel socially connected. The tools they were using most included Instant messaging, forwarding emails, content and photos, posting comments on sites, and connecting to people on social networking sites.

Turns out seniors were 18% more likely than the traditional user to use the mobile internet to educate themselves and youth 9% more likely to shop.  52% actually use it to manage finances.

Building a Creative Living in the Digital Age

Scott Kirsner, a social media maverick, wrote a book I’ve just got around to hearing about entitled “Fans, Friends, & Followers: Building An Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, published a year ago.

What I liked about it is that he went directly to the source: creative people.  He interviewed visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians, writers, and others who have been pioneering new ways to build a creative career online (and off.) It delves into the business models that can support leaving the day job behind. And all of the material in the book was collected in 2008 and 2009.

To check it out yourself, you can download a partial pdf or buy the book.  Here’s the link.  Or read his reviews here.

Creative Bridges to Community: Top Project Builders to Learn From

Amy Sample Ward has done us bridge builders a great service.  She has created a collection of case studies around the topic of Social Media for Social Good, which is, essentially, organizations that get behind a social cause writing about their goals, approach, etc.

But aside from gathering what people are doing in the name of social good, I think these studies provide readers with excellent examples on how to go about making creative bridges to our communities. She, along with Beth Kanter, presented the winners at the NTEN (The Nonprofit Technology Network) this past March. but you can check out the full range of submissions here.  A wonderful idea bank for social media connection!

Localizing Your Business Via Online Tools: A Bay Area Example

Nothing like having a real business challenge to get me moving on how to advertise locally. And I certainly had that. Nothing complicated in any way; just a few small businesses yearning to open their doors and reach out to the Bay Area community, and my challenge to come up with a few strategies for them.

Since I had been concentrating on online awareness campaigns exclusively, and not what social media could do on the ground at the local level, I had some work to do.  No matter. Like a siren call, there came a point when certain terms persisted, echoed louder and louder.  Words like “localizing”, “hyperlocal.”   I’m sure for you too.

So, here’s what we’re probably all seeing.  Local is part of almost every social media effort now.  Sure, we always had our friends to help us broadcast announcements but what’s newly sprouted are potentially more powerful options for discovery that lie beyond our own networks.  Oh, and the accumulation of many more options, such as:

• Local search (Check out Google Becoming Local)
• Blog aggregation focused on a local community and category of interest (see below)
• The emergence of outlets that emphasize  local views (Think Google AdWords or cityslick.net)
• Local video/TV/radio  (BlogTalk Radio provides a local lookup)
• Local ‘location-based’ coupons channels (Think Groupon, now in S.F. and the East Bay)
• Local mapping (Bing, Google, Ask and Yahoo, all have local filters, with mapping opps that create better or even new experiences while mobile)
• Local social networks/meetups (Think Craigslist, Loopt, Tweetups, etc.)
• Online business hubs with a local emphasis (e.g., Google Local Business Center really can optimize your search, achieving better placement in search results, etc).

I was a little surprised, on the other hand, to realize several local business directories (like Yahoo) were quite sparse, and content from many local professional associations, disappointing. Nevertheless, what has emerged to help us hear about/advertise local is impressive (especially those innovations that have focused on filling the gap left by traditional news outlets). For example, Vid SF LOCAL is a ‘Video as Local TV’ site which accepts local advertising and improves local connection-making, and Bay Area News, one of the aggregators for community sites and bloggers, now makes local exploration increasingly fun (many points of view represented in our most passionate areas of interest), not to mention rewarding to folks interested in combining business with a community presence.  Places like Thumbtack are now emerging as the new local directories. And I’m sure we’ll be hearing about many more developments as well.

So, hey, there’s reason for a little optimism, no?  Certainly, there is power in this media. The trick, of course, is to keep up with it, and then, do something with the visibility we are able to achieve.

Founder Dating: what’s not to like!

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I can’t believe it.  For so long, I have attended events, hoping to serendipitously cross the path of someone with compatible interests with whom I could chat up my ideas for a business, but nothing as yet has come to pass.  Either the people only partially shared my interests or the timing was off or a personal knowing was missing to enter into the kind of committed work relationship that sharing a business needs.  I began to curse my departure from those natural peer circles at graduate school where access to partnering seemed more the order of the day.

So, here’s a connection that I just ran across that got me excited and maybe will do the same for you.  It’s called Founder Dating, and  basically you put forward an idea you have, and see if others might also be interested in going to business with you around that idea or something similar.  It’s not like one of those schemes where you vote up or down a business, thereby conveying your belief in its viability (although hey, I’ve got nothing against them).  Or sites like KickStarter Online, where you can make a pitch for a particular project, and get people to back you, essentially a variation on voting for the good idea but better, because here, there is actually a pathway for some real funding.  Or events like Women 2.0, where you gather with others to shape your idea in-person in the hopes of improving the quality of the idea in this first place.

No.  Founder Dating is actually a service that aims to bring together super talented entrepreneurs with different backgrounds and skill sets to start innovative new companies. All too often,  we know people with similar backgrounds and skills sets to our own.  So to find co-founders who come with complimentary skill sets, with an interest in launching similar ideas; well, that kind of service actually fills the gap I’ve just described.  Check it out by submitting an application.  And see if you might find your way to a San Francisco or Seattle to take it further!