Financial Crisis Ripple Effect

As an entrepreneur running a startup online publishing company, I look a the bloodletting on Wall Street — and my IRAs and stocks — and wonder what effects this will have on the advertising climate moving forward. For me the losses are paper. It’s as if it’s not even real. Not yet anyway.

But my concern is how the financial crunch might impact our industry as a whole. The industry was already well into a time of transition and falling revenues. So are even tougher times ahead? Will companies stop advertising? Will people stop taking out classifieds or buying photos from our web sites? Maybe even stop subscribing to the daily paper (I know this already happened) or monthly magazine to cut costs?

No one seems to be looking ahead. We’re all rubberneckers driving by a car wreck. But I can’t help but wonder — fear — what’s next.

What are your thoughts or observations?

Blog originally posted at Wired Journalists

The Business of Search

Just got back from the Search Expo at the Javits Center on Tuesday. The event took up just one corner of the of the convention hall. But the 50-plus exhibitors there seemingly had a unified theme — namely that your busainess needs to have its own Internet marketing campaign and that monitoring SEO and SEM are as important as paying the utility bill each month.

There’s a lot of competition for your ad dollars and how to use them. That’s a good thing. If you have a product and aren’t selling it with the aid of an Internet ad campaign — what are you waiting for?

In fact, there’s an arguement going around that a strategic SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign makes spending regular money on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a moot point. That’s because many people try to fake their way to the top of the search rankings. It’s far simpler to buy an ad on the first page.

I will say that most small businesses don’t have web sites properly configured for SEO. In that instance, spending some money for one-time search engine optimization is a smart investment. Many firms can do the job. (Gratuitous sales pitch) My company, Build N Click, offers a $300 SEO package. If you want to talk, drop me an email: sales@buildnclick.com

But the point of the Search Expo was to sound a warning. If you aren’t investing in online advertising, you better have your web site positioned for maximum results. Neither is a luxury anymore.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

Web Analytics

One of the seminars I sat in on at the Web 2.0 Expo last week at the Javits Center was one on web analytics. The headliner was Avinash Kaushik, the so-called Analytics Evangelist for Google. And he made what’s usually a confounding and boring part of the web utterly come alive and seem vital to any business.

The bottom line is there are several free tools online that you should be using to measure traffic to your web site. (If you don’t alraeady have a web site, well, that’s another story. What are you waiting for?) Start with Google Analytics.

Then buy Kaushik’s book: Web Analytics An Hour A Day. Trust me, he breaks down countless ways to wring useful information from your web traffic, tools that can help optimize your site and profits.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

Reinventing Yourself

Thinking back on Halloweens past, there was a thrilling aspect to transforming yourself into something you were not. It was easy to throw all your child-like energy into the change. Pirate, zombie or soldier; didn’t matter. You pulled it off spectacularly — if only for one night.

Reinventing yourself in real life? Not so easy. At least for me.

The bulk of my professional life has been spent as a journalist. In fact, I started writing for my high school newspaper at 16 and landed a part-time job at a daily one year later. So one year removed from my reporting job at Newsday, my instincts are still grounded in the craft.

But I’m finally letting go of that persona and embracing my new identity as an entrepreneur and small business owner. In a way, the new approach is being forced upon me. You either think and act like a businessman or you risk seeing your business become irrelevant.

I have an added hurdle. I didn’t go the franchise route, where the blueprint for success is handed to you. No, I’m trying to meld my life-long passion for publishing with business. My business plan doesn’t make sense to everybody. Even my wife — at times — has a hard time grasping what I’m trying to do.

I see the value in what I’m doing. The people I serve understand it. Monetizing the product is where the business man within needs to find his way. The dog days of August — a dead period for my venture — only serves to exacerbate the issue. I’m getting close. But I’m not there yet.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

Keep Interns Engaged

It’s been a tough summer for my internship program. We rolled into June with three college students who were interested in spending up to 10-15 hours a week as an unpaid intern with my web development company. After having lost touch with our most promising guy, we’re down to zero interns.

A spate of bad luck? Yes. Could we have managed our interns better? No doubt. You could say we got what we paid for. But I’m not buying it.

I’m personally frustrated because after directly overseeing two successful internships last summer, I stepped back and let someone else run with it this time. After all, the interns were directly reporting to that person anyway.

Bottom line: We didn’t do enough to keep our interns engaged. It’s a lesson learned.

What was different from a year ago? Well, last summer:

+ We set office hours on a week-to-week basis. Be versatile, but insist on getting your intern in the office at least once a week. Rising gas prices probably hurt us more this time around.

+ We gave them general tasks at first, even if it had nothing to do with the skill they were interesting in learning. That way, when they did get to do work related to their field, it was as much a reward as anything. They appreciated the opportunity more.

+ Talk to your intern. Make sure they are satisfied with the general experience. To be fair, one of our interns jumped ship to take a full-time job (related to but not directly tied to his skill set) with benefits.

+ Dangle a carrot. Offer a cash bonus at the successful conclusion of the internship. Or better yet, the possibility of a part-time job.

I’m headed to a job fair this week. The goal is to land another intern or two. I’ll be thinking about our hits and misses from the last year and ways I can personally improve the intern experience. And I’ll take more of a leading role in keeping our interns engaged.

Unpaid and inexperienced they may be, but for a small firm like mine, interns are a godsend.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

No Reason To Fear Transparency

I’m currently in the wilds of New York state on business. I ran into an unexpected road block yesterday — and no, construction limiting traffic to one lane isn’t what I’m talking about. (Although the wait was excruciating!)

I met with the manager of a mall to pitch her on upgrading their web site. What I thought was a glaring omission on the mall’s current site — namely, lack of a diagram of the mall detailing shops, kiosks and restaurants — was actually by design.

The mall’s web site was deficient in so many other ways. But ultimately, the manager rejected the need for a revamped web site, and if I read between the lines correctly, it was because the mall didn’t want to advertise its current state.

Let’s face it, signs of economic downturn are everywhere. In much of New York outside of the City, that’s been true for many years now. Mall management (and ownership) seem to think that not publishing an interactive map of the mall — which might show some vacancies — is an easy way to hide the current state of the place.

Wrong. The people who frequent the mall know this all too well. Yes, the half-finished Steve and Barry’s superstore that will never open is a tell-tale sign of something amiss. Locals can’t be fooled. So why hide the obvious?

Instead, do the right thing by merchants who still call the mall home. Play them up in every way possible. That means an interactive web site. Who knows, you might even bring in new traffic or lure a new tennant?

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

The Dark Side Of Networking Events

I’m a member of the Huntington Chamber of Commerce. This is a very active group with regular networking events and other opportunities that allow local merchants and professionals to mingle. I attended my first networking event in June. I saw it as an ideal place to hand out cards and introduce my new web design business.

What I wasn’t prepared for was being on the receiving end of the hard sell. Although I did leave the event with one very solid contact and lead, I also walked away with a newfound understanding of networking events. The majority of the people you meet aren’t interested in doing business. They only want to sell you.

That includes me, of course. I’m sure they don’t teach that in business school. And there’s no fine print warning you that there will be sharks at the pool party.

I’m not telling you to avoid the next invitation to a networking event. Far from it. An emerging business needs all the exposure it can get. I’m just saying be prepared to swim with sharks.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

‘My Son Built Our Web Site’

Talking to several small business owners in recent months, I get the occasional cringeworthy line thrown my way: “Oh, we’ve got a web site. My son built our web site.”

Well, excuse me for being a pessimist. As handy as your son might be with html code and Photoshop, if he doesn’t run his own web design business, then your web site likely is missing several key features to help it stand out in the crowd.

For starters, search engines regularly crawl sites. And if yours doesn’t have all the alt and meta tags in place, then you are in danger of being marginalized. Choosing the right key words to put in the tags is just as important as the tags themselves.

And then there is SEO. Few people properly understand search engine optimization. You son almost certainly doesn’t. If your site is stuck on Page 8 of Google rankings, no wonder! Pay a professional to optimize your site and you should see real results.

The bottom line is you get what you pay for. Little Joey might be able to whip together a functional family genealogy page. But when it comes to your business, why leave something as important as a web site to an amateur?

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

Small Biz And The Net

Whenever I meet a small business owner, more often than not they are resistent to the Internet. It’s a dirty word; a foreign world. There’s no way any of their potential customers troll around the net looking for them. That’s where many proprietors are making a serious mistake.

It’s no longer enough to hang out a shingle and place an ad in the phone book. If that’s all you do, you are living in a bygone era. And your business might follow.

Search is what has turned Google into a powerhouse and why Microsoft is scrambling for a piece of the action. Anyone under the age of 30 goes to the net first to look up products and services. Any local merchant with a stand-alone web site has an instant edge.

In other words, a web presence is essential.It’s like trying to run a cleaners without hangers or a deli minus a cash register. Consider it infrastructure. And believe it or not, a personalized web site doesn’t need to be a costly investment. If your web site brings in just one new regular customer that just might offset the cost. And in the bottom-line world of small business, that’s a rationalization owners need to be willing to make.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

Journey To Cutting Edge

I started Long Island Entrepreneurs in hopes of finding like-minded business owners to share the latest trends with and possibly network. After 11 years as a newspaper reporter, I left to start my own business last fall. While I’m knowledgable and skilled in online media, publishing and web design, this last year has served as a crash course in the fundamentals of business. That’s been both thrilling and challenging at the same time.

I’ve found social networks and industry-related blogs a great source of information and inspiration. The hope is we can gain the same critical mass here. I’m certainly happy to talk about the missteps and right moves I’ve made over the last year. So let’s get the conversation started. Long Island entrepreneurs unite!

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

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