Much has been made in the blogosphere about using Twitter for business. Twitter, you will recall, is a micro-blogging site that limits your posts to 140 characters. People use it for anything from telling everyone what they ate for lunch to asking for advice to pointing people to interesting websites. Rich Brooks and Lynelle Wilson, both fellow MaineBusiness bloggers, have both written extensively on the topic.

I admit it. On this, I was a slow adopter. I just started using twitter a couple of weeks ago, even though I signed up long before that. I just didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to constantly update everyone on themselves? Sounded a bit too narcissistic to me. My brother and business partner jumped into twitter with both feet in August. When we started getting customers as a direct result, I finally figured it out. We were in the midst of another paradigm shift in internet marketing.

This article in Wired Magazine says that blogs are ’so 2004.’ That’s because back in 2004, blogs were an even playing field. Anyone could write one, and your content could be found by the search engines fairly easily. Nowadays, professional blogging sites like Huffington post have pushed aside the little guy. Their content is updated many times per day, snuffing out those little once-a-week posters. This concept is true across blogging types- personal, political, and business. Twitter, with its 140 character limit, once again puts everyone on an even playing field.

John Jantsch, a respected marketing blogger, wrote a blog (and subsequent ebook) about internet marketing. In the article, he uses Maslow’s Hierarchy of human nature and puts in a business’ “internet marketing” needs. On the bottom of the triangle is blogging, while micro-blogging, like twitter, is placed at the top. He claims that it wont make sense to use social sites unless you are blogging, and that mirco-blogging will only make sense to the most advanced social-media small business owners.

With respect to John’s accomplishments in internet marketing, he is wrong on this. This restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, doesn’t blog or anything- they don’t even have a website- but they have successfully used twitter to market themselves on the Internet. The beauty of the shift to micro-blogging is that you don’t need to know how to do anything else. Internet Marketing cannot be compared to a triangle. It is circular, and how much of the circle you use for any given avenue of exposure will depend on your social media strategy.

I’m not ready to give up blogging just yet. I enjoy writing, and I still like to produce valuable, varied content for visitors to my website. But I do intend to increase my usage on twitter, and have a more focused social media strategy.

Mike Freeman
My 140-Character Bookkeeping Pitch:
Consider it done! flawless, simple, secure, & guaranteed…so u can save time, save money & relax

Follow @mikefreeman!

We recently released our November newsletter. This month, it is called ‘Seven Steps to a Happier Accountant.’ It’s written like one of those couch to 5K training programs, and starts you with a pile of receipts and gets you to a point you don’t have to be embarrassed to visit your accountant. It was written to save small business owners money and heartache come tax time. If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to my newsletter to get the full article.

One of the points of the article is that if you start now, devoting 15 minutes a day to going through your 2008 transactions is a simple way to get caught up. Start with the first transaction is January, and list and categorize every transaction for fifteen minutes. Once the time is up, mark where you left off, and close up until the next day. Eventually, you will have gotten through the entire year’s worth.

There are two main problems I see with letting your accountant enter and categorize all your transactions for you. First, its a waste of money. Accountants are expensive- one of THE MOST expensive ways to accomplish a feat as simple as data entry. Second, you need to know what is going on with the finances of your company. For my clients, I publish a report that gives the details of the state of their business finances. If you have been out of touch with your business money all year, chances are that you are making un-educated financial decisions. Use the 15 minutes to get better acquainted with the flow of your money.

If this blog applies to you at all, chances are you are not a QuickBooks person. Telling you to make sure to enter all your transactions into QuickBooks is not going to help. If you could afford a service to do your books, you probably would. If you fit in that category, try LessAccounting It is an extremely simple yet thorough web-based accounting application for small business. I don’t use it for my clients because I like to get more detailed in reporting, but for Do-it-Your-Selfers, it may very well be the way to go for 2009.

Mike Freeman
Accounting and Bookkeeping Services in Southern Maine

According to the Maine Department of Labor, 2,400 Mainers have lost their jobs in the last year, putting Vactionland’s unemployment rate at 5.6% (these numbers are seasonally adjusted). The number is not horrible, and Cumberland county’s rate is only 4%. As things slow down, though, maybe you are thinking about letting some of your staff go.

Before you make that move, read this article, by Kelly Spors on Independent Street. I have discussed keeping employees before; I have always felt that layoffs hurt more than they help, especially in small business.

Spors gives a few common sense reasons why layoffs are bad for business, then addresses the alternatives:

• Hiring Freeze
• Hour Cuts
• Pay Cuts
• Benefit Cuts
• Get Rid of the Weak

While I agree with the premise of the article, I take issue with the order of alternatives. Getting rid of the weak should have been done before you needed layoffs! Even in good times, business owners should not hang on to toxic or unproductive employees. In any company, wasting valuable payroll money on someone that is actually hurting the company should not be tolerated. Continually communicate with your employees to ensure everyone is on the same page and working on the same team (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

Last week I was in Manhattan for a few days. After catching this episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, I decided to head over to a place called The Doughnut Plant NYC. In the episode, two NYC cops declared Mark Israel, owner of the Doughnut Plant, the winner. Just that fact that Flay went up against him means he makes some good doughnuts, so I wanted to see for myself.

To be sure, you have to be a little used to New York to appreciate the shop. Much like everywhere else in the city, space is limited. This is no suburban Tim Hortons with room to sit an relax. Nor is the restaurant perfectly clean-looking. Since I have been to New York many times and tried my share of hole-in-the-wall eateries, I was prepared.

What I was not prepared for, however, is just how delicious the doughnuts would be! These are organic, or at least semi organic doughnuts. Mark uses no processed foods and only the freshest ingredients. The filled doughnuts are square, he says, to ensure filling in every bite. It works! I tried a standard jelly filled doughnut and got filling in every bite. The texture was very light and the vanilla bean glaze was amazing. I washed it down with a glass of fresh squeezed Orangeade.

The total cost of my snack? $5.90. Doughnuts range from $2-3, more than twice the local average.

This doughnut shop reinforces my many other posts on pricing. Why cut prices when you can build a sustainable competitive advantage? Be awesome and charge what you are worth. This is true in products and services.

One other tip I learned while eating my doughnut. A certain parcel delivery person came into the shop, asked for a doughnut, and left without paying. I asked the clerk about it, and he said “I give him doughnuts, he brings us important packages first!”

Mike Freeman
Doughnut Connoisseur

Last night I was watching Donny Deutsch’s The Big Idea. On there was a guy named Roger Fowkes, inventor of a system called MiraLynx. The show was interesting to me because it gave the other side of entrepreneurship. By “other side” I mean the sacrifices. Sometimes someone has a good idea and is making progress, but is not yet making enough money to survive. They are forced to either accept failure or change paths.

Fowkes was in such a situation. He has secured some contracts with a few bigger organizations, but he is out of money and facing foreclosure on his home. On the show they gave some tough advice to him, and Jeff Chavez repeated it in a blog post. In a nutshell, here is his advice:

• Make sure you are meeting the needs of your family, then pursue your dream.
• Don’t let you emotions cloud your judgment.
• Even though you need to make changes, the dream doesn’t have to die.

Chavez also published a neat little report called “The 11 Killer Instincts of Entrepreneurship.” You can access the report at www.northstarthinktank.com (sign up required). You can see if you possess the qualities of a true entrepreneur by looking at the 11 instincts.

The bottom line is that you have to have to be flexible enough to take different routes to success. Some of those routes may be humbling and require you to work odd jobs to supplement your income. Don’t be afraid to make changes- in fact, your ability to recognize failures early will greatly improve your chances of long term success.

Mike Freeman
Born Entrepreneur

When I was in high school, I worked in my parents’ janitorial services company. It was a straightforward industry where virtually anyone with a mop and bucket could start a business- and did they ever! As the job market grew tighter, more and more “fill-in-the-blank’s cleaning services” kept popping up all over the place.

I remember talking with other owners of office cleaning businesses. They would moan and gripe- perhaps not unlike business owners in any other industry. They would complain that in tough economic times, the cleaner is the first to go. They would also complain that there was too much competition with such ease of entry to the cleaning market. This used to trouble me, because it didn’t line up with what I was seeing. We had never lost an account because a client no longer wanted to spend money on cleaning. In addition, we were getting some of the highest rates in Portland, and having very few battles with those who would seek to undercut us.

To me, office cleaning seemed like a recession proof business! As companies fired their full time janitor, they would seek out a service to take his or her place! Not only that, but businesses never want to let the cleaning service go (save the micro-sized offices) due to money. What is a few hundred dollars a month? By losing the cleaning service, a manager is taking the one of the quickest paths to losing employee moral. If you want to everyone to feel poor, then don’t have the office cleaned. The flip side is that in good economic times, more and more offices spring up and there is plenty of new business to go around. Janitorial services is a good business no matter what the economic condition.

Don’t get me wrong. Our cleaning company was not without its share of problems. We had all the client relations issues every other business faces, and there were many tough times financially. My point is that while many cleaning companies were quick to blame economic downturn on their financial troubles, there were clear-cut business mistakes to blame. Running a business takes balancing the marketing, management, finances, and human resources with performing the actual work- in this case cleaning. When there is a problem, recession is the easy answer because its all over the news. In reality, I think there were some common denominators with the complaining cleaning companies that we can learn from:

Not enough marketing. At the time, the basic source for customers other than referrals was the phone book. It was amazing to see how hesitant companies were to even pay to have their company put in bold. If you don’t stand out among all the other ads, how will people find you? I suppose there is the ever popular AAAAA Cleaning Service!

Appearance of being unprofessional. Many of these operations were run by people with full time jobs- and it showed. Broken down vans, worn out equipment, no uniforms, and process inconsistency gave the wrong impression. In order to stand in a recession, you can’t look like a recession business.

Trying to be low-cost leader. By supplementing their business with full time jobs, many of the companies were able to charge ridiculously low rates- like 75% less than us. Why would anyone pay me $100 when they can get their place cleaned for $25? One reason, among others, is that by paying me $100, they feel they have a better chance of getting the job done right. I hate competing on price, as I have said in many blog posts. It is never a real competitive advantage for a small business, and it just leads to heartache.

No real competitive advantage. Sometimes people compete on price because they feel they have no real competitive advantage. In a commodity-type service, what real advantage can you offer? Quality, for starters, is a great advantage to shoot for. Providing the best value- exactly what the customer is looking for and for the right price- is even better.

The bottom line is that even though recessions hit businesses hard (some more than others), many times looking internally before blaming external circumstances will give you better chances for success.

Mike Freeman
Not Complaining

I subscribe to Jeffrey Gitomer’s weekly newsletter, Sales Caffeine. Today’s article was part two of “How to Become a Power Influencer.” His timely article gives some nice tips to hone your influencing skills. As any business owner knows, real and sustainable sales come from building relationships. You have to become the person that customers count on to get things done. You need to be able to influence their decisions- not just about your service but in other ways as well.

In a nutshell, here are his tips:

• Read a wide range of books.
• Write articles and maybe even a book.
• Drive sales with extraordinary service.
• Gain trust by performing consistently.
• Tell the truth.
• Always complete your jobs.
• Be trustworthy.
• Think long-term.
• Don’t be greedy.

You can read the entire article, including part 1 here. The reason I like part two so well is because they are things you can actually do, not just traits you are born with. Another reason I like part two is because all the tips require long term commitment, patience, and perseverance. They don’t sound easy, but deep down you know that if you were able to do all these things, your power to influence would increase dramatically.

If you keep up with the local news, then I am sure you have seen this story:

Bookkeeper Accused Of Stealing Nearly $400,000 From Employer

A bookkeeper for a local company is accused of stealing money by paying her own credit cards with company funds. I’m sorry to say it, but it reminds me of the movie Matchstick Men with Nicholas Cage. The conman’s famous saying is “I didn’t steal it, you gave it to me!” In order for her to steal that kind of money over four years, she had to go virtually unchecked the entire time. All the money was put right in her hands with no accountability!

After waiting about 20 days our sites finally got approved for Woopra beta.  For those of you that don’t know what Woopra is, according to their website:

“Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. And it’s free!”

At this point, most small businesses that care about the statistics for their websites are using Google Analytics.  Google Analytics is a great tool; I have been using it since our sites were launched.  Woopra is better.

I generally try to blog about twice a week. As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been blogging nearly as much lately. This blog entry will serve as both an excuse and resolve to get more organized.

About a month ago, my 4-year-old son, Ethan, had surgery to correct a Chiari malformation. Since the surgery, life has been a blur as we struggle to get Ethan back to his old self. Several *minor* complications have caused Ethan to be put on steroids and other medications. My once off the charts small boy has gained 11lbs and grown 2 inches. Much of his time these days is spent eating, sleeping, and talking about eating.