Today’s guest post is by Molli Megasko.

It’s Facebook question of the week time.

I hope I don’t disappoint anyone, but I’m replacing Gini Dietrich this week.  She asked me to help her out as she actually is taking some vacation days, believe it or not.

Her question to me was…

“Molli, you’ve worked at Arment Dietrich for nearly six years. During those six years, what are the top three accomplishments you’ve seen the firm achieve?” Continue Reading »

This guest post is written by Molli Megasko

Yes, it’s another Facebook post. But don’t roll your eyes yet (Howie!). I’m not going to talk about the user changes, I’m here to discuss the free ads Facebook is giving to small business.

This January, Facebook is planning to give away $50 in free advertising to 200,000 small businesses across the country to show them how the ad platform works in hopes of return sales and more users.  (That’s $10 million in free advertising!) Continue Reading »

Jay Pinkert is a principal with Shatterbox, a marketing and communications consultancy that helps professional firms and small businesses distinguish their brand and win clients through content-driven programs and niche development.

Shane Bryant, founder and owner of HVAC service company Smart Air in Austin, Texas, didn’t seek referral business through Yelp — it found him.

A scant two years since Shane launched his company and the first five-star reviews started appearing on the local business ratings and reviews site, more than 70 percent of Smart Air’s leads are directly attributable to Yelp, and the company has grown from two employees to eight. Continue Reading »

Guest post by John Heaney of Orange Envelopes.

Entrepreneurs perpetually play the role of David against their Goliath corporate competitors. And, just like their biblical counterpart, small businesses can defeat their large competitors by outmaneuvering, out-imagining, and outperforming them.

In a recent scholarly analysis, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” author Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzed battles between very large armies and small forces and concluded that during the past 200 years the smaller David-sized forces won nearly 30 percent of the time. In many of these battles, the smaller forces were outnumbered 10 to one, yet were able to defeat their numerically superior foe. Continue Reading »

When I speak, it’s almost exclusively to entrepreneurs turned CEOs or “hired guns” – the CEOs/COOs hired by the entrepreneur because they know they can’t (or don’t want to) grow a company. You can guess where that audience typically lies…50+ white men. So you can also guess the resistance I get when I begin to talk about the shift in how we communicate and how technology is not going away, but it’s here to make us more productive and efficient.

Imagine this pretty little girl who comes in and tells them their whole world is changing before their eyes and it’s time to take their heads out of the sand and pay attention. Imagine she begins to tell them their employees won’t talk to them – they want to text and iChat instead. Imagine she tells them the way they’ve always pushed sales out to their audiences no longer works. Would you shake your head and say, “She’s not my generation. She doesn’t know hard work.”? They do. Continue Reading »

Last week, I chatted with Sara Wilson, who writes for AllBusiness.com. We talked about how social media is changing the face of franchising, which she then turned into a story. See it here.

But social media isn’t changing just the face of franchising. It’s changing the way we do business. All of us. Every business. It doesn’t matter if you sell to consumers or if you sell to other businesses. It doesn’t matter if you have a product or if you have a service. Social media is changing the way you talk to your customers and it’s time to get on the bandwagon.

Technology is changing so quickly that this isn’t about the newest and greatest social network (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). It’s about RELATIONSHIPS. It’s about connecting and engaging, one-on-one, with your customers at a very personal level. And the technologies, whatever they happen to be at this moment, are what allow you to do that.

We’ve only been using social media for Arment Dietrich since January. In the past six and a half months, it has:

* Developed an intense loyalty with our existing clients because they now see us as people and talk to us daily, even if it’s not about work. They see us even more now as partners…not as some vendor that does their outside communication.

* Created a brand for Arment Dietrich outside of our niche markets and outside of Chicago.

* Developed a way for us to create thought leadership, gain feedback, solicit ideas, and also balance criticism, which is making me a better leader (even if it sometimes hurts).

* Allowed us to prospect for new business leads globally.

* Created new interest from talent wanting to work here.

* Made us smarter…not only in the knowledge and wisdom we gain daily from the people we connect with, but also in how we run the business, how we work with our clients, and how we create our own category expertise.

Social media is not a trend. This is not a fad.  It is the way we all expect to communicate going into the future.