Very often, your business website will be your primary window to the world. As such, you must take a great deal of care and patience when putting it together. In many cases your business will not have a physical address and as such, your website will be your storefront. If you want to have “curb appeal,” then you have to bear some key fundamentals in mind.

You must be in control of your site, which means that you should, ideally, post all its content on your own accessible server. You will need access to the site at your convenience and not according to another company’s whims. Ensure that you choose a software platform that allows you to interact with your site without the need for complex coding knowledge. The more difficult it is to interact with your site, the less often you will want to mess with it and this would be highly detrimental to your long-term goals. If you are looking for a very simple solution, check out Homestead, whose website options are user-friendly and “what you see is what you get.”

Understand that the Internet works in a certain way. You need to have a basic comprehension and know how the search engines work. To achieve maximum visibility your website needs to appear in a prominent position whenever someone searches for information on your particular product or service. This is easier said than done, as the search engines use somewhat complex algorithms to determine what qualifies and what doesn’t. Be prepared to engage in a certain amount of “search engine optimization” which will help you to optimize your site, using certain code and structure. You can either search for the help of experts in this field or if you want to dip your toe in the water and cover the fundamentals, know what your keywords are. Include these words within your page content, file titles and page titles.

If you were writing a book, you would take time to map out your approach. You would devise chapters, titles and come up with a natural progression so that the book would be readable. Take time to plan your website in the same spirit. You will undoubtedly have a number of different pages, covering a number of different topics – one for each of your products or services, for example. Make sure that your home page, which is the primary point of entry, gives a very clear and succinct description of your operation. Links from your home page must be clear and unambiguous and allow the visitor to easily find all your information.

It has been proven that visitors spend very little time on each page when they are surfing the web and you have, consequently, not much time to give them information to try and persuade them to buy your goods and services. Many surfers tend to look for “FAQ” sections first, as they know that they will generally find bulleted abbreviations and be able to scan through quickly. As such, compile your FAQ and make sure that it is prominently linked to from your home page.

These days, as social media marketing is such a powerhouse, you really should consider maintaining a blog as part of your business website. Some companies maintain a separate website for their blog which they develop as an information portal, first and foremost. You can really help to show your expertise and build a good following by avidly maintaining a blog element to your website. Your business will come across as being much more reachable and “touchable” and will, after a period of time, retain its own social buzz.

While you may maintain all of your business via the Internet, you can be sure that potential customers will want to know more about your business and will require some reassurance. Your contact information page is very important and you should include a photograph or two of the proprietor. People like to see photos of real people behind these sites. In addition, you must include a phone number for customer service follow-up and peace of mind and a physical address is highly recommended as well.

Once you have your business website up and running make sure that you try and maintain it as often as possible. Get to know about search engine optimization and make it as visible as you can. Try and track any business initiatives through readily available software. Google Analytics will help you see where your traffic is coming from and if your promotions are converting, helping you to keep on top of your game.

Do you host your own site?

Matthew Toren

Over the last few weeks we have been asking you “What does it take to be an exceptional leader? ”

Thanks to everyone who entered, the overall winner was:
” A leader empowers his people to do their best by believing in them, guiding them and being an example.”

So onto the remainder of the results -
2. Stands firm with her decision about company growth yet has also kept her heart for the subordinates.

3. Networks & a passionate spirit that continually realigns him/herself & the team toward the MAIN goal.

4. Being respected by people above and below you.

5. Demonstrating your passion for your company & mentoring your employees to succeed.

6. The qualities which define exceptional leaders are Vision, Passion and Endurance.

7. I would say a good leader must be able to lead and follow people at the same time as well be willing to learn from followers as well. Lead by example. Leader is also all about serving other people. To Lead is to Serve! Also including integrity. Walk the talk with consistency to earn the respect and people will follow. Last but not least, have the vision to inspire people to move forward.

8. I would say ‘building relationships’. Whether that is with suppliers, customers, employees or other people I think that is the true sign of a leader.

9. It is great if someone is inspiring to get people to do things his way. But I feel it is more important for a leader to be truly able to listen to others, and take that information as leverage for the relationship.
Normally 1 + 1 = 2. A good leader makes 1 + 1 equal 4.

10. A leader is somebody who listens to his/her subordinates. He/She can consider each other’s opinion and willing to take the risk. Also, a good leader is someone who is flexible and can adapt changes instantly without hesitating. Experience is the best key to learn how can you be a good leader, books are just theories.

If you would still like to add your comments, we are leaving the contest open for 1 more week – enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/.

Next week we will be starting a brand new entrepreneur Poll!

Adam Toren

Facebook traffic continues to grow as the social networking platform consolidates its position as one of the most influential websites on the planet. With registered users in excess of 200 million and over 113 million unique visitors to the site from within the US alone in May (according to respected Web analytics firm Compete), Facebook is starting to rival the major search engines in terms of traffic.

Clearly, Facebook is breaking new ground and we are all coming to terms with its presence and with its implications. The site is, in many respects, rewriting the rules as it goes along and it is only understandable that a number of significant questions have arisen in recent times regarding the security of the data collected by the company and the overall privacy considerations.

In July of 2009, a landmark statement was issued by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner berating Facebook for its failure to protect the personal information it gets from subscribers. While they acknowledged that Facebook was concerned about privacy issues, the investigators “found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates.”

This leads us to significant questions and one in particular that every Facebook user should consider. To help you ponder the meaning of the Facebook universe, we have composed some tips to help you protect your privacy.

1. Efficiency – Establish separate lists for friends, family and business contacts.

This is a very useful feature that allows you to really categorize and separate these potentially very diverse groups of people. For example, you may well want to keep your private persona separate from your professional one. You may or may not want people at work to know what you do in your spare time, after all while you may not be ashamed or embarrassed by your membership of a particular group or your participation in a particular type of recreation or sport, people at work do not need to know and should not necessarily be privy to everything that you do outside of the work environment.

If you categorize the people in your Facebook world in this way (Facebook refers to them all as “friends,” although this is a rather generic term) you can interact with them accordingly. You should also know that you can add a person to more than one list, so someone could be in your professional list while also being in your friends list, if you have that type of relationship with that person.

It is important to note that you can allocate different privacy policies to each of your groups, so that there is no danger that your professional contacts may see one of your personal photographs from a special family night out or a raucous beach party, for example.

You can even apply separate friend lists to categorize your contacts geographically or according to specific keywords. It is rather easy to accumulate a very large number of contacts on Facebook, and while the whole idea behind the platform is to keep in touch with people, especially if you had previously lost contact with them, if you do not adequately categorize them they could become “lost” within your own database. So, consider establishing friend lists for friends who live state by state, or for those you may have met at a convention, on your annual summer vacation or so on. Just go to the friends area of your Facebook page to start working on this feature. Click on, “Friends-Lists-Create New Lists.”

2. Selective Invisibility – Make yourself invisible within Facebook.

For one reason or another, people want to keep their information private or at the very least want to be aware of who is requesting or viewing this information. You could be in a position of responsibility or in a high profile occupation, and while valuing what Facebook has to offer, you do want to make sure that your profile is “low.” As such, you will not want your personal information to show up within search results on Facebook, and this is rather easy to accomplish.

To remove yourself from search results within Facebook, you should first go to your search privacy settings page. Open “settings” in the top right-hand part of the blue bar at the top of the screen, click on “manage privacy” and then open the “search” option. Under “search discovery” you can select either “everyone on Facebook,” “friends of friends” or “only friends.” You can also specify that the people who do find you through Facebook search may see your profile picture, your friend list or pages that you are a fan of. Remember to save your changes.

3. Global Invisibility – Make yourself invisible to the rest of the Internet world.

Facebook is highly ranked by Google and the other major search engines and information from within Facebook is regularly displayed by the engines within their search results. This means that user profiles can be displayed, although this information is quite restricted. You may consider that exposure is a good idea and that people from your long-lost past may be able to simply “Google” your name and immediately see that you have a Facebook page, enabling them to make contact with you. If this is the case, you can opt to check the box allowing your profile to be available as a public search listing. To do this, go to “settings – privacy – manage – search.” Once you are there, scroll down to the public search listing box and check it. Immediately above is the “search results content” option and you should check the appropriate boxes within to stipulate what information is available within the public search environment, as well. For example, select your profile picture, your friend list, pages that you are a fan of, or select an option allowing people to link to you as a friend, or an option allowing people to send you a message.

For those who want to ensure that their information is not made available when somebody does a search for their name, ensure that the public search listing is unchecked.

4. Accountability – Don’t tag me, bro!

This has emerged as one of the biggest issues for Facebook and its users. The visual image is a highly potent communications tool on the Internet. People tend to scan webpages quickly, but always fix on images and photographs. It is probably too easy for people to “tag” photographs of you and post them on Facebook. If you are particularly concerned that your private life does not mix with your professional life, you could be worried that an incriminating photograph could be posted for all to see without your permission or knowledge. Maybe you let your hair down just a little bit too far at the office party, or someone took a lot of pictures at a recent political fund-raising event. Whatever your concern, you should know that it is possible to stipulate that your name “keyword” is not tagged to a photograph of you. Don’t forget that this can apply to videos as well!

While you can immediately remove a tag when you spot it, the damage may have been done by then, especially if you have not visited your Facebook page for a day or so.

To make sure that your tagged photographs or videos do not show up in all of your friend newsfeeds, go to “settings – privacy – manage – profile” and look for the “photos tagged of you” drop-down box. You have four options– allowing everyone to see, “friends only” may see, “friends of friends” may see, “some friends” may see or “only me.” You can even specify that everyone may see your photographs except for certain friends or those who are on one of those friend lists. In this way, you could exclude that “professional” friend list that you established earlier on. Apply the same customization for videos while you are there.

5. Secrecy # 1 – Be careful what you tell your friends.

This is an area that people get confused about rather easily. Many people have been embarrassed when they alter their relationship status within their profile and find that it is posted as a news item and all their friends get to know about it. This can lead to concerned comments being attached to the actual post itself, drawing further attention to it. You may have just gone through a breakup and are particularly upset about it in the first place. The last thing that you need is a public discussion about it! A certain amount of basic information is required within your profile, but you can control what is broadcast automatically and the settings are as follows:

Go to “settings – privacy – newsfeed and wall.” Here you will see that the highlighted section of your friends home page will include what you do or say, if you comment on a note, a video, a link, a photo or an album or if you change your relationship status. You can check or uncheck any one of these five boxes as you wish. If you go back to the privacy page and select “profile” you can select who is able to see your basic information by interacting with the drop-down box there as well.

6. Secrecy # 2 – There is an app for that, too.

Applications abound within the Facebook platform, some of which are very handy, some of which are funny or entertaining and some of which could be rather embarrassing. They could be especially embarrassing for you if you choose to download them, as unless you are careful a newsfeed story will be added to your profile telling everyone of your interest in the application.

You should make a habit of checking your profile often, and if you see that a post has been made detailing your interaction with the embarrassing application concerned, you can simply remove it.

7. Privacy – Protect your contact information.

Once you start building your Facebook presence and reaching out to friends and contacts from the past, you will be surprised at how, suddenly, you will get a message out of the blue from someone who you may remember from “way back then,” but only vaguely. If you decide to approve friend requests from such people you should be sure to make your contact information only selectively available.

If you are not particularly careful about who can see your contact information, as your friends lists grow you may find that you get e-mails from people who you can barely remember. Don’t forget to edit your settings as follows:

On your profile page, look in the left-hand column, probably below your photograph and there you will see “edit my profile.” Click this and various categories will appear including basic, personal, contact, education and work. You can open up these categories and apply as much or as little information as you need, within. Then, look over to the right and you’ll see a small icon which looks like a padlock, for some reason. Open this and you will see that you can specify who has access to each item of information.

If you have categorized your friends according to family – friends – professional as we discussed earlier, you can make sure the right categories of people have access to the appropriate items of information and contact details.

8. Graffiti – Make your walls selectively visible.

Anyone can post to your wall, yet you do not always want your friends to see what is written. Again, we are coming back to friend categorization in many instances, although there are many different ways that you can be embarrassed and we don’t want to know! If you use Facebook for business and for pleasure purposes, you need to be particularly careful about what you allow to be written to your wall. You can customize these settings, so that your wall postings are only visible to certain people and you can also specify which friends are able to post to your wall in the first place.

Firstly, go to your profile and then click on “wall” if it is not already selected. Just underneath the “what’s on your mind?” box on the right-hand side is a magnifying glass next to the word “options.” Click on this first of all. This will open up three separate categories for you, your friends or “you and your friends.” On the right-hand side you will see the option to amend the settings for each of these categories. If you open up this page you will then be able to specify if friends may post to your wall and, if so, who will be able to see those posts. Once again, you have infinite customization options here. Spend a little time in here and think through all your options. You really can customize whatever appears on your wall if you check the appropriate boxes.

While on this subject, you should note that you might think that when you post to someone else’s wall, this is a private message between you, but this is not necessarily the case. If the friend to whom you are posting has not checked the appropriate box, it is possible that every one of his friends will see your message, so go to: “settings-privacy-newsfeed and wall” and look for “posting to someone’s wall may appear in your mutual friends’ News Feeds” – un-check that box.

Note that you can also go to your “settings – privacy” page and customize your wall post requirements there.

9. Company – Who do you associate with?

For security reasons, or once again because you may be selective when it comes to revealing your friends, you may want to modify who can see your friend list. You may well have a huge number of friends and feel that this is some kind of societal statement, but you may not want to make the details available to potential marketers or to those who just like to browse around and see who interacts with whom.

Once again this can be a little difficult to find, as it is not contained underneath the “friends” tab in your blue bar at the top of the page. Go to “settings – privacy – profile” and scroll down to “friends,” where you may specify who can see your list of friends by selecting the option from the drop-down box.

10. Photography – Make sure that you index and categorize.

It has been said that Facebook is really designed for the distribution and sharing of photos and videos. Before you know it, you may have hundreds of photographs, and you should – right from the get go, make sure that you categorize them within folders appropriately. If you don’t want your photo albums to be visible to everyone, specify within the relevant section, album by album.

Go to “profile – photos” and you can modify your settings by clicking on the album privacy.

Conclusion.

Some people find it rather difficult to navigate their way around Facebook in general, and especially when it comes to allocating their settings. Hopefully this post will help you to prevent those embarrassing items from appearing within your Facebook account and it should go a long way to assuage your fears about privacy and security. Facebook is part of a communications revolution within our society, and while the owners are still finding their feet and are modifying the platform as they go along, the medium is likely to remain an essential part of our lives for the foreseeable future.

Adam Toren

This week I have been lucky enough to interview Jason Rzepka.

Jason is currently the VP of public affairs at MTV. Prior to joining MTV, Jason was the director of communications for the Pop!Tech Institute.

Adam: You have had a stellar career so far. What do you think has motivated you to achieve so much so quickly in such a tough business?

Jason: I think the big thing is I’ve not been focused on achievements – I’ve just run towards the work I most enjoyed, was good at and passionate about. I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing people along the way who have pushed me and who I’ve learned invaluable lessons from. Hard work and timing have also been key.

Adam: What led you to choose a career in public relations?

Jason: I actually feel like public relations chose me. In college, I planned to pursue a career in marketing and advertising. My first gig after school was as a marketing coordinator at a dot com start up. I hated it. But then I found an awesome PR firm in the San Francisco Bay Area – Atomic PR. I’d always been a media junky, I liked to write and I liked to talk. And Atomic was really ahead of the curve – they didn’t believe in the hierarchy of traditional PR firms and deeply understood how PR was fundamentally changing in the late 90s. The time I spent there felt like strategic communications grad school and definitely catalyzed my career.

Adam: What attributes do you think are needed to help you get ahead in the PR world?

Jason: There are several ingredients that make a successful PR professional. The first is strategic thinking, which I view as absolutely critical. Second, you must be a GREAT communicator with the ability to effectively deliver complex ideas. Lastly, you have to be extremely diligent.

You can be a stellar strategist and a great communicator, but if you lack diligence, you won’t reach your full potential. As an example, there are lots of PR practitioners who can write a great pitch and build an awesome media list, but after they send the pitch e-mail, they’ll often settle with leaving a journalist a voice mail. After 10 years of PR experience, I can probably count on one hand the number of times journalists have returned a voice mail. I would sometimes call my highest priority media targets 50 times – never leaving a message – and never giving up until I got them on the phone. And this is how I placed some of the biggest stories of my career, from TIME to NPR to The New York Times to ABC World News Tonight.

Adam: You have been involved in think tanks and with the Pop!Tech Institute. Do you think that this type of collaboration is worthwhile and should it be more widely encouraged as a tool?

Jason: Think tanks play an important role in generating breakthrough ideas, but to really be effective, I believe they must exhibit two critical characteristics: embrace multi-disciplinary collaboration, and have a mechanism to translate great ideas to action. In my experience, the best ideas are born when you have people with very different perspectives, backgrounds and skill sets – who don’t often talk to each other – sitting around the same table, focused on a difficult challenge. Further, it’s essential that think tanks have connections to best-in-class organizations that can help actualize great ideas. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Adam: You have been outspoken and not afraid of covering a whole variety of issues and causes. How easy is it to gauge if your take on a subject has gone too far?

Jason: At MTV, we know we aren’t experts on sexual health, the environment, poverty or politics – so we always align ourselves with the foremost authorities in those fields, who ensure our campaigns are technically accurate and sensitive to the issue. We force ourselves to innovate, push the envelope and find new ways to partner with young people on these issues – empowering them to effect positive change – and our expert partners ensure we don’t go too far.

That said, sometimes “too far” is highly subjective. When we launched “Darfur is Dying,” an online, student-developed video game to help stop the genocide in Darfur, some critics said the concept went “too far.” Three years later, the game has been played over four million times, led 50,000 to take action to help end the bloodshed and been praised by college students, holocaust survivors, Congress and dozens of influential journalists, including Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.

Adam: The influence of MTV on society has been enormous. Does this bring extra pressure to your projects?

Jason: At MTV, we feel a strong responsibility to “use our superpowers for good.” We know we reach a large youth audience and we’re committed to empowering them to have an impact on the greatest challenges they face as a generation. We’ve learned a-lot about what works and what doesn’t when engaging young people on social issues, and while we always feel the pressure to outdo what we’ve done before, we relish every opportunity to partner with our audience and address the issues they care about most.

Adam: You have had a fairly long tenure at MTV. Which projects are you most proud of?

Jason: I’m most proud of working on mtvU’s Sudan Campaign, which I can honestly say transformed me as a person. With that campaign, we’ve given college students a powerful megaphone to raise national and international attention for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been displaced. Unfortunately, the situation in Sudan is still terrible, but we feel proud that through partnering with college students, we’ve been able to help change the dialog and generate significant attention for this genocide in slow motion.

Adam: Where do you see your career going over the next 5 years?

Jason: I feel incredibly privileged to head up the Public Affairs group at MTV, and truthfully, I can’t imagine anything I’d enjoy more – at least for the foreseeable future. That said, I hope to use the rest of my career to work for social justice and to effect positive change.

Adam: Getting young people to vote was a huge and relatively successful endeavor during the last Presidential campaign. What else do you think can be done to make sure that people start to engage with the process?

Jason: The 2008 elections generated one of the largest youth voter turnouts in U.S. history. It was exciting to see young people so engaged – and it’s another example of what’s possible when our audience mobilizes around the issues they’re passionate about.

Our guiding philosophy for engagement on any issue is simple: involve young people in the process, speak to them in their language, offer multiple ways to get involved and celebrate youth who take action and have an impact.

One example is Serve.MTV.com, a new tool we launched to make it super easy for any young person to connect with volunteerism opportunities in their local community. We’re leveraging the power of our most popular shows and relationships with some of the biggest names in pop culture to alert our audience to the tool. And we’ll soon use our on-air and online platforms to highlight young people who are getting involved and making a difference.

Adam: You are very involved in educating young people to take action to change their lives as well as the lives of others, what else do you think needs to change to enable this process?

Jason: We know most young people want to get involved and make a difference, but it can be difficult to know where to start. So we always go to great lengths to make it as easy as possible to get involved. We also always offer multiple levels of engagement, so there are ways for everyone from hard-core activists to sunny day volunteers to take action. Storytelling is also a powerful tool to help incite action. If you can reach someone on an emotional level – through powerful human stories – that individual is more likely to understand an issue and be motivated to get involved.

Adam Toren

“I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.” – Michael Bloomberg.

As a politician, Michael Bloomberg breaks the mold. He does not appear to attract the traditional mudslinging barrage and when he does find himself to be the target he appears to be able to just brush off the dirt and continue. Befitting the great city that often seems to defy generalization and champions the unusual, New York’s mayor treads a fine line of political astuteness along an enviable path of success through economic, social and cultural minefields.

Michael Rubens Bloomberg was born in the dead of winter 1942 to middle-class parents in Massachusetts. A solid work ethic and an inquiring mind were evident from an early age and he progressed through Johns Hopkins University to Harvard where he received his MBA. He was intrigued by the process and distribution of information and zeroed in on technology’s role in distribution during his time with the investment banker, Salomon Brothers.

Now an enthusiastic New Yorker, Bloomberg applied his theory to practice by founding Bloomburg LP in 1981. This financial news and information service is today a household name and is a trusted source of information for over a quarter million subscribers worldwide.

With his thriving company on course, Bloomberg devoted a lot of his spare time to philanthropic causes. He used his not inconsiderable presence and Rolodex lists to help charities and institutions make an impact in the name of a variety of causes. He was becoming increasingly better known in New York political circles and civic affairs.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 shook the city to its very core and while many people initially turned to “America’s Mayor,” the then leader Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg was waiting in the wings for his chance to bring his style and vision to bear. When Giuliani came to the end of his term, Bloomberg mounted a considerable campaign based on a reconstruction of the spirit of the city.

Perhaps surprisingly, Bloomberg was a lifelong registered Democrat before he decided to run for mayor, yet switched his allegiance to the Republican Party and was successful, a feat he repeated in 2005. In 2007 he decided that he would leave the Republican Party and became an independent. He had successfully switched allegiance twice, a move that has rarely been successful for politicians at any level before.

Bloomberg’s self-effacing attitude and willingness to “get in the trenches” has endeared him to many New Yorkers to this day. He’s been very successful in combating crime and particularly illegal gun possession and use. He continues to incorporate philanthropy and has been able to reach across party aisles successfully throughout his terms in office. Indeed, he has so much presence that he was able to successfully campaign to amend New York City’s long-running term limits law, allowing him to run for an unprecedented third term in 2009.

In addition to being the mayor of New York City, he is estimated to be the richest resident and the eighth richest person in the world, with a fortune of $16 billion. He is still a majority owner of Bloomberg LP.

While he did not run for election during the recent presidential campaign despite persistent rumors to that effect, Michael is in the running for the mayoral nominations of both Republican and Independent parties in his beloved New York. He has considerable political power within one of the most diverse, demanding and critical political environments and retains a list of admirers across the spectrum and from billionaire to pauper.

His business ethics are unquestionable and his political success may be attributable to the fact that he is able to get within the psyche of what makes New York the place it is – “and because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you. This is the city of dreamers and time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.”

Adam Toren

Donald Trump suggests “the best business reading books for the summer.” Warren Buffett simply says “read, read, read.” There are thousands upon thousands of business books with new ones coming out everyday. Budding entrepreneurs often think that they have enough on their hands without spending “valuable” time reading books. In truth, you should have a voracious appetite for business books and classify the time that you spend reading them as a significant investment in your future. Here are some of the best business books around to start off with:

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

Robert Cialdini, PhD

According to Cialdini, there are six principles of influence inherent within us all as human beings that a business practitioner should embrace and engage on a daily basis – reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. Each principle of influence is exhibited by us all and anyone who truly understands these principles and is willing to use them advantageously will be successful within any sphere of life and most notably in business. This book is very useful for those looking to hone their negotiating and sales skills.

The Practice of Management
Peter F. Drucker

This was the first book to take a real look at the world of management as a whole and was very revolutionary when it was first published in 1954. It has remained a classic since that time and most of its principles hold true to this day. The book establishes the role of the manager and his or her position within the multidisciplinary practices. Drucker was way ahead of his time when he realized that significant performance could be achieved within an organization willing to categorize and motivate its workforce appropriately.

How to Win Friends & Influence People
Dale Carnegie

This book was published in 1937 and is the definitive work on the essential topic of people skills. It is required reading for everyone in the business world. It promotes the need to be empathetic and to treat others the way that they would like to be treated. Through giving, one will receive. By building people up instead of taking people down you are far more likely to achieve your goals. Today many books have been written expounding the theory, but Carnegie’s epic is still the best. Prime location on your bookshelf.

10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management
Hyrum Smith

You don’t have to be in business for long to understand that your biggest challenge is likely to be time management. You may have the coolest ideas and the loftiest goals and the strongest work ethic, but if you don’t have your time under control you will likely not succeed. Smith maintains that you need to leave your comfort zone or you have little chance of success and advocates the display of integrity, character, self-confidence, self-esteem and drive. When you are feeling overwhelmed, put down, harried or spent, flick through and gas up on Smith’s techniques.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Michael E. Gerber

Gerber tries to dispel many myths with this book, but what may be its best ingredient is the fact that it promotes you to think outside of the box. He maintains that you should not work in your business but should work on it and be very careful about classifying it as just a miserable job, albeit subconsciously. Some are not happy with his analogies, while many find them refreshing. “Nobody’s interested in a commodity. People buy feelings. Find a perceived need and fill it.” Gerber preaches at us to hate the comfort zone.

Have you read any good business books lately?

Matthew Toren

The more that we learn about the ubiquitous click through rate the more we should realize that it is not a good measurement tool for our marketing efforts. Since the Internet emerged as a serious marketing medium, we have been bombarded with reports about click through rates and how we should pay attention to them as a symbol to quantify the effectiveness of our approach.

More and more studies are pointing to the fact that a high click through rate is not necessarily a harbinger of great conversions to come. Mobile analytics firm Amethon released a study which focused on sites that exist only to host a specific advertising campaign. CTR was high, but the target pages did not hold attention for long and the bounce rate was very disconcerting. Why is it that a large number of online marketers rely on this metric in the decision-making process as opposed to any other metrics, such as brand awareness?

Online brand marketers seem to be somewhat blinded by this measure and this appears to be largely a hangover from the early days of the net when the pure novelty and the potentially serious ramifications of the “click through” first dawned upon us.

In the world of direct response marketing, it seems that more tangible measurements have greater importance. Instead of merely paying attention to clicks and impressions, it is far better to quantify the number of leads generated, especially if these are qualified.

As the consumer is blinded by an ever-increasing assault from the marketing media encountered on a daily basis, so it seems that the click through is losing even more of its meaning. Could it be that the click through is becoming just a natural physical reaction for some people?

With the emergence of social media marketing the waters are even more muddied, as studies by Forrester Research and by Marketing Sherpa show that many top online marketers are very naive about social media measurement. The MS study, Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices showed that the factors that presented the most effective barriers to social media marketing amongst organizations or clients were: a lack of knowledgeable staff (46%) and an inability to measure return on investment (43%). Digital branding and branding specific metrics will become increasingly more important and it falls to system designers to come up with some robust and readily available analytic technologies. As this happens less emphasis will be placed on the pure analysis of click through rates as a measure of success within the marketing environment. Just as the click through has endured a significant decline in response rates since its introduction, so its elevated status in the online marketing business will recede.

Do you click out of habit?

Adam Toren

We might have known that it would only be a matter of time before the ubiquitous Google AdSense machine started to tie in to the mobile applications market. There has been a predictable explosion in interest for smartphone applications and it would seem that the sky is the limit. Downloadable applications proliferate for Apple iPhone and Android platforms.

Google is now moving into the mobile ad market following the testing of text and graphical ads in private beta. The web-behemoth has expanded its field testing and is playing with contextual ads for both platforms. According to Google the ads can be targeted by “applications, locations, categories or keywords.”

Program developers can insert a snippet of code within their applications, allowing iPhone and Android powered handsets to display ads. This effectively synchronizes the application with the Google ad network and opens up significant earning opportunities down the road.

One of the challenges associated with the approach is, as always, to get past the typical consumer “ad resistance”. Harold Steinberg, director of business development for Urbanspoon (one of Google’s startup development partners in the venture) concurs. “What we are looking for… is to allow the user to look at the whole application as one and not say, “oh, that’s an ad, I’m not going to pay attention to it.”” If the ad is successfully integrated within the application there is more chance that the consumer will interact with it thus allowing the app developer and Google to make money and the advertiser to gain traffic.

It does appear that the banner style of ad will likely be utilized, rather than the text ad we are all so familiar with. The traditional desktop style webpage rendition does not convert very well for the iPhone screen, as we know and it appears that Google is well aware of the potential difficulties associated with trying to first “expand” and then click on tiny text ads. They maintain that the AdSense ads will all be “above the fold” and will thus be instantly viewable as soon as you surf to the relevant page, just ready for the click, or touch in this case.

For the marketer, “pay per click” is one of the primary traffic-driving platforms available online. Google markets this opportunity as “AdWords” for the advertiser (you pay Google and they display your ads) and “AdSense” for the webmaster, or in this case the application developer (Google displays your ads and they pay you if somebody clicks). While many people are highly successful using Google’s AdWords, the concept must be approached with a lot of caution. You can wipe through an advertising budget very quickly if you are not sufficiently prepared and/or very sure of your keyword choices, composition and landing page relevance. As far as the new AdSense for iPhone potential is concerned, the same cautions apply. While it may be tempting to jump all over anything that has to do with the mobile Internet revolution, marketers should exercise additional caution here. It remains to be seen how accepting consumers are to the idea of “in your face” advertising on the phone screen, as this is only just rolling out. We must also see how much it will cost to specify that your ad appears on this platform and whether it can be sufficiently integrated (see Steinberg’s comments above).

While Google is keeping things small right now and only working in beta with a small number of highly qualified partners, it has (as usual) a clear advantage in this marketplace. When Google opens up and allows marketers to select mobile applications as part of their overall AdSense campaigns, bidding will increase significantly and ad rates will go up.

As the smart phone market experiences unprecedented growth and the future looks equally as rosy, expect there to be significant interest in this platform and who would bet against good earnings potential. Mobile application usage is expected to quadruple in five years and Google is perhaps banking on the fact that those eyeballs will be drawn to mobile AdSense, especially as the mobile advertising market is touted to grow to almost $5.7 billion within that period of time.

Have you started to use AdSense Applications on your iPhone? We would love to hear your feedback.

Matthew Toren

In today’s challenging economy you might think you really can’t afford to start a business. The reality is you can – and one smart way to do that is by bootstrapping your startup. This means starting on a shoestring and putting all the money you make back into the business. Bootstrapping will keep you out of debt as long as you remember that any profit you make goes toward growing the company. This has always been a smart way to start a business with less financial risk – and in today’s economic climate, it’s smarter than ever. Here are 10 tips for bootstrapping your business:

1. Start a low-cost business.

It might be nice to open the first of a chain of retail clothing boutiques or a hamburger joint, but most brick-and-mortar businesses require lots of cash. Service businesses or e-commerce businesses, on the other hand, are typically lower-investment. Find a middle ground between your entrepreneurial dreams and the reality of startup costs.

2. Count your cash.

Look around you for money you can tap into. Do you have savings or CDs you could cash in? Do you own any collectibles you could sell for quick cash? How about a “toy” like a motorcycle or sailboat?

3. Keep your day job.

If you want to bootstrap your business, you won’t be paying yourself a salary – at least, not for a while. So if at all possible, consider keeping your day job (or at least working part-time) so you have enough to live on while you build your business.

4. Live at home.

As a young person, maybe you can persuade Mom and Dad to let you live at home for a while so you can save even more money to put toward your business. (And the desire to get out of their house will probably motivate you even more to succeed!)

5. Don’t spend more than you need to.

Buy the bare minimum you need to get your business going. Strike a balance here: You don’t want to go so cheap that you buy a computer without the power you need. But you don’t need to waste money on unnecessary bells and whistles, either. Similarly, spend what you need to make a good impression on clients. But if clients will never see your office, does it matter if your desk is secondhand?

6. Save money on what you do need.

Register to get special offers from retailers you use often. For even more deals, check out Bank of America’s Add It Up, an online shopping portal which allows small business owners to earn up to 20 percent cash back from more than 270 retailers when they shop online with their Bank of America check card through the Add it Up Web site.” The program is free for Bank of America’s Online Banking customers; for more details, go to www.bankofamerica.com/additup.

7. Keep on top of cash flow.

A simple accounting program combined with online business banking can give you access to daily reports that show you exactly how much is coming in and going out.

8. Watch your receivables.

Today, many customers are going longer before paying. Don’t let them. If an invoice isn’t paid on time, follow up (politely) to see what’s going on. Often, a gentle reminder is all it takes to get your money. Or offer a discount if a client pays early.

9. Barter.

Bartering means trading your products and services for someone else’s instead of paying cash. For instance, your Web design company could design a marketing company’s site in exchange for their handling your ad campaign. You can join an official barter exchange (search for them online), or use informal barter with other business owners. Just be sure you put an agreement in writing so everyone knows what they’re getting.

10. Go for the low-hanging fruit.

Get more cash in your coffers by focusing first on the projects or products that are easiest (and least expensive) for you to handle. When you’ve got more money in the bank, you can tackle those longer-term projects that require a bigger investment.

This is a guest blog by Rieva Lesonsky, CEO, Journalist and Author.

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. She recently conducted an expert forum on Bank of America’s Small Business Online Community, where she answered questions about navigating a small business through the current economy. You can also ask her questions at www.askRieva.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rieva

Time for another poll update! Thank you for all your entries so far, but we still need more!
We need your help in putting together an awesome list of leadership qualities, and we are running this poll through Twitter. If you have a Twitter account cast your vote – or post your entry.

This month we are asking…

“What does it take to be an exceptional leader?”

enter at http://contests.youngentrepreneur.com/