If you own or manage a small business, Twitter and Facebook are tremendous tools to grow your business.  The Economist Magazine’s newest special report covers the effects of social media in our society.  One article in particular covers social media’s effects on small business.  This post summarizes and builds off the examples and suggestions in the article.

1. Even The Advertising Playing Field

Social media is free (so far).  This means that the budgets of huge companies like Comcast, Starbucks or Dell doesn’t matter that much anymore.  There is nothing that these companies can do that you can’t.  All that matters now is your creativity, not your budget.  So if you didn’t have a marketing budget before tools like Twitter and Facebook this is your chance to increase your customer base.  If you do spend money on traditional marketing, the article mentioned a survey reporting small businesses in Britain have saved over $8,000 by using social media.

2. Get Feedback From Customers

If you don’t know what the customer wants your business is going to be at risk.  Social media gives you access to customers that already appreciate your service or product.  Use them to better understand their needs.  If you can improve existing customer’s experience of your brand, they will be more likely to tell their friends about the great things you do.

If you are at a small business or building a start up, by definition you won’t have a budget for market research.  Thus making social media so important.  Social media can be a useful substitute for intense market research.

3. Promotions Made Easy

The Economist article reported that 44% of Twitter users who follower brands do so because of the exclusive deals offered.

The most famous example of a company using Twitter for promotional uses is Kogi BBQ.  They are a mobile Korean food company.  They use their tweets to alert followers to where their trucks are located.

If you offer weekly events like book readings or musical acts social media are great ways to promote these activities.  Maybe you offer an awesome happy hour, twitter to remind followers about it.  Another idea mentioned in the article is to offer a password to followers which can be redeemed by a select number of customers for cupcake in this case.

Most of the example here are about increased access to your customer.  Whether you want to know more about them, tell them more about your company, or promote your product, social media does the job.  Use these tools to growth your business on a shoe-string budget.

If you are lacking a direction or just don’t know where to begin your social media campaign contact us and let’s see if m2volt can help you out.

This post was written by Cameron Plommer, Project and Social Media Manager at m2volt.
Follow him on Twitter.

Here are some links to the tools we like to use for twitter…

• Tweetie 2 for iPhone: http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/

• Seesmic for Web and Desktop Application: http://seesmic.com/

• Tweetdeck is another popular tool: http://www.tweetdeck.com/

• Twitter Search: (This is where the power is at) http://www.search.twitter.com

If you are new to twitter or need to know more about setting it up, you should read this guide put together by Mashable. Really, the possibilities are endless and it is only limited by your imagination. Just start talking and building new relationships, that is what it is all about. Use twitter search to find people talking around you. Simple as that. Start Talking.

We build websites. We customize blogs. We do all that backend stuff so you don’t have to. We pretty much do anything web. We are also passionate about talking with customers and business tools to streamline how you do things. Please call us anytime at 309-453-8175 or subscribe to our feed via RSS or Email to receive notifications on new business tips and dev tools. You can also follow m2volt on twitter or join our fan page on facebook.

This post was recorded by Shane Mac and Cameron Plommer. Read more about shane or follow him on twitter here.

You can follow Cameron on Twitter Here.

(sorry if offended by title, I mean no harm but it got your attention…)

Prostitution. Horrible. Disgusting. Illegal. Not Always… Wait! Before you leave, did you know that prostitution is considered the oldest profession in the world? With that said, I think we can all learn something from the oldest model of business if you forget about the morals. Here are 3 things I believe all of us can learn from the business of prostitution.

1. You know where to find them.

It seems so obvious. We tend to assume that people know where to find us. Small and medium size business owners, myself included, tend to think that because we know exactly where to find ourselves that everyone else does too. While people may be able to find you if you are bad ass at PR and marketing, but the truth is that it’s much easier to find the street corner where other businesses are standing and setup your shop there. Think about McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Burger King, and other large chain restaurants, they are usually built within blocks of each other. The same can be said for automotive dealers, bars, online networks, and any other business you can think of. It is usually easier to be where people are looking rather than making them take a detour. If you do take the “build it and they will come model,” you had better be worth it. Go find your corner, work it, and make sure you take the time to look better than all of the others.

2. You know what they are selling.

I can’t tell you how many times I talk with businesses, especially online, where I find myself thinking, “what are they trying to sell.” Once people find you on the street do they know what you have to offer? They should be able to look at you from head to toe and know exactly what you do. Content is more important than you think. I find many companies who assume that because you found your corner that people will know what you are selling. Don’t ever assume and make sure you dress the part, walk the walk, and realize that no one will know what you do unless you show them.

3. You know you’ll have to pay to get more.

This is where you have to be good. If you suck, you are not getting anyone to pay for more. If you are good, then you can keep them wanting more and more and more and more and more and… you get the picture. Have confidence that you can give a little bit up front and that people won’t be able to resist what you have to offer. This is especially important online and you should have enough confidence in your product that you can offer it up for free knowing that people won’t be able to resist wanting to use it more. Perfect example is Basecamp by 37signals. They tease you for 30 days and get you to bring in all your buddies for the party and then right when you are about to get off they ask for the money. You can’t resist and you keep coming back every month because it is good, really good. There are technology companies across that board that forget this point and try to run out the door selling shit. Build something of value, give a little taste of it, listen to them tell you how they like it, then only give it all up if they want to pay. The secret is figuring out how to charge for each little pleasure you give. If you are no good then you will get kicked to the curb anyways so focus on building kick ass stuff. Do your clients know where to find you, what you offer, and how much it cost to get their lips wet? Ask yourself… Are you “Down on the corner?” We build websites. We customize blogs. We do all that backend stuff so you don’t have to. We pretty much do anything web. We are also passionate about talking with customers and business tools to streamline how you do things. Please call us anytime at 309-453-8175 or subscribe to our feed via RSS or Email to receive notifications on new business tips and dev tools. You can also follow m2volt on twitter or join our fan page on facebook. This post was written by Shane Mac, co-founder of m2volt, and he only ‘interviewed’ a few prostitutes for this post, a while back. Read more about him or follow him on twitter. Photo Credit: ricardo.martins

We have built so many different websites from e-commerce, to portfolios, to database solutions but I wanted to go back to where it all started and dig up a simple video that I made which shows the process of developing the wire frames for the homepage of our company’s site, m2volt. The software I use in the video, Curio, is what I still use today for project management, concept of design, mind-mapping, and wire frames.  It is an awesome program for the mac that combines simplicity of use with some incredibly powerful features.  I will posting more videos in the future of tips and techniques with Curio but for now I hope you enjoy the very beginning of how we started m2volt.  If you would like more detail of Curio you can read about it in another post that I wrote, Business on a Mac? Simple. You can view the video more clearly if you view in full screen so I would suggest doing so.  After you watch the video be sure to check out our homepage and see how the wire frame came to life.  Enjoy the not so quick 5 minute video and feel free to fast forward if you like….

Do you use a wire framing software?  What do you prefer?  Do you use any programs that do multiple functions like Curio or stick to unique programs for different tasks?  Would love your input.

-Shane Mac

You can follow me on twitter here.

The Mac is for creative stuff, the PC is for Business. I would say I beg to differ and in the recent months I have taken small companies including my own from concept to opening their doors all on a Mac. I am always trying to find the easiest, most efficient way to help companies perform all the different tasks that are associated with running a business and the list below is a few programs that I think can help out any company looking to increase efficiency and/or cut their labor on the admin tasks.

1. BILLINGS: Invoice and Billing made easy

There are so many bookkeeping and invoicing programs out there but I have found the quickest and easiest to use is a program for the mac is Billings. A lot of start ups and small companies use Freshbooks, an online cloud program that makes invoicing and book keeping simple but sometimes Software as a Service, SaaS, is a costly way to go when having to pay a monthly fee. Freshbooks is a good program though and may be worth a look for your company. Billings integrates with a CRM program, Daylight, which can turn all of your leads and contacts into clients easily and make it easy to stay on top of prospective clients. It is basically a scaled down program that is similar to Salesforce.com.

Billings Screenshot

2. EVERNOTE: Remember Everything

Whether it is remember an idea you have in the car, taking a picture of the whiteboard from your meeting, or keeping an electronic business card database, Evernote is a must have for anyone. With the text in picture search technology, the program reads all of your images and then you can use the search feature to find any words inside of a picture you have taken. Have you ever been in a meeting and after a long mind map whiteboard session you wanted to take that with you? Now you can and it is pretty dang awesome. You just set up all your own categories and write tags with each entry for easy to find info later. The best part about Evernote is that it is everywhere you are. It has a mobile app, desktop client, online version, outlook plugin, and browser plugins so anytime you want to save something just select some text or an entire page then Evernote it. After you have all of your ideas in Evernote you can take it right over to one of my favorite tools, Curio, for just about everything from project management, simple design, to-do’s, and more.  Evernote works on both Mac and PC.

Evernote Screenshot

3. CURIO: MS Project on Steroids

It’s a mindmapping ,project management, simple yet powerful design tool, powerpoint engine, and much more. (and it integrates with Evernote). Curio allows you to create a start to finish project plan with all the documents, designs, live web integration and action items built into a simple to use tagging function that even my 5 year old niece could ace. The integration with Evernote is an awesome feature as well. It allows you to drag and drop any notes or images you have saved in Evernote straight into the project plan or mindmap and then tag it to any individual in your address book. It is simple to drag any contact onto an individual task and it keeps a clean list on the right hand side of the page of each individual’s tasks for the day. Integration with the new MacBook’s touchpad also makes designing in Curio a breeze for beginners. Don’t get me wrong, it is not photoshop or programs similar to it, but it can be a good starting point for design for any designer due to the quick and simple interface. This is basically a must have (my top recommended program) and should be the first step in putting Microsoft Project into the garbage. Who doesn’t hate managing projects with that program and with Curio it opens the door to creativity and innovation along with organization. You will soon find yourself with 50 different mind maps and ideas coming out of thin air.  Here are some design mocks, wireframes, and project management tools that we use daily at m2volt and helped in the creation of our own company.

Curio Designing Screenshot

Curio Wireframe Screenshot

Curio Project Management/Mindmap Screenshot

4. WORDPRESS: Websites made easy

While there are so many platforms for websites, social media, or online advertising, I think the easiest and most efficient way to build a website is through Wordpress. (For one, I am writing this article using the Wordpress platform right now). It is as easy as Microsoft Word or the rapidly growing Google Docs to update and it can be set up to feed any of your Social networks automatically whenever you update your site. There is also an endless supply of plugins that can be added by the click of a button and add some pretty advanced features to your site without knowing any code what so ever. Along with that, there are many wordpress experts out there if you ever wanted to customize your site beyond the template layout you are using and did I mention changing your entire layout is as simple as clicking one button. Wordpress is a super easy and efficient way to keep your site up to date and looking good and is much more than just a “blogging” platform these days. I hope you find these programs to be as useful as we have in starting m2volt.  Contact us if you want to develop a custom site powered by Wordpress since that is what we do here at m2volt.  Wordpress is a web program so it will work on any operating system.

Wordpress Screenshot

What do you use for your company?

What do you use for your small business?  Have you tried any other programs that we should know about?  Would love feedback in the comments for programs on either Mac or PC.

This post was written by Shane Mac, co-founder of m2volt.  You can follow him on twitter @shanemacsays.