Mike McDermott, President - Bash Foo

Miami County Chambers of Commerce Small Business Council

Business Advancement Seminar Series

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If you have participated in Facebook for any length of time, you have been exposed to “Friend Farmers”.

No, not those annoying people who post their Farmville updates to your wall, a friend farmer is someone who seeks to be friends with all of your friends for purposes of either to market their products or services to you, or they are simply curious and want to snoop into your collection of friends.  Is the correct approach to then remove them from your friend list?

Friend to All Manner of Beast

Friends and friendships are vital to social networking site such as Facebook, without them you simply would not be linked up, ‘in the know’ nor have anything to read and distract you from getting anything worthwhile done during the day. The Art of managing your social networks includes that beguiling spell where you simply “friend” every person who has ever occupied space and time with you. You meet someone at the farmers market for the first time, and you rush home to add them to your social network (or even worse, do it right in front of them on your mobile device). If you are a confident and grounded person you won’t have any use for that additional random person as you have already fostered years of real-life investment in your friendships. The message that the social neophyte sends to their new electronic acquaintance, ”It doesn’t take much for someone to be my friend”.

Fair-Weather Friends

This lowered barrier of entry to your social circle also allows for the creation of masses of “fair-weather” friends who only want something when They are in need, and are rarely happy unless you are unhappy. Also in this category of social media friend can be found the “Desperate Business Owner” who doesn’t have enough work to keep themselves busy during the day, so they surf for friends to farm from their acquaintanceship with others. Their Primary Goal is not to be your friend or to build an existing relationship (from nothing), but to have you visit their retail store or restaurant and buy their wares. They NEED you to be their friend so they can stay in business. They are rarely happy unless you are felt to be left wanting without them. “Your day won’t be complete without buying my stuff”

Beware

You should beware the next time you accept a friend request from a random person via Facebook. Their intentions may not be the best for you. On top of them trying to shill wares to you, they may want to pry into your box of friends and hit them up as well. This usually precipitates a private message from your friend that says “Hey… Do you know this guy, he looks creepy but Facebook said he was your friend”. My personal guidance on the subject, if you find a friend farmer on Facebook, delete and block them and let them know why you are killing the social media connection or they will continue to try to friend you. Their friend following will be large, it will swell due to the number of people who don’t preen their social media nests, or those who have very low self-esteem and are desperate for a crackpot in their life who will immediately trounce on their harvested friendships with wild abandon.

Business journaling for me customarily serves to help my existing clients or prospective ones through some weighty issue or challenge. Today’s post will merely be cathartic in nature and may serve as the only way that I can slog through the rest of the morning, so please bear with me.

Getting called into an RFP (Request For Proposal) with very little information or requirements gathered is a commonplace enough event for technologists. An RFP is the chance for the service provider to deliver a summary of what sort of services they intend to deliver to the customer. Rarely will an RFP include pricing, as in this initial stage the service provider has not collected the Customer Requirements.

Apparently for the client in question it was not RFP time, it was RFQ (Request For Quote) time. They wanted to know soup to nuts what services would be provided for them and what it would cost plus or minus 10%. In order to perform such a task a service provider must have gathered together the Customer Requirements. Some people call them “Customer Spec” short for specification. Essentially the service provider has to have a good understanding of what the client wants in order to ensure that all of their basic requirements are met, and that most of their “would like to have’s” are at least addressed by the proposed solution.

This particular “emergency” RFQ was initiated by the customer as they wanted to know by 1:15PM how much “it all” would cost. The customer prefaced the conversation that he recently fired the last service provider for not delivering what he needed. The customer delivered a few printouts of screens in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application that was built by the prior service provider. The customer stated that it was “all wrong” and that he wanted things done differently. When asked for test data he said that he did not have any data or transactional maps that would guide a service provider in building the application, just a handful of utterly useless screenshots.

Dear Mr. Customer;

I so wanted to take part in your urgency today. You see I thrive on action, and it sounds to me like you needed some.

I understand that you are behind schedule and without any tool in place to do work. Your line of business is not a commonplace one, so it demands a level of customization that many would not understand. Your business size is not large enough for an enterprise solution, but it is big enough to demand some level of automation. You have been recently burnt by a prior service provider who did not understand what you needed, and only delivered a fraction of your un-documented requirements.

Please, please, please. Mr. Customer, gather thee requirements three.

1. Stated Budget. Before beginning any deep dive into what a customer wants, it is imperative to understand what size budget they are willing to allocate to a project. If in the clients mind they want to spend $2,500 on a solution, the service provider must not take the time and energy to deliver a $50,000 proposal. It serves no one to hold back on rough numbers. ERP solutions (for an example) often run in the 6 figure range so a customer expecting to receive one for a few grand can quickly be educated on what is commercially available and developmentally  feasible.
2. Key Functional Requirements. The customer should be able to tell you the top 10 things that they want their website/application/service to do and what work it should perform. A good service provider can then help them to force rank those deliverables and put rough estimates on each one.
3. Tell us how you plan to grow. Scalability is the ability of a provided technology to grow with the business. Businesses may have in mind to NEVER go above ‘X’ number of employees, or another stated level of size. Such notions should be taken into account by a service provider when planning for website/application/services. The life-cycle of the services provided should not be shorter than the median growth estimates of any line of business. As an example, you would not sell a two-seat vehicle to a young couple with plans in the next year to have a child. (Well unless you are one of those really BAD car salesman/service providers) Estimating your usage and growth are important for a service provider to factor into their equations.

There.. That wasn’t so bad was it? Providing a few key requirements can help to streamline the RFP/RFQ process as well as help to shield your business from financial or operational harm. As a service provider, we are here to make your business work. We are only happy doing what we do when YOUR business is more effective. Ability… CHECK, Urgency… CHECK, Requirements… Well, now you get the picture.

Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect and use the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our site and our products and services.

What Information Do We Collect?

When you visit our Web site you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and Web site use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our Web site.

Registration Information

You will provide us information about yourself, your firm or company, and your practices when you contract us to perform design or programming, request a commitment from us or one of our business partners or affiliates, register for certain products or services, or register for our email newsletters and alerts. You may also provide additional comments on how you see Bash Foo is servicing your needs and interests.

Email Information

If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses in order to serve you better.

Web Site Use Information

Similar to other commercial Web sites, our Web site utilizes a standard technology called “cookies” (see explanation below, “What Are Cookies?”) and Web server logs to collect information about how our Web site is used. Information gathered through cookies and Web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web site. We, our advertisers and ad serving companies may also use small pieces of code called “web beacons” or “clear gif” to determine which advertisements and promotions users have seen and how users responded to them.

How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?

Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering and expanding our business activities, providing customer service and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our Web site, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. You may notify us at any time if you do not wish to receive these offers by emailing us at mike!@.

What Are Cookies?

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a Web site, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each Web site can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a Web site to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

How De We Use Information We Collect from Cookies?

As you use our web site and services, the site uses its cookies to differentiate you from other users so your information is only available to you. In some cases, we also use cookies to prevent you from seeing unnecessary advertisements or requiring you to log in more than is necessary for security. Cookies, in conjunction with our Web server’s log files, allow us to calculate the aggregate number of people visiting our Web site and which parts of the site are most popular. This helps us gather feedback in order to constantly improve our Web site and better serve our customers. Cookies do not allow us to gather any personal information about you and we do not generally store any personal information that you provided to us in your cookies.

Sharing Information with Third Parties

We may enter into alliances, partnerships or other business arrangements with third parties who may be given access to personal information including your name, address, telephone number and email for the purpose of providing you information regarding products and services that we think will be of interest to you. In connection with alliances, partnerships or arrangements, we may also provide certain information to third parties if we have determined that the information will be used in a responsible manner by a responsible third party. For example, some of our partners operate stores or provide services on our site, while others power offerings developed by us for your use. We also use third parties to facilitate our business, including, but not limited to, sending email and processing credit card payments. In connection with these offerings and business operations, our partners and other third parties may have access to your personal information for use in connection with business activities. As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assts or business offerings. Customer, email, and visitor information is generally one of the transferred business assets in these types of transactions. We may also transfer such information in the course of corporate divestitures, mergers, or any dissolution.

Notice of New Services and Changes

Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our Web site, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As our customer or prospective client, you will be given the opportunity to notify us if you desire not to receive these offers by sending an email request to mike@bashfoo.org .

How Do We Secure Information Transmissions?

Email is not recognized as a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email. Some of the information you may enter on our Web site may be transmitted securely via Secure Sockets Layer SSL, 128 bit encryption services, which are enabled by GeoTrust. Pages utilizing this technology will have URLs that start with HTTPS instead of HTTP. Please contact mike@bashfoo.org if you have any questions or concerns.

How Can You Access and Correct Your Information?

You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing mike@bashfoo.org .

Certain Disclosures

We may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to (a) conform to the law or comply with legal process served on us or Affiliated Parties; (b) protect and defend our rights and property, the Site, the users of the Site, and/or our Affiliated Parties; (c) act under circumstances to protect the safety of users of the Site, us, or third parties.

What About Other Web Sites Linked to Our Web Site?

We are not responsible for the practices employed by Web sites linked to or from our Web site nor the information or content contained therein. Often links to other Web sites are provided solely as pointers to information on topics that may be useful to the users of our Web site.

Please remember that when you use a link to go from our Web site to another Web site, our Privacy Policy is not longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other Web site, including Web sites which have a link on our Web site, is subject to that Web site’s own rules and policies. Please read over those rules and policies before proceeding.

Your Consent

By using our Web Site you consent to our collection and use of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. If we change our privacy policies and procedures, we will post those changes on our Web site to keep you aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we may disclose it.

Updated: 1/18/2010

Can you remember back to the days when you were first learning to swim?

The smell of chlorine, the patter of wet feet on white tile was unmistakable. In the pool at the Fairfield YMCA I remember going through a whole process on getting into the pool. Toes in first to test the temperature and always stay near the side of the pool.. Just in case you got into trouble. Use the ladder on the shallow end of the pool for maximum safety. Never, EVER jump in!

It is with the same timidity that many approach web advertising and social media marketing, but why is that??

Thinking back 50 years ago, you could ask a junior attorney whether or not he wanted to advertise in the Yellow Pages and he would say “YES!”.. “And I want the biggest advertisement that money can buy!” he would conclude. There was no timidity there. No process to swim. The young attorney just knew that advertising in the Yellow Pages would make him successful, just as every attorney he ever came in contact with.

So what causes timidity when confronted with the world of web advertising and social media marketing?

• Do business people truly still think that the Internet is a ‘yet to be tested’ advertising venue?
• Are they waiting for the “next best thing”?
• Is it because it is ‘technology’, and they ‘don’t understand technology’ that they steer clear?
• Do they fail to see their competitors taking advantage of web advertising?

I have rarely heard anyone respond to the affirmative on any of those counts yet today 98% of the businesses I meet with have failed to setup their local business profile in Google. It takes 10 minutes, anyone can do it, but many fail to even take those baby steps to growing a better, more recognizable business and brand.

This takes me to what I call the “Process to Swim”. It is something that I did not come up with on my own. These are the very steps that many of my clients go through to achieve their online success.

• Provide a detailed analysis of the “problem”. Send your consultant packing if he/she urges immediate action.
• Plan an online campaign just as you would a traditional one. (insider tip: sometimes I still rely on story boards to deliver the message)
• Define the boundaries. What are you willing to spend, willing to offer, willing to share?
• Work as hard as you can to engage the masses. Just like any direct mail, catalog drop or an email blitz. Know your customers, and engage them.
• Analyze results, rinse and repeat. From repetition, business leaders learn to TRUST, with this TRUST, advertising efforts receive REAL VALUE.

Anyone trying to pass along an e-marketing campaign that does not include REAL VALUE is missing the boat. The true “stump hole” out there is the fear that one will only receive INTRINSIC VALUE for participating in online advertising and marketing. Strategists must move beyond selling poorly supported advertising agendas that only exist to support a weak value proposition. If your online campaign does not instill a strong TRUST from leaders, and the follow-through RELIANCE from the sales organization, you have not learned how to swim.

Swimming lessons are available on a first-come.. first-serve basis.

Call me: Mike McDermott at 937-573-8535

Blogging is an extremely popular social media technique in use today, and almost any niche on the Web has a vibrant blogger community developing around it. Your niche blogs can be one of the best public relations and advertising platforms you can find for your website. Third party blogging helps your business in many ways.

Build trust with your potential customers

• Publicity in the ‘blogosphere’ is essential for building trust with your potential customers. The more positive reviews and endorsements of your business people see online, the more they trust you and your company

Generate traffic to your website

• Getting traffic to your website from the blogs that talk about your company is one of the natural outcomes of your blog marketing campaign
• We find you visitors who already have an affinity for your products and services and serve tehm up to you

Get through to your target audience

• The power of niche blogs is in their very solid readership. You can get your message through to thousands of blog readers that are potentially interested in becoming your customers

Generate buzz about your company

• Getting your company name mentioned on blogs over and over again creates a buzz around your business.
• It helps you win the attention of some industry experts who can then endorse your company and recommend it to people

Improve your search engine rankings

• Like many other online public relation activities, third-party blogging helps you score valuable in-content links to your site, and consequently, improves your positions in search engines

 

Bash Foo will help you develop a successful blog marketing strategy, get connected with your blogger community, create unique and inspiring content, and promote your website on your niche blogs.

OK, I thought I would never do it.. In fact I have taught those in my marketing classes that you shouldn’t have to separate your business and personal persona’s online. This evening I created a business Twitter account @bashfoo separate from my personal twitter account @Delta40 (which has over 3,500 followers)

After some recent conversations with peers and some detailed analysis of online conversations (particularly ones on Twitter) I have identified a couple of reasons why separating your personal and business personas may be a good thing. (and they are not the reasons you would think)

1. Number and Frequency of Messages. A funny thing occurs for people with 100 followers that does not occur for those that have many thousands. If you are a frequent tweeter, you may add updates to a followers queue faster than they are willing to accept them. While I usually tweet 20-25 messages a day, they cover a myriad of themes and topics. Even if the topics are varied, all of my low count followers get inundated with updates from … well mainly from me. Separating personal from business messaging theoretically cuts my number and frequency in half. A smart choice.

2. High Expectations. Those that expect to hear my funny quips and business conversation have also had to endure my political rants, family goofing-around and local sports and entertainment news. While these conversations are all 100% genuine, they do not serve to baseline expectations for an audience. And unlike #1, this is not an issue about “Too Much Information”, this is all about “Staying on Target”.

3. Conversational Depth. I have always been hesitant to dip too deeply into complex marketing topics, business strategies or client profiling with my wide array of personal followers. Really, they don’t care and could very easily start tuning me out and then blocking my stream.

Therefore, learning from these shortcomings, I have decided to crack open another Twitter account to converse on business topics and retain my primary account to handle all my “eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” updates. Fans of @Delta40 will continue to receive my frequent and fun conversations. Fans of my company, Bash Foo Social Media will get treated to a much deeper conversation to help progress their business or their “social life”.

As an Ambassador for the State of Ohio I have a strong drive to share with others how rewarding it is to live and work in Ohio. Owning a business here is an important facet to my life here in Ohio. I enjoy employing talented and creative individuals who use their skills to grow my clients’ business. Labor here in Ohio is talented, plentiful and affordable.

The Why Buy Ohio Alliance is not a State controlled or designed organization. It is simply my effort to help market and grow independent Ohio businesses. Helping small businesses do business with other Ohio businesses is also a goal of the Why Buy Ohio Alliance. If you would like to have more information about the Why Buy Ohio Alliance please visit my continued work in progress:

http://whybuyohio.com

The best way to show potential clients true business value is to provide a clear demonstration of benefits from the use of strategic web marketing. Most everyone I meet with understands that the Internet can be a very powerful way to market their goods and services, however many have tried and failed to attract interested customers to their website(s) and quit focusing on web marketing.

Here are a few current projects that I am engaging in:

The Get Social! Radio Show

My very first business was a small DJ company in Oxford, Ohio. I “spun vinyl” at local dances, weddings and parties. From there I worked in a number of radio stations, learning the trade. Now twenty years later, I pick the mic back up as host of the Get Social! Radio Show. Internet radio is really a great way to share news, information and create a “following” for your brand. As host of the Get Social! Radio Show I have created opportunities for Ohio businesses to connect with and share information about them and their products with listeners. Callers can ask business owners questions and owners can share the reasons why their brand is important to consumers.

Read More About: The Get Social! Radio Show

Why Buy Ohio Alliance

This has to be the most rewarding project for me. I am fiercely territorial and seek to support all Ohio businesses who have made a choice to Buy Ohio themselves. Dollars spent in Ohio should go to Ohio businesses and not “out of town”. Big Box stores take Ohio income and distribute it somewhere else. When Ohioans choose to “Buy Ohio” they make an economic decision to support Ohio businesses and help our state economy and employment.

Read More About: Why Buy Ohio

TippNews DAILY

Back in 1988 I was the editor of my high school paper. Even then I appreciated the value of the English language as well as the powerful freedoms that Washington, Adams et. al provided for us in the Constitution. Now many years later I pick back up the Editor cap and have produced a citizen journalism site where local residents can speak their mind and share stories about their families, their organizations, their businesses or the things that make them smile. No one gets paid to write an article, but everyone benefits from the availability of swift and frequent information dissemination within our community.

Read More About: TippNews DAILY

If you would like to get involved in one of these great opportunities to highlight your business or your brand, give me a call!

I found some coolness today with iTunes that I did not expect. One click subscription to a podcast! Yep, if a podcaster creates a link that starts with itpc:// and the their podcast feed they can direct users to iTunes and instantly subscribe to the feed. VERY COOL feature. Now we need folks to see the true value of ‘Foo” so folks can have easy access to their  foo://
Ohh I am just dreaming!

If this iTunes tip helped you out, subscribe to my podcast by clicking on this very Apple graphic or to this link: itpc://feeds.feedburner.com/GetSocialRadio