An Ignoble Experiment: Helping Small Business help themselves - SolutionsArePower�

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That title sounds like the makings of a comedy movie and probably by Sunday there will be amusing stories to share. For those of you who don’t know what Gnomedex is I would say that it is like a mini-TED conference without the large cost and is focused on the social media community with a mix of speakers that present cutting edge ideas and products.

It is put on by, Chris Pirillo, the Original Gnome or “OG” as I like to call him and his wife Ponzi in the beautiful city of Seattle. I have been to many conferences in the past and I have to say this is one of the best out there. Little things like working wi-fi for everyone, power in every seat to make your liveblogging acheiveable and awesome food that you would find at really expensive conferences.

Like many conferences, the best conversations are usually in the hallways and this conference is one par with SXSW in that vein. Chris limits attendance to around 350-400 which makes it possible to meet almost everyone if you work hard and he really leverages web tools to connect people and employs backchannels like IRC and Twitter live to show what people are thinking as the presenter is speaking. He also does a live video feed for fans who can’t be there.

To check out who will be there in addition to Shashi and me, here is the attendee list (another great thing that most conferences don’t do) and the agenda which is going to be entertaining and educational.

We will be blogging from the conference every day (Thursday-Saturday) and capturing lots of interviews that should be rolling off the presses for publishing next week and into September.

If you want to follow the happenings at the conference check out the twitter and friendfeeds which should be quite busy starting Thursday evening.

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Does your Business need a community?

In my post on Marketing 2.0 for Small Business there was a request that I talk about community. It’s an excellent point and it’s difficult to cover every point at length in one article.

The question was:

Some sites and businesses don't necessarily need a community, more specifically, not all communities are the same.

I agree with that completely! So there are two main points. The process of establishing your business online & where they are interacting on the web.

First it’s important to make sure that you focus on getting your business online. There are many steps. It’s important to make sure that you cover all of the items in the inner circle first before you invest in setting up a platform for a community.

Once your business is established online the next step is to engage with your customers. Hopefully you researched where your customers were at online before you invested in getting set up, but if you didn’t, now is the time. Use Google to search for your brand. Are people talking about your products? Has someone established a group or place where they’re already having conversations? Those are the places to join in. Check social networking sites like Facebook, Google & Yahoo groups and discussion forums. I’ll have more blog posts coming on how to do that.

I think that in doing that you’ll be surprised at what you find. If you don’t find much don’t be disappointed. The next step is to search for groups that could use your products. A good place to start is to use the keywords that you’re using for your SEO (search engine optimization). Start searching for places where there are people that need your product or service. When you find them those are the places to get involved. Just a note of caution! Make sure that you get involved & provide value. Don’t violate their terms of use or worse yet spam people with information that isn’t helpful.

So there are many things you can do before you even consider creating a community site. And you really should do them.

What have I forgotten? Are there parts of that that you have questions on?

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A Voice is Saved

… a blogging voice. There are millions of voices out there, would it matter if we lost one from the din? Of course it would!

Every voice is important to us at Network Solutions. They are our customers! We are proud to be using the most innovative methods to identify problems & reach out to those experiencing them. And it’s not limited to office hours. Weekends find us offering support too.

Our story is told in the voice of a customer. She describes her issues & how our new program at Network Solutions not only provided resolution but also convinced her to stay on as a customer.

He recognized that this little itty bitty mommy blogger who is not even making a business of it, is still important as a customer. I am not some bigwig, I am not even powerful within the blog world, but I finally felt important as a customer.

Her voice will continue for another year (and I hope much longer!). We appreciate her openly expressing her appreciation of our efforts!

I was impressed. Here was someone who was finally recognizing the power of word of mouth. Someone who could listen and had the power to fix it.

Our blogging customer left out the names involved, but I welcome you to read more about Gerry & his dedication to excellent customer service. And Shashi the person who first contacted her is responsible for implementing this new program.

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