LivePlan has teamed up with crowdspring for an interactive webinar series on how to grow your small business. Join us on September 14-16 to learn from six rockstar presenters from industry-leading organizations in branding, marketing, insurance, business management, remote work, and accounting that you don’t want to miss. 

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill webinars. These are custom sessions structured around your questions to provide engaging, custom education from top presenters. Their presentations will cover critical, often-overlooked topics that can make or break your business.

What to expect

Over the course of this 3-day series you’ll learn:

• How to save more than $12,000 on your taxes this year
• To plan strategically and grow 30% faster while spending just minutes on your strategy
• Why and how to hire globally and look outside of your home country to hire legally
• Create beautiful designs even if you can’t be trusted with a box of crayons
• Uncover little-known tips to getting affordable business insurance
• How to dominate your competition with small changes to your website  

The speakers will keep their presentations concise to leave plenty of time for specific questions from attendees. If you’re not able to attend live, all sessions will be recorded and provided to registrants along with key takeaways from each conversation.

In just a few hours, our presenters will help you learn to grow your small business faster, improve your work/life balance, and save thousands on taxes. 

Register now to get the agenda and submit your questions to the presenters in advance. 

We hope to see you there! 

‘Tis the season for sick time and vacations, increased sales, and last-minute requests from customers and partners. Is your inbox ready?

Webinar details

Join us on November 18, 2020, at 10:00 am PST for this free, 1-hour webinar, where, we’ll talk about how to keep your company’s email communication timely, professional, and ready for anything the holiday season will throw at it.

During this webinar you’ll learn:

• The best out-of-office messages to use
• How to coordinate with your team and respond to emails quickly
• How to use tools and processes to keep your inbox organized and efficient
• A simple process to pick up the slack when a colleague is out sick or on vacation
• How to set appropriate response time expectations with customers during a busy season
• The importance of setting communication goals and measuring success

Results

With an organized and efficient company email, your team and your customers will be able to enjoy a happy holiday season. Space is limited, so register today!

Date: November 18, 2020

Time: 10:00 am Pacific / 1:00 pm Eastern

About Outpost

Outpost is a shared inbox tool that makes email management faster and easier. It helps keep your emails organized, improves response times, and fosters better teamwork.

Thanks to features like Assignments, Templates, Routing Rules, and Notes —you and your team get all the benefits of a shared inbox without all the frustration. You can sign up for a free trial, no strings attached, to see how Outpost can upgrade your email productivity today.

Learn the perfect email organization method

Are you and your team getting bogged down by email? Do you wish you could focus on what’s important in your inbox so you can get more work done and take better care of your customers? Have you tried getting to inbox zero, only to be flooded by more email the next day and the day after that?

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, it’s time to learn about the 4D Method of managing your email.

Webinar details

Join us on October 20, 2020, at 10:00 am PST for this free, 30-minute webinar, where we’ll teach you this time-saving method to cut down email clutter, and free you to spend time on what matters most.

During this webinar, you’ll learn:

• The 4D Method for managing email
• Tips on being a better delegator with your team
• How to reply faster without sacrificing quality
• Recommended tools to streamline your inbox

Space is limited, so register today!

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Time: 10:00 am Pacific / 1:00 pm Eastern

About Outpost

Outpost is a shared inbox tool that makes email management faster and easier. It helps keep your emails organized, improves response times, and fosters better teamwork.

Thanks to features like Assignments, Templates, Routing Rules, and Notes —you and your team get all the benefits of a shared inbox without all the frustration. You can sign up for a free trial, no strings attached, to see how Outpost can upgrade your email productivity today.

In the past, our customer service team relied on a “thanks” at the end of a phone call or email as a measure of customer satisfaction, and we hoped we had achieved our goal. Now we use a support ticketing tool, which includes a customer feedback survey once a ticket (or customer issue) has been solved. The feedback is intended to be about us, and whether we were successful in responding to the customer’s question. We schedule this feedback survey to be sent within 48 hours of the completion of the  ticket.

Although metrics are just measurements and they can’t give the specific feedback from customers, they visually help the team get a perspective on our level of success in keeping our customers happy. Everyone on the team is regularly checking to see how they did with the feedback surveys. It’s also created a competitive element within the team, to see who can receive the highest number of “good with comment” feedback from their customers. And reading those comments is a real bonus; it is gratifying to be told when you’ve done a good job.

Sometimes we miss the mark, and the customer feedback reflects that. These comments may not be easy to read, but they’re extremely valuable. Many times the feedback has helped us find new insight into a particular issue, and also look for new ways to handle the problem. Many of our current processes have evolved based on dealing with an “outside of the box” situation for a customer. And when we can face the challenge and solve the issue to their satisfaction, it makes the subsequent feedback all the better.

An important benefit of customer feedback is tracking it with tags, product names, and other descriptions. Our support ticketing system is gathering data on every ticket based on the product, feature, or issue discussed. We as a team can then become the “funnel of feedback” from our customers to our development team, as well as our marketing and web teams, by creating metrics on the most-asked question, most-requested feature, etc. This data can help paint a picture of what’s really most important to our customers, and helps us figure out ways to reduce the need for customers to contact us by revealing the information we neglected to include in our help instructions or website information.

We also track our emails from customers, to make sure no one is lost in the shuffle. It’s best to be the “last touch” in communication (even if it’s just to say, “I’m happy that you’re happy”), so we try to ensure that we achieve that by tracking our responses. And when we haven’t heard back from a customer after asking them a question—”What is your serial number?”, for example—our email system tracks the time and sends an automated follow-up email after two days that asks, “I haven’t heard back from you, is everything OK now?” We want to let the customer know that their question—and the resolution to their problem—is important to us.

No matter what tool or process you choose, it all comes down to listening to your customers. They’re not just a voice on the other end of the phone or text in an email. For us, they are entrepreneurs who are trying to make their business dream a reality, an endeavor that is both exciting and terrifying for them. Having empathy for your customer’s particular situation goes a long way.

This post is a part of Small Business Tracking Week, sponsored by LivePlan and TSheets.

The sheer chaos and clutter of the internet creates something of a quandary for business owners and marketers who need to make their content stand out; it’s tough to create a corporate site that generates the same sort of buzz that animals that look like Vladimir Putin do (for obvious reasons), but that doesn’t mean you should simply abandon the internet to pets. Instead, you may want to consider building a microsite to drive traffic to your main site and to create some noise of your own out there.

What is a microsite?

As the name suggests, a microsite will be smaller than your main business site. Further, a microsite is devoted to one discrete topic or purpose.

Perhaps you are launching a promotion, doing a product giveaway, promoting a fundraising campaign or your work with charity. Microsites can be ideal ways to showcase and focus attention on one very specific campaign or push.

Why should you consider a microsite for your business?

A microsite can be a powerful tool in the quest to attract prospects, deepen brand loyalty, and extend your brand or organization’s reach in a non-spammy way. Microsites are so useful because they provide:

They offer flexibility

Changes to a major site can..move…at…a…glacial…pace. Microsites, on the other hand, are quick to design and go live, and therefore represent an efficient use of your resources.

While IT departments may cringe at the thought of marketing folks tinkering in their domain, they’ll appreciate not having to go through a long site change process.

It’s a solid Litmus test

Microsites are exciting opportunities for brands to experiment and take some risks. Because, as mentioned above, a microsite doesn’t involve tinkering with your main site, it’s possible to take more risks than you would with content on your corporate site.

If you have an idea that you have been playing with, and you want to dip a toe in those waters, a microsite can help you to gauge audience reaction.

They’re laser focused

Your main company website, almost by definition, probably tries hard to pay equal attention to each major site content section so that the whole feels balanced.

A microsite asks for no such thing from you. Instead, it offers the perfect antidote to the lack of specificity required of a main site. Because a microsite only focus on one topic, idea, promotion, or visual, you have the luxury of devoting all of your attention to your pet project.

They are user-friendly

Forget the backslashes and hashtags. In fact, forget a complicated URL altogether. Microsite web addresses, since they do not need to be tied to your main site, are easy to remember, find and share.

Users don’t need to remember a complicated pathway off of your main site—simply name your campaign or pick a specific keyword phrase and slap a “.com” onto the end.

You can take advantage of trends

It’s hard to imagine your whole site going viral; it’s too big and it needs to be too many things to too many different people. “Have you seen the whole Nike website???” is just not something that one hears outside of marketing land.

On the other hand, a microsite does have the possibility of generating buzz and being passed around via social media channels: A good microsite is focused, pithy and maybe even takes some risks. What’s not to like?

4 tips for creating an effective microsite

Are you convinced that it is time to venture into the tiny-yet-exciting land of the microsite? If cheap, efficient, crowd-pleasing and fun sound good to you, then you might just be the ideal candidate to create a microsite.

Below we’ve assembled some tips to guide you in your quest for microsite greatness, as well as some examples of microsites out there that are killing it.

1. Get creative

The delightfully animated Every Last Drop microsite makes water conservation fun and whimsical. Scrolling down takes you through a day-in-the-life of an average UK water user. What text there is is deployed in the service of showing viewers how much water they use doing common daily tasks. It’s quick, creative and laser-focused on its topic.

2. Get useful

This conversion rate optimization guide has made rounds on the internet for a couple of reasons: In addition to being well designed and visually pleasing, it is useful. Essentially it is a set of links, but the careful curation makes it much more than that. It’s one-stop shopping for anyone who wants to learn CRO, but it is useful, not spammy.

3. Get interactive

Microsites are fun forums to allow viewers to interact with your material. This home security guide walks readers through the best ways to keep their home safe. By combining curation (like the CRO guide) and visuals (like the water microsite), it provides the viewer with an engaging way to interact with the company’s content.

4. Get awesome

This iPod visualization is an example of a microsite that does all of the above. It’s visually pleasing, creative, useful (bet you didn’t know how much your music collection on vinyl could weigh or how much two adult grizzlies weigh, did you?) and interactive. (Notice also on the lefthand side of the screen how easy it is to share this microsite via Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)

The takeaway

Microsites are efficient and engaging ways to connect with new prospects and to wow your current audience. They are also perfect for allowing your brand or organization to take some (tasteful!) risks or to experiment with a new campaign. Even better, if you don’t like them, you can easily take them down; since they aren’t a part of you main site anyway, it is quick and painless to say goodbye.

Are you ready to put your creativity to the test? Good luck!

Taking advantage of video’s popularity can seriously help your business reach its target audience and boost your bottom line. However, you can’t just throw a haphazardly edited video on YouTube and expect it to go viral; you need a video marketing strategy. Follow these video tips and the examples set by four companies—Dove, Logitech, Columbia Sportswear and Chipotle—that are acing the viral video game.

Use video to draw consumers in

Want to immediately lose your viewing audience? Heap the page with long paragraphs of text. Looking to draw visitors in? Introduce them to your organization via video. The internet thrives on “scanners”—people who browse sites but may not engage further.

A short video is a great way to give visitors an intro to your business while infusing personality. The more connected they feel to your company, the more likely it is that they’ll engage in business with you down the road.

Utilize social media to share video

How often are large blocks of text shared across social media? Not often. Videos, on the other hand, are very easy to share via social media, making your company’s video more likely to be shared than your competitor’s blog post.

Twitter’s Vine app alone generates 5 shares every second. This can work both for and against you: since video and social media are deeply connected, your video is instantly sharable; however, that also means there’s a lot of competition out there.

If you’re debating which social media channels to target or trying to figure out how exactly to upload video take a look through this Small Business Guide to YouTube for suggestions on enhancing engagement.

SEO benefits

Search engines love “rich” content (including images and video), and tend to rank your page higher if it contains some type of rich element.

While the major search engines previously relied on only keywords, they now take pictures, video and other unique content into consideration when ranking sites. Embed the video on your landing page, upload it to Facebook and include a keyword rich description for the best chances at a high search engine ranking.

Examples of companies using video successfully

It’s one thing to discuss what the perfect video strategy entails, but another to watch companies that are getting it right. You may have seen a few of these videos before—and if you have then they’ve succeeded in spreading their message to the masses. The following examples showcase how the mission of an organization (or differentiating characteristics of a product) can be effectively communicated in only a minute or two.

Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches

Media darling Dove stays true to their mission to promote real beauty in their latest video, which contracts a forensic artist to draw women based on their descriptions of themselves. Why is it effective? Because Dove isn’t self-promotional; they appeal to human emotion and the content draws the viewer in. Dove’s video errs on the longer side, but with the engaging content and intriguing storyline it holds viewers captive.

Logitech Ends Bad Hair Days

In stark contrast to the emotional Dove video is Logitech’s earbud advertisement, which showcases a specific product in a relatable setting with a humorous angle. By emphasizing the head-restrictive (and hairstyle destroying) typical headphones they’re not only undermining their competition but also showcasing the best elements of their product—all without saying a word. Consumers who may be on the fence about the Logitech purchase will likely relate to the video and it may even help sway their purchasing decision.

Columbia Sportswear

Columbia Sportswear succeeds in this video series by adding a creative angle to their extensive product testing. By highlighting their grueling product testing in the beginning of the video, they’re legitimizing their process, yet still poking fun at their own expense with the humorous content. As we saw in the Logitech video, Columbia Sportswear is showing the audience the differentiating elements of their product rather than telling them outright. Seeing often means believing, and Columbia effectively leverages the video format to add value to their product and personality to their brand.

Chipotle’s Back to the Start video

Chipotle uses their touching video and effective music to educate the viewer on the company’s mission. They’re effectively appealing to the emotional side by emphasizing the simplistic nature of the way food was originally produced. The counterpoint is made as the video slowly morphs from the happy farm into the more industrialized, modern-day farms. By showcasing both options for food production, and then emphasizing their obvious choice to return to a simpler method, Chipotle is endearing to the audience and immediately associates their restaurant with fresher, more eco-conscious food.

Takeaways

Unlike the companies listed above, you don’t need to have a huge production team or multi-million dollar marketing budget to make video an effective part of your online strategy. The key to a successful video is conveying your message clearly and succinctly in a way that shows your audience versus telling them, while employing humor or an emotional tie to draw the viewer into the story.

Video is an efficient way to add personality to your company, increase your SEO rankings and legitimize your business. How do you plan to integrate video in the future?

Start thinking about it, because the LivePlan $10,000 Boost is officially open for registrations!

Open to U.S. residents only, the LivePlan $10,000 Boost is a business plan competition for users of LivePlan, the leading online business planning and tracking software. The best-written LivePlan business plan will take home the $10,000 grand prize, with thousands of dollars worth of in-kind prizes going to four additional runners-up. Plans will be judged by a panel of experts, with winners announced via live webinar on September 10.

Find out more about the LivePlan $10,000 Boost

If you’ve been meaning to write your business plan, now’s the time to do it. And if you need a little guidance, here are some tips we gathered from a recent angel conference. Keep these in mind as you craft your business plan for the LivePlan $10,000 Boost:

Highlight your rock star team – even if it’s just you!
Investors want to see motivated, experienced leaders behind a business before they’ll consider it a winner. Talk about who’s leading your business and why they’re qualified to do so. Don’t be afraid to brag!

Be in the right place at the right time.
Businesses that meet an emerging consumer need, or are launching at just the right time, are always appealing to investors. So play up how much people need your product – and show you’ve done your homework to validate your claims.

Be aware of your competition.
Some businesses have a low barrier to entry, while others are entering into already crowded spaces. Investors can be weary of these businesses, so if this describes your business, explain why they shouldn’t be concerned. Also explain why you’re different from any other business in the same space.

Show how it will scale.
It might seem like a high-class problem to have to worry about meeting high demand, but investors know that many businesses fail because they can’t ramp up fast enough. Explain how your idea will scale as your business grows. Be sure your financials reflect this growth.

It’s all about the exit.
Investors love  multiple exit possibilities, and can be less interested in businesses that don’t have a clear exit plan. If you’re raising outside investment to grow your business be sure to include how and when you plan to exit, and which potential buyers might be interested. Note: You do not need to be raising outside investment to enter the “LivePlan $10,000 Boost” competition.

Don’t forget sales and marketing.
Even the best ideas won’t sell themselves. Investors know this and they expect you to know it too. Be sure to spell-out your market segments, how you will reach them, engage them, and measure your return on your investment. It’s also important to explain your sales process, and how much it will cost to acquire each customer.  Will you be selling direct-to-consumer online, in a brick-and-mortar store, or something else?

Best of luck to you if you chose to enter the LivePlan $10,000 Boost!

Important Dates/Times: (all times are PDT)
July 17, 12:00pm:    LivePlan $10,000 Boost officially launches
Aug   7, 10:00am:    Free live webinar: “How to Maximize LivePlan”
Aug 24, 12:00pm:   Deadline to share your completed business plan within the LivePlan app
Sep 10, 10:00am:    Free live webinar: “Boost Winners Announced”

But did you ever stop and think, why? Why would somebody want to follow my business?

A good way to answer is to turn the question around on yourself. Why would you follow a business on Twitter?

According to this infographic, the main reasons people follow businesses is to stay informed about product updates and company activities, and to receive special offers and discounts. But we know Twitter users don’t want a steady barrage of product  promotion.

So how do you build up a Twitter following, engage those followers, and ultimately give them what they want? You can’t only tweet when you have a sale or product update, because how often is that? The first thing many avid Twitter users do before following an account is check to see when their last tweet was and how active they are. A tweet every two months, for instance, says that you’re not serious about this whole Twitter thing and probably can’t be counted on for much of value. On the other hand, tweeting about your product all the time says that you’re not really interested in engaging with your followers, you just want to sell sell sell.

The question is, how do you walk the line? How do you keep active without being spammy, and how do you keep your followers interested enough in what you tweet that when you do announce a special deal, there are people listening?

The key is trust. A business that provides content related to what they sell, but not necessarily aimed at selling their product, is building trust with their followers. If you were to follow @Bplans on Twitter, for instance, you’d get a steady stream of content about starting and running a small business. Sometimes  we post links back to this blog or to our collection of articles. But more often, we tweet links to articles, blogs, and news that we’ve found around the Web. If it seems like something a Bplans visitor would be interested in, we share it. And of course, sometimes we share special offers and discounts.

Here are some reminders that you should keep in mind as you use Twitter to engage with your current and potential customers:

• There are a million sources of information on the Web. Linking only to your own site is self-serving and transparent.
• Providing fresh, quality content on your subject matter shows that you’re actively participating, not just faking it to make a buck.
• Sharing and commenting on other people’s content starts conversations, which is what the “social” part of social media is all about.
• Responding to tweets and interacting genuinely with followers makes you more “real,” which promotes loyalty.
• Once you’ve provided somebody with valuable content, they’re more open to what else you have to say.

Sharing information and proving yourself an authority in your field will go a long way toward creating trust with your customers and followers. Engaging honestly with them will make your business feel more personal, which makes it easier for people to be loyal to you. And trust and loyalty are two of the cornerstones of long-lasting brands.

So back to  the question – why should anyone follow your business on Twitter? If you’re doing it right, the answer is easy: because you’re a valued provider of content they want.

 Leader image courtesy of Shutterstock

Not so long ago, offices were filled with people who were putting in face time, or “working” 18 hours days because that’s what it took to get ahead. But the question is, were they being productive during that time, or just spending time away from their families and lives (making them unhappier and less fulfilled) without really contributing much to the company’s bottom line?

Palo Alto Software CEO Sabrina Parson says she’d rather have employees who are passionate about what they do, but who don’t necessarily spend half their lives in the office.

“I want people who don’t get burnt out. I want people to have a life outside the company,”  she notes in this BusinessMakers Classic Minute video.

She adds that when employees aren’t chained to their desks and are able to pursue outside interests, they’re happier. And happier people are more productive people.

The trick is to hire people who actually care about what they do. As makers of online business planning software, Parsons’ company looks to hire people who are passionate about innovating and helping entrepreneurs. “I think that we’re getting a lot of their brain time, even when they’re off doing something else,” she says. “When you’re doing things you love, you’re brain’s still going, you’re still thinking.”

The take-away is that employees who are engaged with what they do and with your company’s mission are likely to be open to thinking about it when they’re hiking, or cooking dinner for their family, or knitting quilts. Great ideas happen anywhere, and happy employees who are encouraged to have lives are more likely to have those great ideas.

Basketball at work image courtesy of Shutterstock

What happens when they combine forces to create a snack for pre-workout fueling and  post-workout recovery?

The answer is Picky Bars, allergy sensitive, athlete designed, and “scientifically scrumptious” snack bars.

Jesse Thomas, of Springfield, Oregon, was an amateur triathlete. When he decided to go pro and started training like it was his day job (because it was), his energy needs went through the roof. As he started eating more to accommodate his intense training, his problems digesting dairy and gluten were magnified. He needed a snack with the right nutritional makeup that he could grab and eat quickly without worrying about the ingredients, and there was nothing on the market that fit the bill.

His wife, professional runner Lauren Fleshmen (two-time USA Champion in the 5k and five-time NCAA champion) and her training buddy, Stephanie Rothstein, a professional marathoner, both had extra time on their hands because of injuries, so they set out to create the ideal energy bar for Jesse.

“Eventually they came up with a bar that we all really liked,” says Jesse, “and I started eating them like crazy.” The bars contain 200 calories from all natural ingredients like organic dates, natural nut butters, dried fruit, and chocolate, with a nutrition profile that’s considered ideal for recovery from training activity. And of course, the bars are gluten and dairy free.

When runners they were coaching tried samples and asked if they could buy some of the bars, the trio of Jesse, Lauren, and Stephanie realized they had a potential business on their hands. “We decided, hey, let’s try to make this a legitimate business. Let’s try selling them online.”

Luckily for the Picky Bars team, they had an ace in the hole. In addition to being an incredible athlete, Jesse happened to have an MBA and previous startup experience. The group formed an LLC, got the required licenses, and in late October of 2010 sold their first Picky Bars online. “We just started making them and selling them ourselves. In the first month, we sold around 5,000 or 6,000 bars.” Since then, business has boomed. “Last month, we sold around 13,000,” Jesse says.

What’s interesting about Picky Bars success is that the business, which in addition to Jesse, Lauren, and Steph employs two full-time and nine part-time workers, is basically a second job for all three of its founders. “Our top priority is competition. That makes this a lot different than my previous startup experience, which was a very typical Silicon Valley startup where we took on venture capital and worked 80-100 hours a week. It was our entire lives,” Jesse remembers.

It isn’t always easy to juggle responsibilities of being professional athletes and  entrepreneurs, but it works for the Picky Bars crew. “The situation has enabled us to determine our own need for growth. We aren’t pressured to grow it super fast or to make X return by year five,” he says, acknowledging that this also has probably held the company back. “But what we have now is a truly organic base of customers, and a product that people legitimately value.”  Many value the bars so much that they join the Picky Club to get monthly supplies of bars automatically delivered to their homes.

Over the last six months, sales have increased five or six times, just by word of mouth and a very small amount of promotion at athletic events. Seeing that, Jesse says he realized that what he had been considering “just a project” had become an actual business. “That’s when all of a sudden, having a plan, thinking about how things will be impacted financially, what our strategy is, became much more important.”

When a Picky Club member suggested LivePlan, Jesse signed up and used the online business planning software to create financial projections and start thinking specifically and strategically about the future of his company. He says the process of working on a business plan has been tremendously valuable as he prepares to steer his business toward sustainable growth.

And while he clearly enjoys managing the company, Jesse says the human side is really what gets him going. “The most rewarding part of the whole process for me is bringing in these other people, and having them continue to grow as the company grows,” says Jesse. From his previous startup experience, he knew the value of hiring the right people, and says that has led to a “culture built around people who have a healthy work/life balance, who are active, and are generally fun and happy to be around.”

His employees care deeply about the company, says Jesse, acknowledging that in some ways they want to see Picky Bars grow faster than the founders do. It’s a good problem to have, he knows. “It’s amazing to have employees so emotionally invested in what they do.”

Check out Jesse’s website Leapdaysports.com for details about his second consecutive win at the prestigious Wildflower Triathlon, only days after this interview was conducted at his Springfield, Oregon home.