How to make the most of Twitter when you’re a small B2B company | techbubblestechbubbles One of the most common reasons why small business owners avoid social media is time. When you are busy trying to manage customers, staff and cash flow, an hour spent on Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn can seem like an hour wasted. But ignore these tools at your peril. There is a common perception that Twitter in particular is a time-consuming source of idle gossip, celebrity chitchat and revelations about what was for lunch. This perception is not entirely groundless – there is a lot of fluff out there and you do need to devote some time to it daily – but Twitter can also be a rich source of information and business leads. We have successfully used it for recruitment, media relations and competitor research for our clients; we even used it to find our new office space in Manchester. When you set up your Twitter ID, make it clear who you are. Whether you are tweeting as a company or an individual, use your Twitter biography to explain who you are and why you are there. Plan ahead.
New wave of entrepreneurs seek fast fortunes Alan Bond, pictured in 1995. Photo: Patrick Cummins Once upon a time the word 'entrepreneur' made Australian investors cringe. In the heady days of the 1980s, high-profile entrepreneurs such as Christopher Skase and Alan Bond amassed vast fortunes, only to lose the funds of investors in the wake of the 1987 stockmarket crash. It's sad what happened to the world entrepreneur back in the 1980s It hasn't always been the way. Everyone, it seems, wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of founder of Atari, famously said: "The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. Advertisement A new generation is now working to reclaim the word. The second internet boom has allowed a generation of young businessmen to make fortunes, and make them fast. Indeed, August seems to be entrepreneur month in Australia. From the dark days post-'87 crash, there now appears to be no end to the opportunities for rising business stars. Zuckerberg clan beware.
What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too. The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Tumblr founder David Karp will "try hard" not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. Gain Awareness, Be Grateful Choose Your Frog
3 Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs: Perseverance, Respect, Innovation While the young business grad was outwardly enthusiastic, I sensed an undercurrent of fear. With bright eyes and animated hands, she had spent 10 minutes describing her plans and goals. However, I could tell that--staring into the abyss of her adult life--she was a bit uneasy about her future. She was right to be a little afraid. When carving a niche in the world of business and entrepreneurship, academic knowledge is rarely enough to guarantee success. To actually compete and win--particularly as an entrepreneur--you'll need some additional skills. I'd like to share three I picked up along the way. Perseverance We've all heard of the "fight or flight" response. When faced with an uncertain future, many people choose to do nothing. The simple truth is that every monumental endeavor can only be achieved in increments. Many people fail because they give up at the first sign of difficulty. Respect Bonus tip: Seek out the stories of the veterans, the founders, and the ground-breakers.
12 Things to Consider When Deciding Where to Start Up Entrepreneurship has an attractive set of freedoms: create any kind of business, set your own hours and manifest an ever changing job description, one free of geographical bounds. Thanks to the Internet, you can choose to start up anywhere in the world that you want to. But just like selecting a home for your family or a school district for your kids, there are a few important factors to consider when picking a place to start a business. Note: these things should still be top of mind if you’re entertaining the idea of location independence altogether! I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following question: What specifically should entrepreneurs look for when seeking out a new city to launch their company? Here are the 12 things to keep an eye out for when considering new regions to call home base for your startup: 1. I just moved Real Bullets Branding to Boston last year. - Caitlin McCabe, Real Bullets Branding 2. - Michael Tolkin, Merchant Exchange 3. 4. 5. Rent. 6. 7. 8.
What It's Like To Be The CEO: Revelations and Reflections The following is a guest post from Paul DeJoe, founder at, Ecquire, which provides contact management software and EIR at Fairbridge Venture Partners. This article is adapted from an answer on Quora that Paul left responding to the question “What does it feel like to be the CEO of a startup?” I reached out to Paul for permission to share his thoughts with the OnStartups.com readership. At the end of the article is an epilogue with additional notes. It's worth reading too -Dharmesh On May 20th, either right before midnight or right after midnight, I can't remember, I posted my rendition of what it feels like to be a startup CEO to a question on Quora. 1124 votes later and one last glance at a notification of an up vote from, Jia Liu, a social game maker from Zynga, I'm going to close the Quora tab and at the recommendation of Dharmesh, write what this last few days have been like, some of the cool things I've heard and some of the great people I've met as well as what I've realized.
How to name your startup Choosing a name is one of the parts of a startup I find the most difficult. It’s also something you can easily get hung up on. We all know that the key thing is to move on to actually building something we can put in front of users. Here are 3 steps I would take if I was naming a new startup: 1. If you can, stick to 2 syllables Often constraints are good when undertaking a creative process like naming your startup. GoogleTwitterFacebookFoursquareDropBoxPocketTumblrFlickrHipChatSparrowTweetbotReeder All great startups. SquarePathBox 2. I used to try to be very clever about naming my startup. Unfortunately, I’m not the most creative person. Therefore, since I don’t have that creativity, I take a slightly different approach. I also like the “real word” approach for a couple of other reasons: You’re more likely to end up with a name that can be “spoken” without confusion. 3. I see many, many founders limiting themselves with the domain name. How did you think about naming your startup?
4 Personality Traits All Entrepreneurs Must Have | Inc. 5000 Within every entrepreneur's personality there exist four distinct dimensions that drive and fuel the creation and vision of enterprise: The Dreamer, The Thinker, The Storyteller, and The Leader. No doubt some of these aspects are more developed in you than others—for we each have our own strengths—but in order to successfully launch your own enterprise, all four characteristics are must be present. Those that are lacking must be developed if you are to succeed. The Dreamer The Dreamer is the least understood out of the four dimensions. The Thinker The Thinker is The Dreamer's most important companion. The Storyteller The Storyteller invokes excitement in others when conveying the dream. The Leader The Leader is who assumes the responsibility to move the dream forward. So, ask yourself: have I nurtured these four characteristics within my own personality?
Best Place in the World to Start a Company The relative merits of various cities as locations for start-ups is a favorite media talking point. Is New York approaching parity with fabled Silicon Valley? Check out the start-up scenes sprouting in formerly down-and-out cities! Why is that? "Ventures perform better--survive longer, generate greater annual profits and cash flows--when their founders locate them in their home regions where they have deep roots of family and friends. To come to this conclusion, Sorenson and his research partners sifted through data on more than 10,000 Danish start-ups, comparing those started by local founders with those started by folks who were new to the area. Relative to a newcomer, an entrepreneur with an average tenure of 6.4 years in a region had a 9% lower failure rate and earned roughly $8,172 more in annual profit. Why might this be so? Your own personal skills and experience. When do personal ties to a region outweigh the benefits of joining a distant but well-established start-up cluster?
Using Social Media to Test Your Idea Before You Try to Sell It Offerings from Creme Delicious. When starting a business, new entrepreneurs often spend time naming the business and developing a logo and printing business cards and perfecting the look and feel of their packaging before they know whether they have a viable product or service. There’s now a better way — social media has become the ultimate tool for market research. Stephanie Clifford wrote an article for The Times this week about how big corporations are replacing focus groups with social media, but it works for small businesses, too. Thanks to social media — especially Twitter — small businesses now have the ability to determine what their customers want and what they are willing to pay. Phillip McCrae of GladRuth Services, in Newtown, Pa., sells direct video advertising tools for sales, marketing and education organizations. Sandy Patangay is founder of Creme Delicious, a dessert boutique in New York City. And please tell us in the comments section what has worked for you.
Why Being a Young Entrepreneur is a Good Thing When you start out as an entrepreneur at an early age, you find that one of the things that stands in the way of your entrepreneur success isn’t the world, but it’s you. Yes, you. As a young entrepreneur, you often split your focus between two ideas: You’re too young to know better.You’re too young, and that makes you cutting edge. For those who are the younger generation (however you define that), it can be easy to think that because you are younger, people don’t expect as much of you. Reality Check While you might be young, you are still expected to be a professional. At the same time, because you are young, you probably do things because they seem like a good idea. The Cutting Edge Mentality There is a distinct difference between being cutting edge and being blindly arrogant. All this cutting edge pressure can make you blind to reality – that sometimes ideas just don’t work. Youth and Who You Are This is beginning to sound like youth is a bad thing.
5 must-watch Elevator Pitches | Global Entrepreneurship Summer School An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The idea is that should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes. Put your brand in their hand Elevator pitch winner Josh Light CEO of coffee cup advertising presents in an effective way how he will place messages on coffee cups for independent coffee shops in exchange for the right to place advertisements on the cups. See video Dollarshaverclub.com Mike, founder of Dollarshaveclub.com pitches his business in an out-of-the-box video in 1 min 34 seconds explaining all you need to know about his business. The Bustin Jieber app Thomas Suarez is a 6th grade student at a middle school in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Hoist Kasper Hulthin from Podio (formerly known as Hoist) won the elevator pitch competition at MIT’s Global Startup Workshop in Iceland March 2010. Designing for women