If last year you proudly created a page on MySpace, this year chatting on the Facebook during business hours you’re not much of an avangarde of a web technology any more. There is bigger, more sophisticated, better… ?Hmm.
What and how fast do you adopt new now? Do you have to? Good question.

It used to be a little bit of a social network, and mostly alumni club to check out who gained weight and who became a millionaire. However, many of these technologies cross to business domain and are used now to enforce and grease the sales power or simply improve communications and efficiency.

If a large company has 2000 people in different departments on many floors, and possibly in many buildings, consultants are not enough now to tell the management who is doing what and why. In-house expertise is missed or resources mismanaged, costing that company lots of money. Until this new software that is, which (can you believe it) analyzes all the emails and network communications flying among the employees and charts out who is most often talking about this or that topic. It locates a real expertise in a snap, and you can image what else it does on the way.

This software is Aptima - it finds connections between people attempting to solve similar problems. It used to be called “organizational network analysis”. It’s just now it’s done quite automatically. This one is not very useful for a small selfemployed entrepreneur, but others are.

You probably know LinkedIn, Spoke, Technorati and Friendster. But did you see SelectMinds, VisiblePath and Tacit Software?
It’s not just who you know. It’s also who they know, and what they know. Online social networks have the potential to connect you to a vast world of people and resources. It will connect your list of personal contacts to the lists and profiles of others, giving you a bigger Rolodex of potential clients and suppliers. Visible Path doesn’t examine the content of messages; it only notes who sends messages to whom, when they send them, and how frequently.

Illumio, a new product from Tacit Software that is available to individuals for free, pores over the information on the PCs of everyone on your virtual network. Using data indexed by Google’s and Microsoft’s desktop search tools it identifies the people most likely to be able to answer a particular question.

Visible Path, which has made its software available to the public, hopes to create a mass cross-organization network, but only if it can get enough individuals to sign up to have their e-mail tracked.

Talk about tracking – I looked at Twitter time and time again, and still can’t figure out how this can be a fascination to anyone but a mother of a teenager… Texting your friends (or a network of customers) what are you doing this minute – who cares? Unless you are going to a cave and might need help any time. But does your cell phone work in a cave?

Have you tried SecondLife yet?

Starting to sound like a lost philosopher among all these new gadgets.

hg

A lot of calling cards are not really what they claim to be. You can encounter initiation fees and hidden charges before you know it. Some of the more sound options are: getting on the VOIP network, finding flat rate long distance plan, signing for free incoming calls plans with your mobile or buying virtual calling cards with unlimited number of calls or minutes.

So what is that VOIP )? Voice Over Internet Protocol allows to run your phone system on the computer-like network.
What are the advantages? Internet usage is non-expensive in Canada. Once you installed broadband internet connection, the rest is [almost] free. Of course, you need to purchase VOIP phones, and have some server of the phone system.
Further advantages are that VOIP phones can be moved freely on the network (from location to location), and the phone number (extension) travels with the phone, as well as all the messages stored on it. You can even unify all your communications (phone, voice mail, fax and email) in one box of Microsoft Outlook account. Neat.
It’s also very easy to add numbers to your VOIP network – as easy as plug in another phone and enter some data to a software program (providing you purchased a block of numbers from the appropriate company). A secretary can do it, without calling Bell technician to rewire anything.

Disadvantages? – VOIP network is as vulnerable as a computer network – can be hacked, infected with virus or worm or can be simply down, when internet service is down. This means that you are totally dependent on the reliability of your internet provider. This is serious weakness. When your internet is down and the phone is down, what communication is left? – just your legs, I guess… There are also some restrictions in using 911 service on VOIP.

One remedy to this is to install a semi-VOIP network. On such a network, on the inside it is a computer network with all the bells and whistles of VOIP technology, and on the outside all calls go over the plain old Bell network. This also can save some money if you are upgrading your old phone system to VOIP network, because in this solution you can use some existing Bell circuits and add new VOIP features,. It can be advantageous in a transition period from old to truly VOIP system.

VOIP is very advantageous for mid-size businesses. If you are a one-person orchestra in your small business, and are trying to run VOIP calls through your computer, you may find that often a quality of voice is poor. In this case you’d be better off using Skype. Skype is free between Skype members, and for a fee it would allow you to call landline phones. It is a very economical option, with additional perks of using video at the same time, if the person on the other side has a web camera too.

There are recently even better options than Skype for long distance calls. Pay attention to so-called virtual calling cards.
This prepaid phone service is a dream for big talkers with mobile phones. If you are not talking that much, but still would like to cut down on your phone bills, Telehop (http://www.telehop.ca/) can be an option.

And when you are yakking on the phone for hours, take a minute to count your blessings, because in many parts of the world cheap communication is still an unfulfilled dream.

hg@minibizweb.com

Well… you’re on your own now. How to find all these ‘tools to run the business’ and not spend a precious cent?
Believe it or not, there is a lot out there that will make you look like a Pro, a BIG Business you want to be.

First of all – what basics do you need?

You would need a word processing package to type up documents going out to your clients and vendors, you need to be able to invoice clients and write a cheque, you need a spreadsheet to gather your income and expenses data. A place to keep customers and vendors information, and of course calendar – you have so many things in your head, you don’t need to look unprofessional forgetting an appointment you made.
Then, if you’re trying to do your own promos, you need a graphics program and a presentation software. You may even make up your own web page, to be able to send ‘cool’ email to your prospective clients. To round a package, PDF writer is a must if you are emailing out any attachments. And of course, you need email and Internet access. I will not discuss this, since if you are reading it, you’ve got it already. By the way – don’t forget about the backup… After all the nights spent typing, researching and gathering documents, including contracts and contact data, you don’t want to lose it in one minute, because the power just went off and something happened to your hard drive.

Where to find it all free or for next to nothing: have you heard about Open Office? Don’t be afraid, download and install it. It will give you an edge of the whole office suite. You can even transform word documents to web pages.
It’s free and very easy to use if you dealt before with Microsoft software. You can even save a document as MS Word format, so your client will never know that you don’t have a brand software.
For invoicing you have a choice. It’s fairly easy to type up an invoice in a spreadsheet and make it a template for all your invoices. You can even insert a logo, sum up items on the invoice and print it without the grid, so it looks like ‘real’ invoice from an accounting package. For those of you who can’t be bothered to figure out a spreadsheet, FreshBooks has a very nice solution. Make up professionally looking invoices online and get paid by PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more. Great solution for freelancers, one-person professionals offices, lawyers, virtual assistants, web designers, writers and anyone who does business globally.
If you’re into doing your own graphics, Paint.net will do ‘photoshop’ wonders for you.
For your calendar and contact management you can choose Active Desktop , CRM-Express or one of the online applications offered with free Google account.

You know how hard it is to keep track of ever-changing email addresses and your contact’s new gigs? People change companies and move around – without notifying you about it. You may loose three quarters of your contacts/clients in a year if you’re not able to keep up with it. There is a rescue – sign up with Plaxo! This free, non-spaming service allows you to keep up-to-date with all your contacts in a non-invasive way that everyone likes. You can even show either business or private info, depending on your choice, and a mini-promotion piece, introducing your business. All backed-up while you sleep, so you never lose a contact.

Don’t even think about sending your customers files, that they wouldn’t be able to open. How do you know if the person on the other side of the email has the same program as you do? You don’t and you don’t need to know. Send pdf only – it’s a standard! Creating pdf documents is as easy as printing to the ‘pdf driver’. Treat it as your regular printer. PDF Creator is easy to use, small and free. You can’t underestimate it’s importance.

Wow! I just made you a few thousand dollars savings! Hang on… to hear about Brilliant Outsourcing next.

You have a client at your desk now. Does he know what to do? Where to go? Do you know why he came and what he needs? Make it easy to find suitable information. Make navigation extremely easy. If this is a health inspector knocking on your door – did you show him where to go? If this is a window-shopping lady with the whole free afternoon – what would you like her to do on your site?
They stopped by – “Great” you think, they will buy my product. Not so fast… Did you tell them clearly what to do next or you just stand there – a mime, watching them leaving without a single move, although they said – “hm, nice store you have there”. Call for action! Don’t stand there… Tell them clearly what they should do next, if they found something of interest.

Is all your page about “I”, “we”, “our company”? The viewer will think “wow, great people, can do all this, have good careers, nice products, good for them!”.
Change it to “You” and “yours”, and all of a sudden it’s about client and his needs, not about you. You meet his demand – you have a sale. If you don’t ask what people need, it’s like a museum – pure pleasure watching and walking away. Did you at least cash the tickets?

So a website plan should start backwards – not from you and your company, but from an internet user. Imagine final sale… and trace it back to your company. What lead to it? Trace back each step, and what action did you take that lead to that step? Now you’ve got your website. Oh, you don’t have time for all this? Your greatness lies in carving wood? Or writing a book? Well, why don’t you do just what you brilliantly do, and let someone else create a brilliant website working for your profits day and night. A modern way of slavery – no harm, designed by YOU, because you need to know what exactly your website should do for you.

By the way – your website has a double life – one that users can see, and one that shows to creatures like crawlers, search engines, spiders and marketing agents. These are like Miracle Grow – apply them with care and benefits will double and triple outgrowing a pot. That’s how your business grows while you’re sleeping.

Want to calculate your website ROI – set up a traffic tracker. Stats are a little story tellers, that will trace your latest success to the newsletter campaign or that banner designed by your son’s classmate. OK, don’t rely on him for everything… At least update your site to web 2.0 style. Why? Is it worth it? This is for another story… Read soon.

Haga – email me with comments at hg@minibizweb.com

In this day and age, a service like Blinksale is a welcome addition to the self-employment toolkit.

You do recurring billing, create invoices for services, hourly or daily bills and products, add freight and/or taxes and set payment terms including late payment rates.

After you create your invoice you either print it for snail mail or email a formatted copy and then Blinksale keeps it in your list of open invoices, and keeps track of overdue and outstanding accounts until you are ready to mark it paid.

The only shortfall is that I didn’t have the ability to label my sales tax, since here in Ontario we may charge 6% GST and if we do, we have to list our GST number as well. And the only missing feature I’d ask for is the ability to PDF an invoice before emailing it.

Best of all, Blinksale has multiple service levels, including a free one which give you 3 invoices a month, and the next level up is Silver which gives you 50 invoices a month for $12/month and even an enterprise level giving 1500 invoices per month at $49.

In short, it is quite comprehensive and a perfect fit for that lean mean self-employed back office.