Can You Ignore a Facebook Fan Page for your Business?

March 15, 2010

Over the past 15 months, I have used my Successful Marketing Tools blog to discuss major social media sites. I wrote a complete series on Linkedin—the professional social media site. ( You can see the ten top Linkedin tips here  http://successfulinternettools.com/linkedin/) I did a series of posts on Twitter, a great social media site to let people know about your business and begin the relationship process with potential customers. (You can see the ten top Twitter tips here http://successfulmarketingtools.com/wordpressblog/top-ten-twitter-tips/). In the last series of posts, I looked at YouTube and the absolute marketing power videos can add to your small business operations. (You can see the top ten tips here http://budurl.com/10videotips.

The one major social media site missing from my posts is Facebook. It’s now time to look at the largest social media site in the world.

Face book images (2) Facebook

Facebook has become the largest and fastest growing social media site in the world. It has over 400 million participants. Unlike other social media sites, over 50% of the participants are active. Active means spending 25-55 minutes per day on Facebook. On many days Facebook surpasses Google’s for hits and involvement.

Facebook Fan Pages

In the last year, Facebook has opened wide the commercial aspect of its site. Once you have a profile on Facebook(your personal Facebook page), you can create a business Fan page. For all practical purposes, this Fan page can look and act like a website for your business. It can have all the functions of a sophisticated website, like video, photos, interactive discussions, shopping carts and much more. Fan Pages are free.

Many experts are predicting that Facaebook Fan pages will overtake Google as the number one commercial site on the internet. I will discuss these reasons in up coming posts.

Conclusion

As a small business owner, you need to ask yourself the question, “Can I afford not to have a Fan page for my business?” If Facebook is where the market place has gone, what will happen to your business if you do not have a presence in this market place?

In the next two posts, I will share two additional reasons why Fan pages are perfect for small business owners.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

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What is Business Freedom?

March 8, 2010

I continue with excerpts from Michael Gerber’s The Most Successful Small Business in the World. In principle Seven, Gerber talks about the freedom principle that is so much a part of small business motivation.

But now you’re the boss. And the freedom that we all believed a small business of our own creates does not happen on its own. Like all freedom, it depends on you. It requires you to change your behavior from that of an employee to that of an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is psychologically far afield from the employee in you. He doesn’t want freedom because he already has it. He doesn’t create a small business to be free; he creates a small business to express the freedom he already posses.

In short, if the higher aim is to be realized at all, it must arise in Joseph. It must drive Joseph. It must become Joseph’s obsession…It must speak from him, and to him, whether he know how to speak so or not, whether or not he knows from where the voice comes.

Do you realize that you, the one reading this sentence right now, have been given a destiny to create a new world? You were given that even before you were born…You are called to grow beyond your comfort zone, to grow beyond your need to make a living. pp. 104-6.

In the next post, I will share how Michael proposed for us to achieve this business friend.

Your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

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Do You Dare to Turn Your Business Plan Upside Down?

March 4, 2010

Michael Gerber offers his third principle of small business success in The Most Successful Small Business in the World. He calls it the collaboration of all the parts of a business working together. What’s so special about this principle? It seems to be like a no brainer.  In this post, I will share how Gerber turns this no brainer upside down. Enjoy and prosper.

When We Started our Businesses

When we started our businesses, we started from our own perspective. We started with what we wanted from our businesses. How could the business operations serve our needs? We identified how much money we needed to make from our business. It was our business. It was our baby. It was our creation.

Gerber’s Genius

What if we started instead with the market place? Who are the people we serve and what problems or needs would our business solve for them? Gerber says, “Start with the market place”. Without this starting point, we have no business or we have a business that always struggles.

I am reminded of similar thoughts from other greats in the business world. Eugene Schwartz in Breakthrough Advertising. We can never create a market. We can only tap into the desire or want that already exists. If no desire exists, we have no business.

Gary Halbert’s principle of the starving crowd. If we were to open a hamburger stand, what would be the most important ingredients to make it successful? Would it be the location; the quality of the hamburgers; customer service; the hamburger making system; the cost of the hamburgers? No, Halbert says our greatest chance of success would come from finding a hungry crowd!

Respond to the Market Place

Gerber says our second step is this market driven approach is our business idea. How will we solve this customer’s desire or problem? The strength of our business will only be as strong as our idea. Our idea needs to transforms the customer’s life around that problem we solve. This is the heart and soul of any successful business.

The Third Step

Only when we have completed these first two steps, do we organize our business functions. Our business functions are molded and shaped in response to the market place and our transforming business idea. All of the parts of a business, the marketing, the business model, the operations, the staff, the financing are created in response to the market place. It’s not about us. It’s about our response to the market place.

Conclusion

Gerber has turned upside down the approach to small business. Go to the market place to find the problem and create a bigger than life solution. Only when these two steps are completed do we start to organize our business functions.

How would we change our current business operations if we started from this market principle? How different would our business be if we changed our business to a response to the market place rather than our own business perspectives? Good questions to ask ourselves!

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

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Gerber–Parts of Your Business Must Collaborate Together

March 1, 2010

In this post, I continue with excerpts from Michael Gerber The Most Successful Small Business in the World.
Gerber’s third principle is a small business is a system in which all the parts contribute to the success or failure of the whole.
All parts of this system must be identified, taken apart (so to speak), and [...]

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Is Your Business Idea to Make a Living???

February 27, 2010

Did you start your small business this way?  You worked for others.  You realized that you got only a small piece of the pie.  Your employer may have been charging customers $50 an hour.  You were getting paid, $20 per hour.  You said to yourself, “Why don’t I skip the employer and make the $50 [...]

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Gerber’s Second Principle–Your Business Idea!

February 25, 2010

Gerber’s second success principle is simple—a small business is no more effective than the idea upon which the business is built.
So let’s apply this principle to our mechanic, Joseph, and his business.
So Joseph asked himself, “What exactly will the auto repair I do be?  What do I know about the business of auto repair, its [...]

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How Would You Create 10,000 Businesses?

February 23, 2010

How would you approach your business today, if you had a goal of making 10,000 businesses just like the one you have now? What would you do? How would I approach my business, my new business, if my goal was to make 10,000 more businesses just like the one I have now? [...]

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Gerber’s 1st Principle–The Principle of 10,000

February 21, 2010

So what’s wrong with the picture of Joseph the mechanic Gerber developed in the last post?  Why will Joseph’s business never grow?
Gerber suggests that without a bigger idea, Joseph will never be doing more than working for a living.  He is a mechanic not a business owner.  He needs something bigger than making a living. [...]

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Michael Gerber’s Joseph the Mechanic…

February 19, 2010

A good way to understand the 10 principles of small business success is to  start with the story of Joseph, the auto mechanic. Let’s start with his story as Gerber himself does.

The business next door is easier to look at than your own.  The business next door was started by Joseph, the auto mechanic. Or [...]

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Excerpts from The Most Successful Small Business in the World

February 17, 2010

You have probably been told, as I have been told, that if you build your business on what you love to do, your business will be a success.  Read this excerpt from The Most Successful Small Business in the World as Michael Gerber takes a different twist on that piece of business wisdom.  Getting the [...]

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