To locate these two employees, I did the following:

• Searched on Linkedin

Many people use Linkedin as a filter for follow up.  I was surprised there was very little information in either profile.  My experience tells me the search would stop there and no effort would be made to pursue a relationship.

• Reviewed the company website for employee listing

The company only listed the Executive level staff and their names did not appear.

Here are three reasons why you should maintain an up-to-date LinkedIn profile.

Reason 1: Immediate proof of experience / expertise in a particular industry
Linkedin is my first stop if I met you at a business event.   I want to learn more about you; college attended, past companies that you worked for, common interests / connections and volunteer work that you might be doing.  This information may further our relationship building by allowing us to communicate and learn more about each other.

Reason 2: Commonality between connections
Building a relationship is not simple.  It helps when you learn a little bit about someone enabling you to bring it into the conversation.  More important, if you have interests in common, it helps even more.  Even as little as having attended the same college can bring two people together for a start of a business relationship.  That is why they ask you to list the University that you attended, and “other” information as you wish to add.  I am involved with my University Alumni groups and volunteer with at least two charities, all listed on my Linkedin profile.

The Blogs and Tweets I post are immediately announced / posted to my Linkedin page.  These topics are also good “conversation starters” or “relationship builders”.

Commonality is a big help in connecting to people.

Reason 3: Increase qualified business opportunities
Many people misunderstand how to use Linkedin.  Just because you meet someone does not necessarily mean you need to or should connect to them on Linkedin.  Not everyone I meet will have a need to connect to me, nor may I have a need to connect with them.  Not every contact that you get a business card from should be on your list.  Remember, “credibility” is important.  These connections may lead you to revenue for your company.  You want these contacts to feel valued not just another connection.

When you want to connect with an old colleague, either for social or business, your first stop might be Linkedin.  If your information on Linkedin is not up to date, you may be missing out on a business opportunity.   Quite a few people on Linkedin do not have an extensive list of contacts, some less than 10 connections, nor is their information always up to date.  A few contacts that I have researched recently only list their current or most recent employer.  Today, it is very important to provide as much pertinent information as possible if you hope to make connections.

There is also Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo, UStream, YouTube and many, many more sites to utilize for social networking and to research and follow your associates.  Choose a couple and connect.  Don’t lose a relationship with someone that is or might be the next leader you want to work with or be hired by someday.

Meet.  Connect.  Build.  Repeat.

A colleague asked me what I would do in a certain situation.  He said that he had contacted an old friend to plan to get together for lunch.   He called a few times, and got okay let’s do this with no commitment to time or place.  He asked me if I thought he should continue to pursue with this person.   I think not.   There comes a time when you can ask only so many times without result and then kind of chalk it up to experience and move to something else.

Another colleague was talking recently about a business proposition, and the fact that all parties want this project to work out but no one wants to take the first step to writing the contract or taking the steps necessary to actually start the project.   I don’t understand why anyone would agree to a project and then not find the time to make it happen.

Am I deluded or is this reality?

Are we all so busy these days that we can’t finalize a plan, or are we all so self important that we don’t have to finalize a plan?   If it is our self-importance and/or ego, we have become a very selfish society.

What do you think?

To begin with, there are three types of books:

• Out of copyright books: readers like you and me will be able to search for these books online, read them, print them or download them. As far as I understand, the writers for said books will get nothing.

• In copyright, out of print books: readers will be able to search for these books online and preview and purchase them – unless the author/publisher chooses to turn off the last two features.  But why would they?  Today, the only way to get these books (since they are not being sold or printed) is to find them at a library or a used bookstore.  With Google Books, everyone benefits in this scenario.

• In copyright, in print books: these are books that can easily be obtained from bookstores.  As with option 2., Google Books will allow readers to search for these books, and a) preview the books and purchase them online, if the author/publisher agrees, or b) point them to the nearest library or bookstore that stocks the books.

Ok.  But how does it work?

As with all things Google, it’s simple really. You go to http://books.google.com and search for a book.  If it’s one of the 10Million titles that has been scanned, or if the search keywords are in any other book that’s been scanned (that’s right, Google Book Search scans titles and book copy) it will be served in the results.  You’ll notice that the only interactive part of the book is the table of contents that will let you click to each chapter.  Beyond that, it’s really a bastardization (a poor one at that) of the paper version.  More on this in a later post.

Great.  So who benefits from this?

Readers benefit because we have access to books as long as we have access to the internet.  This means that I can search for a book from the couch and potentially be able to start reading it right away.  Even if it is out of print.  And if it’s one of the 10Million scanned books.  It will also democratize knowledge – a principle that’s hard to dislike.

And the payment model for readers is simple.  We can download for free (option 1. above), preview and pay author/publisher for download via Google (options 2. and 3.), preview and pay a subscription fee to a library or association (options 2. and 3.) or look up the nearest library or bookstore that stocks that title.

Publishers and libraries benefit as it makes their titles more universally accessible, reduces printing and distribution costs.  It will also probably mean lower revenue per title, which may or may not be offset by higher sales – and let’s not forget the lower costs.

Authors benefit in so much as their titles are more universally accessible.  While I am no expert, I suspect that (as we are seeing in that other vertical – Online Journalism), the writers will likely not come out the winners. Copyright lies at the heart of the problem.  The vast majority of books are protected by copyright.  In general, a book is protected by copyright during the author’s lifetime and for a substantial period thereafter for the benefit of the heirs (usually 70 years in the US and the UK).  Of the 40Million odd books in US libraries, about 32Million are in copyright.  By scanning a copyrighted book, Google has by definition committed piracy.  Accordingly, in October 2008, Google agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Authors’ Guild of American and various American publishers to compensate authors and publishers whose rights it has breached, to the tune of approximately $60 per book, through a mechanism arcanely known as the Book Rights Registry.  We will also be hearing more about copyrights from European publishers soon.

Google’s benefits are staggeringly simple…and well, staggering really. Users will now not only come to Google to search for old flames, new dates, videos – now that video has proliferated beyond YouTube, blogs and code; they will also come to search for books or snippets from books.  This would translate into even more user data and more ad revenue for Google.  Google also gets to pocket a cut of what readers spend purchasing the digital versions – how much remains unclear to this reader.  And it gets to exploit it’s database of out of print books and orphan books (for whom no one has claimed copyright – constituting about 5-10% of books scanned by Google) by including these books in subscription deals sold to libraries.  Of the 40Million books in US libraries, some 27Million are out of print. In theory, that could be a nice chunk of change for Google.  In practice, these books are out of print for a reason and readers may not have an appetite for their digital versions.  While it is clear that Google will benefit, and benefit greatly indirectly, it’s too early to quantify the direct benefit.

What is clear, however, is that Amazon’s near monopoly of the digital book business is coming to a close.  Small wonder then that Amazon and other behemoths like Microsoft are up in arms against Google.  One of their two chief arguments is that the primary responsibility for digitally archiving the world’s books should not rest with a commercial company.  I don’t buy that – if anything, it will make the process more efficient, innovative and in line with public interest. Just ask the car industry.  The second argument is, of course, that of copyright.

- Parneet

(Click here to read more posts by this writer)

In that conversation, most people in the room favored public access.  Everyone agreed that getting the most contacts is not conducive to good business — or even to selling a product or service.  It is certainly less tedious to be able to directly ask someone to network than to ask me to connect you — and the back and forth that should entail if you are practicing good business networking habits.

If you do ask me for a connection, I do take the time to see who you are, what you do, and whether my making a connection that may get a negative response from the person I am connecting.  I would not want to forward a bogus or “just collecting names” request.  I would usually take the time to ask the 3rd party if they would like to make the connection.  All this does take time.  Sometimes it is worth it.  Sometimes, as recently happened to me, the requestor had the wrong person.  I did not forward the request.

And I do spend a lot more time looking at a connection request when lists are private.  You can tell if you have opted for public or private by looking at your preferences.

I suspect most of us don’t take a second look at our preferences once we get past the initial setup.  This is not, imo, a good practice.  Updating your personal information on your social sites at least yearly makes you a more valuable business contact.  It has the added advantage, especially to those of us early adapters or those who are a bit timid about all that the socnet age has to offer, of allowing you to correct what may have been an unintentional consequence.  You may not have understood what public and private meant when first registering, or you may want to be public, now that you’ve become comfortable with the Internet and the 21st century way of talking.

By Gayley Knight, aka Mother Geek
Mothergeek@businessherway.net

Post Office Protocal (POP), which is less efficient, has its place.  If you are the only one working on your computer, if you do not need to share your work and communications, if you have limited storage space on your email server, and/or you have a slow Internet connection, POP may be your best choice.

On the other hand, if you are want to be efficient and manage your time well, Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is the better choice.  IMAP lets you access your email, including previously read email, from many electronic devices and from wherever you are in the world.  IMAP provides two-way communication between your mail server and your electronic devices, saving you from duplicating messages, storing them in various places, and generally improving your filing and management systems, saving you time.

Unlike POP, IMAP easily synchronizes messages from different computers, automatically mirrors file folders created on the server or computer, and even stores your sent messages on the server (if you elect to do this).  Mail programs that support IMAP even can move messages between folders on the server; between the server and a local mail folder; and even between different IMAP mailboxes on different servers.

IMAP makes handling email simpler and efficient.

While POP can be set to store messages on the server and save emails sent from the server. It is good practice to store messages for a few days at least, just in case some are deleted from your computer hard drive.  IMAP will store messages on your hard drive with the proper settings and folders.  The one disadvantage to IMAP is the amount of storage space your ISP provides.  While you can always rent more storage space, it is a good idea to monitor this.

IMAP makes deleting messages safer.  When a message is marked for deletion, it disappears from the inbox or folder, but it is still on the server — and can easily be undeleted if needed.  This is especially useful when sharing emails. One person reads and deletes a message, but another can still read it and retrieve it.

Emails are permanently deleted with a purge command.   For more on how email works, read How Stuff Works article on email.

By Gayley Knight, aka Mother Geek
mothergeek@businessherway.net

How to build community for your business out of all this?  There are basic steps in successful online community building.  It is a lot of hard work, but worth the effort if done well.

• Define your purpose and audience. In other words, PLAN.

This is no different than any marketing and outreach undertaking. Without definition, it is difficult to proceed or to attract and keep members.

At CommunitySpark.com, Martin Reed has a great PDF whitepaper with questions for you to consider before building your community.

• Choose the right technology tools.

This is important, but not a place to get sidetracked.  Find a community building application (Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Groupsite, Facebook are the more used ones).  If you specialize, look for those, such as photographers at Flickr, writers might join Seth Godin’s Squidoo or Network Solutions’ “My Solution Spot” or Google’s knoll.  Speakers should look at online speaking bureaus as well as the Yearbook of Experts.

Features to look for when deciding on which tech tools include discussion threads, tagging, search, RSS feeds, file downloading, and the ability to link to and display just about any type of standard web based interface to a wide variety of systems, data stores, and presentation media.  Don’t add features just for the sake of having the most toys. Grow the community first, then add tools as the community needs demand.

Spending a lot of time on developing the technology misses the point. Look at Richard Millington’s “Online Community Manifesto”  to get you thinking in another direction.

• Brand and promote your community.

Branding is critical to growing your community.  Define your community clearly and unequivocally.  This is no place for cute and clever.  Demonstrate a consciousness of kind, build traditions, and celebrate successes and history through stories that strengthen your brand.  Then promote it everywhere.  Once you know what your brand stands for, your users will find you.  And then you need to keep them.  Do this with good content and your active participation in the community.

• Content is still king – and a weapon.

Organizations invest in a web site’s architecture and understand the need for great user interaction, yet the ROI is often missing because the content is insufficient, does not support the goal of the site or the actions to be taken by the visitor, making the value worthless.  A wireframe is no good and cannot be launched without developing and implementing a content strategy plan (and content), at the same time and with the same care taken to build our perfect site.

Content strategy helps you and your team know what needs to be written for publication and why, as well as what to omit. Publishing is complex.  Content is being developed for multiple uses: syndication, collaboration, community, social media, user-generated content — and then there are the technologies used to push all this content.

Use content as a weapon to improve the community experience.  Improved experience is the key to grassroots, word-of-mouth referrals, which builds on itself, sending more customers, which drive the social web.

Content strategy is even more critical when building a community as collaboration needs to stay focused.

• Collaboration is key — make it easy for the community to contribute.

Make it easy, but remember that content needs to be appropriate and on point.  Make sure someone is daily managing the collaborators.  Reject posts that are not appropriate to your brand and the community message.  Make it simple to login to a user forum. Provide various means for users to access the forum and information in the community.  Evolve the best practices and solutions into an FAQ and manuals.  Integrate the community into your business web site.  As with all things web, don’t just leave your community out there alone.

The key to successful collaboration, therefore community, is sharing.

Sharing requires tools that create a central repository.  Documents, emails, messages, resources are all in one place.  Collaborators can follow the entire conversation, and see the latest versions of documents, without missing an undelivered email or attachment.

Basecamp is an excellent, free such application.  Tadalist is another such tool, with a different focus (shorter for to do lists, rather than for longer collaborations).  Online communities naturally share through comments and vetted authors.

• Recruit active members as collaborators — and give them recognition

This sounds simple, but might get complex, especially as the community grows.  A lot of successful communities create awards. Some don’t publish the exact criteria for being a top contributor to prevent gaming the system.  Others, like LinkedIn, offer those getting responses to their questions a means to spotlight a particular answer.

Recognition should be timely, simple and sincere, specific (tell what the recognition is for exactly) and personal.  This last means taking time to know the people you are recognizing.  Make the recognition fit the person. I often take the time to review their web site, read their other collaborative efforts, and their biographies so when I do promote them in our community,

Especially, recognition should make the recipient know s/he is a valued member of the community.  How to do this?

• Does a member mention an event or important date?  Ask them about it afterward.
• Engage in a dialogue with your members.  Answer their questions and pose some follow up ones of your own.
• Be available to members.  If there is trouble, they need to know you are around for support.
• Support the uniqueness of each member.  Allow them to custom color their member areas, upload an avatar, and/or give badges for those who deserve them.
• Use email and personal online outreach, but don’t forget a hand-written note for successes or personal bad news is still the most meaningful gesture.

• Listen and Improve

Listen to your community.  Take the opportunities offered and the advice so kindly, and freely, given.  Build relationships and your community will thrive.

By Gayley Knight
mothergeek@businessherway.net

Your profile
Before joining any social network, read the rules!  Once you find a neighborhood whose rules you respect and that respect you and that make sense to how you’ll participate, join the group.  This usually requires creating a username and password (login data), then filling out a profile.

Your profile is your main pipeline to the group.  Without a full, complete profile, that you update periodically, clients and customers may not discover your business.  If you already have a profile, consider a profile makeover.  Here is a great example  from Guy Kawasaki, currently managing director at Garage Technology and co-founder of Alltop, an online magazine rack. Guy is a former evangelist at Apple, Inc.  Add him to your twitter account and your reading list.

Explore the Neighborhood
Now that you are part of a network, take a look around. Who is here? Are there groups and fan pages where your potential clients are hanging? When you find a place you are comfortable, join in.  I’d forego making my own group page as it requires maintenance. However, do provide links to your website, which is Web 2.0 and dynamic, of course.

Knock on doors – start connecting
Comments are a good way to make contact, to get known.  Asking questions is another.  Questions are also a good test marketing tool. Don’t forget to respond and thank those who help you by responding to your questions.  Join your neighborhoods together with the use of microblogging tools such as posterous or Facebook’s notes page.  It is not enough to have a well-designed page. You need to work it.

Regular entries (I do mine every other week), reviews of articles you’ve read, sharing resources, creating an account at Alltop (alltop.com, an online magazine rack) are all part and parcel of making strong connections.

Add this to your routine.  Make an appointment with yourself. Put it on your calendar, much as you do for the beauty parlor or barber or for your fitness routine.  Don’t reschedule your social networking time, unless you get an invitation to the White House for beer or gardening — or maybe not even then.

By Gayley Knight
mothergeek@businessherway.net

I did notice that the site has a copyright date of 2008.  I know this site has been live since at least 1999.  It is a static site, so no way to tell if content is current.  If I did not know this site and the owner, I might well assume, correctly, the site is not up to date.  When was the last time you gave your site a basic checkup? And are you moving your business from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond?  It is critical in this social web era, especially as we move from the semantic web to the streaming web, to update your online presence. Here are 5 things to consider upgrading.

• Site logs. Check these regularly (at least monthly). Using Google Analytics makes this simple, although your web hosting company should provide some site logging tools.  If they don’t, switch! Your logs will help direct your aim at the people who are visiting your site.  You can design landing pages that give them what they are looking to find.  You can use the logs to see from where they are coming, then use that information to get more interactive on your end.
• Change the content. If you have not updated your site’s content in the past year, your site is losing touch with the changing web.  Fresh and relevant content is where it’s at with Web 2.0.
• Web 2.0 interaction.  Your business is no longer in control of its own products, much less its branding. Customers are now in charge.  If you are not talking about why your product is of value to me, your customer, I am probably doing my purchasing elsewhere.
• Social or Wallflower? If you’ve joined social networks, great.  If you are not participating, you are losing customers, the opportunity to control the buzz about your company or product, and track, at the least, your company’s name using Google Alerts or some other such tool.  Twitter may seem to be too futuristic and up your daily noise level, but your business is reaping the rewards or not if you are just sitting against the wall.
• Unsolicited Email. If you are sending emails to customers and potential customers without permission, you may be in violation of federal law.  The Can-Spam Act of 2003 has 4 main provisions.  The most important for your customers is providing them a way to easily opt-out of your solicitations.  If you don’t have a business system for handling this, and are still emailing from your personal copy of Outlook, Eudora, Gmail or Hotmail, you are probably not following the law. Time to purchase a proper email handling program such as Constant Contact.

By Gayley Knight
mothergeek@businessherway.net

What does an entrepreneur do when the garage gets too small?  Or you just want to get your car back where it belongs?  Join an incubator.

Incubators accelerate the development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support, resources and services, developed or orchestrated by incubator management, and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts.  The main goal is to produce successful firms that will leave the program financially viable and freestanding — and who will give back to the community by creating jobs, revitalizing neighborhoods, and strengthening local and national economies.

It is not a simple thing to join an incubator.  They come in all shapes and sizes, with various perks. And you can’t just walk in the door. You do need to apply — the incubator, remember, is also a business.  It is looking for businesses that will pay for themselves.  Once in the door, you’ll find benefits including

• working in a nurturing environment designed to help small businesses share experiences with each other and conduct business with one another thereby reducing the risk involved as start up
• accessing facilities and equipment otherwise unavailable or unaffordable
• discovering available financial and technical services and resources and learn how to utilize those services
• finding mentors
• paying for these benefits at a reduced or flexible rates

From Incubator to Mezzanine

When a business is ready to leave the incubator, the incubator will often assist in getting the business set up on the mezzanine level.  This is an intermediate step before becoming a full-fledged business.  At the mezzanine level stage of a company’s development, venture capitalists (VC) are more likely to look at the company, prior to its going public, as there is a lower risk of loss than at the incubator stage.

By Gayley Knight
mothergeek@businessherway.net

* Historically, Gates started in his dorm room, but who will ever be sure?

Foregoing the discussions of planning (why, who, for what purpose, the cost and ROI, how to implement, when to upgrade, and most importantly, will your purchaser be comfortable with the system you select), I thought it might be time for a quick review of some of the most currently used payment systems.

Paypal
This is the first and most well-known.  It has its detractors and supporters. Our advice is always to include Paypal, just because everyone knows it and feels safe with it.  Why miss a sale because your purchaser is not familiar with your merchant bank?  If you are selling a lot of low-cost items, the transaction fee at Paypal may be too high.

Spare Change
The first and largest micropayments solution for social networks users allowing buyers and sellers to make small payments.  Similar services include Bee-Tokens and Tipjoy.  Tipjoy differs a bit as it is one click and encourages your customers to share your content with their friends, through feeds to social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed, RSS feeds, and emails.

Twitpay
This is a micropayment service for microbloggers.

Generically, there is

Digital Cash – a form of electronic currency that functions similarly to a debit card.

Electronic Checks – as straightforward as it sounds: small business allows customers to pay for e-commerce purchases by accepting personal or business checks online.

Internet Cash – for those businesses whose customers traditionally pay cash.  It’s great for gifts and to set spending limits for teens.  Or to provide purchase opportunities for those without credit cards.

eCharge Phone – allows customers to bill purchases to their local phone bills.

Tradenable acts as an escrow agent between auction buyers and sellers.  The buyer and seller set terms online.  After both parties agree to the terms, and successful payment and receipt of goods is made, Tradenable then pays the seller.  There is a method for returning goods also.

By Gayley Knight
mothergeek@businessherway.net