There are many questions you can ask when selecting a developer to build your website. Are you compatible with them? Do you like their portfolio? Do they have good references? There are, however, some non-obvious questions that you should also ask before making the final selection. Here are 3 that I recommend you ask any potential web developer before hiring them.

What is the biggest website you have ever developed?

You need to know that the developer you are hiring has developed a website around the size of yours and knows how to make sure the site stays “performant”. (Performant is a word developers made up to say “runs fast”. If we all said “runs fast”, we think you may not need us because you understand things.)

How do they deal with scalability of websites your size? Do they have experience scaling a website both up and down to handle seasonal traffic?  Do they know how to build websites that are fast even under load?

You need to make sure your developer has previously built something of the same size as your site. You need to know that they have already faced the problems your website will run into and have answers at the ready for them.

Action Item:

Ask any potential developer for 3 websites that they have built around the same size as yours. Then, after you have left them, put each of them through this URL:

http://www.webpagetest.org/

A Page speed score lower than 80 is is a red-flag.

Where will you host my website?

I am assuming you are allowing your web developer to choose the hosting platform for your site. If you are managing this yourself, skip to #3.

It is important to know where your site is being hosted. Many web develoeprs have hosting agreements with hosting companies and will put your website on a server with hundreds of other websites. This isn’t necessarily bad, as long as you know it. It doesn’t make sense to dedicate an entire server to a small site, especially for personal blogs or small businesses.

However, some developers will stick with their hosting provider, even if it isn’t the right solution for all websites, simply because it is what they know. Many small business sites are better served on a Virtual Private Server than shared hosting. If your website will be doing ecommerce then you need to make sure that the server that is handing the transaction is PCI compliant[1], most web servers are not. You need to make sure that your website will have the resources it needs and not be at the mercy of other sites.

Action Item:

Ask any potential web developer for three websites hosted with three different hosting partners or on 3 separate servers. If they can’t provide that then it is a red-flag because it means that your site will most likely be one of hundreds on a common server.

What will you do to secure my website?

Security is very important these days and should be something that you discuss with any potential web developer. You need to make sure that your developer understands the importance of security and has a plan to keep your site safe.

The best security is layered. It starts with good, secure, and audited code. If your web developer is building on top of an open source platform like WordPress or Drupal, you don’t need to worry about the code being audited. Large open source projects have large communities behind them. As long as your developer keeps their sites up to date,  you will be reasonably protected. If however, the code that will be running your website was written by the developer, ask for proof that it has been audited by an outside vendor in the last twelve months.

The next layer of security is software: making sure all applications running on the server are regularly patched and up to date. Many servers are compromised not because of the code that the developer wrote but because a vulnerability exists in one of the many, many programs it takes to run a modern day website.

The final layer of security is a firewall. Your website should be run on a server behind a firewall. These days many servers have firewall software installed on them, and in many cases that will suffice. The firewall should be properly configured, though, to only let traffic into those applications that you are actively using. For instance, if all your server does is serve web pages then the firewall should block all traffic except for web traffic. If your developer stares at you blankly when you ask this question, and they can’t produce a system administrator who handles this for them, it is a serious red-flag.

Action Item:

If your site will be built on top of WordPress or Drupal, or any other open source project, ask your developer to pull the site up in a browser, view the source and show you the version number. Most modern day packages put the version number in the comments somewhere. As an alternative, they can log into the site as an administrator and show you the version number. Most modern web applications show the current version number on the administration pages. Then, when you are away from them, research that package and find the latest version number. Unless the version numbers have changed in the very near past, they should match. If they do not, that is a red flag that should not be ignored.

Wrapping it up

There is no “silver bullet” question that will ensure that you hire the right developer. Even if they pass all of your tests, things could still go wrong. However, there are questions that need to be asked beyond the obvious one to help you make the decision. I’ve given you three here to get you started.

[1] Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. If you are storing and processing credit cards on your website, you must have a PCI compliant server.  http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/

About the Author: CalEvans is a professional programmer, writer and speaker. His passion in life is helping people do great things with technology. His latest book is “AvoidingaGoatRodeo: How to get what you want when hiring a developer to build your website” which does just that.

Attention Small Business Experts!  Here’s a New Way to Add Dollars to Your Bottom Line!

There is nothing that a marketing person loves more than finding new ways to add customers and profitable revenue to the bottom line.  So when the folks over at Mindflash approached me with their latest innovation, I got really excited because I just knew that you would be too.

A Little About Mindflash

I was originally approached by Mindflash when they launched their online training platform.  At that time, this product was aimed at larger organizations who had internal training needs and wanted to save money on expensive training software.  Since my audience consists of small businesses and consultants who could only dream of being big enough to HAVE a training department, it wasn’t a good fit.

But NOW – Mindflash has launched some new features that I think you will REALLY love.   The Mindflash Marketplace is an online platform where anyone can sell a course or presentation at absolutely no cost.

This new feature, which developed out of the requests of many previous Mindflash users, provides an exciting new way for experts, consultants, and small business experts and professional trainers to make money with their hard earned knowledge, as well as a way for those seeking new skills to avoid hiring programmers or dealing with merchant accounts. With over seven billion ‘How-to’ Google searches to date, Mindflash Marketplace fills the high demand for high-quality online instructional content.

How Does Mindflash Marketplace Work?

Anyone can use Marketplace to create professional courses from content they already have. Some example courses include ‘Negotiations’, ‘Social Media Business Basics’, ‘Closing the Deal’, and ‘Transit Systems’. It all starts with a blank course template. Here you can upload files (e.g. Powerpoint, video or Youtube formats, PDF’s, etc.), make Quizzes, Descriptions, and more. Users can setup reminder and course management details, Question Types, Handouts, and three different types of Certificates. Mindflash lets you preview your test before it goes live. It also provides a full suite of reporting programs to track how well your courses are selling, as well as a way to invite trainees yourself. There’s also a feature that allows customers to contact the instructor, which can be setup as well, and ways to link to your course through your blog or email. Once all this is done, you just decide the price. The minimum is $9.99. Once the course is live, customers can preview the first three slides then purchase your course with just a click.

Revenue Sharing With Mindflash Marketplace

There are no setup or subscription fees with Mindflash. The fees are commission-based, meaning Mindflash will take a small percentage of money made through the course (though even this fee is waived in the beta, which will go through the end of October). The commission is 15%. All transactions will be handled through credit card, though Mindflash handles all the necessary processing fees. Customers will use a PayPal account to get their payments to you. At the moment, funds are dispersed through Paypal every two weeks. There are additional plans in the works for commission discounts for high volume sellers (those making $10,000+/month). And once your courses start selling, Mindflash provides an platform to track your various earnings. Again, all this is totally free.

Why Choose Mindflash Marketplace?

There’s no question that the Mindflash Marketplace is the first service of its kind. Similar sites have a much different fee structure. Digital Chalk, for example, has a $299 start-up cost, as well as a per course listing cost and a transaction cost. With these types of programs users can lose hundreds of dollars before they even sell anything. Mindflash is a great platform for both experienced professionals and those just starting out looking for an easy, low-risk solution.

Additionally, though it has limited functionality at the moment, Mindflash plans to do a lot of the marketing work for you. If you have a blog, web page, or other established network anywhere in the world, Mindflash Marketplace will help you get the word out. Right now there’s a Public Course link that can be pasted around the web, and Mindflash hopes to integrate the marketplace with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter within the next month.

Mindflash Marketplace is the perfect way for industry experts to monetize that expertise, especially in an economy where supplemental income and marketable skills are increasingly important. It’s a simple, innovative way for millions of people to connect and share resources, and it’s all entirely free. There’s no reason not to give it a shot and make money sharing your knowledge with the world.

All small online businesses face a common issue.  They do not have a large brand name, awareness, nor sufficient credibility because people are not familiar with the vast majority of small businesses.  Consequently, small businesses who do not clearly and convincingly demonstrate trustworthiness and reliability, face lost sales, abandoned shopping carts on their websites and failure to close leads. The trust issue has a direct impact on a small businesses’ ability to be successful.

A few years back, there was a study that showed that this trust and credibility issue impacts small businesses to the tune of $21 billion in lose sales due to trust and security issues.  For online small businesses, an industry has sprung up offering  trust seals to help companies try to address this crucial trust and security concern.  These trust seals typically focus entirely on helping online ecommerce stores address the trust issues.   However, the trust issue impacts every type of small business from online stores to almost every type of service providers such as small law firms, accountants, contractors, consultants, plumbers and bloggers.

This post will discuss a brief overview of the range of trust seals that are available to help small businesses.  I will also cover which type of small business should consider using which seal, who sells them, and any issues that may arise with particular types of trust seals.

The trust seal universe is broken into the following categories: SSL Certificates, Website scanning seals, Business Information seals, Bonding seals, Privacy seals and Trust and Business Transparency seals.

1. SSL Certificates – The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol was created to ensure secure transactions between web servers and browsers. The protocol uses a third party, a Certificate Authority (CA), to identify one end or both end of the transactions.  In lay person’s terms, this basically is an encrypted communication between an online buyer’s browser and the browser and server of the small business of the selling website.  Every site that is selling online should have an SSL certificate because otherwise your customers will be sending their credit card information unencrypted over the internet.  No one wants to have that happen.  Typically SSL Certificate sellers must conduct some level of validation for a business prior to issuing an SSL Certificate for a website.

SSL certificates are provided by companies like Verisign, Comodo, GoDaddy, Thawte, DigiCert and Network Solutions.  There are also different types of SSL certificates from DV (validate a business’ right to use a domain name), OV (validate the domain name and  certain items regarding your organization) and EV (extended validation of your business).

The key to remember is that SSL certificates generally only serve online stores and do not serve other small business websites.

Best for: Online stores and pricing ranges anywhere from $33-125/month.

2. Website Scan Seals – Another type of trust seal is used by small businesses to communicate to the world that your website gets scanned according to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.  In some instances, small businesses can also get a third party to monitor your small business website’s hosting server. The scans and monitoring are generally for the purpose to check for a defined list of vulnerabilities, attacks and the presence of certain malware.

The companies that provide these types of scanning trust seals include McAfee, Verisign  Trust Guard and Comodo (HackerProof).

Again the vast majority of the websites that these seals are focused on are ecommerce sites.  Additionally, there have been reports of nearly constant security breaches on websites across the world and these seals have not been found to have avoided or detected any of those breaches.  These scans may be helpful to identify low grave vulnerabilities or malware on your website, but with the major proliferation of malicious malware that is active and being spread worldwide on a daily basis, it is unlikely that these website scans will detect the more damaging and harmful vulnerabilities.

Best for: All businesses with websites, but typically used by online stores and pricing ranges from $9-$168/month for these seals.

3. Business Information – A business information seal is a seal which provides information about the legal, physical and actual existence of a small  business. In some instances, the seal may contain some very basic information such as name of the business, location and address.  Typically the information is cursory and not in depth about this business.  These seals are generally issued in conjunction with a membership with an association so there is limited information that is provided as a part of this seal.

The companies that provide these types of Business Information seals include the Better Business Bureau (BBBonline) seal.  Generally this seal is another example of a seal where a small businesses is purchasing an association with a larger and established brand so that they can place that brand on their website.   The thinking is if this larger and established brand has issued my business this seal, then a website visitor should trust me.  The BBBonline seal has been under attack recently for a number of different practices such as selling grades for businesses and has even received the attention of the Today Show for their questionable trust seal practices about how the Better Business Bureau handled this recent incident with this small business.

Best for: All Businesses, but typically just used by online stores and pricing is approximately $33/month and is a part of an overall membership.

4. Bonding  – Another type of seal is a seal that allows online merchants to show that they are trustworthy and reliable by having a third party guarantee a shopper’s purchase with a bond, up to a certain amount of money (some go as high as $25,000).  This seal basically communicates to shoppers that if they buy from a merchant with a bonding seal that there purchase may be guaranteed up to a certain value.  

buySAFE  is a company that offers a bonding seal to online stores. In order to get a  buySAFE seal, they will have your website undergo the buySAFE certification process to assess trustworthiness and reliability  of your website and if you pass that your business will be able to guarantee purchase terms of sales for shoppers up to $25,000, give them some form of identity theft protection for 30 days and 30 day price drop protection up to $100.   This buySAFE seal has been in the market for some time and mainly is geared toward larger small businesses that have higher transaction volumes of at least $1,000 a month of website sales.

Best for: Online Stores with larger transaction volume and pricing ranges vary and include an option for taking a small percentage of total monthly sales for the small business.

5. Privacy  – A privacy seal is used by small businesses to convey to website visitors that their business maintains some level of practices related to privacy matters.  These level of practices can be commitments about how the small businesses uses shopper information and how that information is maintained, stored and used.  These commitments and practices are confirmed by a third party in some manner and then a privacy statement is generated for the privacy seal that generally covers how a business handles confidential and sensitive information of its customers.

TRUSTe is one of the main providers in the market of such a privacy seal for small and medium businesses.  The TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal indicates that TRUSTe has reviewed a website’s privacy policy and it adheres to TRUSTe’s privacy program requirements.

Best for: Online Stores and the prices for the TRUSTe seal range from $41-82/month.

6. Trust and Transparency Seals -  The final type of seal is a trust and transparency seal.  This type of seal allows small businesses to take information about their own business, website, management, financial history, policies, locations, website traffic and displays all of that information for website visitors.  The purpose of these seals is to give shoppers and website visitors extensive information about a small businesses so the potential customer can make a well-informed determination about the trustworthiness of the site.   This  type of seal is essentially a merchant report card for a small business with information that is continually updated.  This seal allows small businesses to take their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness and make that transparent to shoppers at the point of sale or for website visitors when they are reviewing a service business website.

KikScore is the only provider of a seal like this and that also includes a unique and dynamic online trust score for the small business.  The online trust score is based on the information and data that is available for a small business.

Best for: All Small Businesses, both online stores and service providers such as lawyers, plumbers, contractors, bloggers.  Also non-profits and charities can use a trust and transparency seal.  The price for a trust and transparency seal is $14.99/month.

What Seal is Best for Your Business

As described above, each of these seals have their respective uses.  However, in the end a small business should ask themselves what is at the heart of the trust and credibility issue that they face as an online business.  The heart of the issue centers around an information asymmetry between the website visitor and the small business.  The visitors generally just does not know enough about the business and who is behind the business and website. That leads to lost sales.

That is why the single greatest weapon that a small business has in the battle to win trust online is the weapon of information and data.  Not just any type of information and data, but key pieces of information about the history of a business, their track record of reliability, management and other data around a business.  In the end, the more information your business provides to website visitors, the higher chance that the website visitor gains a level of comfort.

Lastly, the seals that provide information and transparency in your business are highly recommended to use to solve the trust issue, but trust is a multi-dimensional issue so we also recommend using the various seals together.  For example, if you are an online store we recommend that your small business website also has an SSL Certificate too in conjunction with a trust and transparency seal.

This is a guest post from Sander Daniels, Co-Founder of Thumbtack.com a new outsourcing service for small business.  At some point, even DIYMarketers have to outsource in order to get it all done and grow their business.  In this article, Sander gives some fantastic advice on how to outsource painlessly and get the results you’re looking for.

So you’ve heard about all this ‘outsourcing stuff.’ You’ve run across a few sites that say they can help you find people for work you need done. You think it might be a good thing to look into one day. But you just don’t know where to start or whether it’s really worth the trouble.

I hear you. We were skeptical about the whole phenomenon. Would the quality of hires be good – or not so good? Would it be impossible to manage someone remotely? And what tasks do we have that we can outsource anyway?

Since we put out our first job ad for remote help two years ago, we’ve become huge converts. In fact, we’re such huge converts that we now have a team of 125 remote assistants helping our company run.

Here is a 5-step plan for how to outsource successfully.

1. Brainstorm things you could outsource

This is the most important step – once you complete this step, you’re on your way to a bigger and better business.

Be creative here. Think hard about this and write down your answers on a sheet of paper: What am I spending time on that I could be outsourcing?

You’ll have a brain block at first – “Surely someone working remotely can’t do the same quality of work I do.” “It’s going to be really hard to manage and coordinate this – ugh.”

Here’s how to get over the brain block: Think of the smallest, most repetitive tasks you do every day or week. Here are some possibilities of things you might do:

• Gathering phone numbers of potential clients you’ve been wanting to reach out to.
• Browsing blogs to find articles that keep you up-to-date on your industry.
• Finding open-source photographs to brighten your marketing materials, your email newsletter, or your website.
• Stuffing envelopes with letters to customers.
• Shopping around on Craigslist for deals on office supplies.

And keep this in mind – outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean ‘overseas.’ Outsourcing can just mean ‘temporary help from a hard-working person who lives near me.’

For example, here are some people nearby that could help improve your life:

• A professional organizer who comes into your home or office, builds some shelves or buys some boxes from the Container Store, and makes a joy of your workspace.
• An accountant who comes in once a week and organizes your sales, your receipts, and your tax write-offs.
• A college student to deliver carry-out to your office for Friday lunches.
• A high-end graphic designer to develop a new logo for your team.
• A handyman to repair the leaking faucet, remove the coffee stains from the carpet, and install the refrigerator lightbulb – all of which you’ve been meaning to get to for 6 months.

Remember: be creative. You are probably doing a lot of things now that you could outsource.

Step 2: Choose a site to use

Can your job be done completely remotely – or do you need someone local to help you out? Are you looking for general help on a bunch of different tasks – or are you interested in a person with a very particular skill set?

We love and use Odesk.com for jobs that don’t need to be done in person. They have a huge number of people all over the world – they say more than 1.3 million people, both inside and outside of the U.S. – who can help you with almost any remote job imaginable. We manage our team of 125 through Odesk, many of the people on their site are extraordinary talented, and most are thrilled to get work and motivated to help you out.

For local jobs, we’re partial to Thumbtack.com (our site!). More than 180,000 local professionals – likehousecleaners,interiordesigners, andgraphicdesigners – have listed themselves on our site. Like Odesk, you can post a free ‘request’ on our site telling us what you need done, and we’ll do our best to send you 3-5 bids from qualified service professionals to your email inbox within 24 hours.

Odesk has been phenomenal for our needs. Thumbtack is more geared towards jobs that need to be done in-person or locally. There are also ‘in-between’ companies that specialize in certain types of work, like 99designs for graphic designers. And Ivana wrote here about a couple other sites you can try out as well.

Step 3: Post a job ad

The next step is to post a job ad on your chosen site.

This should be a pretty easy step – these websites try to make it as simple as possible for you to advertise what you need done.

The only two things you need to do are create an account on the site and fill out the form.

For example, here’s Odesk’s form:

As you can see – this step shouldn’t take you more than 3 minutes.

Step 4: Review your applicants

Most sites have a page where you can easily review and compare your applicants according to their credentials.

You’ll want to compare your applicants on a number of metrics:

• Experience – is this their first job through the site, or their 100th?
• Professionalism – was their response to you a ‘canned’ response filled with typos? Or was it a personalized response written in proper English?
• Enthusiasm – do they sound excited to work with you? Does your job fit their skill set?
• Affordability – how does their hourly price compare to that of other applicants?

Here’s an example of how our comparison page looks on Thumbtack:

This may seem complicated – but you’ll find that you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly which are the ones you might want to move forward with, and which aren’t.

Step 5: Hire and delegate!

Now you’re on the last step – hiring the person and delegating the project!

The act of hiring someone is pretty simple – most sites have a simple button that notifies the person you want to hire them. Or it will just be clear in your correspondence with the person that you want to work with them.

Delegating the project should be pretty easy – the person already has a description of the job that needs to get done. Usually at this point you’ll need to give them a few more details or some additional materials at this point – this is typically done either through the website’s internal messaging system or just by email.

If it’s a relatively small project, you can let the person run with it, and the next time you’ll hear from them is when the project is finished.

If it’s a larger project, I’d recommend having the person check in with you early on in the project so you can make sure everyone’s clear on how the project needs to get done.

And voila – that’s it.

In the best case scenario, you’ve saved yourself time, increased your productivity, and found a reliable partner to help you out with those things you no longer have time to do. And in the worst case scenario? You’ve spent a relatively small amount of money and time to find someone that didn’t end up working out. You can try again – maybe you’ll have better luck next time – or decide that outsourcing’s just not for you.

If you’re anything like us, you’ll be reluctant to outsource at first and wonder if it’s really worth the effort. But once you give it a try, you’ll never go back.

About the Author:   Sander Daniels is a Co-Founder and Director of User Happiness at Thumbtack.com, an online marketplace for local services. Thumbtack is a small business of 12 employees based in San Francisco.

Are you pulling your hair out trying to decide what type of web hosting is right for you or your business? You are not alone. Many individuals and businesses struggle with choosing a web host, because it can be confusing to the average user, not to mention it is a very daunting task. Be that as it may, it is crucial to find a good and compatible web host, because your website will not be successful without it. There are various types of web hosting to choose from and deciding which one to go with depends on the type of website you have, how much bandwidth is needed, and the different functions you will want for your site.

Shared Hosting versus Dedicated Server Hosting

With shared hosting, your website is one of many sites on the web host’s servers, and each site is on its own partition to separate it from other sites. You are responsible for the content, the service provider handles the rest – bandwidth, setting up the server, backups, security, updates, etc. Many small business and blog owners choose this, because it is the most economical. You pay a small monthly or yearly fee to use their equipment, and the service providers will handle the technical issues.

There are a few drawbacks to shared hosting, however. Each plan will have some limitations such as bandwidth and the amount of disk space you get. And because you are sharing a server, busier websites might possibly wreak havoc on your site’s performance. Also, you have to worry about your site crashing if the provider’s resources are overloaded. It is wise to choose a provider who has a good uptime percentage of, say 99%, because the less downtime, the better. Visitors to your site will not come back if it is continually down.

Dedicated server hosting is typically used by larger websites who receive a lot of traffic on a regular basis. With this type of hosting, an organization can lease an entire server without having to share it with others. Therefore, the organization has complete control over that server. There are no bandwidth limitations, your site is more secure, and it will perform better because your site is the only one on it.

Reseller Hosting versus Virtual Private Server

Reseller hosting is a great way to start a hosting business. With this type of hosting, a reseller can purchase web space from a web hosting company, and then sell it for revenue. A reseller is a person who acts as a representative of a web hosting company. Customers then pay a monthly fee to the reseller. The main advantage to reseller hosting is that you are using an established service and network, which means the configuration is already in place, and everything has been tried and tested.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtual server that is installed on a computer serving multiple websites. It is ideal for small businesses, and functions like a separate physical computer. VPS will contribute the same CPU and RAM, but will not share them with anyone else. When you purchase VPS, you get a machine that can reboot anytime you want without affecting other sites.

Cloud Hosting versus Free Domain Hosting

If you need a lot of processing power, then cloud hosting is for you. A cloud-hosted website operates on a massive infrastructure, instead of one server like with traditional hosting. Processing power is limitless. Because of hardware updates, load balancing, and more, you can expand your website with few inhibitions.

A big plus to cloud hosting is cost. Cloud hosting companies bill users based on the amount of computing power depleted, so they can get what they want without the worry of a huge expense.

However, the disadvantage to cloud hosting is security. For example, in May 2009, Google suffered a major outage. Businesses that relied on its numerous applications were unable to function without them. In addition, it gave hackers a better understanding of the damage they could do if they worked better at it.

Free domain hosting is just that – it is free hosting. Many hosting companies offer free domain hosting, because it allows users to host their website at no extra cost to them. The drawback to this, however, is that the hosting company has the right to put ads on your website for revenue, and that can be a big annoyance to visitors. Free domain hosting works best for personal blogs or websites.

Conclusion

If you are finding it difficult to decide which type of web hosting is for you, make sure that what you choose is compatible for you and your site’s needs. Cost, security issues, bandwidth, processing power, etc. all play a part in your decision. Do not settle for less than what is best for your site. Good hosting is necessary for its longevity and success.

Today’s guest post is by Adam Blitzer, COO and Co-founder of Pardot, a marketing and email automation system.  

The key to sales and marketing in a small business is efficiency. Marketing automation technology can help tremendously by eliminating manual effort and nurturing leads.

Small companies often have a seat-of-your-pants approach to marketing, simply because they can’t afford to hire a full-time marketing director.  Those companies lucky enough to have one, may have her handling sales or customer service responsibilities as well. If your business has invested in online marketing, through your website and/or social media, it requires considerable manual effort to send and track campaigns, measure results, and to separate the wheat from the chaff in those online-generated leads. Without distinct processes and technology to help manage all this, online marketing could be a big waste of time and money, yielding lackluster results.

If you are using the Web to generate leads, and you have a long and complex sales cycle typical of many B2B companies, you’ll want to automate as many marketing processes as possible. Not only does this simplify your efforts and free up more time for sales and business development, but it can also result in a greater return on your marketing efforts. Here’s a checklist to get started on marketing automation:

1. Build the online marketing foundation

To start, you’ll need a clean, easy-to-use and sales-ready website. Since most small companies don’t have in-house technical expertise in this area, outsourcing is your best bet. It’s possible to find a local web designer within your budget — someone who can not only design and develop the site but maintain it and add new features as needed. This might be one or two people, depending upon their skills, since web development and web design are two different practices. Don’t rush through the process. Your website is the cornerstone of your online marketing strategy.

Critical to your website strategy is the content. High-quality content drives traffic, attracts prospects, and retains customers. Most e-mail marketing campaigns link to landing pages where prospects can register to receive a white paper or attend a webinar. Visitors will want to learn something substantial about your product or space, not just receive a marketing spiel. Outsourcing that content development is a smart idea. There are plenty of freelance writers with subject matter expertise, and willing to lend a hand without the Madison Avenue price tag. To get the most bang for your buck, develop content that can be used in multiple ways: Blog posts that can expand into a white paper, or a webinar that contains quotes for a Q&A, for instance. Ideally, you will have a content management system (CMS) that is simple enough for any employee to use, so that you don’t have to call the Web team every time you want to update content on your site.

2. Choose strategic yet simple marketing technology

Many small businesses use free and low-cost tools such as Google Analytics for metrics, Constant Contact for e-mail marketing and Wufoo for online forms. Beyond campaign creation and tracking, consider how you will manage the leads generated by those campaigns. Manually sorting those leads, qualifying them, and then following up with e-mails is time-consuming especially if many of those leads are still “cool.” Marketing automation software allows you to set up a nurturing program that kicks out e-mails and new offers as the prospect progresses up the ladder of engagement.

Marketing automation software also includes many of those point solutions, such as e-mail marketing, forms and metrics. That way, you can reduce the number of tools that your staff needs to learn and use (which lowers complexity and long-term costs) and also realize other efficiencies related to lead management. Marketing automation software comes in all flavors, depending upon your business size and needs. Look for solutions that are extremely simple to use and learn and require minimal IT support. Fortunately, cloud-based service offerings are prevalent today.

3. Qualify your leads

This is the bread-and-butter of online marketing.  Companies that are adept at qualifying prospects and understanding their level of interest can get ahead quickly.  Scoring leads allows you to see which leads are hot, and which are not, and which leads just need a bit more time. The lead that comes to your site every week, spends time on your pages and clicks on campaign content will naturally have a higher score than someone who occasionally reads your blog. Marketing automation systems automatically supply a score to each lead, based on the rules that you set up in the beginning. Your company now has a clear indication of a visitor’s level of interest in your products or services, based on their activity. You can also set up filters to ensure leads meet certain “ideal prospect” factors – such as job title or industry – that can help determine if they are a good fit for your company. What about my CRM system, you may ask? CRM software is excellent for organizing contacts and storing information about them, but it can’t qualify leads. Google Analytics provides metrics on an aggregate level by telling you how many visitors you have monthly on your site, and where they spend their time. Only marketing automation can give you detailed information about an individual lead’s behavior, which is critical for B2B companies. Scoring tells the sales team exactly who to call first.

4. Automate follow-up

What a prospect isn’t ready to buy right away, salespeople don’t want to waste time with a phone call or personalized e-mail. This is where nurturing programs come in to play. Marketing automation allows you to “set and forget” rules and processes for nurturing so that your team jumps in only when the prospect has progressed to a certain level of interest. It’s best to start out with one basic nurturing program, and add additional nurturing tracks later when there is a need. A basic program might look something like this: a visitor who fills out a Web form for the first time will receive a thank you e-mail with a link to a white paper. In two weeks, the system will send him another e-mail with a link to a webcast. If he registers for that, the following week he may receive an invitation for a sales demo. If he doesn’t respond to the webcast invitation, he will receive a different type of content — and so on.

Marketing automation software also includes real-time alerts. Let’s say a prospect tracked in your system is on your site downloading product collateral. A sales rep assigned to that prospect can get instant alerts when one of their assigned prospects visits the website or requests additional collateral, and choose to call the prospect right then. Studies from Harvard and other institutions have shown that following up on hot leads when they are engaged has more success than waiting a few hours or days.

Automating marketing activities doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s always best to start slowly and keep it simple, so that you and your team don’t get overwhelmed by a product’s features and capabilities. Begin by scoring your leads and setting up a simple nurturing program. As with many functions in business today, automate the repetitive processes so that your people can focus on growth activities, such as developing relationships with high-value prospects and customers. This is where technology can truly provide ROI to a small company’s sales and marketing efforts.

About the Author: Adam Blitzer Is COO and Co-founder of Pardot. Adam is responsible for product management, marketing, and operations. Adam was previously a senior email marketing consultant for InterContinental Hotels Group, a consultant at Moxie Interactive, and spent four years in Japan at an advertising agency

The holy grail of “marketing automation” continues to be the reining “shiny object” within the marketing industry.  First reserved for B2C, then for large enterprise B2B, marketing automation has now expanded into the small business market.  But too often companies think they need marketing automation and implement a full system right off the bat. Before you buy, creating a detailed plan of your goals, resources and expectations can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.  It is important to evaluate the problem you’re trying to solve and set clear goals for what you are trying to achieve before shopping for a system.

Here are four steps for building your Marketing Automation plan:

Step 1: Determine your goals/objectives.

This will help you stay focused on your particular needs and not get caught up in extra features and functionality that may not prove useful to your business now or in the near term. In a recent study of businesses that have implemented marketing automation, nearly 50% use fewer than half of the features for the first year of ownership. It is common for companies to over-buy, based on the assumption that they will eventually grow into the system.  Truth is most companies’ move from email marketing platforms to marketing automation platforms because they simply want to be better at email marketing. This makes sense in theory, but if all you want to be able to do, is better target prospects, based on behavior and hand off interested leads to your sales team, based on prospect interest, you don’t need the full feature set that most marketing automation systems offer. The key is to find a system that can meet your needs today, but grow with you as your needs increase. So ask yourself these questions before jumping in:

-      Do you want to be better at email marketing?

-      Do you want to be able to behaviorally target customers?

-      Do you need to get more qualified leads to your sales team?

-      Do you have a complex product and are your sales cycles are too long?

-      Have heard that marketing automation is great, so you must need one?

Step 2: What functions do you expect to get out of the system?

The capabilities vary from vendor to vendor. Some solutions tout themselves as being the jack of all trades (master of none), while others pride them on being very good at a core set of features. For instance, some systems will run all of your sales and marketing processes in one place, including CRM, e-commerce, email marketing and drip marketing. While others are more focused on B2B businesses, where they have very robust marketing automation and email marketing capabilities, but integrate with your existing CRM and other systems, instead of providing them. Most small businesses would opt for the former, but would be upset as rapidly discovered the limitations of the system. Others might go for the latter, but would get overwhelmed by the richness of the features set. Evaluate your current systems, what and how you will need to integrate and how advanced you want your systems to operate.

Step 3: Determine your capabilities and limitations:  This will give you a guideline for which solutions meet your needs.  If you don’t have the staff to manage a complex system then all of the added benefits it might provide will be for naught.

-      How many people can you commit to managing a system?

-      A full automation implementation requires a significant amount of unique content for drip campains and lead form pages.  Do you have the resources to create the content to make full marketing automation successful?

-      How much IT expertise or support do you have in house?

-      What is your budget?

-      Is this B2B, B2C, person-to-person or web-based?

-      Do you have a CRM system? Does it need to integrate with your marketing system?

Step 4: Identify your organization’s marketing needs to understand the level of automation you require.

-      How many segments will you be addressing?

-      How long and complex is your buying process?

-      Do you intend for salespeople to use it?

-      Are you looking to track marketing revenue?

-      Do you need predictive analytics?

-      What kinds of programs are you looking to run?

-      Do you need automated nurturing, or will you be running manual drip campaigns?

-      Do you need to include social media in your content marketing programs?

-      Will you be using lead scoring?

Step 5: Invest in training from the on-set! Most failed implementations are due to a lack of investment in training and resource allocation. Engage those that will be using the product, make sure it is easy to use and intuitive because if no one is using the product then the investment was a waste.

At the end of the day, a successful marketing automation system can intelligently message to and nurture your prospects, reduce sales times and focus your sales efforts on only the most promising and interested prospects. Taking the time upfront to qualify these questions, determine your marketing objectives and find the solution that really meets your unique needs can make your marketing automation implementation a triumph.

About the Author: As CEO of Genius.com, Sam Weber is responsible for creating and executing on the company’s overall vision, overseeing all business operations and working closely with customers to grow the business. Weber brings over 15 years of extensive experience in enterprise software sales, pre-sales, support and professional services having worked with companies including: KnowNow; E.piphany; Clarify; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

On Monday July 25, 2011 between 7:00pm and 8:00pm ET there’s going to be a Tweet Chat about the SMBInfluencer Awards.

What are the SMBInlfuencer Awards?

The small business space has become increasingly crowded and overwhelming.  Even if you troll around the small business internet space, it’s unbelievably easy to be confused about who is an expert in what and which companies provide what service.

This is why co-founders Anita Campbell, publisher of the award winning Small Business Trends and Ramon Ray from SmallBizTechnology.com put their heads together and came up with a way to recognize the companies, leaders, gurus and media organizations that help and influence small business every day.

This project started in June with nominations pouring in from all over the internet.  And the voting period started about a week or so ago.  To get some more background and see the field of SMBInfluencers, visit the SMBInfluencer site and browse around.  Feel free to vote for the people who have influenced you and helped you in your business.  You can vote daily and you can vote for more than one person.  So head over there and give it a try.

Join the #SMBInlfuencer Tweet Chat (Use Hashtag #BBSMBchat)

If you’ve never been in a tweet chat, you will find this an engaging and thrilling experience.  A tweet chat is a live conversation about a specific topic that is going on in Twitter.

You can participate in this Twitter chat by joining us on Twitter — search on the hashtag #BBSMBChat and weigh in withyour tips, insights and ideas. Or follow the action at the Tweetchat room: http://tweetchat.com/room/BBSMBchat

For all the details about the Tweet Chat and the SMBInlfuencer awards – Read the press release for SMBInfluencer Awards and Tweet Chat (#BBSMBchat)

Sure, we know effective branding is crucial for a company’s viable success, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing how to implement a realistic branding strategy. Branding can be even more challenging for small business owners who might not have the funds needed for extensive marketing platforms. Fortunately, small businesses owners still have a number of inexpensive avenues they can explore when looking to brand a new enterprise — they might just have to think outside the box a bit.

When branding a new business, you should really take the time to explore all of the options thoroughly because the decisions you make now will define your company’s image for years to come. The following are five questions you should ask yourself before you begin developing potential branding elements.

1. What are you trying to say?
   Your first priority should be to develop a communicable message that accurately represents your business and what it offers consumers, whether it be a product or service. Take the time to think about every aspect of your business. Writing a mission statement for your enterprise is a great way to solidify what your company is all about.
   You need to have a well-thought-out message from the get-go so your branding practices can be implemented consistently in the future.  The overall design concept, individual logo and expressive colors should flow seamlessly to deliver one comprehensive message about your business.
2. How much money can you afford to spend?
   Some small businesses might have the start-up capital necessary to hire a freelance designer or marketing specialist to help them brand their company. Others might not have funds to allocate toward developing a marketing strategy, which makes the initial branding process that much more important. If the latter is true for your business, contact the marketing or graphic design departments of colleges/universities in your area. Higher education programs often offer opportunities for their students to get real-world experience by working with local businesses. You’ll get free marketing and branding development, and they’ll get college credit and professional clips for their portfolios.
3. How do you want customers to perceive your business?
   The first branding component potential customers will see and remember is your company logo. People should be able to recognize your business by its logo, and color choice plays a big role in your decision. Choose something that will draw attention but still look professional. Get feedback from as many people as you can before you settle on a logo. Ask your friends, family members and professional colleagues what their opinions are, because, as consumers, their opinions are all relevant.
4. What should your online presence be?
   Today’s consumers expect to find the companies they do business with online. As such, every business should have some sort of online presence. The extent to which you promote your brand online will depend on your staff and its financial capacity, but there’s certainly no reason you can’t establish a profile on social media sites for free. If you choose to set up a unique website, make it easy to navigate with contact information that’s readily available. Websites should always be eye-catching yet informative to best meet the needs of potential customers.
5. How will you maintain your brand?
   Once you’ve established what you want your brand to be, consider the various marketing strategies that will help you promote it in the future. Carefully consider who your potential clients are and how to best reach them. Take advantage of every viable opportunity to get your brand out into the public. The more familiar the public is with your brand, the more likely they will be to work with you in the future.

Considering these questions from the get-go will put you on the right track to building a brand that will give you positive results. When developing a brand for your new small business, the takeaway point is to keep it simple and keep it consistent.

This article was written by Kristen Bradley SuretyBonds.com, a nationwide surety bond producer. SuretyBonds.com helps new small business owners meet licensing requirements every day. The agency provides professional advice to entrepreneurs to help them open for business as soon as possible.

I’m always being asked for strategies to increase the ROI of social media.  DIYMarketers are busy folks and no one has any time to waste.

My advice to every crazy-busy  small business owner who has recognized that social media as a marketing vehicle is just too valuable to pass up is to streamline and automate wherever possible.

Tools to Help You Automate

My favorite automation tools are HootSuite, MarketMeSuite and SocialOomph.  Each of these social media apps allow you to manage many accounts and automate and schedule Tweets.   I allocate about 15 minutes a day to review my goals and strategies for social media and program any Twitter love I want to hand out to my community.

I use automation to do the things that don’t require any personal interaction.

• Promote your peeps. For example, if my clients are running a special contest or program, I create unique tweets with hashtags and links and program those to go out over the course of the day/week or month depending on the program.
• ReTweet. I pay attention to content that I’m always re-tweeting.  For example, I noticed over time that I re-tweet just about every quuote, cartoon or infographic that’s out there.  So I automate those items.  I also have people whose content I just love that I’ve automated as ReTweets.
• Manage Followers. I’ve automated my following using SocialOomph.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t clean my lists, it just means that I follow everyone and then about once a month, I spend an hour or so watching TV and cleaning my list.

Automation Doesn’t Build Relationships or Influence — Conversations Do

Don’t think that automating everything will bring you success — in fact, it will ruin your brand reputation.  Brand equity and follower responsiveness is built with personal conversations that you have with people and the action items that come from those conversations — and THIS is where so many of us fall down.  We have these great ideas, and we don’t follow through — and this is where Nimble becomes your saving grace.

Nimble is the Next Generation of Relationship Management – Social CRM

Anyone in sales and marketing is familiar with the CRM systems like SalesForce, ACT and Goldmine.  These systems were developed to manage customer relationships, but have evolved into sales and marketing management reporting systems rather than relationship development systems.

I have several clients who use all of these programs and they definitely bring value — but with 28 million small business owners and over 50% of them being solo-preneurs, these systems really do little to manage those all-important and profitable relationships.

The observations I’m making here aren’t just mine — these ideas come straight from Jon Ferrara, the developer and CEO of Goldmine and now, the creator of Nimble — the latest CRM tool for the social generation of small business owners.

Nimble Streamlines and Automates the Relationship Building Process Without Sacrificing the Personal Touch

I’m a Google Apps girl.  And on any given day, I can have as many as 15 tabs open in my browser.  I hop and skip from email to calendar to HootSuite and then click over to my Google task manager to make sure I am getting everything done that I’m supposed to do.  It’s crazy.

I’m always looking for tools that will help me reduce the number of tabs I have open in my browser.  Nimble is one of those tools.

Nimble combines the three core activities that every small business owner has to manage 80% of the time; email, calendar and social media conversations.

All you do is register, import your email accounts, primary Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and your calendar.  That’s all there is to it.  The entire process took me about 3 minutes.  And I did it while chatting with Jon Ferrara about a completely unrelated topic.  So you won’t need a lot of concentration to complete the task successfully.

Nimble keeps things very simple — notice that I said PRIMARY social media accounts and calendar.   Nimble’s focus is on building profitable relationships and actions and not just on generating tweets, updates and content.

Nimble Ties Contacts, Conversations and Tasks Together

I haven’t used this feature much – but I’ve only been using the system for a day, so it’s just a matter of time.  Nimble gives you the ability to TIE TOGETHER your social conversation with contacts and tasks.  Here’s how it works.

Say you start a Twitter conversation with someone.  They ask you a question, you answer and then you start a conversation about a potential opportunity you want to create together — say you decide to partner on a webinar for example.  So now, you’re going to move the conversation to an email.

With every other system, the Twitter conversation is lost in the Twittersphere and then it continues in your email client.  Then you add tasks on your list.  In Nimble — ALL of these things become CONNECTED.  So that you can see that you started your relationship on Twitter and then migrated it to email and then you can create tasks from the email or the Twitter stream.  In the midst of all this, you’ve added this new person into your personal contact database.

Standard marketing strategy for maximizing on social media is to transition these virtual relationships into REAL LIFE, face-to-face interactions — and Nimble allows you to do that.

What You WON’T Find in Nimble — Today

One notable item that’s missing from Nimble that makes in practically incomparable to the current CRM systems is it’s lack of sales funnels and management reporting.  The focus is squarely on meeting people, building and generating leads and generating tasks based on these relationships.

That doesn’t mean that these items aren’t coming.  In my conversation with Jon, he shared the future of Nimble and you can expect to see all these items and more become part of the application — for a fee.

For now, I’d recommend that you sign up for Nimble and give it a shot.  It will take some practice to wean yourself away from the myriad tools you’re using now.  I still find myself going over to my email now and then before I remember that I can send messages from Nimble — but guess what?  That doesn’t matter because Nimble still keeps track of all that.  So you can send email from ANY device you like – and it will be connected.

Nimble is a super new tool. I’ve already noticed that I’ve increased the number of valuable interactions and conversations that I’ve had on all my social networks.  So far, I’ve found Nimble to be a valuable complement to my automated social media content.  It’s helped me to become a more interactive and influential part of the conversation.

Related articles

• CRM Daily | Nimble Offers Social Relationship Manager for Teams (serve4impact.com)
• Nimble Launches 2.0 – Unifying Team Contacts, Communications and Collaboration (diversity.net.nz)
• Using Nimble.com to Unify Your Social Network Contacts (readwriteweb.com)
• 5 Ways to Get Started With Social CRM Today (oneforty.com)
• Thinking one step ahead with social CRM (customerthink.com)
• Striking the Right Balance With Social CRM (customerthink.com)
• 5 Tools for Automating Twitter (blogs.sitepoint.com)
• 10 Steps to integrate CRM and Social Media (#SocialCRM, #scrm) (customerthink.com)
• The Top 5 Alternatives to Salesforce.com (customerthink.com)