Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Keep Up with Small Business Trends with Comcast Business

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I spend a lot of time online trying not only to keep up with what is going on with my industry but also what is going on with business in general. It’s basically a full-time job just staying on top of affiliate marketing. Add to that technology, human resources, public relations and everything else that goes into running a small business and you may very well find yourself buried in information.

Did you know that you can turn to the Comcast Small Business Community for new articles every day on the latest trends in small business?  Just in the last week I have found information about:

  • How to hire the right people (overqualified candidates, new college grads, etc)
  • Tips on creating a new venture
  • Secrets about getting new referrals (this one was particularly helpful to me)
  • Using social media to increase sales (including a slide presentation and webinar)
  • Why some customers are NOT worth it

The site makes it easy to search by content area or explore what is currently trending. The articles are easily digestible and often have links to other resources if you want to explore the topics further.

The industries covered by the Comcast Small Business Community are pretty diverse–including Bars and Restaurants (with contributor Robert Irvine), Retail, Education, and even Sports. It’s clear that they are working on providing small business resources that complement their product offerings.

It’s easy to get bogged down in only reading the same sites and authors all the time–particularly those who write in your industry. Take a few minutes to check out some of the articles I mentioned above and remember why you started your business to begin with and what you need to take it to the next level.

Disclosure: Comcast Business partnered with bloggers such as me for this program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any product mentioned in these posts. Comcast Business believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Comcast Business’ policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.

Why You Should Join a Slack Group

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Benefits of Using Slack

I wasn’t exactly an early adopter of Slack. In fact, Brian Littleton had to almost drag me to it. But very quickly I came to understand why. I know at the outset it seems like just another tab you have to keep open on your computer, but once you start using it you will see why it might become your most important tab.

Explaining Slack is hard. It’s a combination of instant messenger, meeting place, calendar notices, and file sharing. There are so many integrations that you can include that you can make it do a variety of things that will streamline your processes and keep you organized. You could pretty much use Slack just by yourself and find it useful in a lot of ways, but there are so many benefits to joining a Slack group.

Collaboration is Key

Whether you are working with colleagues in a corporate setting, volunteering with a non-profit, or sharing information with people of like interests, Slack is perfect for collaborating. Once you join a Slack group, you can work with others in a public or private channel, start small group conversations, and send direct messages to people. You can send files back and forth easily and keep them organized. You can tag people you want to respond to something so you know that they will see it. Use a “thumbs up” for simple voting or weighing in on ideas.

Affiliate Slackers

Being a part of a Slack group means you can quickly get responses without interrupting the flow of your day. It’s easy to bounce ideas around. There is also a built-in search functionality so that if you know someone mentioned something at a point in the past, you can search back for it rather than asking them again. [Read more…]

Are You Treating Your Blog Like a Small Business?

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Most bloggers didn’t start out thinking they were going to change careers or become full-time affiliate marketers. Many of us started off the same way with a simple niche blog about our kids or our hobbies or a cause that we cared about. Somewhere along the way that changed. We started making a little money. We accumulated a following. We learned that although blogging can be fun, it can also be a genuine business. But you have to change your mindset. You have to think beyond plugins and site themes and start thinking about technology and business plans.

Technology is More Than Just a Convenience

As I have been working with Comcast Business this last 2 months, I have been thinking more and more about the role that technology plays in my business besides just the fact that I am “online.” The technology that powers my company includes everything from the backbone of my sites to how I communicate with my employees. It impacts how my customers reach me. No matter what your business is, you can’t afford to look at technology anymore as just a way to do things easier or more conveniently.

Your technology plan has to be at the heart of your business. How will you ensure that you stay online? Do you have a plan if your service goes out? The video Creating Your Technology Plan helps explain how you can get from identifying key challenges to building your technology plan. (The video includes Peter Bordes, who is the CEO & Founder of oneQube but I know from his time on the Performance Marketing Association Board of Directors).

When you start thinking about these kinds of things, you start moving your blog in the direction of being a true small business.

Partner with a Company You Trust

2 out of 3 of business owners feel overwhelmed when it comes to technology. The best thing that you can do is find a company that you trust and let them help you fulfill your technology plan. You need someone who is responsive and understands small businesses. Comcast Business reports that you can reach one of their specially trained Business Service representatives within about 30 seconds. 30 seconds! When is the last time you had a tech problem and got in touch with someone that quickly?

If you are like me and started your business on the side, you can get evening and weekend installations to fit your schedule. Use Comcast and their Business Community to help you:

  • Take a fresh look at your business plan
  • Understand how technology can fill gaps
  • Find a trusted advisor or service provider

Let them show you how they can help you keep your business both secure and more productive.

Comcast Business partnered with bloggers such as me for this program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any product mentioned in these posts. Comcast Business believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Comcast Business’ policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.

Be Careful When Accepting LinkedIn Requests

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This morning as I was making my way through emails I found a LinkedIn request from someone I didn’t recognize. When I recognize a name, I always accept. When I don’t recognize the name, I go through a few steps to figure out whether I should accept. This (likely) spammer almost got me! Here are the steps I took and how they almost made their way into my network. More importantly, I explain why it’s a good thing I didn’t accept.

The Invitation Email

At first glance, nothing in the invitation jumped out at me as being fishy. Sometimes the whole invitation will be in another language or the company they are with is clearly something I don’t want to be involved with.

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The fact that the first name was in all caps was a little weird to me but not enough of a red flag to ignore it completely. I wasn’t sure if that might just be a LinkedIn formatting issue. Plus, it would be plausible for someone in Indianapolis to want to connect with me, especially someone in marketing. So I clicked to view the profile.

The Profile

The profile had a couple of things going for it. First of all, I recognized all of the companies listed. The positions made sense as did the years in each position.

Even more importantly was the “How You’re Connected” section.

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Now, I have blurred out my friends’ pictures because I don’t want to embarrass any of them. But suffice to say there were a LOT of Indy friends who were 1 connection away from “Sharon.” Many of those Indy friends are bloggers or other people in marketing. So in my mind it would make total sense that someone from Kellogg might possibly want to contact me about some kind of Brand Influencer opportunity (see my last post on that).

The Profile Picture

My last step is always checking out the profile picture, and this is where I hit gold. See that profile image? I saved it and ran it through Tineye. The result? This:

linkedin3We’ve got a match! The only way that profile picture is “Sharon Morris” is if Sharon is “Isolated Indian Professional Business Woman Presenting With Hand.”

What If I Had Accepted?

So what is the worst thing that would have happened if I had accepted the request? At the very least, I would have received some inbox spam that I could have ignored.

More importantly, my own network reputation is on the line. Using LinkedIn is all about building up trust and sharing connections. Clearly this spammer was targeting Indianapolis business professionals. If I had accepted their request, the next person they invited would have seen that I was a direct connection to the spammer, so they would have been more likely to accept the request. Once they started getting spammed, they would have looked back and seen that I was the one who basically vouched for the spammer by being the connection.

Do yourself a favor and look closely before accepting LinkedIn requests. You may not care if you get a little spam in your inbox, but your own connections might. Keep your network clean so that people will trust your recommendations and connections.

Relationships and Adaptation Led to 10 Successful Years

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sunshinerewards-collageThis month my company Sunshine Rewards celebrates 10 years in business. Although I have been in affiliate marketing longer than that, for some reason this milestone is the one that is most important to me. It’s meant weathering a lot of storms and building partnerships that are the foundation of everything I do.

When we started SR, my husband Kevin and I were armed with some technical skills, a little knowledge about affiliate marketing, and a desire to create something that would get us out of the $100K debt we found ourselves in between college and law school loans, building a house, and having 2 kids in the first 4 years of our marriage. We knew that if we wanted to really change our lives, we had to do something BIG. This is how we did it.

The Start of Something Big

On January 10, 2006, we registered www.sunshinerewards.com. We bought a cheap starter script and Kevin spent every evening and weekend hour rewriting things to make it our own. The logo was made in Paint or something like that. Our goal was to make a simple site where we could put up affiliate links and share the revenue with our friends who used them: Here’s how the site looked (this is really embarrassing):

sunshinerewards-1 [Read more…]