Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The video above shows 10,000 Japanese people singing Beethoven’s Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy). I’ve never seen or heard a 10,000 person chorus – it’s pretty impressive.

Wondering how your competitors are using Pinterest to increase their revenues? Here’s a good guide – http://bit.ly/JGEus8

What Small Businesses Can Learn From The World’s Best Brands – http://bit.ly/L7w1zq

Small Business and Startup Tips: Analyze This (a Data Primer) – http://bit.ly/MAnPJA

crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Penn Brewery – http://bit.ly/LfMldU

The $1 Billion Club Gets Crowded – http://on.wsj.com/KfXqfK

Wondering how your competitors are using Pinterest to increase their revenues? Here’s a good guide – http://bit.ly/JGEus8

Small Business and Startup Tips: Analyze This (a Data Primer) – http://bit.ly/MAnPJA

The Darwinian Evolution of Startup Hubs – http://bit.ly/Li4aZl

Why Instagram Won’t Be the Last Billion Dollar App – http://on.mash.to/JcxaGv

Has the term “innovation” lost its meaning? – http://on.wsj.com/LgeaTs

Lies, Damned Lies, and Pitch Decks – http://bit.ly/JEpkWz

Freemium Pricing for SaaS: Optimizing Paid Conversion Upgrades – http://bit.ly/KJkV4y

‘The Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over, and We’re Dancing on its Grave’ – http://bit.ly/KwEyZJ

CEO’s Can’t Tweak Their Way To Innovation – http://bit.ly/Llufdi

The Inside Story Of What Happened On The Facebook IPO – http://read.bi/KwAqXK

9 Deadliest Start-up Sins – http://bit.ly/Kg031g

Good poston pivoting – be careful – http://me.lt/5kUJC

Good suggestions on keeping balance while working – http://bit.ly/LoJQp0

How Tim Cook is changing Apple – http://bit.ly/KBBzxm

Pivots are a Trap – http://bit.ly/K8uV4y

Excelerate Labs, Just the Facts Please – http://bit.ly/KC86Jb

Good article about Facebook’s dual stock class structure & investors – http://nyr.kr/MAsPhs

Why stay-at-home mothers are more depressed than working moms – http://bit.ly/KdMD72

Take a Tour of 1871, a New 50,000 sq-ft Coworking Space in Chicago – http://techco.tl/JwQgSk

How Intern Mentorship Works at Khan Academy – http://bit.ly/Li6a3F

Facebook IPO, and How to Build a Social Network for $389 – http://bit.ly/KYyfjW

GM Bows Out of Super Bowl Advertising – http://on.wsj.com/JTOIoq

Q1 saw the most tech IPOs in four years, but funding amounts are down – http://bit.ly/KBDFNN

Why Independent Employment Is Killing the Nine to Five Job – http://huff.to/KfZl41

Female Business Owners Network, Trade Success Secrets http://shar.es/qqOQG

Number of job listings with the term “ninja” have increased 2,505% in past 6 yrs – http://on.wsj.com/Mtpdh9

Is it time to change the way we work? – http://bit.ly/KfZVPm

Big Day for a Space Entrepreneur Promising More – http://nyti.ms/KLbfCJ

Are Facebook Investors Playing Russian Roulette? – http://bit.ly/LoIzhR

The Facebook Fallacy – http://bit.ly/KJkuat

Facebook IPO Post Mortem – Killer – but not for the reasons you think ! – http://bit.ly/MJUk8m

“Chicks Rule?” A great breakdown of which gender dominates networks – http://post.ly/7Qc7G

Does GM Have a Point About Facebook? Yes, Rivals Concede – http://onforb.es/KfVzaO

Why I Lost My Faith In Facebook Advertising – http://onforb.es/JcxWmS

How Facebook’s bankers saved an IPO, kept shares above $38 – http://cnet.co/KwDSDN

Pretty good analysis of what Facebook stock is actually worth (when you take out the hype) – http://read.bi/LaXrkj

Sorry, But This Whining And Umbrage About Facebook’s IPO Is Ridiculous – http://read.bi/KC7Sln

Why Did Zynga’s Stock Drop After Facebook Went Public? – http://bit.ly/KC9nA8

Proof That Pinterest Drives Sales, And Its Fans Spend Big – http://bit.ly/Li2dfr

Women Click on More Facebook Ads – http://bit.ly/KpeUWA

11 Free High Quality Fonts – http://bit.ly/KjFfYF

Wow – what a creative way to show an infographic – http://bit.ly/JAbkvI

A roundup of awesome stickers design – http://bit.ly/KYGqg7

45 Fresh Must See Photoshop Tutorials from 2012 – http://bit.ly/KjBhza

95 Excellent High Resolution Wood Textures For Designers – http://bit.ly/KdVKFw

Terrific essay about book cover design … Hack the Cover – http://bit.ly/KBE2YM

The History Of Usability: From Simplicity To Complexity – http://bit.ly/LgawZJ

30 Fun and Interactive Business Cards – http://bit.ly/KjAPAT

30 Lovely Green Business Cards – http://bit.ly/LaNuDx

A Showcase of Creative Gig Posters – http://bit.ly/L80XiP

30 Creative Package Design Examples – http://bit.ly/LExQ9n

30 Free Essential Photoshop Ornament Brushes – http://bit.ly/MHj4hg

Album Cover Artwork Throughout the Decades – http://bit.ly/KgmkgB

30 Packaging Designs Which Showcase Creative Innovation – http://bit.ly/K8qaYR

30 amazing and stunning business card designs – http://bit.ly/KUBiHS

How To Choose The Right Face For A Beautiful Body – http://bit.ly/Keh2mq

17 Transparent Plastic Business Cards – http://bit.ly/KjzNEX

30 Free Dazzling Photoshop Bokeh Brushes – http://bit.ly/Kjz6f5

10 Free Amazing Motion Design Fonts – http://bit.ly/Ke7IPz

The art of print ads: 30 stunning examples – http://bit.ly/KYFFUa

30 Free Pretty Designs of Flower Font – http://bit.ly/LaN3t1

20 of Today’s Most Exciting Artists and Illustrators Reimagine the Paper Plane – http://bit.ly/JAdL1j

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

40 (More) Creative Negative Space Logo Designs – http://bit.ly/LaLrPO

10 Free Amazing Motion Design Fonts – http://bit.ly/Ke7IPz

11 Free High Quality Fonts – http://bit.ly/KjFfYF

Designing Search: As-You-Type Suggestions – http://bit.ly/KYGa0y

50 fantastic tools for responsive web design – http://bit.ly/LaORlz

Websites That Come In Black – http://bit.ly/JMgFl4

30 Brilliant Examples of Responsive Web Designs – http://bit.ly/K8nqKZ

The State of Design in 2012: Six Header Design Trends – http://bit.ly/MHjgwZ

Improving 404 Page Design – http://bit.ly/LlZykP

20 of Today’s Most Exciting Artists and Illustrators Reimagine the Paper Plane – http://bit.ly/JAdL1j

Interesting insight for writers … use sensory verbs to better stimulate readers – http://bit.ly/KXAhic

The fascinating history of the paperclip. It wasn’t always the one we use today – http://bit.ly/KXxLsd

PayPal handles 60% of web transactions, leaves Google in the dust – http://bit.ly/KfUvUz

An Egyptian 19 year old invents a way for spacecraft to maneuver in space without thrusters (using quantum physics) – http://bit.ly/MHjxjz

The Samsung might get me to give up my Apple fanboy card – http://bit.ly/JsXlZS

Nearly 16% of loans made by Greek banks last year went bad, compared with 7.7% in 2009 – http://sto.ly/KoGi9y

Boy, 15, invents simple, cheap test for pancreatic cancer – http://on-msn.com/KjKiID

10,000 Japanese singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – http://bit.ly/KjE6QI!

People are eating fish faster than fish can replace their population – http://bit.ly/MAtake

Why Independent Employment Is Killing the Nine to Five Job – http://huff.to/KfZl41

Is it time to change the way we work? – http://bit.ly/KfZVPm

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

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Market research firm Millward Brown has  published its annual BrandZ study, ranking the world’s leading brands. Interestingly, four of the top five and seven of the top ten are technology companies. The study ranks the world’s brands by their dollar value (based on financial data, market intelligence and consumer measures of brand equity).

What additional lessons can small businesses learn from BrandZ 2012 study?

First, great products and services are critical to building a strong brand. Apple, for the second year in a row, is the world’s leading brand. According to the BrandZ 2012 rankings, Apple increased its brand value by 19 percent this past year – to $183 billion (37 percent of Apple’s market capitalization). This was extraordinary – especially since its visionary founder, Steve Jobs, died last year.

Most people write about brands to share their experiences, to offer advice, and to praise a brand.

Second, you can’t coast when you’re the market leader – there’s always someone on your tail. According to the BrandZ study:

Apple continues to innovate and maintain its ‘luxury’ brand status, but faces future competition from Samsung. Samsung is successfully outpacing Apple in a significant number of markets by positioning as a cool, well-priced alternative to the ubiquitous iPhone.

Third, a strong brand will help a company weather tough times. Between 2006 and 2012, a period that saw the economies of most countries around the world challenged with high unemployment and generally unfavorable conditions, the total value of BrandZ top 100 increased 66 percent.

Fourth, reaching the top doesn’t guarantee success. In 2008, Nokia was the world’s ninth most valuable brand. Last year, Nokia was ranked 81st and this year, it fell even further. A company cannot stop innovating because even a strong brand will suffer when you create average or below average products or services.

Fifth, you don’t have to mimic the brand personality of your competitor to succeed. In fact, brands in the same category, but with radically different personalities, can succeed. The key is to understand your brand’s personality and be consistent in your messaging.

I recommend you download a PDF copy of the BrandZ report – there’s much more great insight that we haven’t discussed.

Related posts:

1. What Can You Learn From The World’s Best Brands?
2. Most Valuable Brand In The World: Google
3. 5 great viral marketing campaigns (and what small businesses can learn from them!)

If you live on the East Coast, you should check out this week’s spotlight: Penn Brewery.   Founded in 1986– when craft beer was in its infancy– Penn Brewery consistently produces quality and interesting beers, from Czech-style pilsners to chocolate stouts. Beer Advocate (my website obsession) ranked the brewery overall as exceptional. Penn Brewery and its restaurant are located in Pittsburgh, but you can find where to buy it here.

Co-owner and director of marketing, Linda, talked to me some more about what’s brewing at Penn:

How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?

I co-own a microbrewery & restaurant and also serve as its marketing director.  I am responsible for our advertising, public relations, our mailers, our label designs, promotions, and many of our online programs, including our website. I spend much of my day writing.

What are some industry specific challenges you faced?

The craft beer industry is growing rapidly, and that means that there are literally thousands of beer brands that we compete against.  Because craft beer consumers like variety and are always eager to try something new, we must constantly develop new products to keep our line fresh.  Another challenge that we face is that beer is a regulated industry, both at the national and state levels, meaning that we have many, many legal guidelines to take into consideration when we manufacture, market, and sell our products.

What was your biggest learning curve/experience?

Simply learning about beer and the beer industry.  Although I’d had more than twenty years of packaged goods marketing experience when I got involved with Penn Brewery, I had never worked in the beer industry itself.

What made you use crowdSPRING? 

Because Penn Brewery is a small business, we need to be especially careful about controlling our costs.  Yet we don’t want cost control to equal subpar quality.  CrowdSPRING attracted me because I loved the idea of getting professional design work at a price I knew I could afford.  I also liked the opportunity it afforded me to tap into a large talent pool and choose from among many different design concepts

What’s the craziest story you have from starting your own business?

I seemed to become a lot more popular once I owned a brewery! People are always eager to talk about beer and learn more about it, and they’re also very curious about what it’s like to be a woman in the beer industry.  I once even received a (tongue-in-cheek) marriage proposal from a man when he heard what I did for a living – and his wife was standing right next to him at the time!  I always say that buying a brewery did more for my social interaction skills than Dale Carnegie was ever able to.

If you could go back, would you do anything differently? If so, what and why?

Yes.  I would have spent more time doing due diligence about the industry and the business structure, particularly the financials.  While you can certainly never anticipate every hiccup that will happen with your business, it’s always valuable to do scenario planning in advance and anticipate how you would handle various twists and turns.  That can help to minimize stress and anxiety, which can be extremely distracting to running the business.

How do you see your company growing in the future?

 We are based in Pittsburgh, but we sell in several additional states.  I anticipate driving growth by increasing brand awareness and trial in these outlying markets, as well as expanding distribution into new areas.

 Six words of advice to those looking to start their own company.  

Work hard, and bring your checkbook.

Penn Brewery’s call for a 25th anniversary t-shirt logo received 39 entries.

Related posts:

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3. Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Alfred Jorgensen Laboratory

There is precedent for a high forward-year projected earnings (P/E) ratio. For example, Amazon has a forward-year P/E ratio of 182 and Salesforce.com is trading at 89 times forward earnings. Both stocks have enjoyed strong growth this year.

Amazon has spent aggressively on Kindle and other programs and stands to reap huge benefits in the future – it’s P/E ratio, while high, is not unreasonable. This is less true for Salesforce – it continues to be a market darling while continuously losing huge sums of money.

How can Facebook (and investors) justify Facebook’s aggressive P/E ratio? They can’t – certainly not based on Facebook’s current revenue opportunities. Here’s why.

First, there’s a huge disconnect between Facebook’s user growth and potential revenue per user. To justify its current P/E, Facebook will need to aggressively grow its user base – already close to 1 billion users – and aggressively grow its revenues per user. It will have great difficulty doing either.

Even if Facebook increases its user base 3X, to 3 billion users, it will generate only $13 billion in revenue per year (based on the current per user revenue numbers). That’s very healthy revenue, but significantly below the revenue needed to justify a 100 billion dollar valuation. And we shouldn’t assume that it will be easy for Facebook to tripple its user base. It’s already coming close to saturating the limits of world Internet usage.

Increasing revenue per user will prove equally challenging (including ad revenue and revenue from Facebook’s share from apps and games on its platform). For example, there are five major markets where Facebook is not the top social network: China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. While China and Russia are both huge markets, it’s doubtful that their revenue per user will be equal to the revenue per user in Europe or the United States. In fact, since those countries all have native language social networks dominating already, it’s difficult to see why Brands will choose to spend huge sums of money on Facebook (in those countries) as opposed to the dominant networks.

Moreover, current per user revenues outside of the U.S./Canada foreshadow the problems with growing per user revenue. European revenue per user is half that of the U.S. and the rest of the world, including Asia, is even a steeper decrease. If the majority of growth is outside the U.S., revenue per user will continue to decline (on average).

Second, Facebook’s revenue growth is actually slowing down, not increasing. Facebook’s revenue growth has slowed for four consecutive quarters. And in its most important market – the U.S. – revenue per hour has been falling for each of the past two years. Alarmingly, even the lead underwriter in the IPO, Morgan Stanley, recognized these trends and cut Facebook estimates just before the IPO.

While there’s some hope in mobile advertising (Facebook has so far not monetized mobile), that too doesn’t justify a $100 billion valuation. Estimated mobile display spend in the U.S. was around $500 million last year.

Third, revenue growth depends on continued mass adoption by big Brands and tens of millions of businesses around the world. This will be challenging. The top 50 branded Facebook fan pages belong to some of the world’s biggest Brands. Most of those fan pages are growing at a rate of 1 to 3 percent per month (which is pretty good). Some, like Converse, are growing at a much higher rate (23% April to May 2012 growth).

Is it plausible that big Brands will continue to increase their advertising on Facebook enough to justify a P/E of 100? It’s not. In fact, we’re seeing plenty of rumblings from big Brands about the lack of ROI to Facebook advertising. GM (the third largest advertiser in the U.S.), for example, announced that it would quit advertising on Facebook. Other big Brands also have serious doubts about the value of Facebook as a marketing platform.

It’s not surprising that companies are unable to justify their return on investment (ROI) running Facebook ads. Conversions on Facebook ads are awful and as Ben Kunz points out in Businessweek, “what GM’s retreat really shows is the harsh reality that other brands must face: Making social-media communications work requires heavier lift than many organizations can muster.”

More importantly, Facebook must grow revenue among businesses of all sizes, especially the tens of millions of small businesses around the world not currently advertising on Facebook. Given the challenges of poor conversions and the difficulty of running integrated campaigns on Facebook (including advertising and social media engagement), it’s difficult to see Facebook growing meaningful revenue from small business customers.

Facebook’s constant changes make it more difficult for businesses to use Facebook as a marketing channel. For example, before Timeline (introduced a few months ago), companies could designate landing tabs as default landing pages on a fan page. This allowed companies to drive “likes” and other calls to action – and were in many ways analogous to landing pages you see on other websites. Although Facebook has argued that Timeline improves engagement on fan pages and marketers will surely adapt, these steps make it even more difficult for the vast majority of companies (especially small businesses) to develop manageable Facebook marketing strategies. If you haven’t tried Facebook ads yet and are considering doing so, here’s a brief Facebook lean marketing guide to help you.

Before you short Facebook stock, consider that there are many creative ways that Facebook can develop new lines of business. For example, it can launch a service that competes with Google’s AdSense, by placing advertising on third party websites that Feature Facebook’s “like button”. It can also become more focused in high revenue demographic areas (such as professional networks that could compete with LinkedIn). Whether or not Facebook pursues those opportunities remains to be seen. At the moment, however, investors buying Facebook stock are playing Russian roulette.

Do you agree or do you think Facebook has unlimited revenue opportunities? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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I have written several posts in the last couple of years about small business and the importance of numbers and of gaining a deeper knowledge of and ability to work with data – from financial modeling to basic analysis it is critical that you be able to use a spreadsheet program such as Excel, Numbers, or Google Spreadsheets, and be able to build a simple analytical model. I thought that if I can create a one-page lesson plan for Bianca to use as she moves up the learning curve, it might turn out to be helpful to others as well.

To start the lesson we’ll need a modest set of data to work with – nothing too overwhelming for the first time out the gate, just a couple of hundred data points to use for the exercise. Bianca and I had discussed an opportunity for her to start practicing: last month we switched our phone support software to a new provider and we now have about 5 week’s worth of data to look at. By the way, our new phone software is really cool: IfByPhone is a SaaS solution that allows us to set up phone support schedules, automatically route calls to multiple phone agents, receive and record voicemails, forward calls as needed, and give callers a variety of outgoing messages dependent on the specific number they dialed as well as day, time, etc. IfByPhone integrates with Zendesk, our help desk software, and works with Skype, allowing our folks to provide high quality phone support from anywhere, as long as they have laptop, a headset and an internet connection. Nice.

But back to the lesson: I have created a file of this data that you can use to work through the tutorial with Bianca and you can download it here. The data set is a pretty simple one, but for Bianca’s purposes it should serve well; 6 columns of data are included: DATE, ACTIVITY (or what the system did when a call came in), CALLER ID (we’ve changed these to randomly generated phone numbers to protect our user’s privacy), CALL DURATION, SYSTEM MINUTES (this is the time a caller spends on hold or listening to an outbound message), and TALK MINUTES (the amount of time the caller actually spends on the phone with an agent). The 7 steps below are by no means the final word on spreadsheet analysis, but this is a good start to get you working with your own data sets and start you down the road to more meaningful analytical exercises.

For the purpose of this lesson, I will assume that everyone is using Excel and will use terms and features specific to that software. But, many of these features are available in other spreadsheet software and you should be able to figure it out if you are using a different program.

1. Get your ducks lined up.

OK, Bianca, first things first: open a new, completely blank spreadsheet and save it with a title that works for you. Next, download the data, open it in a text file, and copy/paste it into a tab in your spreadsheet. The file we are using is a .csv file and you can also open it directly in Excel or import it into the sheet – just click on the ‘File’ menu, choose ‘Import’ and follow the simple steps. In the first window of the Text Import Wizard choose CSV file then select your file from the folder where you downloaded it. Excel will then guide you through a series of simple steps to import the raw data into rows and columns in your sheet.

2. Organize your work.

You’ll see that our data has a header row with labels for each column of data (the 6 I listed above) ad well as 325 rows of the actual raw data. Each row represents one call received by our system between April 10th and May 17th. At this point we want to make sure the data is in the proper formats and easy to work with. We start by telling Excel exactly what type of data is included in each of the columns; start by clicking the letter ‘A’ at the top of the sheet to select the entire first column. Use the key-combination Command-1 to open the formatting menu, then select date from the list of categories on the left. You will see a list of choices to format the dates – select the one that displays as “3/14/01 13:30″ and click OK. Repeat the process with columns D, E, and F but this time select “Number” in the Format/Category list. Set decimal places to 1, check the box labeled “Use 1000 Separator (,)” and click OK. We don’t need to bother with columns B and C as these are already formatted correctly for this exercise. Save your work and off we go.

3. Lay it out.

To make it easier to work with our spreadsheet its a good idea to take a couple of simple formatting steps. First let’s deal with the header row which are the labels for our 6 columns. Highlight row 1 in the sheet, and in the formatting menu (command-1, remember?) select “Font,” and set the font to Bold; then select “Alignment” and under the pulldown labelled “Horizontal” choose Center. Click OK and  your header row looks nice and stand out, right?  But now we want to ”freeze” the header row so that it stays visible even when you scroll down through the sheet. Place you cursor in Cell A2 and from the top menus pull down the ‘Window’ and choose ‘Freeze panes.’ You will see a thin gray line appear below Row 1. Try scrolling down through the rows and you will see that the header stays locked and visible at the top of the sheet.

4. Ask your questions.

The most important part of business analysis is figuring out exactly what you want the raw data to tell you. I’ve created a short list questions that we answer using our data and you can come up with others on your own. For this lesson we’re going to ask the following three questions and I will show you how to find the answers using Excel’s tools, features, and formulas.

1. How many calls did each agent receive and how many went to voicemail?
2. Which were the busiest days of the week for incoming calls?
3. Which customer made the most calls to us in the 5 weeks for which we have data?

5. Determine what you don’t have.

Based on the questions above there may be some information not contained in the data that we’ll need to add to the spreadsheet. For instance, question 2 asks what is the busiest day of the week for incoming calls; to answer the question we need to create a new column which tells us the day of the week for each row of data. We will set up column G by adding a label at the top (cell G1), “Weekday.” Now we need to add a formula to the cells below, to display the day for each row of data. The Excel formula for displaying the day is pretty simple; first you want to tell the system that you wish to display the day as text and then you simply need to tell it how to format that text. in our case, the formula we will use (first in cell G2) is “=text(weekday(A2),”dddd”).” When you paste this into the cell and hit return you will see that our first row of data was created on a Tuesday! Now copy the formula down the rest of the rows in column G and you will see a day appear for each data point. You can create other specific date-related information with a number of Excel formulas, such as to display the month, year, or even the hour of a 24-hour day for use in answering other questions you may come up with.

6. Sort it out.

We can start the simplest analysis by just sorting the columns. Let’s try first to sort using the information in column B, “Activity.” Click the ‘Data’ menu and select ‘Sort’ at the very top of the list; the Sort window will open and all you have to do is tell Excel which data you want to sort the sheet with; click “Sort by” on the left and choose ACTIVITY, click OK and your data will now be sorted alphabetically based on the type of activity in the system. You can repeat this process using any of the columns or you can add additional columns and sort using those.

7. Ready? Set? Pivot.

Bianca, Excel contains a very powerful feature, without which it would be impossible for us to do meaningful (and fast) data analysis: the “PivotTable” report. A PivotTable allows you to select a range or sheet of data and look at that information in different ways with just a few mouse clicks. Creating your first PivotTable can be a little intimidating, but hang with me and I’ll show you how to do it. There is invariably some trial and error in the process, but it is really cool once you have one set up and can start getting the results. As a matter of fact we are going to use one PivotTable to answer all three of our questions from above.

A PivotTable is it’s a self-contained chart divided into columns and rows that you define and that you can easily change. To start, let’s select the entire sheet we’ve created by clicking and dragging starting with column A and going all the way to column G; you should have highlighted all 7 columns of data. Next click the Data menu and select PivotTable from the list; a window will appear asking you to define the data for your PivotTable – you’ll see that “Use a table or a range in the workbook” is already selected and columns A:G are shown in the “Location” field; click OK and continue to the next step.

A cool-looking window will appear called the “PivotTable Builder” (see the screenshot at top of this page); this is the tool where customize the information you want included in your PivotTable. You’ll also see that an empty table has appeared on a new sheet of your workbook with sections titled Column Area, Row Area, and Values Area; this is your shiny new and un-populated PivotTable and this is where you will see your answers start to magically appear as we go through the following steps.

Let’s use our first question to populate the table, “How many calls did each agent receive and how many went to voicemail?” You’ll see in the Builder a list of “Field names” – these are the column-heading titles for each of our seven columns; start by checking the box next to “ACTIVITY” in the list and you will see that it now appears in the section below called “Row Labels.” Next we will define the “Values” for each Activity, i.e. the number of times each Activity was listed in our sheet. This time, click and hold the Label “ACTIVITY” from the Field name list and drag it down into the Builder section labelled “Values.” You will see it appears there with the title “Count of ACTIVITY” and you’ll see a number appear in the Values Area of your new table which is the actual count for each of the listed Activities. Look at the table and you can see that it is sorted alphabetically by Activity; you can sort it by the Total column using the sort tool. If we choose to sort by total, we can see that in the 5-week period, Audree was assigned 96 calls, Bianca received 92 calls, 51 went to phone-hours voicemail, etc. right down to the 2 calls that were transferred to me!

Question 2 was “Which were the busiest days of the week for incoming calls?” To answer this we just need to delete ACTIVITY by dragging it out of the Row Labels and Values in the Builder and replacing it with “Day” in the Row labels and Values sections. You’ll see that your PivotTable has magically changed and now the rows are the days of the week and the number of incoming calls received for each day is displayed in the Total column. Looks like Wednesday is the busiest day of the week for calls thus far, with Monday and Tuesday not far behind.

Finally for Question 3, “Which customer made the most calls to us in the 5 weeks for which we have data?” we will replace Day with CALLER ID and then sort the data to see from which number we received the most calls. Quite a few Caller IDs show up 3 times during the period, but (fortunately) we do not appear to have any phone stalkers. Yet.

So, that’s it for the first lesson; you can use your PivotTable to answer other questions by selecting other fields from the list: for instance which caller kept us on the phone for longest? Which agent has the shortest average time on a call? Or, how long was the average hold time for a caller?  Take some time to play around with the Builder to understand all of it’s features including how to display different totals, by clicking the little i in the Values area and changing Count to, for instance, Average to see how the display changes. Have fun, Bianca!

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Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The image above is The Hulk, one of the characters in the film The Avengers (released a few weeks ago around the world). It’s a phenomenal film – I definitely recommend you see it. Look in the Other section below for an in depth article about special effects, the challenges, and how the special effects for The Avengers were created – it’s a terrific article.

Small Business Pinterest Starter Guide (10 tips & tricks on using Pinterest to increase sales) – http://bit.ly/JGEus8

There are many lessons SMBs can learn from Brands – http://bit.ly/5HA5Z6

Some small businesses find many ways to sabotage their own brands. Examples – http://bit.ly/pbltT9

crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: AppMonsta – http://bit.ly/JjsWHO

Death by a thousand great ideas – http://bit.ly/IZejO5

Work harder on yourself than you do on your startup – http://dharme.sh/JtJjV2

Employee Referral Bonuses Are Pants on Head Stupid – http://bit.ly/JsXpEq

In war for talent, ‘brogrammers’ will be losers – http://bit.ly/IZkCBb

Think Twice Before Starting a Company – http://bit.ly/JNbL4t

Events for women programmers in Chicago – http://cwdevs.com

Good reminder about What Matters (to entrepreneurs) – http://bit.ly/JtdCJw

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet (and how integration kills innovation) – http://gizmo.do/L16cgK

Dear Mentor (thoughts from an intern about mentorship) – http://bit.ly/KFTSVP

Everyone’s Convinced That MBAs Are Useless, So Now Might Be a Good Time to Hire Them – http://bit.ly/J4akNE

Small Business Pinterest Starter Guide – http://bit.ly/JGEus8

Startup Swingers: Swapping Founders to Generate Fresh Ideas – http://ow.ly/1jP45A

Dear Mentee – http://bit.ly/J9igB3

Twitter Makes Better Recommendations of Whom to Follow – http://nyti.ms/J4aCEr

Inside Microsoft’s New Azure Accelerator — Will Redmond Get The Startup Mojo? – http://tcrn.ch/J9iA2B

Salesforce’s plan for opulent campus a costly debacle – http://reut.rs/KRuxWk

The paradigm shift continues to build momentum: Crowdfunding Hits $1.2 Billion – http://bit.ly/KYx15q

Small Business Pinterest Starter Guide – http://bit.ly/JGEus8

What Does Facebook’s $100 Billion IPO Mean for You? More Ads – http://slate.me/MkGOaZ

Advertising People Are The New Advertising Medium – http://onforb.es/KMj1yj

Are Those Little Sharing Buttons the Future of Online Advertising? – http://onforb.es/KRw3HY

The Facebook IPO: A Note to Mark Zuckerberg; or, With “Friends” Like Morgan Stanley, Who Needs Enemies? – http://bit.ly/JAgms8

Very smart look at why news media is collapsing – great analysis – http://bit.ly/JsVO1h

Good interview with David Armanoabout the future of digital media – http://bit.ly/JyMazC

India Set to Overtake US as Facebook’s Largest Market – http://bit.ly/J4dMI6

The paradigm shift continues to build momentum: Crowdfunding Hits $1.2 Billion – http://bit.ly/KYx15q

Can Quora build a for-profit version of Wikipedia? – http://bit.ly/KscmKd

Twitter is tracking you on the web – http://bit.ly/JAiKPF

Report: Google+ Engagement Down, 30% of Users Publicly Post Won’t Post Again – http://bit.ly/IYayVh

GM to stop advertising on Facebook – http://on.wsj.com/L8agSe

GM Says Facebook Ads Don’t Work, Pulls $10 Million Account – http://onforb.es/KM2cn4

Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links – http://selnd.com/KPxWaV

6 countries are clear leaders in smartphone adoption – stats in this report – http://bit.ly/MkIOQw

Warren Buffett investing in local newspapers. Says he wouldn’t touch most papers at any price – http://bit.ly/JjwC2X

Font Collection: Thin and Light – http://bit.ly/KFQIl3

9 New Free Fonts for Your Designs – http://bit.ly/KPAqGl

Mixed Grunge: Texture Pack – http://bit.ly/LJcCn7

35 Awesome Double-Sided Business Cards – http://bit.ly/McWWLs

Wow – what a creative way to show an infographic – http://bit.ly/JAbkvI

After Effects tutorials: 40 amazing projects! – http://bit.ly/KPAxlj

70 Creative And Innovating Business Card Designs You Must See – http://bit.ly/MezHRh

20 Stunning Typography Examples – http://bit.ly/KPABl5

10 Business Cards With Wow Factor – http://bit.ly/Mez5Lp

25 Amazing Photoshop Actions – http://bit.ly/KFQSJ6

Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point – http://bit.ly/J0xyD8

How to Design Awesome Infographics – http://bit.ly/KrZpjv

45 Most Creative Business Cards With Illustration – http://bit.ly/KPznGv

Telling stories with your designs – http://bit.ly/JNcRgF

Showcase of 50 Stunning Poster Designs – http://bit.ly/McXi4K

Is it Better to Be a Creative Generalist or a Specialist? – http://bit.ly/JhXvO0

60+ Beautiful Examples of Geometric Designs – http://bit.ly/KsLwkU

30 Stunning Blue Business Cards – http://bit.ly/KPANAQ

30 Creative business card designs – http://bit.ly/Ks09Fj

Free Texture Tuesday: 5 Vintage Paper Textures – http://bit.ly/Ks0mbr

The Font Wars: A Story On Rivalry Between Type Foundries – http://bit.ly/KFQY3m

40 Wonderful Gadget Design Tutorials for Photoshop – http://bit.ly/MezD44

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

Grayscale Inspiration: 50 Black & White Logos – http://bit.ly/LJagVe

Font Collection: Thin and Light – http://bit.ly/KFQIl3

47 Logo Designs That Will Build Powerful Reputation – http://bit.ly/KsLWId

90+ Awe-inspiring Photography Logos – http://bit.ly/J0xC5Q

9 New Free Fonts for Your Designs – http://bit.ly/KPAqGl

21 Fantastic Examples of Sliders in Web Design – http://bit.ly/MezLR1

How Colors Help Make Websites Successful – http://bit.ly/McX3GU

21 Awesome Bright and Colorful Websites – http://bit.ly/JMZcWR

30 Responsive Web Design and Development Tutorials – http://bit.ly/McXqkP

Ultimate Restaurant Website Design Guide To Make People Forget About Diet Constanly – http://bit.ly/KPzxxB

21 Best Websites for Teaching Yourself Web Development – http://bit.ly/JZVRm4

Free Zocial Button Set: Social CSS3 Buttons – http://bit.ly/KrZzaG

21 Fantastic Examples of Sliders in Web Design http://bit.ly/MezLR1

Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration – http://bit.ly/KMhUP0

Phenomenal post discussing (with examples) the animation for the movie The Avengers – http://bit.ly/IZnxKc

Amazon has democratized the book review process, according to latest research – http://tcrn.ch/KsJ8e6

Chinese Physicists Smash Quantum Teleportation Record – http://bit.ly/KjMaPe

GREAT Colbert interview with Maurice Sendak – part 1: http://bit.ly/KPsg0I and part 2: http://bit.ly/JN1q8C

A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity – http://nyti.ms/KMixIz

The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon – http://bit.ly/Mey6el

HOLD EVERYTHING. I may have found the best advert EVER – http://twitpic.com/9ks1p5

Big Omaha 2012 – 4 years in, it’s still the best conference you’ve never attended – http://tnw.co/Mesd0C

Robert Downey Jr.’s Shocking ‘Avengers’ Payday – http://huff.to/KZjXMU

What killed men’s hats? I love this theory – http://n.pr/KFSF10

Cost of Greek exit from euro put at $1tn – http://bit.ly/JyOhU6

Is there anything that cannot be built in Dubai? Here’re plans for an underwater hotel – http://bit.ly/JNb0rW

The Story of Send: what happens to email after u send? – http://goo.gl/ab8Um

13 Stunning Images from Space of World’s Most Impressive & Beautiful Glaciers – http://bit.ly/jWL43

Our blades are fucking great (funny ad for dollarshaveclub) – http://youtu.be/ZUG9qYTJMsI

A hybrid 500 horsepower Porsche – http://bit.ly/KsMFch

Rdio redesigns site, looks a heck of a lot like iTunes – http://bit.ly/Me2S7b

Good to see Walmart crowdsourcing product ideas – http://bit.ly/Jt7uB7

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

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Are you wondering how you can leverage Pinterest for your small business?

Pinterest is currently one of the hotest websites. For some businesses, Pinterest is delivering more user trafic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Pinterest, here’s a brief summary: Pinterest is a free social sharing site launched in 2009. Pinterest invites people to “pin” images and videos from all over the web, to pinboards directly on Pinterest. You can, for example, pin images of your favorite wedding dresses if you’re preparing for a wedding, or your favorite cars if you’re a car enthusiast. Other people browse or search for images that interest them and when they find such images, they’ll share them with their own followers and friends by “repinning”, “liking” or commenting on the images and videos.

Pinterest offers a new channel for businesses to connect with existing and new customers. But is Pinterest right for your small business? Should you invest your time to learn yet another social network? How can you best leverage Pinterest to increase sales?

We answer these questions in the following 10 tips for how your small business can use Pinterest to increase traffic and sales.

1. Learn what’s popular on Pinterest. Pinterest’s value to your business is in its network effect. When you add an image to your Pinterest board, you want that image to be “repinned” or “liked”. The more times users engage with your image by repinning it, liking it or leaving a comment, the more exposure you’ll have.

Pinterest makes it easy for you to see what’s popular. Visit the Popular section of the site and you’ll see what other people are sharing, and their comments. Now ask yourself: what does your business do and how can you leverage similar images on your own Pinterest boards.

Don’t force the connection – if you are a financial consultant, would it help your business to post images of phone booths or cakes? Probably not. Try to find synergy between popular images and your company’s products or services.

To succeed on Pinterest, your images must be interesting – nobody will repin boring images. For example, if your small business is a bakery and you create fancy cakes, you should be posting original images of your cakes every time you create one. People love cakes.

2. Share other people’s content. It’s never enough to simply “pin” your own content. As you should do on all social networks, take the time to find and pin other people’s content.

You can find this content on Pinterest and repin it, or you can pin original content from sites you already visit.

Pinterest makes it easy to pin from the web – there are numerous extensions available for most browsers.

3. Set up topical pinboards. Avoid the urge to create one pinboard and pin everything there. Think about the types of things you’d like to pin and create topical pinboards to help you (and your potential customers) classify the images you’re pinning.

For example, our imaginary bakery might have the following pinboards: Beautiful wedding cakes, Weddings, Funny Cakes, Family Parties, Cake Recipes, etc.

Look at how your competitors or other companies are using Pinterest and the types of pinboards they’ve created. For example, the yogurt company Chobani has created a rich group of pinboards on many topics that interest its customers and potential customers.

If you are a painter, share images of painted rooms – ones you painted and others, as inspiration for your potential customers. If you create gift baskets, share images of your baskets and other unique gifts.

4. Add prices and promote you products. Don’t be shy about creating special pinboards to promote your products. You can easily add prices to your images – and use a pinboard to promote special sales. Threadless does this very effectively.

Even if you don’t add prices, you can promote your products on dedicated pinboards. For example, Nordstrom promotes different collections on separate pinboards.

5. Set up a Pinterest competition for your fans and customers. One great way to use Pinterst is to invite your customers to pin images of your products to their pinboards. Offer a small prize for the best pin.

Here’s how one company, Nails Inc., leveraged Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter to promote its products in a competition that invited its customers to share images of their painted nails.

6. Include your fans and customers. Pinterest makes it easy for you to invite your fans and customers to pin directly to your pinboards.

If you’re worried about inviting everyone to help, select your favorite or most active fans or customers and invite them to help.

Ask your fans to pin their favorite photos of your products. Or ask fans to pin photos showing how they use your products in unusual and creative ways.

7. Add a Pinterest “Follow” or “Pin It” button to your site. When you add one of these buttons, you encourage your customers and potential customers to pin your products or content to their own pinboards.

Pinterest makes it easy to add these buttons.

8. Be smart about keywords. When you add a new pin, you have an opportunity to add keywords that will help other users find your content. You can add multiple keywords, so think about ways that customers might be looking for products you’re pinning.

For example, if you’re posting images of cakes, you can add the following keywords: #cakes #bakedgoods #weddings #cupcakes #bakery #food.

9. Engage with other users. Always keep in mind that Pinterest is a social network. Don’t silo yourself and expect everyone to come to your pinboards. Take the time to browse, repin and comment on other users’ images. That’s how people notice you and ultimately, your products and services.

10. Hold Pinterest only promotions. One good way to build a following and expose your customers to Pinterest is to create unique offers only on Pinterest. People like to share deals – this is a good way to spread the word about your company’s products and services.

How do you feel about Pinterest? Do you have other tips you can share with small business owners or a question? Please leave a comment below.

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This week, my app honoree is AppMonsta.  If you and/or your company are in the process of developing a mobile app, look no further than this company.  AppMonsta is truly a one stop shop when it comes to brainstorming, researching, and developing.  Businesses are able to identify niches in the marketplace, gauge growth, and find publishers and developers.  And that’s just with their tool AppInsights. AppEverything allows users to identify the top apps in multiple countries, as well as collect social media metrics on popularity and reviews. There is also a weekly email available, AppHighlights, that gives a run down of top app downloads and other trends.  Overall, pretty rad.

AppMonsta used crowdSPRING in the development of their own app, Federal Job Search Pro, which connects the workforce with available government jobs.

The ever jovial Jeremy took some time to answer our Small Biz Questionnaire:

How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?

AppMonsta provides data about apps and app stores, helping companies make more informed decisions based on data.

What are some industry specific challenges you faced?  

We have worked hard to make the massive amounts of data into consumable products – boiling down our Big Data into even more useful and actionable insights for customers of all kinds.

What was your biggest learning curve/experience?

We’ve needed to learn a great deal more about databases, data structures, and the app stores as a whole. Every app store is different and every one has something valuable to offer to every type of business – its just a matter of finding it and highlighting it. Ask questions on our new blog (Ask AppMonsta) – we’ll answer all those we can with our data! 

What made you use crowdSPRING? 

One of our projects needed some outside inspiration, creativity and design chops – crowdSPRING offers all three. We needed an icon for one of our iPhone apps – Federal Job Search Pro – an app that was was designed for a niche in the iPhone app store that we found with our data.

What’s the craziest story you have from starting your own business?  

We are designing an ‘AppMonsta’ at the moment – a big and huggable beast that loves apps. It has felt a bit like an animation studio with drawings and sketches everywhere. Our gaol is to make this data more approachable as we know it can help app developers, entrepreneurs, investors and researchers alike.

If you could go back, would you do anything differently? If so, what and why?

We would have learned from this app market data first, then we’d have built the apps we found the market wanted.

How do you see your company growing in the future?

With more and more attention on this burgeoning app eco-system, there is a rising need for data to inform decisions in the mobile space. AppMonsta will be there – adapting to the changes in the market, and making sure the most cutting-edge app market data gets to our customers.

Six words of advice to those looking to start their own company.  

Talk to customers. Build them value.

AppMonsta’s call for a knock-your-socks-off icon received 96 entries.

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Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The image above is an ad created by TBWA for Moustaches Make A Difference – a campaign to raise support for prostate cancer research. More interesting ads in the Social Media and Marketing section below.

Growing Your Small Business Using Social Media: The Facts – http://bit.ly/JfbaI1

Web Tool of the Month: crowdSPRING – http://bit.ly/IIQ5GA

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media – http://bit.ly/ImKDaT

How to Increase Trust for a Landing Page Design – http://bit.ly/JZnGsr

Better Agile Than Smart – http://bit.ly/J9Di3c

The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses – http://bit.ly/JN9J5a

Four Things to Get Right When Starting a Company – http://bit.ly/JewYHD

8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses – http://bit.ly/Ja53TR

Six Myths of Product Development – http://bit.ly/IAYevk

When Selling is the Worst Way to Win Customers – http://hub.am/JYMXJ8

Building It Is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition – http://bit.ly/IMfZca

Unlimited Vacation Doesn’t Create Slackers–It Ensures Productivity – http://bit.ly/IPcnXs

Crowdsourcing taps public for work, money, ideas – http://bit.ly/KmvBUJ

If You’re Competing On Features You’ve Already Lost – http://bit.ly/KwmMKZ

Tips for small business (and startups): Negotiating With the New Recruit – http://bit.ly/J9uuqk

Growing Your Small Business Using Social Media: The Facts – http://bit.ly/JfbaI1

The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth – http://bit.ly/JCo0xb

If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You’re Probably Not Innovating – http://bit.ly/JCnwqS

Unlimited Vacation Doesn’t Create Slackers–It Ensures Productivity – http://bit.ly/IPcnXs

Fred Wilson: what crowdfunding means for the VC business – http://bit.ly/Jesq3W

Good reminder about the importance of face to face communications – http://bit.ly/JexdlS

When Selling is the Worst Way to Win Customers – http://hub.am/JYMXJ8

Andreessen Horowitz Confirms Its Scout Program, Calls Out Lazy Angels Who Hate Competition – http://bit.ly/JesvER

Are You Willing To Pay For The Change You’re Demanding? – http://bit.ly/Kjc9It

VC Rights: Up, Down, And Know What The Fuck Is Going On – http://bit.ly/Je0IAy

The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses – http://bit.ly/JN9J5a

8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses – http://bit.ly/Ja53TR

Poor long term returns by VC funds, according to Kauffman Foundation – http://bit.ly/JesrVv

What I learned from raising venture capital – http://perfor.ms/yRB2WZ

Better Agile Than Smart – http://bit.ly/J9Di3c

Four Things to Get Right When Starting a Company – http://bit.ly/JewYHD

So what exactly is a tech company? – http://bit.ly/JesoZY

If You’re Competing On Features You’ve Already Lost – http://bit.ly/KwmMKZ

It’s Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement – http://bit.ly/KjbEhu

Taking E-Mail Vacations Can Reduce Stress, Study Says – http://nyti.ms/JO5YfT

Six Myths of Product Development – http://bit.ly/IAYevk

Crowdsourcing taps public for work, money, ideas – http://bit.ly/KmvBUJ

Early Startup Time Wasters – http://bit.ly/LJSEuP

The CEO who invented a cure for hiccups – and, oh, yes, she’s 13 – http://j.mp/Ja37uK

Sequoia Confirms Existence of “Stealth” Scout Program. Who’s Next? – http://bit.ly/KayBTX

The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man – http://bit.ly/IEffbQ

How to Increase Trust for a Landing Page Design – http://bit.ly/JZnGsr

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media – http://bit.ly/ImKDaT

Is Facebook Larry Page’s Moby Dick? – http://onforb.es/INEEKx

Building It Is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition – http://bit.ly/IMfZca

Web Tool of the Month: crowdSPRING – http://bit.ly/IIQ5GA

After Timeline, Top 50 Brands See Facebook Comments Dip 11%, Likes Rise 11% – http://bit.ly/IPcGl0

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media – http://bit.ly/ImKDaT

Tips for small business (and startups): Negotiating With the New Recruit – http://bit.ly/J9uuqk

Building It Is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition – http://bit.ly/IMfZca

30 Sophisticated Ads To Give You Great Inspiration – http://bit.ly/JVYybF

Very shallow argument that Facebook is not a publisher, and thus should not be blamed for horrible ROI – http://bit.ly/K1C3Cj

Another Big Newspaper Says Digital Ads Shrank Last Quarter – http://dthin.gs/K7gvlZ

Klout to expand +K button – http://bit.ly/J7GmHy

50 More Humorous Print Advertisements to Make You Smile – http://bit.ly/JVYIQr

Creative Advertising In These 90+ Epic, Smart & Beautiful Ads – http://bit.ly/J93Xtu

Beautiful And Creative Advertising Design Ideas – http://bit.ly/Jfbt6A

22 Fresh And Free Fonts For Your Design – http://bit.ly/KA4usf

100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design – http://bit.ly/JcxYMg

60+ High-Quality Graffiti Fonts for Your Design Works – http://bit.ly/KwTaHJ

50 Photoshop And Illustrator Tutorials For Creating Text Effect – http://bit.ly/JQPMGc

700+ Ready to Grab Free Photoshop Pixel Patterns – http://bit.ly/J8ICUy

30 Gorgeous Examples of Very Creative Business Cards – http://bit.ly/Jfcagt

48 High Quality Wood Textures – http://bit.ly/JfcvQ1

40+ Beautiful And Creative Letterpress Designs – http://bit.ly/J8IN1S

35 Different Types of Liquid Textures – http://bit.ly/KOaKXZ

20 Beautiful Examples of Efficient Brochure Designs – http://bit.ly/J94Lyl

20+ Step by Step Tutorials in Designing a Typographic Poster – http://bit.ly/IRxqf6

15 Useful Chrome Extensions For Designers And Developers – http://bit.ly/J94ICF

25 Flashy Pink Business Cards – http://bit.ly/ImKfci

20 Creative and Appealing Business Card Designs – http://bit.ly/Jf9DTm

50 Amazing business cards – http://bit.ly/JVYAR5

30 Free and Appealing Outline Fonts – http://bit.ly/Jf9jE7

Food Packaging – 10 of The Tastiest Designs – http://bit.ly/JfcFXS

Beautiful And Creative Advertising Design Ideas – http://bit.ly/Jfbt6A

Free Peeling Paint Textures – http://bit.ly/J8GyM8

How to Use Drop Shadows in Photoshop – http://bit.ly/Jf9Zt2

New Design Practices for Touch-free Interactions – http://bit.ly/JQPFup

30+ Examples Of Brilliant Typography Designs – http://bit.ly/JVYDvZ

45 Useful Paper Textures – http://bit.ly/J8Iu7s

30 Spectacular Red Business Cards – http://bit.ly/ImKxQw

Free Stone Textures – http://bit.ly/ImKq7n

Rough Concrete Tiles: Texture Pack – http://bit.ly/ImKunD

12 Questions: Meet Tiffany Silverberg (USA) – http://bit.ly/Kq8mG2

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

25 Inspiring Logos with Innovative Use of Typography – http://bit.ly/JriyiP

30 Free and Appealing Outline Fonts – http://bit.ly/Jf9jE7

20 Simple, Yet Clever Logos – http://bit.ly/JVYQPW

36 Impressive Logos Inspired By Cats – http://bit.ly/JQPYoV

22 Fresh And Free Fonts For Your Design – http://bit.ly/KA4usf

Turn It Up: Musically Inspired Logo Design – http://bit.ly/JVYPeH

60+ High-Quality Graffiti Fonts for Your Design Works – http://bit.ly/KwTaHJ

40+ Creative uses of Ribbons in Web Design – http://bit.ly/ITrqwN

Footer Design Trends – http://bit.ly/JVYGbd

World of Watercolor: Beautiful Watercolor Effects in Web Design and Tutorials – http://bit.ly/JQPu27

30 Orange Website Designs Which Look Stunning – http://bit.ly/J8HuAj

How to Increase Trust for a Landing Page Design – http://bit.ly/JZnGsr

30 Inspiring Examples of Textures in Web Design – http://bit.ly/JfaRy3

30 Beautiful Gray Web Designs for Inspiration – http://bit.ly/ISnA66

20 Pure Websites with Clean White Backgrounds – http://bit.ly/JNs9jY

22 HTML5/CSS3/jQuery Tutorials for Frontend Web Developers – http://bit.ly/J8InbZ

UI: Proper Indicators for Hidden Elements – http://bit.ly/IEkzgh

30 Awe-Inspiring Black and White Website Designs – http://bit.ly/JVYusA

21 Beautiful Examples of Typography in Web Design – http://bit.ly/ImKuUU

Top 10 most read books in the world – http://bit.ly/J2WHzh

Ever come across such people (constantly talking on the phone)? http://youtu.be/AgOEvi9rbHs

Disturbing data on how chemicals affect people (and animals) – http://nyti.ms/IPcdiS

So you know, how astronauts sleep – http://j.mp/J0y86I

The Unknown Inventor Whose Work Is Saving The Developing World – http://bit.ly/J8I693

Suncream Ingredient ‘Zinc Oxide’ Linked To Skin Cancer – http://huff.to/ITlmYy

Amazon Leaps Into High End of the Fashion Pool – http://nyti.ms/JesqAX

People to marry robots? With a 50% divorce rate in the U.S., doesn’t seem far fetched – http://slate.me/Jesscg

Ha – there’s scientific support for the egos of “social media experts” – http://on.wsj.com/Jesktb

Given what passes for journalism today on some sites/publications, this robot is sure to be a huge step up – http://bit.ly/J9CN9m

Once Upon a Time in Dubai-Amazing photographs of a time before the boom – http://bit.ly/JwMiIS

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

Related posts:

1. Twitter Link Roundup #89 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More
2. Twitter Link Roundup #106 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More
3. Twitter Link Roundup #108 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

There’s no clear consensus about social commerce and whether businesses should invest marketing dollars in social media. For example, Forrester Research, last year, released a report questioning whether retail stores should invest money in social media marketing efforts. In that report, Forrester and GSI Commerce concluded that retailers wasted money on social media efforts because social networks had little influence on online purchasing behavior.

However, more recent (and more authoritative) research questions and contradicts the conclusions reached by Forrester.

A report released earlier this year by Altimeter Group – The Rise of Digital Influence - discusses, among other things, digital influence and ways that companies can identify individuals with social capital who can increase word-of-mouth for a company’s marketing efforts.

While many studies have focused on the U.S., studies done in other countries reflect the same conclusion – friends do influence purchases on social networks. For example, a Harvard Business School study in Korea found that moderate users of social networks reflect a 5% sales increase over the average, based on the influence of their social network friends.

We’re seeing more and more credible research, including from Altimeter Group, suggesting that social influence does, in fact, translate into increased sales. Notably, a new report just released by Market Force suggests that 81% of U.S. consumers are influenced by their friends’ social media posts (The Market Force study measured 12,000 survey respondents – half in the U.S. and half in the UK. Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 65 years old – 75% were women (the primary household consumer purchasers).

Other studies reflect similar percentages. For example, a study conducted by the firm Chief Marketing Officer Council and Lithium, found that 80% of people are more likely to try new things based on their friends’ suggestions in social posts.

But here’s where it gets a bit more interesting – the Market Force study reveals that a comparable 78% of people are influenced by the companies‘ own social media posts (see following chart).

This data suggests that company-driven social media efforts can indeed drive purchasing decisions.

Some small businesses worry that their social media efforts will simply uncover a hornets nest – inviting consumers to publicly complain about those businesses. This is generally untrue. “Social media channels create an ideal two-way platform for direct conversations with customers. What’s striking is that consumers have more positive things to say than most brands realize,” according to Janet Eden-Harris, chief marketing officer for Market Force. “Using social media monitoring tools, brands can mitigate the downside by pulling negative comments into a private conversation, and maximize the upside by giving consumers an easy way to engage. There’s no reason not to take the plunge. Consumers are out there talking about you.”

Before you rush to start posting on social networks, you should understand that consumers are rarely interested in rich “content” – they care mostly about promotions, sales and giveaways, as the following chart from the Market Force report shows.

What can/should your small business do, in light of this data?

First, you should understand that not all content is created equally. When you share content, you must carefully pick content that is interesting and of value to your fans, followers and customers.

Second, the promotional, sale and giveaway content should be a regular tactic in your social media efforts. While many small businesses work hard to build thought leadership in social media, the research suggests that most purchasing decisions are influenced by discounts and incentives, not merely by great “content”.

Third, you should consider your business and your industry and decide whether social media makes sense for you. For example, the Market Force study shows that consumers “like” restaurant pages 86% of the time – far more than any other category on Facebook. If you have a restaurant, you definitely should consider a social media strategy.

On the other hand, if your business is in the financial services space, you should think twice – only 13% of U.S. respondents and 7% of UK respondents “liked” companies in the Financial Services industry. 

Fourth, as you develop your social media strategy, we strongly recommend that you test your tactics in small batches, listen carefully to your customers, and learn fast. More about this in our Lean Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses and Startups post.

Do you have additional data you can share from your own experience on social networks? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Revolution – Facts and Figures (Updated)
2. How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
3. Twitter Link Roundup #94 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

Last year, I wrote a couple of posts about the process of hiring new employees and what applicants can do to help. Recruiting and hiring can be one of the more painful aspects to running a small business, but job applicants can go far to ease the process for those doing the hiring and, at the same time, improve their own chances of landing the job.

Today, we take a short leap forward in the action. Imagine that you have gone through the process – sorted through the applications, identified attractive candidates, completed two or three (or four) interview rounds, and taken the time to contact the personal and professional references provided. Now you have made your choice and  that incredibly talented rock star you want to hire wants the job (yes!) and is excited to start. Now comes the part that many entrepreneurs dread: negotiating the deal itself.

Compensation negotiations differ from other types of negotiations, because the goal is not just to get the best deal you can possibly wrest from the other side, but rather to get the person you want and to turn them into a happy, motivated, and productive member of the team. This is not to say that you can’t  draw on your experience negotiating with vendors, suppliers, and investors, but bear in mind that the compensation negotiation is a different beast and your goals are necessarily different. Classic negotiation strategies include thorough preparation, defining specific objectives, setting a reservation point, and working to understand your negotiating partner’s objectives and reservation point. Compensation negotiations include all of that but also need to emphasize, trust, open communication, flexibility, and a willingness to let the new hire drive the conversation and find the deal that will make them happy.

Here, then, are five tips for negotiating compensation for your new recruit:

1. Define your goals but understand theirs.
One of the key principals in negotiation strategy is to comprehend the other party’s goals and gain an understanding of what they are trying to accomplish from their side of the negotiation. In compensation negotiations the deal you are making should not just include an economic goal, but also must focus on the objective of gaining (and retaining) a valued employee. To achieve this objectives, it is critical that you take the time to really understand this person; what are they looking for professionally and personally and how can you help them to achieve this? When signing on to a new job, the recruit’s goals will always include their salary requirements, but will also include other, sometimes less tangible, rewards as well.

2. Remember it’s a person.
Your approach to the process must reflect and accommodate the recruit’s humanity. This is not an outsourced service you are bargaining for, nor is it a house you are purchasing – it is a member of your team and (if you have done a good job in selecting them) someone who will bring energy, experience, skills, and countless other contributions to your business. What is important to them? Obviously salary is critical, but what about work hours? Child care? Vacation time? Take plenty of time to understand what drives this person; ask good diagnostic questions, listen closely to their answers, and be sure to ask about this when you make those calls to their references. If you can achieve a good understanding of what is driving the recruit, you can effectively use this process to gain trust. Then take time to consider the ways you can create an offer which represents the ‘total’ package that will meet their needs and satisfy their negotiating goals

3. Consider the alternatives.
One of the first rules in negotiating is to assess your alternatives should the deal fall through. The “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement,” or BATNA, is what will drive the decisions you make during the process and can help you to develop your reservation point. Is there another candidate whom you like? Does the position need to be filled today or can it remain vacant? Consider carefully how far you are willing to go before your BATNA becomes preferable to a negotiated deal. Also remember that the person you are recruiting has their own BATNA and if you can learn what that is, you have a meaningful advantage in reaching a deal. It is imperative that you not share your BATNA and you should assume that the recruit will protect theirs as well, but the more you can learn about it, the better your assumptions will be during the course f the negotiation.

4. Stay in the zone.
In any negotiation, there is what academics sometimes call the “zone of proximate agreement” or the “positive bargaining zone.” If you picture a Venn diagram, with one circle representing the deal that is acceptable to you, and the second circle representing what is acceptable to the new hire, it is the overlap of those two circles that embodies the ultimately successful offer. In other words, a space exists in which both parties can be happy with the outcome. One tactic that can be very effective in expanding that space is to craft multiple offers, or even “ala carte” menus of deal elements that the recruit can select from. This is a great strategy that can help you to better understand what makes them click, but also to let them know that you are working hard to make them happy with the outcome; the most successful negotiations will always end with both parties satisfied that they achieved their goals and got what they wanted.

5. Create value for both of you.
You read often about the fabled “win-win” negotiation, but most negotiators have no idea what this means. Win-win does not mean that a compromise was agreed to or that an even split of the resources available was reached. A true win-win is achieved when there is no money (or other resource) left on the table for either side and that all creative opportunities to reach the deal were taken advantage of. Work hard with your recruit to build trust by identifying areas of common agreement; make multiple offers to diagnose what is truly important to both sides; build in meaningful and achievable incentives; and work to stay within the positive bargaining zone to achieve a successful outcome.

Creating real and meaningful value in a negotiated agreement is the goal, whether it is a deal to buy 50 tons of a commodity like aluminum, or to craft a creative compensation agreement for a new and valuable team member. Keep in mind that it is not just money and benefits that make up a great package, but other less tangible elements that will make your new employee happy, productive, creative, and effective!

Photo: net_efekt

Related posts:

1. Tips for small business: Dear applicant, please show me what I need to see
2. Small business and startup tips: training day!
3. 10 Tips for small business: surveying your customers

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The video above shows why cats will never be as cool as dogs. Ever see a golden retriever dance the Merengue?

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media -http://bit.ly/JkbC4O

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media -http://bit.ly/JkbC4O

Illinois 3rd-worst in nation for business, CEO survey says -http://trib.in/IGNZHh

Traits of successful founders - http://perfor.ms/zlOEzG

The dirty secret behind the incubator boom - http://bit.ly/JVZmNX

Startup Founders: Don’t Freak Out - http://bit.ly/Ix80ko

VCs in Angels’ Clothing: The Sneaky New Trend of “Deal Scouts” in Silicon Valley - http://bit.ly/Ix8iI4

The 11 Harsh Realities Of Being An Entrepreneur -http://perfor.ms/y1q1uV

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media -http://bit.ly/JkbC4O

What Google Analytics New Social Reports Offer & What They Can’t - http://bit.ly/K2d5kc

Frustrated advertisers to Facebook: Take our money — please! - http://cnet.co/IYuJ7y

Traditional Advertising is Truly Dead - http://bit.ly/K2dfrR

$20m given to Kickstarter games projects, but only 25 per cent succeed - http://bit.ly/Ju9YNX

30 Sophisticated Ads To Give You Great Inspiration -http://bit.ly/JVYybF

50 More Humorous Print Advertisements to Make You Smile -http://bit.ly/JVYIQr

30 Spectacular Red Business Cards - http://bit.ly/ImKxQw

60+ High-Quality Graffiti Fonts for Your Design Works -http://bit.ly/KwTaHJ

Rough Concrete Tiles: Texture Pack - http://bit.ly/ImKunD

50 Amazing business cards - http://bit.ly/JVYAR5

30+ Examples Of Brilliant Typography Designs - http://bit.ly/JVYDvZ

Free Stone Textures - http://bit.ly/ImKq7n

25 Flashy Pink Business Cards - http://bit.ly/ImKfci

12 Questions: Meet Tiffany Silverberg (USA) – http://bit.ly/Kq8mG2

The $1000 May cS Award and the April $1000 cS Award Winner -http://bit.ly/KxuVJt

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

20 Simple, Yet Clever Logos - http://bit.ly/JVYQPW

Turn It Up: Musically Inspired Logo Design - http://bit.ly/JVYPeH

40+ Creative uses of Ribbons in Web Design - http://bit.ly/ITrqwN

20 Pure Websites with Clean White Backgrounds -http://bit.ly/JNs9jY

UI: Proper Indicators for Hidden Elements - http://bit.ly/IEkzgh

21 Beautiful Examples of Typography in Web Design -http://bit.ly/ImKuUU

30 Awe-Inspiring Black and White Website Designs -http://bit.ly/JVYusA

Footer Design Trends - http://bit.ly/JVYGbd

Why cats will NEVER be as great as dogs: http://bit.ly/cALfO4

Web Tool of the Month: crowdSPRING -http://bit.ly/IIQ5GA

Crowdsourced design is not a risky business - http://bit.ly/JuaDz7

Big LCD tv’s are a low margin biz. Ben Kunzsmartly argues Apple will fill a niche at smaller sizes - http://buswk.co/JtxPNZ

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

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May cS Award

The May cS Award of $1,000 will be given to a designer who does the most to upgrade their crowdSPRING portfolio in the next 4 weeks.

To be eligible, you must upload, during the month of May, at least five (5) new portfolio items. In case of a tie, the award will go to the creative who has the highest average buyer score for their entries in May.

You do not need to win a project to be eligible for the May award.

Good luck to everyone!

And now…. the April cS Award Winner….

We are thrilled to announce that the April $1,000 cS award will go to iconicdesign!

Connie joined crowdSPRING way back in July of 2008, which makes her one of our longest-serving Creatives! Since then, she’s submitted work to over 300 projects, has won 24 and is a consummate professional in all of her communications with the community and our team.

We are proud to have iconicdesign in our community.

Thanks to everyone who participated in March, and congratulations to iconicdesign on winning the cS Award!

Related posts:

1. The April cS Award and the March cS Award Winner
2. Announcing The July cS Award Winner!
3. The December cS Award and The November cS Award Winner

We’re very proud to feature Tiffany Silverberg (crowdSPRING username: TiffSilverberg ) today. Tiffany lives and works all over the United States.

1. Please tell us about yourself.

I’m a marketing writer and consultant – which means I work with small businesses and entrepreneurs to help them develop their brand and tell their story. I work from home, for myself, which frees me up to travel and explore! I move often with my husband’s job so I love having the chance to get to know new communities and the businesses that drive the local economy.

2. How did you become interested in writing?

I’ve always been completely obsessed with languages and the ability to communicate. I grew up moving a lot – much as I do now – and had the chance to learn Cantonese and Spanish. When I went to college, at the University of California Berkeley, I studied linguistics, with research in language development among Deaf children. I also took Danish linguistics, Latin, conversational Spanish, and of course American Sign Language classes. All that random knowledge sort of coagulated into my job now – which to me is still all about communicating.

3. Who/what are some of the biggest influences on your writing?

All the great copywriters that produced the retro magazine ads of the 1960′s and 1970′s really inspire me. It was an age when words were respected and manipulated to say the cleverest things. I keep old ads all around my desk. On a more philosophical level, I’ve always adored Jane Austen’s ability to draw out the nature of women in her books in a way that we fellow women can both appreciate and learn from. I want my story telling to be the same way. Lighthearted, but thoughtful.

4. Please tell us about your favorite projects.

Really practically, I love doing projects that force me to pull out a few thesauruses and dictionaries and delve into the etymology of words. I love to swim in words. But from the clients’ perspective, if I had to choose one project, it would probably be bios. I love helping my clients see themselves in a new light.

5. What types of writing interest you the most?

Copywriting is probably one of the most fascinating to me. It’s so full of spark and creativity – and yet at the end of the day, it’s about selling and you have to stay within the parameters. It’s like a puzzle.

6. Do you do your best writing in a Porsche 911?

Well, I think everyone around me would prefer that I keep my eyes on the road, rather than on my paper when I’m in my car, but I do love driving fast down country roads – and that retro style of ad writing does rush in when I’m there.

7. What kind of on-line resources do you use?

Oh, http://www.etymonline.com/ is probably my favorite. Quick resource for Latin and Greek derivations. There are also some great lists of roots, prefixes, and suffixes that you can pull up and muse. When I’m trying to create new words for companies and brands, it’s fun to mull those lists and just try the sounds.

8. How do you promote your work?

Mostly through my website, TiffanySilverberg.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.

9. Please describe your typical work day.

It normally starts with a cup of coffee or three while I peruse Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and emails. Then I delve into client projects all morning, through lunch. Then Crowdspring projects until dinner time.

10. What is your favorite book?

That’s like asking a painter their favorite color – it depends on the situation! The novel I’ve read and marked up the most is Pride and Prejudice. But I spend a lot of time with dictionaries, word usage books, and linguistics books – and I can’t choose just one.

11. If you weren’t writing, what would you be doing?

In college, I occasionally dreamt of doing field work – unearthing and preserving languages in the jungles or deserts of somewhere… and sometimes think that’s what would have happened if I hadn’t taken this path… but it would have involved words, language, and stories.

12. What do you do with your free time?

Knitting has become my recent interest. It fascinates me what can done with string and needles. I also love to decompress in the kitchen, experimenting with spices.

_____________________________
Thanks so much, Tiffany!

Related posts:

1. 12 Questions: Meet Grace Conlon (USA)
2. 12 Questions: Meet Keith Woodruff (USA)
3. 12 Questions: Meet Vinay and Asha (India)

We write often about the power of great customer service and share ideas for how to engage with customers. improve delivery, and analyze your performance in this crucial arena. There are reasonably priced tools aplenty which can help you provide better service to your customers: help-desk software like Zendesk, virtual call center services such as ifbyphone, and real-time chat tools for your website such as velaro.

By leveraging the power of social media you too can open up completely new and valuable channels through which your customers can reach you quickly and easily. Today we’re going to discuss some tools which will cost you a grand total of $0, require virtually no time to set-up, and with which your employees are already fully trained. What’s that you say? Free AND immediate? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well my friends, read on, because it’s not too good to be true.

Several key components are important to the use of  social media to deliver customer service  effectively and when well-executed, these can add up to a meaningful competitive advantage. First and perhaps most important, your company must learn to actively listen; people out there may be talking about your company or even complaining about your company and you need to develop the ability to hear them. Second, the active engagement of customers (or potential customers) via the channel that the customer prefers is critical to your success with this strategy; this is an incredible opportunity for you to learn about your customers and an equally incredible opportunity to create true fans. Finally your company needs to develop the ability to measure the SM traffic to your business; by better understanding your customer’s online behavior, you can better understand the customers themselves and anticipate their needs.

1. Twitter.

Twitter is the simplest and most powerful of the social media tools for providing great customer service. Powerful and simple search capabilities make it easy to listen when Twitter users mention your company and the ability to track those comments in real time and respond immediately makes a huge and lasting impression. Use Twitter search to set up a search for mentions of your company’s name and e ready to immediately pounce at the first complaint, complement, or question someone might have abut your company. We use Tweetdeck which allows you to view multiple search terms simultaneously and respond to people with 140 character answers. Of course you can also use Twitter to direct people to your site or other support channels when a more complex answer or solution is required. Twitter also offers web analytics tools which allow for tracking of traffic sent to your site by. Help desk software like Zendesk even allows the full integration of Twitter and will create new tickets when Tweets are received to your account.

2. Facebook and Google +.

These services allow people to contact you directly through a trusted platform that millions of people around the world are already using comfortable and effectively. By setting up a page for your business on Facebook and Google+ you make your company available and accessible for customers with problems or questions, or even folks who just want to share something with you. We receive comments and questions every day on our FB page and are instantly notified when someone posts something. This allows us to respond quickly, either right there on Facebook or by moving the conversation to our own help desk.

3. Skype.

Not so much a social media tool, but a very practical and inexpensive way to communicate with customers from around the world. Skype provides high-quality voice and video-chat features which enable our customer service agents to reach out to anyone anywhere anytime. Nice.

4. YouTube, Flickr, et al.

Great customer service should be a two-way street. Remember it’s not just about responding to the questions your customers ask, it’s also about anticipating those questions and making the answers easily available. We post videos on YouTube that explain everything from a high-level view of how crowdSPRING works, right down to the nitty-gritty of how to post your first project to the site. A link to these pages can be sent out or shared through the various support channels or people can easily find them for themselves with a quick search.

5. Blog and newsletter.

Your blog and your newsletter are other great channels for providing customers with valuable information about your company and your products or services. Using content distribution to preemptively help your  customers is an effective way to  share information, engage users, and build valuable relationships. Whether you are contributing ideas and information intended to help other business owners and managers, or sharing tips about your own offerings these channels can be easily measured and analyzed to determine if people are interested in what you have to say – if they are keep up the great work; if not, adjust your approach and try again.

Photo: Widjaya Ivan

Related posts:

1. Lean Marketing: Customer service strategies for small businesses and startups
2. Lean Marketing tips: not-for-profit edition
3. Lean Marketing: Public Relations strategies for small businesses and startups

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The video above is a fascinating account on the excess and hubris of the International Art Market (reporting by 60 Minutes journalist Morley Safer).

Small Business and Startup Tips: Managing Remote Employees – http://bit.ly/HVo69c

The Economic Clout of Women-Owned Small Businesses – [INFOGRAPHIC] – http://t.co/ZLSNaSEa

Small business Congress-watch: Three Reasons to Vote Next November? – http://bit.ly/I6a3Og

crowdSPRING”s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Invitation Consultants – http://bit.ly/Jq2XzC

Small Business and Startup Tips: Managing Remote Employees – http://bit.ly/HVo69c

Nice write-up on Google’s venture capital investment company – http://bit.ly/IqlFb5

5 tech deals that need to happen – http://bit.ly/I0xKro

Good thoughts on assembling a board for a startup – http://bit.ly/Jt2mRq

Startups Should Say No to 99% of Partnership Opportunities – http://t.co/7FV94ni6

What It Takes To Innovate: Wrong-Thinking, Tinkering & Intuiting – http://t.co/sWeGOD1o

Entrepreneurs, keep you eye on the ball and don’t get distracted! – http://t.co/Rm4MAUm3

Jeff Bezos: ‘Even Well-Meaning Gatekeepers Slow Innovation’ – http://t.co/1qbf8w4b

Making the Turn – Leveraging a Pivot into Growth – http://t.co/UruvDKFX

Why Being A Meaner Boss Will Help Your Company–And Make Your Employees Happy – http://t.co/gvZAe5mt

Should Your Brand Launch a Film Festival? http://t.co/b5meagjD

Why Obama’s JOBS Act Couldn’t Suck Worse – http://t.co/qwBiJnT1

Twitter’s Revolutionary Agreement Lets Original Inventors Stop Patent Trolls – http://t.co/qWUXfcqr

The Twitter IPA: What does defensive really mean? – http://t.co/1EJwRmDY

Linking To Facebook Pages Lowers Ad Costs – http://bit.ly/HLmcn4

Why Earned Media Alone Won’t Cut It – http://bit.ly/Jjym5P

Facebook, Google Must Adapt as Users Embrace ‘Unsocial’ Networks – http://buswk.co/I9RFBd

25 Stunning Examples of Minimalistic Advertising – http://bit.ly/IiHiYt

Digital ecosystems: an in-depth comparison – http://vrge.co/HLpWVI

Crowdsourcing on Facebook Gets You Consumers’ Ideas and Their Purchases – http://t.co/LvD0xELh

Collaborative commerce: Pinterest and Amazon are a match made in affiliate heaven – http://t.co/hlvG1TNf

Click-Through Rates May Matter Even Less Than We Already Thought – http://bit.ly/I9HcXx

Clever Twitter ad from Smart Car Argentina. Go here and hold down the letter J – http://t.co/EiqXRNMy

Study: Those Social Media Logos On TV Actually Work – http://t.co/TNLVrZOz

What It Takes To Innovate: Wrong-Thinking, Tinkering & Intuiting – http://t.co/2kBVE99l

The funny side of advertising: 20 amusing and clever print advertisements – http://t.co/cLtn5oTA

Creative Examples of Billboard ads – http://t.co/EtVse2Db

The 18 Most Ridiculous Ads Of The Dot-Com Super Bowl – http://t.co/27SOnBcv

55 Latest Free Fonts for Professional Designers – http://t.co/I9xkCMkY

40+ Creative ideas in business cards – http://bit.ly/IiFPBg

10 Things to Consider Before Starting a Freelancing Career – http://bit.ly/IDIlF8

Magazine Cover Design Through The Decades – http://bit.ly/I6oTnX

200+ Pinterest Boards for Designers to Follow – http://t.co/ttPi6KYQ

50 Extremely Beautiful Photoshop Patterns for Elegant Designs – http://bit.ly/Icm7bq

200+ Free Vector Grunge Graphics for Designers and Illustrators – http://bit.ly/IDInwC

29 Hot New Freebies Every Designer will Love – http://bit.ly/IDIgky

Cool and Unique Bookshelf Designs For Inspiration – http://bit.ly/IDIice

General Info and An Intro to Font Selection – http://bit.ly/IDIsAz

35 Stylish and Creative Wedding Invitation Designs for Inspiration – http://t.co/Y4UaoFs2

40+ Fresh & Creative Minimal Art & Film Poster Designs Inspiration – http://t.co/FkfLyiHp

30 High Quality Examples of Scratch Texture – http://t.co/jcxdWTod

A fantastic free font: Valentia typeface, an antique Spanish didone – http://t.co/g00mQASB

35 Stylish and Creative Wedding Invitation Designs for Inspiration – http://t.co/Y4UaoFs2

Showcase of Creatively Designed Brochures – http://t.co/VJMLC73s

Getting Creative Things Done: How To Fit Hard Thinking Into a Busy Schedule – http://t.co/gQljYBKG

Newly Released Tools And Resources For Web Designers And Web Developers - http://t.co/dVzfoOPc

Six Brochures That Will Amaze You – http://t.co/JrSFXZ9Q

Absolutely Fresh And Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials – http://bit.ly/IDIbO0

Excellent Collection of Brochure Design for Inspiration – http://bit.ly/IiG0ww

40+ Creative Sticker Label Inspirations In Package Design – http://bit.ly/Ibe4kH

30 Awesome Examples of Free Wood Font – http://bit.ly/IcmaUy

30 Amazing Photoshop Tutorials That You Can’t Missed – http://t.co/2AaEC82r

20 Superb Labels Used in Package Design – http://bit.ly/IiFIWm

Latest Business Card Transparent Designs – http://bit.ly/JB6dKq

30 High Quality Examples of Rope Texture – http://bit.ly/IiFiPZ

15+ high quality, free pattern sets – http://bit.ly/J5psrB

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

60 Photography Logos That Are Among The Best – http://bit.ly/IcmfYi

30 Fantastic Celtic Fonts for Free – http://t.co/LZcN4ksO

Showcase: 40 Appetizing Restaurant Logos – http://t.co/Gqy5yYZB

55 Latest Free Fonts for Professional Designers – http://t.co/I9xkCMkY

18 Beautiful Examples of Parallax Scrolling in Web Design – http://bit.ly/IiGaE6

45 User Friendly Navigation Menu Examples – http://bit.ly/IiGkeL

Using Photo Backgrounds in Web Design: 30 Examples – http://t.co/Kpj0c5OM

21 Inspiring Examples of About Pages - http://t.co/hWcL4l5n

Showcase of 27 Beautiful Restaurant and Food Websites using WordPress – http://t.co/MKbrtieb

32 Examples of Usable Mobile Website Layouts – http://t.co/PCofRb8a

20 Best Examples of Landing Page Design – http://t.co/HCU0TNme

40 Creative Examples of Pricing Page Design for Your Inspiration – http://bit.ly/IkbXrV

23 Inspiring Examples of Contact Pages – http://bit.ly/IiHV4n

35 Beautiful Landing Page Design Examples to Drool Over [With Critiques] - http://t.co/8WBdFlMd

1st grader without hands wins a penmanship award – http://abcn.ws/IBvzpH

Wonderful set of infographics about the foods we eat and our diets – http://bit.ly/J9uyHP

How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death – http://nyti.ms/Ikicf8

Apple nearly doubles quarterly profit – http://bloom.bg/JpIb37

13 Fun & Fascinating Facts Not to be Feared on Crowdsourcing – http://t.co/57sz5bLm

The dumbest toilet door #FAIL I have ever seen – http://t.co/V3hJadd4

Audi Crowdsources The Design Of Their Race Car Inspired Chair – http://bit.ly/Jh3atM

Truly despicable how women are treated in the Middle East in Arab countries – http://bit.ly/IMMgyg

NASA crowdsourcing solutions for a way to get to Mars on the cheap – http://tnne.ws/HRvLkp

New study says social security will run out of funds 3 years earlier than previously thought – http://trib.in/I8USni

Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers? – http://nyti.ms/Imfk27

Not surprising that data centers require lots of coal and nuclear power to operate – http://t.co/deGFJ13i

Interesting … clinical research suggests there’s a connection between inadequate sleep and ADHD in kids – http://t.co/wW1Dsoci

Mobile Payments Won’t Replace Cash or Credit for Another Decade – http://t.co/qsOKsb5a

Art for the One Percent: 60 Minutes on the Excess & Hubris of the International Art Market – http://t.co/ZWGtttAF

Seems far fetched but at some point, I believe we will mine asteroids for minerals – http://bit.ly/I8lp2b

Outstanding look at depression and clinical research on Prozac – http://nyti.ms/IfIsYd

Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest – http://bit.ly/JinNmU

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

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Invitation Consultants provide classy, customizable invitations at an affordable price.  What Vista Print is to business cards is what Invitation Consultants is to your invitation needs.  This includes anything from weddings to corporate events.  They also provide users with suggestions for how to word your invitations and proper etiquette when mailing or sending them out.

Each year, Invitation Consultants crowdsources one of their designs using crowdSPRING.

CEO Allison De Meulder discusses the business of invitations below:

How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?

Our company designs invitations, stationery and gifts for all event types. Customers use our website to personalize each item to suit their occasion.

What are some industry specific challenges you faced?  

When we first started having vendors let us sell their product because they did not know who we were. When we said in 1999 that we were internet-based they thought we were a sub-par company. Now when you say internet company, people take you seriously.

What was your biggest learning curve/experience?

Learning to do the production angle, best practices, be efficient, not waste and economies of scale when implementing new technologies and equipment.

 What made you use crowdSPRING? 

We decided to use crowdSPRING to bring fresh ideas into our invitation line. Each year, we host an invitation design contest where winners are selected to have their designs sold on our site. We knew that crowdSPRING would help us reach talented designers who could bring new perspective and inspiration to our product line.

What’s the craziest story you have from starting your own business?  

Crazy is defined differently by each person. I am typically a conservative person, but I walked into Best Buy spent $1000 on my first laptop and started a business and never looked back. No money, school loans, credit card debt and minimal life and work experience at 23. I define crazy as a risk and this was risky.

Six words of advice to those looking to start their own company.  

Generosity. Perseverance. Honesty. Creativity. Efficiency. Leadership

How do you see your company growing in the future?

We want to be more involved in the production and manufacturing of our products. Not only is this option more economical, it is also important for us to be involved in every step of the process.

If you could go back, would you do anything differently? If so, what and why?

No, I don’t ever believe in regrets. That’s the truth. Everything I did – I had a purpose at the time. If you question anything too much or regret what you have done, you are creating road blocks.

Invitation Consultants most recent contest received 71 entries.

Want to see your business here? Email Us!

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A few times a year I take a browse through current legislation that has been introduced in our Congress. The idea is to stay current on what the folks in Washington are doing for small businesses and startups and to briefly analyze some of those priorities and efforts.

As business owners and operators who live our lives without the luxury of lobbying firms to represent our interests, we are vulnerable to the decisions that will be made with little or no input from us. Sure we can (and sometimes do) pick up the phone or send an email to one of our elected representatives to voice an opinion or advocate for an issue, but at the end of the day we have very little real power; what happens with legislation will happen and the impact on our businesses will occur regardless of our input.

Here  - for better or for worse - are three pieces of legislation proposed or pending in Congress that have the potential to impact your business. You can reach out to your Representative or Senator and let them know where you stand on these. Or you can simply wait until November and send your message in a electorally appropriate manner; in other words, feel free to vote the bums out!

H.R. 585: Small Business Size Standard Flexibility Act  (Introduced 3/21/2012) Many of us have businesses that are heavily regulated by the government, while others enjoy lighter oversight. In either case, rules and regulations can have a real economic impact on small businesses. The Small Business Size Standard Flexibility Act along with H.R. 527 (the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act) would require government agencies to consider whether new rules conflict or overlap with other existing rules, and require more input from small business representatives in making the rule making process. The point being that rules are often formulated without taking into account the real impact on small business in particular.

H.R. 4293: Restore Main Street’s Credit Act of 2012 (Introduced 3/28/2012) This law, currently in committee, would amend existing law to specifically define ‘Main Street business’ to mean “an organization, other than a nonprofit organization, with 20 or fewer full-time employees that possesses, occupies, or leases a physical property other than a home for the business’s operations.”  The law would require that credit unions, specifically, make extensions of credit more easily available to companies that meet this standard. More credit for small business during a time of notoriously tight lending standards? Sounds right to me.

S. 2284: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide expensing for small businesses (Introduced 4/16/2012) We all buy stuff for our businesses, right? And we all filed our business taxes recently, right? And we’d very much like to be able to deduct more expenses from our tax liability, right? Well this bill, introduced just a few days ago is designed to make it easier for us to do just that. Currently, when we make a capital expenditure, we typically have to depreciate the item over time and amortize the cost over several years. The bill would permit small businesses (defined as those with profits of less than $1 million) to expense, or immediately deduct, the entire value of the purchase in the year that purchase was made. Let me put it more simply: buy something and get the full value deducted in the same year you bought it. Nice.

photo: Photo Phiend

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Some companies hire remote employees in order to find the best people. By hiring only in geographically small locations, companies give up the opportunity to find better candidates elsewhere. And while it’s not unusual for small startups to work remotely, this can scale to hundreds of employees working remotely.

But how can you effectively manage your remote employees? I encourage you to watch the following video where, together with representatives from DELL and Microsoft, I discuss the challenges of managing remote teams and how to overcome those challenges with policies, culture changes, and technology.

Do you have any questions or additional tips for managing remote employees? Please share in the comments below.

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When starting and running a new company it is easy to focus on the present and quickly lose track of what may come in the future. This is not a bad thing  - in fact the present is exactly where entrepreneurs should place most of their priorities and devote most of their energy. But as a company matures and strategic planning starts to concentrate more on the future, consideration should also be given to the future of the company’s administration, operations and financial structure and a succession planning process should be an important part of that. The word itself should provide some basic guidance; Merriam-Webster online defines “succession” as “the order in which or the conditions under which one person after another succeeds to a property, dignity, title, or throne.” Throne, you say?

While much of the literature on succession planning tends to be about long-term legal planning as well as the importance of valuation, buy/sell agreements, and tax and estate planning, my advice is that you first focus on what will happen tomorrow if you don’t have any plan already in place. The kind planning I want to discuss should be driven by a simple question: “If I get hit by a bus on the way to work today, what will happen?” Taking some time to ponder this simple question will lead you to some straightforward steps you can take to assure that your venture will continue on (triumphantly) during your days in the hospital. In other words, start planning for an emergency succession, then turn your focus to the longer term planning that should follow.

There are several immediately practical as well as the legal and financial questions that will arise immediately during your absence. On the practical/operational side, good succession planning should be designed to ensure that everything you are responsible for doing at your company will continue to get done – from paying the bills to maintaining the database and on down to taking out the trash. On the financial/legal side, this planning should be about making certain that the business can continue to operate effectively under its bylaws or operating agreement, that cash flow will will not be impacted by your absence, and that the resources are available to enable new hires or bring in outside assistance to make up for the loss of your personal capacity. Here is a list of 5 uncomplicated steps you can take this week to get things going.

1. Document. First and foremost take the time to make a list of the things you do every day that someone else will have to do in your absence. Are you responsible for payroll? Is there a marketing campaign underway that needs your daily attention? Are you the person who locks up at night and sets the alarm? Make sure that you carefully write down instructions for these things and that you know who will be the one to take these on. Simple cheat sheets can be incredibly helpful – just make sure that at least one other person knows where these reside and has access to them. Creating comprehensive written instructions is not so important for taking out the trash, but for more complex tasks such as accounting and finance functions, documentation is critical.

2. Insure. One way to make certain that you will have adequate cash to survive an emergency succession is to take out appropriate insurance policies. Many small businesses carry some type of “key person” policy which pays out in the event of the death to disability of a founder or CEO or other important employee. In the case of multiple founders running the company, matching policies can be set up to safeguard should something happen to any of these people. There are a number of factors that will drive the value of such a policy: business valuation, costs of hiring and training a replacement, and the lost revenue or business opportunities attributable to that person.

3. Train. Don’t overlook the importance of training other people in the company to take on whatever tasks will need doing. Each of us has specific knowledge about the tasks we perform everyday and it is dangerous to assume someone else will be able to pick up the reins while you are in that hospital bed. So my advice is to plan for redundancy and to identify the backup person for any given area of responsibility. Then be sure to give that person both the written instructions discussed above and, more helpful still, an opportunity to learn the task – let them watch you do it once or twice or, better yet, let them try it on their own with the help of that new cheat sheet.

4. Anticipate. In any succession, there will be many issues that inevitably result: conflicts and disputes can emerge between employees, investors, or other partners; a loss of confidence might take place for employees, clients, or creditors; potential tax exposure could also result for your family or partners. The point is to take some time now to consider what could happen in your absence and start considering steps you can take now to head off what could be potential problems later.

5. Clarify. Whether in legal documents or in your informal notes and cheat sheets be sure that all succession instructions are clearly defined. Issues such as the transfer of power and  transfer of assets are important, but so are the little nitty-gritty operational details that must be seen to. During the early stages of starting your business there is typically very little strife or conflict between partners or investors, an succession emergency can bring out the worst kinds of discord and tension.  A good succession plan accounts for all of the possible things that can go wrong – it should be an instruction manual for those left behind that clearly and in a detailed manner describes what happens now. Take the time to determine the issues and the terms to provide for the smoothest of transitions and it will pay off if and when the tie ever comes that you need it.

And, please remember to look  both ways when you step off the curb.

Photo: Stephen Wilson

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Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The video above is an 11 minute short about a 9 year old boy in East L.A. who built a very elaborate cardboard arcade inside his father’s used auto parts store. It’s a fascinating look at curiosity, drive, and flash mobs.

The Economic Clout of Women-Owned Small Businesses – http://bit.ly/HD6PRT

Compete on Know-Why, Not Know-How – http://bit.ly/HzMo34

10 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Academics – http://bit.ly/Im4slR

10 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Academics – http://bit.ly/Im4slR

Did everybody see what just happened? The pendulum has swung – http://bit.ly/HRw3oW

Good & useful post for entrepreneurs about founder stock vesting & things to consider – http://bit.ly/HCLVz0

Good look at how the office has changed and why companies favor collaborative space – http://bit.ly/HRAO1Y

Compete on Know-Why, Not Know-How – http://bit.ly/HzMo34Facebook acquires Instagram – http://bit.ly/IbmV45 & http://on.fb.me/IbnbA2

The purchase price for Instagram (by Facebook)? 1 billion dollars – http://bit.ly/IbnJ9d

Zynga Spends Big to Keep CEO Safe – http://bit.ly/HGQcCc

How to Fail: Mark Pincus – http://buswk.co/HBM9c4

Harsh words, but good observations from Seth Godin – Is everyone entitled to their opinion? – http://bit.ly/I3BmoE

Why a remote workforce is bad for startups – http://bit.ly/IjNscp

Things To Consider Before Saying “I Do” To Investors – http://tcrn.ch/HuaHEP

The Economic Clout of Women-Owned Small Businesses – http://bit.ly/HD6PRT

Can Brands Market on Facebook Without Actually Spending Money on Advertising? – http://bit.ly/Izn5NX

Ten benefits to using Springpad’s social notebooks – http://bit.ly/HKIC9L

PR people continue to struggle with social media – http://bit.ly/HRuV4O

Thoughts on the Future of Social-Digital Agency Services – http://bit.ly/HvhIRI

Less marketing douchebaggery. More Tanks (or how to get more likes on Facebook) – http://bit.ly/IjPvx1

Unilever continues to blaze path – crowdsourcing sustainability suggestions – http://bit.ly/HrGhP2

The funny side of advertising: 20 amusing and clever print advertisements – http://bit.ly/HEJc7q

30 Cool and Stylish Curly Fonts – http://bit.ly/HvkaaX

10 Tips for Writing for Designers – http://bit.ly/Hvk6bc

11 Extremely Useful Fresh Free Fonts – http://bit.ly/ItZGPk

40+ Different ideas in business cards – http://bit.ly/IHwzqs

250+ Retro Patterns for a Vintage Look – http://bit.ly/IlpyS5

20 Creative Grunge Fonts To Download – http://bit.ly/ItZ6RA

Fresh Package Design Inspiration for Designers – 32 Examples – http://bit.ly/ItZwaS

20 Beautiful Free Fonts for Vintage and Retro Style Website Design – http://bit.ly/HBsQRl

80+ Effective Minimalist Packaging Designs – http://bit.ly/HKR0Xt

Typographical Infographics That’ll Make You Go “Wow!” – http://bit.ly/HKQiJF

Grunge Photoshop brush roundup – http://bit.ly/HEJ1cv

25 Free Hi-Resolutions Concrete Textures – http://bit.ly/IlpiCE

31 New Inspirational iPhone & iPad Application Websites – http://bit.ly/IlpbHe

25 Tutorials for Learning Character Design – http://bit.ly/Ilp6Dp

I love this creative potato chip container design (that blooms into a bowl) – http://bit.ly/Hyf7dV

50 Beautiful Examples of Clean and Minimalist Package Designs – http://bit.ly/Is6mwr

30 Free And Fresh Photoshop Brush Sets – http://bit.ly/IuG1Rg

50 Most Incredible Examples of Icon Design #2 – http://bit.ly/HCgvFs

A Handy Guide to Proper Typography for a Successful Design – http://bit.ly/HvjZfI

Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/1ySfi

Legal Contracts for Graphic Designers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – http://bit.ly/XTLkS

30 Cool and Stylish Curly Fonts – http://bit.ly/HvkaaX

25 Type-Based Logos for Inspiration – http://bit.ly/IfEgbZ

20 Creative Grunge Fonts To Download – http://bit.ly/ItZ6RA

11 Extremely Useful Fresh Free Fonts – http://bit.ly/ItZGPk

20 Stunning Websites Using Bright Colors – http://bit.ly/IHw6Ve

30 Awesome Blue Websites For Your Inspiration – http://bit.ly/IHwjYo

20 Beautiful Free Fonts for Vintage and Retro Style Website Design – http://bit.ly/HBsQRl

30 Awesome Dark Web Designs – http://bit.ly/IlpmlP

30 Excellent Textured Website Designs for Inspiration – http://bit.ly/HKQA3d

12 Killer Sites that do Parallax Right – http://bit.ly/HCgpO7

65 Fresh and Creative Portfolio Website Designs for Inspiration – http://bit.ly/Iu05kQ

50 Most Incredible Examples of Icon Design #2 – http://bit.ly/HCgvFs

Free Icon Set In PNG (120 Items): SweetiePlus – http://bit.ly/HBt3nz

40+ Useful Free Online Books for Web Designers – http://bit.ly/IHvGy0

Guide to User Flow – The “Foolishly Ignored” Backbone of Website Design – http://bit.ly/HvkeHO

31 New Inspirational iPhone & iPad Application Websites – http://bit.ly/IlpbHe

30 Red Websites Which Look Great – http://bit.ly/Is6nk9

23 Fantastic Examples of Dark Colors in Web Design – http://bit.ly/IHvYos

What Recruiters Look At During The 6 Seconds They Spend On Your Resume (eye tracking study) – http://read.bi/IBER3K

Clever Twitter ad from Smart Car Argentina. Go here and hold down the letter J – http://bit.ly/IxNKRj

Interesting look at how computing has become more energy efficient over the past few decades – http://bit.ly/HDPFgU

Wow – 1 in 6 dads are stay-at-home. Hard to believe – http://bit.ly/Hxlw8r

Very impressive stats for online population in China (infographic) – http://bit.ly/HxT46z

Watch an iPad get made from the Foxconn factory floor (>250,000 people work there) – http://bit.ly/HEjRP5

For the Elderly, Emergency Rooms of Their Own – http://nyti.ms/HNLJOa

Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals – http://nyti.ms/HNFAl5

Antibiotics for Livestock Will Require Prescription, F.D.A. Says – http://nyti.ms/Hw51EE

I hope you enjoy these links! Please leave a comment and let me know what you liked/didn’t like.

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In the United States, the number of women-owned businesses (and revenue) have both steadily increased for the past 15 years.

Not surprisingly, California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois are the top five states with women-owned businesses in 2012 (the top five hasn’t changed in 15 years).

The role of women in business is increasing not only in the United States, but also around the world. For example, according to a recent report of Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and several private firms, the role of women in Middle East and African mobile markets is increasing.

If you’re interested in recent numbers for the U.S., you should look at the 2012 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report (commissioned by American Express OPEN). The two charts above are from that Report.

I also invite you to look at the fascinating stats about women entrepreneurs (and leaders) in an infographic published by the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School (below).

Via MBA@UNC & Women 2.0

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As college graduation weekends and summer business incubator announcements loom, I thought I would take a few minutes to consider the connection between the entrepreneurship and academia.

Entrepreneurs, by definition,  take an idea or a concept and strive to make that idea into a operating business. To do this, we spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork: researching, modeling, testing, and (finally) executing to turn all of that work into a revenue-generating enterprise.

scientists, and pedagogues of all stripes – also explore ideas but in a theoretical structure. They use a rigorous and clearly articulated process of  scholarly examination to explore concepts through investigation, experimentation, analysis, and interpretation to (finally) arrive at a conclusion or support a theory. Although the scholarly process itself is not necessarily  about the actual creation of a concrete “something,“ it doesn’t mean that entrepreneurs can not learn from their erudite cousins in academia. Here is a list of 10 things that academics do that can provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs:

1. Academics research throughly.

Academics leverage scholasticism to answer questions and to resolve conflicting theories and ideas; the scholarly process is the formal methodology used by academics around the world for validating ideas and theories. Through the use of a similarly rational, meticulous and methodical approach to their businesses, entrepreneurs can also solve problems, find answers, and support theories in their own industries, markets, or companies.

2. Academics believe in empirical data.

Through research and experimentation, academics collect data to produce or support a theory or to investigate causal relationships between actions and outcomes. Entrepreneurs should also collect and interpret accurate and appropriate data to support their business ideas and also to measure the actual outcomes of their strategies and tactics. We often hear the term “data-driven” used in the context of business decisions and the credible and careful collection of that data can lead to better decision making and a clearer understanding of the observed effects.

3. Academics are rational.

The research and experimentation that is conducted as part of the scholastic process is strictly logical, reasoned, and sensible; subjectivity should always play a negligible role in the approach researchers, scientists, and other academics take to their work. Entrepreneurs should also strive for the rational; the best decisions and the most successful strategies should be built on a foundation of data, historical fact, and cogent, well-reasoned theory.

4. Academics respect history.

By using the historical method and leveraging primary sources, scholars reconstruct facts, context, and derive meaning through past events. Entrepreneurs should always conduct their own historical research to better understand the context of their idea, the likelihood of the venture’s success, and to determine the value of a market or a business model. For instance, the use of comparable company data to make projections or imply valuation is one way entrepreneurs can leverage historical fact to help arrive at conclusions.

5. Academics review one another’s work.

The formal process of peer review allows for the credible evaluation of a scholar’s work. Peer review is most commonly associated with the publication of scholarly articles or papers, but extends to experiment design, grant proposals, and even software development. In business the concept of peer review is under-utilized; entrepreneurs can and should engage in this in an informal manner. Ross and I both speak often on the need to question your assumptions and to actively seek out disconfirming information; these ideas are analogous to the concept of peer research –  bringing in other qualified individuals to harshly question your ideas, criticize your assumptions, or review your data is a powerful way to strengthen your approach.

6. Academics experiment.

Well designed and executed experiments can provide valuable data for analysis and interpretation. This is true in the world of academia and scholarship, and equally true in business. For example, we often advise businesses to experiment with different marketing tactics and then to collect, analyze, and act on the resulting data. Scientists will design multiple experiments with the goal of proving or disproving a theory and those investigations can provide meaningful answers to serious questions; business people should emulate this diligent approach to their own experimentation.

7. Academics observe and measure.

A critical part of the experimentation process is observation and collection of data; high quality data is invaluable to the process and experiments are designed specifically to protect the integrity of the information collected. Entrepreneurs also need to practice and perfect the art of observing causal effects and measuring factual results as they design and execute business experiments such as A/B testing,  trial tactics, and marketing pilots.

8. Academics cite their sources.

Proper attribution is not just encouraged in scientific research and publication, but it is essential to the credibility of the author and the research itself. In business, too many entrepreneurs are quick to claim concepts as their own, and slow to cite the original source for their ideas. Business people may not be required to provide proper attribution, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t.

9. Academics accumulate knowledge.

Over time, scientists, researchers, and other academics have accumulated a huge store of knowledge and ideas. This mass of knowledge is celebrated and it is also incredibly valuable to other current and future scientists and researchers as well as to the world at large. Entrepreneurs can also benefit through the accumulation of business-specific knowledge and data, whether about their own ventures, experiences, and experiments or through the knowledge acquired by other entrepreneurs; writing, speaking, and participating at conferences and through professional organizations are ways that we share knowledge and build resources that can help others who travel the same road.

10. Academics learn continuously.

The goal for all of us, whether scientist or business person, is to constantly grow, constantly challenge ourselves, and constantly test new ideas. In academia this is completely normal and expected; those of us engaged in entrepreneurship can mimic this approach and add value to our own ventures by consistently seeking to acquire knowledge and to take the time to discovery, analysis, and experimentation.

Photo: Jon Tucker

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