In percentages, the top ten search terms (atleast 2 hits each) on this site over the past month:

1. Omnifocus windows - 8%
2. Omnifocus Linux - 3%
3. Conceptdraw Omnigraffle - 2%
4. freemind vs novamind - 1%
5. microsoft project mac book pro - 1%
6. how do I highlight tool on macbook - 1%
7. ais media - 1%
8. vtiger ical - 1%
9. dotproject ical - 1%
10. omnigraffle conceptdraw - 1%

It’s always interesting to see what folks are looking for.  From the search items above, it’s apparent that Omni Group could do well with a version of their excellent task management/GTD OmniFocus program on Windows and possibly on the small amount of Linux desktops out there.  It will probably not happen since the OmniFocus user interface is designed to be used on a Mac but you never know.

Sure, Omni has extended the platform to the iPhone.    If you are an Apple advocate and are using a Mac/iPhone combo then this integration is brilliant.  Through a WebDAV server or MobileMe, you can enter tasks on one platform and remotely sync them.  It’s not cheap ($80 for desktop + $20 for the iPhone app) but it is very much worth it my humble opinion.

The second part of diving through the stats I would like to cover in the post is freeware vs. payware mindmapping.  Mindmapping, a registered trademark of Tony Buzan in the UK, is a left brain/right brain exploration exercise.  It is commonly used in brainstorming, or simply, “emptying your brain onto paper”.  Freemind is a popular Open Source Java based Mindmapping client.  NovaMind is a commercial Mindmapping tool popular on Mac platforms.

Both Novamind and Freemind work on Mac and Windows platforms.  Further, Freemind, being Java based, works on Linux very nicely as well.  Personally, I find Novamind a bit easier to use on the Mac and the support is top notch.  Additionally, it integrates very nicely with Merlin 2 (a Mac Project Management tool that is just as good as MS Project on Windows boxes..)

That’s it for this post.  If you have any comments on your experience or have questions then please feel free to post them.  Even though I have not posted in a few months, I do receive email notification on comments

In order, I’ll answer the 5 W’s in the following context:

• What is BNI?
• Why join BNI?
• Where are BNI chapters/where is an opening?
• Who joins BNI?
• When should I join BNI?

What is BNI?

Business Network International was found in 1985 by a guy named Ivan Misner. Misner wanted to create a system where professionals were accountable to each other for referrals. Misner’s story is told in a book provided upon joining called “Giver’s Gain”. The main point the book gets across is that the old adage it’s better to give than receive works for more than just gifts. By giving quality referrals and deserved testimonials to other members, you are actually building up your credibility.

One of the points Misner makes in his book is that only one member representing an area is allowed into the chapter. In other words, you will not have two Realtors or two web designers. Only one can join so it’s a first come first serve proposition. This works out well because it reduces internal competition.

While BNI is not the only game in town, it’s the best in my book. Sure, there’s others including LeTip and other local varieties including an email I received for a Professional Business Network in Warren, NJ. Of course, there’s always the local/county/regional Chambers of Commerce. Personally, BNI made sense the first time I visited. It’s very structured and goal orientated.

The structured BNI meeting I attend every Thursday between 7AM to 8:30AM goes something like this:

• 15 minutes of open networking
• 45 - 60 second commercials given by every member
• A report by the chapter VP going over referrals, “dance cards” (meetings with members outside of the BNI chapter meeting) and closed business attributed to the chapter
• 2 seven minute presentations by members on their businesses. With a chapter our size, we present roughly every six months.
• “I have” time. We share referral (or acknowledge them if already shared with the individual) and to give testimonials.

Why Join BNI?

BNI has a couple of advantages out of the box:

1. It increases the size of your sales force. Put simply - if one of the 40 members hears of an opportunity, there’s a very good chance you’ll hear of it as well.
2. It helps build your network immediate. Sure you have to build credibility and trust but it helps that you’re like someone else because you’re both members of a group.

Case in point: A startup/potential client needed assistance with finding a distributor. I asked my BNI group for help in finding distributors. Within 24 hours, I had emails from three BNI members with contact details.

Where are chapters/Where is an Opening?

BNI’s page contains a listing of all the chapters that you can use to find a BNI chapter near you. Each subpage is a little different so I cannot give you a link to find a chapter with an opening for your business type. However, I will give you a search page for New York City/Metro New Jersey. If you’re in New Jersey but outside of this area then check out the clickable map of New Jersey/Pennsylvania. Believe it or not, the web page has been the biggest annoyance so far - everything else just runs. Perhaps it’s due to the old school word of mouth networking.. don’t know why it’s not more clean cut!

Who Joins BNI?

In short - a wide swath of business people. Some members own their businesses while others are professionals or even employees at large companies. If you are customer facing, have a relationship manager role or are responsible in some or in whole part for sales, then BNI could be for you. As an example, our chapter, the Select Business Source in Westfield, NJ contains the following members (as of May 2008) :

• Accounting
• Appraisals - Residential Real Estate
• Attorney (Divorce)
• Attorney (Real Estate)
• Attorney (Employer Law)
• Banking - Commercial
• Business Brokerage
• Chiropractor
• Cleaning Services
• Commercial Banking
• Commercial Lending
• Computer Service
• Copiers & Office Software Solutions
• Credit Card Processing
• Custom Window Treatments
• Data Networking
• Divorce Attorney
• Financial Advisor
• Graphic Design
• Interior Design Consultant
• Insurance - Auto, Home & Commercial
• Insurance - Life, Health, Disability & Long Term Care
• Health, Nutrition & Lifestyle Counseling
• Heating/Cooling Systems
• Home & Building Inspection
• Human Resource Consultants
• Marketing & PR
• Merchant Processing Services
• Mortgage Services
• Moving & Storage
• Real Estate (Sales & Listings)
• Lawn Maintenance
• Legal Services (Real Estate)
• Printing Services (and direct)
• Printer Cartridges
• Sales & Management Training
• Signage/Trade Show Displays
• Telephone, Wireless & Internet
• Web Design & Hosting

Needless to say, it’s a pretty diverse group.

When Should You Join BNI?

A bit of a rhetorical question in my book. Perhaps as soon as possible?!? If you are dependent upon sales, or are a sales organization, do yourself a favor and visit a chapter. It doesn’t cost much (if any) to visit, and generally, you’ll be breakfast out of it as well.

• Sites are not being updated regularly & not refreshed on any regular basis. It’s not uncommon to see a “Copyright 2004″ on the sites.
• Small companies are forced into “content contracts” that force them to use the developer to update content. If you did not want to pay then someone in your company must know Adobe Dreamweaver or Adobe Contribute.
• Small companies have no idea how their sites are making them money. A website is something they “have” and is seen as cost of doing business.
• Small companies have little or no analytics/metrics of site performance. If they do have some sort of analytics then it’s generally a “check it occasionally” or the opposite - an obsessive compulsive “how much bandwidth am I pulling?”
• Small companies have joined referral networks. These are generally niche but can cost upwards of $500/mo for a handful of contacts. Some have had good results and others have seen this as throwing money down the drain.

That’s what I’ve seen so far. What does it mean? It could mean that companies are not interested in maintaining their own content. Perhaps they want to focus on selling and servicing the customers. I think this is a fair point but it misses a major trend that has built since 2003/2004.

So, what’s happened since 2004? Well, namely, Web 2.0 has come into its own. The democratization of the Internet continues and Web 2.0 has entered the mainstream. It’s a user generated content world now. Content is king and if you don’t publish, or allow the ability for your users/customers to publish, then you’ll risk being left behind.

What does “left behind” mean? Namely, you’ll have to pay for you content to be served and opposed to customers discovering your content. It’s no secret that search engines love blogs. Blogs, or weblogs, are not new - they’ve been around since the late 90s. It’s only been in the last few years that they have entered the mainstream.

Some popular mainstream Web 2.0 sites:

• YouTube’s video sharing
• Flickr’s photo sharing
• Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia
• del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking (I’m more of diigo fan but it’s not as popular)
• last.fm - Social media/music
• LinkedIn, MySpace and facebook - Social Networking

There are countless other sites and the list above is only a taste. You can spend hours reading articles (and news feeds) from sites like Slashdot (/.) or TechCrunch to keep up, or, better yet, focus on your business. The problem with this approach is that lots of sites and tech just don’t pan out.

You may be thinking - that’s nice. I really don’t care about those sites. I think you may want to perk up before it’s really too late. Technology, like business, goes through cycles. A good illustration of technology cycles was documented in Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation (Amazon.com link) and modified by Geoffrey A. Moore in “Crossing the Chasm” (Amazon.com link). For the sake of this blog, I’ll keep it simple and use Rogers’ bell curve where the technology adoption cycle follows stages including:

1. Innovators (2.5% of population)
2. Early Adopters (13.5% of population)
3. Early Majority (34% of population)
4. Late Majority (34% of population)
5. Laggards (16% of population)

A graphic representation of this can be found on Wikipedia. Not sure about you, but I’m a bit more visual. Text is nice but pictures are better!

Technology cycles do not follow a prescribed 7 - 10 year cycle. It really depends on the technology, the usability of the technology and the benefits participants gain from consuming the technology. Case in point - computer took multiple decades before they ended up in your house. I’d say it was very uncommon to have a UNIVAC in the garage in the 60’s. Oh, and the Internet - well - it was created in the 70s and 80s by the US government only to be opened to college students in the 90’s for “Research Purposes.” That’s obviously changed a bit…

So for Web 2.0 - I’d guess we are somewhere between the Early Majority and the Late Majority. Blogs are probably a bit further and are in the Late Majority. Blogging has been around since the late 90’s so it’s pretty mature now.

Perhaps some additional proof will help. A respected publication, BusinessWeek, who in my opinion, catering to the Early Majority & the Late Majority has an article about Social Media in the June 2, 2008 edition called Beyond Blogs. This article is an update to a 2005 article on the importance of Blogs. It

So, what’s a small company to do? Wait it out? When have you gone from waiting to being passed by? Wel, according to bell weather, BusinessWeek, it’s

Everyone’s needs are different but I think small businesses should have:

• An easy way to update content
• An easy way to update different types of content (i.e. - blogs, simple articles, forums, etc)
• Receive appropriate contacts

Taking these issues into consideration, I think the best solution is to open up the content creation for small businesses. Considering I’m a big fan of Open Source and like some of the open source Content Management Systems out there, I’m interesting in promoting this directly to businesses in New Jersey.

• Deploy an Open Source Content Management System (CMS.) Jargon aside, a CMS simply is a car that you can drive yourself. You don’t always need to have your expensive chauffeur drive you around.
• The CMS should include some form of blogging or adding articles easily
• The CMS should provide tools to classify (tag) articles as well as categorize them to provide both readers and search engines relevant content.
• The CMS should pro

I am working with my partner to develop solutions based on an Open Source CMS called Joomla! Personally, I’m more of a Drupal snob when it comes to the Joomla! space but I can do more through partnerships than on my own so… Joomla! it is.

Joomla! may be too feature rich for the micro businesses/professionals. Wordpress is probably a better solution in this space and I am considering supporting this personally. I think there is a market that’s been forgotten about in this space. While the main focus is larger companies, I believe some professionals are being left behind. Sure, they can setup their own blog. It’s not that difficult but there’s something to be said about having a human there to help.

If you are a small business located in Central New Jersey and have been sitting on the sideline then reevaluate your position. Wait a second… if you are reading this then it’s likely you are not in this boat. Better yet, if you know someone whose business is sitting on the sideline then have them contact us.

If you work for a large company or want to manage the technology yourself then I’d recommend looking at these solutions:

• Clearspace (from Jive Software)
• SpikeSource’s products including it’s version of Drupal and the SuiteTwo Web 2.0 bundle
• Drupal 5.7
  
• Wordpress (.org - downloadable version)
• Joomla!

I’m very interested in views - both supporting and outright flames. What do you think?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the process of advertising and marketing your products & services on the Net through search engines. Search engines, like Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live, receive a referral fee from you for the increase in traffic to your content. SEM is also referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC).

Why do it?

SEM is an effective way to draw traffic, and with it, customers to your site. The better your target your audience with your message, relevant keywords and great offers, the more likely you are to increase your revenue stream. Your goals for this increase in traffic may include:

1. Buy a product or service from you online.
2. Fill out a contact form for an offline sale.
3. Fill out a contact form so you can continue the conversation with the lead through targeted marketing (email/other direct methods).
4. become more educated on the products and services you provide.

How do you setup SEM campaigns?

You can hire a professional to do this for you or you can follow these steps:

1. Prepare your Target Content
2. Research Your Keywords
3. Setup and Launch your Campaign
4. Measure the Campaign’s effectiveness
5. Tweak the Campaign/Content
6. Repeat steps 4 & 5

As you can see from the steps above, this is not like a Ronco device - you don’t set it and forget it. You have to measure it and make changes. Ideally, you will have two (A/B) or more (Multivariate) ad tests . I’ll get into this a bit more later in the posting.

Prepare Your Target Content

Before you start your SEM/PPC campaign, you need to setup your targets. If someone were to click on your ad, what would you want them to do next? In other words, you’ve paid Google some money and you have a captive audience on your site.

Some suggestions on content:

• If you are looking at lead generation, make it easy for the audience to provide information to you. In other words, do not direct them to a page that does not have a contact form readily present. The more clicks required - the more chance you have in losing the customer.
• If you are looking at educating the lead, you will want to direct them to detailed product information. For example, on one of my campaigns, if someone comes through looking for web development then I will direct them to a custom web development page. This is much better than an overview of what services you provide.

If you are interested in learning more about content setup then I would suggest taking a look at a book by Tim Ash titled “Landing Page Optimization” (Amazon link). Ash does a great job helping you create landing pages and how to build a flexible landing page system to experiment on what works best.

Once you have your targeted content set, you need to research your keywords

Research Your Keywords

Now that you have set up your targets, you need to perform keyword research for your campaign. I found a post that may save some keystrokes here. The best tool in that posting is this page on SEO Book.

Setup and Launch Your Campaign

There are multiple offerings in this space including:

• Google AdWords
• Yahoo! Marketing
• Microsoft AdCenter

What’s the big difference between the three? Google’s traffic is much great than the other two put together. The most recent numbers I could find peg Google’s search traffic at 60% vs. Yahoo’s 22% (as of December 2007). While being bigger isn’t necessarily better for the long run, the size helps you test out a message very quickly in front of a large audience.

From personal experience, another benefit is Google provides better geolocation ads. In other words, if you want to advertise to a specific area, Google has the knobs and levers to do this. Yahoo! is decent in this area but prefers you to use metropolitan areas and this may be too large for some small business to focus on. Case in point: the NYC metro area includes New Jersey, Connecticut and of course NYC/New York area. Unfortunately, if you happened to be in central New Jersey and had clients in your local area, in NYC and in Connecticut then you could be very annoyed with amount of transit time required.

MSN AdCenter promises the best geolocation services but I have not seen the results from experience. When I ran a personal campaign for my business on AdCenter to test it out, I found connections from Iran, India, Pakistan and 30 of the 50 states in the union. This may have been caused by a content network (and not the search itself.) Either way, I’d rather stick to Google, and secondarily, Yahoo! for my dollars.

I digress…. I’d suggest you sign up for Google AdWords first. If you want to try another program then feel free to do this once you’ve measured your base results then please experiment.

Sign Up for Google AdWords

When you sign up for Google AdWords, you are given a choice between the “Starter Edition” and “Standard Edition.” I would advise you to signup for the standard package out of the gate. While there’s a bit more complexity, you have more control over how your ads are displayed including ad scheduling hours and better geolocation options.

Creation of A Campaign

Once you have logged in to AdWords, you have multiple options for campaign creation. Google has expanded their offerings to include newspaper and radio advertising. That’s a bit out of scope so I’ll stick to the topic of SEM/PPC campaigns. For these campaigns, you can setup either a “keyword-targeted” or a “placement-targeted” campaign. For our purposes, we want to create a “keyword-targeted” campaign.

Base Settings for a Campaign:

Assuming you do not have any current campaigns you will need to setup a name for the campaign, the ad group, which language you will use and where the customers you want to target are located.

Creation of your first Ad:

Once you have these basic settings, you will be asked to create your first ad. The format is as follows:

• First line - Headline - limit of 25 characters.
• Second line - Part of call to action/additional information - 35 characters
• Third line - Continuation of your call to action/information - 35 characters
• Fourth line - Your display URL w/o the http:// - 35 characters
• Fifth line - Your Destination URL (hidden from customer - can contain whatever tracking URL you want to include.) - 1024 characters max

In my opinion, creating the ads is the most challenging aspect of SEM. You have to be concise but offer enough information or have a good enough offer to generate interest. It seems fairly easy until you start writing them - you’ll see!

Keyword Submission:

After you have submitted your ad, you are given the opportunity to add your keywords you grabbed during your previous research. You can be very specific in the match criteria (use [keyword] to match exact keyword only or “keyword phrase” to have the show up in the search string) of you can be very broad and not use brackets or quotes. The more precise you are, you may receive less traffic but it may be better traffic. It may be the type of traffic you’re willing to pay for.

You will also be asked how much you are willing to bid for the keyword. Google, and the other guys, will display your ad based on how much you are willing to click and how many time people click on your ad versus someone’s elses ad. This later is generally referred to as the “quality” of the ad in the SEM speak…

How Your Ad Will Show:

You may be willing to pay $10 for a keyword but someone will only rarely click on your ad because it does not appeal to customers as much as an ad where a competitor is willing to only pay $2 for an ad but they rank above your ad. In rough number it makes sense. If your ad only receives a Click Thru Rate (CTR) of 1% and the competitor receives a 10% CTR then it makes more sense for Google to run their ad and not yours.

This is the other reason why writing the ads is the hardest part - you need to write great copy.

One last setting.. Setup Ad Serving to Rotate So You Can Measure Your Ads:

I would recommend you create another ad for the ad group/campaign in Google AdWords and then verify your Ad Serving is set to Rotate and NOT Optimize. If you have the campaign set to optimize then you will not have a good testbed to experiment one ad against another. You can verify this under the Campaign setings- “Edit Campaign Setting Settings.”

Measure

For simple campaigns, it’s a good idea to throw out a couple of ads with different message to see which one sticks. All the providers provide measurement tools to help you figure this out. Under Google AdWords, for example, you can find this information under the “Campaign Summary” - <Specific Campaign You are Running> - <Specific Ad Group> - “Ad Variations”. You will generally want to give the Ads a couple of days to compare their effectiveness. If you change things too quickly then you may miss out on the copy that could have turned you into a billionaire.

As an added benefit of your PPC campaigns, you may notice additional traffic in your analytics package. (Side note: Google provides a free analytics package that is bundled with AdWords or can be used independently - click here for more details). This is not an uncommon experience. Some folks prefer to go to the display URL themselves by manually copying/pasting and others my be directed by others who have already visited. Within your web analytics program should allow you to drill down to find the source of the traffic. This is outside the scope of this article but I wanted to mention the other benefits of PPC campaigns from a marketing standpoint. Basically, the Internet billboard you posted using SEM provides multiple benefits..

Tweak

Ideally, you will want to rotate the ad not performing and replace this ad. I would suggest you not delete the Ad, rather pause it so you can always go back and review your experiments and their varying levels of success.

Repeat… until expiration (if any)

For folks newer to SEM/Internet Marketing, this may seem a bit odd. In the past, you may have sent out a direct mail that took a couple of weeks to author, proof and deliver to the printer. After the printer ran their batch run, someone went to the post office with a big bag of bulk delivery items. Then, in a few more days, your message was in the hands of your customer. If this is the world you are used to and want to know what it will take to change to the new world then I’d recommend you pick up Do It Wrong Quickly by Mike Moran. I reviewed it earlier in this blog here. Another advertising & marketing channel of interest to you may be e-Mail marketing. I’ll cover this in another post.

As always, your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. Feel free to drop us a line by filling out our contact form.

It is very liberating to run whatever stack you want to run. I also decided that I would use my personal MacBook Pro as my work laptop. Before I went off a deep end and do things differently just because I can, I should consider what I need to run a business. Decisions on the following software products were required:

• Accounting/General Ledger & Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. This topic is covered in this post on this blog.
• Office Suite
• Project Management Software
• Planning Software
• Presentation Software
• Collaboration Tools

Office Suite
An office suite provides you with a word processor, a spreadsheet program and a presentation package to show off your brilliant ideas. Some choices you can run:

• Microsoft Office - This software runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. It is the de facto standard for office suite functionality and true compatibility.
• Apple iWork - iWork is a great alternative to MS Office if you are a Mac user. The presentation software, Keynote, is the real gem of the software package. Apple, the producer, has not ported this to MS’ operating systems nor Linux.
• OpenOffice & NeoOffice - OpenOffice runs on a variety of systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. NeoOffice is a Mac specific port that looks prettier and does not require you to run a copy of X Windows.

I’d like to use either Apple iWork or OpenOffice. The issue I have is that I must have true compatibility. The partner I have in Atlanta uses MS Word & MS Excel files for a good portion of the spec’ing process. While I use NeoOffice on the home PCs, I decided, that for business, I should use MS Office. Apple’s iWork is a close second in my book…

Project Management Software
Project management software is used to report on the progress of projects. I see it more as a communication tool rather than a management tool. Sure, you can use it to manage but I would argue that project management is more about reporting rather than doing.

Desktop products:

• Microsoft Project - MS Project is the de facto standard in this arena as well. However, you must run a MS OS to run MS Project. Also, it’s very expensive so be prepared to dole out some cash if you decided on this product.
• Gantt Project - Gantt Project is Java based an runs on any operating system with a Java VM (in other words.. pretty much any PC/Mac) Its usability is passable but not great in my opinion.
• Merlin2 - Merlin is a great product if you are Mac shop. It syncs with iCal, has a nice bookshelf/set of reference materials and had built it workflows. Perhaps I should emphasize the sentence before last - if you’re a Mac shop then this is a great product and you should look at it. As an added bonus, during an evaluation, I threw MS Project files in both XML format at regular format at it. It was able to open both.
• ConceptDraw Project - ConceptDraw is a great value if you buy all the ConceptDraw products. However, if you’re a Windows user I’d have a difficult time recommending it over MS Project. If you are a Mac user, I’d have even a harder time recommended this over Merlin2. So, where does this leave the product? A second, in my book, for both OSs.
• OmniPlan - OmniGroup puts out really good software for Macs and OmniPlan is a good program. However, it pales in comparison to Merlin2 and ConceptDraw Project in my opinion.

SaaS/hosted:

• 37Signal’s Basecamp - Basecamp provides task management/to-dos, simple project document management (pay versions only), whiteboarding and time tracking for projects. Basecamp is provided in multiple pricing tiers - from free to an “enterprise” max version for $149/mo.
• Daptiv (previous eProject) - Not sure why they renamed it. Suppose Daptiv sounds fresh but eproject makes sense… Anyhow, I have not reviewed this product in detail. It looks feature rich. I’m listing it in the event you are in need of evaluating multiple product offerings..
• SugarCRM/Netsuite/Concursive project management. These platforms offer project management as a tertiary feature if you’re having a good day.

Host your own:

• DotProject - Dotproject is a great alternative if you have the time and resources to host your own server. It requires a fairly standard LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server, a VMware image or you can host at a low cost provider. The major downside I’ve seen with DotProject is in the project planning stage. Yes, you can assign a project a prebuilt template. However, adding and manipulating tasks is not overly easy. If only the DotProject guys would get together with some Web 2.0 folks and worked out some nifty AJAX interface…

For my purposes, I chose Merlin2. I really like the interface and I’m in luck because I run a Mac shop. If I ran a Windows shop then I would have to think long and hard between MS Project and ConceptDraw’s Project though MS Project would probably end up being my choice. If my company expands to multiple location with multiple OSs deployed then I’d have to seriously look at hosting a DotProject server and centralize this functionality.

Planning Software
Before you can manage something you have to plan it. While some use a project management tool, a text pad or a text pad on their computer, I prefer to dump my brain using a mindmapping tool.

Software:

• Novamind Platinum - Novamind makes great mindmapping software. It’s not cheap but generally the good stuff on the desktop side costs you (yes… I made a point of saying on the the desktop side…) The Platinum edition of this software provide screen writing capabilities (like I’ll ever use that..) and a really nifty presentation interface. A nice feature of the software allows you to dump the mindmaps directly to Merlin2 so you can kick off the project quickly. While this feature is touted for Merlin, it does work with other PM software as well…
• Freemind - Freemind is Java based and works on just about any computer you’ll use in the wild. It has a development community that has developed some nifty tools like a Mediawiki plugin for displaying Freemind mindmaps in both Flash and Java. MediaWiki is the software that runs wikipedia.org..
• MindJet MindManager - MindJet is one of the pioneers in the computer aided Mindmapping software. They have lots of experience on Windows platforms and have recently ported this software to Macs.
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP - Again, ConceptDraw does a good job and this is, in my opinion, one of the better products they put out. However, it feels a bit clunky compared to Novamind.
• Inspiration - Inspiration runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. I have not used this product but I thought I would include it if you want to evaluate it. I have heard good things about it…

I chose Novamind Platinum over Freemind. Having used Freemind for over a year on multiple platforms, and now Novamind for 6 mos, I can say Novamind’s product is hands down worth the price. In hindsight, I did not need to get the Platinum version of Novamind and could have gone for a cheaper Novamind product.

Presentation Tools
I am referring to tools that visually diagram processes and systems as presentation tools. Both mindmapping and Powerpoint/Keynote have been discussed previously so I will avoid talking about these again.

• MS Visio - Visio is the de facto standard for diagramming. However, this only works on MS’ OSs and it is costly in comparison to the alternatives.
• ConceptDraw - ConceptDraw is an excellent program that runs on both Macs and Windows PCs. ConceptDraw does a good job of importing MS Visio files. The interface is a little clunky to me though…
• Omni Group’s OmniGraffle - OmniGraffle is an excellent program for Macs. It takes a bit of time to deprogram yourself if you are a Visio type like me. However, the importing of MS Visio files is not as good as ConceptDraw’s.

Since I run a Mac shop, Visio is not appropriate. Sure, I could use a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run Windows program, or worst yet, use Bootcamp to boot into Windows on Mac. However, I think either option is looking to the past rather than move forward.

For Mac users, it’s a tough choice between OmniGraffle and ConceptDraw. In the end, I chose OmniGraffle since it felt like a better designed product. The Visio import feature on the professional edition is much better in the 5.0 release.

Collaboration Tools
Collaboration tools are growing very quickly. Collaboration tools range from desktop products including:

• e-Mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, MS Entourage, Lotus Notes (it still lives… check out this humorous post..) or MS Outlook.
• Instant messaging clients & aggregators (like Adium on the Mac, Pidgin on Windows & Linux and Trillian on Windows.)

Web based tools:

• e-Mail clients including SquirrelMail, Horde IMP, RoundCube - All these clients require a server to run on but you do not need a server to run Google’s mail client. Google Apps allows you to configure your own domain (bob@somedomain.com instead of bob@gmail.com) for free in most cases. If you have not checked out Google Apps then you need to do that now…
• Instant Messaging clients like meebo.
• Wiki software from MediaWiki among tons of other packages you can install on your server.
• Blogging Software from hosted provides including wordpress.com and Google’s blogger.com of you can host your own servers using software like wordpress.org or Drupal’s platform. Like Wiki software, there are tons of of choices here too.
• Forum software like phpBB and vBulletin.

I am certainly missing some great products in the list above. As I started typing up this note, I began to realize that I have looked at quite a few products over the past 6 months to a year. The software available on both desktops and online is truly remarkable and is getting better every day. At this point, I will highlight both the hardware and software stacks I chose.

eMail is still a killer app. However, I have distinct patterns of conversation depending on who I know. Many business conversation are in eMail but I have noticed a change here.

My Hardware & Software Stack

• MacBook Pro with EVDO card (see this post for more info on the card..)
• Microsoft Office 2004. 2008 is in the mail and I’m looking forward to the speed increases for the native Intel Macs.
• Merlin 2.5 Project Management software.
• Omni Group’s OmniGraffle.
• NovaMind Platinum.
• Apple Mail and Adium (iCal & Contacts used as well..)
• Adobe CS3 software. This was not discussed earlier but I thought I would throw it in to have a complete list.

Wrap-Up

I’m interested in hearing about comments on this post or other tools I did not list above. The post became a whee bit bigger than I expected but I think it is important to see the alternatives.

Thanks for reading and feel free to drop me a line via the contact form if you do not comment on the page directly.

• Accounting/General Ledger Software
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

Accounting/General Ledger Software
This is the software you run your business on. The technology alternatives to ledgers are vast. You can simply add entries to Quickbooks on your laptop/desktop on the low end to having a shareable online portal via Netsuite. Let’s take a look at the options out there and some pros/cons of each method:Desktop Products:

• Quickbooks - The de Facto standard for both businesses and accountants.
• Peachtree - Quickbooks is a better option..
• Excel, OpenOffice, NeoOffice (Mac OS X), iWorks’ Numbers (Mac OS X) - A very manual process but a possible solution if you’re launching on a shoe string.

Software as a Service (SaaS)/hosted products:

• Netsuite - Netsuite is an expensive proposition for many companies. It is a very complex system due to the feature richness.
• NetBooks - Netbooks is less expensive solution than Netsuite. It is definitely a product/service to watch
• Quickbooks Online - Quickbooks provides some good solutions for small business for the price. Intuit, the maker of the Quickbooks software/services, is making a huge push to move its customers to online solutions

Overall Pros/Cons of Accounting/General Ledger Software:

Desktop Pros:

• Great usability compared to SaaS
• Application response time is generally better than SaaS.
• Generally a more secure - your data is with you.

Desktop Cons:

• More difficult to share information with other parties like your accountant or partner.
• You are responsible for backups (of your managed services/IT person..)

SaaS Pros:

• Easy to share information
• Easy to extend services with online partners of the service offering
• Backups are someone else’s problem.
• Upgrades are someone else’s problem.

SaaS Cons:

• You must trust your provider. Your data is in their hands. You must know how they protect it and back it up.
• Application performance may be impacted by a number of factors. Then again, if you do have a problem, is it with them, your Internet provider, their Internet provider, a transit network, your computer? You get the idea…

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
CRMs are critical for organizing your sales process and customer touch points. I’ll go into more detail about CRMs in another post. As you will see from a survey of some of choices, it is a VERY crowded field. The trend, with the exception of Rave CRM, is to move this interaction online as a hosted service or as a client-server interaction for company networks.Desktop products:

• Goldmine - A client/server solution that may work well for small businesses and those who are accustomed to being attached to their corporate network on a regular basis.
• Rave CRM - A newer product - I’ve seen some good writeups on it.
• ACT! - This product has been around for almost two decades. It’s a great product but the trend moving to online services.

SaaS/Hosted:

• ConcursiveSuite - Concursive is both an Open Source/community support product and a pay/enterprise version. Without getting into the technical details between this, SugarCRM and vTiger, it’s a great product. It may be worthwhile trying it, for get this, free for five user for a year.
• SugarCRM - Like Concursive, SugarCRM has multiple versions available. You can host your own or subscribe (minimum of 5 users) to either Sugar’s Professional or Enterprise editions. Sugar provides the differences between the pay editions on this page.
• Netsuite - In my opinion, Netsuite’s CRM capabilities are good but not as great as Sugar or Consursive. However, it’s integrated so that you see a single view of all customers. In other words, you don’t have to enter information in your ledger and then add another customer record in Netsuite. The unified view is very valuable in my mind.
• 37Signal’s Highrise - 37Signals makes software that’s easy for people to use. The usability rivals desktop products in some cases. However, Highrise simplicity takes away some functionality found in other hosted/SaaS product.
• heap - You may have never heard of WBP System’s heap. I stumbled across it ~ 6 mos ago when going through my own analysis of products. It, like 37Signals Highrise, is a very simple product to use. It’s **VERY** cheap at only $9/user/month and has what amounts to unlimited storage at that price. WBP provides widgets for both Vista and Mac OS X and email workflow processing. That’s cool! I’d recommend taking a look at it if you need something simple.
• SalesForce.com - SalesFoce.com is a pioneer in this space. The only problem, it’s like Frankenstein. It’s so patched together that I’m not a big fan of it. Netsuite is a much better (and cleaner) approach though SalesForce.com does have some great addons..

Overall Pros/Cons of CRM Software:

Desktop Pros:

• Same as above - Great usability compared to SaaS, Application response time is generally better than SaaS, Generally a more secure - your data is with you.

Desktop Cons:

• Same as above - More difficult to share information with other parties like your accountant or partner, You are responsible for backups (of your managed services/IT person..)
• Miss out on features and innovation occurring on the Web. There’s a larger community behind both SugarCRM and SalesForce.com.

SaaS Pros:

• Same as above- Easy to share information, Easy to extend services with online partners of the service offering, Backups are someone else’s problem, upgrades are someone else’s problem.
• Innovation - the pro of the software con previously noted.

SaaS Cons:

• Same as above - You must trust your provider. Your data is in their hands. You must know how they protect it and back it up and possible application performance

Host Your Own:

• Concursive (Registration on site required for download of community edition) - You can use open source or a corporate supported, professional edition. Requirements: A compatible OS (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or Sun Solaris) a J2EE stack and Postgreq DB (other databases are being developed but this is the reference database..)
• SugarCRM - To host SugarCRM, you need Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP Stack) by default but other OSs, including Windows and Mac OS X, work. If you need Oracle support then you must buy the Enterprise edition.
• vTiger - vTiger utilizes a standard LAMP stack.

Pros/Cons of Hosting it Yourself

Pros:

• Could be cheaper decided on one of the three options above - Concursive, SugarCRM or vTiger
• You control your data.
• You get the benefits of innovation on the Net/communities in a controlled environment.

Cons:

• For a small number of users, hosting it yourself may be more expensive. You must do a break even analysis of your internal hosting costs.
• You are responsible for administration including backups and upgrades.

My Decision
I am a big fan of both SugarCRM and Concursive. However, I am more interested in having a single view of my customers. As noted above, if I have a customer record in QuickBooks and a customer record in SugarCRM then I must synchronize the data manually. Netsuite has solved this problem. This is the main reason I chose Netsuite. Sure, it’s expensive but I know myself well enough to know I would be annoyed sync’ing data between the two systems.I did not include OpenBravo in this writeup. OpenBravo is a full blown ERP/CRM in the similar vein as Netsuite. However, it’s a consultants come in type situation and hosting is not readily available at last check.If you are a medium/large sized business with an IT department or budget for managed services then I would seriously look into OpenBravo. I think it’s a smart idea.I’m interested in hearing your comments on this post. Inevitably, I missed a product (or 20…)

Book Information:

• Title: Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (Amazon Link)
• Author: Mike Moran
• Publisher: IBM Press, 2007, Edition 1, 408 pages
• ISBNs: 0132255960 & 978-0132255967
• Overall Rating: 4.5/5

The Chapters

The book is broken down into three sections. The sections break down to: 1) theory 2) detailed information 3) how to implement and stay on top of things.

• Part 1 (’That New Fangled Marketing”) - Chapter 1 - “They’re Doing Wonderful Things with Computers.” This chapter discusses the old marketing paradigms and how they have shifted.
• Part 1 - Chapter 2 - “New Wine in Old Bottles.” This chapter rights the ship and explains how newer marketing methods are similar to older ones - the main difference is - everything moves much faster.
• Part 1 - Chapter 3 - “Marketing is a Conversation.” This chapter discusses how permission marketing (see Seth Godin for more info here..) and new media formats are changing how marketers discuss products/services with customers.
• Part 2 (”That New Fangled Direct Marketing”) - Chapter 4 - “Going Over to the Dark Side.” This chapter is all about the conversion of customers.
• Part 2 - Chapter 5 - “The New Customer Relations.” This chapter discusses how to engage in the initial, and follow on, conversations with your customers.
• Part 2 - Chapter 6 - “Customers Vote with Their Mice.” You have to continue to experiment and understand motivations change. This chapter highlights how you can never rest on your laurels when it comes to marketing to your customers.
• Part 3 (’That New Fangled You”) - Chapter 7 - “This Doesn’t Work For Me.” As the author puts it: this chapter borderlines on self help. The chapter is all about him trying to help you (and most importantly your mindset.)
• Part 3 - Chapter 8 - “This Won’t Work Where I Work.” A chapter dedicated to organizational behavior. Anyone who has worked in a political environment will relate to this chapter. For some, this could mostly be skipped. If you decide to skip then I’d recommend you pick back up at page 287..
• Part 3 - Chapter 9 - “This Stuff Changes Too Fast.” This chapter prepares the marketer for new mediums to consider including cell phones/mobile web, virtual worlds (like Second Life) and social networks (like MySpace). This area is still developing so you need to keep up with these maturing markets. The author provides his blog as the site to keep up with the changing times. This is the only plug within the book (that I caught atleast..) but there’s more resources than just his blog. I’ll put in an entry with some resources at a later date.

Points from the Book:

• The Internet has changed Direct Marketing forever. Previously, you wrote copy, printed it up and sent/gave it to the customer. Your message was fixed for days/weeks and changes to the message cost $$$. With the web, this has all changed. Variations to the initial ads on web sites, blogs, search engine and email marketing channels can be changed quickly.
• It’s far easier to measure the effectiveness of marketing messages on the web then in old days of billboards, flyers and commercials.
• The author stresses a trial and error - do and measure - approach to your direct marketing campaigns.
• Using New Media techniques such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and vidcasts to reach a larger audience than standard web pages.
• Major site redesigns may not be the answer. Some tweaks over time is what you may need. The author later correlates this to a trend in project management - the move from big bang waterfall approaches to agile/iterative approaches.
• Establish conversations with customers. The old style of marketing and advertising is fast dying. Customers are not interested in being given messages from a faceless corporation. You need to interact with your customers. Those who chose not to will suffer the consequences.
• Allow your employees to talk with customers directly via web technologies. Sure, they might screw up but the level of authenticity added is worth the short term pain. The author, like others, suggests you establish blogging & communication guidelines.

In Summary…

• The message is clear - do not be afraid to make changes and measure them. However, you must have resource available to make the changes or outsource to a search marketing firm. The value will be seen - you must give it a chance.
• Analytics, and in a more complex environment, full blown Business Intelligence, packages are worth their weight in gold for measuring results. You could go the route of Urchin, Omniture/Hitbox/WebSideStory, WebTrends. Personally, I do not have a need for data mining/full reporting so I’m sticking with Google Analytics for the time being. It’s a good package to start with!

“Do It Wrong Quickly” is available at your local book store or read more reviews on my favorite e-retailer: Amazon (Link for Do It Wrong Quickly)

I looked at opportunities including franchising, startups and partnerships. I knew my valuable technical experience should be utilized. While I was reading more business & marketing books from the likes of Brian Tracy (site, Amazon), Brad Sugars (site, Amazon) and Napoleon Hill (Amazon), I knew I did not want to go to far from the technology. Besides, I recalled how bored I was when I worked at a Wendy’s and a Subway nearly two decades ago.

So.. how could I exploit my experience while learning new skills and business systems? A technical franchise came to mind immediately. I will not get into the names of the companies I looked at, but they ranged from a “outsourced IT” approach to website design. The key issues I discovered were threefold:

1. Having worked for a company obsessed with its branding, I understand the importance of this. With franchises, you are building the company’s brand. Your brand is simply a holding company/semi-independent entity.
2. The fees the franchises were charging were a bit rich for what they provided. The range was between 10% and 18% of sales (read: not income). Again, I will not get into the names because I have NDAs in place with these companies.
3. Territories overlapped in one of the cases. The nearest franchise owner was, literally, 3 blocks away. The franchise explained this as “it’s like having another McDonald’s three blocks away”. Well, I think McDonald’s would think twice about putting another franchise within 3 streets of another unless you are in a densely populated place like New York City.

On the plus side, franchises generally offer working business systems. However, I was not convinced of the virtual/home based franchise models. I did not see the benefit of growing someone else’s brand while taking the risk on myself. So… what, oh what should I do?

With sites like PartnerUp and BizBuySell and friends with ideas and contacts, I questioned if I should go the safe franchise route. I was not comfortable with either approach after giving it more thought. I chose a hybrid approach. While the partnership with AIS Media is similar to a franchise it differs in the following ways:

• I will grow both their brand, AIS Media, along with mine Mavance, LLC
• I am not limited in what services I can provide. I have a certain affinity toward Open Source (well.. and Apple stuff too..) If I want to be an Open Source VAR/SI then all the more power.
• I have a partner who will fulfill orders. The ability to offload this allows me to focus on my clients.
• AIS Media prides itself in providing winning web design.
• AIS Media understands the nuances of marketing and I can learn strategy and tactics from them.

In summation, this approach allows me the opportunity to apply sales and marketing theory while having an established company to learn from. Additionally, it takes me out of the technical loop. While this is a strength, I already know how to do this. I need to learn new skills and continue to grow.

The next posts will go over the systems I have put into place. Yes, it’s fairly technical but systems are important. As Brad Sugars (and Michael Gerber, et. al.) will preach - you have to have business, people and technical systems in place to leverage your time. I have headed their advice and will share what I’m doing within the LLC.

Allow me to introduce myself and my company. My name is Kelly Hair and I work for Mavance, LLC. Mavance, LLC is a New Jersey single member Limited Liability Company I registered in February of 2007. Originally, I had intentions of becoming a real estate mogul and using this entity, along with others, to stockpile my properties. Well… times change!

Back in October 2007 and I received notice that my team’s services were no longer needed at big, global employer. The employer gave me 30 days to find another job within the company or receive severance. Ironically, I was excited by the news. It provided a ray of light I felt was missing for the last year/year and a half of my employment.

I did not try to find another role. Like many others, I shared the dream of starting a business and growing it. This was the final sign I needed to get moving on that dream. There were no more excuses. Oh, sure, I have a new son and my wife and I had bought a house a year earlier. Those excuses are not good enough to not pursue THE dream!

To be continued…..

Since this is my first post, I thought it would be a good idea to share with you what my other posts will include:

• Use of technology in business. WARNING: I’m a self professed geek and if you like this stuff then feel free to take a look at my geeky blog - QLVR (a mnemonic for the word clever.)
• Sales and Marketing
• Process management
• Lessons learned along the way