Improv Tricks

What does improvisational acting have in common with small business ownership?

Not much, I would say off the top of my head. But the answer turns out to be "quite a lot," if you equate improv with networking.

Financially inKleined reader Rose King recently let me know about a fascinating article that lists 25 improv tips that entrepreneurs can use to make and keep strong business relationships.

Give it a look; you might learn something before you go to that next Chamber Mixer.

Tweet, Tweet-Tweet, Tweet-Tweet

Yes, I worked at Disneyland back in the day and listened to the Enchanted Tiki Room soundtrack one too many times. (My restaurant, Plaza Pavilion, was housed with the Tiki Room ride and the Tiki Terrace, a Polynesian-themed restaurant that was well-known among Disney "cast members" for only hiring Asian employees).

In today's terms, "tweeting" is a technological innovation that one (apparently) must participate in to be a valid member of society. Or at least a smart marketer and savvy solopreneur.

Buzz Bissinger, once a Twitter skeptic, has become an enthusiastic convert, according to The New York Times.

I feel more like the Times' Peggy Orenstein, who wrote an insightful column in last Sunday's magazine. It's worth a read, but here's a bit that particularly resonated with me:

The expansion of our digital universe — Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — has shifted not only how we spend our time but also how we construct identity. For her coming book, “Alone Together,” Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T., interviewed more than 400 children and parents about their use of social media and cellphones. Among young people especially she found that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion. “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.”

It's that blurring between the public and the private - that sense of being "on stage" at any given moment during the day - that gives me pause and makes me a reluctant technology adopter.

No doubt one day I will tweet like the birdies tweet, several times a day. But for now, I'm content to stay quiet.

Specialty Networking

Entrepreneurs are often told to narrow their marketing efforts and target specific customers. But how effective is the highly targeted networking that is enabled online these days?

I address that question in telling the story of a new social networking group for LGBT professionals and their allies. Check it out.

Misner Q&A

As promised, here is BNI CEO Ivan Misner's take on what entrepreneurs are doing wrong when it comes to social media marketing.

A Local Connection

Interviewed Ivan Misner, founder and chairman of BNI, this morning about social networking "best practices." In contrast to a lot of big shots I interview (BNI claims to be the world's largest business networking organization, with 5,600 chapters worldwide, and Misner's been called the "Father of Networking" by CNN), it would be hard to find a nicer guy.

On the phone at least, Misner comes across as genuine, down-to-earth and funny. When we discovered a local connection (he lives in Claremont), he stopped for a 10-minute chat on restaurants. For the record, he recommends Tutti Mangia and Aruffo's Italian Cuisine, and he commented favorably on Yianni's, a Greek place I went to just last weekend.

Turns out that Misner started BNI in 1985 in Arcadia. In fact, the founding chapter still meets at the Coco's on Santa Anita! The second chapter started a few weeks later in Pasadena and things spread from there. Misner said it was one year and 20 chapters later when he finally figured out he had created a phenomenon and sat down to write a business plan for it.

The group operates on the philosophy that networking is about giving, and relationship building, rather than selling and promotion. True to his word, before we wrapped up the interview, Misner was mentioning that he knows loads of business owners and would be happy to connect me with some if I ever need sources.

Definitely a class act. The interview was very interesting, too. I'll post a link here when it is published next week.

Social Media Tips

I attended a brown-bag lunch meeting today of a local LinkedIn group. Its aim is to share information and advice about social media and how it enhances business online.

Thought I would share a few of the tips I got out of the very informative session:

1) It's hard to know whether your marketing efforts are having any effect unless you measure things like traffic to your website or blog. The good news is that you can measure those things, quite precisely and inexpensively, with free tools such as Google Analytics.

2) Even if you know about Google Analytics and have it installed for your website, you may not really know what all the terms mean and which are most important. "Unique visitors" is what you want to notice. "Hits" apparently just describes how many unique pieces of code are downloaded each time someone calls up your site. Unless you're a programmer, the number of "hits" you get is not important.

3) To measure visitors' engagement with your company website or blog, look at the categories called "Page Views" and "Bounce Rate." You want to increase your page views (how many pages visitors to your site are looking at) and decrease your bounce rate (the number of people who click on your site but navigate away from it almost immediately). In order to keep people on your site, give them something to do (like "order now" or "click here") right up front.

4) You also want to encourage people to stay on your site longer and increase your subscribers. In order to do this, you need to build an interactive community - rather than think of your customers and potential customers as an audience you will be selling to.

The last point I think is very important, but it's not easy to grasp. As business has moved online, there's an interactive component to customer relations that is really quite revolutionary.

I've written a little about it here and here.

Keeping Tabs on Your Brand

Small business owners often go to great lengths commissioning surveys so they can find out what their customers think about their products or services.

But these days, it's cheap and easy to find out what people are saying about your brand online: Monitor social media sites for individuals talking about you in discussion groups, online forums and reviews.

Small business owners who are not keeping track of kudos and squelching rumors or dealing with complaints are bound to fall behind, says the founder of The Escapist, an online gaming community, in my Smart Answers column today.

I've Cracked the Code!

My college student heads into finals week starting tomorrow and I head up to collect him next week. It's hard to believe he has completed his first year away at school.

He's done wonderfully well (as far as we can tell) but keeping the lines of communication open has not been easy. After barely hearing from him first semester, we instituted a weekly telephone call that has worked out nicely.

But often when I needed to tell him something, or ask a question, my emails went unanswered. I didn't know whether he was not getting them, getting them and ignoring them or what.

Then I signed up for Facebook (after long years of resistance) and I finally figured out how to get through to him: Send him a Facebook message! I tried it and he replied the next day.

The funny thing is, some of us still think of email as "modern communication." But to teenagers and 20-somethings, email is old school.

Seriously. They don't use it and have to be prompted to remember to check it. Everything seems to go through Facebook.

So if you want to communicate with your teenager, I recommend it. That and an AIM account is all you need.