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guest blogger: Megan Jeffery

TKG is hiring! We need a few folks with some talent, some initiative and a little bit of experience. Perkiness, good body odor, lack of felony convictions are pluses. If you’ve got these qualities or can point someone who does our way, we’d appreciate it.

The positions we need to fill:
Multi-Media Developer
Search Engine Optimization Specialist
PHP Programmer

The links give you all the technical details, but let me tell you what we’re really looking for. We need people who want to come in and get going. This is a fast paced business. TKG needs some fast paced folks to keep up with it. If you love the Web, and work, play, and even live on the Web, then you’ll fit right in. We tend to be a fun group, we’re looking for some fun people to help fill these spots (seriously – one of the senior strategists’ requirements is ‘hilarious’), and we need people who are willing to work as a team to keep projects moving.

So, if you’re a hot SEO/SEM item, great with analytics, social media and think that Google Analytics is awesome and can tell us why in 100 words or less, please click the link above and get in touch.

If you’re a designer / developer with a couple of years under your belt, are proficient in Flash, Adobe, Illustrator, are amazing with video production and have a good knowledge of HTML, please click away – find us – call us, email us, singing telegram us, messenger pigeon us.

If programming is your deal, your enchilada, your piZZZa piie, and you’ve been rockin’ some serious HTML/XHTML , PHP and JavaScript for a couple of years or so, let us know, send us a telegram, stand outside our offices and serenade us (holding the boom box over your head, of course), or shoot us an email and we’ll get in touch.

Please, spread the word. Tell your friends, tell your family. Tell your postman (hey, he could be a closet programmer, you never know!). Tell them to contact s@tkg.com.

I recently read an article on Fox New’s small business that said the Facebook was like a cocktail party for small business. I have to take issue with this a bit.

We all know that Facebook can be leveraged for marketing purposes, but not all small businesses are going to get the greatest benefit from it. Take for example, the wedding photographer featured in the article. She states that for her:
“Facebook is huge for networking. As far as marketing goes, it’s the best tool,” said Guenin, 32, who promotes weddings and other events she has photographed on the fast-growing social media site. “

I can see why Facebook would be a great fit for her. Her business is highly social. She friends her clients when she accepts a project. She can upload pictures from her weddings and other events, allowing her clients to share them, all marked of course, with her logo. Free advertising. People like what they see, especially if she uploads the best or most interesting shots, gets lots of comments on them, and remember that when they need a photographer for their own events. It’s a great setup, especially with such ease of use and low or not cost. The only cost would come from the time involved in updating her profile, if she did not maintain it herself.

But, all small businesses are not so socially oriented. I don’t see this working quite so well for a dentist or a metal fabricating company. I mean, you can’t really post about the great root canal you just gave, or the awesome filling you just did. You might be able to get away with some shots of tooth whitening, but, really, who wants to shop for a dentist on Facebook? A metal fabricating company might have the same experience. Your friends and family aren’t going to “share” your pics of guys welding in helmets, or the finished product. Friending clients on Facebook might come off as strange. It’s not a natural fit, by any means.

In the end, there are Web marketing solutions to fit every small business. Some will do well with social media, while others might need to concentrate more on their email campaigns, SEO, and some local search – that dentist will want to spend more time on local search than Facebook. It’s just a better fit. It just makes sense.

A couple of years ago the new administration passed a law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. This newer law regulates the living daylights out of just about every product made for children in the United States.

Now, I am all for safety – I have six kids, I want them to be safe. If you ask my wife, she may tell you I have never learned the definition of safety, but I’m safe where it counts. Many of these regulations, all 3000 pages of them, are ridiculous. They are expensive for the manufacturers, sellers, and resellers. This of course, is going to make the product more expensive to purchase.

This type of government interference is going to tie the hands of manufactures and business owners. If you make everyone jump through expensive, unnecessary hoops before they can sell a product, the end result is going to be less money spent on product development or marketing or new employees. That money will have to go towards testing and retesting products, repackaging products, product warning labels and so on. To use the example given in the video below, do you, as a consumer, need to be told NOT to eat rocks, as they may contain lead? Or do you think you would probably avoid ingesting inorganic materials that won’t comfortably make it through your digestive system?

This administration so far has refused to change this law. Perhaps, if enough business owners and consumers start demanding a change, the incoming House of Representative can help effect some changes. Here’s hoping.

If you’d like more information on this topic, and how you can protest the 2008 law:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1236
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/the_winds_of_overregulation.html

As Black Friday looms in the very near future, it’s time to get ready for what looks to be a more promising shopping season than the last two years. Recent projections indicate that most shoppers plan to spend about 30-35% more than they did last year. Brick and mortars are also hiring more than they did last year, close to 600,000 jobs will be added for the holiday season. More than last year, but still less than 2007 and 2008.
While all this seems like good news, it’s not as good as it could be. If you own an e-commerce site and want a piece of the Cyber Monday, Black Friday, whatever you want to call it, pie, you are going to have to compete with the big retailers offering some pretty steep discounts.
Some of the things you might want to consider doing:
1. Offer Free Shipping (no brainer)
2. Offer free gift wrapping (Makes most guys happy because they won’t have to do it.)
3. Discounts (A 20% discount makes girls get all happy – I’ve seen it happen.)
4. Free promotional materials with each order (T-shirts are a big hit)
5. Promote your business on Facebook and Twitter – make sure people know where to find you!
6. Hold a contest or giveaway to draw in customers. (People love to win, use this to your advantage.)
7. Use your email lists to send out special discounts and offers to current and past customers. (Remind them why they purchased from you before!)
8. Remember to offer other items alongside your cart, to temp buyers. (The online version of the “impulse” isle.)
9. Almost last, consumers are smart, and getting smarter. Do your best to provide the best possible price, and you’ll get the sale. (Money talks, right?)
10. Lastly, remember those less fortunate. Offer a portion of your proceeds to a worthy (and popular) cause. (People like giving back this time of year, especially if they get a good deal while they’re at it.)

Ten tips to turn this into the best holiday season since…2007. Hey, better than last year, right? We’re gettin’ somewhere, folks!

Now that the election is over, we have to start looking at what we can predict is going to happen as far as taxes, Cap&Trade, the Health Care Reform Bill and other aspects of our economy that have plagued business owners, and potentially, how the Web can help you stave off some of those expenses.

Two things seem to have happened with the unemployment rate in this country. The first thing is the years long, some 99+ months of unemployment payouts that have created a culture of people unwilling to work as long as they can rely on the government to pay their bills. The second thing that has happened is a fear, a worry by business owners as the new taxes loom in the near future. The end of the Bush tax cuts, the Health Care Reform Bill, and the potential (hopefully this worry is now null and void) of the Cap & Trade Bill. These new taxes are creating a train of thought among business owners who have no real idea what it is going to cost to hire someone. How much will it cost to provide a full time employee with health insurance? How much more in taxes will I have to pay if I grow my business and get hit with the end of the Bush tax cuts?

This might lead you to think that the safest bet is to play it slow and easy for a while, until you see how it all shakes out. But, you still have a need for skills, labor, whatever. So where are you going to turn? Freelance? Part time help? Overtime for current employees? Outsourcing jobs you used to handle in house? All of these are viable options, though I hate to be the one to encourage people not to hire. I tend to be optimistic and think it will all work out in the end, TKG has been hiring for over a year now, and I do think that the economy is making a slow turn-around. I really can’t say that I believe that will continue if some of the political atmosphere doesn’t change, but we have to go with what we know for now.

So, what can the Web do to help you fill in the holes in your workforce?
1. Utilize sites that provide legal forms, business administration forms and schedules, and just about any other paperwork you need to do.
www.lectlaw.com/formb.htm
http://www.entrepreneur.com/formnet/index.html
2. Use Freelance sites to help you find the temporary or long term extra help you need.
www.freelancer.com/
www.freelanceswitch.com/
3. Use LinkedIn.com, job sites and Craigslist.com to find employees who might be willing to work part time until the economy becomes more secure and hiring becomes an options.
4. Outsource jobs that you might normally have handled in house, if there were someone around to do the work. You can have many jobs outsourced – I know that The Workshops in our area even takes small assembly jobs, packing and sorting, it’s worth checking into if you would prefer to wait to hire.
5. You had to know I was gonna get to this – the plug for TKG, but hey, it’s valid! Have a Web firm do some SEO, search marketing and social media marketing for you. We do copy, too. Not only will it save your marketing budget, but we might be able to help you squeeze through a time constraint or deadline when you really don’t have the resources available. Freeing up your in house marketing folks to concentrate on traditional marketing, or if you are a smaller biz, your assistant, to work on some of your more niche jobs might make your life a little easier and your business run a little smoother.

As for me, quite frankly, I am grateful for the way things turned out last Tuesday. I really hope this is the beginning of a turn away from so much government spending, enormous tax increases and a slippery slide into socialism. I hope that this resistance to hiring doesn’t last long, and that we all start to feel like we can relax, have faith in our economy and capitalism. To move forward we need to grow, hire, spend, and hopefully, not have all of our efforts go to China’s the government’s coffers.