Seattle! SEM Resumes, please!

I'd be interested in what it takes to be Seattle's finest! Send me your SEM focused resume and I'll send you an I Heart Bacon pin. That's right. It's hard to pass up, I know. Just give in to it. Do eet.

This seems to be a popular topic to search for on my site so I figured I'd give the people what they ask for. I'll be posting the best examples here for other job seekers to learn from. Don't you want to help the jobless people? DON'T YOU?

What do you need to do?

1. Send me your resume (mailto:maureen@iheartiheart.com
2. Use the subject line "I heart bacon"
3. Tell me if you're employed.
   
4. Tell me where to send the "I heart bacon" pin.

I fully expect there is not going to be ONE resume that comes my way, but I figured I'd throw it out there. What do you have to lose?

Resources for Small Business

I was just thinking the other day about how I'm a terrible business administrator. It's true. I suck. I do innovation, design, and big picture planning really well. But the accounting, legal business, and state departments are not my friends. So I thought I'd compile a list of online resources that might make my life easier.

Here goes!

Accounting/Invoicing/Time Tracking - This is my least favorite part.
Freshbooks.com - I love these guys. They have a comprehensive invoicing, book keeping and time tracking system that allows you to manage several client, contractors and employees. It is a web based application that you can take with you anywhere you go. From my research it's not so good for retail businesses but great for service driven businesses (like design, consulting, etc). It's free up to three clients, after that they have several reasonable business solutions.

Graphics & Design - Professional design and slacker student prices.
CrowdSpring - Set your price, describe your project and watch the designers run around like chickens to get your business. It's a pretty great process from what I understand. AND you can set your price. Did I mention you can set your price?

Weebly.com - Talk about the easiest way to set up a website EVER. This is the best online website WYSIWYG I've ever seen. You just pick a design, drag and drop your elements and publish. You can buy a domain, add a photo gallery, add text and pictures with just a click. It's inspirational. It would bring a tear to anyone who is trying learn CSS *ahem*me*ahem*. It's just so darn diddly easy.

Email Marketing - Nearly free marketing, a must have.
SendBlaster - If you don't have a customer relationship management (CRM) software or content management system (CMS) doesn't have a mailing list manager, you'll probably like this one. It allows you to put a field on your webpage that will add your customers to your list. A ton of convenient features and free up to 100 email addresses. After that it's 75 Euros for a year license and unlimited email addresses.

Long Distance Relationships - virtual meetings with those you love.
LogMeIn - This is a way for a person to see what you're seeing on your computer monitor. it's a great way to setup virtual meetings. For our purposes, this is a way to look at potential product ideas, and do market research. One of us "drives" and the other takes notes. This way we have the same experience, can discuss it and have cohesive notes. It's quite quite helpful.

General Information
Linkedin Q&A Section - I'm a general fan of this site just because it gives you a window into other companies through people you have genuine relationships with. But in the Q&A section you can solicit the opinions of professionals just panting to answer questions to prove themselves. This is an excellent resource.

Marketing: Finding YOUR Business Voice

Joe, this blog's for you.

Finding your business voice was such an incredible challenge for my business partner and I. Once we did find it, it was like a hand in a glove: just right. When I wrote Finding Our Business Voice I kind of copped out, saying that it just takes business experience to figure it out. It dawned on me (thanks to a little nudge from Joe) that everything takes a process. So, here are a few guidelines to find your voice:

• Meet your customer. Go out and meet several people you think you might be selling your product to. Asked them what sort of sites they go to. Ask them what magazines they read. Ask them what do they do for a living. Learn about the voices they gravitate to.
  
• Visualize your customer. Aw, hell, mock up a picture and tape it up to your desk along with a list of attributes that make them up. What kind of socks do they wear? Do they take public transportation? How old are they? Make it as detailed as possible, and prune it down later. This will help remind you every day who you're talking to.
  
• Know your product. One of the trickiest parts for us was understanding where our niche really laid. We learned that the more focused your product line is, the easier it is to market to your customer base. Even if you want to market to a wide customer base, make sections that appeal to specific interests. If you use this guideline to build your website as well as your marketing campaign, you'll win.
  
• Don't be afraid to be yourself. As most bloggers will tell you, their readers are drawn by their personality as well as the quality of their information. If your collateral is a personality as well as marketing material, people will feel more inclined to relate to your voice, and if they feel like they've gotten to know your company, they'll be more inclined to stick around. Look at Freshbooks, for example.
  

Marketing and Sales Before the Super Walmart

Isn't this desire for personalized, niche services just hearkening back to the times of yore (you remeber yore, dontcha?). Being impressed and mesmerized by the fact that companies are interested in engaging with you on a personal level through outlets like Twitter seems to smack of having salesperson in a store actually walk up and HELP YOU find what YOU'RE LOOKING FOR in a hardware store, doesn't it?

Doesn't the "new" and apparently noteworthy business model of specializing in niche products like bacon, candy, and toys especially for geeks just remind us of stories about bakeries that *gasp* just makes BAKED GOODS? Or butchers offering JUST MEAT? Or cobblers actually MAKING SHOES?

Maybe consumers are tired of generalization. Maybe we want people who do what they do best to DO WHAT THEY DO BEST. Maybe consumers just want help finding what they're looking for.

Maybe "yore" is pointing you in the right direction of your next marketing campaign. Or heck, maybe it's the answer to your whole marketing and sales strategy.

Finding Our Business Voice

So, I've had businesses before, but this new project I'm working on is different. Before I was a willy-nilly, seat-of-my-pants, ride the wave of excitement entrepreneur girl. I didn't set up processes that would make my life easier in the long run. I chose a partner with fewer resources than myself. I didn't understand what it meant to be a customer. I didn't even know what marketing is. Which promptly lead to increasing arguments with the spouse and overwhelming desire to take a month off of life.

This time, with no small contribution by my partners (hubby and official business partner), we've taken time to build out the systems and develop the plans to guarantee (as much as possible) our success. One of the most magical parts of this journey is the day we found our voice.

As you know, in this day and age, you can't just slap up a webpage, get a biz license and call it a success. The dot bomb days were aptly named. You have to create a lasting and genuine relationship with the people you intend to engage in business. Much like friendship, if you don't know what you stand for, it'll be difficult to find people who understand you. As a new business, we spent a lot of time feeling around for who and what we were so we could make a genuine connection with people. But when we settled into it, it was like coming home.

I would love to tell you there's a magic bullet for conquering this task. There isn't. For us, it just took time and business experience to settle into our skin and discover what we didn't want to be when we grew up.