ethnicomm – the blog part I

Many of us start the day with the best of intentions but by dinner time, are not entirely satisfied with our accomplishments. It’s hard to stay focused with emails, phone calls, text msgs, IM, SKYPE, Twitter and FB updates constantly interrupting us. Not to mention blog posts!

The time management courses that I took while in the corporate world always focused on making a TO DO list. I tried this one particular Monday and ended up moving the list to Tuesday. This was easy to do using the Day-Timer binder – just click open, remove the list, flip the page and insert the list. I did the same thing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday, I felt bad that I did not accomplish most of what I had intended to accomplish.  Knowing that this was a best practice, followed by the masses, I kept at it. By the end of the month, I realize that this doesn’t work for me so I did what I always used to do – successfully I might add!

1. Focus on the stuff that will get me promoted.
2. Then, focus on the stuff that would get me fired if I didn’t do it.
3. Ignore the rest until it fell into either 1 or 2 above.

This is fine if you are in a position where you can be promoted or fired. But what if you’re running a consulting service that helps companies develop a marketing, sales or web strategy? Or any other entrepreneurial venture where you are the boss and thus determine where you actually spend your time? I have found that the primary focus seems to be on keeping the business going NOT on thinking about the future.  What are YOU focusing on?  With proper time management, you can find time to keep the business going while you work on filling the sales funnel.

I recently read a Harvard Business Review blog post that I think will do the trick. It is called “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” and suggests three steps that one can easily do. The first step, plan your day, and last step, review your day is obvious. What is unique is the author’s suggestion to refocus every hour. Review what you accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) and recommit every hour. As an entrepreneur, I find this to be a great tool. Now, when clients call and say “what have you personally done to grow my business”, I can quickly respond with specifics!

TimeLeft is a free utility that will help you by quietly counting down and popping up a message every hour. My message is “What have you accomplished this past hour?” Of course I lose 5 seconds reading that

Have you found an effective time management system? Please share via text or video.

A new search engine launched today and I was thrilled to read that it indexes over 120 billion pages or three times more than any other search engine according to their press release.  What other search engine is relevant?  The one where the Cuil guys came from – the one that should feel no threat – at least not yet. Cuil may be the biggest search engine but as you will see, biggest is not necessarily the best.

I was curious to see where I ranked on my keywords compared to Google. Not because it is important to me (well ok it is) but because the keywords I chose are part of my web strategy and if they’re not helping me rank higher and bring in traffic, they are useless.

So…I Cuil-ed the keywords (somehow I don’t think that it’s going to become a verb like Googling).  It was lightning fast in telling me the number of search results. Unfortunately, getting those search results to show up on my screen was slower than the new Facebook page refresh!  Out of 13 results on the first page, 4 were for one particular company. Cuil claims that they “focus on the content of the page and then present a set of results that has both depth and breadth.”  I don’t think so!

One key phrase, and I mean KEY phrase, yielded 14,500,000 pages on Google but only 114,518 on Cuil.  Even “web strategy” was poorly represented (98,756 results). In the time it took to roll my eyes, Google showed 31,600,000 results.

I also searched for ethnicomm to see if my homepage showed up. NOPE. In fact, a client’s homepage that had the words “web strategy by ethnicomm inc.” popped up several pages in. I would have tested it out some more before commenting but I didn’t want to wait 10 minutes for the content to spit out.  I’m sure things will improve over time but right now, I don’t have the time to waste on Cuil. And why does it look like cull on my computer?

On a positive note, the layout is aesthetically pleasing, I am not bothered by Adwords and the short descriptions seem a bit more informative. Maybe Google will learn from their ex-employees.

If you’re looking to switch to a better search engine, it is not Cuil!

Despite Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve saying that output was unlikely to “grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly”, Register.com found that there was confidence amongst the 800 small businesses that they recently polled. 70% of the respondents did not expect a decline in revenue over the next year. In fact, about 35% expected more revenue! Keep reading to see how they expect to get that added revenue.

Given the looming recession (ok the not so looming recession), the US government is investing $117 billion through tax rebates at a time when one would normally hunker down and save. Can small businesses learn from the US government? Absolutely!

For well-positioned companies, an economic recession should not prompt marketing cutbacks, but rather an aggressive increase in marketing spending to achieve superior business performance according to research authored by Gary Lilien and Arvind Rangaswamy of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business.

You have to get your name out there and do it more often. Brand awareness is key, more so during a slowdown. A good web strategy at this point would be to leverage technology to help you accomplish more with less. This is what the small businesses are planning to do. Topping the list of technologies that the small businesses said they will most likely invest in next year are website design (53%), SEO (43%), and email marketing (41%).

Website design is like remodeling your store. Aside from a fresh coat of paint, you want an uncluttered look to make people comfortable while they shop. They should know who you are and what you offer. Things should be easy to find, in logical places and customers should not have to go through hoops to make a purchase.

SEO is taking that remodeled store and locating it on a busy intersection, just off a highway and high up on a hill so that people can see it from miles away. The signage conveys the name of the store and what they sell. Having a good sign that communicates what the store offers attracts the right clientele.

Email marketing is like having special days where you invite a particular segment of the population to your store. Tuesdays may be Seniors Day where things are 15% off. Thursday may be Kids Days with small prizes and goodies for the young ones who bring parents in tow. The message is different to these two segments, as are the sales expectations and product mix.

I believe this is how the small businesses expect to grow sales. Do you have a web strategy? Is it contingent on your view of where the economy is heading?

photo credit: Shanghai dear Edward