1) Set up your space
Sounds simple, right? Well, perhaps for some, however, you have to take into account quite a few factors prior to getting started.  First, you will need to locate a quiet area with good acoustics.   You need to avoid echoes, loud heating/cooling systems or a space with a whole lot of traffic.  We opted for a lesser used area in our conference space.  We set up two microphones so theywould face each other and also back up Yeti Microphones if we needed to record extra tracks.   Ensure the space is conducive to both recording and conversation–you want your podcasts to feel natural and never forced, so generating a comfortable environment will go a long way!

2) Set up your equipment

My advice? Make sure you read the instructions very carefully and test as you go!  Many do not have experience with audio equipment, so setting up microphones and mixers can be a head scratcher.  While preparing the equipment, open Garage Band or whatever program you are using to record audio, and make sure the microphones and mixers will translate the audio appropriately to your machine.

3) Test it out

Once everything is hooked up, play around with the equipment to get familiar with it –this is the ideal way to learn.  It can become confusing to record making use of multiple inputs, so I broke it down for you below.

Select Preferences and change the Audio Input to your selected device.   If you don’t actually do this, Garage Band will use the System Input (the microphone built into your computer).

Once you decide on your input, you must assign a microphone to each of your recording tracks.  Next, select “Input Source” which is located in the lower right corner while the track is highlighted.  When selecting tracks, hit the red record button and test it out!

There you go!   Here’s hoping your first attempt is very successful but if not, don’t feel dismayed –it took me a few tries too.  For distinct problems, I advocate the website CreativeCow.com - it is a wealth of information and has answered nearly every one of my questions.

Corey O’Loughlin is a Marketing Analyst at OpenView Labs and is responsible for marketing initiatives for both OpenView as well as the portfolio companies.

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Complete employee relations services are supplied by a PEO that is Professional Employer Organization. Businesses and corporations employ a PEO to perform everything from appointing, to payroll, to employee education as well as regulatory compliance.

Normally a PEO makes its way into a customer’s organization like a practical co-owner. They usually takes over such daunting tasks as tax management and reconciliation, human resources, as well as risk supervision.

Meanwhile, the employer targets day-to-day management of their own employees and permits more time to concentrate on building the business.

It is possible to believe of a PEO as being the group of specialists who control most of the documents. Consider high of the documents evaporating off your counter. Organisations find they get a great deal more achieved along with enjoy the business a lot more.

Employee benefits packages is no doubt extremely well-known services made available by PEO’s. These make it easy for employers to outsource essential things for instance medical insurance, an insurance policy, Flexible Spending Accounts, Transportation Compensation Incentive Plan.

Administration, and COBRA/HIPAA Management.

PEO’s even have deals in which companies can provide their own workers fascinating family vacation promotions. At time when most companies are burning off staff benefits, specifically well being services, value-effective employee advantages can be exactly what a company is required to turn out to be highly effective in the hiring industry.

If you want ideal people in your business, giving excellent rewards will get his or her attention, have them on board, and also keep them happy as part of your company for years into the future.

A PEO will normally develop a co-employment arrangement, managing the entire range of taxes, pay-roll, HR as well as employees settlement as the company maintains full charge of his or her company. This is what was in the past often known as employee leasing, however it is vital to note the client continues comprehensive control of the employees as well as their company.

I am taking this slight detour due to the latest news on two brand new advancements at Google and Facebook. Facebook and Google have become huge rivals for they jump started their product development, bringing out brand new attributes and offerings that might give one an edge over the other. The new features discussed here resulted from that rivalry and will make many online marketers and website managers rethink their website design and marketing approaches.

Firstly, as you may have already seen, Google has been quietly implementing a new search engine feature which gives searchers an instant preview of the website results. While this is not entirely complete, Google is implementing it very well – the snapshots are displayed fast (they are pre-fetched immediately after you preview the first link), and they show the full website, not just the very top portion that fits into the screen.

Due to the implementation of this new feature, the design and layout of websites will be an instrumental key that will affect click through rates once searchers are used to looking through the previews. Text-heavy sites with dark backgrounds or dark-toned graphics will probably suffer a drop in click throughs, especially when they compete with sites that have preview-friendly designs, mild colors, larger fonts and eye pleasing layouts. Sites with large Flash or Ajax components will probably suffer as well, as the preview will not display any of the dynamic graphic components. This also affects SEO approaches, as a web page’s textual content now must be well balanced against excellent design and clear layouts.

This is just the latest in a trend towards “preview before click through”, that began with website plug-ins such as Snap, moving ahead to link shorteners, and now major content producers like Twitter and Google. We anticipate that all click throughs in the future will be preceded by a snap shot review, and possibly even more data. Hopefully, with the preview features, fewer people will click through bad attack sites, and as a result, professionally designed websites will advantage from more traffic. As it affects the best sources of traffic, particularly organic search and direct traffic, it will have deep consequences on internet marketing strategies.

Facebook is soon ready to reveal their next development which is their email tool. While details on this is scarce, I believe this will be a large step forward for Facebook, particularly as they compete with Google on one of Google’s own turfs – Gmail. What I am more involved in is how it will affect the marketing mix of the modern online marketing strategist.

Email marketing has been the mainstay of online marketing for years, and it has been growing and weathering the total market slump really well. Every day, billions of emails are sent using a number of software platforms…from self service, no frills MailChimp to enterprise class ExactTarget. These platforms add value since they allow companies to reach thousands or even millions of people for a low cost and very reliably to give them a competitive advantage. Even with very low open rates or click through rates, the return on email marketing is almost always positive, and usually outweighs other marketing channels. That is, until social media marketing came on the scene and upset the traditional channels in ways no one could have predicted.

However, social media still lacks scale because it is still tough to make use of social media to instantly reach a significant number of people and driving website traffic with an unadulterated message (with the exclusion of Twitter, which then lacks “depth”, as a function of its inherent limit on message length ). Moreover, many social media platforms are still “walled garden” that are more or less distinct from the basic electronic communication tools utilized by everyone linked to the Internet – email.

Facebook email, code-name Titan, may well change that. Allowing people the ability to send emails to Facebook connections, allowing emails to be forwarded by friends of friends, and allowing emails to go to and from corporate mailboxes powered by Outlook, will greatly enhance the reach and the grip Facebook has on our digital lives. Furthermore, while we do not know if they will allow for commercial use, the fact that there is capacity to send rich, custom-made emails to millions of people today on Facebook will make current email marketing vendors obsolete in just a few years.

Presently, Facebook and Google are accelerating social media trends and development and the way internet users utilize technologies. In the face of such momentous rivalry, it is best for online marketing managers to stay aware of the most recent developments, and be aware of how they can and will influence marketing strategy in quite a few fundamental ways.

Tien Anh Nguyen is an Associate at OpenView Venture Partners, responsible for delivering strategic value-add services to the portfolio companies as part of the OpenView Labs team.

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As more and more professionals, such as doctors and dentists, get introverted into the mechanics of how to have a successful practice, and thus engaging in all kinds of health-care and dental marketing, they have forgotten the most important power of their business: Moral Authority. Real power in the world or workplace is not the technology or the weapon power you possess but the moral authority that you possess. To be honest, I can see why business owners forget. I know that it’s easy to forget, since it seems so important to have the best technology and professional skills in all businesses.

It is the ‘moral authority’ that has more power than all the technical skills and years of experience a person has. What is moral authority?  It just means that your moral image that you portray to the world is strong and unbending. Being known for a person who stands for certain virtues, being known for a person who gives help with no vested interest in mind, being known for a person with certain ethical standards – this perceived image alone will attract enough people to you and your business and thus make it safe for people to trust you with your recommendations.

And this image can be portrayed in many ways inside your business by a great customer service department but most importantly, it can be portrayed outside your business by getting yourself more involved in the happenings of your community.

I have been advising dentists and doctors to not try to put out ads that talk about their diplomas. People aren’t looking for the dentist with many diplomas or the sales person with 50 years of experience. People are looking to do business with people they can trust and they can like.

Begin by doing something to improve your community.  Whether it’s helping the elderly, the poor, supporting schools and children, anything that makes a positive impact on your community will make a big difference for your business. (This article is not here to sell any program but you can find some free ideas at our Un-Advertising blog.)

The personal likable dentist will always get more business, will always be able to charge more for his service than the technically perfect, but socially not well-known ( and thus not well-liked) doctor. And that’s the way it is. Even if this dentist does online dental marketing, he still needs to portray through his web sites or videos etc that he is not only into ‘making money’ but he is there to provide real education to the public on dental health (not just superficial descriptions of what he is selling.)

Perception is what it’s all about.  What counts is the perception people have about you.  And that perceptions needs to be at least 5,000 times better than you think it needs to be.

If you think that your authority, your reputation, your being recognized is great, but you are not having all the good paying customers to fill your business to the rim, then the perception of the people around you about you being an authority is not strong enough.

Presidents are elected, doctors, lawyers and car mechanics are hired, and spouses are picked, by their character — or by their perceived moral image.

Did you know that Harvard University’s MBA program does not admit any students who have no record of participating actively in social and community activities?

Check it out – the Dean of Harvard has talked about this in an interview on a Charlie Rose show.

Remember: In any profession like a dentist, for instance, do not depend only on traditional dentist marketing to ‘convince’ a prospect to come to you. Establish a strong moral authority in your practice through letting the community know about your good work and let them spread the word-of-mouth for you. We called this ‘Un-Advertising’. You will see that attracting a higher quality customer pool would not be so difficult once you have established that moral image through the help of other powerful entities around your business.

There are types such as advanced link building, in which you can create multiple access for his or her websites via a lot of different web pages throughout the internet. Link building comes in a lot of various forms such as one way linking, reciprocal linking, and many other ways. Reciprocal linking is whenever 2 people that have very similar web page material get together to post links of one another’s web pages on their own web pages. This way anyone visiting either site will be able to get more information from the other website as well.

This is a very popular form of linking and it is also used throughout the many social networking sites too. Basically, that is what adding friends does on the numerous social networking website as it adds additional links to other people’s websites in the network. Social networking has become very involved with search engine optimization because many people that have companies use the social network websites to advertise their company.

They may link their company on their personal website and they may also have a web page just for that particular company alone. This is a wonderful way to send traffic to your company as well as gain exposure to a lot more people. A lot of people use search engine optimization techniques and do not even know they are using them.

Social networking websites have been one of the best ways in which to begin linking systems throughout the internet because these are virtually already established for this person. Basically, anyone who comes to your site has the opportunity to see your company. You can have friends add your business to their homepage too. By gaining all of this new traffic, you can successfully add more links and begin to get the attention of the many search engine websites, possibly getting your website linked at one of the top lists.

Then in the 1980s, things began to change. Application packages quickly replaced custom development. This lowered the cost of a quality system, but it also created a gap between the system and the business.

Since he no longer developed the system, the professional, who understood the business, had to dig deep to understand the functionality of the package to apply the advanced features that enabled the business to improve. The professional who understood the package did not understand the business and saw his role as explaining use of system.

For consultants, employing the application package to improve the business was difficult and risky. The risk had to be contained, so the approach became system implementation to convert a defined portion of the existing business over the new system.

So consultants chased the new business opportunity in packaged system implementation. It started with the big audit consultants, whose approach to consulting tended to parallel the approach to auditing–use junior staff to follow methodologies and produce deliverables.

Consulting firms developed methodologies for system planning, system evaluation and acquisition, and system implementation. The methods were executed by junior consultants, who no longer needed the analytical capabilities and business knowledge of past professionals.

Methodologies began to spread to other facets of consulting like strategic planning, etc. In the 1990’s a new wave came in business process re-engineering, producing new business transformation methodologies. These methodologies concentrated on the business, but avoided IT, since business change could be executed quickly, and IT change was notoriously slow. This created a gap the other way between the business and the system.

Then integrated applications systems were relabeled as ERP systems and proclaimed to employ industry “best practices” that would automatically solve the problem. Many consultants supported a particular ERP package implementation, so then system planning and system evaluation and acquisition methodologies favored that package to bring in the enormous implementation revenues.

But, ERP system implementation employed the same implementation methodologies that concentrated on conversion of existing data, business rules, and practices. Employing industry best practices required strong user effort beyond what the consultants provided.

In recent years, there have been exposes of the problems with management consulting. Books have been written about the bad practice that also developed within management consulting firms.

Much of the professionalism has gone out of management consulting. What do we have to do the bring professionalism back into consulting, particularly for business change and management improvement consulting.
This is one of the issues we have been discussing at the Business Change Forum, in order to define problems with conventional methods and discover breakthroughs in enterprise management.

We need to employ a new management consulting model that requires change by both the enterprise employing consultants and the management consultants and consulting firms. The enterprise must have the capability to manage its own development and manage the achievement of benefits. The consultants must get away from employing rote methodologies, and return to professionalism to work in partnership with the enterprise.

The new consulting model involves the following elements on the part of the enterprise:

o    Structure the enterprise to define and manage precisely what the enterprise must do to be successful

o    Structure enterprise capital to manage all capital utilized to produce enterprise success

o    Install a professional capability to manage enterprise investments and development programs

The new consulting model involves the following on the part of consultants:

o    Help the enterprise understand and plan the value to be created by change and improvement to provide the return on the investment

o    Work with the enterprise in partnership to create precisely-defined value

o    Provide proven professionals with analytical capabilities and specialty experience

o    Leverage the enterprise teams to produce enterprise products and improvements. Do not do anything that the enterprise can do itself

o    Work with the enterprise through to utilization of improvements for benefit and return on investment

o    Do not implement information systems, implement the improved process that incorporates the system

o    Do not provide consultant deliverables for review. All documents are accepted enterprise knowledge and records. There is one consultant deliverable, shared enterprise success.

Management consultants need the new model to eliminate the old problems and risk in gaining benefit from business change and management improvement. Only when we have a way for the enterprise and their consultants to work together in partnership for measured success, will we have a way for consultants to return to the professionalism of old.

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Here are the benefits of social bookmarking . First it offers supplementary information . Info on how worthy a site is . Which topics rate well to visitors and what others are looking at. If we want to get a few ideas on what are the most remarkable subjects and get recommendations from it  . Social bookmarking really is a great guide . Then it offers the opportunity to share . It gives the opportunity to visitors to share web pages they enjoy with buddies and family . It is one of the opportunity to search, store and also manage favorites that really makes it easier for information to be shared around.

Social bookmarking will economize you time, eefort and money  . Organizing the web pages as well as websites that we like, can make it simpler to share these with others . On a web marketer’s side, it is an easy technique to utilize . Just sign up to a few social bookmarking services, start submitting what ever chosen projects you may have and let the links keep flowing as well as visitors . Bookmarking is also excellent for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing . Bookmarking is one answer to elevate for search engines . A very good marketing tool for your site. If you’re after popularity and visibility of your website, then this is the strategy to implement.

Increased opportunity for much more web site visitors . One very good thing about bookmarking is the more personal approach . It’s really engaging towards website visitors . Upon first visit to the site, a visitor might not take any kind of action but the more bookmarking choices that we have, the better. The more choices, the the more actions and also the most important things, much more site visitors .

The Social Bookmarking Strategy is changing . Changes for the better. In a few days, there may be new ways on promotion, advertising or marketing . Which ever executes best for your online business, let us think through it . You’d really never know what is the best one among the numerous strategies till you try every single one  . The pros of Social Bookmarking Services have been discussed , it is now up to you if you can make the best out of these pluses.

The answer is Yes and No.  You do not want a Business Plan Writer or technical writer to build the business plan.  You can use these writers after the business plan is built to make it more professional (i.e. adapted for a Funding Business Plan).  However, hiring an experienced Business Plan Consultant can be quite advantageous when building a business plan.

A Business Consultant Will Take the Time to Get to Know You and Your Business

A good Business Consultant will take the time to get to know you and your business. Typically a business plan consultant will customize a set of business plan questions and requirements for your particular business and business plan use. When you answer and submit these business planning questions back to the consultant, he or she will analyze them, make recommendations, and afterwards, develop and form your business plan.  The business owner and management team must be integrally involved in the business planning process as you know your business better than anyone else.  A good Business Plan Consultant harnesses the substantive information by asking the right questions in order to build a solid Business Plan, while applying and providing valuable expertise and experience during the planning process.

There are Huge Business Plan Benefits When Working with a Business Consultant

An experienced business consultant offers years of valuable business development experience. The consultant has the benefit of working with a wide range of businesses, businesses at different stages of development and maturation, and different industry sectors.  The consultant applies all that acquired knowledge and experience to the development of your business pan. If you hire a Business Consultant early on in the business development stage, the consultant will not just help to build an effective Business Plan, but also be available for advice as you implement your Business Plan and grow your company.  A Business Consultant can show you effective ways to maximise profits and margins, while minimizing expenses.  Moreover, a Business Consultant can introduce you to important business networks and connections to bolster your company operations.

This article is written by Frank Goley, Marketing Consultant for ABC Business Consulting.

With the City being the largest employer and purchaser of goods and services in San Francisco, it pays to take advantage of a variety of certifications available for LBE’s and SBE’s.

DOHERTY/Associates/LTD is proud to be a

Certified LBE – Local Business Enterprise

In addition, the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development offers a variety of tax credits to SF businesses – Enterprise Zone-Local, State & Federal Tax Credit.

The directory is provided as a resource, and we will endeavor to keep these links as current as possible –

San Francisco Tax Credits and Business Certifications

In the past, I have written about how the little guy can be competitive with the 800 lb. gorilla. As small businesses, we have the ability to be flexible, responsive, customers connect with decision makers, etc . . .

If you were to simply follow that line of thought, we’d all be successful and corporate America wouldn’t exist.

I have something to confess, so please be gentle. . . .

I go to Starbucks every morning . . . there I said . . . Yes – I support the corporate behemoth . . .

Let me explain – I moved into my neighborhood about six years ago. Starbucks hadn’t arrived, as of yet. So, I would grab the dog and head to the local coffee shop. It was the routine. This probably went unchanged for about four years or so, and then came Starbucks. OK, I admit it, I may have stopped in if it somehow worked into my travels, but for the most part I remained faithful.

My coffee shop was the place where everyone knew you name. Every morning, I chatted with a few regulars, the dog got a biscuit and the manager (who had a penchant for Journey) and I (my prom song was “Open Arms” circa 1981) always exchanged our daily pleasantries.

About six months ago, my life was thrown in turmoil. The manager took a new job and I was left to fend for myself. The old manager always worked the morning shift, the new manger preferred afternoons. So, my new coffee barista was a late teens/early twenty something perpetually hung over and typically running on an about two hours sleep.

The first to go was the morning pleasantries. The next to go was the morning selection, there used to be a variety of offerings, but the new barista only felt compelled to make a really, strong dark roast and decaf. And finally, there was the wait – every morning this new person was usually engrossed in a phone conversation about last night’s adventures – and really – my order was an inconvenience (who in the world do you call at 6 am?).

It wasn’t long to I was seeking out the Seattle Elixir. “I’ll have a Grande breakfast blend with room for cream . . .”

Here’s the deal – no matter which Starbucks I walk into, there is always someone at the counter ringing customers and a barista preparing drinks. It doesn’t matter how long the line is, I know I out the door in less than ten minutes. When I order my Grande breakfast blend, it tastes the same, whether I am out home, on the road, or traveling abroad (OK, I did order it in Shanghai and it wasn’t same, but I think that was the cream). So Shanghai aside, I get consistency in both product and service whenever or wherever I step into a Starbucks store.

This is why we go to corporate merchants. Local businesses do well when there is a face to them – be it an owner or a dedicated employee. But as we grow, the oft lacked processes diminish the customer experience. You open your second location, you can’t be in two places at once – do your employees treat the customers with the same care that you did? Do your clients experience the same level of consistency every time they visit, or is it dependent upon whose working that shift?

If they don’t, you’ve got some work to do!

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