Leveraging technology and not the house.

In business for yourself, not by yourself. -Ray Kroc

Julian Caldwell

Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." - Darryl Zanuck, movie Producer, 20th Century Fox 1946

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. - 1876 Western Union Internal memo.

Getting IT wrong.

Technology Tools and News Junky

Programming since I was 10

VP Business Development for a $15M/Year company

Addicted to the entrepreneurial spirit

First venture in college (unsuccessful )

Second Venture Last Year (successful )

Third Venture This Year (will be successful )

About Me

How do I improve my productivity?

Free tools!

Open Office• www.openoffice.org

• Desktop and portable version for

• Word

• Excel

• PowerPoint

• Draw

• Etc.

• Easy to use, similar layout as MS Office BUT (FREE)

Productivity Tools

Google Applications• Spreadsheet

• Documents

• Mail

• Chat

• Google Desktop

• Indexing of email, PC, Server, you name it. Easily find ALL documents

Free (unless you want business domain like @mycompany.com) usually $50/user/year.

All documents can be shared (in real-time) with selected users

Voice over IP• Google Voice

• Transcription of voice mails to emails

• Unique handling of phone calls based upon who they are.

• Handiest tool I have used in the last 2 months

Google (‘nuf said)

Freemind • http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

• Mind-Mapping Software

• Easily create content from meetings, brainstorming, connecting ideas and sharing them graphically.

• Demonstration

Mind-Mapping

A person consumes as much information in one week as a

person did their entire lifetime in the 18th century.

A person is hit with 3,000 advertising messages per day (business owners twice that)

How do you separate yourself from your competition?

Today’s world

How do I improve my communication?

Content is king

Web Presence• Cross-Browser Support

• Search Optimized for Content

• Analytics (FREE) www.google.com/analytics

• Relevant design (new vs. older and dated)

• Clear and Concise

• Company Blog

• News and Information converted to posts (release as RSS)

• Create content that can be 'mashed' with other sites

• Who's talking about you

• http://backtweets.com/

• Google Alerts

Your website has to be better than your competition

Good, but not great. Great.

New vs. Old

Well designed Meta-Data with online presence

Same data, less impact.

Poorer designed meta-data

www.wordpress.com• The most prolific content creation development platform for the web

today (my opinion). Easily configurable with thousands of free 'themes' to make your website look professional, easy to update, and tons of online help making content creation relatively easy.

• 1000's of plug-ins to extend the functionality of your basic website.

• Email newsletter sign ups.

• Pools

• Facebook/Twitter extension

• Picture galleries

• Blog Feeds

• RSS creators

Word Press – Online Content

Meebo Bar• http://www.meebo.com/websites/

• Increase "Sharing" of content to your viewers network

• allows login of multiple instant messaging platforms,

• Facebook, AOL, MSN Messenger, etc.

Skype• www.skype.com

• File Transfer, phone calls, chats, encrypts calls and chats prior to sending them through the internet.

QR Codes

Quick Response Codes (Phone Friendly Bar Coding)

How do you increase sharing?

Publish EVERYTHING• YouTube - How To’s

• Email Marketing to your contacts with 'how to'

• Think Content.

• An email to a consumer about how to, can become a blog post.

• Shoot videos at events

• Interview your customers

• Share lessons learned the hard way

• Set UP Word Press website

• < $500 to get your started with hosting development content and some key search engine work

• Find where your customers are talking

• Twitter, Facebook, THEN ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS with them

• Don't over do it

• Good example (http://www.natureshelperinc.com/ )

Leverage who you know…

Process with the correct infrastructure

can be automated

Good use of email marketing

Links to “do it yourself” videos

(even though they are in the business of doing it for you?!)

Limited Emails (Timely)

Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter• Why? How?

• Connect with you and your extended network.

• So, what should I share?

• How Often?

• Engage in the Q & A Processes (become an expert in your subject area)

• Think of keywords in your response, but keep it simple and straight forward

• Great access to public conversations regarding your business

• “Like” is the next “word of mouth”

Do I need to “Tweet?”

www.groupon.com

www.foursquare.com

Location based offerings

I am in the ‘neighborhood’ what is a good deal for me?

I checked in at Starbucks, 50% discount on a roll.

I am next to Starbucks, CD’s on sale 15% off.

I loved the meal I just had at Mom and Pop’s diner. Check it out!

Benefits

Good visibility (www.groupon.com)

New Customers (www.foursquare.com)

Drawback

Expensive (www.groupon.com)

Younger Crowd (www.foursquare.com)

3’s a crowd…that buys stuff.

Location based services

• Combining where the customer is, with offers in ‘the area’ is the next biggest thing hitting the internet market place.

• New Browsers support Lat/Long identification.• http://localhost/canyahelp/index.php?/test/geo

• Lots of META DATA around where the person is located. Can you imagine just limiting your advertising to a neighborhood? It can be done.

• Cell Phones applications “usually” know where you are.

• Geo-fencing allows you to know if someone has came “into” your store. (if they allow it)

• Lots of competition to have the right application that is ‘opt-in’ advertising. I will accept advertising from businesses in the area IN EXCHANGE for discounts, etc.

• Free Drink at local establishment (85% would take the offer)

Location, Location, Location Based Services

Audacity • http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

• Create podcasts

• How to do something.

• What to look for in a product.

• What is going on in your community

• Any business trends you see in your day to day involvement in your business

• Interviews with key members of your industry

Be a DJ….yeah you.

Active Collab• www.activecollab.com

• Work with your associates and clients, assign tasks, share files, get notified when something happens, discuss and comment. Everything is saved in the system and available for future reference.

• Built to engage your staff (from 1 to 10000) to focus on the right things.

Same page…

MailChimp• www.mailchimp.com

• Easily manage your email marketing campaigns with this affordable software as a service solution.

• Good analytics, easy to use interface, FREE for small outbound campaigns

• Automatic integration to Google Analytics (lead generations), Facebook, groups, MailChimp’s RSS-to-email campaigns automatically send newsletters whenever you update your blog or any other RSS feed.

• BEST in the market

You’ve got mail..

GotoMeeting• www.gotomeeting.com

• The best (my opinion) online meeting tool on the market. Easily interact with your customers anywhere in the world. Quickly determine if they are a lead or a red – herring

• Easy for your customers, easy to set up.

• Record the session for “content” on you website

When you need face to face..

EventBrite• www.eventbrite.com

• Publish, promote, manage, and sell events that your business is involved in.

• Training seminars

• How To

• Lectures

• Food Promotion

• Wine Tasting, etc.

Online Event Planning made Simple

What is a web service?

Web Services

WEB 2.0 methodology• Interactive sharing between applications (Web services (REST/SOAP),

MASHUP's)

• User-Generated Content

• Restaurant can easily “post” facebook comments and reviews

• Restaurant can post events automagically

• Menu can be ‘posted’ automatically to the web without a developer

Make sure you are investing in 2.0+

YQL Yahoo Query Language• MASHUP of web services around the world

• http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

• The Yahoo! Query Language is an expressive SQL-like language that lets you query, filter, and join data across Web services. With YQL, apps run faster with fewer lines of code and a smaller network footprint.

YQL

www.twilio.com• Cloud-based enterprise class voice services platform

• Allows small businesses to engage customers with voice and phone (like the big guys)

• Easy to implement (5 minutes to 1 week for voice/text service)

• Some Examples

• Record the caller's audio, and submit the resulting recording back to your web server. Use it as content on your website.

• Order Status

• Special Offers via SMS

• Automate outbound phone calls (for offers, sales, surveys)

Voice Services

www.surveymonkey.com• GREAT relatively free application to ascertain opinions from our

customers. Great way to generate customer service surveys, product surveys, general interest surveys.

• REAL – Time Analytics from the responses.

• Online (no set up)

• Free for limited number of survey questions and email addresses.

Online Survey

Mobify your site• http://mobify.me/

• FREE for smaller users

• Great way to take your existing content (web site) and make it mobile.

• Some limitations to the process, but if you have NO mobile site, it is better than that!

Become Mobile

www.codeigniter.com• Good development framework

• Great deal of online support

• Best user community out there (my opinion)

• Tested on multiple network platforms

• Configurable for multiple language support

• Relatively easy to learn

• Inexpensive resource (off-shore and on-shore)

Development Framework

http://camstudio.org/ • Records screen activity from the Windows desktop into standard AVI

movie files. It is an ideal tool for creating software demonstrations and how to’s online.

http://www.youtube.com• Good example of content

• http://www.youtube.com/user/growingwisdom

• Very focused presentations, easy (5 minute) how to’s

• Become an expert in your arena with a $100 camcorder and a web connection.

Creating Online Video Content

Email: juliancaldwell@gmail.com

Facebook Julian Ivey-Caldwell

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/juliancaldwell

Twitter : @demandswarm

Questions?