4 ways to manage multiple businesses

On the SBBuzz chat this week, we talked about managing multiple businesses. Some great points came out.

I was reminded of this old, old business card I found. It lists more businesses than you can make sense out of! This guy is buying and selling and trading, and running a restaurant, motel and club.... How can we be smart in managing our own multiple businesses? Here's what we came up with in the chat.

sbbuzz: How do we integrate disparate businesses/interests into a manageable effort?
View Tweet

Perspective one: Cut down and focus

lindadessau: In my case, I've had to sometimes put one thing down for awhile to focus my efforts and get some momentum. View Tweet
lindadessau: Also I've had to be really clear with my marketing - which hat do I wear in which setting, etc. View Tweet

Timberry: There's a lot to be said for cutting the disparate lines and focusing on doing better in the most promising. As an option, maybe. View Tweet

r: Chasing too many opportunities can prove costly. View Tweet

Perspective Two: Find common themes or consolidate

ginabee: I think of it as a tangle of yarn and if I just pull the right one in the right direction, it will all straighten out and be cohesive View Tweet [This is my favorite! -Becky]

scoblitz: I'm working on consolidating the similar for now, looking for bigger impact opportunities. Disparate will have to wait. View Tweet

bradfordshimp: For me, it starts by bringing things under one brand, one roof so to speak. View Tweet
bradfordshimp: Working on doing this with my blog and my design/marketing work. Started w/ the blog, but now want it to offshoot from biz. View Tweet

BeckyMcCray: I specifically looked for common themes, areas of overlap. It started to make sense when I thought of the right theme. View Tweet
BeckyMcCray: I did a lot of noodling around on the ideas before I found the central theme. View Tweet
BeckyMcCray: My theme: Small Town Specialist. That pulls together my consulting with small town govs, my blog at Small Biz Survival, etc. View Tweet

Perspective Three: Manage your time

selahsynergy: Blocking out time on my schedule 4 priorities.Plan. Delegate, Dump, Outsource. Always re-assessing time. View Tweet

rogersanchez: The priorities define the schedule, it's a walk, not a race. But when it is a race, coffee is awesome! View Tweet

nrohrbach: I wrote a blog post on @ideaanglers http://bit.ly/96MHYI and I put those same concepts to work 4 week/month/qtr/yearly time mgmt View Tweet

Perspective Four: Build a portfolio

BeckyMcCray: "A portfolio of profit centers": see @joblessmuse's post today: http://is.gd/77wIh View Tweet

Your Perspective

What works for you?

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Come share in the Basket

Every week, I open a new Basket. I call it the Brag Basket, but it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing. I started this so you can introduce yourself or share some good news about yourself or a friend. 

Speak up and add yourself or another deserving soul in the comments. We all cheer, and everyone feels great. It lets you meet each other a bit. Reading each others' stories brings us a bit closer to being a community. 

This particular basket is open from Jan 29-31, 2010.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post. You tell something great about your week, or you give plaudits to someone who did good stuff this week. Or you celebrate a terrific failure. It's not an ad; it's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other!

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6 Tips for managing a distributed workforce

With all the technology available to us, sometimes we work with people for years before we ever meet in person. That can be terrific, or it can be a headache.

Digging around in my notes from conferences, I found these tips on managing a distributed workforce from a 2008 session at SXSW with Andrew Huff, Editor and Publisher of Gapers Block, and Jeff Robbins CEO of Lullabot. 

1. The best system to learn how to manage a distributed workforce: the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard.

2. Leave time for informal talk during online and phone meetings. Make it feel like in-person interacting.

3. Give clear communications of when to work and when not to. No need to be online all the time.

4. Declare a weekend off.

5. Don't be afraid to ask for increases in output when needed.

6. Write an employee handbook. Include that extra time will be required for daily reporting-in, and the worker will need to allow for it.

What tips can you add?

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Retail Store Industry Benchmarks

Another great source for business intelligence: the Retail Owners Institute offers industry benchmark data on six key financial ratios.

In a section called Store Benchmarks, they break down industry averages into 51 different retail lines. They give five years of data for these six financial ratios:

• Current Ratio
• Gross Margin Percentage
  
• Return on Assets Percentage
  
• Debt to Worth
• Pre-tax Profit Percentage
  
• Inventory Turnover
  

How to use this data if you're in retail

Find the classification that best fits your store. Using the Formulas Cheatsheet at the Retail Owners Institute, figure your own store's ratios. Compare your performance to the average. Compare your trends to the industry trends. Are you doing better, or worse than the category? You're looking for areas where you do well, where you do poorly, and where you have a bad trend. For example, if your Current Ratio is headed down, you are less able to pay your debts. You may be in for a cash shortage. If the industry average plummeted last year, but you managed to stay even, then you did good!

If you don't clearly fit a single category, you may need compare a couple of categories that you're close to.

How to use this data if you're considering a retail business
Take a look at the category you are considering. Here are some actual industry averages you can plug into your financial projections. If you're planning to start a store selling custom truck accessories, look at the auto parts and accessories benchmarks. If you have an estimate of how much you think you can sell, multiply that times the average gross margin percentage (36.5%), to get your gross profit. That's your profit after you pay for the merchandise only. That's all that's left to pay salaries, utilities, advertising, and any other expenses. Take your estimated sales times the profit percentage (1.8%) to see what your potential net profit might be.

It may help you find a retail business to avoid. Take a look at new car dealers benchmarks, and click the Profit tab. In 2009, the average dealer suffered a net loss of 2.9% of their sales. Look at lumber and building materials dealers benchmarks. From 2005 to 2009, the percentage shown on the Profit tab dropped from over 3% net profit down to .3%. You might not want to jump into either of these categories right now.

Other sources
Do you have other sources for business intelligence? We'd love to hear about them, and share them with everyone.

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Cool events in Oklahoma and Nebraska

Nebraska MarketPlace
Joy Marshall, event planner for the Center for Rural Affairs, reminded me that it’s almost time for the Nebraska MarketPlace, held Feb. 23-24, 2010, during National Entrepreneurship Week.  

Oklahoma Entrepreneurship Conference
Shelli Todd, director of OKStartup.com for Oklahoma's Department of Commerce, sent details on the 2010 Entrepreneur’s Conference, also Feb. 23-24, 2010. The conference has three "series" or tracks devoted to entrepreneurs in the idea and planning phase, start up and development, and growth. Keynote speakers are our long-time friend Chris Brogan and Ernesto Sirolli. Derrick Parkhurst, Jessica Miller-Merrell, Malena Lott and I are also speaking.

Registration is now open online, and is only $99. You'll find the list of speakers, etc., in the PDF brochure.

I loved this video that Commerce put out to promote the event:

2010 Entrepreneur Conference from Brian Bendele on Vimeo.


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Should we call it the Sharing Basket

Every week, I open a new Brag Basket. It's not really about bragging. It's about sharing. I started this so you can introduce yourself or share some good news about yourself or a friend. 

Speak up and add yourself or another deserving soul in the comments. We all cheer, and everyone feels great. It lets you meet each other a bit. Reading each others' stories brings us a bit closer to being a community. 

This particular basket is open from Jan 22-24, 2010.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post. You tell something great about your week, or you give plaudits to someone who did good stuff this week. Or you celebrate a terrific failure. It's not an ad; it's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other!

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How to write an interesting town history

What makes for an interesting town history? It's not names and dates. It's stories. You're trying to attract visitors, and the best way to do that is pull them into the story. 

We don't care about a list of names of prominent town founders. We do care about the story of the woman who won 160 acres of land in the lottery, and had it surveyed out into lots for the town's settlement. Who was she? Why did she choose to make a town, and not a farm? (Read the story of Mattie Beal, and the founding of Lawton, Oklahoma.)

We aren't impressed that agriculture was a key industry. Tell us the story of a particular farmer. Or how specific crops were brought in and why. Did immigrants bring crops or farming techniques to the area? Did one crop fail, and lead to the introduction of something new? (Read how corn failed and wheat took over in Kansas. And notice, while you are there, how they use quotes from real people to give the story some life.)

The list of businesses by itself doesn't mean much. You know the type of list I mean, "a feed mill, three saloons, two hotels and one doctor." Find something interesting. I've heard all my life that early-day Alva, Oklahoma Territory, had something like 23 saloons on the downtown square alone. Surely out of all those saloons, we can find one interesting story! (Read how the saloon keepers subsidized the baseball players who made Alva's early reputation.)

I'm telling you, there are interesting stories in your town's history! Go find them, and write up a town history that draws people in.

Photo of Surveyor C.N. Gould near Lawton, O.T.
by US Geological Survey, 1901.

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Kim Tinkham makes a difference in Decatur

We love to share small town success stories. Deborah Reynolds sent us this one after our most recent newsletter.  (If you missed our newsletter, you can read it here.)

I want to share a story with you about one woman who is making a difference in our small town of Decatur, Texas, actually in our entire county.  Kim Tinkham has been distributing a county magazine for the last six years entitled Wise Family Today.  This magazine is about inspring parents, motivating kids and celebrating life.  She offers it as a free publication and makes it available online. Kim is very well-known, highly motivated, and an amazing businesswoman.

Kim truly enjoys helping others and her passion is to help locally.  From this passion and her incredible business experience, she founded Wise Merchants Association in 2009 to help our local businesses weather the recession.  The goal of this Association is to allow merchants to share ideas, problems and solutions with other merchants.  The Association meetings are structured to provide information, education, and motivation for business owners, as well as networking opportunities.  It is open to any merchant in our county at no cost.  Our meetings have included training for business owners in marketing, networking, social media, and business goal setting.  Kim even arranged sales training with a speaker from Brian Tracy!   And, last November she provided members free tickets to the Get Motivated event, which featured Colin Powell, Rudy Guiliani, Zig Ziglar, Robert Schuller, and George W. Bush.

Kim Tinkham is consistently providing invaluable information to our local business owners through the Wise Merchants Association.  The Association has grown tremendously and the members are very supportive.  You can read more about it and its members at www.meetup.com/wisemerchants.

In addition to the Wise Merchants Association, Kim recently launched Wise Woman magazine to educate women business owners in our county on various topics.  She has local writers, as well as nationally known writers Dave Ramsey and Bob Burg contributing to the magazine.

Kim Tinkham's passion has really made a difference to local businesses in our small town and county!

Deborah Reynolds
Owner and Virtual Assistant
DediKated Resource Virtual Administrative Solutions
www.dedikatedresource.com

Downtown Decatur, Texas, photo by stevesheriw on flickr,
used under a Creative Commons License.

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Small town business book reviews

Inspired by the challenge from Julien Smith, I'm reading much more consistently this year. Here are some of my recent reads.

Small Town Sexy by Kim Huston. It's a whirlwind tour of Kim's romance with small towns. From her window on the world in small town Kentucky, she offers up a sample of small town living, festivals, economic development, and the ever present town characters. It's fun. Share it with some small town skeptics, just to see their reaction. I just got word that Kim will be speaking at the Michigan Small Town Conference in 2010, and I know she will be outstanding! Kim has a blog on Small Town Sexy, and is also on Twitter.

Making a Living Without a Job by Barbara J. Winter. This is the book for those people who really want to start a business but don't know what business to start. It's good for helping people make the shift in thinking from employee to entrepreneur. If I was charged with counseling potential small business owners, I would keep a copy of this on my desk to loan out. You'll find Barbara at Joyfully Jobless, and also on Twitter as @JoblessMuse.

The Mom and Pop Store by Robert Spector. Starting with his own family story, Robert tells us about hundreds of small family run businesses all over the world. While most of them are in big cities, a few are small towns and all of the lessons apply equally. He's a great story teller, and he selected excellent stories to share. I found myself re-telling stories from this book to my husband. You'll find more about the book at Robert's website.

Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. I speak quite a bit, and I've set a goal to speak more this year. Scott's book was perfect for me. He chose to fill it with his own experiences, good and bad. I had such fun reading it, I didn't think about the lessons, until I got my next speaking request. Then I ran back to re-read things I remembered, and I created a better presentation because of it. Learn more at Speaker Confessions or Scott's blog. Scott is also on Twitter, @berkun.

If you have a book relating to small town business you want to share, feel free to send me a copy, at PO Box 8, Hopeton, OK 73746. If I read a book every week, eventually I'm going to run out of the ones already stacked on my nightstand!

Book cover photos by Becky McCray.

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Share some good news

Every week, I open a new Brag Basket. It's not really about bragging. It's about sharing. I started this so you can introduce yourself or share some good news about yourself or a friend. 

Speak up and add yourself or another deserving soul in the comments. We all cheer, and everyone feels great. It lets you meet each other a bit. Reading each others' stories brings us a bit closer to being a community. 

This particular basket is open from Jan 15-17, 2010.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post. You tell something great about your week, or you give plaudits to someone who did good stuff this week. Or you celebrate a terrific failure. It's not an ad; it's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other!

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Beyond shop local is bank local

Shop local is a popular topic here, but this week I've watched a new trend pop up: bank local.

Move Your Money is encouraging people to shift their money to locally owned banks. The site includes bank rankings by Institutional Risk Analytics. All of my local banks scored B+ or higher.

The project was dreamed up at a pre-Christmas dinner party of political activists. And the campaign is seemingly everywhere. It has spread by social networks, and while I was in Dallas this week, I saw it on the local news.

Your local banks are important your community. The people who work there volunteer in your community. You see them in the homecoming parade. (When was the last time you saw your international mega-bank in your small town parade?)

Jack Schultz has reminded us that "too big to fail" should come with additional capital reserve requirements. I listen to Jack on banking issues because he serves on his local bank's board of directors. He also points out, in an Sept 30, 2008 issue of the AgUrban newsletter, that the big problem for local banks is the huge burden of regulation that is out-scale for small banks. Also read the Nov. 18, 2008 issue, and the reader reactions in the Oct. 7, 2008 issue.

 So, what's your take on the bank local initiative?

Photo by Becky McCray.

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How did this happen? I'm in business!

UPDATE: We're scheduled for Sunday, March 14, 2010, at 12:30 pm, in the Hilton Room E. Here is the detailed event page at SXSW.  

Hi, this is Becky McCray of SmallBizSurvival.com, and along with Liz Strauss of Successful-Blog.com, we're going to answer your questions in a Core Conversation at South By Southwest Interactive, called "How did this happen? I'm in business!"

Is this your life? You have a few beers with friends, come up with a good idea, and now you have to keep track of miles on business trips!

A thousand questions swirl in your head when you start a new business:

• How do I "become" a business?
• How much financial record keeping will I have to do?
• What expenses are tax deductible?
• How do I deal with miles I drive for business?
• Why do I need to keep a business calendar?
• How do I reach customers?
• What are the differences between sales, marketing, and just talking with your customers?
• What are my options for structuring my business?
• Are some structures better for interactive and new media creators?
• Do I need to file for a business license?
• What IRS tax filings are required?
• Where can I get answers to more business questions?

Well, sit down with Liz Strauss and me, the left brain and right brain of business. Liz turned a blog post into a successful conference series, and took a small publishing firm international. I started my first business in junior high, and today I manage a cattle ranch and a liquor store.

Whether you're a business of one or 100. Whether you're in business yet, or still thinking about it. ...Join the discussion. You'll find us under the title, "How did this happen? I'm in business!"

To get a preview of the simplified business and marketing plans, the checklist for going into business, and the difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur, stop by Successful-blog.com and SmallBizSurvival.com. And bring your questions to Austin!

We're scheduled for Sunday, March 14, 2010, at 12:30 pm, in the Hilton Room E. Here is the detailed event page at SXSW. 

If you'd rather listen than read, here's the audio version:

(If this says "Playlist Empty," please click here for the audio page at Utterli.)

Photo of Liz and Becky at SXSW '09 (Liz is the tall one; Becky is the one standing on a step.) (cc) Shashi Bellamkonda Social Media Swami (cc) Network Solutions

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Meet the locals in rural tourism

Rural and small town tourism is all about experiences. That is why you should steal this idea for your local tourism: Meet the locals in Jamaica.

[There are] about 300 ambassadors who volunteer with the Jamaica Tourist Board's Meet the People program. Launched nearly 41 years ago, it arranges meetings between visitors and residents, basing the matches on shared occupations and interests.

Any small town, any small rural tourism business, any regional tourism association could adapt this idea. Here are ideas off the top of my head:

• Hold a picnic "mixer" with locals and visitors. 
• Connect visitors with local rodeo-ers for a riding or roping lesson. 
• Recruit local boaters to take visitors out sailing.
  
• Introduce visiting business people to your local entrepreneurs.
• Turn a museum visit into a chance to talk with local history buffs. 
• Connect visiting photographers with local hobbyists for a photo walk.
• Pair visiting teachers with local teachers. 
• Recruit local traditional artists to give lessons to visitors.
  
• Invite visitors into local events. Let them participate and role play. 
• Bring visitors out to the harvest fields.

Help your visitors remember their connection. Take lots of photos and videos for them to share.

Brainstorm ways to involve visitors in your community. How can you help them connect?

Photo of visitors mixing with locals at a watermelon social in Burlington, Oklahoma.

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Upstairs Downtown

Many small towns have un-used space in their downtown. A local resident in Buffalo, Oklahoma, has used some of that space to create short-term lodging for hunters.

Julia Hinther runs a salon and gift shop. The space upstairs used to be an apartment for her sons. When one of her sons tried his luck with guided hunts, they used it to lodge the hunters. Her son is no longer guiding, but Julia is still renting the upstairs space to hunters.

She markets it only by word of mouth, and has it booked up for hunting season every year. The rest of the time, she just rents it nightly to people needing a night's lodging in town.

Interestingly, the nightly renters cause less damage to the property than when they rented it out monthly. And the pay back has been better, too.

Credit Dan Carmody, fellow speaker at the Michigan Small Town Conference, for teaching me about this issue. Dan's presentation Using the Spaces in Our Places is available for download.

What unused assets do you have in your business, or your town?

Photo: Traverse City Upstairs for Lease, by Becky McCray

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While you were out

Erratic or limited hours are a frequent complaint about small town businesses. But how can you convince small business owners to expand their hours?

My friend Charles French sent me this very neat tool: "while you were out" notes for businesses. Here's how it works. Customers use them to let businesses know when and how often they would likely drop in, if only the businesses were open then. 

I can see a really brave local chamber of commerce handing these out. Or a smart downtown business district. You have to be brave, because some businesses won't want to hear from customers!

Thanks to Visualingual for the idea, and the photo I have borrowed here. You can also find a ready-to-use PDF of the cards at Visualingual's post, "While You Were Out."



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The Brag Basket is really a conversation

Every week, I open a new Brag Basket. It's not really about bragging. It's about sharing. I started this so you can introduce yourself or share some good news. 

Speak up and add yourself or another deserving soul in the comments. We all cheer, and everyone feels great. It lets you meet each other a bit. Reading each others' stories brings us a bit closer to being a community. 

This particular basket is open from Jan 8-10, 2010.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post. You tell something great about your week, or you give plaudits to someone who did good stuff this week. Or you celebrate a terrific failure. It's not an ad; it's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other!

This week, I also want to share an note I just received via email:

Becky,

I am Dominique, French and I run a blog about and for freelancers.

Recently Chris Brogan mentioned your brag basket.

Curious, I went to have a look and just found in love with the idea. Today, I wrote a note about it, asking my reader if they would like a "brag basket" on my blog as well. So far, they enjoy the idea, because it's a positive, engaging and I'm sure it will give them ideas and opportunity to share.

Here is the link to the note:
http://blog.freelance.com/mon_weblog/2010/01/une-belle-rubrique-pour-saluer-les-initiatives-dautres-freelances-.html

Thank you for your blog, very inspiring.

Merci,
Dominique

Now, how cool is that?

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New Online Small Business Tax Workshop

New business owners always have questions about taxes. I visited this IRS-made site. It is remarkably "user friendly" and intuitive. The video is of an excellent quality and there are many features that make it very easy to use.

You should, at least, go watch/listen to the Introduction. Then you can chose whichever area is of interest to you. You do not have to stay from the first to the last. You can pick and chose.

The revised Virtual Small Business Tax Workshop offers updated content with interactive features and a new reference section.

Jump start your small biz webinar Jan 13 2010

I hope our 4 ways to jumpstart your small biz in 2010 post helped lots of you get going with 2010. The National Federation of Independent Business liked it enough to ask me to do a webinar based on it.

I've agreed, and it will be Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 12pm Eastern Time. I'm also pleased NFIB is making this webinar available free to members and nonmembers.

Here's the official description:

Do you have a business or marketing plan? Do you know what you need to do to grow your business in 2010? Becky McCray, from SmallBizSurvival.com will give you the "how-to" on organizing your business for this year and beyond.

You will need to register for the webinar.You can also find out about the other NFIB webinars.

Hope to see some of your friendly faces (or names!) on Wednesday, the 13th. 

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Our small town biz newsletter

In addition to everything we talk about here, I publish an occasional newsletter with extra bonus material. It's intended to be the sort of thing you can pass along to other small businesses in your town, or maybe someone like your chamber of commerce folks.

Although the newsletter has been inactive for quite a while, I'm motivated to give it new life this year.

Our first issue of 2010 is going to discuss small town trends in small business and entrepreneurship. I've submitted my annual list of the top ten trends to the Small Business Trends website, and I'll let you know when it is published. There are seven more trends that I think are important enough we ought to discuss them together. So that will be in the first issue, going out on Monday.

If you want to join the discussion, go to the newsletter sign up page.

Thanks! 

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Developing small town tourism

Yesterday, I walked the small town of Okeene, Oklahoma, through a process to help them expand their tourism potential. We used the 8 Rural Culture Elements from Kansas Sampler Foundation. I wanted to share some of the discussion with you, in hopes it will encourage you to take a fresh look at your local tourism assets.


The 8 Rural Culture Elements:

1. Architecture
2. Art  
3. Commerce  
4. Cuisine
5. Customs  
6. Geography  
7. History  
8. People

I asked questions, and the people told me about their town. Most of the people there learned something new through the process. Here's what we learned.

Architecture. Okeene's Catholic Church is a stunning gem for a small town. Could we find other churches by the same architect and create a driving tour? Okeene also has several nice natural stone buildings, including the Chamber of Commerce!

Art. Beyond the one big mural, Okeene doesn't have a lot of public visual art. They do have a huge Red Dirt Music festival that would be the envy of any small town.

Commerce. It just so happens that Wilkinson Mortuary was the business of the month at the Chamber, and we got to hear the history of how the building started as a hospital, how the original owner converted it to a mortuary, and how different families had owned it. Every business in town has a story. Those individual stories taken together tell a larger story that can draw visitors.

Cuisine. Long ago, every town had a flour mill. Okeene has one of the few remaining, now part of the Shawnee Milling Company. Their flour goes into everything from Sara Lee products to dog biscuits to the VAP specialty bakery products, made in my hometown of Alva. In more traditional cuisine, Okeene's Whippet Stop is a wonderful old time cafe. When I asked about ethnic cuisine, everyone said, with one voice, "Delgado's." And if you come during the Rattlesnake Hunt, you can try the rattlesnake meat. Really.

Customs. The annual Okeene Rattlesnake Hunt is probably the best known Okeene tradition. Another annual tradition is the Whea Esta festival. It's a cross between a local version of the county fair and a heritage festival. I live about an hour away from Okeene, and I didn't know anything about it. I think this is their huge, undiscovered tourism gem.

Geography. Okeene is in a mostly flat area of prairie, but with plenty of wildlife and open space.

History. Okeene has a rich history. Just the story of where the town got its name is interesting. The town site is at the boundary of two Native tribal areas. Early town leaders decided to create a word, taking the "Ok" from Oklahoma, the "ee" from Cherokee, and the "ne" from Cheyenne. There is no other town in the US named Okeene. That means they can own this word online. It's much easier to dominate the search results if you don't have to compete with 27 other towns named Springfield.

People. This is where I ran out of time for my short presentation, but it's clear that Okeene has a strong asset in its people.

Next steps

Now that Okeene has assessed the local assets, it's time to follow up. The Chamber of Commerce is heading in to their annual planning sessions, and I'm sure enhanced tourism will be in their plans.

There are lots more follow up ideas on the Kansas Sampler website. 

So the challenge to you is to gather a group of locals plus a new comer or two, go through the 8 elements, list off some of your most untapped assets, and find new ways to bring visitors to your town.

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Promote yourself with StumbleUpon and Delicious

Our friend Denise McGill, author of the "Writing Tips for Small Business Owners" booklet, asked about using social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Delicious to promote her works online. Here's a very quick introduction.

StumbleUpon aims to help people discover neat things online that they otherwise might not. Delicious allows you to bookmark favorite items online, and share those bookmarks with friends.

StumbleUpon
Stumble Upon has been good at bringing spurts of visitors on occasion. I sometimes use their "su.pr" URL shortening service to share links on Twitter and Facebook. (Thanks, Chris Cree for sharing it.) You get two bonuses when you use su.pr to shorten a web address: you get statistics on the number of clicks, and you get exposure to other StumbleUpon users. For small businesses, those click through numbers are an extremely valuable measurement.

Small biz example: For Allen's Liquors, I wrote a reference post with the number of ounces in the different liquor bottle sizes. Because it was the kind of thing that is useful for lots of people, I used su.pr to shorten the link and share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Delicious
Delicious has brought me some excellent traffic in the past, though not as much as previously. So, maybe it is less popular than before. Or maybe I haven't hit the right combination to get attention lately!

Small businesses can use Delicious to share links to any resources customers might use. We use it for Tourism Currents, to share all the great tourism promotion and tech examples that Sheila Scarborough finds. (Sheila turns up an insane amount of great content.) You can see it here: http://delicious.com/tourismcurrents

Rex Hammock uses Delicious to share small business news items: http://delicious.com/smallbusiness


The trick is to make sure you show customers that you have created this resource. At Tourism Currents, we have a link right on the home page to the Delicious links. We also mention it in newsletters, in our lessons, at in-person events, and in anything else we can think of.

In use
Because these are my two favorite bookmarking sites, I offer an easy way to share any of our posts with them. At the end of each post, you'll see "Stumble It! • Add to del.icio.us" links. If you like what we write, feel free to give it a promotional nudge on those sites.

Everyone has their own favorites. What are yours?

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Meet Mike Knutson of ReImagine Rural

Mike Knutson is someone you should meet. He believes small, rural communities need to “Reimagine” their futures.  At “ReImagine Rural” (www.ReImagineRural.com) he and others attempt to inspire rural residents to look at the futures of their communities differently and to base their community development efforts on innovative, transformative ideas.

I think I favorite or share every single post from ReImagine Rural. If you're interested in rural issues from nonprofits, to entrepreneurship, to development, you'll become a fan of theirs, too.

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New year, new Brag Basket

Every week, I open a new Brag Basket. This time, it's a new year, too.

This is not really about bragging. It's about sharing. It's here so you can introduce yourself or share some good news. With a new year stretched out in front of us. What wonderful things do you foresee for 2010?

Speak up and add yourself or another deserving soul in the comments. We all cheer, and everyone feels great. It lets you meet each other a bit. Reading each others' stories brings us a bit closer to being a community. 

This particular basket is open from Jan 1-3, 2010.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post. You tell something great about your week, or you give plaudits to someone who did good stuff this week. Or you celebrate a terrific failure. It's not an ad; it's a conversation with friends. So jump in.

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