Share your good stuff in the Brag Basket

The Brag Basket is our tradition of sharing. The basket is always free and open all weekend, this one September 30-October 2, 2011.

Display your good stuff in the Brag Basket.
[Photo: Basket maker Terrol Dew Johnson.
Photo by sea turtle on Flickr.]

Even though I call this the Brag Basket, it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing.

What can you do in the Brag Basket?

• introduce yourself
• share some great news from this week
• congratulate a friend
• laugh about something wonderful that you tried that failed
• applaud for each other

Don't hold back because of that word, "brag." When you hold back, you hide your good news and accomplishments that might inspire others.

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.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post, email me, or catch me on any social network and share your thought.

This is not an ad. (I delete the ads.) It's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.


New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Oklahoma Governor's Conference on Small Business 2011

I'm speaking at the Oklahoma Governor's Conference on Small Business, on October 14, 2011. The conference theme is Igniting Small Business Leaders. Incendiary, but good! My topic is "The Social Network: Marketing Strategies for Today."

If you dropped in from the conference, welcome! You're in the right place for a copy of the slides and some resource links. (And if you're a regular Small Biz Survival reader, feel free to eavesdrop on the goodies. In fact, there is still time to register if you'd like to attend.That's one reason I posted this early.)

The Social Network: Marketing Strategies for Today

View more presentations from Becky McCray.

Resource articles:

• Should I blog for my small business?
• How to use video to promote your small business
• 21 Ways to use video for your small business
• How to do simple videos for your business
• 6 Big Facebook tips for small business
• The Simplified Marketing Plan
• 19 Presence Management Chores You Could Do Every Day by Chris Brogan
• How to multiply your efforts

Tools:

• Gist to find out more about your customers

You can connect with Small Biz Survival and me further in these ways:

• Twitter: @beckymccray, @sbsurvival
• Facebook: Small Biz Survival
• Or subscribe to our newsletter. 

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Extend your Twitter reach with Twylah

Small town businesses and tourism groups are using Twitter for marketing and building community. One of the problems with that can be the limited reach. Twylah is one tool to reach more people, even those who don't use or maybe don't even like Twitter.

Normal people view a Twitter page as something of a foreign language. Free service Twylah takes your Twitter stream and reformats it to look more like a newspaper or a magazine. It also groups tweets by subject, and includes featured photos. The result makes your tweets friendlier for people who don't use Twitter.

This is completely different from services like Flipboard or Paper.li that are designed to make it easier for you, the Twitter user. Twylah makes your tweets more accessible to people who don't use Twitter. It's a way of making more of the content you already create.

In essence, you get a custom landing page created out of the tweets you already send. That extends your reach to more people. There are lots more features including landing pages for individual tweets, customizing which labels appear, and even some statistics. Twylah is also offering the ability to integrate this landing page into your existing website with a custom domain feature.

I found my personal Twitter account was too scattered, covering too many topics to work well. Our @TourismCurrents account is focused on social media for tourism, so it worked much better. I can see this working very well for tourism organizations and for small businesses.

If you want to extend the reach of your Twitter efforts, Twylah is a good tool to look at.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

How to build more cooperation in your community

What if your town council, your chamber of commerce, and your school board sat down together for a public meeting just to compare calendars?

A few Northwest Oklahoma
community leaders. 

What if these leaders started talking about possible cooperation, shared projects, or mutual goals?

What if more local boards and leaders began to participate, aligning their own goals and efforts with more of the community?

What if it generated open discussion about the community as a whole?

What if neighboring towns sat down together and compared calendars and projects?

What if it worked so well that your community started to do it annually, quarterly, or even monthly?

What if it started with just one meeting?

This is one of those ideas that hit me while talking with the smart people of Concrete, Washington. Does anyone actually do this sort of thing?

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Join me in the Brag Basket

The Brag Basket is our tradition of sharing. The basket is always free and open all weekend, this one September 23-25, 2011.

Even though I call this the Brag Basket, it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing.

Bragging on our
140 Characters this week!

What can you do in the Brag Basket?

• introduce yourself
• share some great news from this week
• congratulate a friend
• laugh about something wonderful that you tried that failed
• applaud for each other

Don't hold back because of that word, "brag." When you hold back, you hide your good news and accomplishments that might inspire others.

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.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post, email me, or catch me on any social network and share your thought.

This is not an ad. (I delete the ads.) It's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.


New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Failure forms your character more than success

One of the Napkin Dad's artworks
(c) Marty Coleman, shared from Flickr

"I have had a LOT of failures and catastrophes in my life; schools I got kicked out of, a failed marriage, rejection in the art and academic world and physical disasters just to name a few.  If I had not had those 'failures' and not gained the resulting character I now have, I would not be able to take the successes I have had in a good, positive and mature way (which I attempt to do).
Our successes reveal the character we've built during our failures."
Marty Coleman, the Napkin Dad

Part of our ongoing series on failure.


New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Tune in for livestream of 140conf SmallTown today

Today, Sept 20, 2011, around 140 people from small towns in 18 states and 3 countries will gather in Hutchinson, Kansas, to share ideas, and another 3,000 or so will tune in via live stream online.

2010 140 Conference Small Town,
Jeff Pulver and Becky McCray.
Photo by Jerry Hirsch

It's the 140 Characters Conference, the first and only high-tech conference to recognize the value of people in small towns and then locate the conference in a small town to share with them. People will share how they use tools like Twitter, Facebook, and much more, to change lives in education, business, nonprofits, volunteering, arts, agriculture and tourism.

If you weren't able to make the trip in person, you can still join in online. The conference will be live streamed. I'm expecting it to be on the 140 Conference Events Ustream channel. As a back up, (and we always have a backup), check in on the 140 Conference homepage, and we'll have a link there. To keep up with the speakers, check the schedule, but know we are likely to run behind.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Are QR codes just a fad?

Yes. Use them anyway.

QR Code overload at SXSW, by Cote

While QR Codes will disappear from popular use at some point, the idea of a link from the offline world to the online world won't change. Whether the next technology is near field communications (NFC) or something we don't even see yet, you can and will adapt.

Believe in the idea of the link: Offline experiences can be enhanced by the link to the right online information. 

Don't believe in the specific technology, like the QR Code itself.

So now is a great time to invest in creating the online information. Then no matter how the link is made, you have the information available and ready for users. You can update from QR Codes to NFC, or to what ever comes next.

It makes no sense to hold off on creating the compelling online content for your customers because you're worried about the way the link will be made in the future.

Want to future-proof your efforts?

1. Back up your data, especially if you are buying in to someone's proprietary QR Code information delivery service. You'll need that data when you move to the next way of making the link.
2. Don't set your QR codes in stone. Or in concrete, or other permanent media. 

Key question to ask yourself: what information would a user or customer appreciate when they interact with this? Put that information online, make a link with a QR code or whatever comes next, and explain to the user what they will get when they follow the link.

Bonus QR Code tips

Things to remember when you use a QR code:

Tell them what to expect. Lonely QR codes with no explanation seldom get scanned. Think about "What's in it for me?" and explain that right next to the code.

Include a short URL, written out. That makes it usable for people who can't scan a QR code, but can use mobile internet or wifi, including laptops, original iPads and older phones.

Deliver the user to a mobile-friendly site. If you have to pinch and zoom or scroll both ways, it's not mobile friendly. Test it on a variety of mobile devices.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Be sweet in the Brag Basket

The Brag Basket is our tradition of sharing. The basket is always free and open all weekend, this one September 16-18, 2011.

Sweetgrass basket, by Muffet

Even though I call this the Brag Basket, it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing.

What can you do in the Brag Basket?

• introduce yourself
• share some great news from this week
• congratulate a friend
• laugh about something wonderful that you tried that failed
• applaud for each other

Don't hold back because of that word, "brag." When you hold back, you hide your good news and accomplishments that might inspire others.

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.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post, email me, or catch me on any social network and share your thought.

This is not an ad. (I delete the ads.) It's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Add this 1 thing to make your tour signs much more effective

Have a byway, driving tour or walking tour? There is one thing you can add to your signs to improve how your visitors see it.

What's missing?
The "MORE" link.

Adding a QR code or short URL for a
mobile friendly website
adds new value to your existing signs.
And visit my friends in Concrete, WA.

Here's what I mean. Add the QR Code and short URL that takes visitors online for more information. And be sure to taken them directly to mobile-friendly information about where they are.

You know, like the "More..." link you see on websites, this is your chance to give visitors more than what will fit on one screen, or in this case, one sign.

Of course, that means doing several steps to make it work:

• Copy the text from the tour brochure to a new site or page on your existing site. Posting the PDF is not an acceptable alternative.
• Make sure it's mobile friendly. Test it on your phone. If you need to pinch or zoom, it isn't mobile friendly. 
• Create a QR code that links directly to the tour page.
• Create a short URL for the link. Your QR code service may make one automatically. You want both so visitors who don't use QR codes can still type the URL into their phone to access the page.

Feeling like an over-achiever? Make a separate page for each stop on the trail. Add more mobile-friendly content. Think of things that help tell the story you are trying to tell. Include photos, links to videos, audio of your best story teller, and more text. Whatever helps your visitor get the picture and understand the history.

Now, get that QR code and short URL printed on weather-proof stickers, and go post it! (And hey, even Avery Labels makes weather-proof stickers, so you can print your own. No more excuses.)


New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Accept credit cards? Important change to your record keeping

Starts with 2011 tax year. That's this year's tax return, filed in 2012.

New income reporting requirements will require the ability of a business owner who accepts credit cards to segregate cash sales from credit card sales. They must be reported separately on the Form 1040, Schedule C and, also, on Form 1065 (partnerships & LLC's reported as partnerships).

MasterCard pinata, pic by Infusionsoft.

Here's what is going to happen. 

• For 2011, credit and debit card companies will begin to issue 1099-K forms on payments to merchants, and third-party networks such as PayPal will give 1099-K's to payees with over 200 sales transactions and over $20,000 in annual sales volume.
• These amounts will be reported on a separate line on Schedule C and Forms 1065, 1120 and 1120S.
• This way, the Service will be able to match the amounts shown on the 1099-K with what’s reported on a return, making discrepancies easier to spot. [Apparently, the IRS intends to check. Be forewarned.]

What you have to do.

If you accept credit cards and do not currently separate and keep track of both your credit card sales and your cash/check sales, start NOW.

You must also go back through the earlier part of this year (2011) and set apart the two types of sales. Easier now than later. Perhaps, you could review your sales for each month and evaluate total sales against the credit card sales reported to you by your credit card processing company. You may be able to differentiate the two types of sales from those records.

This is an effort to close the tax gap and, therefore, could potentially be a very serious matter that should not be taken lightly. Prepare.

Author Glenna Mae Hendricks is an Enrolled Agent. 

Show your true colors in the Brag Basket

The Brag Basket is our tradition of sharing. The basket is always free and open all weekend, this one September 9-11, 2011.

Colorful baskets by Xeeliz

Even though I call this the Brag Basket, it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing.

What can you do in the Brag Basket?

• introduce yourself
• share some great news from this week
• congratulate a friend
• laugh about something wonderful that you tried that failed
• applaud for each other

Don't hold back because of that word, "brag." When you hold back, you hide your good news and accomplishments that might inspire others.

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.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post, email me, or catch me on any social network and share your thought.

This is not an ad. (I delete the ads.) It's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.


New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

A Map to Small Business Capital

Every state has some capital funds, special loan programs, and other interesting business financing tools. Most are available only in some locations, and many that are widely available, like USDA funding, have different contact people in different places. How do you make sense of all that? Kansas put it on a map.

A Map to Small Business Capital

Capital funds for small business in Kansas,
mapped by county. 

Kansas state government put together the map of all kinds of capital funds available:

• angel investor funds
• matching loan programs
• regional foundations
• USDA programs
• rural cooperatives making loans

The info is divided by county, including the local contact person for the program. It all comes together here: Kansas Capital Funds map.

Simple and effective.

If you have responsibility for economic development in a multi-county area, you might consider doing something similar with incentives, support services, and capital funds.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Map murals can drive tourism

Last week, I found myself in downtown Concrete, Washington, facing this huge map mural at the end of the street. I love the way the design works around the doorway. I even love the tag line, "Welcome to Concrete, center of the known universe."

As I figured out my location on the map, I realized I was a very short walk from the cool Baker River bridge. So I headed on over. (Yes, they could have put up a big sign, too, but that's another story.)

So a well executed map mural could:

• help visitors figure out where they are
• discover close by attractions
• discover other attractions they might otherwise miss
• be fun

Sounds perfect for small towns.

If you have a mural program, have you thought of adding a map mural?

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

The Brag Basket is like bread for your soul

The Brag Basket is our tradition of sharing. The basket is always free and open all weekend, this one September 2-4, 2011.

A basket full of bread for you, from me. 

Even though I call this the Brag Basket, it's not really about bragging. It's about sharing.

What can you do in the Brag Basket?

• introduce yourself
• share some great news from this week
• congratulate a friend
• laugh about something wonderful that you tried that failed
• applaud for each other

Don't hold back because of that word, "brag." When you hold back, you hide your good news and accomplishments that might inspire others.

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.

How does it work? You write a comment on this post, email me, or catch me on any social network and share your thought.

This is not an ad. (I delete the ads.) It's a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.

Small towns talk high tech at 140 Conference

Speakers from 17 states are converging on Kansas September 20, 2011, for a conversation about how high tech thrives outside Silicon Valley and all the usual big cities.

This is not just a Kansas event. It's not a local 140. It's an international event that happens to be held in Kansas. 

And it's the only international "high tech" event to talk small towns and go to a small town to do it.

Here's an overview of the 140 Conference from Oklahoma Horizon TV. (Don't see the video? Click through to Small Biz Survival.)

Transcript of the video

What makes the 140 Conference special? 
When people from different backgrounds get together, they can share ideas across boundaries. Here are a few of our confirmed speakers for this year:

• Cheryl Lawson will tell how the LA 140conference lead her to create Social Media Tulsa. 
• Sheila Scarborough will share how a city kid like her got sucked in by rural friends on Twitter. 
• Janice Pearson will tell how a non-farm girl became known as an expert on cotton. 
• Leslie McLellan will tell how she used soical media to market a small California tourism destination. 
• Patsy Terrell will talk about how creative types fare in small towns.
• Ron Williams will come from Brooklyn to talk about trusting in ourselves. Yes, Brooklyn!

By the time this comes out, the SmallTown 140 Conference schedule should be posted online.

If you're interested in what goes on in the high tech world outside the metropolis, join the conversation.

• Student passes are only $14 
• Adults can use "friendof140" for a serious discount 

I'll be there. Will you?

New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.