Networking is still one of the greatest ways to help your business grow, but it has taken on new dimensions over the years.

Attending business meetings, joining a Chamber of Commerce and other groups are still effective ways to get to know and connect with movers and shakers in your community. But with the advent of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, networking has extended its reach and picked up speed.

No matter what your niche, there are others interested in being your colleagues and customers. With Facebook and Twitter, geography is no longer a barrier. When I posted on Twitter this weekend, I got a response from a trainer in New York, a farmer in Iowa and a fellow coach in Alabama. By sharing what we are each doing in our businesses we are able to make connections that can lead to resources and increased business.

Even if you are still not convinced that social media is right for you, get a free membership from at least Facebook and Twitter. As you learn more about these you will become more comfortable with using them.

Just as few businesses try to run without a telephone and computer, modern successful businesses are capitalizing on the power and reach of social media for networking. Get on board and you’ll discover the same.

Like delegating, outsourcing is another way to free up your time and enable you to focus on your area of expertise within your business.

Outsourcing is subcontracting with an external third party to carry out some of the operations or tasks of your company. Unlike delegating where you have personal contact with the workers, in outsourcing you are often working with people or companies you may never meet in person.

Creating the marketing material is an area where I outsourced. While I enjoy creating, graphics and layout are not my strong suit. So, when I wanted a logo created, I went to an online company, Elance, and hired a designer who happened to be located overseas. He was quick, talented and priced right.

Dropshipping is a type of outsourcing popular with gift basket companies who want to sell gift baskets, but not create all the themes themselves. A gourmet gift basket company, for example, may get an order for a baby theme. They want to satisfy the customer, but don’t want to stock the baby items since they don’t get request for this theme too often. So, they contract with a gift basket dropshipper who specializes in baby themes. This dropshipper creates and ships the design directly to the customer. Find gift basket dropship companies on this free online directory.

Outsourcing arrangement typically take place by computer or telephone. Even though you may not meet providers face to face, it’s still important to do your research and check out credentials, portfolio and references before you hire them. This way you can maintain the quality that will help your business succeed.

In the early stages of your business you may have worn all the hats: buyer, designer, marketer, sales manager, inventory stocker, accountat, shipper  and more.  It probably didn’t take long before you became exhausted and overwhelmed.

Even in a small business, managing all the necessary tasks is not only tiring, but can hamper your success.  Delegating can help you tremendously. Delegating is not just a good idea or a suggestion, it is essential to business success.  And yet, you may hesitate to delegate for a few reasons:

• You are a control freak
• You think you are the only one who can do things right
• You are an adrenaline junkie and like the rush of having too much to do
• You have a gigantic ego that causes you to disregard others
• You want to be liked so desperately that you think you must have your hands in all parts of the business

If you recognize yourself you must be honest with yourself and work on the area that is blocking you. Then, to begin delegating take a look at the tasks at which you are best and which ones don’t need your constant attention and could be done equally well by someone else. Find someone you trust and assign them small tasks to start. If they require training, allot plenty time and patience to give them instruction and practice they need. Check back with them periodically, but don’t hover.

Bookkeeping is one of the first areas many people delegate. While you may be good at keeping your books, it’s an area of expertise that takes dedication and consistency.  Because of many changes in tax laws and business rules, it’s also an area that requires vigilance. Turning this over to an able and efficient professional will not only save you time, money and energy, but also avoid stress.

Delivering your own gift baskets takes you away from your studio and from taking orders. Turning this over to a company skilled at delivery will cost a fee, but you can pass this cost on to your customers.  In addition to using local couriers for hand deliveries, use UPS, FedEx and USPS. They have become increasingly easier to use since you can create your own labels and arrange for pickup from your business.

These are just a few places you can begin to delegate. When you turn over tasks to you others you will discover that you benefit in new-found energy, improved mood and increased business profits.

The time you free up by delegating will feel like a breath of fresh air. Get inspiration for using your time well from our e-book, It’s About Time.  Download your copy here.

This week we’ve been talking about reasons your website sucks.

Reason #5: You are too timid about promoting your website online.

Networking online is fast, efficient and powerful, and yet many companies are not sure they should network online.  Are you one of them? Let’s take a look at another popular social network website, Facebook.

Originally called thefacebook, Facebook was founded by former Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (while he was at Harvard) who ran it as one of his hobby projects with some financial help from Eduardo Saverin.  Facebook become popular within months across dorm rooms at Harvard, and soon at Stanford
and Yale.

When Mark was joined by two other fellow Harvard students–Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes–Facebook grew to become a national student network phenomenon. In August 2005, thefacebook was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

You still needed to be enrolled in one of the participating universities to be on Facebook until 2006 when anyone 13 or older could join. By January 2009 Facebook had moved ahead of MySpace in popularity.

While many businesses questioned whether MySpace was right for them, there was less hesitance for many businesses considering membership on Facebook.  A noticeable difference between the two may account for how they’ve been received by businesses.  MySpace allows to members to customize their pages with HTML and Cascading style Sheets, whereas Facebook mainly allows plain text and now photos, as well as a free classified ads in the Marketplace.

One glance at my grandkids pages on MySpace convinced me that I didn’t want to list my business there (To call their pages and those of their friends “garish” is being polite.) But Facebook has a more professional and controlled appearance. Besides, the History Channel has a Facebook page.I also like the fact that Facebook now has the capability of  linking to my articles from Ezine articles, my blog posts, and my radio episodes from BlogTalkRadio.

You are right to be thoughtful about what personal information you share on any website, but people want to know who you are before they trust you with their money and their projects. Networking websites give you the option of keeping some information private or limiting who views it. That can be useful when you build a big following.

Regardless of which social networking site you select, keep in mind that you’re there to make contacts, offer information, and be a resource.  By building relationships you create friendships and connections who sometimes turn into fans. That will grow your business in ways that old fashioned advertising never could.

Reason #4 your website sucks: You are keeping it a secret.

Your website may boast a great design, but if you aren’t drawing visitors you are missing the main purpose: earning profits for your company.

In the last few years there has been an explosion of ways to network with potential customers and colleagues and get the word out about your business.  Research show, however, that you can increase your profits better by building relationships rather than hitting people over the head with hard advertising. That’s where social network marketing comes in.

Not too long ago you would have had to spend big advertising dollars to reach your potential customers. Now, thanks to social networking websites where potential customers willingly complete profiles and indicate their interests, your job of reaching them is much easier, very affordable and more effective. One such site is MySpace.

If you haven’t heard of MySpace.com, either you don’t have kids, don’t know any kids, or have been living on another planet for over a decade.

MySpace is a social networking website started in 2000 by Tom Anderson (graduate of UC Berkeley and UCLA) and Chris DeWolfe (graduate of USC) . It was bought in 2005 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

My Space is an interactive network of user profiles, photos, an internal email system and blogs. Although the founders claim to have started the site as a place for 18 to 25 year olds to socialize and hang out, its phenomenal popularity with teenagers and preteens has brought it under heavy scrutiny from the media and watchdog groups. These groups worry that unsupervised youngsters who display their personal information and suggestive photos online will fall victim to the more than 50,000 sexual predators believed to troll online sites and chat rooms.

By contrast, MySpace has been a godsend for fledgling musicians and independent filmakers because they can upload their original songs and films where they begin to develop a following. Here they can get visibility, popularity and sometimes, gigs.

As of today Alexa reports that MySpace is the 11th most popular English website in the world. My 25 year old daughter and my college students swear that they use MySpace just to stay in touch with friends they already know. But is MySpace appropriate for business and educational use also?

While some business owners believe that MySpace is a good place for them to network and meet potential customers, many businesses and schools are blocking access to My Space from their employees and students because of the tremendous strain it has put on bandwidth and professionalism.

Many believe that MySpace pages have been damaging to students who, already the object of teasing in their local school, can now be humiliated worldwide. In other situations, jobseekers’ chances of landing their preferred jobs have been hurt by the personal information they’ve shared.

 MySpace was recently at the center of the first cyberbullying trial when a Missouri mother perpetrated a hoax directed at a 13-year old girl pretending to be a teen boy. When the fictitious boy dumped the girl and told her the world would be better without her, she committed suicide.

Think twice before you decide to test the “six degrees of separation” theory on MySpace. While as an adult you may not be as likely to fall victim to sexual predators as preteens, you must consider whether the types of clients you seek will really find you on MySpace.

What do you think? Are you on MySpace? Has it helped grow your business?

Tomorrow we’ll look at another reason your website sucks.

Over the last two days you’ve learned the #1 and #2 reason your website sucks.

Here is the #3 reason your website sucks:

You are letting your website visitors  come and go without capturing their names.

That means your website is not as profitable as it should be–you’re letting money fly through your hands.

We all begin business counting on orders from new customers.  But what about the visitors to your website who look around and leave without ever buying anything?

Do you know who they are and how to reach them? You should, because the majority of potential customers don’t buy the first time around.  As a matter of fact, most folks need to learn about your product seven times before they will buy.

Just think. If you had a way to get the name and email of everyone who visits your site you could have many other shots at educating them about your product and service until you get orders from them.

But how do you do that, you ask.

Easy. Offer visitors something of value. Let’s call it an ethical bribe. In exchange for their names and email you will send them a newsletter, a special report, an e-course, or a list of tips. Just be sure that you only offer something that can be emailed.

Your goal is to capture names that you can contact on a regular basis reminding them of your service, announcing specials and offering quality content that your leads want to receive.

But wait. You can’t just ask for email addresses and start sending email to folks one by one.  Besides, even after visitors give you their email you must be sure they really wanted to do that. It’s called double opt-in confirmation.

In order for this to work with the least amount of ongoing work, you must set this up so that it’s automatic. To do that you will need to use an autoresponder program, software that sends out email automatically.

With an autoresponder program you can enter the content you want to send and set it so that it emails to your leads at whatever intervals you wish–weekly, monthly, even daily (although I don’t recommend that.) And you can do all this for many months ahead of time so that you don’t have to be online when your email goes out.

And, if your prospects want to stop receiving your email they can unsubscribe on their own.

Over the years I’ve tried a number of autoresponder programs, but the one I use and recommend that you use too is AWeber. They have a free trial so you can try it out. To help you learn to use the program, they offer lots of help: instructional videos, tech support, a blog and more.

Get this right and your website will move from suck to big bucks.

We discussed the #1 reason your website sucks. Here’s the #2 reason.

Your website design is unprofessional and inappropriate for the service you offer.

• You put up an unfinished website.

In the early days of the Internet it was common to see websites that were published before they were finished. But nowadays if you put your website up before you’re ready to do business, how can I do business with you? Furthermore, what does it say about your judgment.

• Your choice of music, colors and flashing graphics are distracting and say “amateur.” Just because all the extras are available doesn’t mean you should use them.

This website , http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html, has a serious message but distracts from it and even dimishes it with their choices. If their purpose is to save my soul, they missed it by a long shot.

MGM Grand , by contrast, uses appropriate music and flash to set the mood to lure their intended target to their hotel. Besides, they are competing against other Las Vegas hotels with entertainment and amenities so their message needs to be glitzy and over the top.

• Your efforts to be clever backfired.

Brill Publications , for example, came up with a clever metaphor, but how many visitors will understand it and go through the steps to find out what the company does and how to use them.

In an effort to avoid having your website suck any longer, see what Chris Flanders has to say on his website, Web Pages That Suck

If you’re ready to make your gift basket website more professional, subscribe to our free e-course, “How to Dramatically Improve Your Gift Basket Website.”

Are you getting all the business you want from your website?

I didn’t think so.

That’s because your website sucks in a number of ways.

Here is the #1 reason: Your website makes me nervous so I don’t feel at ease ordering from you.

Why?

• Your home page doesn’t tell me the major benefit of choosing your gift basket service.
• You don’t have a privacy policy reassures me that you won’t be sharing my personal information with others.
• You don’t even have terms and conditions telling me what I can expect when I use your service.
• Your About Us page gives me general information, but you don’t give me history of your company, your mission and a photo.
• You don’t have an icon confirming that placing my credit card information on your site is safe.
• Wait! You don’t even accept credit cards? I have to call you to place an order. What century are you in?
• On your Contact Us page you have a box where I can leave a question, but you don’t list your street address, city, zip, state and phone number. Are you a real company?

To learn more about fixing the problems with your website, get our free e-course, “How to Dramatically Improve Your Gift Basket Website.” Sign up below.

Gift basket designers long for mega orders of 1,000’s of gift baskets, but few actually win these coveted orders.

A Texas gift basket designer, Teresa Nelson, won an import award for handling a 4,000-basket order for which all the items arrived on the same day. She was among three area businesses awarded the 2006 Mayor’s Global Business Award. Teresa was so successful, in fact, that she has had to restrict her company’s growth.

Before you rev up your efforts to go after mega orders, be clear on what’s involved in fulfilling these orders:

1. Confirmation from your vendors, manufacturers and other wholesale sources that all the products you need for the order are available and ready to ship.

2. Adequate capital to order all the inventory. For mega orders, retailers often ask for a deposit, with the balance due upon delivery.

3. Enough warehouse space to store the inventory, and working space to assemble the designs and pack for shipping.

4. A trained staff who can keep meet the deadline in a timely and efficient manner.

5. A delivery service that can handle mega orders if hand delivery is required.

6. Staff to keep your regular operations going while you the mega order is being completed.

Mega orders can help your profits swell if you’ve priced your designs correctly and have everything in place as outlined above. But if you have undercut your competition to get the order or not planned ahead for the reality of completing the order, your hard-won order can become a non-profitable crazy-maker.

Learn about a mega order I turned down when it didn’t promise to make profits for me.