Despite the snake oil pedaled by social media evangelists, it is extremely difficult even in the best of times for small businesses to succeed in the long term. With that in mind, before launching a stellar enterprise, here are six points to consider before jumping into the fray of small-business independence:

1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. One small music shop in a relatively small town gets most of its income in lessons and lesson room rentals, an income base that is more stable than just retail sales. Diversify your income stream with more than one business, part-time work or even full-time work.
2. Focus on your relevant audiences diligently; pay less attention to ‘the general public.’
3. Think out of the box for promotions and beware the time drain of social media; while cheap monetarily, time is money and S.M. will suck the life out of you time-wise. Word-of-mouth is effective but achieving — and sustaining — good W.O.M. is another matter entirely.
4. Design your own identity and collateral at your own risk; just because you have M.S. Publisher, or Photoshop, doesn’t mean your ideas will translate effectively. I teach, work full time and consult on these topics for a living and I still hire out design work and strategically outsource many other services I could do myself.
5. Have a good CRM system in place. Most small businesses fail in doing this, if they even know what it is.
6. Set boundaries with customers; if you don’t, it will come back to haunt you and cost you money, time and perhaps worst of all, reputation.

Personally, in this economy, unless you have a solid business plan, tremendous market potential, little up-front investment, significant enough profit margins for your living standards, and solid contingency plans, I would proceed with caution.

Consider the time and money investment versus working an 8-5 job. Which, in your heart, feels most realistic and settling? THAT one is your answer to whether you should start a small business.

Good luck.

I had the bright idea this week to create a second Twitter account for myself, one to separate my ‘personal’ account from one that represents my ‘professional’ persona (don’t laugh please … it’s a work in progress). Dovetailing on this thought was another idea to see if and how I could measure follower trends — and perhaps more importantly, the relative meaning of having Twitter followers in the first place.

For @nvbob, my personal account, I’ve wielded a mighty ban stick recently, whereby I have closed the account to the public stream, I’ve limited my followers and reduced the numbers of those who I follow. With @bobconrad, which I set up on Sunday, I followed hundreds of people right out of the gate.

The results: Within days I had more than 30 auto-replies in my @bobconrad Direct Message inbox and more than 250 followers, which is far more than I ever had under my @nvbob account. Altogether, the aggressive trend to follow others had the effect bringing on 265 new followers, despite having, as of this writing, only posting a mere 21 updates.

Based on this trend, I decided to create a very simple research project. I posted a link to this article about social media run amok: http://www.searchandsocial.com/seo-blog/stop-high-level-social-media-speak/. I posted it from both my @nvbob and @bobconrad accounts at the same time but with different short links that linked to the article.

What I wanted to know was if my new followers, despite the dozens of friendly — and frankly, very annoying — replies welcoming me to the Twitter fray, would yield more, the same or less clicks through to the article.

The text on both tweets was the same: “Excellent article on social media gone awry: (link).”

I then waited overnight to review the results. Using Tr.im to create the short links, I was able to measure the clicks from the same tweet from two different Tr.im accounts. The ratio of clicks versus followers is:

@bobconrad (the new account)
256 followers 
9 clicks to the article 
28.44 to 1 ratio 

@nvbob (my old account)
83 followers
10 clicks to the article 
8.30 to 1 ratio 

As you can see, the volume of followers is negligible when you have spent time weeding out your less-important contacts versus playing the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” game. Cautiously, I think these results demonstrate the idea of appropriate targeting rather than jumping onto the social media bandwagon with guns blazing.

With that in mind, here are 10 tips on how deal with the bombardment of frivolity social media brings forth, as well as general recommendations on how to best manage the onslaught of what is becoming mind-numbing banter and information overload.

1. Stop responding to email. Pick up the phone and call back instead.
2. If you really want to have a discussion, invite the person out for lunch – better yet, beers after work.
3. Consume passively. Read sites, view images, watch videos and so on – but don’t respond to what you are reading or viewing.
4. Again, don’t respond. Responding to others encourages dialogue. The Internet, using social media, is often the wrong place for that as the discussions are increasingly vitriolic and/or shallow.
5. Follow people on Twitter using their RSS feeds rather than through Twitter’s follow feature. Doing so will allow you to read their updates on your time and through your own system versus Twitter’s never-ending stream of digital diarrhea.
6. Setup different email accounts (using Gmail) for different purposes. Filter email that you know for sure will be sent to you, such as newsletters, Google Alerts and so on. For example, I set up a work Gmail account so that all Google Alerts, Help A Reporter Out emails and other emails are auto-filtered there to be consumed at my convenience. Also, those emails filtered to never show up in my Gmail inbox.
7. Consume as much as you can — news, blog posts, etc. — through RSS feeds. I use Google Reader. Click the “Mark as Read” button often and liberally.
8. Delegate your information consumption to someone else who can filter it for you.
9. Put your information dissemination and consumption tools in one place. I use iGoogle for managing input (RSS, Twitter, Gmail, etc.) and I have a Ping.fm account to transmit output to the various other sites where I have accounts. More than 90% of what I need can be managed within two clicks.
10. Finally, measure your efforts. Online media offers the benefit of seeing instantaneous results, as the above example using Tr.im shows. Is your output maximized to increase the ratio of success? If not, consider changes to your system(s) until your output is achieving a better return on your investment.

It was hyped to death. “It’s going to be the iPhone killer,” the tech-pundits claimed. Verizon ran ads showing – allegedly after doling out cash – on-the-spot, man-on-the-street praise for the phone.

And when it hit the streets, the hype turned into a vengeance, somewhat deservedly. The demand, predictably, was far greater than the supply. Units ordered on the day of the Blackberry Storm’s release were suddenly backordered by up to three weeks.

(I pre-ordered one from Best Buy and when I went to pick it up, I was told they couldn’t honor a contract extension because Best Buy’s Verizon outlet was in fact a Verizon contractor; in other words, my pre-order was now going to cost my $600 instead of the originally promoted $200 after a mail-in rebate. I walked away.)

Then there was the question of which version was actually being shipped. Some claimed Verizon released the Storm after realizing an upgrade operating system was so full of flaws that the units had to be re-flashed with older versions.

Verizon, however, said the mix-up was really a mistake in package labeling, in which the Storms were mislabeled with a newer operating system typo on the original label which was later covered up with a new label indicating the correct version being shipped.

Then there were the reviews. Most were harsh and many claimed the phone to be a joke. The actual users, on the other hand, were more forgiving perhaps because of confirmation bias or perhaps because of genuine fondness for the phone and its real-life usability.

With all of this in mind – in particular, my less than stellar experience with Best Buy, which I now dub the “Home Depot of electronics” for its continually lousy customer experiences – I ended up receiving a Blackberry Storm direct from Verizon. It was later than originally promised, but to its credit, Verizon was apologetic for its miscommunications and had one sent overnight when it was available. The wait was less than a week, far shorter than many had to endure.

After more than a month of putting the phone through its paces, it was finally time to settle my thoughts about its performance. I originally was going to return it primarily because of its sluggish performance. But an eventual software update, with promises for more to come, helped the problem. It’s still far from perfect.

Here’s a list of pluses and minuses for the BlackBerry Storm.

• HIT: That built-in features are ones that I want and use — Facebook, Flickr, the ability tether the phone to a laptop for use as a modem, etc.
• MISS: There are limited apps for now but BlackBerry is intending to create a user-developed apps store in the near future.
• HIT: The camera.
• MISS: The slow camera. It’s hard to tell when it’s actually going to take a photo.
• HIT: The camera is 3.2 megapixels.
• HIT AND MISS: The photo quality. Outdoor daylight pics appear to be the best use of the camera. Indoor and low-light scenes produce something questionable and blurry.
• HIT: Uploading to Flickr, Facebook and MySpace is very easy to do and you can email photos directly from the camera app.
• HIT: It does everything I want in one place (Rhapsody, GPS, etc.).
• MISS: The phone lags and is sometimes unresponsive.
• HIT: A new software update improves responsiveness.
• MISS: It’s an extra $15/month to use the phone as a modem tethered to a laptop.
• HIT: It’s easy to set up e-mail.
• MINUS: Web surfing can be a chore. If you zoom in on a page, you have to re-zoom in if you navigate to another page.
• HIT: Web surfing in the “single column” view makes it easy to read pages, but you have to select the “single column” button on each page you navigate to unless you set the “single column” view as the default page view under the browser’s options.
• DOUBLE MISS: You actually have to have your skin touching the screen to activate the touchscreen. With gloves on, the screen won’t activate. That can be annoying at this time of the year.
• MISS: You have to physically be holding the phone to navigate the screen accurately. Its response is dodgy when I have the Storm mounted on my window mount in my car using the GPS navigator or when it’s just on a table in a stationary position.
• MISS: The screen view often flips at the wrong time. The phone’s sense of when it needs to be vertical or horizontal demonstrates little rhyme or reason far too often. It sometimes takes an excruciating amount of time to correct itself.
• HIT: The “suretype” feature, which assumes what you are typing and pops up a list of possible words to select to complete your typing for you. It’s surprisingly accurate, and despite having to get used to the touchscreen keyboard, I can type almost as well as with my previous BlackBerry, which had real keys. Again, you really have to be holding it with both hands to type accurately.

I do like the phone. With the software update, it’s not nearly as bad as most of the negative reviews made it out to be. At the end of the day, you get the good with the bad.

The Big Questions

1. Should I get a Blackberry Storm? If you are on Verizon and don’t intend on leaving and want a more feature-rich phone, then I would say yes.
2. Should I get an iPhone? If you are an existing AT&T subscriber, stay with AT&T and get an iPhone. I would have gotten an iPhone long ago if I used AT&T. The one consideration here is that Verizon’s cell-phone coverage tends to be more reliable and widespread than AT&T’s is; however, AT&T claims to be faster. I think both are probably true and should weigh into the decision. (This video does a good job of outlining the differences in features and performance between the iPhone and the Storm.)
3. Should I get a BlackBerry Bold? The Bold by most accounts is a Storm but with a traditional keyboard that defined BlackBerries. If you prefer a real keyboard over an often sluggish screen-based keyboard, get a Bold. (It is not available for Verizon at this time.) The features will likely be the same as a Storm, but you have a smaller screen and a real keyboard to play with.
4. Will the Storm perform all of the functions to be an on-the-spot new media geek, and then some? Without a doubt. In fact, the Storm has more features built in than the iPhone – the ability to tether to a laptop, video and a higher-megapixel phone, as examples.
5. Will the experience be infuriating at times? Unequivocally, yes. Probably far more so than using the iPhone, which is more responsive and in many ways is infinitely cooler, particularly with the array of apps available for the iPhone.

If I wasn’t already a longtime Verizon subscriber, I would’ve purchased an iPhone. For now, on Verizon, the Storm is a good way to go. I hope the next model corrects all of the above problems. You can definitely work with the phone despite the setbacks and inconsistent.

A final thought: If you are considering buying a Blackberry Storm, proceed with caution. Try one out in person first. If you actually do purchase one, relish in your decision and enjoy the hell out of it. I do.

It’s 7 am. I’m on my first cup of coffee and I open the laptop.

The first email, from Help A Reporter Out (HARO) , pops up on my screen. The last inquiry, number 20, is perfect for me. It directly relates to my public information duties at my day job. The inquiry is from a freelance writer requesting information on state parks with low overnight camping fees. The story is about low-budget travel ideas for the summer of 2009.

I do some background research and craft a pitch for Nevada’s parks. The pitch is out at exactly 7:22 a.m., with the potential to reach some 200,000 direct email subscribers should the freelancer pick up on the information.

I check my phone messages. A reporter from eastern Nevada has called for the second time this week. He’s seeking clarification on a scientifically and legally complex water rights ruling affecting his area. Since I’m also the PIO for Nevada’s State Engineer, I help where I can and show him how to find the needed information.

By 9 a.m. I have gone through my work and personal email, cleaned out both inboxes and my day is just starting.

It’s also my day off.

I’m technically scheduled to work four 10-hour days an hour’s drive from my home, which was negotiated as part of my job acceptance.

The work week never works out that way. The nature of my position is that I’m nearly always on call and I frequently update Web sites, respond to emails and send ‘heads-up’ messages to those who need them as news arises, whether at 7 a.m. or at 9:30 p.m.

Likewise, reporters on deadline don’t care if I’m on vacation, like when I was on the beaches of Oregon for the second time this summer working by phone and laptop – while taking annual leave from work.

I don’t take comp time and I don’t ignore work when I’m not “working.” The point is that I am fairly productive. In addition to my day job, here is some of what I do:

1. Play drums in one band plus two others as schedules allow
2. Play on an amateur league paintball team (I played one out-of-state tournament in ’08)
3. Write two separate blogs (one – this one – regularly, the other sporadically)
4. Run a public relations firm part time, managing a virtual team consisting of two designers, a coder, one content manager, one writer/editor, one public relations specialist and a virtual assistant
5. Attend school full time, scheduled to attain my doctorate in 2010 (two chapters of my dissertation have been drafted)

As I write this over the weekend, I’m also preparing for my last final for the semester. I’m not stressed. Admittedly, I received an extension from my instructor to turn in overdue homework late, but I will have it done and will finish the semester on Wednesday. Yes, some things take a backseat when others have priority. Some clients wait longer than they might with other firms (and are forewarned of this before I accept work from them), I skipped out on countless paintball practices this year and one band has floundered as we near year’s end (no fault of my own).

Still, I think I do more than the average person and I still have time for family, friends and fun. I like the amount of what I do, especially the diversity of it, and it is because of this diversity that I can get so much accomplished usually with tangible results.

I’m curious to hear what others think, as well as other suggestions you may have for being productive especially in an age when work can be done remotely, often with better results than sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. Comments are welcome below, and here are some of my tips for getting things done for today’s PR professional:

1. Be available to reporters, even after hours and on weekends
2. Ensure online site content can be updated remotely and at any time
3. Process urgent emails and phone calls immediately
4. Batch process non-urgent emails and phone messages once a day
5. Don’t force creativity or productivity – take breaks and/or surf the Internet for ideas
6. Seize creative opportunities regardless of the time of day or where you are (I have mapped out research ideas and PR plans on scrap paper in all sorts of sundry places)
7. Manage your regularly visited news sites and blogs with an online bookmarking site (delicious or Diigo)
8. Mange your other regularly visited sites with an RSS feed (I use Google Reader and view it through iGoogle)

It’s a trap that is easy to fall into. You can get pulled into time-consuming newsletter editing, being the go-to person for news release distribution (for the most frivolous of “news”) and so on. Here are tips to avoid these traps–and to save precious time throughout the day.

1. Present no more than three options. Usually two will do, but three choices provide both options and limit discussions. Be prepared for tangential discussion and revise suggestions on the fly. And at the end of the day, know where your bread is buttered. At the same time, keep in mind that being known for being a pushover earns less respect than being slightly less friendly but quick and effective.
2. Train the delegators and delegate in return. Administrative assistants deserve our love and respect. They often present the voice of the CEO and other leaders, so they must also be adequately trained. When receiving direction, ensure the task is in fact best handled by you–if not, find the most appropriate person and delegate. Assistants and clerical staff should be your best allies.
3. Act first, beg for forgiveness later. This may sound trite and cliche, but strategy-by-committee sessions effectively kill innovative ideas and waste time. It’s better to complete a task with minor imperfections than to suck the life out of a task or project. Most often, the target audience will never notice the minor imperfections that tend to devour group discussions.
4. Be genuine. Nothing is more annoying than the two kinds of public relations personalities often encountered: the stuck-up know-it-all and the shallow kiss ass. It’s better to be an honest straight-shooter than the person who avoids saying anything unkind in fear of appearing “un-PR-like.” Public relations is about relating and often isn’t nice. Reporters are not nice. Clients are not nice. The public certainly isn’t nice. So why do PR people kiss so much ass? PR people should be advocates for being genuine, however. Genuineness emboldens credibility. Those who come off as credible are more effective and waste less time playing in the realm of damage control and wishy-washy behavior.
5. Self-reflect. At the end of the day metacognition is a healthy practice. Thinking about how you think as well as knowing how your behavior affects others will put you ahead of your colleagues and endear more loyalty than those who never realize their own arrogance. Ask your coworkers: “How could I have handled this better?”

A while back I touted the virtues of Gmail

Google offers far more than just Gmail. There are four other important features Google offers that give us increased potential to enhance our effectiveness for public relations.

1. Google News Alerts are a critical tool for every PR person who monitors news coverage. News Alerts have basic, important features, and you can easily get into your inbox real-time, daily or weekly links to news related to search terms of your choice. The drawback is of course that Google News Alerts will only send you news that appears in Google News. This is a mixed blessing. By searching for specific terms, words or phrases, you can apply a news alert to be sent to your email, but if specific news outlets are not submitting to Google News, you may miss some critical coverage; for example, niche and specialty publications (or in my case, rural Nevada newspapers). It’s best to also continue monitoring news by specific media outlets in addition to adding regular news alerts to your media monitoring. Google News also allows for Blog Alerts, which function in the exact same way as news. A caveat: choosing search terms may take some practice. You will notice which terms work and which do not. Experiment.
2. Google Docs & Spreadsheets allow for easy sharing of documents (e.g., press release drafts) online. You can set up permissions for specific people to view/edit your documents. The benefit of this is self explanatory. One drawback is saving Google Docs as Word documents, wherein the formatting gets funky in the translation. The Google Docs & Spreadsheets interface also takes some getting used to and pales in comparison to the feature-rich Microsoft Word. But for developing online access to share with clients and so on, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is an easy and inexpensive way to go. Simply, it allows for remote access to files. (The draft of this post was saved as a Google document to be edited later on my laptop.)
3. Google Reader is about as important as Google News Alerts, and it allows the monitoring of Web content in real time in a central location—your Google Reader interface, or on your iGoogle page as explained below. The Reader lets you to create a personalized list of RSS feeds. I primarily track other blogs of interest, as well as niche media outlets. Using Reader is invaluable and much of my blog content, or ideas for content, comes from items that show up in my Reader.
4. Google’s new iGoogle allows you to customize your Web interface, essentially putting all of the above in one place. I use iGoogle as my default homepage on my Internet browsers at work, home and on my laptop (iGoogle also works on my Motorola Q). iGoogle allows you to customize your screen ‘gadgets,’ or mini windows within your larger screen window, for easy retrieval. (Click the thumbnail image above for a full-size view of the iGoogle page). Tabs also allow you to create multiple screen interfaces to quickly gain access to needed information. For example, my default homepage has five tabs: Home, Local News, National News, Design and Science News. Clicking on each give me my customized gadgets under each category. Clicking on Science News, I get my latest Science Friday links, with this as the top one—yesterday’s Science Friday podcast on NPR: NASA Troubles – SciFri Podcast – 2007072711. Play with iGoogle, and you will see what I mean as far as customizability. It’s suitable for multiple interests: personal, work related and so on. My “Home” gadgets include this blog’s posts, driving directions, a dictionary/thesaurus, the free CallWave Text Messaging gadget, local weather and my Google Reader gadget. From just my default homepage, I can get access to 90 percent of what I need on a regular basis.

[Disclaimer: this post is intended to provide advice on using Google for public relations productivity, not expert user advice, which others are far better suited to provide. Also, though I use Google ads on this blog, my recommendations for using Google come from personal experience. I am not getting paid to recommend Google's services. I welcome feedback on other online tools for public relations use and will readily recommend those found useful, especially if those services are free.]

Tips

1. Allow time to get used to the difference. Gmail, at first, is clumsy and intimidating mainly because it’s so different. I’m also used to working within Microsoft Outlook—the standard at work—and find it suitable for most purposes. Outlook’s interface is mostly user-friendly. Gmail, however, views email as something else entirely: conversations.  
2. Conversations appear like multiple emails all in one email. Office, on the other hand, keeps adding new incoming emails forcing you to track a history of emails, assuming you did not permanently delete them. Gmail, when you receive a reply to an email, adds it onto the previous email, to present a conversation, not exactly new emails.
3. Gmail’s accessibility is quick for mobile users. Microsoft Outlook’s online interface is slow and dreadful. I often do media relations on the road and at weird hours, either on my Moto Q or laptop. To surf on a three-inch screen means that Outlook shows up in a split screen, so my screen real estate is cut in half, and I have to make adjustments accordingly. Lame. Gmail, on the other hand, resides online so the mobile phone version is easier to navigate and appears primarily text-based. If in cell range, Gmail is easier and faster to navigate.
4. Think in terms of keywords, not folders. This is a primary benefit for public relations purposes. Office allows you to segregate emails into folders and archive as such. Gmail, though, let’s you add “labels,” which are keywords, or tags, to attribute to your emails effectively turning your email into a more powerful database. Say you have email related to a particular client but it comes from a non-client, like a reporter. Typically, you may file the email under in the client’s folder. With Gmail, you can tag your email with labels of your choosing, so an email could have a tag of “Client X” and “Media Outlet X.” You can archive the email with both labels and retrieve the email by clicking on either label. Simply click on the “Media Outlet X” label, or “Client X,” and the same email will appear, along with all of the emails tagged with those labels. Emails can be tagged with multiple labels and archived accordingly. 
5. Gmail contacts rock. I use Excel at work to manage my media contacts. It’s limited, especially for those of us who are not savvy Excel users, mainly because I have to list them under a certain category (e.g., rural Nevada, environmental reporters, etc.) and/or in multiple files. The problem: What if I want to send a news release to just reporters who write about environmental topics in
   Nevada? I have to search from memory in my geographically based list. EDIT (7/17/07): I decided Gmail’s Contacts were not up to my original assumptions. They are rather simplistic compared with Outlook’s. While it’s easy to import from other mail systems into Gmail (easier than Outlook in fact) I’m still not convinced using Gmail’s Contacts for your media contacts is the best approach. Please submit your thoughts.

Lastly, it’s easy to import other email accounts into Gmail and even mask that you’re using Gmail for your primary mail interface. Consolidating your other accounts toward Gmail puts you in one driver’s seat for multiple purposes: work, personal and so on.

These benefits are not necessarily the best for all applications, and it’s not to say that other software or online applications can’t do the same things. I’ve found that Gmail does a pretty good job for most PR purposes, above and beyond my Yahoo interface. For mobility, Gmail’s online interface far outweighs both Outlook’s and Yahoo’s.

Gmail’s advertising is annoying and it’s constant calls to refer contacts to Gmail are even more intrusive. Nevertheless, for managing contacts from remote areas, Gmail is at the top of my list.

Disclaimer: These are basic principles of Gmail geared toward public relations purposes, not expert user advice.