Posted on Jul 28, 2011
Finally! We are releasing the 3rd and final issue of our Business No-Brainers, submitted by over 20 different collaborators. This edition covers Technology No-Brainers that we hope many of you will consider implementing. I know we will! Please let us know your thoughts or simply reach out to our contributors!
For those of you who missed this, you can find Editions 1 and 2 here:
Business No-Brainers – Marketing Edition (Issue 1 of 3)
Business No-Brainers – Operations Edition (Issue 2 of 3)
Technology Business No-Brainers
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Taking An Old Platform and Making it Smart!
Jodi Sorensen lets us know how cool Smartsheet is when it comes to managing and handling team projects:
I’ve been in high tech marketing out here in Seattle for nearing 20 years. I’ve managed teams and marcom projects at start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike. A lot has changed in software over the years, but I – like many others I suspect – relied on Excel to track people, tasks, campaigns, events, PR/blog calendars, perf reviews, budgets, etc etc etc. It was ok, but not great. I often had multiple versions of my Excel files floating around the dept, all at various degrees of out-dated-ness, and never felt 100% confident of my projects’ status at any given moment. (esp when caught in the hallway by the VP of Sales).
I was leery of using ‘yet another software tool’ to keep me organized, b/c frankly, I’m in marketing and I don’t believe a lot of marketing copy that I read. (sad, I know) My aha moment came from using an online spreadsheet called Smartsheet that removes me from being the sole owner of the projects, responsible for monitoring and tracking status, updating the exec team on progress, etc. It was so easy to use b/c it looked like Excel but then goes farther — it enables my team to collaborate on the projects, share files and notes right in the sheets. No more “um – I’ll have to check on that for you” or digging thru emails for the last update. Marketing magic.
Plus, I don’t have to carry my laptop back and forth to the office because everything’s in the cloud. I get to my projects from my iPhone, my iPad, anywhere in between. Now I can’t imagine working without it. And best yet – I didn’t have to get IT’s blessing to use it since it’s a SaaS tool.
Jodi Sorensen; Director of Marketing; www.smartsheet.com
PA: Being a spreadsheet aficionado who recognizes their limitations, I’m ready to go check out Smartsheet on the next opportunity I have!
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When Art and Science Come Together
Walt Ribeiro is an artist who uses technology to source client choices to help lead his production selections:
I wish I had thought of the idea of putting up a poll and having my community vote on my arrangements earlier. I arrange pop songs for orchestra, and have arranged Lady Gaga, Madonna, Pearl Jam, and more at
http://fororchestra.com/music
Voting has grown my followers because it involves their input in my arrangements each week. I have them suggest songs for me, and also set up polls for them all to vote on which song to arrange.
This is great because for a song to be arranged by me, it has to win in the poll – and the only way to have a song win is to tell your friends to vote it to #1 on my website.
The sharing and “viral-ness” is fun and effective. In addition, people who invest in the process are much more likely to purchase the product when it’s finished – so my community has slowly grown to be a tight family.
Walt Ribeiro; Composer, Pop Songs Arranged For Orchestra; http://ForOrchestra.com
PA: Walt, it is awesome to see science and art come together to make beautiful music!
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A Kik-Start in Market Expansion
From a casual evening with friends, Raj Malik was able to hone in on a new market for his internet confidence-building badge:
I saw your below request to find entrepreneurs who have business no brainer ideas. I co-founded KikScore, a startup that enables online small businesses to quickly and easily demonstrate that they are trustworthy so they can close more leads from their website.
Our business no brainer is simple: IT IS OUR CONFIDENCE BUILDING BADGE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES CAN BE USED BY AN ENTIRE OTHER MARKET THAT WE DID NOT THINK ABOUT!
We have a product that started out being solely focused on small online stores that sell products online (ecommerce stores) and helping those stores show that they are trustworthy. We did not even think about other small businesses like plumbers, contractors, attorneys, bloggers and accountants that don’t sell online, but have marketing websites. Then we were out to drinks with an attorney friend of ours and he said you know what I could really use your confidence building badge too. Then it dawned on us that all small businesses need to show that they are trustworthy, not just stores that sell online. As a result, we launched our product so it could serve the rest of the small business market especially those businesses that do not sell online.
All from a night out and a few margaritas with a lawyer!
Raj Malik; KikScore; www.kikscore.com
PA: Raj, perhaps we at Performance Analysis need to look into KikScore to bring confidence and trust to our visitors. Nice to see how you have left your eyes open so that the most innocuous meeting was able to open up a new market for you.
Michael Issa taught us that small business collaboration can be done these days with the greatest of ease and little expense. What an advantage for those who go this route:
…thought you may be interested in Quipu Apps – it’s a no brainer that SMBs should be able to have a dashboard to monitor their business process from business plan to HR, to finances, to profits. Quipu Apps thought of it.
Quipu Applications, Inc., a Northern California-based start-up Cloud Computing company is revolutionizing the way entrepreneurs and VCs communicate and collaborate. The company launched incQubator(tm) solution at Interop 2011 providing branded BusinessModel(tm) communities – including Office of Technology Transfer, Economic Development Centers, incubators and VCs – with a cloud-based instrumentation and collaboration tool to monitor normalized prospect investment analysis and other key performance metrics in real-time.
The company’s cloud-based collaborative application – BusinessModel- allows entrepreneurs, SMBs and the investment professionals to create, share, manage and monitor their business plan and business operations. BusinessModel is essentially an ERP with intuitive business plan and analysis tools, research, blog capabilities, plan creation, forecasting, collaboration, expense report tracking (even via PDA), content manager, business plan software, collaboration tool and more all wrapped into a free SaaS tool. It even allows users to import documents and applications like QuickBooks or Google Apps, and collaborate and share as much as or as little with stakeholders — ideal for incubators, universities, etc….
Michael Issa; CEO of Quipu Applications; http://www.quipuapps.com
PA: We will be taking a look at this right away, as it could be a useful tool for our business.
Kevin Burns shares five great SEO tools for web developers to help push their sites up in the search ranks:
I have a list of 5 quick and easy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) steps that people can perform for their site. These will ensure they are up to date with all of the recent Google (panda) and Bing (Honey Badger) updates.
1. Submit your website to search engines ( GOOGLE:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl, YAHOO
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, BING
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx)
2. Generate a site map for your site with this tool:
http://www.web-site-map.com/
3. Research your competition’s links with
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
4. Set up social media accounts with Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon. Make sure each account has a link back to your site. Leave comments on people’s walls and submissions, be active on websites.
5. Make sure you have unique meta descriptions for each page on your website.
Kevin Burns; http://www.wpromote.com
PA: Thanks Kevin! These are all items we try to follow here at Performance Analysis as well!
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Linking Up Better with LinkedIn
David Drewelow points out a simple method of using LinkedIn as a more effective business tool:
I and my marketing person have been in LinkedIn for several years, but more in a passive role as a basic way to keep in touch with the business community.
A few months back I was in our Columbus, OH office meeting with Craig Hohnberger, our master licensee for that territory, and he told me how he was using LI not only to aggressively build his network, but to also go after people in a recruiting way, both for referral partners and potential franchisees.
For me, as a master licensee with ActionCOACH, I thought why didnt I think of that? I came home, upgraded my account and took a simple approach of asking people, based on a simple selection criteria, to meet for coffee to talk about how we could work together. Simple. Effective.
Today it is a key weekly strategy and serves us well to get connected with both potential referral partners and people who have interest in learning more about either hiring an ActionCOACH or becoming one. If you need more, let me know.
S. David Drewelow; Head Coach, USA Heartland Team ; www.daviddrewelow.actioncoach.com
PA: This sounds like a good plan. If I upgrade and then get in touch, can you send more details on the methodology? 
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Providing a Two-Way Professional Network
Katrina Priore, marketing manager for ProductionHub.com realized that, even though their site and services were intended for one client base, there was also another set of prospects who would need to make connections with them.
I am the Marketing/PR Manager for ProductionHUB.com, a B2B website that connects film, television, video, live event and digital media professionals with those seeking production equipment, services and people.
It’s free for users to sign up and create a profile to get found by those searching for their services; however, we do sell upgraded “featured profiles” in our directory so people are at the very top of their location or categories.
We typically get 250,000 users per month, many looking for work. Soon, like a camera coming into focus, we realized we needed to make sure we were marketing to not just those IN film, TV, video or digital media, but all the businesses owners, ad agencies and marketing professionals who would need to connect with (and hire) those on our site. This revaluation of our market was a no-brainer, and these companies interacting with the profiles only increased the value of our featured profiles.
RESULTS: We have seen a 50 percent increase in industry professionals and companies creating profiles on ProductionHUB. We receive a steady stream of testimonials from happy customers and continue to secure repeat business from both featured profiles and banner advertisers. Users are recognizing the true value of ProductionHUB and taking advantage of its power by using us an everyday B2B social network for their production needs.
Katrina Priore Diamond; Production Hub; www.productionhub.com
PA: Nice when you can multiply your client base just by thinking through the two-way street that is networking!
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