This week is National Small Business Week and to celebrate and show our support of small business owners everywhere, we are once again hosting a Small Business Super Hero contest. This contest encourages small business owners to cast off their civilian garb and show off their true super powers so that we can recognize them for the everyday heroes that they are.
You can submit your own story or nominate a business you admire. The entry form is brief and the prizes are many (including a build-your-own custom bike from Republic bike!) so go ahead! Share your story and you just might become a real live Small Business Super Hero.
Other prizes include:
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Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Contests, mailchimp, MOO cards, small business, small business super hero, small business week
Now that the weather’s finally getting nicer, more people heading outside to do their thing. A pleasant way to spend some time might be to grab your laptop and head outdoors, fire up the wi-fi and ice up a glass of coffeemilk to check out some recent BatchBlue press. Relaxing AND informative!
BatchBook & Google Apps Marketplace
Our big news of the month was that we were one of the 50 companies selected to launch in the new Google Apps Marketplace. As one of only two New England companies selected, we were excited to be a part of it and our local Providence Business News was there to cover our big moment.
Our friends at Small Business Trends also wrote a post on the Google Apps Marketplace launch, “Getting to Know the Google Apps Marketplace“, which gives a nice overview on how the services there can benefit SMB owners.
Small Business Web Directory
We launched the new version of the Small Business Web Directory at SXSW last month, which a quite a few folks wrote about. There was great write-up in Inc. magazine by Howard Greenstein, who was nice enough to attend our SXSBW party in spite of being sick.
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Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Customer Service, google, google apps, google apps marketplace, google marketplace, ReadWriteWeb, small business trends, small business web, WebWorkerDaily
This past week, I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. Since we launched BatchBlue Software just over three years ago, I’ve been to quite a few conferences. In tandem with the growth of our company has been the rise of social media, which has been great for us in many ways since our product, BatchBook, is an online contact organizer that grabs feeds from social media sites and lets you read them in one place.
But something seems to be changing in the conference world. In the past, they’ve been great places not only to learn from the leaders in your industry but to make connections, spark new friendships and form potential new partnerships. That sense of the hallway conversations being as important as the sessions themselves seems to be receding, largely because the conversations…aren’t really happening.
At Web 2.0, people were heads-down on their various electronic devices during breaks, not engaging with each other but seeking frenetically to connect with people not actually at the conference. I don’t mean to just specifically call out the Web 2.0 Expo because this is certainly happening in other places as well. And the conference panels were very good, in fact from a business-level some of the most useful that I’ve attended. But that’s another post.
Having recently attended the PopTech conference, which is a place where people connect instantly and constantly to share ideas, discuss sessions, start projects, I was particularly struck by the lack of attendee interaction. Even at the Web 2.0 “Power Up” station (Web 2.0′s version of the Blogger’s Lounge at another highly social conference, SXSW) it felt like we were in a cavernous office, with people quickly clicking and scrolling away in solitude rather than talking about the sessions that they had just attended.
Admittedly, people still have their daily work to do and as someone who liveblogs, I’m guilty of having my laptop up and running most of the time during sessions. But another thing that’s changing is what people are doing while they are online during the sessions. The Keynote speakers had an enormous screen behind them that was at first broadcasting their Twitterstream (hashtagged #w2e) behind the speakers. As an attendee, I found it enormously distracting. danah boyd from Microsoft Research New England, presenting on (ironically) “Streams of Content”, found it so unnerving that the audience was laughing at criticisms of her presentation that she later stated on her blog that she “closed down”.
I’m all for the back-channel and having a spirited conversation about a presentation, but I can tell you that as a presenter, to have it broadcasted while you are presenting sucks, especially once the spammers and the trolls join in. There’s even a term now, “harshtag”, which is when people start tagging their related tweets with something insulting in order to get it to trend.
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Tags: chris brogan, Social Media, twitter, web 2.0 expo
I thought I’d share some quicklights from yesterday’s sessions at Web 2.0 Expo. I started at Kristina Halvorson‘s “Content First: Why Content Strategy Will Save the Web” (view her presentation here), where she talked about how crucially important your content is and how often it’s the last thing companies plan for or think about especially when coming up with a “social media strategy”.
We’re guilty of this ourselves when we make site changes: often I’ll get a design to review that includes placeholder text “words go here” or “blah blah blah”, which as a writer I’ve always found kind of funny. But words matter and should absolutely be part of your planning and design process and even your usability testing.
Halvorson also talked about how things like Facebook and Twitter and blogs are only tools, that what’s important are the words you’re putting out there, reflecting your brand. If you put something up in a social media space, she notes, you become a publisher. Halvorson should a couple examples of old YouTube sites for forgotten corporate contests and mentioned how, if you don’t maintain your content in all the places you rush out to add it, it lives on out there without you, reflecting your brand.
A key takeaway from this session for me was the importance of creating a content inventory, which simply lists all the places where your content lives so none of it gets forgotten and languishes. She suggested looking on Google for guidance on getting a content inventory set up.
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Tags: chris brogan, kristina halvorson, tara hunt, web 2.o expo
Here’s a quick round-up of some posts from users and reviewers of BatchBook.
Adam & Cheap Trick: A match made in CS heaven
If you’ve ever spent any time in the BatchBlue Forums, you’ve probably experienced the magic that is Adam Darowski. Adam is our User Experience designer known for his passion for good design, our customers and music. So the fact that he crafted an email to someone who was considering BatchBook that included a link to a Cheap Trick song came as no surprise to any of us. But the (potential) customer was so impressed, he wrote up a blog post about it, which was tweeted all around the socialsphere. And the best thing is that we have a new customer who appreciates our sense of humor.
Bedazzled by BatchBook brilliance
Robert Mattar wrote up a nice piece over at Posterous about his experience searching for a CRM that would work well for small businesses. His conclusion? He calls BatchBook “one of the most versatile and affordable applications” out there and even calls us “brilliant” in the post’s title. Thanks, Robert, we’re so glad BatchBook is working out for you since we think small businesses are where it’s at!
We love lists
People love lists and so do we, especially when we are on them! So here goes:
- Our friend (and frequent @sbbuzz participant) Bradford Shimp posted this cool list of 9 Businesses to Follow and Get to Know on Twitter. He has fabulous things to say about BatchBlue, our @sbbuzz weekly chat session, and our own Queen Bee, Pamela!
- One of our favorite small business marketing gurus, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, mentioned us as a way to keep track of your customers’ social media activities.
- And last but never least, social media pirate Chris Brogan reveals what’s in his software booty chest (including BatchBook) in his recent post entitled A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like.
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Tags: @sbbuzz, batchbook, chris brogan, Customer Service, john janstch, small business, small business CRM, social crm
