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Thank you for changing the body of the Invite message. It is SO much better. I used to have to write a couple of paragraphs of introduction because the old message sounded like a "come ye all" sales pitch instead of truly touting how wonderful Biznik is and communicating some of the great benefits. IMHO you hit a home run with your current content. Thank you again for this change and for all the great work you do.
First, I came across this new post in the Evergreen Alumni group on Facebook. I thought I’d pass it on to Biznik Greeners:
Any alumni business owners out there? There is a new student group on campus called The Center for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and we would like you to come to our regular meeting to talk about the ins and outs of owning your own business. Please email cse@evergreen.edu for more info.
Second, wonder how many Biznikkers are Evergreen Grads? I graduated in 1978. (Hey, the gray hair has been earned!) How about the rest of you? It would be nice to have an Alumni Group on Biznik once they launch Biznik 3.0. (Coming to computer screens in front of you soon!) It has a groups feature.
On another list I inhabit a post just came across that could be a good opportunity for one or more of the event managers on the list. But I could not figure out where something like that should be posted. Am I missing something? It does not seem to fit in any of the sections. Do we have some kind of exchange section on the forum where members could pass on leads? Or do we need to add one?
This is not the first time this has happened for me. This time the post was about a contract position for an event manager but other times it has been for videographers, bookkeepers, virtual assistants, etc.
These are not full time job offers. They are 1099 contract positions which many of us indies are looking for. I guess they would be considered luke-warm leads since in my case, I am usually just the pass-through messenger and have no first hand knowledge about the position or the company.
Ideas?
Here is the post so you can see what I am talking about (and if you are an event manager, you can see if you want to respond).
Local marketing firm is seeking an experienced Event/Trade Show Manager who can work on an "as needed" basis, remotely or at a specific client location.
This is a contract/1099 position. We need a technology savvy individual who can work independently, make good professional judgments, pay close attention to details and work well with a range of people. High level of comfort with MS Office is required.
Responsibilities include:
Manage other promotional items and submit information as needed
If interested, please send a resume or a brief summary of your experience to: mrktjobs@gmail.com
Barbara Winter teaches an awesome class on how to become known as an expert in your business industry. I have taken this class and found it to be extremely good and useful. I wanted to let you all know that she will be doing her "A Dozen Ways to Build Your Expert Status" class as a teleseminar on August 13th (see below for details). Here are the descriptions of all of the teleseminars. This is from her most recent newsletter. (I have nothing to do with her seminars other than being a raving fan!)
COOL OFF ON A HOT AUGUST NIGHT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The month of August has a well-deserved reputation for being hot and steamy, but it's also the time of year when kids get ready to go back to school. Even though our schooldays may be far behind us, August continues to feel like a prelude to the new year. It seemed like a perfect time to invite you to spend an evening (or two or four) with me exploring some of my favorite teleclass subjects. We'll kick off this teleclass series with the ever popular How To Support Your Wanderlust. If you'd like travel to be more than an occasional vacation, join me to explore all sorts of options for creating a portable business that allows you to travel and make money (and create a tax deduction) at the same time. Nope, I'm not talking about working for the airlines or a cruise line. Those options are too obvious. Join me for this teleclass and you'll leave with imaginative and workable ideas gleaned from creative entrepreneurial gypsies who are seeing the world and building a business at the same time. .August 5, 8:30-10:00 PM EDT, 5:30 Pacific
It's so much easier to move ahead when you know the techniques of Outsmarting Resistance. All of us have it, we can never eliminate it, but we can learn to recognize it and counteract this power that keeps us stuck. August 7, 8:30-10:00 PM EDT, 5:30 Pacific
We may be moving out of the Information Age and into the Idea Age, but one thing will remain constant: learning. If you've got ideas and information that you'd like to share via seminars, A Beginner's Guide to the Seminar Business is for you. After exploring the three stages for building a successful seminar business, we'll discuss the wide range of venues and vehicles for conducting seminars. August 11, 8:30-10:00 PM EDT 5:30 Pacific
Finally, we'll close out this series with A Dozen Ways to Build Your Expert Status. This teleclass covers the most useful and practical things that every expert knows--and every successful expert uses to build their market and visibility. August 13, 8:30-10:00 PM EDT, 5:30 Pacific
Lots of great ideas and information was shared at Bizjam. Let's continue the conversation. Please post any follow-up thoughts, further information, etc.
Also when someone posts their newest idea on Ideablob let us know. This thread would be a great place to announce it!
Hey Biznikkers,
I need your help finding words that would work for a touchy subject for us independent and small business owners. I want to write more about "how to keep yourself and your small business afloat through any rough sailing" but all the words associated with that sort of concept have subconscious negative associations. The result is that we just "don't want to think about those sort of things" and we don't!!
Please help me find some catchy phrase (short) or concept that I could use!! I need it for my new business and possibly for a book title. I have thought of using the word Ark somewhere in the name. Maybe LifeRaft but even there it sort of has negative connotations. (Plus there is a series of seminars for actors called LifeRaft.)
The sort of words used in the corporate world are things like Disaster Planning or Business Continuity. But don't those words just bring up a "Yuck" response in you? They do in me and I am a trained specialist in the field!!
I need to find words that will draw in Biznik members and other small business owners to think about and prepare for worst case scenarios. Our needs are very different from big business.
On a personal note I will add that I got caught unprepared to have my income stop due to a bad accident. All my training in business continuity had not prepared me for the additional risks we have as independent contractors and owners.
Please brainstorm away! I look forward to your input. Thanks.
Viv Ilo
I just checked the Needs tab on the membership page and was sad to see that it has really become just a place for people to advertise what they are selling - not what their needs truly are. It looks like a mini profile section. That leaves us with no real place to state needs and be able to truly collaborate and help each other. Yes! We all would like to get clients! But the needs section does not seem the right place to post that.
What are people's thoughts on this? Am I a loan wolf?
Hi Everyone,
I just found a neat blog post that has all sorts of Blog related links for those of us overwhelmed and confused. The author, Adnan, does a nice job grouping the links into topics and putting a short explanation of the company and the service they provide to bloggers. 101 Essential Blogging Resources
Adnan says about his list: "With the amount of tools and programs cropping up all over the web for every type of person imaginable, its about time that someone wrote a massive list of resources for bloggers. Fortunately, I’ve taken up that responsibility to share with you some of the tools I use in my daily blogging life. Please note that by no means is this a definitive list, so please let me know if you think I’ve missed any out!" He has updated it repeatedly and it has already been translated into a couple of languages. He has other interesting and helpful posts on his blog too.
Please use this Topic to post other links and places that you have found greatly helpful.
Cheers! Viv Ilo
On the "How Fabulous" chain of posts Dan McComb filled us in on a new idea regarding Articles. It is probably a good idea to air some Wows, Wonders, and Worries here before Dan, Lara, and John do all the work on it. What are your thoughts about it?
Here is Dan's description:
"All right, on to developing the next feature! Which I want to tell you a bit about, because when deployed, it will help address the question that several of you had about providing information that is relevant to potential clients.
Next up on our development roadmap is an article publishing tool. This will allow you to write articles about subjects you are knowledgeable about which are relevant to this community of independent business people, and publish them on Biznik, where they will appear in a new Articles tab, as well as prominently on your profile.
The entire Biznik community will be able to rate your article on a sliding scale based on its helpfulness. Top-ranked articles will be much more visible throughout the site, and when you have published enough articles that receive high enough ratings, you will earn an "expert" badge that will display on your profile. Having "expert" status on Biznik will likely help you attract members to any event that you host, and, most importantly for this discussion, will also help you attract new clients! "
I have a client with an ecommerce business of about 1850 products. She has a Yahoo Store site so we contracted with Solid Cactus to design and build a new site. They had promised to get it up by the first week in November and now are not coming through. (I would not recommend Solid Cactus by the way. Great sales hype but then poor communication and overworked employees after you get past the jovial high promising sales staff!!)
We are trying to decide if it is in our best interest to pound on the table and hold them to their promises or if we should just wait until after the holidays to launch the new site. Our concern is how long it will take for webcrawlers to find and index the new site.
The new site is much easier to navigate and has lots of nice new features. In many ways we would like to have the new site up as soon as possible but not if it is going to make it harder for people to find us when they Google or search for a product. We want to be on the first page, in the first few listings; not page 10!! The current site is quite old and lousy for SEO; really lousy. But that might be better than having a new site come online so close to the holidays. Holiday sales are very important to the company. Thoughts?
The company is DreamSoftBedware.com and sells sheets, blankets, yoga clothing, fleece, and organic cotton and bamboo products to name a few.
The wishlist part is: When giving someone a referral it would be great to have an option similar to "Introduce to a Friend" where there was a drop down list to connect two Biznik members. Often I am giving one Biznik member a referral to another Biznik member and it is clunky to do so the way it is currently set up.
But I also have some other concerns and questions about the way the referrals are set up on Biznik. Are Introducing, sending Compliments, and giving Referrals all rated equal in the algorithm? The referrals (either direction) show up on our network, but not the connections.
I tend to feel far more comfortable connecting two people than doing a referral to a person I have not yet used myself. I got stung early on referring business to someone I wish I hadn't. I have used the "Introduce to a Friend" function many times which has resulted in a business transaction being made. However there is no way for the person to whom I actually referred the business to credit me for that.
Similarly, I will be reading someone’s profile and see what is listed in the Need section and think “Oh, they should contact X” but there is no way from their profile to refer them to the person using the referral option. So again, I use the “Introduce to” link.
Additionally, the current referrals arrangement seems to allow for easy “gaming of the system”. One Biznik member told me that 14 of the referrals given TO her came from one person who was trying to “get their numbers up". Only a couple of the referrals had even been real possibilities and I am not sure that any of them turned into clients.
Another referral type of thing that is not calculated into this is the work relationships we develop amongst us. (One of the best things about Biznik!!) I know we can give each other compliments but it seems like it would also be a good thing to rank or track. Like look how many people are using Dominic or Karrie! If everyone had to write compliments to get counted it would get sort of old even though they are fantastic.
I know that you are planning to set it up so that we can delete people from the "You have referred business to" section but then how does that affect the rankings and also the numbers on the profile pages. For instance if the member mentioned above deleted the person who sent her all the bogus referrals would both members’ numbers go down? (Actually you have not said that we will be able to delete people on "You have received referrals from". Don't know if that is really needed.) But the question still stands how deletions will affect things.
To some extent this boils down to that very involved algorithm of ranking. If we are going to rank members then we need to do it on what is important and keeping the ranking clean. No complaint in this because I know that is exactly what you (Dan, Lara, John, et.al.) are trying to do. It just seems that the referral part is sort of cloudy at the moment.
Sorry that this rambles a bit but I have felt confused and uncomfortable with the referrals for a while.
So, what do the rest of you think?
Are you on LinkedIn? Or FaceBook? Or other similar sites? What do you think of them? What is your experience. There seem to be so many out there that it feels a little overwhelming.
Every time I am on the Events page I wonder which event the cool pictures are from. Unless it is one I attended I have no idea. Would there be a way to have a one line caption that identifies the Event Title and Date?
Like always, thanks for all you do! Viv Ilo
What events would people like to attend? What do you wish was being offered? What would you like to learn about?
How about if people start asking here and members reply if you would be willing to host it? Please put your general location down or be specific if you have a location in mind. That way we will know if it is a request for something in Tulsa or in Seattle!
I'll start! (In Greater Seattle area)
I have a blog on Typepad. It does not have to stay there but it might be easiest to keep it there. What I need is someone who can teach me how to set it up better. I would like to make it into my website with an entry page, about, contact, and sample pages as well as the blog. Every time I try to do it I just get overwhelmed by the options and confused about what to do. I am open to moving it to wordpress or someplace else if necessary.
Input is welcome!
Anyone want to go? I am looking for someone who would like to take my spot at the PowerPoint Live conference in New Orleans Oct. 27 - 31. I signed up early so only paid $795. PowerPoint Live is a GREAT conference with a limit of 250 attendees. You can check it out at: http://www.altman.com/conferences/powerpoint_live/faq.htm They are almost completely sold out. I cannot recommend this conference highly enough and wish that I could go, but I can't! The networking is great as well as the camaraderie!
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