Chicago Business Directory: February 2017

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

2017 KEY TO SMALL BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Here’s my 2017 New Year’s resolution to you: I want you to focus on your organic social media reach for the next year. As we wrap up 2016, I’ve been reviewing my core strategy for my personal brand and why it matters for all of my clients, small business friends, contemporaries, and others putting out branded content. Over the past year, I got really serious about putting out content on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and, most recently, Instagram as they introduced new platform features.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

5 Reasons Why You Should Build A Small Business — Not A Start-up

I know we all want to do important things. We all want to work on important products, start important companies and accomplish tasks that could change the world and have an enormous impact. I see this in entrepreneurs and the tech community more than anywhere else.

The question we ask, whenever we hear about a new business or idea, whether it’s renewable energy or a messaging app or a fucking hamster sled, is this:

Will it scale?

And then if we find out that whatever idea we’re looking at can’t instantly scale to a million users and isn't designed to be a billion dollar concern, we dismiss it. Sometimes, even laugh at it. When we do that, we’re being assholes. Huge assholes. Because starting a big, huge, fancy, sweating tech company isn't the be-all and end-all, and choosing not to do that doesn't make anyone stupid.
In fact, going in the opposite direction is likely to make you happier, healthier, wealthier and shit-tonne wiser. You can choose to found an on-line small business rather than a start-up unicorn. What’s the difference?

A start-up unicorn wants to grow fast and grow big, take on investment and gain dominance.
An on-line small business wants to to grow within clear limits, reach profitability and serve customers.

Business Trends in 2017

Elevated customer engagement - We have already seen a shift on how brands engage customers -- in person and digitally. Customer engagement will continue to dominate as merchants move to a more digital-based business model. Relationships matter, and we have forgotten that intimacy can exist in a digital environment through data, responses and personalization.
Customer data collection - How do you help people become more productive? Give them a higher level of service. To do that, study what customers consume and how they consume it, and use that information to give them what they want. Sounds simple enough, but not everyone has learned this lesson.
Automation - Growing up, I remember watching The Jetsons and wanting a robot like "Rosie" to perform my household chores. In business, chatbots perform a much more important role for companies like Microsoft and Bank of America.
Crowdfunding - Crowdfunding isn’t something people think of when talking business. Instead, they associate it with movies, artisan projects and other specialty industries. However, more businesses are using crowdfunding to validate their own products in the market.
Specialization - Gone are the days when companies would hire one person to perform numerous tasks. Nowadays, companies are hiring specialists who are assigned to perfect one skill, instead of trying to be proficient in ten. Think about it this way: When you go to the doctor, you want a specific diagnosis that applies solely to you, not one that’s general and ambiguous. It’s the same in business.