Reputation can make or break a business. And with the ever increasing popularity of social media applications like MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and so on, business and personal reputations are more public and publicized than ever.

Everyone, everywhere, has a reputation. Your friends and family may think of you as kind and thoughtful or harsh and self-centered. Online you may be perceived as professional and helpful or immature and uncaring. You may think your personal reputation doesn’t effect your business; that people shouldn’t mix personal and business. But people do. And your personal reputation definitely carries over into your business. (more…)

Kids-in-Biz.com is an excellent resource for entrepreneurial teenagers and for parents of entrepreneurial children. Editor Teresa Smolinski knows first hand how to start and run a successful family business. She and her two daughters have been selling a hot product in the kids’ sports market for several years.

I’m proud to have guest authored an article for Kid-in-Biz: Is a Direct Sales Party Plan Business a Good Choice for a Teen?. Other recent topics include how to sell crafts, helping small businesses with technology, and fundraising.

In addition to providing invaluable skill development, helping kids start a small business is a great way to stay connected.

Are your children interested in running their own business or have they started their own business? Are you a teen in business? Please leave a comment and share your story.

I just finished going through a stack of email notifications for my new Twitter followers and it prompted me to let followers know how I decide whether or not to follow in return.

Some Twitter users believe that etiquette dictates that one return the favor by following anyone who follows you. As much as I’d like to always return the favor of following, I just can’t. I can only read so many tweets so I just can’t follow everyone.

At least once a week I go through my Twitter notifications and look at the profiles of everyone who is following me. Here’s how I decide whether or not to follow you:

• If I know you personally or have developed an online relationship with you through some other online venue, I’ll follow you.
• If I don’t know you, but your profile and tweets reveal who you are, and you are someone I think I can relate to either personally or professionally, I’ll follow you.
• If you interact regularly with someone I already follow, I’ll probably follow you.

If I don’t follow you, please don’t hesitate to ask me to reconsider after you update your profile or when you start tweeting more. Or if you think I overlooked the notification or made a mistake because you meet one of my decision criteria above drop me a line. I can be persuaded to change my mind.

If you are following me, thank you. I appreciate it.

If you aren’t following me and you’d like to see what I tweet about, you can find and follow me here. If I don’t meet your expectations, you can always stop following me. (Don’t worry, I won’t feel bad about it.)

How do you decide who to follow on Twitter?

Yesterday my friend Roy Montero, The SEO & Twitter Guy, asked me why I was limiting myself. In response to something he said, I had replied that I don’t want 100,000 people following me. He seemed surprised to hear it.

Of course I have goals and I would like to expand my business, but I just don’t see myself providing services to that many people. It’s just not my style. I understand the theory of “thinking big” and setting lofty goals, but I’m in the process of restructuring my businesses to offer more personal, more one-to-one direction. I can’t provide that to 100,000 people.

I guess I’d rather be the “little shop on the corner” where customers come to chat and exchange information over a cup of coffee. I don’t want to be the big chain that serves countless customers that I never get to know.

Maybe Roy and I are really more on the same wavelength than we thought we were. I wouldn’t mind influencing 100,000 people. I’d just rather do it by teaching a few thousand who then go out and share that information with the rest of the crowd.

What about you? Do you think big enough? Or are you limiting yourself by setting your sights too low?

Image courtesy of rpongsaj.

The other day I came across a free ebook of interest and when I went to download it I was asked for my email address. It’s not an unusual request, in fact, I expected it. But I decided not to provide my email address and I didn’t get the ebook. Why?

Because I couldn’t find the company’s privacy policy.

In many cases, all it takes for me to be willing to supply my email address is a simple statement to the effect that provided email addresses are not shared with anyone else. Other times, I look for longer policies to find out how my email will be handled and protected.

But if a company isn’t willing to tell me what they plan on doing with my email address, I won’t give it to them.

How important are privacy policies to you? Do you have a one readily available on your site and opt-in forms? Do you look for a privacy policy when you sign up on other sites?

Use AutoWebLaw Pro for personalized privacy policies, website terms of use, and other legal forms.

Tara Burner recently wrote about the definition of an independent consultant in an article containing some excellent tips about what it takes to be successful as an direct sales party plan consultant. But there are a couple of points that seem to lean towards the opinion that consultants “work for” the company. I think it’s a mistake to think of the relationship between a direct sales company and its consultants with an employer/employee mindset.

The article proposes a definition of an independent consultant that includes the phrase, “……separate from main company, yet still under the authority of main company…” In my opinion, the company and consultant should think of themselves more as partners than as employer/employee with one having authority over the other. Each has something to offer the other, and thinking of it as a mutually beneficial relationship will help both succeed. Consultants are a huge asset to the company (they are the sales team) and companies offer expertise in the product and sales methods, and in most cases manage inventory and delivery. Both parties should take advantage of, and respect the other’s expertise, and work in a professional manner to fulfill their obligations to each other.

Later, the article mentions a consultant being surprised “when they’re let go from company.” Being “let go” is a term that I think is most associated with employers firing employees. Most companies have a consultant agreement that spells out how and when the company or the consultant can terminate the relationship, and there are times when it’s best to part ways. But I think it’s more in keeping with the spirit of the independent consultant relationship to think of it as terminating a contract rather than someone being fired.

And finally there’s a section that reads, “If you really want to make it with whatever company you work for, present yourself professionally and be active.” I completely agree that to be a success in direct sales a consultant needs to be professional and active. But consultants don’t work for the company; consultants and companies should work with each other.

Admittedly I singled out some specific terms in the article so I’d like to stress that I completely agree with the spirit and intention of the article. I think Tara’s point is that successful consultants are the ones who make the time and effort to participate in the company’s training, stay up-to-date on products, and take advantage of the company’s expertise and help. I’m sure she values her company’s consultants and wants them to succeed, and I think she’s more than willing to help consultants take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

For more information about Tara’s company, Affordable Mineral Makeup, please visit the company information page in our makeup directory or the company website.

If you struggle to come up with fresh content for your monthly newsletter, this may be the answer. With a Quick and Easy Newsletters membership you receive a fresh, pre-made newsletter each month. They are sent in three formats - HTML, Word, and text - and can be customized to include your specials and events.

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One of the most popular tools for keyword research is WordTracker. And now you can try the full version of WordTracker for free for seven days.

With WordTracker you can find out how many times a particular keyword is searched for and get a list of related keywords. But perhaps one of the most helpful features for small business is the ability to see how much competition there is for a particular keyword. Choosing the keywords with fewer competing pages will help your page rank higher in the search engines.

Claim your free WordTracker trial today.

If your direct marketing email or postal campaigns are falling short of expectations, here are ten tips for improving response rate.

1. Carefully target your audience.

Identify your most likely customers and if necessary, create different versions of your direct mail marketing materials for to each specifically targeted audience.

2. Solve your customer’s most irritating problems.

Most customers don’t buy products, but they do buy solutions to problems. If your product solves a critical problem, pull out all stops to let your customers know.

3. Help your customers achieve significant goals.

If you can clearly show that your product or service will make your customer’s lives easier or better, your sales volume should improve.
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Image courtesy of adiything.

I received this question from a subscriber to our Choose Your Opportunity mailing list.

“How do I begin a home-based scrapbook business (sell products online)? Where do I get products at wholesale so I can sell them at retail?”

The first step is to determine who you are going to sell to and what they want to buy. This recent post offers tips on defining your niche: Not Sure How to Find Your Niche Market? It’s not specific to scrapbooking, but will give you a good idea of how to narrow in on a market.

Sell a popular product to an underserved market or sell a unique product to a market that is spending money.

For information more specific to scrapbooking, check out How to Turn Your Love of Scrapbooking into a Profitable Business. Even though it’s a couple years old, the information is still current.

Wholesale is not my area of expertise so I can’t be any help there. Sorry. Perhaps becoming a direct sales consultant would suit you. Find information on various scrapbook direct sales companies at ScrapbookingBusinessOpportunity.com

If anyone can suggest a good wholesale resource, please post the information in a comment.