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Yesterday’s startups starting on a shoestring might have considered subletting a small suite of offices, getting some second-hand furniture, hiring a part-time secretary and receptionist, and outfitting the office with a couple of computers, a network, a fax machine, a copier and a phone system.  Oh, and don’t forget making a trip to the office supply store to buy lots of stuff to write on or with.  And definitely don’t forget the coffee machine and other paraphernalia of an office.

But things have changed. 
Today’s startup is just as likely to be one person working out of a spare room at home.  He or she may well get by with using just 3 pieces of equipment:  a mobile phone, a laptop, and an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax.

This scanty hardware is augmented with plenty of online software services.    Need to keep your books?  Sign up to use your accounting software online.  Need a customer management solution?  Find a Web-based CRM package.

We even have an entirely new vocabulary, replete with liberal use of the word “virtual” to describe how we operate today.  In many businesses today,  we use virtual phone systems to take the place of expensive hardware-based systems of the past.

Instead of hiring an administrative assistant as an employee, we contract with the services of a virtual assistant who could be located across the country.    We even have virtual partners — people we’ve never met in person but with whom we start businesses together.  How crazy is that, huh?

But I’ve been thinking about what’s really required in the form of hardware to run a startup today?  Do you need a Blackberry or iPhone in order to be mobile outside the office?  Do you need a digital camera?  What about a Webcam for video conferencing and shooting videos?

Weigh in below with your list of essential hardware for a startup today.  Tell us what hardware you think a startup entrepreneur needs.

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Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

We all know the famous Google Policy, allowing all employees to use 20% of their time on a project of their choosing (they call it “innovation time off”). Publicly, Google claims that many of their breakthrough businesses come from this policy. However, a quick glance at their quarterly financial statements reveals that well over 95% of their revenues come from just a few of their businesses and really only one thing: ads. So, what are the real benefits from giving open space to your employees to pursue a project of their choosing?

Another thing we know about Google is their obsession with talent. The company’s competitive advantage is people. Their greatest assets walk out the door every night, and the company desperately hopes that they return the next morning. Yes, the main campus’ Segways, 17 cafeterias, and packed pantries help the cause. But with all the poachers of Google talent out there, appealing to someone’s sweet tooth or fascination with gadgetry is not enough. What if the best talent-retention strategy is to let employees spend time on their own projects, however unrelated they might be to the core business?

Perhaps all the talk of the business strategy behind this corporate policy is just a ruse? Nevertheless, it could be considered clever management. Maybe Google’s managers are as smart as their engineers after all? How do you hire and actually keep the most brilliant people in the world engaged? Let them spend a portion of their time doing exactly what they want. And if the time actually yields something relevant…all the better (but not necessary nor expected!).

The lesson for the rest of us is to understand our (and our team’s) human psychological need to have our minds engaged. Especially in our youthful and creative years, we all need to feel challenged. No ordinary job can fill the void of our imagination, not even a coveted job at Google. Deep down inside, the brightest and most creative minds want to go out and make their own ideas happen. The smartest thing any beyond-start-up company can do is to provide such an opportunity internally and write of the “costs” of such a policy as talent retention.And perhaps the “innovation time off “ will yield something of value to the business. But regardless, the business is better off with the right people in the right mindset.

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.

All information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

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Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

First it was blogs. In the world of small business, people started going nuts over blogs a couple of years ago.

Business owners and entrepreneurs and those who work in small businesses found the benefits of blogs enticing. Who could resist the allure? We entrepreneurs discovered that blogs gave us self-publishing that was almost as easy as creating a Word document; a do-it-yourself way to improve your search engine position; and a way to connect with customers and prospects more authentically in a marketing-saturated world.

And small businesses continue to discover the joys of blogging — and I don’t expect that to stop soon.

In fact, blogging has jumped past the early adopters, and now is mainstream. Heck, we no longer consider blogs remarkable the way we once did. For instance, we longer even bother to count blogs obsessively the way we used to, marveling at the market growth.

Why?

Blogs are now accepted.

But a funny thing happens as technology goes mainstream. The early adopters, bored and restless, move on to something else.

Last year I interviewed Sam Harrelson, a noted online marketer, who pointed out the trend toward microblogging. Speaking about what to expect in the future, he said: “Attention spans will get smaller in size. People will want smaller bits of information … in micro-chunks they can quickly consume.”

A telling sign was when the entrepreneur who helped bring blogs to the mainstream, Evan Williams, creator of Blogger.com, developed a new tool. The new tool is Twitter.com, which is one of the hottest new social media sites.

Twitter is an example of how shortening attention spans and our desire for small bits of information translate into an online community. In Twitter, you send messages of up to 140 characters over the Web or a mobile phone or mobile device. That’s about one long-ish sentence, or two shorter ones. Here’s an example of a Twitter message:

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In my last post, I promised to cover some simple ways to make your presence on the web more conversational. But before I do that, let’s talk about what I mean by “Conversational” in the context of the web (as opposed to say, a restaurant!).

I’m currently at work on a new book, provisionally titled “The Conversation Economy,” which argues that we are entering a new era of communications between business and customer. And the critical transit of that communication is the Internet – an ubiquitous medium that our customers love. (Hence my thesis, in my first post, that we’re all in the media business now, whether we like it or not).

At its core, the Web is a network of computers. As businesspeople, we’ve been in dialog with computers for some time now. But back in the 1960s and 1970s, computers were hulking machines meant for the back offices of Very Large Companies, not small businesses. These machines had a very particular interface – a command line into which you were required to type an arcane “computer language” to get anything done. The number of people who spoke this language were understandably low, and therefore, the number of people in the world who were having “conversations with machines” was also quite low.

In the 1980s, we all got “personal computers,” and thanks to the graphical user interface - “GUI” – millions of us starting talking with computers. But the conversation was hardly fluent. I call this the “hunt and poke” era of computing – we used a mouse to navigate a representational desktop; when we found something we wanted, we poked at it until it came alive for us. This gesticulative interface – not unlike what the wordless signals we employ while in a foreign land in need of the bathroom – is a step forward, but it sure doesn’t scale.

And then the Internet came along. And everything changed. Now we were not just navigating our desktops, or the back office computer files. We were navigating mankind’s possible knowledge base. The whole shootin’ match. Clearly, not a place we could hunt and poke our way through. We needed a new interface. And we found one, in search.

In a way, the search interface is a lot like the 1970s command line (anyone remember C: prompts?!). It’s a blinking cursor and a command line. But what you put into it is the magic: Words. Phrases. Language. And language is the transit of conversation.

When you enter your query into a search engine, you are beginning a sophisticated conversation with a machine. You say “discount building supplies” and bam, in less than half a second, Google responds by re-organizing the entire Internet around your input, and comes back with a web page called www.secondsandsurplus.com, as well as an entire pageful of other possible answers.

It’s a magical experience, “talking with” computers in this way, and it’s the main reason Google has become one of the most legendary companies in the very storied history of the Silicon Valley. It’s also the main reason that you have to change your approach to conversing with your customers via the web: If your site isn’t responding to your customers the way Google does, well, in the long term, you’re toast.

So what can you do? Sorry to bury the lead here, but that will be the focus of the next post, and I promise, it’s coming really soon!

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Source: John Battelle of SearchBlog

Action steps are worthless without a sense of accountability to complete them. In our jobs and daily chores, the oversight of colleagues, wives/husbands, and clients helps us stay focused. In the mishmash of daily life, we must feel accountable in order to stay productive and push ideas forward.

However, at some point, supervision backfires. Having a boss over your shoulder or constant nagging reminders will actually reduce our motivation. After all, we want to take pride in our own productivity. As such, the drive must start from within. But methods to support our drive for productivity are critical defenses in a world of TIVO, email, and countless other distractions.From the Behance team’s work with especially productive teams in the creative world, here are a few of the tactics we observed:

• Accountability via Photocopy & The Mailman. There is a non-profit board that has developed an interesting method for boosting productivity and ensuring that people complete their tasks. Everyone is given a sheet at every meeting to capture action steps, and then, at the meeting’s conclusion, every person’s sheet is collected, photocopied, and returned. You leave the meeting with your original copy, just as you normally would. However, one month later, you stumble upon a letter when opening your mail and – surprise – there is a photocopy of your action steps, in your own beautiful handwriting. It is a reminder from…yourself.
• Action Step Recounting. Some teams have a quick “action go-around” at the conclusion of every meeting. Each person takes a turn reciting the action steps that he/she captured. After each turn, the rest of the group has a minute to comment on anything that may have been missed (after all, most ideas never happen because the actions required are not captured!). This verbal exchange that takes place is a powerful force of accountability. Magic happens when you state publicly that you are going to do something.
• Public To-Do Lists. Imagine if your to-do lists were transcribed in 32 pt font on huge pieces of paper gracing your walls. This is a surprisingly effective method for accountability in a team environment. In fact, we use this strategy ourselves at Behance. The benefits we notice include:
  • Public disclosure of productivity – everyone knows where everyone is at.
  • Sharing of action steps – it is visibly alarming when someone has too much on their plate and needs help.
  • Efficiency in utilizing resources – we are more likely to provide assistance to our colleagues if we know what they are working on.

We spend a lot of time focused on general productivity and too little time on the forces in our lives that keep us motivated and on track. While our instinct is to seclude ourselves into our own productivity cocoons, we must also incorporate the necessary pressures to stay on task. Most often, these pressures are external and must be tolerated, if not embraced!

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.

All Information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

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Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

Not so long ago I was a video naysayer.

Oh, online video sounded great if you had a “video-worthy” consumer product, such as T-shirts with funny logos. But not for the typical small business in the mainstream in the United States — the retail establishments, manufacturers, medical professionals, engineering firms, CPAs and others. The chances of those kinds of businesses getting any traffic or new customers with video seemed remote. Or so I thought.

But — I have changed my view. One reason is that Google has integrated YouTube videos aggressively into the regular search results. Now there’s identifiable value from videos. By creating a video and hosting it on YouTube, it gives your business an extra shot at getting listed on the first page of the Google search results. Your company’s Website AND its YouTube video could both appear high up in Google.

Instead of a one-in-ten chance of a searcher finding your site in the 10 search results returned on a Google page, with a YouTube video suddenly you have two chances in ten. That also means one less competitor appearing in the top 10 results, because you’re taking up two of those coveted 10 spots.

And it’s not just about appearing high up in Google. The other thing that has changed my mind is experiencing some of the business videos that are out there. Some are compelling. The funny ones, but also the serious, useful, informative ones.

The effectiveness of a small-business video has little to do with how slick and glitzy the video is. Nor is it necessarily about humor — most of us tend not to choose our vendors and service providers based on whether they make us laugh. A successful video has more to do with how authentic and useful the message is. Does the video help the viewer understand how your business can solve their problem or address their fears or needs? Is the person delivering the message believable? Would you trust that person and the business he or she represents? Does something about the video spark a desire to make you take action?

One example I stumbled on is from the Successful Smiles blog. There I saw a video by a dentist, Dr. Helaine Smith of Boston. She used a video to explain a special syringe she uses to give painless injections of novacaine. The message resonates. Who among us wouldn’t want to hear about a way to avoid pain at the dentist?

Now — I don’t know Dr. Smith. Nor do I live in Boston. Unless I moved to Boston it’s highly unlikely I would ever become a patient of this dentist. So you might be tempted to think that my seeing the video was a complete waste. But you’d be wrong. That would be taking a myopic view of how the online world works.

Consider that here I am writing about the video. Some of you reading this may be from Boston. Or you may forward the video link to friends and family. Or you might happen on the good doctor’s blog and see the video there. Or someone searching in Google may find it.

According to a Pew Internet study, online video by its nature is social and viral. People naturally tend to forward video links on to others: “More than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them.”

Information spreads easily on the Web — especially video content. It spreads by means we often cannot track and by people unknown to us. Information and videos can be working for our businesses 24/7, in ways we are utterly unaware of.

And the best news of all is that today you actually can do a better job of tracking how well that video is working for you. YouTube recently launched a service that gives you statistics about your videos. It’s called YouTube Insight. The YouTube blog says it is “a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time.”

So now you don’t even have to take it on faith. You’ll be able to get a much better handle on the value of that video. And prove its usefulness for business.

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Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

Our latest intern at Behance arrived with a tremendous amount of energy and anticipation for the wild brainstorming that one would expect in such an environment. After all, we are a team that develops products and services for the creative community. We aspire to think out of the box. What could be more creative?

Our eager intern was clearly disappointed when she realized that we spend less than 1% of our time generating ideas. As our founder explained to her mid-way through her time in the office, “if anything, we have a surplus of ideas. Excess ideas are our greatest cost. What we need is fewer ideas.” In addition, our intern observed that the team essentially lives in “execution mode.” Not much fun.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for a creative group is to consume its creative juice sparingly. Creative people, regardless of their commitment to a cause, are more likely to exchange ideas than take steps to push any one idea forward. Why? Idea generation is an addiction. It is an engaging, brain-spinning indulgence that must be practiced in moderation.Of course, you should take pride in the creative capabilities of your team. When you do engage in creative flow, enjoy it. Just be sure to compartmentalize it. Recognize that such occasions have the tendency to be intoxicating.New ideas have the potential to transform your life in wonderful ways, but they are also the most notorious source of distraction. Frustrated entrepreneurs and struggling creatives often trace back their problems to a moment when they decided to pursue too many things at once.The steps for making ideas happen are interrupted by impaired judgment. And, as we all know, our judgment is impaired when we get intoxicated. When rampant, new ideas will get you off track.

So, drink in moderation. Hire “designated drivers” that are more cynical and have the power to keep you focused. And strive to make ideas happen, rather than just generate more ideas.

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.

All Information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

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Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

As if running a business wasn’t challenging enough, now you have to worry about your business getting trashed at voting websites and in blogs.

Imagine that you’ve dedicated years of sweat and toil and shoestring budgets just to build a business. You love your business.

You take joy in serving customers. You pride yourself on your business’s customer service. Fact is, most of your customers are satisfied. Some are ecstatic.

But let’s say one customer isn’t satisfied. You and that customer had “issues” that ended with you or the customer saying goodbye. Now that ex-customer has his or her revenge – going out to Yelp.com or another site and leaving a scathing review about your company, its products or services.

Worse, when prospective customers and the public go to Google to research your company, what do they see? That bad review appears on the first page of the search results.

In effect that one dissatisfied customer has a megaphone to spread his or her feelings about your company all over the world (or at least all over the World Wide Web).

The most alarming part to business owners is that reviews can be made anonymously on most sites. So customers are free to embellish, or simply use stronger language than they’d use if they had to give their real names. You may not even know who is doing the complaining, so you may have no way of determining how to make matters right.

And the dirty little secret is, a competitor may be out spreading vitriol to damage your business. It’s no accident that when you see product reviews online, sometimes they’re accompanied by anonymous comments denouncing the product and at the same time praising a competing product. Occasionally you’ll see multiple anonymous comments each extolling the virtues of a different competitor! Interested bystanders? I doubt it.

It’s not just voting sites you have to worry about. With blogs, anyone today can be a publisher and publish a negative post about a product or service.

In the past mostly the big companies were the targets. Small business owners used to not have to worry as much. But I’m hearing more and more war horror stories how this is becoming a problem for small firms.

The impact can be devastating for small businesses, especially if your business does not have a strong presence in the search engines. If you have lots of search engine results you can dilute the effect of one or two negative reviews. But when you have thin search engine results, one negative review stands out like a blemish on a teenager’s nose.

So, what can you do?

Even on a limited budget you can do a number of things.

(1) Monitor your presence online. To protect your reputation you have to know what you’re up against. Sign up for Google Alerts, which will email you when your company name or products are referred to in Google search results. There are other services designed to monitor more than Google results, including forum posts, such as Trackur.

(2) Start a blog. If for no other reason, having a blog indexed in the search engines means that your blog posts (under your control) are likely to show up more frequently in the search results to offset any negative reviews.

(3) Set up profile pages at “authority” sites. There are a number of sites where you can create a profile quickly and for free.

(4) Correct inaccuracies. If a blog post is factually incorrect, email the blogger asking for a correction/retraction. Or write your own side of the story on your own blog. Or leave a comment in the blog post briefly explaining your side.

(5) Don’t lose your cool. You’re not the only business in this situation. Many consumers and prospects are savvy enough to realize that one complaint can be a fluke or spurred by questionable motives. They’re more likely to be impressed by a calm, even-handed response than by attacking back emotionally. Try to take the matter offline — and learn from the situation. If there’s an issue to fix, fix it.

If handled deftly you can even make lemonade from the lemons of negative comments. An outspoken critic may become an evangelist — it’s happened.

For further reading, check out these articles about reputation management, which seem particularly relevant to small businesses:

Basics of Online Reputation Management

Nine Essential Tactics For Reputation Management In Social Media

Reputation Management you May be Missing

A Best Practice Primer to Search Engine Reputation Management

Managing Your Reputation Online - Tips From A Professional Reputation Manager

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Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

Contrary to popular belief, creativity can exist in bureaucratic environments. You can see it in the form of brainstorms and “exciting days” in offices across the corporate world. A new idea flourishes, but then it enters a bureaucratic mess that substantially reduces the likelihood of execution.

“Don” (real name protected) had an internship this summer at a social networking startup that shall go nameless. As he explains, “ideas for changes and small improvements would originate in a brainstorm, and then be preserved for a meeting with our design agency. A week later, a meeting with designers would end with a series of questions for the programmers. The programmers (some work on the opposite coast and some work in India), would have to agree on a meeting time with the designers and with the executives. By the time that meeting happened, everyone would need a refresher on the topic, weeks would have passed, and money evaporated.” Painful.

To make ideas happen, creative professionals must work in a system that values a bias-to-action and boundaryless collaboration.

• Brainstorm meetings should include the resources required for execution. If the plan for implementation involves designers, programmers, accountants, lawyers, etc…then they should have representation.

• Strive to have everyone at the table (physically or metaphorically). It is no wonder that small all-in-house start-ups are especially productive in developing new businesses.

• For dispersed groups, extra effort must be taken to engage the right resources in a timely manner.

When an idea is brewing, your first action should be to get everyone involved who will actually need to take action to make the idea happen.

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team.Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.

All Information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

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Source: Scott Belsky of Behance