Publicity stunts are on my mind this week. This past Sunday night on the premiere of Mad Men, Peggy suggests paying women to fight over a ham, and scores press coverage for her client. I arrived in Manhattan on Monday morning to find Herald Square turned into a park with an artificial hill, trees and a new Ford Explorer 2011 (which had been revealed on Facebook only two hours prior.)

Launching your business should be a deliberate, calculated event. You should prepare, have press materials ready, generate online materials as well, to make sure that people who want to find out more about you can do so easily. But you might consider the value of a stunt to generate attention and sales.

Jim Kukral, author of the book, "Attention! This Book Will Make You Money",(http://attentionthebook.com) as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant has worked with large brands like Fedex and Sherwin Williams. He told me about this small biz example from his book. “Grasshopper.com provides a virtual phone solution for entrepreneurs who want to sound professional and stay connected…Grasshopper knew that in order to stand out and get some buzz going, and new customers, that they had to do something different. Their solution? Package up 5,000 packs of real chocolate covered grasshoppers and send them out to 5,000 influencers on the Web. People like bloggers and technology pundits and in general people who could, and would, talk about them…This got them a 4,911% traffic increase from April to May, 144,843 video views with 162 comments, 1,500 tweets, 120 blog posts in one month and 7 national TV mentions.”

You might not generate as much excitement as Grasshopper.com. But something as simple as “Free Ice Cream to the first 10 people who prove they’re our Fans on Facebook or show us this Tweet” can be just as much fun on a small scale.

Peter Shankman, founder of HARO http://helpareporter.com/ and Author of “Can We Do that?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work – And Why Your Company Needs Them” http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/dp/047004392X told me “A stunt for the sake a stunt is pointless. Tie it into something in the news, tie it into what's going on in the world. Make cupcakes? Send some to Lindsay. Offer career coaching? Give it to Mel Gibson, he'll need it. But don't just put something out into the universe without a bigger plan. PR is an ongoing process. One good piece should lead to another. It should foster growth inside and outside the organization. The blessing of a good media piece is a powerful growth tool, both to clients and to employees as well.” A timely example: Beach Bum tanning salon did a “Free Lindsay Lohan” rally yesterday http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/27/beach-bum-tanning-salons-free-lindsay-rally-only-a-publicity-stunt/ .

Once you’ve pulled off your ‘stunt’ you need to be able to capitalize on the publicity you’ve generated. Can people find your store, business or site online? Do you have a special offer for people who have shown up for the first time because of your stunt? Do you have a way for them to sign up for a permission-based email list so you can keep in touch with them in the future?

Doing something people will talk about around the water cooler (real or virtual) is an accomplishment. But being able to capture the attention and turn it into leads and sales is the real trick.

What can your startup learn from the value of pulling a simple stunt?

A long-time recruiter in the tech industry who also is an entrepreneur, Halper got a dream call last year. An investor was looking for 3 CEOs, and 3 CTOs. Then she got a dose of the new reality: everyone she spoke to told her they were done working for someone else, and they were starting their own thing. So Halper put up “Start-up One Stop (SOS)” to connect these start-up folks to each other. People offer help, or ask for it. When Halper kicked off the effort she sent out 500 invites and got 212 responses – a real New York number.

“We get requests for employment lawyers, insurance agents, php programmers, designers and other specialized hires. And I no longer have to reply to five emails a week asking ‘Do you have a client with extra office space?’ I also know Investors and VCs are also on the list, trolling to see interesting start-up ideas go by. At least one company has been contacted.”

SOS notes go out twice a week. “I hate getting something everyday – and start-ups are too busy to read something daily.” Time sensitive items get priority, and no multi-level marketing items ever show up. The list has no spam – it has to be real to get past Bonnie.

The feedback from people using the list has been positive. An anonymous legal question from a start-up founder got his query answered by a partner at a firm, who helped the entrepreneur for an hour - for free! The lawyer loved the challenge too much to charge him.

An original inspiration for SOS was Craig’s list since Bonnie was an early subscriber. She discussed it with HARO’s Peter Shankman (covered in December's column "Promote Your Start-up, Help a Reporter") who encouraged her to go for it.

Isn’t this competing with her recruiting business? “A lot of these folks are unfunded and can’t yet afford a recruiter – but I hope they’ll come back to me when they need me.” Halper’s not charging for the list at this point. She thinks it is the right price for a start-up, and contributing to the community is valuable. But her involvement hasn’t been without benefit. Since she started the list, she’s been invited to join the boards of 4 start-ups.

While there are several thousand subscribers, Halper knows people have taking to reposting the list to their own friends on LinkedIn. While this violates her rules, Halper is enjoying the company. “People at start-ups don’t like to meet recruiters at events any more than used car salesman – they hate us until they need us. But they love to meet another entrepreneur - especially one who is helping start-ups out.”

What resources do you recommend to help other start-ups out? Make a comment and let us know.

But beware how you use that Social Network data you find. It could lead to discriminatory hiring practices. Most start-ups don't have an HR department to tell them that different restrictions take effect when you have 4 employees, 15 employees and as you grow past 20 and 50. The Federal Equal Employment Laws prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities, and prohibit bias based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, age, as well as other considerations. State and Local laws may impose even stricter rules depending on where your business operates.

This data (a candidates race, national origin, pregnancy status, etc.) is considered “protected information” and you can’t ask it in an interview. If it is revealed to you, it is often best to keep it to yourself and not pass it along to other hiring managers.

But what happens when the candidate reveals protected information via their social profiles? A Facebook basic profile almost matches the list of things you can’t ask in an interview – race, religion, sexual orientation, relationship status - are all part of the standard questions many people fill in on their pages.

“Social Media is an issue in HR and Employment and Compliance law – the protected information on people’s profiles is free, easy and voluntary. It’s not as if the employer is asking “are you pregnant” in an interview,” said lawyer Nancy Schess, a partner at Klein Zelman Rothermel, a labor and employment boutique firm that represents management. “The questions to ask are is a)it legal and b) is it a best practice to go and look for this information in the context of your hiring practice.”

Schess continues “Yes, If you go on a search engine and you can find it, you are allowed to look at it. But once you have the information, legally, what can you do with it?”

Take the case of a start-up owner who needs new assistant. He asks his network or his HR person to get candidates. He interviews an outstanding woman candidate and practically offers her the position during the interview. Then he finds out via her Facebook status after the interview that she’s 3 months pregnant. The owner knows that 6 months from now when she’s out giving birth, it will be the busy season, when he can't afford to be without help. Legally he can’t act on this information.

I asked Schess, “How do you “un-know” this in your decision making process?” She replied “You can state you didn’t take it into account, but if you are sued for discrimination you have to prove that it wasn’t part of the decision making process. Now you’re in a risk area with a large liability.”

Is this kind of worrying really relevant to hard driving, fast-decision-making startups? “It’s my opinion in working with students and startups that they typically don’t care about this kind of information. They want qualified candidates,” says Dan Cohen, a Lecturer in Human Resource Studies at my alma mater, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Cohen was a 15-year entrepreneur who sold his own business and earned a PhD. in Management. He’s also the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Cornell's Student Agency's eLab Incubator. “When start-ups need specialized talent they want the people that can do the job. The need for that talent is often blind to other personal characteristics.”

Schess cautions “If you’re going to use Social Media, and it is an appropriate approach, there’s a way to do it that protects you. Separate the information gathering, so the person who does the online search isn’t part of the hiring chain. Perhaps a screening agency, or a different employee. You have that person look at a candidate’s online profile for legitimate business issues, then ask them to brief you about their educational background and business experience. Make sure they don’t tell you about their protected information.”

Do you recruit candidates using Social Media? What’s been your experience?

Note: You should consult your own attorney before relying on these procedures - employment law varies by state and locality.

His famous energy was in full force at Internet Week New York’s stage yesterday for a discussion of new business models, and he was as outspoken as usual. Vaynerchuck had solid business trends advice for discussion with his audience. (The entire presentation is available as a video.) His 2008 book, Gary Vaynerchuk's 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World is still number 17 on Amazon’s wine collecting list, and Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion) was an Inc. recommendation for Best Books for Business Owners in 2009.

Gary’s not just an Internet guy. The author, speaker, and investor was raised in retail, and grew his family wine store from a $4 million dollar a year operation to $45 million a year in 5 years. When we spoke yesterday after his appearance, he emphasized the fact that his experience online and as an angel investor and social media advisor to companies is solidly based on his retail and business experience.

Vaynerchuk’s advice to companies thinking about starting up today includes three key ideas. First he covered the “freemium” business model and the “App Store” small payment model. Freemium is when a customer can try a basic version of a product or service for free, but additional services, capacity or functionality (premium) require a subscription or payment. Customers get hooked, many stay for free, but the paying customers pay for the whole service. (Inc. writer Jason Fried's 37 Signals products were one of Gary’s examples.) The app store model shows that customers are fine with paying a small price for some small functionality, as we see in the Apple and other mobile application stores. The things they love, they share with their friends. Call it the new “frugality.” People are buying new things more often at a lower cost, so Vaynerchuk advised businesses to think about how they can use these models. He suggested creating some things to sell at small prices, and premium up sells to generate regular income streams. “If I started my WineLibrary.Tv show today, I’d do 2 shows a week for free, and charge for the others.”

His second piece of advice was to think about simplicity and limiting choice, like Groupon, GiltGroup and Woot.com. These businesses are known for offering different, limited products or deals every day until they run out. Gary decided to test this in his retail store. Where he once had an alcove near the front with 10 bargain wines, he now has only one wine on display. How has lack of choice affected this high traffic area of the store? “We’re crushing it – we’re selling these bottles at a staggering rate, one that trumps residual loss of not selling many products in that space.” This lead to the launch of CinderallaWine.com, which sells only one type of wine for a few hours, each day. It’s both a deal, and a limitation of choice. “People are overwhelmed these days, so limiting options is very successful. Simple decisions are exploding in value.”

Finally, he’s excited about location-based mobile services like FourSquare and GoWalla. “Anyone in marketing who doesn’t understand that this lets consumers have the ability to be rewarded at the point of purchase or for going to a specific location is missing out.” You can use these services to reward people and move them to locations. “Expiring inventory like seats at a concert, food going bad, inventory in marketing that brands sponsor, how much is that number on a daily basis? The number is F***ing huge with enormous value and the best platform to move it is geolocation based mobile platforms.” When friends don’t understand why they’d use these “check-in services” he asks “Don’t you want a free beer for going to a restaurant?”

Finally, I had a chance to ask Vaynerchuk the investor what he looks for in new business pitches. “The person, first and foremost, and how they explain the way the business will make money. 95% of people can’t answer that simple question. The idea is a close second.” What’s he looking at for investment these days? “Apps and freemium based businesses, of course, and also Tea. Tea is going to be big in this country. We're eating more Asian style. Similar to wine culture, people collect tea, learn about it, sample it, compare it. There’s also a health factor – people are discovering how good tea is for them and that matches with the general health trend. I’m going to China and India to learn more about it.”

Given his energy and drive, it’s likely Vaynerchuk will “crush it” with tea the way he has with wine. How do these business trends impact your business? Let us know in the comments below.

HG: How about the Pros?
VH:Pros of raising money: Money. If the investors are value-add, they're essentially paying you to advise you. The additional social proof of being funded can help with recruiting, customers, marketing.

An additional thought: If you raise money, it's harder or impossible to take a small exit from your business, or run it as a cash business. However, you're more likely to swing for the fences and therefore have a slightly greater probability of a home run outcome with your business.

HG: Thanks for sharing your thoughts with our readers.

Have you raised Angel Funding, or are you an Angel investor? Weigh in below.

Related information about how to find an angel from Inc.com.

I like to bounce these things off people in the industry first, so I contacted Keith Moore, Chief Marketing Officer at iContact. Keith agreed, “If you want to utilize a list, have the owner handle sending a mailing on your behalf. You don’t have the trust and understanding of another firm’s customer.” So, my reader could work with the list owner to create an agreed-upon note that would introduce the competing service, and invite the current customers to join in.

Keith and I discussed the best practices involved. “Have the invitation go to a page on the company site where you can invite them to your list.” It has to be a normal, opt-in form. “Good mailing list management means always being clear and upfront with your customers. Don’t abuse the right to email them, and you’re more likely to keep them as happy customers.”

The other question the reader had was “How much do I pay for the list?”

My suggestion was “Pay for success.” In other words, if the list has 5,000 people on it, don’t pay for all of them. Let the going-out-of-business company send a mailing or two. Most email list software can let you segment your responses into a new list. Count the customers that are still with you in a month or two, and pay for those that are now your customers. Now you’ve gotten some valuable, opt-in customers, and you can give back some consideration to the person who provided the leads. Base the compensation around what your current cost of email acquisitions are. If you don’t know that number, think about a cost to get people to sign up at an event or trade show in your industry. Make sure the person with the list is comfortable with your calculation and your proposal. And good luck.

What’s your email acquisition strategy? Let us know.

White’s vision was to “allow users to build communities and share passions online, and to remove for them the barriers of technology and cost.” She and her partners wanted to create a system that allowed non-technical users to create these community websites by dragging and dropping shapes and boxes, designing their sites without knowing any code. This isn’t revolutionary in 2010, but 11 years ago it was not very easy. MoonFruit successfully created a website builder in Flash, and gained 100,000 customers. They got funding from French Giant LVMH’s EuropAtweb and Flash creator Macromedia (now part of Adobe.)

“After the NASDAQ crash and September 11th, funding dried up, and EuropAtweb closed most of the businesses they had invested in, but not ours,” said White. “We had customers, and we had good relationships with our investors.” White and partners bought back the company at a fraction of the investment cost, but had to scale back from 60 employees to 3. “It wasn’t easy – we had friends and even family working in the business, but we had to fire them. Then we went to our existing customers and asked them to pay for the software [which had previously been ad-supported]. We used freelancers and contractors to keep the costs down. We saw we had customers who were using the product, and we didn’t want to just close up their sites and leave them without a web presence.”

MoonFruit could barely support their users, but in their online forums, their own customers started answering other’s questions. This support from their customer-advocates generated word of mouth about the company and their growth started. By 2004, they had 9 employees and they changed their pure subscription-based model to a “freemium” model – basic functionality was free, and became their marketing channel for the premium package, which was purchased by about 5% of users. They also found that graphic designers were using the site to create websites without needing code, so they created a reseller platform, and a version of their tool that other ISPs can “white label” and offer to their customers.

Around 2005, White's husband got into the business after leaving McKinsey. After an aborted attempt by a large company to purchase them, Moonfruit ended up buying Gandi Group, the owner of the top domain registrar in France, and recently started offering hosting services. Last year, MoonFruit grew by 70%, while the whole business grew 30%. "It seems that post the blogging boom, consumers are more confident about building their own websites," said White. "Last year we did a Twitter campaign last year in the US to raise awareness, and people started doing crazy fun videos about the brand, and made it a lot of fun. It helped us understand value of social media, and brought us back to our roots of sharing community online."

Now Moonfruit has sales of 14MM Euro ($22MM) per year, with 2.5 million sites and about 75 employees. White's advice to other companies that have to survive scaling back? "A lot of people believed in us - we had tenacity and our customers kept us going by deciding to pay for our services. You need to take a good look at what you really have - see the metrics - if you believe that you'll get to where you want to go , you can scale back and then bootstrap. Make sure you have an appetite to do so. In the UK there's more fear of failure, where as in the US people tend to carry back on even when they've failed."

What "near death experience" has your company had? Share it below in the comments.

(Disclosure: Moonfruit was a sponsor of a program at the Social Media Clubhouse. The clubhouse was run by Social Media Club, where I'm on the board. It's a non-profit (filed for status), and I didn't get specific compensation for writing this story.)

As a startup owner, you probably don’t care about APIs – but you might care that putting your invoicing data into Freshbooks will let it flow into bookkeeping and tax solution Outright. Or that sending your business cards to ShoeBoxed means that you can add the data you get to CRM provider BatchBlue’s BatchBook database as well as send it through sales lead provider Jigsaw.

Small Business Web co-founders Michelle Riggen-Ransom, Director of Communications for BatchBlue and Sunir Shah, "Chief Handshaker" of Freshbooks sat down with me at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival to talk about this many-company integrated solution. “We want to work towards an Open Web platform because Open is the fastest way to build the biggest market,” said Shah. You can find out more about these companies in their directory, which was announced last week at SXSW.

The Small Business Web’s “Most Connected Customer” is Brandon Dunlap, Managing Director of Brightfly, a research based consulting company, focused on business management of audit and information security. Dunlap did about 100K miles in air travel last year, going to conferences and working with professional associations as well as clients. As someone who is never “in the office,” he uses software from 7 of the Small Business Web companies.

“We’re a decentralized organization, a virtual team. I was using another solution to scan business cards and receipts; it was time a consuming process. A colleague turned me on to ShoeBoxed at the same time we were having accounting software upgrade problems. From them we came across Freshbooks and Outright. Freshbooks let us do online invoicing, and integrate the receipt scanning from ShoeBoxed, which imports to our Outright financials,” said Dunlap. After conferences, instead of sending materials on CD ROMs, BrightFly started emailing folks with links. But keeping track of who was sent what was difficult. "Now we send cards to ShoeBoxed, they’re scanned and uploaded to BatchBook. We can send people mail messages based on contact lists from BatchBook using MailChimp. Batchbook keeps track of whom we contacted, when, and where we met them." Contact emails come back to him, and he can use CRM in BatchBook to track connections. He’s now using Survey Gizmo for data collection and Eventbrite for some of their upcoming live web events.

Google’s Apps program recently announced a marketplace where companies using Google’s mail and other programs can also purchase applications. Several of the Small Business Web companies are now available in the Google Apps Marketplace. This allows a single sign on for a small business – logging into their mail also permits login and connection to their marketplace apps. (Note: My Inc. colleague Renee Oricchio has some concerns about the marketplace.)

There are several categories in the directory where competitors are listed – such as online form builders FormSpring and WuFoo. However, the philosophy of the leaders is “Hug it Out.” Riggen-Ransom of BatchBlue ran into the CEO of another online CRM company while with Shah of Freshbooks. Shah suggested that in the spirit of the open web, the competitors hug and talk business. Riggen-Ransom told me “We have a lot in common with people making competitive products, and the friendly competition is going to make all the products better for our customers.”

Are you using integrated solutions from the Small Business Web, or other cooperating vendors? Let us know in the comments below.

To explain, for those not familiar with location based services, a person goes to a venue such as a restaurant, club, store, or park, and 'checks in' via their mobile phone, letting their friends and optionally their contacts on social networks know that they are in a specific location. They're also able to give a short message like 'Eating dinner.' Why, many people have asked me, would they do this? Aren't they worried about privacy? Let's put the privacy concerns aside for a second (though there are valid concerns.) Assuming a perfect world where no one takes negative advantage of this information, letting your friends know where you are is a great way to attract them to your location. At a festival or conference, this information can help you track down people effectively. For restaurants and businesses, users of these services can add tips such as 'Try the mulled wine,' or 'Special sale on Tuesdays' to help other users get the most out of the venue. Some services support pictures of the venues, or links directly to Yelp or Google Local Business Listings for review.

On FourSquare, users compete to be the 'Mayor' of a venue, and some businesses have taken note, treating people who show their mayoral status to free coffee, extra toppings, or even a night at a hotel. Gowalla's icons have been used to provide prizes for visitors to venues. Some attendees at SXSW who checked in at Austin airport were offered rides to town courtesy of Chevrolet as part of a promotion at the festival.

Granted, Chevy is bigger than your business, but all of these location-based services are looking to partner with the little guys as well. It is free to add a venue to any of these services ' and in fact someone may have added your business already. Have you checked? Are there tips or reviews of your business on these sites? Are there some negative comments? Better address those soon.

In June of last year I asked 'Does your Small Biz site show on the Mobile Web?' and this is still relevant ' but the location based services are the next thing. Twitter and Facebook are already experimenting with location-based tagging of status messages ' so if someone tweets 'Having a terrible experience in a store,' the message may tie directly back to your business. Twitter tools will soon be able to report these locations, and I've heard some are already doing so.

Finally, to the privacy advocates ' some percentage of people will not use these services. Some don't want their location known and will turn it off. There are legitimate concerns, and sites like 'Please Rob Me' were set up attempting to tie location checkins to people who might not be home, to make just this point. On the other hand, a statistic that shows the scale of check-ins at SXSW is that PayPal and Microsoft sponsored a bounty of $.25 per check-in via "Check In for Charity" on the FourSquare service, and raised $15,000 for Save the Children's Haitian relief fund ' that's over 60,000 check-ins in just a few days, at one (admittedly hyper-connected) conference. (Participants got a note thanking them for their contribution ' which helped reinforce the behavior.)

What is the future for location-based serivces? Pretty soon, the real estate folks won't be the only ones saying the key is 'Location, Location, Location.'

But most people believe there's some sort of stigma about being an introvert, according to Nancy Ancowitz, author ofSelf Promotion for Introverts and blogger for Psychology Today. Ancowitz is a self-proclaimed introvert with a history in both large companies and her own enterprises. Many introverts, she says, "make great entrepreneurs." Introvert stereotypes include being more considered, looking inward for approval and guidance, and researching problems looking for perfect answers. These same characteristics can make great business leaders.

What advice can help the introvert succeed in a startup? Ancowitz says "When selling as an introvert, use your abilities as a good researcher to really know audience, know what matters to them, and figure out a product match before you go in. You'll be meeting with people, so rest up before social interactions with those you are selling to or speaking in front of. Prepare and practice because as an introvert you will think before you speak - as opposed to extroverts who speak as they think. So having a few lines ready, or thoughts composed in advance will be beneficial. Rest, prepare and practice is the magic formula because of the way introverts are wired."

That seems to work for Adelaide Lancaster, co-founder of In Good Company Workplaces, a community and workspace for women entrepreneurs in NYC that provides events, consulting, shared desks and meeting rooms. As a graduate student in a psychology program, Lancaster found out she was an introvert. In 2003 she formed a consulting practice helping women in professional transition. It was research and data driven. "As an introvert it was more comfortable being a resource instead of being in an interpersonal mode all the time. Now I'm in business now with an off-the-charts extrovert. Our focus is on entrepreneurs, and our consulting led into creating the workspace."

Lancaster gave me a tip for startup introverts. "While putting your business model in place, feedback is a critical component, but introverts may close themselves off to that - it might not occur to them to ask others for advice. They need opinions and iteration." Lancaster didn't talk to lots and lots of people, but she strategically chose 5 people to check in with and get advice from. She also notes "There's an opportunity cost if you're not connected to other business owners - if you over-emphasize research it can prevent you from finding easy solutions to your problems right, in your business network." Lancaster uses Twitter and LinkedIn groups to connect with business resources and share tips.

This connects well with Ancowitz's advice to "Get known as an expert, and build deep and meaningful relationships. Introverts do well with deep relationships and conversations rather than chit-chat. Be generous in introducing people to each other as well. Then it's easier for you to ask for introductions from your good contacts." She also notes "if you're an introvert there may be activities you'll like more than others, like writing or speaking to one person at a time. There are many ways to market with quiet activities like blogging, using Twitter, writing for newsletters, and doing guest columns that can help you promote yourself."

Any introverts out there? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below.

(Disclosure: I am quoted in Ancowitz's book as an expert and an NYU colleague. We both teach at NYU SCPS, but I did not hire her or have a business relationship with her. I report on the book not because of my quotes in it, but because it's an important guide for those who may have trouble promoting themselves, and that's why I agreed to be interviewed.)

Web service uptime is critical for Jay Graves, CTO for edo Interactive, a company that has a technology that puts coupons directly onto customer's debit cards. edo has 27 employees and works with large companies like Coca-Cola for an under-the-cap loyalty program, as well as the financial institutions that issue debit cards.

Jay told me "In the modern age of service-oriented architecture, if we're hosting a web service for a customer, unless we can prove it is up, they're going to think it is down. We use AlertSite DejaClick to track our web site and web services for our clients. AlertSite monitors East Coast, Central and West Coast for us. We give customers a report with the AlertSite logo that shows we had 99.97 percent or greater uptime. When you're dealing with larger companies as a startup organization, this reporting helps your reputation. You have to be prepared for an extra level of scrutiny, but if you want to be a successful startup you have to be prepared for that scrutiny anyway."

Ken Godskind, Chief Strategy Officer of AlertSite opined "In Small and Medium businesses, they don't want to be monitoring experts. They know their store, blog, or website. With our DejaClick product, you don't have to be highly trained, you just have to know how to click through an application. It is designed so a normal user can accomplish it."

The demo I saw allowed a user to hit a 'record button' and capture their path through the site. If there were user names or fields to fill out, the product captured those. They can be edited or conditional logic can be added. It even worked on a flash site I was shown. Setting up the monitoring was not rocket science - most site owners could do it with little help or coaching. AlertSite then tests your site, using your script, from data centers around the country. They then report back how long it takes for your site to load, and ensure that the service can successfully complete the scripted transactions.

Godskind describes their product set as services that help customers make sure that whatever the important thing they're doing on line, it is working well for end users. In Retail, that may mean, "Can shoppers go to home page, search for products, view products from a catalog, add to a shopping cart and check out?"

Graves said "They can spit out monthly reports, let us know when we were up, and since they're a 3rd party, they're immediately more trustworthy than if we reported to the client. We also share reports internally with entire company so everyone knows our uptime and our reliability."

How big does your company have to be to consider monitoring services? "If you're a web based business," Godskind told me "and you're putting a lot of effort into sharing a brand feeling - and keeping customers - you want to make sure your site is available, functions reliably, and you want to know how your load time changes during the day. There's a very inexpensive, availability monitoring service for $10/month, but if you have multi-step store transactions to test, you can expect to pay more like $100/month and up."

If your business lives and dies by its website, $1,200 a year to have peace of mind that your site is up seems a pretty small price to pay. Do you track your online uptime and make sure your customers can buy or contact you at any time? How do you do it? The comments are open.

"The cost of obtaining new customers is typically greater than the cost of retaining your existing customers," says Morris Bocian, President of Creative Business Planning and Adjunct Professor of Business at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and Baruch College. "Many time companies ignore their existing customers - they don't make the same offers available that they do for new customers, and that can alienate the existing customers."

"I don't like the word retention — it implies the customer is trying to leave" says Christopher Penn, Vice President, Strategy and Innovation at Blue Sky Factory Email Marketing. "If you look at standard funnel — marketing is at the top, then sales takes the leads and creates customers. Then customer service and product design work with the customer. From bottom of funnel to the top you have declining control. You have full control where product teams and customer service can tailor what you do to your customers. When you get to sales, control is iffy, and people may not buy if they don't have money. There's even less control in marketing - you're competing for people's attention, to turn it into a qualified lead. A good marketer in general can move 10% of the attention they create into qualified leads. With good customer retention, good service, good product, you have a huge amount of control about keeping your customers. They're yours to lose."

"Especially in the phone business, there's always a challenge in customer service and retention," reports Phone.com President Ari Rabban. His 3-year-old business is growing in revenue every month, and is up to 35 employees. "We port (move) phone numbers, so we know if you were previously a customer of a specific other company — we've done analysis — we have 9 times more numbers coming into our company than going out. We think customer service is key to retention. We have an in-house 24x7 customer call center, which costs more, but the results speak for it."

Rabban notes that his team contacts all customers who sign up for their service. "It's more interesting when we get complaints. We have no scripted answers in our call center. We deal with people directly and answer their questions if we were your IT team. When there's a crisis, we just admit a problem or find a quick solution, then most people don't want to leave us. They just want a fix and good attention. If we do this well, they often become testimonial customers and pass us on to others."

As far as using tools like email marketing for retention, Blue Sky Factory's Penn says "This may be beating a dead horse, but just send relevant, timely, targeted emails to people who ask for it. That's the real formula."

How do you keep your customers happy, or just keep your customers? Let us know below.

I hear from many small business owners that “Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are too hard – they take too much time.” August's piece on “Social Media for Small Business Takes Time – How much is up to you” states it clearly – you must focus and be organized. There's a fear factor. There's also reality - the more you do something, the less time it will take you. However, you also have to measure, measure, measure so you know if your online promotional efforts are gaining you customers.

Let’s take this to a practical level - How do you measure the customer interactions on Facebook? If you have a Fan Page, Facebook’s analytic package, called “Insights” gives you some information on who is coming to your page.

According to Taylor Pratt, Product Marketing Manager of Raven Internet Marketing Tools, a small business may not have to dig a bit to use the information from those basic Facebook analytics. “Take the example of a local restaurant. Maybe their goal is to increase awareness of their place, and gain fans who eat there regularly. Once the page is up and working, look at Insights to see the age of fans and use the demographics. The owner might choose to feature healthy food if demographics skew older, or feature maybe drink specials if there’s a younger crowd. Apply the information you’re getting from your insights to change your business.” Of course, you then have to measure your cash register sales and see if your changes are bringing in people. Asking them where they heard about your restaurant or your specials may help you confirm the channel of communication - Facebook, word of mouth from friends, or other things you're trying.

Twitter doesn’t have analytics, but Pratt suggests your FB fan crowd might have similar demographics to your twitter crowd, so you might adjust your conversations on Twitter accordingly.

“When people are interacting with you see what they’re saying?” asks Pratt. “Are they reporting bad service, asking about ingredients or calories? This is a lot different than ‘How many people are visiting my page?’

The conversational aspect of services like Facebook and Twitter also lend themselves to measurement. The successful posts are ones you get comments on, and people choosing to “like” your posts are a lesser measure. People don’t take the time to comment unless they’re feeling strongly. If they said these things to you in your place of business – how would you respond? Do the same online. “Don’t let the conversation die!” urges Pratt. “Also try Facebook Ads. You can target the city you live in, and specific demographics like “Women 25-54” to tune in the exact crowd you want.

How are you managing your online outreach time? What is most effective? Let us know in the comments.

For those that choose to go it alone, there are several new choices for distributing news and announcements that allow multimedia content and search engine indexing, but won't break a start-up's budget.

PitchEngine founder Jason Kintzler, told me "As I blogged about PR and Social Media, and the feedback I got helped me create the application. It's not a traditional wire service, but it enables entrepreneurs to package content for the social web. Startups are not just trying to reach journalists who they hope will write about them, they can distribute their content to everyone and it's searchable and stays around."

They have 300,000 journalists and bloggers that sign up for their feed and come to their site to look for content. Those users take the content and share it with their audiences who have interest in a specific area.

A few months ago I reviewed Drop.io as an easy content sharing service. It seems many media communications professionals were also using Drop.io to share multimedia with the press, but it was not a full solution. Steve Greenwood, VP of applications for Drop.io told me the feedback from their customers helped them create Presslift.

"This is our attempt to provide a 100% answer for media distribution. We found that most PR professionals want to include multi-media with a press release and many journalists say it's important to access multi-media easily, but only about 10% of press releases contain multi-media. That's because FTP, email attachments, DVDs, and USB drives are expensive and difficult. (Note: I covered how important it is to have good materials for a meeting with a journalist in 5 Tips for How to Promote Your Company to a Reporter.) So we're creating a new category — a place to share related multimedia and provide complete distribution flexibility. We work well with wire services. We also enable distribution of content on Facebook and Twitter." Steve gave me the example of an iPhone application developer, but it could be any kind of product company. For that iPhone app, a text release isn't very useful, but "screen shots, a video demo, related links, and a very searchable release with pictures of the founders of the company as well as quotes is very useful."

"We believe that Presslift offers a very innovative tool for the market, it's extremely impressive technology, and it's obvious they've done their homework about what PR professionals and journalists want," said Susan McPherson, VP of Business Development at PR Newswire.

No one is going to buy your product if they don't know about it. If you have to go it alone, definitely look into these tools that can help your business get the word out. If you have suggestions, we'd love to hear them in the comments.

Roark has been on the US Ski Team for 16 years, placed 18th at Torino in 2006, and has qualified for 2010 at the age of 35 (making her one of the oldest skiers in Olympic history.) But she's not just about the skiing. With a degree in chemical engineering, Roark saw a business opportunity to create something new — a line of natural perfumes made the old way — before today's chemical synthetics and alcohol bases. In 2006, Roark launched Phi-Nominal, bootstrapping her way into the scent business. She was determined to have a business that would help support her desire to ski. Though she's had sponsors, her career includes a time when she lived in a tent and on friend's couches so she could train. Roark overcame this mogul and bought a house which turned into a very good investment.

"I have an engineering background, and I'm a World Cup Skier, but there are a lot of marketing and business plan things I've had to learn," says Roark. Her husband has an MBA and has helped her create marketing copy and design the plan to move the company forward.

Her newest fragrance, "Inspiration," is the one she wore to qualify for the Olympics at Deer Valley. "Humans develop a sense of smell in the first trimester in the womb. It is our most important and often overlooked sense. Inspire comes from the Greek root that means to inhale." Roark wants all her senses aligned when she's trying to win. She also wants to inspire others — a fan telling her she's an inspiration is her biggest compliment.

One recent bump that Roark took like a champ relates to her downtown Denver business space. She bought a building with room for her perfume creation on the top level, and room for a storefront at street level. There was enough room that she offered to rent out part of the space to a salon. Four days before opening, the salon owner's financing fell through. Having built out the space, Roark took over and created the Voila Salon, Spa and Parfumerie. The spa has a lot of potential, and she's learning about how to run that business while also training to appear at Vancouver in a few weeks.

Her lessons for other entrepreneurs? Differentiate your products. Roark's perfumes have "all natural ingredients, mixed in proportion using the Phi Number (or Golden Ratio) and they're about the wearer and his or her relationship with themselves. A confident person is a sexy person." Roark's mission statement is to have Phi-Nominal make the scent for the first woman president.

How does she make time to run a business and train at the World Cup level? "If you can't make your passion work — what can you make work? I don't own a TV, I don't sleep very much, and I just make everything happen."

You can learn more about Roark's skiing at her International Ski Federation profile or at the NBC Olympic site and see recent video of her run on YouTube.

Bob Hammer, MBA, CFO for Hytrust has run several businesses in several different industries. He also teaches accounting management at Monterrey Peninsula College. Bob told me "It's always important to start the new year by figuring out where you've been, taking a realistic look at last year, and seeing what goals you did and didn't make. When you create a plan for the new year, figure out financial goals and how you will achieve them. For example, If you want to reach 10 MM in sales, what are the activities you're going to perform to achieve those numbers? Every time you go over or underachieve, understand why. The numbers represent your company activities directly."

Stephen King, President of Growthforce, an outsourced Bookkeeping and Controller service for companies that use Quickbooks, also values planning. King worked as a CPA with small businesses for 15 years before creating Virtual Growth, which he sold to Administaff. "Take the time to create a budget, but don't get upset about whether it's right. By definition it's wrong - because you can't predict the future. Put something down as a placeholder to help you evaluate results against what you hoped they would be. Then after six months you can look back, and you have a way to evaluate the results against your goal. Good or bad, you have something, and over time you'll get better at making budget predictions."

King also suggests a forecast. "A budget is for a fiscal period like 6 months, a forecast is short term — 6 weeks. This helps you make sure you have cash flow to make payroll, rent, and other critical expenditures. If you have a 6 week cash flow model you can anticipate problems in advance and have enough time to figure out how to solve them. And we all know the 3 reasons that business fail are cash flow, cash flow, cash flow."

Stan Lau, Controller of Tipping Point Partners, an incubator that builds and operates Internet startups, knows "Visionaries who run startups often spend the money quickly — the finance person needs to keep them grounded around what's possible. The bookkeeping, accounting and finance (as well as HR and Insurance) is often an after-thought, and the team's focus is on building and operating the business.The office manager often gets the role to manage 'that stuff' — but can be someone who doesn't have accounting experience. They may know how to balance the checkbooks and report what happened — but the value is in providing forecasting and insight. There are a lot of startups who don't need a full time controller — there's obviously a demand for a service which acts as an outsourced controller." (Stan, you should meet Stephen.)

If you're worried about the economy, Hytrust's Hammer urges "Don't get hung up in the environment of recession. There's still money around. What's missing is a shortage of ideas that can make money. People are always willing to buy something that fills a need in their business or their life."

Growthforce's December newsletter has checklists for everyone from your CEO to your bookkeeper. In one list states that labor costs are typically your biggest expense, but investing in your people and their people skills can provide a ten-times return on investment.

What are you doing to plan the year? Let us know in the comments.

NYCSeed was formed "to provide deserving New York City seed stage entrepreneurs with the capital and support they need to move from idea to product launch." The fund has partnerships with New York City and State agencies as well as an investment committee that includes several venture and investment funds. Managing Director Owen Davis* is a veteran of the New York startup scene, working on early AOL and MSN projects and creating startups in 1995 and '99.

"Part of the impetus for this SeedStart program is to provide support for the ecosystem of startups in NYC, but it is also a forward looking way to create jobs for the city," said Davis. "We're thinking about how can we keep building the ecosystem around startups in the city. They don't just need money - there is always need for early stage funding, the very high risk capital. But VC firms enter when there's a level of adoption. We're thinking about what makes a 'fundable company.' There needs to be feedback from investors and business leaders who know this. We want to help scale the process of introducing founders with people who want to work in startups, like engineers. And we want New York's Colleges and Universities involved to tap the talent of bright students that are here."

The SeedStart program is similar to programs at DreamIt in Phildelphia (covered last September in this column), TechStars in Boston, Boulder, and Seattle, and Silicon Valley's YCombinator. (All of these sites have places for aspiring companies to apply, and TechStars' Boston group application closes next week.) Entrepreneurs get $20,000 for up to 4 people to defray living expenses and cover hardware, server or cloud computing rental, and the like. It's not huge money, its only intended to make it easy for the folks in the company to work without worrying about office space, rent or macaroni and cheese money. For that, founders give up 5% equity in the company they're creating. At the end of the summer, they present to other investors, who may choose to help the company move further along the track.

What's different is the City. NYCSeed and its joint venture partners in SeedStart, Venture firm advisors from RRE, Contour Ventures, Polaris Ventures, and IA Venture Strategies, as well as its mentors and advisory board represent a path to New York's top industries including executives from the Advertising, Media, Fashion and Financial Services worlds. "For seed-stage start-ups, where you start out should be about far more than just investment dollars. Strategic direction and industry insight are key and SS is adding that layer here in NYC - access to talent and guidance from professionals who are executives at the business partners and customers the start-ups need to penetrate," according to Danny Schultz, MD and co-founder of DFJ Gotham Ventures, an early-stage tech focused VC firm here in NY.

If you're not interested in starting a tech company, New York's Fashion Incubator and Kitchen Incubator are other ways the city is trying to attract talent and create new jobs.

Coming to the Big Apple to start a company is a major decision, and as the song says, "Its up to you..."

What are your Startup plans in 2010? Let me know in the comments.

(*Disclosure: I served on the board of the World Wide Web Artists Consortium with Owen Davis from 1996-98, but have had no business dealings with him.)

Several companies go on year-end retreats. Managing partner Doug Hall from and Dallas-based Financial Additions said "Everyone has to list the 3 things they are most proud of, and 3 'do-overs.' We also ask for the one thing they are going to do differently and one thing the company could do different. We then set goals, hand write them and sign the handwritten statement, and put the handwritten notes in a box (time capsule) in the conference room. Monthly, we pull out this handwritten list, pass it out and remind everyone of their own personal commitments in their own handwriting. The goals are posted in a more formal outline the office for view but there is something about handwritten commitments that makes a difference."

Yola.com 's offsite has similar qualities. CEO Vinny Lingham gathers the management team and each person shares what they felt was the biggest accomplishment for the year. "We discuss how we met that goal and what it took to get there. This also helps us set new goals for the following year. Discussing this accomplishment makes the Yola team even more likely to meet the ambitious goals of next year."

Goal setting doesn't require a retreat, though. Todd Schoenberger, Managing Director of LandColt Trading and a Fox News Contributor said "I set 4 goals I need to accomplish in the next year. Anything less, and I really need to reevaluate my passion for the business. You need dozens of initiatives floating out there. If you don't, you get stale, and your business will--probably--not survive."

Mahalo.com founder and long time Internet Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis told me "As a startup company it's a good idea to review, and in fact celebrate, the victories you've had over the past year. Looking back at your "team emails" is a good method for this, as well as simply looking at statistics. [I'm going to tell my team] We've tripled its traffic and grown 11x in revenue year over year in December. That's exciting stuff."

" I'd encourage start ups to create a system or SOP for everything so that when year-end comes, there's no pressure to get things organized (especially accounting records) or complete administrative tasks. Having a process for everything means you'll only have to spend time signing off before heading off for vacation" said Isha Edwards, Owner, Founder and Brand Marketing Manager of Epic Measures.

Crystal L Kendrick, President of The Voice of Your Customer, a minority-owned marketing firm that assists clients to penetrate niche markets, wrote in to say "We review our strategic objectives to ensure that they remain in line with current market conditions. Most importantly, we include key leaders, advisors and suppliers in the planning process and communicate to our employees, contractors and customers accordingly."

With Goals set, many then take some time to relax and prepare for the New Year. Serial Entrepreneur Lucinda Holt of ClickEquations.com takes "2 weeks if possible. Really clear my head from the day-to-day of the business'to take stock of what went well and to study major industry trends."

Mike Enos, chief executive officer of Fast Wrap USA has started 3 companies. "In December of every year I take off on a 3 week long fishing cruise down to Mexico. This really helps me re-focus and re-energize for the new year as well as helping me to de-stress from the previous year. I always come back with great new ideas and feeling like I'm ready implement them."

I've personally been inspired by many of these entrepreneurs, and I'm planning to follow their lead, specifically by taking a few days to refocus at the end of this year. My column won't publish the last week of the year, so I'll see you in January with new news for your Startup Toolkit.

Leif Hartwig, founder of 5050BIZ.com said "I typically launch a year-end campaign that bonuses employees for their December results. The extra money they earn is appreciated around the holidays and promotes strong employee/employer relationships."

Ben Lerer, angel investor and founder of male-focused local city guide Thrillist.com said "I like to wrap the year in a bow. I think it's important to give employees significant time off (we are closed from Christmas to New Years) to take a proper vacation knowing the office is closed, with the peace of mind that they don't need to worry about Thrillist. It motives everyone to work especially hard in Q4 and sprint full speed ahead toward the light at the end of the tunnel, while also laying the groundwork for Q1. Additionally, it gives everyone a chance to rejuvenate and enter the New Year strongly."

Several CEOs told me there is no year-end anymore — its just another quarter. "Don't wait for the end of the year, if you need to change strategy or implement change, carefully evaluate it and implement it immediately! The year-end is just another quarter; you should always be cleanly closing quarters" said Jeff Stewart, CEO of Urgent Career and founder of Mimeo.com. There's one exception to his rule: accounting items. "I recommend changing the chart of accounts only once a year. This will make reporting easier and simpler."

Then there are those who reach out to important clients and customers at year's end. "I always send out New Years gifts as opposed to Christmas or Hanukah gifts. They don't get "lost" among all of the other gifts my clients are inevitably getting at that time!" reported Danielle Cuomo, Owner of Virtual Assist USA. Lisa L. Spahr, Consultant, Coach and Author, thinks taking inventory of your best clients is important. "Once identified, thank them with a gift or personal connection. Then, track how you got them and thank the referral partner who directed them to you with a gift or personal connection. Finally, create a plan for attracting more of them, your BEST clients, by repeating history. You'll enjoy the year more by working with the type of clients you most enjoy (for whatever reason you chose them as the best)."

Alltop.com CEO Guy Kawasaki, a founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures and the author of nine books, told me "I throw out every pending email and start the New Year with an empty inbox. It's a good thing you sent this when you did."

What do you do at the end of the year?

"It grew out of my own needs. Reporters I knew were constantly asking me if I had a source about different subjects," Peter told me. He started gathering his friends and sources in a Facebook Group, quickly outgrew the group, and created a Page for HARO. Facebook didn't have the tools Peter needed to manage the list, so he started using an email list provider. In about a year, his list has grown to over 300,000 readers.

HARO is now a three-times-a-day newsletter that lists reporter's source requests, and lets the potential sources contact the journalists. If you're a small startup, you have the same chance as any large business to be quoted about your expertise - just read HARO right when it comes out and respond appropriately. (Don't forget to read section 3.2 - the rules of HARO .) Daily, journalists from major media outlets are finding sources via HARO. "The list has gone from being a tool for PR people to being a tool for small business," said Shankman. "The 97% of the businesses in this that are small businesses still need good PR, but HARO helps level the playing field, especially for startups."

While Shankman started HARO to get his reporters and sources together without him as a direct intermediary, he also knew he had a revenue source. As this is a valuable, opt-in list of sources and journalists, Shankman and his team sell the space in the first paragraph of each mailing. Since inception, HARO has promoted about 1250 different small and mid-sized businesses to the list of over 300k people.
This stream of cash (3 ads a day, roughly 250 business days a year, or 750 ads per year, and about 1.7 MM emails per month) has generated over $1 million dollars in revenue in the first year. Shankman now employs 5 paid staff.

Do-It-Yourself Publicity Expert Nancy Juetten promoted her Bye Bye Boring Bio guide on Haro and said "I got to break even [on the ad cost] within 12 hours. Blog visits have escalated dramatically. Ezine sign ups have escalated, too." Leslie Haywood, Founder of Grill Charms said her HARO ad propelled her and her company to secure over 50 media opportunities for her company, including Parenting, Health, and NBC.com. All of her media exposure from her HARO ad led to an appearance on ABC's hit small business reality show "Shark Tank."

While PRNewswire's Profnet performs much of the same function - connecting reporters and sources, the service is subscription only. Shankman says they're not a competitor. "We're targeting 307 million small business owners who haven't heard of us yet."

Final advice for startups from serial entrepreneur Shankman? "Never listen to the naysayers - worst that happens, it fails and I go do something else."

And yet, you could tell the boss they improve morale. Huh told me the company motto about making everyone happy "is a crowd sourced philosophy- it came from the users sending email saying the site cheers them up. They turned that into our mission." That's fitting considering that users create the content and make each other happy. "It's their world, we're just helping them," said Huh.

So, as we're all laughing, Huh and his Pet Holdings Inc.Cheezburger Network are laughing all the way to the bank. With nearly 50 million page views a month (self reported for the network), and over 1 million unique visitors for ICanHasCheezeburger.com (according to Compete.com statistics), the network has some serious revenue potential. (Pet Holdings is privately held and do not disclose earnings).

What lead to the growth of this site? Huh had been part of a failed DotCom startup, and had spent time after that working with other CEOs and entrepreneurs trying to learn what made businesses successful. He knew of the Cheezburger site started by Eric Nakagawa and several others, and was brought in to help as it grew in popularity. He raised money to buy the site outright via an angel investor in Seattle. Once he bought the site he did one thing: Nothing. "I thought, don't screw it up. Don't change anything, run it the same way. I inherited a site generating revenue, so the trick was not to put it in the red."

As the network of sites grew, Huh has added people, always making sure the revenue pays for the new hires. While people still perceive them as "2 guys in pajamas in their mom's basement," today Pet Holdings Inc. has 26 employees and full time contractors.

"Believe it or not, spending less than you earn is hard. The 'If I build it they will come' inclination is very strong," said Huh. Growth is mostly organic -they purchased a few sites, but majority of them they built themselves. As the network grew larger, they were able to launch more sites, more frequently. Each new site is like a niche cable network, with a different audience and revenue based on their interests. Typically, the new ideas come from the users telling them what sites to build — and contributing all the material. "We get more that 10 thousand submissions of content per day," said an amazed Huh.

Some of that content has been republished as best selling books. The I Can Has Cheezburger book is currently 17th in Humor and 8th in Cats, Dogs and Animals on Amazon, 1 year after publication. Two new books have recently been released.

Failure, he told me, IS an option. "If you fail hard, you can't get back up again, and you've destroyed opportunity. If you make small mistakes that you learn from, you can adapt. A good entrepreneur isn't supposed to 'not screw up' but to find out what works.

Ben's favorite humor site? "It's still I Can Has Cheezburger. I save it to the end of the day, when I'm tired, and I savor it. The creativity of the users is fascinating and so unexpected." And the ultimate irony for this humorous LOL Cat entrepreneur? He doesn't have any cats - he's allergic to them.

How can your business grow by making people happy? Discuss in the comments below.

Bonus video: Behind the Scenes at Fail Blog.

*(LOL means Laughing Out Loud)

There are some basic steps, like having your Facebook or Twitter pages link back to a page on your official company site that, in turn, notes your official presence on those social sites. But for some people, that's not enough.

This is one of the problems that PeoplePond.com is trying to solve. When someone from a social network connects with you, how do you know that this particular "John Smith" is the John Smith who you met at the chamber of commerce meeting, or at college? PeoplePond http://peoplepond.com president Theron McCollough told me they have 2 products. "PeoplePond is a Brand and Identity management tool. There's lots of noise on the net, this is a place where people can have their own jump-off point. It's all the information that you want others to see, and a very robust living document for you.

Since People are acting like corporations, and corporations are trying to be like people (making one-to-one connections), CompanyPond http://www.companypond.com/ creates a profile for all company online presences, with links to all the people who are legitimately part of your company." Follow the links and you can verify that this is Theron, who works for PeoplePond, and it's confirmed on the company page.

Tools are also available to show this information on Facebook and blogging platforms. Here's an example of Roderick Peterson, who has a verified profile. And, Fort Wayne Web Design lists Chad Pollitt on it's company page as one of its' employees, via his PeoplePond profile. McCullough told me the sites help startups and small businesses because "Having all your web presences listed in one place helps you manage them more effectively and helps you market and promote more effectively. If we look at building trust online — this helps show that you are who you say you are, everywhere you are online."

If you want people to have a higher level of confidence that you are who you say you are, for a fee your information is run through a 3rd party verification process improving the odds that it's you — though this verification is not as extensive as a credit check. PeoplePond provides a badge that shows you've been verified, and you can put it on your website. In the future, McCollough said, they'll be "Pushing identity account ownership beyond the PeoplePond site."

Additionally, having this profile may help your search engine rankings as it aggregates information about you, and points to all the places you 'exist' online. This could be helpful for a new company starting out and trying to build their name and search rank, as well as for a professional trying to improve where their own name shows up on search results. What things do you do to show your customers you are really behind your own Facebook, Twitter, or Blog page? Share in the comments below.

Amazon, the folks who bring you books and other things via their online site, created a service called "Mechanical Turk" that allows people to create such "Human Intelligence Tasks", and parcel out the actions to any workers that show up to do the task. Users have to take a 'test' to prove that they can do the work, and then they work on as many or as few assignments as they want to.

One challenge, however, is that the quality of individual workers can vary, and you, the job creator, are responsible for your own quality control. Enter CrowdFlower.com Luke Biewald, Founder and CEO, told me that in a previous role, he occasionally needed a bunch of people to quickly check local results for search engine Powerset (now part of Microsoft's Bing team), but he couldn't just hire and fire them overnight. He started using Mechanical Turk to parcel out tasks, but found the quality of the results would vary depending on who did the tasks.

Luke and his partners made a decision to create Crowdflower. Their website redundantly assigns tasks to different workers. They then test the results. If multiple workers agree on a result, it gives a higher degree of confidence about the quality of the work. Crowdflower works "on top of" sites like Mechanical Turk, even splitting work across different crowd sourcing sites.

Why farm out this kind of work? Luke described a wedding photography company that assigns a task of looking at pictures, labeling them (Is the Bride in this photo?), and then asks "does this seem like a good photo that someone would want?" The photographer doesn't have to look through a bunch of pictures to judge brightness, or focus, and he also gets a result "bride and groom in the photo."

Christian Wiklund Founder & CEO Skout, Inc. (warning- dating site, not all images are appropriate for a business office), a mobile-focused location-based dating site said "One thing that we have to do is content moderation — making sure there's no copyrighted or explicit material on our site. We used to do this manually, but as we're growing, we either have to hire more people in our operations team, or outsource this in some way. Crowdflower provided a cheap alternative. All our content uploads go to Crowdflower, and we get back an 'approved' or 'not approved' message. This works out really well for us. We did side by side manual approval to Crowdflower's work force, and they were basically equivalent.This kind of work has to be done by people, and this solution is saving us money and time."

Crowdflower marks up 33% on top of the cost of the crowdsourcing sites. The company recently took a $1MM angel funding round.

How could you use a 'crowd' to solve your problems? Give some feedback below.

While I don't want this column to harp on the health care debate in Washington, Terri Lonier, President at WorkingSolo.com, told me she believes "The Entrepreneurial Spirit would be unleashed in the US if we had better access to health care. Of course there are economic consequences, but in my experience, people who are ready to run their own firms stay as W2 workers due to challenges getting insurance. Illness underscores the reality that many entrepreneurs are their business. They should have contingency plans in place for someone to fill in for client or customer obligations when they're not able to."

Elizabeth Brooks, managing partner of Str.ate.gy knows about that "plan b." She has a small team, but she's the creative lead on almost all her projects, and many can't move ahead without her input. "The world stops when you are incapacitated. I've had the situation where I had a minor outpatient procedure, but had no idea if I would be on painkillers, or how long it would take for me to recover." She had people who she trusted completely, but "It is always difficult when it is a creative decision since no one will make it the same as you would. Creatives are often very 'type A' and hard to relinquish control - but you need to have that backup person." She advises that for each initiative, for each item, hand it to the person on your team with the most appropriate background. Or, give it to someone who you trust as a partner who you work with often. "You have to have faith in your ability to choose great staff, or great partners. Having been a corporate executive helped me learn to do that."

Mark Tafoya, owner of the Remarkable Palate personal chef service , and co-owner of the Culinary Media Network
said the biggest problem is "you're the guy. If you are sick, you can't work. On the media side of my business I could work from home, but as a Personal Chef, it's irresponsible for me to cook for others when I'm not healthy. I pass the job to someone else, and end up losing the money from that day's gig, but it is the right thing to do. The benefit of being a chef, though, is that I'm much more aware of being clean, and I wash my hands all the time. I actually am getting sick less often."

What's your plan B? Let us know in the comments.

I'm going to be looking out for trade show booths, good and bad, and have posted a few pictures (bad booth, good booth). When you spend thousands of dollars for a booth at a trade show — what are you doing to attract people into the booth? Will your signage have your logo, the name of your company and your tagline or motto? Great. But what about telling people what your company does? I'm often amazed by companies who spend money for large signs telling you they're the "Industry's Leading Solution Provider" or the "Top In Our Field." Which field? What Industry? What are you solving?

When I've been to really large trade shows, done at Javits in NYC or the Los Vegas Convention Center, I've always come away a little shell shocked. It is overwhelming to walk literally miles of aisles trying to find a booth with a company that solves a problem or provides a new service I didn't know about. The booths tend to blend together. Therefore, what you put on your sign is very important and relevant. Ask someone who's not in your industry to look at your design and see if they can explain what your booth is for just by looking at the signage.

Once prospects are in the booth, someone knowledgeable should be there to help them. Having 'rent-a-booth' people often isn't usually helpful for closing sales. Those folks may be attractive, or extra bodies, but they probably don't know your industry or your business. They can do little more than get leads that you hope you can follow up - they can't usually qualify the lead. Use those people to help prospects fill forms, do very light hospitality, and move them to your sales person. Having your actual employees, who can turn contacts into warm leads, which turn into sales, will maximize the value of what you've spent. What are your trade show tips? Comment below, please.

Small business trade shows are always exciting for me because I get to interact with lots of startups and business owners, and find out what they want from my column. I hope people will talk to me after my panel and let me know. Feel free to tell me more about your business in the comments below — and let me know what I should be writing about for you.

It's not easy. You're out making your products, raising capital, or finding the right supplier or accountant, and sometimes the customer problems seem like, well, problems. That is exactly where a leader steps in and declares problems to be opportunities.

For example, our lawn service recently burned our lawn and our neighbor's lawn with chemicals. We had to argue that they had done it, and that they should make it right. The clue was the fact that the brown streaks stopped at the property line with a neighbor who doesn't use that service. There was an opportunity for the owner to apologize and immediately make things right. He eventually did, but you can be sure my neighbor is already talking with other lawn companies, offering them not one but two new customers for next year if they can give us a good deal. And we'll be looking for customers who've used them and getting recommendations.

Today I'm off to cover the Blog World Expo in Vegas. I needed reprints of my business cards. I contacted the firm I used the last time, which I won't name, but which promises a quick turn around. They delivered on time, but the cards were all cut wrong, with a 1/16 or 1/8 inch white line in the colored bar at the bottom of my cards (see photo).

I've spent several hours via email arguing that they should reprint and overnight them. They want to charge me for the overnight shipping. I say, correct your mistake and make me the customer advocate. If they did that, their name would be here in the column and they would look like heroes.

I was recently at a client's site, and their customer service manager told me "We think of every problem reported as a gift. It is an opportunity to make our products better, and to keep a customer." Wow. I want to work there, don't you? It is one of the best things I've heard in a long time. Of course, I don't know how it plays out in real life, but noting that this company is in a highly regulated industry where their problems are tracked by government agencies, I suspect it is more than lip service.

Who gives you great service? What do you do to make sure your customers are happy? Share your ideas below, please.

Dave told me his primary motivation for joining DreamIt was money. They had raised just a few thousand dollars from friends and family for their small company, Waffl.com, which helps Bed and Breakfast and innkeepers with technology and online marketing. Waffl lets these small inns create very good looking, search optimized promotion pages and more.

However, now that the team has been through the accelerator/incubator experience, "The money mattered much less than the experience value. For example, we worked with the law firm, racked up thousands of dollars in fees, but they were covered." Lifson also said that the experience gave them credibility with other angel investors and early stage venture funds. Finally, they learned a great deal about skills they were lacking such as Sales and Business Development. "We now understand price elasticity and how to create surveys to see what prices people are willing to pay for a service."

Additionally, a few weeks into the incubator experience, Lifson, Maguire and Schoppik had switched direction. They still manage Waffl, but ended up spending most of their summer creating Postling, a tool to help the innkeepers they met at Waffl (as well as any other small business) promote themselves in many forms of Social Media. A small business can create their own blog posts, and have those posts promoted via Facebook and Twitter. The posts can also flow to blogging services like Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace and TypePad, and even more importantly, comments flow back to the Postling dashboard. So, in one place, a small business with limited time and resources can manage their social media presences.

The Postling team recently added a feature that allows postings at a certain time. So, a small business owner can schedule a blog post for 10am, with Twitter and Facebook promotion at 10:05am and again later in the day. That way, if the business owner is busy at the register or speaking with a client, their information still goes out on time.

There are more good things coming to Postling, according to the team, much of it from what they learned from their Waffl customers and experiences at DreamIt's Start-up Accelerator.

Is an incubator right for your business? Ask your questions below.

I spoke with Steve Barsh, a managing partner of Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures and a Project Faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, about how DreamIt works with Startups. (I also had the privilege of speaking to this summer's group back in August. )

Howard Greenstein.: What's the role of an accelerator/incubator?

Steve Barsh: The number one blended role is to help them refine their idea and de-risk it. Entrepreneurs run around with assumptions, thinking that everyone is going to want their product or service. Most business ideas are based on three to five key assumptions. How do you test and remove risk from those assumptions as quickly and as capital efficient as possible? By turning assumptions into knowledge as quickly and cheaply as you can. Build a product or service, release it to the world, and get it out to your market and test metrics. That way you de risk. Figure out "What did I learn?" and then iterate.

Another way of doing it is to speak to your target market first, before you build anything. There is no need to build software to test entrepreneur's assumptions. Ask your market and you'll get requirements you didn't know about, including feedback and reactions.

HG: What resources can a company get from an incubator?

SB: The most important thing is a mentor, a been-there done that entrepreneur who can help you through the process. Another critical resource is a speaker series that is very pragmatically focused with tips, tricks and help that companies can use to take action immediately. Professional support like accountants and attorneys and office space are usually included. Don't minimize the ideation time, bouncing thoughts off others. The teams cross pollinate and work together and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Finally, they provide some working capital -"mac and cheese money" — so you don't worry about paying the rent and eating. We take pressure off so you can focus on ideas.

HG: What are some of the tradeoffs?

SB: It will be a lot more intense — people describe it as "working out at the gym vs. working out at home." Everyone is watching; so you lift more, work harder. You're in a more competitive situation — if another group met with business prospects, you feel pressure to meet with business prospects. Another tradeoff is a some of your company's equity. For some of the entrepreneurs, they had to move to Philly for the summer, find a sublet and just work - like boot camp for 3 months.

You can learn more about the start-ups Dreamit worked with this past summer on their Demo Day page. In the next few weeks, I hope to have one of the 'graduating' company's feedback on their experience. Did you work with an incubator? Share your story below.

Heyman would know. Several years ago, he started a company called iPromotions, running online promotions campaigns, and has run hundreds of these for large and small advertisers. His book "Conversion Marketing" and his research into the topic comes from his experience in these campaigns.

When you consider promotions for you company, Heathman says "If you are an IT consultant helping small businesses create office networks, you would use a different promotional vehicle than would an owner of a hair salon." The trick is to visualize the target audience, figure out what offers they respond to, and then pick tool to evoke emotional response. How? Take a look at self interest motivators of audience vs the business motivators of that audience. If you're that IT consultant selling $10k servers to a large company, you can offer 2 types of promotional offers. One would be $500 in free cables required to setup the server. But, there's no value to the purchasing manager as individual even if he'll need the cables. Instead, consider offering a free fly-fishing rod if the purchaser lives in an area where that sport is popular. The 2nd offer is more of an emotional response item, and may generate more sales.

I asked Heathman "How do you test the emotional response and see how people will react?" He told me "The size of your organization will determine your appetite for testing and measuring campaigns. For a small company, call up customers and ask which promotional offers they like. This is inexpensive and may be quick and effective. If you do have a team, you can try things like A|B pay-per-click testing using Google Ad Words, or try different offers to different customers."

If you're not sure where to start, Heathman's "promotional tools worksheet" lets you evaluate which offers might work for you. Has promotion and conversion worked for you? Let us know how in the comments.

As a marketing and PR veteran for over 20 years, Robyn Levin found the Entrepreneurs and startup marketing teams she was coaching were missing a simple way and brief way to create a focused marketing strategy.
Often, in meetings with them, she would grab a napkin to sketch out ideas. She wondered how often this occurred, and started considering the characteristics of the napkin. Clearly, there's limited space, so there is only room for core ideas. Less, in this case, is more.

"I started giving seminars and handing out branded napkins on which attendees could create their plans." Now Levin has an Ebook — the Cocktail Napkin Marketing Plan that lets entrepreneurs answer a series of questions, and the results are filled into a one—sheet template. (I guess cocktail napkins don't really fit through a pc printer.) "The intent of the plan" says Levin "is to get entrepreneurs clear, focused and ready to take action." The result is a one—year time line with quarterly strategies that the entrepreneur can follow.

Levin notes that some older entrepreneurs are not as comfortable with the new technologies for marketing. They may be overwhelmed or confused by Internet tools like Facebook. She suggests that to market today you have to "understand traditional and new media, and how important it is to integrate the two types." Clearly, Levin does this, selling e-books, blogging, creating webinars, and using word of mouth. She also does in person speaking and bootcamps for training.

What are some core take-aways Levin can give to Entrepreneurs and Startups? "People who are new to marketing or advertising often give it one or two tries and then give up. They don't realize how many times you may have to do something in order to get people to take action. Like Covey says, Begin with the End in mind. A strategy is very important and without it you may be throwing money away. You may have to reach out 5 to 7 times before people will take action."

How do you create your marketing strategy? The comments are open below.

When I spoke to Mark LePage last year in Building Success by Blogging he mentioned that he spends 10-12 hours a week on bloggin, separate from his standard marketing efforts.

If one goes by the old adage that an entrepreneur should spend about 20% of her time marketing, Mark might be spending more time when you factor in blogging and standard marketing (or working 80 hours a week).

Sometimes, though, the social media efforts really require some focus and organization. Use tools such as Google Reader to organize RSS feeds from websites you care about, so you don't have to check each site separately. Create Bookmarks in your browser to remind you to check important sites (like your competitors, industry trade association sites, The Startup Toolkit, etc.).

Social Media Consultant Chris Brogan notes how much work he does in "How Many Chores Does It All Add". Chris' thoughts are great, but more focused on the high-end social media user. However, the things in his comments below the post can also give you great ideas.

If you're using Twitter, consider tools that help manage your incoming messages, such as TweetDeck, CoTweet, PeopleBrowsr, or just look at the @Replies tab on your home page more than your regular page to see if people are talking about you or your company. Don't forget to search twitter for mentions of your company or industry as well.
(Disclosure: in the past I have done some consulting for CoTweet, but am not currently doing so.)
If you have a blog, make sure new comments are set to come to you in email, so you can respond to them. Make a time, in the morning or afternoon, to check your social presences, such as a facebook fan page, myspace page, or whatever you're using. Check it then don't watch it all day. It is true that Social Media can take a lot of time, and we'd all probably be looking at pictures of our friends on the beach than doing the hard work of running our businesses. But if you make specific appointment times and use those times to check in, respond to questions, and post new content for your customers and fans, you'll be able to manage the time and be more effective.

What methods are you using? Share them in the comments below.

LinkedIn is a 6 year old social network intended to help people make better use of their professional networks while allowing you to help people you trust in return. In practice, though, many people aren't using LinkedIn to its full potential, so Krista gave me several tips which I'll share over the next few weeks.

How can your startup business get the most value from LinkedIn? Krista said it depends on your goals. For a lot of small businesses, they get the most utility out of LinkedIn Answers. "Many businesses use Answers as a think tank — a way of asking your network for help about a question or business problem. If you don't' have a network you can make your question public, and everyone can chime in. You can get answers from anyone - over 45MM users — who can help you connect with other professionals."

When you login to LinkedIn and look at your Answers page, you'll see questions from your own network. You can also browse all the different subject areas and see if there are things you can answer yourself. Answering the questions can be a key to generating your own business leads, or to finding new connections.

Krista noted "Always be really transparent and tell people who you are when you respond. For example, if you're a travel agent, and someone asks travel related questions, respond with tips and tools, regardless of whether you are going to get the business." Be generous with advice and answers, as this will improve your reputation. Then people will think of you when they want to specifically use your services.

We'll have more LinkedIn tips in a few weeks. Please share your tips in the comments.

Affiliate Marketing has been around for many years on the net. Inc covered it in 2001, Affiliate Advertising: Friend to the Bottom Line and 2004's Start a Sales-Based Affiliate Program.

But of course, things have changed a lot in the last few years. "Think of Affiliate as another sales channel" says Jim Kukral of TheBizWebCoach.com. "It is a way to obtain leads or sales, and monetize those referrals in a way that uses tracking technology to give people credit for the sales they sent you, and to make sure those referrals get paid." There are opportunities for affiliates to send direct sales to a site, or to pass leads. Many people have seen,the Amazon.com affiliate program. People put a link to a book on their website, with some special code that Amazon provides, and if someone buys the book via that site, the owner get a small percentage. Why leave it to Amazon? You can have people selling your goods on their site too.

Lead passing is different. Think of a widget on a car enthusiast site that passes a potential car buyer's name and address to a lead aggregator. A car dealer might want to purchase that lead, and the lead generator gets a percentage.

Who should create an affiliate program? Wade Tonkin of GTO Management, a company that is an "outsourced program manager" which creates an affiliate program on your behalf and manages it for you, notes "Retail is an obvious fit. The affiliate gets a percentage of the sale they've sent to the site. As a merchant, you define what you pay for — a lead, or an actual closed sale in your shopping cart."

Brook Schaaf of Schaaf Consulting and a member of board of the industry's first not-for-profit trade association, the Performance Marketing Alliance suggests that companies must be of a certain size to really benefit from creating an affiliate program. "If you're selling a million dollars of goods a year, and affiliate sales generate an additional 10% of sales, there are going to be fees for the affiliate network, and time spent creating the program and integrating it into your own e-commerce site. It may or may not be worth the additional $100k." Schaaf's group tends to work with companies that already sell $5M or more a year.

But networks such as ShareASale.com let a small merchant do self-service creation of an affiliate program, track the referrals, and pay the affiliates for helping you sell. This business is huge — over 3000 attendees visited the Affiliate Summit this week, and there were 2 floors of booths promoting networks and programs.

Before you start an affiliate program, know that there have been a lot of problems with fraudulent leads and link inflation in the past. "Quality is important," notes Schaaf, "so you should work with services that guarantee to vet your leads and sales for quality."

There's a famous quote about half the money spent on advertising being wasted — if only you knew which half. Affiliate is a way to track and manage that spending so it is clear how payments relate to sales or tangible leads. Kukral and Tonkin suggest any new business considering creating a program do substantial research. A few good blogs to read are "ABestWeb.com" and "AffiliateTip.com". The Affiliate Summit West is in January in Las Vegas if you want to immerse yourself in learning and potential partners.

Previously Hill was a fashion designer, and after time out of the workforce, she was inspired to create Kidzsack because her kids needed a product like it. She also wanted an outlet for her creativity. Hill created Kidzsack, an "eco-friendly backpack and a craft project for kids."

In order to sell her product, Tina has to reach business owners and merchandisers. She's taken to doing much of her own promotion and marketing herself in different ways from online to the phone to in-person networking. Using Tina as a model, here are 5 ways (plus a bonus way) you can promote your start up business more effectively - and obtain sales in the process.

Connect online
One of Hill's key tools is LinkedIn. When she got an order from a Zoo, she went on LinkedIn and connected to the rep, and then worked creating a relationship. Recently she sent him a message, and he bought a new order of products. Hill also sells to resorts, so she joined several resort professionals discussion groups. There she found and connected to resort buyers, which directly led to sales. When DrToy.com gave Kidzsack a "Best Vacation Product Award" Hill put up a press release under the news topic in several of her groups. Buyers got right back to her. Her advice: "Use Groups and reach out to members as a way to find buyers who wouldn't know the product otherwise."

Find Writers and Bloggers interested in Your Industry
To help promote her product to end customers, Hill often reaches out directly to Bloggers who cover kid products. Hill told me "A lot of people read blogs and they shouldn't be underestimated'one person reads it and then tells two people who then tell three'and so on." Clearly she understands the power of social sharing, and how blogs and other online platforms encourage readers to share content, which can lead to sales.
Another good place to find writers? Watch the "Help a Reporter" list. I sourced this article via that list.

Pick up the phone
Tina said "Cold Calling is old fashioned but it's still the No. 1 way I've been getting my sales. People still like dealing with people directly and developing a relationship on the phone and not just by e-mail. E-mail is great for follow ups but I always make an initial first call." I ran that by the "Queen of Cold Calling" Wendy Weiss and she agreed. "Cold calling works. The number one mistake that most cold callers make is to not prepare effectively for their calls. It's a myth to say that cold calling is a numbers game--it's not. Cold calling is a preparation, strategy and skills game."

Find people in person
So often, we know someone who knows someone who can help us, but we don't work our network effectively. Tina sent an email to hundreds of friends and contacts asking for help getting her on TV. "Talk with your friends because everyone knows someone. I reached out to friends and asked 'Who knows someone on TV'? A really good friend knew an anchor on CBS, and they used Kidzsack for their'EcoFriendly must-have products.' "

Have an Effective Website
Hill's website has everything that's needed to find out more about her product, and she says people look at it first, before they contact her. While it is a good site, I'll take a writer's prerogative to suggest a few improvements. The "Where to Find Us" tab on the site is trying to be 3 pages in one. It is acting as the "News" page for the site, the "Where to Buy" for retail, and the "How to Contact a Sales Rep" page, and in doing so it is too busy. Tina would be better off having a "Where to Find Us" page that is for consumers, segmented by State and then Town so it is a bit easier to find the product. The other items deserve their own pages too, so News could show on the "About" page. There also should be a clear link on the home page for wholesale buyers to contact Kidzsack.

Use Online Sites to get Business Support
In addition to reading this column (Thanks) Tina uses small business owner communities www.mommymillionaire.com and www.mominventors.com because "they give tips, have discussions, and help in every way possible. I have made friends on these social networks that have helped me with leads as well as product liability insurance advice (reducing my costs significantly)." Mommy Millionaire got her four or five good friends from the website, and they've helped her shape her business. There are community sites like these for many industries. Use your search engine to find one and become involved.

What are some of the suggestions you have? Please leave comments below.

Acting product manager Mark Jones and marketing manager April Sailsbury shared with me an example of a pizza chain who wanted employees to efficiently be able to order supplies from the distributor. An employee with a mobile phone or wireless device could go into the kitchen, freezer, and stockroom and analyze the inventory, clicking on different items he feels need to be ordered. When the order is done, it is submitted and can be retrieved at chain headquarters as a separate order, or as one line in a spreadsheet. The central group could then bulk order their products and have the appropriate ingredients sent to the individual stores.

I gave them a different example. Say a saleswoman is out in the field and wants to rapidly take orders based on inventory already available — how could she do that? Jones told me "If you want real time inventory you can work with the "reformXT Companion" to update form information from your own database." Our saleswoman could fill the form on her blackberry and submit it while still on the customer site. As she looked through the specific items, she could see updated inventory numbers to let the customer know what is in stock and what might take longer (or offer a substitute product).

Small companies shouldn't fear creating their own forms — if you can fill out a basic web form, you can create your own form with reformXT. The product runs as "Software as a Service" — on their website. Your employees mobile phones access their servers for the forms, and you get the data via email.

The reformXT software is free to try out and create forms, but costs per transaction of forms can range from a few cents to a dollar per form submitted, depending on your usage package. You buy batches of transactions and can save when you buy in bulk.

Cost out how much time it takes when employees are filling out paper and then retyping it — could you make the switch to mobile, on-the-go entry? Comments are welcome below.