In December of 2010, an article published in the NY Times put forth the idea that “humans are born with the urge to help”. Helping other people in need really does make you feel good, and it can also foster good feelings from your community, build relationships with advocates for your business, and generate new opportunities to reach new customers.

The following are five easy ideas for ways that you can do something good for your community and for your business. If you’re looking for a way to energize your marketing, and do something great, try one of these out today!

Note: With all of these ideas, choosing an organization that resonates with your core demographic, or with your businesses mission and values will greatly enhance the potential promotional benefits. Choose something you are passionate about but that will also put in you in front of the people who’s attention you are trying to get!

This great article from Mashable  “How Your Small Business Can Start a Social Media for Social Good” outlines some effective tactics to optimize the impact of your efforts whether you do it online like the article recommends or locally like the suggestions below.

1) Donate goods or services to an Auction for Charity

Every year, schools all over your city turn to this tried and true method to generate much needed funds to support special programs, scholarships, and operational expenses. So do other great organizations in need. Charities who use Auctions find great ways to promote their supporters, including at the event, through online item listing and by advocating to their active communities of families to shop from supporting businesses. This is a really easy way to make an impact and build community relationships locally, and involves very little time (and only a small financial sacrifice!) from your business. I personally was fortunate enough to help staff a silent auction for the largest non- profit preschool in San Francisco and the school’s community was very devoted to supporting businesses that supported the schools fundraising efforts.

2) Sponsor an event

Events are a great way to build relationships with your community and promote your business. Aligning with a great organization in your area to create an event makes it that much easier for you, since you can offset the time consuming tasks of planning event logistics and wrangling attendants, but still reap the benefits of face to face interaction and good feelings! Often, these organizations have plenty of volunteers and staff ready to take on the rigors of planning, but not the funds they need to make them happen, so sponsoring an event becomes a win win for both of you. If you were already thinking of spending money on promoting an event then this is a great opportunity to magnify the impact of those funds!

3) Donate Your Services Directly to the Charity

This is a tricky one and really only applies to certain universal skills. But in my experience working in the Non Profit world there is always a demand for photographers, graphic designers, and web designers. These skills are costly and struggling non profits are always looking for help with their own promotional needs. The smaller the non-profit the more likely they might be open to using your services. Just remember that they might not need your skills immediately, since using these kinds of skills and services is usually part of a larger campaign or effort.

4) Bring Your Team to Volunteer

I recently stumbled upon this quote on the newly launched Social Good Website Crowdrise :

According to Fortune Magazine, All Top 10 of the “2009 Best Companies to Work For” put an extraordinary emphasis on Volunteering. 9 of the top 10 offered paid time off for Volunteering.We guarantee your company will be mentioned on the Forbes’ list if you participate. That guarantee thing is actually not true.

While their message might be a little tongue in cheek, I believe businesses really do reap some great team building and feel good energy from taking a break and rallying around a cause together. Crowdrise has employee programs that make it easy to build a team effort for your business. Or just reach out to a local charity that can accommodate a group of your size. Then make sure to take lots of pictures of your work and promote it through your social media! While not as overt a promotional opportunity as some of the other suggestions, getting your business out into the community and being present and active will provide opportunities to gain new exposure and build new advocates.

5) Donate a portion of your proceeds

Non Profit Organizations in need of funds will actively promote your business if they recieve a direct percentage of the business they generate for you. Large chain restaurants have been using this tactic successfully for decades. They promise to kick back a percentage of the profits and the organization promotes the business.  Last year a  local organization in San Francisco partnered with an entire neighborhood to generate a percentage of revenue from all dining that occurred during that night, and people came out in force to support the cause.

This  tactic can also work well for retail businesses. Just make sure that the organization you target has a core group of supporters who want what you are selling. You are trying to tap into their existing community (since most non profits don’t have the resources to attract a whole new community if what you have isn’t the right fit). This method also works better for small, local organizations without lots of promotional partners, larger organizations with more partners aren’t going to have the incentive to promote your business as aggressively.

Final Note: Be Flexible

Whatever tactic you try, remember that these organizations are exceptionally grateful for your support, but ultimately they are trying to accomplish their mission (something you also want to support!). The best partnerships between businesses and nonprofit organizations occur when those organizations aren’t required to put in a lot of effort to take what you are offering.

I’ve worked in nonprofit organizations that put a lot of time and resources into figuring out how to use things offered to them that they don’t need for fear of losing the support of those businesses. If what you want to give isn’t the right fit, search for an organization that could really benefit for what you are offering or find out what the organization you want to support really needs!

Non profits are typically underfunded and understaffed and therefore excited to work with members of the community who care about their mission and their organization. Don’t be afraid to approach an organization you want to work with and ask them how you can help, they may have ideas that will work for both of you.

Ultimately this about building a long lasting relationship with the community and feeling good!

Eel and Ermine, a local San Francisco Small Business, has incredible events for their clients and advocates.

While  Social Media promotional and marketing methods are getting a lot of buzz and everyone is talking about how to use SEO to optimize your business website, “old fashioned” marketing strategies aren’t getting the same praise or attention from small business bloggers. There’s always something new on the marketing horizon, whether it be geolocation or flash sales, but the excitement over the potential of a new idea shouldn’t detract us from putting some energy into some tried and true tactics as part of a diverse, multi pronged maketing and PR strategy.

I’m a huge advocate for social media and technology. However today I want to advocate for a marketing tactic that can be done tech free. Some might even call it downright old fashioned. It involves stepping away from your computer screen and meeting people in real life. It’s also fun.

I speak of course, of events. Whatever the size of your business, it’s possible to plan an event which will bring you face to face with your clients, generate new advocates, build and nurture a group of key influencers, or develop fruitful potential partnerships and promotional opportunities. If you love technology, and using it in creative ways, social media can help you get people to the event, and parlay the event into branding and promotional opportunities afterwards.

Summer is a great time for events, especially fun, outdoor events or social events. Mashable is as we speak doing their annual Summer Tour. WorkingPoint is planning our own “WorkingPoint Wednesday” office warming party series to meet the other great companies at our new office space.

One great example of effective event based marketing for a small business is a local company that I love called Moxsie. In addition to a wonderful mission (supporting independent designers), and an admirable social conscious (a portion of all proceeds is donated to charity),  they also do a really stand out job of building community, brand awareness and marketing through events.

Kaboodle teamed up with the Karavan and Moxsie's "Street Eats" to provide Palo Alto with a tasty temptation-- cupcakes!

The Moxsie Event formula is one that can work for almost any business regardless of size, or what you are selling. These tips, gleaned from Moxsie’s stellar example, will help you develop a strategy to use events as a way to promote your business and build community around your brand.

1) STAY TRUE TO YOUR BRAND, MISSION & VALUES IN YOUR EVENTS

Moxsie is dedicated to promoting independent brands. They actively support “independent artists” both by exclusively selling and developing independent fashion vendors and by choosing charities to support that promote independent business. Their choice to create a series of events called “Street Eats”, an event calendar based on the independent food movement (also know in the Bay Area as the street food or street carts) actively reflects their mission and therefore their brand. This street food calendar, created by Moxsie, is a recurring opportunity for them to connect to people with similar interests, creating new advocates, supporters, interesting business partners and more.

The photo above is from one of these events and it’s truly great  advocacy for their business. If you are young, fashionable and socially conscious then a photo like this is genuine (not staged models!) and appealing. These are real, cool, stylish people having fun. It’s a powerful incentive to want to be part of their “movement”, and you can participate by buying their clothes.

2) WORK WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT

The Moxsie office is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the independent food movement is getting a lot of press and attention. It’s something that already exists here, and it seems like the Moxsie team just genuinely likes the food and was already eating at these places. Rather than dedicating a lot of time or resources into finding something new, look at what you’re already doing and make an event out of it. Do you work from a local coffee shop everyday? I bet other people do too… see if you can arrange for a “regulars” event or coffee tasting and look for interesting partnership opportunities. Could you get your existing vendors to bring extra gear for a trunk show and provide some snacks for a special event? Why not reward your best customers with a special party or a first look at a new item (Moxsie does this really well with their special pre order first look website) Do you have a new feature or product launching, why not throw a party to celebrate? Creativity is great, but you are a busy small business owner so work with what you’ve got!

3) EVENTS SHOULD BE FUN

Always. Avoid over programming, avoid too much information or too much selling. People want to come out to an event, meet other people, “network”, learn a little bit (but not too much) about you, and make new friends.  You can build the event around your brand in a professional way true to your  brand but ultimately if busy people are going to be spending time with you, they want to enjoy themselves. The easiest way to kill the fun at an event is to over program or aggressively try to brand it. Yes, your name should be out there and you should get credit for throwing it. But you should also be confident enough in yourself and your business to know that people can come, meet you, learn a little bit about what you do (hopefully in a casual relaxed way), and then have such a good experience that they come back for more of whatever it is your selling. Food and drink are pretty much essential, but it doesn’t have to be something fancy and there are great ways to keep costs low!

4) FOLLOW UP

Find a good way to capture information from your event attendants and follow up. The more personal the better. Technology has made photosharing easier than ever, and people love seeing fun pictures from a good event. Tweet, Facebook, use all that great social media technology to sustain the energy of an effective event. Follow up afterwards is equally as important as having a successful event. Send thank you notes, send thank you emails, use social media… just follow up afterwards so your great efforts wont be in vain!

All this new technology has made it easier than ever for other people to advocate for your brand, but events is a really great “old school” way to start building these relationships. No matter how much time I spend on Social Media (and trust me it’s a lot), nothing is a substitute for real face to face interaction!

As someone who writes a lot of blog posts myself, I know exactly how this feels…

Courtesy of Sparky Firepants (also known as David), a real life WorkingPoint user! Check out his other awesome work at www.sparkyfirepants.com.

Right now there is a lot of discussion around  social media and technological innovations that have the potential to provide uncharted opportunities for small businesses to reach new audiences. The most active users of these technologies exist in certain markets, like San Francisco, New York, LA, Boston, but with their rapid growth and popularity (and plans to expand into other areas) these trends could be coming your way soon.

The WorkingPoint offices are located in San Francisco, which means that we are lucky enough to be exposed to the newest trends, technology and innovations before they  reach everyone else. We want to help you to explore these technologies and how they might work for your business.

Geolocation and Small Business

In certain circles there’s a lot of buzz and excitement around Geolocation right now. Foursquares multimillion dollar valuation is being lauded as the latest indicator that influential people believe the trend is here to stay. However if you’re like most Americans, you’ve never even heard of it. According to Mashable, only 7% of Americans are even aware that Geolocation services exists.

What is Geolocation?

According to Wikipedia:

Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a cell phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal. Geolocation may refer to the practice of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location.

The term Geolocation, as we’re using it here, has come to represent the technology that enables you to both pinpoint, and then broadcast, your physical location via the use of a smartphone.

Geolocation services owe their ascension to the increasing use of Smartphones which these days commonly include both GPS and internet capabilities. These capabilities are what enable the smartphone users to track and then broadcast their locations.

Meanwhile, the rampant popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook revealed that people wanted to share everything with their friends. People where broadcasting with a mockable frequency what they are thinking, doing, wearing, eating, thinking about eating… Crowd sourced, location based review sites like Yelp created a online community of advocates (and detractors) who openly shared where they shopped and ate, and those opinions now dominate how a large and active community of users makes consumer decisions. The obvious next step in this world of absolute transparency was to let people know where you are in real time.

From this combination of factors, the “check in” was born. Now, Geolocation applications like FourSquare, Loopt, Twitter geolocation for tweets and even Yelp’s Iphone App let you broadcast your location, either through the app or by linking the updates to your Facebook or Twitter profile.

What does this have to do with my small business?

Foursquare and other Geolocation services are currently working with larger partners like Starbucks to provide coupons, frequent user discounts and other marketing incentives to their communities. Built into Foursquare is a frequent user contest, the “quest to become the mayor” and in certain locations mayors receive special discounts as well.

These Geolocation applications allow you to leverage your customers social networks to advertise your business. If know that my friends like to get their dresses altered at this location, or like this restaurant or go to this healthfood store, I am more likely to go to those places as well.

These Geolocation services also broadcast “trending” spots, or spots that are the most popular at any given time, which means that your location can have it’s own “viral” popularity among the user community.

Sounds great, what’s the catch?

Well, for one thing, Geolocation only works if you are a location based business. If you are not location based then this technology isn’t going to work for you!

Another caveat is that while it may seem that everybody has a smartphone, the actual statistics reveal that this is more perception than reality. According to Mashable, only about 30% of mobile users are using their browser, only 29% are using downloaded apps, and only about 19% are using their phones for social networking or blogs. As I mentioned earlier, only 7% of Americans even know that the technology exists. That’s a lot of room for growth!

Morever, proponents of the technology describe it as being free. Technically it is “free” since there is no actual cost associated, but if you’re running a solo or small business your time is quite possibly the most valuable asset you have, and spending your time on a tactic is an investment. Unfortunately, nothing is really free!

But here’s why you should still consider it…

If you are a location based business, and you are the first or one of the first in your area to adopt Geolocation strategies and technology, you will have access to the market before other businesses do. You know you are the best, so all you need is to get them in the door and then you can win them (and their loyalty, and their advocacy and their social network, and their social networks advocacy…) before other businesses do.

The first businesses to effectively use the Yelp community to win advocates are still reaping the benefits of their rankings and reviews over their slow to adapt competitors. And experts believe that the trend is inevitable and it will makes it way to your doorstep soon.

So if you’re ready to go for it and want to know how…

This great article from Mashable, “HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready” details how you can be the first in your community to adopt geolocation technology. She also advocates for the benefits of adopting the technology.  If you are a little bit familiar with the technology, or a quick learner and willing to dive into something new, this article will get your business Geolocation ready.

I suggest before spending too much time on the technology for your business, first giving it a try as a user, so you can experience and understand how and why people are using the technology.

What do you think? Will you be using Geolocation for your Small Business?

Guestpost by Solopreneur Expert Larry Keltto,
Author of the popular Solopreneur Resource Blog The Solopreneur Life