I finally got around to reading some old RSS subscriptions and I came across the following article: Real Life Examples of Business Owners Using Social Media from Small Business Trends and I was intrigued. I really wish I could have gone to the event. It would have been nice to have learn and listen to everyone who had attended. I love the fact that this article discusses the positive ways of using Social Media and also how so many people question it.

One thing that I do agree with is that you should definitely pick a few outlets and focus on them. Make sure they fit your target market. Also, the time aspect can be a problem. You can always outsource to people who know what they’re doing, or you can make it a company project and have everyone contribute (this works really well for Blogs). The main reason why I personally love Social Media is that the company no longer is just a company, but its something more personable and approachable regardless of the medium someone would find them through.

Twitter, my new personal favorite medium, is a great tool that I find that a lot of companies are under-utilizing. There are a lot of users, and although its fairly new (not really, about a year plus old), everyone is still learning the best techniques.

@37signals is a provider for a lot of the online applications that Border7 uses. I believe that everyone of their staff is also on Twitter (I am following quite a few of them). They use their Twitter account to notify their users of any downtime on their various products, and I am notified by at least 4-5 tweets telling me so.

@LessAccounting created a website (We All Hate QuickBooks) that displays a live feed of all Tweets that mention Quickbooks. The website is unfiltered, so it shows positive and (mostly) negative comments that people are making of one of LessAccounting’s competitors. Its a genius marketing strategy in my opinion. Also, I would never have found them if it wasn’t for Twitter. I was looking for other accounting providers, and they started a discussion with me (Twitter can be a great sales tool).

Which brings me to my next point. @Freshbooks saw that I was looking at other providers, and they used Twitter as a retention tool and talked me into staying with them as well. Fortunately, I needed something from both companies that only each uniquely provided.

@Zappos (I do not follow them since I’m afraid I’ll waste my entire paychecks shopping with them) is also a prime example of how to make your company personable. Almost everyone who works for them utilizes Twitter and they are encouraged to discuss what they’re doing, what is working for them, and what is not. The CEO is the one who runs the main Twitter account (I believe, so don’t hold me to this) and they respond to people, plug products or blog posts, and all in all, just make the company that much more approachable.

And with that, if you’re a Twitter user, I would suggest following @Border7 for all the Border7 news. If you want to get to know me (do so at your own risk) you can follow me @kamylynn.

Also, if you just want to read some general demographics, refer to the recent Time’s article on Twitter.

I am quite possibly the biggest dork there ever will be. I am one of those people who loses their eyeglasses, but soon realizes they are on her face. I am also one of those people who get so consumed with something that I hyperfocus on it (regardless of how real it is).

Now, here’s the deal, I have been trying to find an online email manager for the past few months. Two weeks ago or so, I had IMed Kenny a link to some software which did exactly what we wanted. The next day, I asked him for his opinion and he stated he never looked at it. This caused me to be really sad as I was uber-ecstatic for finding the application. I spent the next two days trying to find it again. I searched for the words “email” “online manager” “pop” and other words through all our logs and emails (on multiple computers mind you). Nada. I couldn’t find it.

During an interview we were conducting with one of our candidates we discussed this and he had mentioned maybe I was dreaming. Kenny and I laughed at it because, knowing me, it was highly possible and that would mean I have reached a new level of nerdy-ness to be dreaming about software that does not exist. On top of that, believing it’s real and going on a search for it.

Well, today, I cleared my name; I found it, it does exist! So HA! I don’t know how, but I did. I’m ecstatic because a] its my day off, and b] I am not such a dork anymore. I found the software, Sproutit, and we are now discussing which plan to use. All I know is it will organize our emails a lot better and make the whole team’s life a lot easier.

By the way, I found the log file from when I originally sent him the link:

(8:10:24 AM) amylynn: http://home.sproutit.com/choose_plan
(8:10:28 AM) amylynn: just let me know what you think abou tit
(8:10:33 AM) amylynn: i just like that its free
(8:19:20 AM) amylynn: Jason and I are going to do a live Q&A session today at 3pm CST: http://tinyurl.com/66ece6
(8:20:00 AM) kenny: realy
(8:20:08 AM) amylynn: Isn’t that awesome?
(8:20:21 AM) amylynn: That’s 1 o’clock here.
(8:20:27 AM) kenny: wow nice
(8:20:39 AM) kenny: how is it doen, via what midea
(8:20:41 AM) kenny: *media

I guess we just need to not jump topics so quickly and probably use Campfire more often so logs are all on one centralized location.

I just wanted to introduce the Batman Caveman. He is the little guy who sits on the bottom left of my screen while I work during the day. We created a “batcave” that is basically our internal system and just helps us remember links to all the online applications we use. Anyway, we’re taking nominations for a name. I already put in Bruce and Yasmine said to call him Wayne. Be creative!

Inc has an awesome slideshow presentation explaining a few steps to take to improve your website. Here is a list of the five I most agreed with.

1. Get into Analytics

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Metrics, metrics, metrics. Without this, you have no way to measure the effectiveness of your website. There are plenty of free Analytic software out there that makes it impossible to have an excuse NOT to have one. You want to know where people are coming from and what they’re doing on your site. This helps you establish trends, which in turn helps you plan and organize your site to close the sale. Seriously, there is no excuse NOT to have this.

2. Identify your Best Customers

If you can establish who your best customers are, you can help establish trends. This will keep you from wasting valuable resources on bad sales. With the trends, you can push your sales people on specific people who are more likely to buy.

3. Make Small Adjustments

“The beauty of the Web is that it’s easy to experiment and collect feedback.” Inc is exactly right with that statement. Once you have a website up, its easy to make small adjustments. If you hear that your colors are clashing, have the designer rework it. If someone tells you your copy is off putting, get it rewritten. If no one wants to give you their CC information, add BillMeLater or Paypal.

4. Boost your Search Rankings

SEO is vital in this web world. A lot of the work can be done by the website owner, so don’t get sucked into an SEO trap. Some companies also use shady practices looked down upon by Google. Just do your research beforehand. You can do a little SEO boosting yourself by ensuring you are using keyword rich information on your webpages, be part of a community in your niche, provide assistance, and slowly build inbound links that way. The sad part of SEO is that it takes time and energy, but the benefits pay off tremendously.

5. Keep it Simple

Nothing more bugs me then looking at a website that is cluttered and just screaming at me. Clean simple designs are more effective than throwing everything you have on the front page. If you’re functional, the graphics and video is not necessary. Just stick to what your market wants and make sure you provide something easy and clean.

Last night Michael and I had the privelage of attending the Mahalo Meetup. They had two presentations for us everyone to listen to. One was a discussion of what GNIP is and how it is the bridge between platforms. We also were able to listen to Chris and Kevin talk about OpenSocial.

We talked with some of the people there, exchanged a few cards, and also met another local designer/musician, Bryan Landers from The Polygon Factory (I can’t begin to tell you how much I love this name). He was really nice and very interesting - made it easy to talk with him.

Anyway, we’re excited. Really really excited. One, we feel very inspired. Two, we are just wicked happy to have gone and listened. Three, we got to actually speak and discuss Google, Apple, living in Mountain View, and a few other things with Kevin Marks. Now really, that is one awesome way to spend a Wednesday night!

Something that will sit with me forever and ever came from Kevin’s portion of the OpenSocial presentation.

Social Internet is a Cloud for his generation. Its oxygen for the younger generation (those of us here at Border7) and its a poisonous gas for the older generation.

By the way, we’ll be at WordCamp ‘08 this weekend

We have been really busy and have only been posting once a week. I’m sorry about that. We have a lot on our plate right now so blogging has been put on the back burner.

We are finally developing our movie rating site. Once that’s completed, we’ll let you all know as we’re going to have a limited beta.

We are planning (but keep pushing back) the launch of Survive The Darkness. Watch the site and you’ll see some really cool nifty things.

We are hiring more designers and developers to work on more of our client work. The list is getting long and we want to help as many people as we can.

We also hired an artist to help me with the two web comics we have in development.

Sadly, this has all happened in the past week. Wow, it makes us seem really productive. I’m sorry that we haven’t updated and I’ll make sure a real meaningful post goes up this week. I promise!

Here is a lesson for anyone who doesn’t normally work in web design - or design in general. Look at the following paragraph:

Ok, now if that was placed in a space on a design, could you really gauge what it would like with your text? Look at the following paragraph:

Can you see why Lorem Ipsum is actually good to use? Again, its Latin, so next time you question your designer and ask “What the hell is that? Is that Spanish? What does it say? Why is it there?” You can at least sound smart and say, “Is that Latin?”

Accounting software should allow you to keep track of all your expenses and also how much you are making. The idea behind it is simple and easy and you would think that a monkey could do it. Well, with that said, I want you to all know, I HATE QUICKBOOKS.

Whew, with that off my chest I can tell you that Border7 has finally decided on what we are going to be using for all our Billing and Accounting needs. In the beginning of the year we had found Freshbooks, and we loved their invoicing system. It was great, and it also lets your clients submit tickets for support requests, etc. Now, although these features were great, we never could figure out the expense reports. They let you pass expenses to your clients, but actual company expenses were not easily trackable. So we started looking for a new application. Through the use of Twitter, Amy found LessAccounting and this accounting software was great. It had everything that Freshbooks was missing and included an online invoice and proposal system. So we decided to start using them.

Well, because of Twitter, and how both companies interacted with Amy, the company decided that we will be using both software. The invoice system for LessAccounting is nice, but our clients log into Freshbooks to see their invoices. Also, the ticketing system of Freshbooks is a nifty feature that we are going to start using more heavily. LessAccounting allows us to monitor our income and our expenses and we can correlate between the two.

This is more than a lesson in accounting. This is about marketing, sales, and retention. Both companies directly contacted Amy and showed them how great they are. The fact that they were attentive and provided answers in an open forum was great; not to mention the fact that Freshbooks put Amy on the spot and asked her why we were “breaking up with them.” A lot of companies can learn from both of these companies. They interact with their customers. By doing that, you one] make them feel special, two] make it harder for them to leave — After being put on the spot, Amy fought with everyone to find the reasons for us to stay with Freshbooks, which by the way were all valid — so now we’re going to rework our billing & accounting process so that we use both applications.