That the former seek shelter from the storm is understandable. There is danger in the black clouds and wiry bolts of electricity. All of the experts will tell you to head for bunker and stay put until the danger passes.

But what do the experts know? They aren’t smart enough to see with their myopic vision that the DANGER NEVER PASSES. Run from the lightning and you’ll be running from everything:

* Confrontation
* Competition
* Risk
* Romance
* Everything That Is Both Uncertain And Beyond Your Control

In fact, you’ll be running from life. Those who recognize that there are no guarantees, that there is no safety anywhere, anytime, rush off to embrace the lightning. In its deadly force, they also  see beauty, the grand and defiant wonder of nature. Of God. And whatever form the lightning takes, as a delicious slice of life, they want to dance around and through its bolts.

If we are to cave into fear, to seek to control the risks, then we cannot sky dive, fall in love, start businesses, invest our money, ski mogul fields, take controversial stands, aspire to leadership, or swim the ocean at midnight.

Everyone lives and dies. The only question is, how fully, how wildly, how completely out of control happy you can be within the goal posts of birth and death.

Paradoxically, the answer to this happiness lies in direct correlation to your willingness to eschew safety and embrace danger. The more we occupy ourselves by building and maintaining moats around ourselves, the less we throw ourselves into the high risk scenarios that lead to the most exhilarating results.

In business, no one wins by mounting a prevent offense. All of the great successes make big bets, defy the odds, act when all of the Harvard Business school professors issue their dire warnings.

The fact is, you can’t be in the life protection business. You must be in the life fulfillment enterprise. Sure there will be some scary moments, but they will pale compared to the highs and the triumphs embedded in the lightning.

Mark Stevens
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses

Founder goes homeless for the year

How to make the most of your interns. New York City‘s Metropolitan Transit Authority has been struggling for years to find an inexpensive and efficient way to bring cellular service to the subway system. This summer, in a rare case of unbureaucratic thinking, the MTA has decided to let a group of seven grad student interns give it a shot. The new approach will cost considerably less than hiring a high-level consultant. As the New York Times puts it, “The cost to taxpayers will be no more than $30,000, the equivalent of loose change found floating around the authority’s metaphorical couch.” Have a thorny issue in your business that you just can’t seem to figure out? This summer, instead of having your interns make copies and get coffee, why not let them have a crack at it? For some tips on how to manage your summer crop of interns, check out our guide.

Blockbuster the next Apple? Okay, Okay. You can stop laughing now. But in an interview with FastCompany.com, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes alludes to the transformation of Apple as evidence that all hope should not be lost for his struggling company. “We’re in the process of transformation,” Keyes says. “Think about Apple 10 years ago. Steve Jobs came back and did a masterful job. But it wasn’t an overnight success.”

Planning your final tweet. If you’re already thinking about your untimely demise, a new start-up promises to take some of the sweat off your back by letting you prepare your social networks ahead of time, Venture Beat reports. For an annual fee of $9.95, MyWebWill stores passwords so your online identity can be shut down or handed over to friends or family when you die. It also allows you to adjust your social networks accordingly, so you can choose your final profile photo or even write a final tweet. For more on services that pass on private digital data, check out our piece from Inc.’s March issue.

The case for faking it. Leadership and management expert Bob Sutton shares some insights from his upcoming book, Good Boss, Bad Boss, over at Business Insider, about why leaders should run their company with confidence, even if they are in doubt. For justification, he borrows an example of two hypothetical weather forecasters, one who predicted a 90 percent chance of rain for four days, and another who predicted a 75 percent chance of rain over the same period. The one who said 75 percent was more accurate, but viewers gave the one who said 90 percent their vote as the better forecaster. Sutton also mentions a study that shows that doctors who consult articles or books before making a decision are seen as less competent than those who do not. He acknowledges that this advice steers business owners away from transparency – and a well-informed decision-making, in our opinion – but argues that “if you as a boss talk about uncertainty too much, the problem is it undermines both your legitimacy as well as the self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The Chinese tech giant you can’t afford not to know about. TechCrunch is betting you can guess two of the three Web companies with the highest market caps (Google and Amazon). But the business in third is far from a household name in the United States. Tencent, a Chinese company that started out providing an instant messaging service called QQ, invites comparison to many American tech giants. It has stock growth to make Apple envious, a user-base bigger than Facebook, and a Google-like ability to branch out into new markets. The company has gone sniffing around the Valley for acquisitions but has yet to open its wallet.

The economy’s on the upswing, right? Well, entrepreneurs are struggling to get the loans they need, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business. Just half of small businesses got all or most of the funding they sought last year, which is down from 90 percent in the mid-2000s. What’s going on? The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s a combination of pressure from federal regulators for banks to make more prudent loans, an attempt to avoid repeating pre-subprime mortgage meltdown mistakes, and a lot of finger pointing.

Compete to win. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that entering contests can be an effective marketing strategy for entrepreneurs looking to jump-start their businesses. For starters, there’s usually the promise of some type of monetary prize. Even business owners who don’t win, however, get increased exposure and get crucial critiques from panelists and judges. Even at small, local competitions, you can improve your presentation skills. As you branch out, strategically target the competitions that will be most beneficial to the direction in which your business is moving.

Who should determine the validity of an arbitration agreement? Not judges, the Supreme Court ruled today. The justices ruled 5-4 today that arbitrators can decide whether an arbitration agreement needs to be enforced, or whether it is too one-sided to be valid. So, the court needs not be involved. This case started when an employee filed a discrimination suit against Rent-A-Center in Nevada, and Rent-A-Center turned around, filing a motion to dismiss or stay the proceedings and to compel arbitration based on the arbitration agreement the employee had signed. Check out the SCOTUS opinion on Rent-A-Center West, Inc. v. Jackson.

Posted by Christine Lagorio

But today’s new generation of bloggers and entrepreneurs have discovered that this age-old offline technique can be one of the most powerful routes to more sales.

They know that online buyers are plagued by fears and doubts. And there’s nothing that will kill a sale faster than doubt.

So what makes a good guarantee?

The Teaching Company offers a brilliant example of a guarantee that leads directly to sales.

They sell CDs, DVDs, and digital downloads of prominent professors lecturing on philosophy, physics, economics, astronomy, literature, history, and other academic subjects.

Many of these lectures command a hefty price tag, often reaching as much as several hundred dollars. These aren’t little MP3s with 30 minutes of fluff. They’re lengthy, in-depth lectures from some of the best minds in the country.

One is “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” by Professor Robert Greenberg of The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. You get 48 lectures at 45 minutes each. That’s 36 hours! The DVD is $699.95. An audio CD is $499.95. The audio download is $349.95. That’s a substantial chunk of change.

I loved the idea of these lectures. Many of them talked about subjects both my wife and I are fascinated by. We could get hours of enjoyment out of them. But still … $500? Was it really worth it?

Then I saw their guarantee:

LIFETIME SATISFACTION GUARANTEE: If you are not completely satisfied with the purchase you have paid for, you may return it with a note describing why you are disappointed and we will issue a full refund or credit your charge card for what you paid for the course or courses.

That guarantee sold me.

I immediately thought,

I have to buy something for myself, maybe ‘The History of Ancient Rome’ or ‘The Great Principles of Science.’ And I can get ‘The History of the United States’ for my wife, the history buff. Where’s my credit card. I gotta order something now!

After all, with a guarantee that strong, the company really must believe that they have the best lectures ever, right? I was absolutely convinced, even before I heard a single word of the audio.

That’s the power of a guarantee.

Reducing perceived risk with a guarantee

Too many people think that selling is about talking people into buying things, as if you can wear people down with an avalanche of words.

You can’t.

You can write all the selling copy you want about how you’re the best, offer great quality, and include lots of great content. However, it’s all for nothing if your potential buyers have any doubts.

Doubt creates hesitation. Hesitation kills sales.

The answer? You have to reduce the perceived risk people feel so there is no hesitation to take you up on your offer.

And that’s the key — risk reduction.

Remember that if you’re selling online, people can’t experience the thing you’re selling before they part with their money. They can’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it. So there’s always a level of uncertainty and risk. A guarantee helps you lower the feeling of risk by answering questions such as “Is it all you say it is? What if it isn’t? Can I return it if I want to? Is there a catch?”

With a guarantee, they feel confident that they won’t be stuck with their purchase. And the very act of offering a strong guarantee lets buyers know you really believe the product is worth its asking price.

But there’s another reason to use a guarantee — ethics.

Thomas Rollins, president of The Teaching Company, said his company values clients so much, he simply doesn’t want them to have any product they don’t absolutely love. In a phone conversation with me, he said, “We call our lectures The Great Courses. If we don’t deliver great courses, we don’t deserve the money.”

Wow! Most people think of customer loyalty as customers being loyal to a business. But how about a business being loyal to customers? This is a recipe for long-term success if I’ve ever seen one. And it all stems from their powerful guarantee.

How to write a risk-eliminating guarantee

A guarantee may be the most important copy you ever write, but it isn’t rocket science. Your guarantee should do four primary things:

1. Assure your customer that you believe in the quality of your product.
2. Spell out your terms and conditions clearly.
3. Specify a generous time period for evaluation.
4. State what you will do if the customer is dissatisfied.

Here’s the classic guarantee template:

We provide the finest widgets in the world. If you are not fully satisfied for any reason, just return your widget within 60 days for a full refund of your purchase price.

You can be more personal. Or stronger. Or more specific. Just keep it short and sweet.

But what about setting limits?

• You might have a time limit: “If you’re not satisfied, return within 30 days for a full refund.”
• You might have usage conditions: “With normal use …” or “When used according to directions …”
• You might have a liability limit: “Liability limited to the replacement cost of this item.”
• You might want to specify repair or replacement rather than return: “If it doesn’t work as promised, we’ll repair or replace it free.”

Avoid asterisks or teeny legal type. They just create the suspicion that you are a weasel.

Does a guarantee pose a risk for you?

This is a common misconception. The logic goes like this: “If I guarantee to refund money after someone receives the product, they’ll rip me off.” This is especially scary for people selling digital products.

The truth is, you may will get ripped off by a few people. But in the long run, what you gain from additional sales will far outweigh what you lose from those scant few cheats.

The only time you run a risk is when you offer crappy products. Offer great products, and your “returns” won’t amount to much.

Remember, your potential buyers feel a certain level of risk whenever you offer something to them. A guarantee is your best tool for lowering or eliminating that risk.

If you want more specifics, I just published a detailed post about how to write strong guarantees at Pro Copy Tips.

About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s top direct marketing copywriters who shares his writing and freelancing know-how at Pro Copy Tips.

Hey there, ma and pop: Are you hip to Twitter, Facebook and the myriad of other social media tools that are currently at your disposal — you know, the ones the teens and 20somethings have basically dovetailed into their everyday lives? Social media may seem like a vapid way for tweens to gossip about Twilight and the like, but it can be an effective (and fun) way to reach new customers and create stronger bonds with loyal fans.

Some of you may already be riding the Internet wave (let’s face it, most of you probably are if you’re reading Mashable). The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business recently did a study that shows the relationship between social media and small businesses and found that the technology adoption rates in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24%.

“I think what we’re seeing in the last 12 months is the trickle-down effect of social media from the major Fortune 500 and global companies who have been putting significant resources into large-scale outreach efforts,” says Dallas Lawrence, managing director at Burson-Marsteller’s Proof Integrated Communications and Mashable contributor. “Social media really has replaced the phone book and your billboard advertising of the past — it’s the easiest and lowest threshold of entry for these folks to do marketing,” he says.

Still, 24% is still a relatively low number, and only 16% of respondents have embraced Twitter — so small businesses still have a ways to go when it comes to truly engaging in the realm of social media.

Why? Well, according to David Spark of Spark Media Solutions (who has also lent his pen to Mashable), a lot of small business owners are concerned about time. You know the old song-and-dance, “I have no time to blog. I have no time to tweet,” etc. etc. Sparks says that this is all well and good, but that people don’t realize how much time they’re wasting by sticking to the tools of the old guard. Think of how many e-mails you send out on a daily basis. How many phone calls you make. Well, social media can not only cut down on those time-sucks, but also help you connect to a wider group of people on a more personal level. Moreover, it’s a hell of a lot more fun to keep up a fan page complete with FAQs and videos than it is to answer 1,000 e-mails all related to the same issue.

We know that business is, well, business, and the addition of a social media strategy is likely akin to “work” in your mind, but let’s, for a moment, focus on the word “social” here. Social means having a conversation. Social means interactions. Social means fun. So instead of casting this kind of campaign as a thankless chore, let’s think of social media the same way the younger set does — as a way to connect. Observe, five trends teens and 20somethings dig, recast as business ideas.

Listen to Gossip

When you were a teen, one of the topics that was probably of upmost concern among your social circle was what other people thought about you. Hell, there’s entire controversial websites dedicated to campus gossip and the rumor mill of youth. Well, we’re suggesting that you take this relatively negative juvenile trend and use it to your advantage. The web is basically one big comment card for your business — people have taken the time to fill it out, so you should read it.

“Small businesses are increasing the use of social media monitoring to help understand their own brand, industry, product etc.,” says Mike Rynchek, president of Spyder Trap Online Marketing. “Originally larger brands used social media monitoring as a means of judging engagement, customer service, etc., however smaller brands are learning this can be a great tool to gain a competitive advantage and develop means for differentiation. Now we generally use social media monitoring as a business intelligence tool.”

There are two ways by which you can tap into the consciousness of your customers: 1). By asking them for feedback, and 2). By lurking.

Heidi Carney, vice president of consumer marketing for True Lemon, a crystallized lemon flavoring, puts a lot of stock in customer opinion. “Even though we’re a very small company, we spend a huge amount of time knowing who our customers are,” she says. “We do a lot of customer surveys, we talk to our customers every single day… Almost everything that we’ve done as we’ve grown as a company has been reflective of the feedback that we get from our customers. As we’ve grown we’ve changed our packaging, our customers have always been a part of that process. We’ve changed our messaging, our customers have always been a part of that process. As we’ve introduced new products, they’ve always been a part of that process. Social media gives us a forum to solicit that kind of feedback,” she says. The True Lemon packaging even features Facebook and Twitter “Like” buttons, which encourage customers to go online and weigh in on the product.

Others merely lurk on the Internet, using tools like Tweetdeck and Google alerts to see what consumers are saying about them or to find potential clients. According to Spark, this kind of monitoring is crucial. Let’s say you’re dealing in a market that’s not yet down with social media. “You have the opportunity to be the one guy, the one company that is the most social media savvy,” Spark says. By finding out what people are saying about whatever realm your business falls within, you can then tailor your interactions and business accordingly. You can also drive people to your site or business.

Eliot Sykes, creator of the website MissedConnections.com (which is basically an independent, dedicated version of the the Craigslist version — although it’s not affiliated), uses TweetDeck to follow hashtags and phrases on Twitter to connect with people who are interested in the phenomenon of the Missed Connection. “A popular relevant tweet is ‘Do missed connections actually work?’” he explains. “Which usually gets a response like ‘@Asker: Yep, it’s a long shot, but many people do reconnect, HTH.’” It’s simple actually — Sykes is merely directing a willing audience toward his site.

Twitter and other social platforms should also be used for customer service. Lauren Drell, who runs the social media campaign for the eatery Luke’s Lobster, scours the web for mentions of the eatery. “We repost and retweet every mention and every blog post about us, even if it’s not particularly flattering, because I feel like everyone’s opinion is valid,” she says.

Share Content

Facebook and the like are so popular among teens and the younger set because they allow kids to document their experiences and share content, something we learned from College Humor Co-founder Ricky Van Veen at Mashable’s Social Media Summit. What he means by documenting experiences is as simple as a status update or a link shared on ones wall: In the online realm, we are defined by what we share, and by hitching your wagon to a certain kind of content, you’re reaching a specific audience. For example, Van Veen and College Humor recently made a partnership with SoBe to create branded videos, thereby publicizing the drink as well as creating kick-ass new vids for the website’s fans to pass around.

According to Rick Burnes, who leads the content production team at HubSpot, a marketing software firm that produces the Inbound Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketing University, “The most important thing is content. What I mean by content is just creating interesting, useful information on all sorts of media about things your business is interested in. Blogging is the easiest format. You can created content on your site, and then share it on Facebook. You can also create photos and videos and share those on Facebook.”

When it comes to content, you can either create your own or get your fans in on the game. Sammy Davis, a young Internet entrepreneur who runs her own vintage business — Sammy Davis Vintage — creates content in the form of a blog, as well as her own branded online TV series. Davis was no stranger to social media when she struck on her own to launch her business — she quit her job producing Esquire magazine’s website to follow her dream, which began with selling clothing at local flea markets and progressed to owning her own showroom. Much of this business was grown through her blog and website, on which she educates her customers about how she and others shop and wear vintage clothing. Davis’s business is more than simply an online shop — it’s an online tutorial/experience.

User-generated content is also great for reaching a wider web of people. True Lemon has grown its Facebook Page from 1,034 fans to 7,000 in three months by asking fans to interact and share content — for example, they launched a game on Marilyn Monroe’s birthday in which they asked fans to submit pictures of themselves with Monroe-esque moles. By submitting such pictures and appearing on the site, fans feel a connection to the brand.

In line with the practice of submitting pictures comes tagging. The practice of linking people to pics — which has spread to Twitter recently with the addition of tagging to TwitPic — allows a brand to spread virally around the web. For example, Bridget Smith, marketing director and manager of the Tattoo Factory in Chicago, plans to tag customers’ tattoos in Facebook galleries (a lot of parlors have online portfolios on Facebook displaying the artists’ work, but few actually tag the customers behind the tats).

She even plans to do real-time updates by taking photos of the tattooing process with her iPhone and uploading them to Facebook and Twitter. This is a great way to spread the word about businesses that often rely on recommendations — like tattoo shops and bridal stores. When you tag a customer in a pic, that photo appears in his newsfeed, and is then seen by his friends, who will be more likely to check a business out once they see their friend’s virtual seal of approval.

Have an Attitude

From the early days of Friendster, to MySpace to Facebook — teens and 20somethings have always been into creating a personality on the web — a facet of the Internet culture a lot of small businesses have yet to tap into, relying too much on RSS feeds, generic newsletters and professional websites to get the word out.

“When it comes to social media, the ability to have the owner of a company directly involved with online conversations about the brand is what gives small businesses a huge advantage over larger corporations, who often (for liability or anxiety reasons) must run all messages past law and PR firms before posting,” says Jill Felska, co-founder of POP! Social Media, Inc. “When this is the case, tweets are days, weeks or even months old by the time they are posted –- and many times no longer relevant to the customer. The ability to be proactive and interactive in this digital age serves small business owners perfectly –- which is why it is to their advantage to get educated and involved on the platform.”

Probably the most important thing a small business can do is to have an engaging, dynamic online persona. No one wants to read a Twitter stream that only deals with menu updates or sales — people want to engage with a brand. In fact, a recent study titled “The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review” estimates that someone who has Liked a brand will spend an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand’s products or services than will someone who has not Liked it on Facebook, for a total average annualized value of $136.38.

As Dallas Lawrence says, “Small businesses should be thinking of [social media] as the new town square. It’s where they can engage in a sustained and regular dialogue. Just as a small businessman knows, you can’t talk to someone one time and close the sale for a lifetime. You need to transfer what you know in the offline space to the online space.”

Therefore, take your in-store personality online. Audrey Marshall, VP of Online Marketing and PR for Somebody’s Mother’s Chocolate Sauce uses Twitter to develop the company’s brand image. “We try to focus on/follow our main demographics (Moms, Food Bloggers, the Specialty Food Industry) and develop conversations with these potential customers or reviewers,” she says. “We tweet things they’d be most interested in hearing, such as mom quotes, our president’s (Lynn Lasher’s) experiences with her children, specialty food news, and other relevant news items that pertains to moms or the food industry.”

In short — every tweet doesn’t need to be shilling your product. In fact, you should keep advertising-esque tweets to a minimum, and keep social interactions in the fore. That’s the way Sammy Davis does it. “I realized in live-casting my excitement, and my energy and my perspective and my personality, I was getting really positive feedback from the digital outlets — whether it was Twitter, Facebook, most recently Foursquare,” Davis says. “When I first started my Facebook fan page I decided I was going to overshare. I try to limit it so that it’s always relevant and entertaining, of course. I want my market to know what I’m doing because they get excited and they feel like they have control over my product.”

Hang Out

As we all know, social media is a great way to facilitate RL interactions, which can, in turn increase business. Tweet-ups — or social gatherings organized via Twitter — are great method by which to interact with your fans and customers. You can even get more creative with social media meetups, like Joe Sorge, owner of AJ Bombers, a burger joint in Wisconsin, did. Sorge has built AJ Bombers on the foundation of social media, utilizing everything from YouTube to Foursquare to grow his business. One of his most successful efforts involved the latter (in fact, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley mentioned Bombers during his presentation at the Mashable Media Summit).

“When our customers using Foursquare started making comments in the tips or to-dos section, we noticed increasing sales of the items they were speaking about,” Sorge says. Driven by an interest in the medium and the success he was seeing, Sorge decided to delve even more deeply into Foursquare. He became particularly fascinated by the Swarm Badge, which requires 51 checkins in one location at one time. Sorge put together a Twitvite and started to invite folks to a Foursquare flashmob at the restaurant in an effort to attain the badge. The event was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. sharp, but the restaurateur invited people to show up at 2 p.m. if they wanted to learn how to use the tool. By 3:02 p.m., the attendees had scored the swarm badge. According to Sorge, 161 people attended, 56 people signed up for Foursquare and it was the biggest sales day ever.

Play Nice with Others

Yeah, OK, so teens are more likely to foster online feuds that to forge alliances, so this is more of a call to action than a trend. Yes, competition is healthy when it comes to business, but you can also work together to reach even more effective results.

For example, small businesses can learn from each other. “I think that there are a lot of small businesses that are just getting started with social media — they definitely know about it and they might have already set up a Twitter account or set up a Facebook page, but they don’t really know how to use it — it kind of seems very overwhelming,” says Sarah Cooley, community manager of Postling, a tool that lets you manage all your social media account in one place. “At Postling we’ve been doing social media meetups for small businesses called ‘Sidewalk Collectives,’” she says.

In addition to giving fellow business owner a hand when it comes to mastering new tools, you can also band together for greater success. Sites like Groupon and Scoop St. are all the rage nowadays — Groupon features daily deals, which are only attainable if consumers get enough friends to agree to partake in them.

Luke’s Lobster, along with a cadre of other restaurants — Caracas Arepa Bar, Porchetta, Butter Lane Cupcakes and Xoom — got together during New York’s Taste of 7th Street food crawl to offer a deal on Scoop St. for a selection of menu items. “They’re all kind of along the same street — so one would think, in kind of a normal, more traditional business environment they’d be very competitive and kind of not talk to each other,” says Cooley. “But instead they use social media to retweet each others’ specials all the time. They realize that when it comes to small businesses, they’re greater when they band together to take down larger corporations than when they try to stick on their own.”

Drell, of Luke’s Lobster, commented:

“Group-buying models — especially for food crawls like the Scoop St. Taste of 7th Street — help businesses merge and share all of their fans, exposing all the businesses to a new cohort of potential customers. These customers get to “test” the business with friends at a discounted price, and are often active on social media, so we can track their steps on Foursquare and Twitter and get real-time feedback on the event and the food.

The food crawl was a great way to lure fans of our neighboring niche eateries like Caracas, Xoom and Butter Lane to try our food, and vice versa, so it was a fun, collaborative environment that celebrated our awesome block. We saw a ton of love for 7th St. and Luke’s Lobster on social media sites throughout that weekend, and we fed a lot of newbies who have since become regulars, so it was a successful event for us.”

Don’t Stress

Your demographic might be more into Facebook than Twitter — no customer base is exactly the same. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try out a range of mediums and see what sticks — afterall, being a teenager is all about experimentation, amirite?

image courtesy of iStockphoto, Renphoto ,image courtesy of iStockphoto, Brasil2 , image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeer, image courtesy of iStockphoto, aldomurillo,image courtesy of iStockphoto, AnitaPatterson

Michael H Kaleikini is a business development consultant and VP of Marketing and Business development with Corporate Rain Makers, LLC in Las Vegas, Nev.

In the so-called war on talent, employee benefits are key. While you may not be able to compensate your staff with health coverage and vacation days, starting a volunteer program is a low-cost way to show employees you care about them and their community.

According to a 2007 Deloitte study on volunteering, 62 percent of 18 to 26-year-olds polled said they would prefer to work for a company that offers volunteer opportunities.

“In terms of the war on talent, a number of businesses use this as a core strategy,” says Chris Jarvis, co-founder of the Toronto-based company Realized Worth, which helps companies connect with their communities. “They improve morale, and that contributes to sales.”

Even if you’re not looking to attract new talent, getting involved with a non-profit in your community can expose your company to other businesses and potential customers in your area. Maximize that exposure, and you’re bound to maximize your return on investment. In fact, a 2005 study out of Boston College‘s Center for Corporate Citizenship showed that 84 percent of company executives reported bottom-line benefits after they started a volunteer program.

This guide will teach you how to choose a charity that fits your business and get your employees excited about the new program.

How to Start a Volunteer Program: Choosing the Right Charity

No matter what your personal interests are, you need to make sure your employees have a vested interest in whatever volunteer program you choose. If you’re the outdoorsy type, but your employees are not, a community gardening program would likely backfire. At the same time, you do need to make sure your volunteer program is in line with your ideals and goals as a company. Striking this balance between employee interest and what works for the business can be a challenge.

“There are three horizons for volunteering: what the business wants, what the community needs and what the employees like to do,” Jarvis says. “Find something that makes sense for your brand.”

When it comes to staying true to your brand, ask yourself what resources you already have at your disposal and what your clients ultimately care about. If your customers believe in the cause you’re supporting, they may be more likely to stick with you and spread the word to other like-minded potential clients.

Erika Edwards is the Vancouver-based retail campaigns coordinator for LUSH cosmetics. When the company began thinking about a volunteer program, it already had a line of lotions called Charity Pots, the proceeds of which go to 58 charities around the world. It made sense for their brand to capitalize on those partnerships.

“Our company really encourages involvement in ethical campaigns,” Edwards says. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be great to actually get our staff connected, rather than just send out a bulletin saying we donated this much money to this organization?’”

To get the program started, LUSH sent out a survey to all of its employees, including their 151 retail locations, and their manufacturing and corporate facilities. The survey asked whether or not the employees would be interested in volunteering and, if so, what organizations they’d be interested in volunteering with.

While a survey is an effective way to gauge employee interest, Nikki Korn, a principal with the Boston-based Cause Consulting firm, says sometimes simply engaging representatives from several different departments can give you the cross-section of opinions you’re looking for. Ask them what employees in their departments are already involved in. If any of those organizations are especially important to your employees, you may want to consider working with them.

Once you have taken branding and employee interest into consideration, focus on the needs of the community. As you vet potential non-profits to work with, ask yourself two questions: does this organization make a big difference in this community and will my company be able to make a big difference in the organization?

“Start with what you want to accomplish,” Korn says. “You don’t have to build a gym to change a school, but you do need to be respectful in pairing what you have with the organization’s needs.”

The more you and the non-profit you work with see eye-to-eye, the more likely your program will work. Tell the organizations about your business goals and your community goals, then ask them what they want volunteers to achieve. Ask if they can actually use all of your employees, and if they can’t, you may need to find an organization that can accommodate your staff size.

“The worst thing is when companies come in and say, ‘Here’s what I have to offer, take it or leave it,’” Korn says. “It needs to be a two-way conversation to create the best experience.”

With all of this information in mind, you’re almost ready to make a decision, but first, you need to think about the level of involvement you want your company to have.

Dig Deeper: Volunteering: The New Employee Perk

How to Start a Volunteer Program: Levels of Involvement

The amount of time your employees will spend on volunteering is a huge consideration. After all, time is money. Decide how much time you can afford to devote to volunteerism, and you will narrow down your search significantly….read full article

Sometimes it comes up from behind and hits you in the head like a wooden plank.

Like when you get scary results back from a cancer test, or learn your spouse is cheating, or lose your job.

Other times it creep ups on you inch by inch as you are in the midst of being busy.

Like when you wake up one day and realize that you really want to do something different but don’t know what. And that your current work feels hollow, and meaningless. And that you know you have done great stuff in the past, but don’t know if you are capable of doing great stuff in the future.

It is the meantime, and it happens when you leave the comfortable, creative groove of feeling secure in your life and enter into the territory of I have no idea what is going on and I really want to feel better and won’t it stop now?

It can feel really, really awful.

The reason it feels awful is that you have no grounding. You are not producing great work. Your long-term relationships feel awkward.  Your sleep is fitful. You want to do something but don’t know what it is. Most people don’t understand it. You don’t understand it. You just want to go back to the way things were in the “good times.” You want to be a Linchpin, a world changer, a force for good. But all you can manage to do is watch reruns of Law & Order.

In the confusion, there is grace

If you let yourself sit with the confusion and sometimes dread, sadness and anxiety, a wonderful thing happens.

You find yourself.

Under the fancy degrees and impressive experience and a stellar community profile, there sits a quiet and unassuming person.

One with the confidence and wonder of a 5-year old. One without preconceived notions of what is responsible and appropriate and without fear of disappointing anyone but herself.

And you can ask her: If none of this frenetic activity really mattered, what would I be doing?

Or perhaps:

• Who do I really want to work with?
• If I had a dying breath and had to say something to the inhabitants of this planet, what would it be?
• How do I want to spend my limited time on earth?
• Who do I really love? Who really loves me?

Great, meaningful, deeply significant work happens when you really marinate in the meantime.

It is not a distraction from the creative process, it is the creative process.

Khalil Gibran explains this perfectly in The Prophet:

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep in your heart the miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.”

If you are feeling awkward and out of sorts, take a deep breath and sink into the feeling.

Renewed creative spirit must be just around the corner.

by Pamela Slim

1.  Act authentically. A few years I worked as a social media consultant with Tony Robbins. As a leading speaker, entrepreneur, and coach, he is one of the busiest people I know. Still, today, Tony has time to manage many of his own social media efforts. As an active Twitter user (@tonyrobbins), he shares honest and compelling personal and professional messages. When he recently celebrated his 50th birthday, he took the time to record a friendly audio message for his fans. Being honest, accessible, and authentic is a key ingredient to social media success.

2.  Make time. People complain endlessly about not having time to roll social media efforts into their lives. Let’s face it, many of us are short on time. As many highly effective people will attest, you always have time for the things you put first. Take the Tony example, I’m quite sure he doesn’t have time to record friendly audio and video messages for an audience but he makes time because he knows it’s important for his business.

3.  Be consistent. As much as you want to run away from your email and the web for a few days here and there, to ensure that your online marketing efforts are getting results try to participate in the social media world on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean that you have to stay glued to your computer 24-7, but try to respond to comments within twenty-four or forty-eight hours during the work week.

4.  Tell stories. If you’re looking for content ideas, there is nothing better than a good story. Whether you’re sharing photos on Flickr or blogging on Blogger, people love to look inside the lives of people at home and at work.  Although you don’t want to share anything that makes you uncomfortable, a little personality goes a long way online.

5.  Plan ahead. When I interviewed the face of Ford’s social media efforts for my book he explained that a strategic plan kept his company on top. “A solid social media strategy meant that we had a plan and were well prepared for the newfound attention we received,” said Scott Monty.  While you might not be experience a huge wave of social media activity right now, six months down the road this could change. As a result, you should be prepared.

6.  Embrace criticism. No one likes negative comments, but may times this feedback can help your organization make appropriate changes. The worst thing you can do when someone lashes out with a complaint is to ignore them completely. Often times, the individual simply wants a reaction and someone to listen to their problems.

7.  Listen well. To pick up on the last point, be aware of what people are saying about your brand or business. A free and easy way to do this is to sign up for Google Alerts, so you can monitor online conversations on a regular basis.  Depending on what you hear, look to your plan to figure out how you want to engage.

8.  Create a policy. As social media continues to grow quickly, and more than 400 million people worldwide continue to flock to Facebook, now is a good time for your business to develop a social media policy. This document can help your team determine what’s appropriate to talk about online, and how they should interact in various situations. For example, Coca-Cola’s social media policy includes a few smart guidelines, including advising employees that the Internet is permanent and that local posts have global significance.

9.  Go mobile. Remember how quickly the mobile world is exploding. Within more than one million iPads sold since launch, the demand for apps on the go shouldn’t be ignored.  Consider developing your own application, either now or put it on your project plan for the future.

10.  Have fun. Although the technology is constantly evolving, and often frustrating, there are lots of exciting opportunities in the social media environment. A few weeks ago I hosted a workshop where attendees were tasked with developing an online video campaign for a fictitious airline in under thirty minutes. Many groups pitched pretty traditional ideas, but one group dragged their chairs up on stage and acted out an online skit with “Amelia Earhart” leading the audience through their plans to go viral. In other words, the most creative and original ideas have the best chance to stand out.

Amber MacArthur is a social media consultant, speaker, and author of Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business. You can follow her on Twitter at @AmberMac.

During tough economic times PR is the most cost-effective way to bring in business. A half-page ad in a major newspaper can easily cost $10,000 a day. A half-page story about you not only is free, but also carries the credibility and implied endorsement of the publication.

So how do you get noticed?  That’s the topic of our free webinar presented by the Verizon Small Business Center on Wednesday, June 9^th from 2:00 to 3:00 pm EDT.  Below you’ll find a preview of some tips we’ll be covering.

You can get free publicity with crazy stunts.  But not everyone is willing to be outrageous or is in a position or business that would allow them to attempt a goofy stunt. Fine, then go the other route—become a star performer instead of a clown, become a respected, oft-quoted expert. (We’ll cover how to use crazy stunts in the free webinar as well, but for this post we’re focusing on how to become a respected expert.)

Anyone can become an oft-quoted expert by following these 6 steps:

1. Find out who the experts are. Read what they’ve written, go the conferences where they speak, listen carefully to what people who disagree with them have to say. Devour anything you can find on the topic. Join related associations.

2. Synthesize what you’ve learned. Simply regurgitating what other people have said doesn’t make you an expert. But if you’ve paid attention you’ll begin to see the seams in the coal where the diamonds lie. Approach the topic with a unique perspective; better yet, discover a new facet of the subject that’s been overlooked. That makes you outrageous, but in a thoughtful way.

3. Ask for feedback. If you’re honest, you always have to keep in mind that you could be wrong. The best way to keep from being embarrassed is to ask the experts to review your conclusions. You don’t want to go public with something that’s wrong or so bad that it’s not even wrong. Keep in mind, by the way, that only kooks refuse to listen to other opinions.

4. Find out who’s interested. Where do journalists find story ideas?  Ninety-two percent say they use news releases, eighty-five percent use industry sources. Get the idea? Become an industry source and send out press releases! But don’t just shoot an arrow in the air and hope it hits something. Save time and your reputation by communicating with publications, editors and writers that are interested. Keep a list of contacts, and keep it up to date.

5. Make yourself available. Build a website, make sure your contact information is easy to find, include an online press kit, make your site searchable. Write blog posts, comment on other people’s blogs, write articles and whitepapers. Learn how to respond to reporter’s questions with sounds bites. Speak about what you know, but use your time carefully. If you’re too busy, start charging. Still too busy? Raise your prices.

6. Make a reporter’s job easy. They’re busy people with more work than time, so don’t make them figure out what you have to say, how to find you’re material, or worse, how to reach you. Treat them with respect. Many, we’ve found, aren’t very good socially or verbally. But, boy, can they write.

by Kevin_Laverty

Excluding business networks like LinkedIn, who understand that business networking is about building a database to strategically and consistently communicate with to increase sales opportunities, most networks want you to keep your “communication” on their sites. Taking that growing database off of their site is a big NO NO.

Facebook has been the hardest to tap into, they are great at collecting your information for their own purposes…namely ad revenue, but have been against you collecting data to take and use off of Facebook. In the past email addresses were images and so building applications to extract contacts and their email accounts was next to impossible, well now emails are text (not sure when that changed) and Yahoo is turning the tables.

On Yahoo you can import your Facebook contacts into your Yahoo address book http://address.yahoo.com. The import grabs first and last name and email address. Then you can export that data into a csv file to be saved and incorporated (adhering to the CAN-SPAM Act) into your email marketing campaigns. Combine the Yahoo feature with the Export Friends to CSV app on Facebook and you can get first name, last name, hometown, current location, birthday, gender, and email.

You can also take the exported Facebook contacts and import them to your other networks to connect with your Facebook friends and their friends/followers/contacts on other sites. This is how you grow exponentially.

You can either use the newly created csv file or let the network do the work for you by giving them access to your yahoo contacts. I am not sure why gmail and msn have not jumped on this yet, but it is definitely a lost opportunity for them. We found a few Facebook and non-Facebook applications that claimed to be able to do what yahoo has accomplished but most of them were either gone all together or “under construction”, if you know of any other tools to extract Facebook friend information we would love to hear about it.

Until then……Happy Networking!

by Bridget Ayers