Entrepreneurs - 5 Things You Must Do Every Day to Build Your Business

If you are an entrepreneur there are a few critical tasks that you need to turn into a daily habit in order for your business to keep moving in a positive direction and to make you money. Read on to find out those key items and how you can add them to your daily routine.

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself. If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1. Plan for the future a few minutes each day. Assume that your product has stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don't necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2. Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers. If your prospective customers don't know about you they won't buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

3. Work on closing a sale every single day. whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4. Develop or strengthen your business network. You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back. This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

5. Contact your current customers. Don't ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you. These are your best customers. They already like what you have to sell and they don't cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing. They won't seek you out. You must go to them.

Source: Manta

Where in the World Are Your Twitter Followers? TweepsMap Knows

Knowing where your Twitter followers are located can not only feed your curiosity, but it can also help you measure the success of your social campaigns. To do this, TweepsMap links to your Twitter account, analyzes your followers and provides a map or chart that shows where they’re located by country, state or city.

Launched in October, the tool helps Twitter users learn if their campaign is successful in a targeted region. For example, if your Twitter campaign is targeted toward Chicago residents, TweepsMap helps you see how many of your followers are actually located in Chicago.

“One of the most important aspects of a campaign is to measure location to see where your followers are and if they are engaged or not,” says Samir Al-Battran, founder of TweepsMap. “TweepsMap helps you learn whether you need to adjust your campaign to reach your targeted audience.”

After authorizing the TweepsMap API, it generates a color-coded map with Twitter birds spread across it to show the number of followers in that specific location — red birds represent the largest number of followers, and yellow represents the second largest number.

Users can use the TweepsMap widget to display their own statistics on any website or blog.

“For individual users, TweepsMap is a fun tool to check out the distribution of their followers and share them on Twitter,” says Al-Battran. “For larger organizations, the goal of TweepsMap is to help them measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.”

TweepsMap does not automatically tweet results without the users permission or store personal Twitter account information.

One of the challenges with TweepsMap is that less than 10% of Twitter users do not add accurate locations on their Twitter accounts, says Al-Battran. Most users only add their country or state instead of their residing city. That’s why most of the Twitter birds on the TweetsMap represent the number of followers in a country rather than in a city.

The site now has about daily 1,000 users and Al-Battran plans to expand TweepsMap by launching premium services in the future for larger Twitter accounts.

Where are your Twitter followers located?

 

Source: Mashable

"Great Tip" - Keep Email Subject Lines Under 40 Characters

What people see in their inbox differs among email applications. An email viewed in Gmail will appear different when viewed in Yahoo! mail or Outlook. To make an impact even before they open the email, keep your subject line within the 40-character limit.

Yelp’s $2 Billion IPO to Hit in Early 2012

Yelp has hired Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead its $1.5 billion to $2 billion IPO in the first quarter of 2012, according to a report.

Yelp is expected to file its prospectus by the end of this year, reports The New York Times, which cites “several people briefed on the situation.” Yelp could not be reached for comment.

The company, which is known for its online reviews of local businesses, announced plans to go public in April. Previously, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman had said he wouldn’t consider an IPO for “several years.” Yelp also turned down a $500 million takeover bid from Google in early 2010.

Yelp’s planned public offering comes after a series of social media IPOs. LinkedIn’s May IPO was considered successful, and though Groupon pushed back the timing of its public offering a couple of times before going public last week, that IPO was also well-received.

Zynga, another social media company looking to go public, also delayed its planned IPO, though the company is now said to be preparing to offer shares to the public the week before Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the biggest social media IPO of them all, Facebook’s, is now set for late 2012, according to a report.