We're proud to announce the launch of our first Ohio website! Pat Nowak is the author of The ABC's of Widowhood, a book with practical advice in an easy to read format that can be used the rest of your life. Available online from many locations.

Hello!
Welcome to this September edition of the free email newsletter, the Maestro Monthly, created and published by Web Maestro, LLC. The intent of this newsletter is to bring you news and updates on Web Maestro services, local business news, as well as general Web news relating to small businesses.

(Please note: if you do not wish to receive this email or other messages from us, you can safely click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.)

The Difference Between Marketing and Spamming

by Nathan Lyle

Email is an extremely powerful tool, one which sometimes causes us to do things we probably shouldn't do. The line between should and shouldn't is most important when your business is at stake. You might make certain decisions based on the pressure to increase sales. However, the same things that may in the short term cause an increase, will often in the long term sink your ship. I'm talking about spamming.

A handful of people know that what they're doing is spamming and don't care. This isn't you. You want to use email to connect with people and get them to buy your product, attend your event, or sign up for something. You may not have considered, however, that every message you send out is an interaction with your company or organization. How you behave will reflect directly on your long term success.

I'm not the first person to so say it, but the true key to the power of online marketing is permission. Some people get excited about the ability of the Internet to increase a person's ability to broadcast—to send out messages willy nilly and shoot for statistical gains. The real power, however, is in the ability to exponentially increase the power of a personal relationship. Your contact with someone electronically should be as courteous and professional as you would want to be in person when representing your business. Get permission to send them email.

Why get permission to send a message to someone? Because they're more likely to read it, and to care what you're saying. Permission builds trust. Trust over time gives you a very receptive targeted market, and builds up the perception of your business. Your messages are part of an ongoing relationship rather than more noise in their in-box.

Beyond permission, specific behaviors matter as well. A very common mistake I see made is when someone sends an email out to 50 or 100 or more others, listing each email address and name in the "to" field of the message. Not only does this give all of those addresses and names to each person on that list, it's easy for people to accidentally reply and send a response to all of those addresses. Some people are very guarded about their email address, and if you start shouting it from the roof tops, they won't take kindly to it.

[read the full article]

Want to read more articles? Read previously published articles on our website's article archive.

How to Create an Ultimate Business System

Guest Article by David Finkel

More than a decade ago, when I was hard at work creating my first successful business, my then-partner and I decided to build our company so that it could be independent of both of us.

We laid out our dream on an oversize sheet of white poster paper, calling it our "Business System." When we started to abbreviate that two-word phrase we ran into a little trouble, so we quickly added the word "Ultimate," forming the acronym "UBS."

Our UBS was the collection of processes, procedures, checklists, key information spreadsheets, and more that drove our business. In fact, UBS became both a noun and a verb at our company. It was a noun when we used it to say things like, "Great idea to lower costs, Paige. Can you please add that to the UBS so that other team members can use it?" It became a verb when we used it to say things like, "Beth, can you please UBS that process so we don't have the same problems next time?"

Really UBSing became a discipline, and it's one I urge you to adopt for your company. It's a philosophy of capturing winning processes and best practices and using them to form:

• How-to procedures
• Templates
• Worksheets
• Scripts
• Spreadsheets
• Samples
• Checklists
• "Common Question and Answer" pages
• Software workflow solutions

Which brings us to the key question: How will you organize, store, update, and access your UBS?

Your UBS needs the following four characteristics:

1. Accessible: It needs to be easily accessible. Usually this means it's accessible online, but you could have a paper-based system too.
2. Searchable: People have to be able to quickly find what they're looking for. Otherwise they'll start keeping a cheat sheet on their desk or computer, and this will eventually mean your UBS won't have the best practices, but will instead merely be a procedural manual that no one uses.
3. Version Control: It must be collaborative. All users need to be able to edit and improve it. This requires some means of version control. This also means that it continually needs to be pruned of outdated information and systems. In many ways the eraser is more important than the pen when it comes to your UBS.
4. Security: It needs to have secure features that allow you to protect your intellectual property. Your UBS will become one of your business's most valuable assets in time.

In essence, your UBS is the system for how you create, store, refine, and access all (or most) of your systems.

Large companies invest millions of dollars in their networking and technology solutions to manage their companies' unique knowledge. They also spend megadollars on proprietary software to manage their business processes. But for lots of business owners, that just isn't an option. Think of your UBS as a cost-effective alternative.

About the author: David Finkel is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and courses, including "The Maui Millionaires for Business". He is a successful business owner who has bought, built, and sold several multimillion companies over the past 10 years. To learn more about his tools for business owners, visit him online at Maui Millionaires.

Miscellaneous Maestro Minutiae

We are officially looking at getting into the App Development game... official in that we've signed up as an Apple partner, but we've got a little ways to go on the learning curve yet. We are also considering getting more involved in WordPress Development, as that platform continues to grow. Watch for fancy new Maestro WordPress themes!

That's it for the moment, thanks for reading! Please feel free to let me know what you find useful or what you'd like to see us cover in future issues.

Sincerely,
Nathan Lyle

Website: www.webmaestro.biz
Email: nathan@sylvaniawebmaestro.com
Blog: www.webmaestro.biz/blog

Business Tip

Don't Fear Competition

A common feeling shared by the small business owner is a fear of competition. People react to it differently, but as a business owner you should think twice before you worry about competition. Not only does competition validate what you do, it helps create the market that you will then profit from. Competition helps create motivation for you to excel—to become better at what you do. Competitors also give you something to stand out against. You don't have to take your competitors out to lunch, but you don't have to hate them either.