New York SBDC Research Network

When I checked my mail after work yesterday, there was a flyer advertising a work-at-home oppotunity that made me both laugh out loud and feel bad for the nice people in my neighborhood that will fall for it. In order to become involved in the "valuable home work and business opportunities" the flyer indicates that interested parties should send $5 and a self-addressed stamped envelope to a P.O. Box in Albany. Of course "No experience needed! Great pay! Free information!" sounds enticing, but the reality is that the company "BIG Capital" gives no contact information. Needless to say, there is no evidence that this is a scam, but all signs point to a rip-off. In the five weeks that I have been here, I have conducted research for three clients that have invested in dubious work-at-home opportunities. While the Better Business Bureau is the place to file formal complaints against a company, it provides little detail on the complaint or how it was handled.

Really Bad Powerpoint With Staff Training nearly upon us, I thought maybe a little advice on putting together a presentation might be in order. I was very much enjoying a presentation given by Seth Godin while researching motivational speakers at another blog called Small Business Marketing Strategies . Seth Godin's presentation is very worth checking out simply for it's humor but also for reminding us to think. His website describes his title as "Agent of Change" which I love. He points out the many silly things that tools supposedly made for people don't work and the ways they could be fixed. This led to Godin's blog which advertises his many books that all look like they would be fun reads. In this blog entry, he discusses the pitfalls of PowerPoint presentations and links to other sites that share advice on how to best use PowerPoint without abusing your audience.

I “attended” a webinar on podcasting a couple of weeks ago. While the focus was on the use of podcasting by libraries, here are a few tidbits that would be useful to anyone: Looking for podcasts to subscribe to? Check iTunes or PodcastAlley . Or even a podcast network like the technology-related TWiT Netcast Network . Want to create your own podcasts? It doesn’t have to be too tricky or expensive. Audacity offers free, and easy-to-use sound recording and editing software. About.com has a step-by-step tutorial, “ How to Create Your Own Podcast ” that will lead you through the process. The Research Network has been pondering how we might use podcasting. Any suggestions for topics you’d like to see?

These advertising to sales ratios from AdAge Magazine can help a business benchmark advertising spending by showing the average amount that businesses in an industry spend on ads. Covering dozens and dozens of industries, the reports show advertising as a percent of sales, advertising as a percent of margin, and ad growth percentage. The figures cover 1997 through 2007.

On our blog, you'll notice the link to our LibraryThing page. We introduced this in August 2007. As you'll recall from previous posts, those within the SBDC can use this site to identify books from our collection that are available for borrowing. It's not resulted in a lot of loan requests, but I'm not surprised. I thought of this while reading this article . Since our inception, the Research Network's acquisitions policy has assumed that information required by our clients would be more palatable in bite-sized portions, rather than full-course meals found in lengthy books. If you look at the copyright dates for the books on our LibraryThing page, you'll notice a pretty scattered range of dates. I purchase circulating books rather haphazardly. Reference materials, however, dominate what we buy on a regular basis. Our budget - like anyone's - is finite, and I'd rather spend it on the things that a greater majority of our clients would need. So that

There is no way to know every internet resource that is available. Every day, new resources are created and old resources become obsolete. The content provided changes almost continually, either expanding or limiting what is available based on a variety of factors, especially time. Two of the other librarians here have introduced me to Resource Shelf , "where dedicated librarians and researchers share the results of their directed (and occasionally quirky) web searches for resources and information.". The site posts articles on resources that have been located and sends emails to registered individuals (it is free to register).

Trendwatching.com's April issue is on what it's calling " Status Stories " which is interesting. It is looking at the things we buy for bragging rights and where that is going. So maybe it's the not the high-cost, prestigious brands but also the eco-friendly or personalized items; a celebration of self, so to speak. What I thought was a promising trend is identifying products that are local since that is what many of us are trying to do as consumers and how many of our clients are trying to market themselves. On of the items in the story was a focus on a supermarket in Britain who are drawing attention to where products are from, in the example, it's milk. Local and Authenticity Still Rule Local farms paired with supermarket giant marketing and consumer preference spells success. Visit LocalChoice by Tesco to see how they are doing it.