For those who haven’t heard, the car manufacturing conglomerate General Motors is now using blogging as a way to connect to different market segments.

Thats right, GM is blogging.
Make your way over to GMnext.com, you will find articles written by executives, proper use of podcasts and other forms of new media. To me, this cements the value in using blogs as a way to market your business, small or large.Late last night (or early this mourning at 2am) Nate, Matt, and I were discussing different markets and how they could use blogs and in what way. We all agree that small to medium sized businesses are among those who could benefit the most from blogging.

Why?
All small businesses need a website (at least in my opinion ) The only problem is most small businesses are working with a relatively small budget. Well, as most of you know, to get a decent website designed these days costs at least $5,000 big ones.A blog can be a far less expensive alternative that benefits from higher search engine rankings in most cases. Also, because a blog is based on some sort of content management system, preferably Wordpress, a blog can be easier to update and modify.Having a great design and useful content on your blog can also convey trust and can encourage visitors to become evangelists for you and your brand.

So What Now?
In the coming years it is likely that more and more of the population will understand how valuable a blog actually can be; a powerful marketing and branding tool, a way to develop a community around your brand, a highly search engine optimized web site, relatively inexpensive, and of course they are easy to update and modify.Seeing the companies with big market research budgets do it first, is just one of the first “clues” blogging is here to stay.

In my last post I wrote about our decision to begin hiring locally instead of outsourcing. So far it has been going better than originally expected.

Outsourcing is a big topic these days and understandably so. Outsourcing can provide cheaper labor than here in the US and often times the companies are highly qualified.

Our decision to NOT outsource is based on customer satisfaction.

When we make decisions, our customers are always at the forefront of our minds. What is best for our customers? How can we serve them better?

Often, designers and coders have extremely high rates and long turn around times. These two factors contribute to a lower number of individuals purchasing their services. I have dealt with this situation myself. I do not want to wait several months for a re-design on my blog. I also am not willing to pay thousands of dollars for one either.

We are offering our customers the best designs in the business (in my humble opinion), as well as an affordable pricing structure and extremely quick turn around times.

It is simply not possible for us to offer the same customer service oriented business philosophy with employees who we have difficulty communicating with. We want to make sure that our vision is crystal clear in the minds of each and every one of our employees.

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote that I have been using Monster.com to view resumes. This service is relatively expensive but well worth it in my opinion. Time is money and the ability for us to hire 5-10 qualified individuals inside of a month is awesome. Monster.com has provided a great service. Their business model is truly spectacular.

What we look for in an applicant

We are especially interested in an employee that has a firm grasp on what we are trying to accomplish. The employee must understand that we are set out to please each and every customer we have. Our goal is to have every customer be an advocate for our company. This will not happen unless everyone at our company is on the same page.

Have you ever been in a less than friendly office environment? I have and to say the least it is not a good situation. With that being said, we are looking for those individuals that get along well with us. We spend most (if not all) our waking time at work, therefore we find it especially important that the workplace is somewhere that we like going to. This means a courteous, friendly, and open environment.

We are Passionate about what we do!

We need our employees to also understand that this is not just a job for us, it is our livelihood. We are all very passionate about our business. The little things excite us; the number of orders per day, each new design, networking, etc. Every part of the business consumes us and we want our employees to share in this passion.

I guess you could say that we expect a lot from our employees. We recognize this and are willing to compensate them in the form of a profit sharing system. We acknowledge the fact that our employees are keys to the company’s success. Therefore our employees will most definitely be treated very, very well.

No one likes working for someone who doesn’t appreciate their efforts. This is not going to happen in our company. We would like to recognize accomplishments and rather than degrade someone for messing up we will simply learn from the experience and not make the same mistake.

What do you think? Are we ‘loco’ for hiring “expensive” labor?

In my previous post about outsourcing, I exposed that my company and I are looking to outsource the development of a dynamic web application. Well, after consulting with our good friend Mitch Harper we have decided to go in another direction.

We are currently searching for employees here in the area of Phoenix, AZ. We are hiring designers/coders right now, and also searching for project managers.

We acknowledge the importance of hiring individuals with more experience and more talent than we have ourselves. This philosophy is adopted in order to grow our company as efficiently as possible.

If you are in the process of hiring local employees, I can suggest theses services we have used:

We paid for the ability to view the resumes on monster.com. This has proven to be the best avenue. I have found over 50 qualified candidates within 100 miles of me. This alone elevates my chances of finding great employees.

I have had no response from elance.com and just a couple from craigslist.com.

Our number one concern is, as it should be, our ability to take care of client’s requests. We are building our brand on exemplary and timely customer service. We always want to go the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction.

We would like to instill this customer satisfaction oriented mindset in our employees.

Why We Decided to Stay Local Instead of Outsourcing

We are building long term relationships with both our customers and employees. In order to establish the kind of personal relationship we want, we are going to build our employee base here in Phoenix.

Our communication channels will have less resistance this way. Therefore, our goals and ideas will be implimented that much more effectively.

Every decision that is made has to be with the company in mind. We must always do what is best for our customers, and that will be better for our company.

I will keep you posted on our progress and helpful hints about the hiring process.

What are your helpful hints?

Do you have people working for you?

If so I would like to hear about your experiences good and bad. I am in the process of handling some of the employment in our company. I would like to know some of the strategies you have used to seek new employees. We are using several forums as our main source of applicants.

What is your goal with your employees?

Do you own a Large or small business?

What are some of the good experiences you have had with the hiring process?

What are some of the ‘learning’ experience that have occurred?

Please let me know!

One of the hottest topics I am reading about right now is outsourcing. Outsourcing everything.

Christine from CreateBusinessGrowth.com wrote an article on this topic called “Outsource Your Life and Free Yourself.” I am in the middle of developing an application for a new company we have. In order to do this we have been looking at five separate companies who will build it for us. I will talk more about each company in a follow up post after we have selected what company we are going with.

In a two part series I will detail exactly what I have learned from the experience.

In this first part I will talk about everything we have learned before we write the check.

-First of all, you need to know what you want. This is just a stating point. What you want and what can be done are often two separate things.

-After determining what you want, you will need to separate your features into what you absolutely must have to be successful and what can be left off until later. You want to do this because money often becomes an issue. This will enable you to get a bare bones estimate if necessary.

-At this point it is almost impossible to figure out what your break even is, so the next step is to find developers and figure out exactly how much your project is going to cost.

-Do a search for web developers. Research in depth 10 of them and choose 5 to move forward with. This will ensure or at least leverage you against these companies from trying to take advantage of you.

-Before calling or emailing the companies make sure you have a complete feature list put together as well as a great description of the final product. What happened to us is that with each company that we contacted, we learned a lot from each one. Therefore the interaction got easier with each contact.

-Make sure you take note of how well the interaction is with each contact. The company who ‘gets’ the concept the most may end up being the company you choose to develop the final product.

That’s all for now. I will follow up with a second post as soon as we are well into the development stage.

What has your experience been like?