The boom of Social Media is giving Twitter an explosive impact in the marketplace

Since coming into the twitter world, I have to say this has been a great experience. I have learned a ton so far on so many levels. First, I have vastly expanded my circle of folks for sharing ideas and information. This has introduced me to a ton of great blogs and articles from other thought leaders

in the industry. It has pushed me to articulate my own ideas more frequently and to expand the focus of my blog and subsequently the services and consulting support we offer. Having talked to many customers,  most have yet to fully get the reasons why Twitter is becoming so popular nor do they see why they should be embarking on this journey for their business. Social media platforms such as facebook and myspace are a lot easier to look at and say "oh I get it", it is a community. Twitter is a bit simpler technically in concept as a extended chat conversation with a community of folks. However it is not as easy to see up front how you can connect with customers since if you just promote products it is typically much harder to get a base of followers.

You will hear a loud "ding" when the light bulb goes off in your head

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Let me take a minute to tell you about and welcome Matt Zimmerman and the Value Builder Program to CNP Integrations . Here is a guy with years of experience delivering CRM solutions to large enterprises and small businesses alike. He worked in the world of IBM solutions and built sales organizations of 100+. When we started talking about having him work with our relatively small company that had a great bunch of technologies and significant expertise with them, we quickly realized his Value Builder Program was a missing link for bringing our great technology platform to companies and driving real success. It is one thing to sell software and associated services but what we wanted to achieve began with our mantra "Your Success is our Success". What we found is that when small businesses looked at our solutions they went WOW look at all of these features and hey I can actually afford this. However, without taking the step of careful planning and identifying where these solutions add the greatest value to your organization, this can cause significant frustration and often times failure once deployed.

Cost of Entry and Open Source

Unlike the big company enterprise solutions with huge R&D departments and proprietary code that drive expensive cost of entry and required maintenance contracts, we work with solutions that are based on open source code. In some ways this is a double edged sword and when you do not plan carefuly this too can slice into your pocket book painfully if you are not cautious in your implementation strategy. Open source projects offer two distinct advantages; one is you have the freedom to customize the framework if needed since the code is open source and two, the cost of entry if often free or very low. Along with this though you have to make sure your expectations are realistic and while you get in with a lower cost of entry you must also plan to reserve enough resources to get the greatest value out of this approach. The greatest value from open source is achieved when you can invest significantly in building and aligning your strategy with extended training and support.

The gap and the need

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With the record layoffs in the job market there are a significant group of displaced folks and many with talent as entrepreneurs. I am seeing signs that there are a lot of them flocking to start "Micro-small businesses". This is a great way for them to help keep their wheels greased and to create a launch pad for either their next big job or the next big thing. What I am seeing a need for is the low cost point of entry for these businesses macro startups. Typically these folks have a network that is hot but have to jump on it before the cold winds set in. They also are on a shoe string budget since they are in the bootstrapping stage of their business growth. The companies that can meet the needs of these businesses with low cost of entry products and services and can nurture the relationship over time to help these new businesses succeed have a bright future. It reminds me of my talent agent days where we would always be looking for the bright talent that stood out from the pack and plugged in our expertise and "connections" to help introduce them to the market place. Then if they kept their heads straight and you kept a good focus and strategy in place together you would go on to be successful. I think the same formula is true now in the growing micro small business community.

What we have done ourselves at CNP integrations is create a small business web site kick start program is a ten hour support service and consulting package priced at under $700 plus $29 per month for inclusive web hosting. The price point is within reach for most folks and includs enough to get a hands on business owner what they need to get started. This is not just "here is a web site, thank you very much bub bye". What we are doing is offering a mentoring program where we install and set up the web site in a collaborative hands on screen sharing environment, where we explain the process and teach non technical users how to manage their content and provide them resources to help them become successful. With the plethora of web technologies and features available it is important to understand the many options available and how to use them effectively or when not to use them in your business strategy.

This program is designed to deliver a powerful Joomla CMS site tailored to the business model you are building and the beautiful graphics and template designs of www.rockettheme.com.We also try to cover many of the right questions that should be asked and how to spend resources wisely as you build your program over time. For the micro-small business and start-ups this is a great way to launch a web program that will put you at the helm and lead  to success.

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This week CNP Integrations launched three new programs to help small businesses grow and prosper. Over the past few months we have been listening to the chatter in the blogosphere and comments by our customers and prospects. After all we are here to fill the needs of our current and future customers so they can in turn

respond to their customers. The programs are designed to meet the needs for a range of small business owners that we typically support. Our Joomla expertise and programming team combined with our turnkey business solutions, training and support services makes us an ideal partner to help you grow your business through smart use of web technologies.

The Joomla Kick Start program: (download PDF)

The Joomla Kick start program is designed to help micro-small businesses or entrepreneurs quickly launch a Joomla CMS portal to showcase their products or services. This 10 hour consulting and support package offers one on one mentoring to take you through all of the steps required for installation and configuration of a Joomla CMS . We install and brand a rockettheme.com template with sample content and walk you through how to jump start your web business with Joomla content management system. This Joomla CMS system features over 4600 extensions . If you want to explore the capabilities of Joomla and build your site with hands on mentoring this introductory service is a great way to get started.

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This initial IAH 6.0 release came out in January but after a bit of a rocky start there are some final touches just released this morning with IAH 6.0.3.6127 that clear up any of the minor hiccups that have been identified. We are also excited about the new features in the 6.1.0 release currently in beta testing. For a full road map as of today look below the release. This release is really a milestone in our 3 year history of working with info@hand. It is a lot of software (bang for the buck) and when used and deployed with careful thought this really levels the playing field by offering an affordable solution for SMB's. This can be a big enabler to improve competitiveness with larger companies. Much of our consulting services are centered around helping you get the best value from this software and to help your people use the system features effectively. If you do it right you can future proof you business by building it around processes and tracking it for real time business intelligence. This can allow you to respond quickly to your customers and trends in the marketplace.

 

Long Reach Releases Version 6.0 of Flagship info@hand
Customer Relationship and Business Management System (CRBM):

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