- Skincare specialists praise the power of the pomegranate as the new miracle ingredient. Will social media be the miracle ingredient needed for small and micro businesses to make their mark during this economic crisis? Here I outline what ComMetrics intends to do to, with your help, make 2009 a year to remember. And I do feel sorry for Ronald Lauder, heir to the perfume and cosmetics fortune, who fails to find time to smell the roses. Personally, I say screw the crunch: I am off to this new year’s party.
Since I started writing this blog in late January 2008, I have passed on to my readers what I have learned about social media in order to help us both save money and time, such as:
Twitter tricks, tips and FAQs
Corporate blogging
Fortune 500
This is the time of year when many bloggers and journalists venture into making predictions for the coming year. In my case, as the grip of the economic recession takes hold all around us (including some predicting that by mid-2009 things will start to improve – NOT), I am wondering what social media, viral marketing and many other things might do for me and my business in the next year. 
Just in case you forgot, neither employers nor employees can continue to feel insulated from the weakening economy after jobs have been cut so widely and so quickly in most cities around the world.
Need to do
As crisis bites, the issue for small-scale entrepreneurs like myself is whether I can outperform the big girls and boys in 2009. Sharon Jaffe put it very nicely:
Amazon took in 17 percent more orders on its busiest day of the holiday season in 2008 compared to 2007. Still, achieving this record was helped along by heavy price discounting and free shipping offers to lure elusive bargain hunters. Small businesses cannot survive using the same strategy, in 2009 or any other year. So should I stop using Twitter and give up developing My.ComMetrics.com or the FTindex?
No time to waste if I want to reduce my risk of joining those who will be on the dole by early Spring. And while today’s sleepwear is luxurious enough to be worn outside the bedroom, if nobody buys your lovely stock you may not be left with enough cash to pay your store’s rent for January 2009. Here, in no particular order, is what I plan to do to help things along and spend my time most effectively while using such social media as Twitter or this blog:
1. Step up efforts: get more people to sign up with My.ComMetrics.com by registering/claiming their blogs. In turn, this empowers them to benchmark their social media performance and how it affects the bottom line to save money sooner. For starters, it’s free for all Alpha Users (indefinitely) – what are you waiting for.
2. Improve dashboard customization: An ever greater amount of useful and often disparate information is provided to our users. However, being limited to a single screen to keep all data within eye span is our challenge and different needs require better ways for customizing one’s dashboard. Accordingly, we must successfully manage to display critical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) required for effective decision-making in blog benchmarking. Why? Because that’s what the My.ComMetrics.com dashboard caters to.
3. Find one or two marketing savvy techies: We have a great team but I would love to get another person to help us with PHP and OLAP to further improve our tool(s). So, if you are able and love working part-time in a virtual team, I encourage you to apply, wherever you are located. Why not leave a message here? But only if you like to work with girls and boys who are a bit different compared to your neighbors down the street.
4. Continue getting clients for our risk and IT security consultancy to pay the bills: Get one or two more big contracts during 2009. I think this includes submitting tenders and even getting turned down a few times, something I hate.
5. Improve content and writing: There is so much to do and so little time, it seems. We have to improve how we communicate with our blog readers (namely, you), as well as our My.ComMetrics.com clients. Considering that more than 70 percent of our readers are non-native English speakers, it is time to hire a competent person to edit our writing, improving our spelling and grammar, thereby making it easier for you to get our message faster.
Bottom line
Let’s face the music and dance. Scores of employees have been left in the cold after being told that their skills are no longer needed or prized. Self-employed workers already account for nearly a third of the US workforce and number in the high teens or twenties in some European countries. These numbers have grown by 25 percent or so within the last two years.
The current recession will make it tough for these entrepreneurs to survive in the marketplace. Many will fold their tents and join the unemployment lines. Yes, a social network can help find employment, but what about making sure your business survives instead of looking for another job that provides little, if any, security?
I have outlined some of the ideas that I will use to improve my thriving business’ chances of survival during what is shaping up to be a tough 2009. If we succeed achieving at least three of the actionable objectives outlined above it will be the people involved with this project that come out as the heroes, because it is people who make things happen.
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Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. What did I forget and what is your advice to me for achieving my five objectives faster in 2009. Please provide your thoughts and insights! I love to hear from you. Thanks.
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In the meantime, register your blog at My.ComMetrics.com for free and track your performance (most important is that you start today, before 2009 comes around). Plus, follow the 
MyComMetrics Twitterfeed to stay abreast of the latest developments. If you also care to know more about my irreverent tips, subscribe to this blog and get a few tricks coming your way by following me on Twitter
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