The recent Staples ad reminds us that as small business owners we are trying to do it all…the unfortunate thing that we need an online presence on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, but the time to actively maintain and update these social media sites typically gets pushed aside for “real” business.

The time invested in social media takes away from managing what we do well….our business! Trying to justify the time spent…we try to sell our product or service…..and it does not seem to work….why?

Maybe the idea should not be trying to sell our product or service…social media has the similar connotation to face to face networking…Building relationships is what social media is all about.  The idea of social media is to present the idea that you are the expert/ the "go to person" that can be trusted in your “real” business.  That trust has to be built….through conversation not the hard sell!  Don’t pass out the business card and then walk away!

Creating the communication channels that can quickly share information allows companies to look fresh, current and at the top of the mind for a wide ranging audience in such of a global economy.  So easily spending hours every day to write blogs, research articles, news feeds, daily tweets, posts, give helpful hints, etc., leaving only little time to effectively run the business.  The answer is Social Media Maintenance with a company that will provide consistently updated and maintained the social network.

Check out http://www.catsllc.net/index_files/socialmedia.htm.

So let’s start counting...Director of Sales is creating the June Monthly Sales Report for the Monthly Sales Meeting Conference Call in PowerPoint. This company has Small Business Server 2008. They use Exchange for their email and all communication. They have resisted in controlling the size of their mail boxes (really using their email as another file server) not to mention they keep everything…the delete key is not an option!

The Director oof Sales first saves the June PowerPoint Sales Report Presentation (4MB) file to his desktop. Remembering he needs to save it to the server for backup, he opens it again and saves it to his personal folder on the server. The he sends the PowerPoint file in individual emails for various approvals/recommendations. 1) he send it to the Controller asking to make sure the numbers are correct. 2) he sends it to the CEO to make sure the July goals and focus is correct. 3) he sends to the Creative Director to make sure that the marketing materials (photos and such for the current promotion are correct).

So far the current count of the June PowerPoint presentations saved at some location is: 8 of which 6 copies are sitting in the Exchange Server.

So this company has done great in building a business for beauty products, but the users do not have a great understanding on efficient use of technology. So what happens is that the PowerPoint files are then received in Outlook, opened, saved to the desktop of the individual, who then makes recommendations for changes, updates and saves, then sends it back to the Director of Sales. The Director of Sales then repeats the process saving a revised PowerPoint on the desktop and send outs for input to his 7 regional sales people, because of course he has included information about their regions that they need to confirm. They save it to their desktops; and repeats the same process that management did before. The Director of Sales receives the modified presentations back and sends it out one more time for management approval..... Gets the approval and sends the final version out for the Monthly sales meeting conference call (10 people).

After all of this that one June PowerPoint presentation, in all of its various versions, is saved in various locations, totals at least 93 copies. Over 375 MB of physical hard drive space is being used and if someone goes back later looking for the June Sales report which version will they assume is the correct version?

This where this thing called SharePoint Comes in...Document control! Collaboration!

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary the definition of COLLABORATE: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. Ok so sales reports may not be an intellectual endeavor, but they are critical to the core strategy communication of the business!!

Microsoft SharePoint makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint, people can share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions. And thus not having over 93 copies of the same file!