Score.org: Free small business mentorship site you should check out!

(source: www.score.org)

I would like to share a great website for entrepreneurs, especially those who need start-up mentors.
Score is a website that offers free small business advice. They have a pool of mentors who have volunteered to help out those who want to start their own business (but lack resources.) You can search for mentors by specific industry/region/area of expertise/keyword so that you can find the right mentor for yourself.

Mentors can give you advice on various areas such as marketing, advertising, SEO, legal, financial, and so on.
There are options you can take, such as contacting them by email, phone, video chat, or meeting your mentor in person if he/she lives close by. But mentors have their own preferences on this, so you should look into their profile page.

If you become really close to your mentor and your mentor really likes you (and your idea,) he or she might even consider investing in your company later. Why not?

So I encourage everyone to check out Score and take advantage of an excellent mentorship opportunity they offer! (It's free too!)

Pinterest marketing for your business: start now before it's too late!

(source: www.pinterest.com)

Pinterest is an interesting social media site. It is kind of like Stumbleupon, but it's much more visually appealing, and also easier to use. And businesses are starting to notice Pinterest's fast growth and open their own Pinterest account.

It's actually not that difficult to do. It's great for businesses, especially e-commerce businesses, because all you have to do is to pin anything that interests you (a person who will be in charge of Pinterest marketing.)
No, it's not like Facebook or Twitter in which you have to think of what to say. You don't have to set up any games or contests. And yet in my opinion, it works just as efficiently as Facebook/Twitter marketing.

Here's what you need to do:

First, you set up a Pinterest account (you request "invitation"). When you are approved, you start creating new "boards" (=categories).

Let's say you sell chocolates through your own e-commerce site "Chocochoco." (I just totally made that up. Not sure if it exists for real.)  Then you might want to create boards on food, desserts, baking, fancy restaurants, inspiration, recipes, DIY, or whatever. But it should be related to chocolates to some extent.

You are almost done. Now, you start pinning. You install a little bookmark bar that Pinterest asks you to put on your browser, and you start pinning anything you think is relevant to your boards. You only need about 15 minutes a day to do this. Just google the right keywords and Google will take you to blogs filled with great posts that you would want to pin, such as "recipe on how to make chocolate-covered strawberries."

What you have to be careful though, is that you can only pin photos. So, the page you are pinning should have at least one photo so that you can pin that photo. People who see your pin will click on it so that they can be directed to that web page.

Sidenote: You might want to pin a page that has an "interesting" photo. In this case, your pin should show  a plate filled with chocolate-covered strawberries that look so delicious that people can't help but repin it.

As you start to fill in your boards with a full of yummy food photos, people will start to notice your pins, repin what they like, and "follow" you. Having a lot of followers is important just as in Facebook or Twitter, because whenever you go to Pinterest, it shows you pins from the people you follow. Your pins will be seen by more and more people as you gain followers. You should also follow people who have boards similar to yours. They will often follow you back if they like your boards too.

So how does this turn into profits?

Well, let's say you have 10 pins on your "Desserts Board." You allow 1 or 2 of those pins to be on chocolates you sell on your e-commerce site. In other words, you can pin a photo of one of your chocolate sets from your site. However, you shouldn't pin from your website too often. 1 out of 10 is usually a good bet. Why 1 out of 10? so that people won't think that you are doing Pinterest only to advertise your products, or so that people will think that you are doing it for fun, not really for your company.

Your followers and people who see your boards will click on the pins that come from your website if they are curious about them, which direct them to your website, and if they think your product is excellent, they will buy it! There, you just made profits.

In my opinion, this is much easier than Twitter or Facebook. There's always too much going on on those websites. What you just posted can disappear from your followers' feeds in 5 minutes. They won't even notice that you posted something if they don't check their feed consistently. But if you can do Pinterest marketing well, you can get people's attention quite well. Pinterest is growing fast, but it is still relatively young compared to Facebook and Twitter. So why not take advantage of Pinterest and create your own boards now?

Note-taking is key: How to apply the lessons learned from business books to your business plan

Lesson #1 for (prospective) entrepreneurs: Get the most out of books and apply valuable lessons directly to your business!

Summary:
What I learned for the last few months which turned out to be really really helpful is note-taking. But it's not just about "writing down everything they say." You've got to read fast (efficient enough so that you can save your precious time), and pick and highlight only the most important points/tips that you can apply to your business. And the next day, you take notes on them, read through your notes one more time, and start connecting valuable lessons to your business plan.

Details:

Let me give you an example.

Every night, before I go to bed, I enjoy my own little "reading time." I usually read a book for an hour or two. Let's say that yesterday night I read the marketing book called All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I would only skim through important points and skip trivial examples. Most business books are actually filled with A LOT of examples, and if there are examples you think are not really related to your business, you may want to skip them. (You've got millions of other books to read, so you've got to read fast!)

I find a sentence written in bold saying something about how customers buy what they "want," not what they need, implying irrationality and subjectivity of people's purchase behavior.
I like this sentence because it makes me think about consumer behavior: How do I make my customers  "want" my products? How do I know what they want? How would this affect my future social media marketing plan?

The next morning, I wake up, get my breakfast, and then I would take out my note, write "by hand" sentences that I highlighted the previous day. It helps to write down the title of the book at the top of your note "really big" so that you can look it up later more easily. This step actually makes me skim through the book again, which refreshes my memory. Then I read my notes that I just wrote, one more time, this time rather slowly. It helps to read out loud. You are reading them so that you can remember valuable lessons forever.

Then I take out another note of mine which has my business plan written down. I compare two notes to see if I can apply the tips to my business plan. If I were to build an e-commerce website like Gilt, I would think about something like: "let's make my e-commerce website invitation-only and flash sale only, really exclusive so that people would die to buy my products. I would use celebrity marketing, ask a young celeb to advertise my product on his twitter page so that his fans would buy my products to look exactly like that celeb." Your business plan now has more insights included in it. Insights you gained by thinking hard about what successful business people said.

There is no point of reading business books if you are not going to remember any of them a day after you finish reading them. You don't want to miss any of the valuable lessons. You should pick out points that you want to think hard about for the next several hours or days. You can set your own "think time" later in the day, but remember, thinking hard is the most important part of the process.

Especially for the 20-something, young entrepreneurs, and those without mentors or resources, business books can actually help a lot. They give you real insights coming from really successful people. But unless you are ready to really "absorb" their points, it would be a waste of time.