Recently I found myself in an uninspiring company meeting listening to a consultant drone on about what he felt were essential elements of successful software companies. He and I had both been hired to help this small, struggling company reverse its declining profits. The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was his blathering about the lessons he learned from the dozens of companies he had helped bury.

It’s 2009! A new year means New Year’s resolutions. People are settling down from the rush of the holidays and starting to think about how to make this year better than any year before. For some that means a smaller waistline, for others it means taking the entrepreneurial plunge; jumping off the corporate ship and braving the waters of capitalism.

Notwithstanding excellent thought leadership from companies like Forrester and Gartner, we still run into a lot of people who are either paying the price for jumping into social media too quickly or who are scratching their heads trying to figure out what to make of it all. Since the proper knowledge, appropriate strategy, and right technology can make the difference between a raging success or a miserable failure, we wanted to reiterate a few of the lessons we have learned while “getting our hands dirty” by helping corporate enterprises build successful communities.

I recently posted about the general mistrust among consumers when it comes to corporate blogs. Ironically the post was on our own company blog, which I’m hoping our readers would consider part of the small group of “trusted” blogs, but if not let us know.

Anyway, I’m hoping to pick up where I left off.

So, you’ve decided on a strategy, you’ve outlined your objectives, you’ve created your blog, you’ve been publishing content and now you’re wondering: “Am I doing it right, do people trust my blog?”

INTRODUCTION
If you do not take control of your business, it will take control of you. With that thought in mind, we recommend the following five tasks to help you take control of your business, finish the year strong, and make sure you are positioned for a healthy 2009: Plan for Tax, Plan for 2009, Collect Your Receivables, Fortify Your Banking Relationships, and Improve Your Web Presence.

PLAN FOR TAX

There has been a lot of really good advice from Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester and others about building a successful enterprise community (http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44041,00.html). Yet we still run into a lot of people who are either paying the price for jumping into social media too quickly or who are scratching their heads trying to figure out what to make of it all.

Does this sound familiar? This was essentially the conversation I had with my own Mother (sorry Mom...) about a year ago. She has just purchased a brand new computer with Vista, replacing the ancient monolith that she had faithfully called me for assistance with nearly every month for the past 5 years. Now the calls became daily if not multiple times daily… Well, this went on for the first couple weeks and finally after setting up nearly everything “just like my old system” she would say I began to get some relief. Then… a new email address and online photos.

On December 5th the Utah Technology Council (UTC) will hold its annual Public Relations breakfast event. This year’s theme is entitled, “PR Through the Modern Mediums: What Works? What Falls Flat?”

There’s some considerable blowback to the whole Proposition 8 deal in California, which is to be expected over such a controversial and hard fought initiative. But you now have a bunch of people talking about ‘boycotting Utah‘. 62% of the population of Utah is “Mormon”. That means they’re on the records of the church. On the [...]

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f you read my blog it should come as no surprise to you that I believe the economy is going to take a hard turn south (its already there). I just got an email from Jason Calacanis at Mahalo. He indicated that he has laid off some of his staff due to the downturn. Jason makes this great concluding comment:

Much has been said in the past couple weeks in mainstream media, new media, and the blogosphere related to the current economic issues and how they affect startups and entrepreneurs. (check sites like TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, VentureBeat, etc. for summaries and coverage.) Entrepreneurs, investors, VCs, commentators are all weighing in. There’s a lot of doom and [...]

Wendia AG International, a privately-held European software company founded in 1990, is setting up their North American headquarters in Utah.

I’ve lived in Utah for 14 years. I really like living here. Granted, there are some things I don’t like, but hey, I figure that’d happen anywhere, as I’ve yet to hear of or experience the perfect place. As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned to focus on metrics and tangible results. However, you have to be careful [...]

A few months ago I came across a piece by Jeff Nolan, titled Incrementalism and “The New New Thing,” which struck poignantly at a raw nerve. He called attention to the incrementalism gripping Silicon Valley despite the flush amount of capital available for startups.

One of the things that has been on my mind since I attended the Gnomedex 8.0 conference was how social media can positively and negatively effect the FundingUniverse brand.  Now, I realize that “social media” is a very popular buzz word these days — everyone (& their dog) is talking about social media and I’m trying to decide if the buzz is justified or if this is a fad similar to podcasts and other new media.

We’ll be holding the CTO Breakfast next week on Thursday at 8am in conjunction with the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference. You don’t have to be going to the conference to attend the breakfast, but I do have discount codes available for CTO Breakfast attendees. Contact me if you’re like one.

We are hosting a job-fair/open house tomorrow (July 23) from 4pm until 8pm at our offices in Orem, Utah. If you are curious about the Utah Technical job market right now, or you know someone who is, send them by!

We’ll be taking resumes and conducting interviews, and likely playing some pretty mean Mario Kart on the wii.

SOS Engineering & Technology
1256 S. State #101 (West Doors)
Orem, Utah 84097

Local tech company Bungee Labs is hosting a FREE showing of Batman the Dark Knight this afternoon at 4:00pm. (I interviewed @ReverendTed from Bungee last Friday on the Couchcast)

We believe Utah is home to many amazing companies…and we want to get to

know more of you.

Bring your family or friends and join us this Tuesday, July 22nd, for the

4:00pm show of Batman the Dark Knight at the Jordan Commons Megaplex.

These days its very easy for small business organizations to get an internet site up and running.  A business owner can let his son, cousin, brother, co-worker, etc. design a site in Front Page and get it up on the web.

The difficult part comes when their web site has been online for a while and they don't get any traffic or they
get traffic but no sales.

Internet  Marketing is a fine art and there are dozens of things you can do.  I will outline what I feel are 5
of the most important ways to make your website more marketable.

We’re doing the July CTO breakfast a little early this month because of Pioneer day. For those of you not familiar with Utah, Pioneer day is a state holiday on the 24th of July and it’s a pretty big deal. Celebrates the day the first pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1848.