Writing - whether it be for a proposal, press release, or personal note - is a crucial part of your day-to-day business. So, as PR maestro Shel Holtz writes, don’t forget to proactively think about the style and voice of your writing. Whether your writing is conversational, poetic, youthful, or "official" just take a minute to think about it before putting pen to pad. Especially for small firms, your writing can shape your brand just as strongly as any visual. It’s important to the experience that is your organization.

Earlier this year, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released research showing that 84% of Internet users have used search engines. During an average day, 56% of those online use search engines.

So keeping this in mind, how are you putting your brand in front of all of these search engine users? The most cost effective way is through search engine marketing, where you buy text ads tied to certain keywords, so when an Internet user searches for these keywords, your company name and message appear right there where they can see it, click on it, and go to your site for more information. From products and services to issues and campaigns, search engine marketing (SEM) is an inexpensive tactic to add to your marketing mix.

To find out more, contact us today.

Planning a major seminar or conference can be tricky, but amid all of the checklists and site visits, you shouldn’t neglect how your event can be a marketing opportunity outside of those people actually in the room. Sure, you’ll send out a press release and put it on the association’s event calendar, but have you thought about actually inviting media?

To take it one step further, Steve Rubel who writes a blog called Micro Persuation, had a post recently encouraging conference planners to invite bloggers. While you may still be grappling with the whole blog thing, it’s a great idea that gets you free publicity, and adds credibility to the blogger’s reporting. Just make sure that you have a good Internet connection (wireless preferred) and a spot where they can plug in a laptop at the seminars. Giving them a media event badge can be an added bonus.

To find out more about Flat Creek’s event planning services here in Washington, DC, click here.

If you own a domain name, now is the time to renew and transfer it. Network Solutions is now offering a discount on domain names via an e-mail promotion. Network Solutions has to have one of the best domain management tools anywhere ever, so take advantage now to either buy new domains or transfer your existing ones to their service for $11.99. They also don’t send lots of annoying spam as others such as Register.com can do.

Just so you know we have no relationship with Network Solutions other than being a big fan of their application, but they’ve always been expensive. With the $11.99 price tag we just transferred all of our domains to their service this afternoon through this link and hope you’ll do the same.

Blackberry devices are popular not only for their ergonomic design and handy thumb keyboard but also because they push e-mail to your device as soon as it arrives. Other devices have to pull e-mail from a server at set intervals, making it hard to have an e-mail conversation when your e-mail only comes in every 10 minutes or so.

Now, according to PC World, Nokia is getting into the push e-mail game with a FREE service for one year that pushes e-mail to your Nokia phone. This is interesting on two levels - 1) By offering it for free, a lot of people are going to try it out just to see how it works, and 2) Blackberry devices work best in corporate environments where users have a Microsoft Exchange e-mail server, but a lot of small businesses don’t have Exchange, they use POP and IMAP. The Nokia service is only for POP and IMAP accounts.

For small business owners, this means a great alternative to $30-$60 per month for Blackberry service, although users have to decide if switching devices is worth it. Those Blackberry keyboards are nice, and crunching out e-mails on a phone keypad and tiny screen would be mind numbing. While Nokia supports older models that have full QWERTY keyboards, they only have a couple of current models with one (the 9500 at $799.99 and the 6820 for free with a new contract).

So ultimately, if you have a Nokia phone that works with the service, it’s free so why not try it out. It may be well suited just to keep track of what’s coming in your inbox, even jotting down a quick response occasionally. But if you need two-way e-mail capability, it may be worthwile to wait and see how Microsoft’s Mobile 5.0 shapes up…

Flat Creek is not just an outsourcing vendor, but an integrated operating partner, managing your back office and helping you keep track of all your vendor relationships. Often outsourcing gets wrapped up in the offshore debate between IBM and Dell and… well, seems like it has nothing to do with small businesses. To the contrary, this article on AllBusiness.com points out the benefits of outsourcing for small business. Not to spoil the surprise, but the benefits include:

• Control capital costs
• Increase efficiency
• Reduce labor costs
• Start new projects quickly
• Focus on your core business
• Level the playing field
• Reduce risk

These are all good reasons to outsource some of your business operations, but ultimately it’s about giving you more control over your company and giving you more time to do what it is you really want to do. To our clients, thank you for making us part of your vision. To readers who aren’t clients, let’s talk today about how your company can move forward with a solution from Flat Creek Management.

How much do you spend each month on travel for your employees? If the answer is "nothing" then skip ahead to the next post. But if you do spend any money to bring employees to the home office on a regular basis, then you should take a look at virtual meetings as an alternative. Using high-speed Internet connections, you can connect with employees face to face at a fraction of the cost or time it takes to fly them in for a couple of meetings. Such interactivity is useful for sales trips, working from home, communicating with a dispersed workforce, or a thousand other ways that may apply only to your company.

There are lots of options out there. Some work and some don’t, so let me know if you would like to look at cost-effective virtual meetings with your team.

There are lots of good reasons to work for a small company instead of a large corporation, and one of the top has to be added flexibility. But how do you demonstrate that flexibility when talking to a sought-after recruit? One way may be to rethink how you offer paid benefits.

The status quo primarily puts benefits in two buckets: vacation time and sick time. This can encourage employees to take less days off, but often pushes employees to fake all kinds of illness when they need a personal day.

Why not put all of their days off into one bucket of "paid leave" then leave it to your employees to responsibly use them? But you may say "We can’t trust our employees to manage those extra days." Well, in that case you may have deeper issues to address…

The Triangle Business Journal details how some Raleigh-area companies are offering "a paid time-off plan" and it seems to be working. If you would like to learn more about paid time-off (PTO) plans, just let us know.

After a month-long hiatus while we tried to work out an issue with Google, we now are experimenting with different blogging platforms to be able to offer you updated information here on our blog as well as know for ourselves which solution is most likely to work best for you. The View from Flat Creek has always been maintained through Google’s Blogger product but then it decided to stop updating to our servers. So now we are working with TypePad, the industry leader for blogging solutions. Being the leader of course means it’s a bit pricey, but we’re looking at other options as well and will keep you posted. If you have any issues accessing the blog, please let us know.

So without further ado, welcome back!