TOP RETAILER/BEST SOCIAL NETWORKING OR VIRAL NETWORKING

Circa
Craig and Michele Escude, owners
Jackson, Miss.
www.circaliving.com

What spaces do you have in your gallery? How do you use them to get people into the gallery?
We have one main gallery floor, devoted mostly to sales. Within that area, we have a stage, so we have live music. We’ve brought in a lot of customers because we offer something unusual. We do have a simple catering kitchen. The back space can be used for rehearsal dinners, board meetings, seminars, all-day meetings, showers. We offer discounts to nonprofits.

How do you market your business?
We do social networking; Facebook and Twitter are a part of marketing that no one should be without. We started marketing as soon as we bought the building. Every day I post one item to say, Hey, look at this.

It may appear that we live in a society obsessed with the latest celebrity tweet or Facebook status update, but according to a recent study, certain forms of social media have yet to win over some business owners.

Small business insurer Hiscox Insurance Company commissioned online interviews in late May with 304 U.S. business owners and managers. Each business had fewer than 250 employees.

The survey found that only 4 percent said they couldn’t do without social media as a marketing tool, compared to 50 percent who said the same about word-of-mouth recommendations.

Of those who do use social media for their business, 28 percent have a company Facebook page, 18 percent have a company LinkedIn page, 6 percent employ a YouTube or video-streaming channel, and only 2 percent have a company Twitter feed.

According to this research, the majority of owners haven’t yet fully embraced social media as a vital part of their businesses. But don’t delete your profiles yet—social media has shown no sign of slowing down.

The Elements of Power

By Terry R. Bacon
Hardcover, 320 pages, $27.95
www.amacombooks.org

No question about it: power gets attention, and powerful people get results. But how do you become powerful? That’s the question author and leadership expert Terry Bacon tackles in his provocative new book, The Elements of Power: Lessons on Leadership and Influence.

Drawing on groundbreaking research into the nature of power, Bacon sheds light on 11 different power sources (five personal and five organizational, plus one meta-source: will) that contribute to a powerful person’s impact on a company, an environment or individual lives.

With concrete examples to guide them, readers will discover, for example, why knowledge is power, as are creative talents, technical skills and “street smarts;” how expressive power—a command of language—speaks louder than words; and other invaluable lessons.

Filled with insights into strengthening each power source, Bacon presents an energizing model for business leaders at all levels who want to increase their voltage.

Start-Up Smarts

By Barry H. Cohen and Michael Rybarski
Paperback, 272 pages, $12.95
Adams Media
www.adamsmedia.com

Whether you’re just starting out or already operating a business, you know that profitability is key to success. Yet if that sounds like a no-brainer, consider this: according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 50 percent of small businesses fail in the first five years.

In their practical and no-nonsense sourcebook, Start-Up Smarts: The Thinking Entrepreneurs Guide to Starting and Growing Your Business, authors Barry Cohen and Michael Rybarski delineate the 10 most important ways to ensure small business success.

The book includes sections on how to create a flexible business plan; find out what your customers really want; capitalize on the right trends; and choose the best business partners. It also contains a series of appendixes incorporating real-world start-up stories and a handy source guide to everything from government agencies to venture capital funding groups.

With more than 13 million Americans thinking about starting their own companies next year and millions more in that make-or-break first five years of business, Start-Up Smarts shows you how to bulletproof your business concept and win.

No B.S. Business Success in the New Economy

By Dan S. Kennedy
Paperback, 258 pages, $15.95
Entrepreneur Press
www.entrepreneurpress.com

If you’re still hanging on to the notion that somehow the old economy is going to come roaring back, get over it, says Dan Kennedy in his new book, No B.S. Business Success in the New Economy. It’s not going to happen, and if you want to stay in the game, you’ve got to learn the new rules.

Capitalizing on his experience in business and marketing, Kennedy takes readers on a tour of the new, more demanding marketplace where consumers have the power, ordinary products and services aren’t tolerated, money is spent with caution, sellers are scrutinized and business success is earned, not given.

Kennedy explains how to position yourself and your business for maximum success, and shows you how to create surefire sales and marketing strategies. He also outlines why people count, and what to look for in hiring the best employees, lawyers and accountants.

“Ultimately, the single most significant fact is that entrepreneurs must be smarter, more strategic, more creative, more customer-centric, and more disciplined and determined than ever before,” Kennedy says. And in the New Economy, he believes the entrepreneurial community will become more important than ever.

The slogan, part of a national “Small Business Saturday” campaign rolled out with great fanfare on Nov. 27 by the small business division of American Express, was brilliant, and so was the message: help your favorite local businesses start booming.

For all of you who actually are small businesses, it’s a no-brainer, right? But consumers sometimes need an extra nudge, and from a preliminary report of the results that just landed on my desk, the Small Business Saturday concept is packing a wallop.

Consider the following:

• 1.2 million people joined the shop small business movement and helped spread the word by “liking” Small Business Saturday on Facebook.
• Nearly 30,000 tweets, including messages by consumers spreading the word about the national movement and by businesses promoting offers they created specifically for the day, were sent using the hashtags #smallbusinesssaturday and #smallbizsaturday.
• More than 100,000 small business owners downloaded point-of-purchase and promotional materials from the Small Business Saturday Facebook page.

Now what do all those numbers mean? That “small for all” is really resonating with consumers who see the need to support the small business owners who are getting our economy going again. The real test will be to keep that initial “Small Business Saturday” momentum going all through the year.

Which leads me straight to NICHE magazine’s 2010 Top Retailers, a very special group of small business owners who have mastered the art of getting shoppers through their doors, no matter what the retail climate.

For 2010 Retailer of the Year Donna Milstein, success is the result of 30 years of setting Hanson Galleries apart from the competition through careful inventory selection, energetic merchandising and attentive customer service. For top retailers Joanne and Peter Hildt of Pinnacle Gallery, it means holding fast to their identity as a contemporary craft gallery in a marketplace saturated with Western and Native American art. And for top retailer Sandy Sardella of Pismo Fine Art Glass, it is a willingness to continually measure what her customers want, then tailor the art offerings in each of her four retail locations to meet—and exceed—their expectations.

No one gallery tackles sales and marketing in exactly the same way, yet all are supremely successful. A full report on the secrets and strategies of every one of the 2010 top craft retailers, compiled by NICHE associate editor Claire Patterson Blome, starts on page 51.

We extend congratulations to our winners, and thanks to American Express for the amazingly big boost it’s given to small (for all!) business.