This is the final article in a four-part series explaining how to implement a great online survey.

Now that you’ve picked the right survey tool and gone through our 13 critical steps to building an online survey, double-check your questions for these 6 common mistakes.

1. Unintentional bias. The way you phrase a question can change the answer you receive. It is important to consider your wording so that it doesn’t appear that the question favors one answer.  For example: If you are comparing different products, give each one a neutral name or reference. Do not call one “A” and one “B.” This can imply that Product A is superior to Product B.
2. Ambiguous wording. Unclear questions can confuse respondents. For instance: “Do you watch TV regularly?” Well, maybe — what is regularly? Every day? Four hours a day? Indirect questions can also throw off your results. Respondents might read a question two different ways, based on their own personal biases and experiences. For example: “What suggestions do you have for improving tomato juice? “ The question is about taste but the response may vary in regards to texture, bottle shape, or something related to mixers. These are called double-barreled questions, and they can easily skew your results, and confuse your respondents.
3. Influential Answer Choices – It is very easy to create bias in a questionnaire. Re-read your questions to ensure they are not influencing your readers towards a certain answer, or opinion. You will get different answers from asking “What do you think of the XYZ proposal?” than from “What do you think of the Republican XYZ proposal?” The word “Republican” in the second question would cause some people to favor or oppose the proposal based on their feelings about Republicans, rather than about the proposal itself.Here’s an example of a bias:
   Most Americans prefer to own American made cars. Do you?
   Here’s how to fix it:
   When purchasing a car do you prefer one manufacturer over another?
4. It’s True What They Say About Assumptions – Technical terms and acronyms can be confusing, so spell them out. Even if you’re absolutely sure that respondents know what they mean, it’s always a good idea to be as clear as possible. Your respondents will most likely not be able to ask you for clarification, so it’s always good to play it safe and spell out acronyms at least once.
5. Poor Answer Choices – Make sure your answer choices are mutually exclusive and don’t overlap. Answer choices that are not mutually exclusive can confuse your target audience.Here’s an example:
   1. What brand of car do you own?
   • Mazda
   • Toyota

   (Problems: what if the respondent doesn’t own a car? What about all the other car options that are out there? What if the respondent owns both of these? What if the respondent had previously owned one of these? The question is not specific enough and the answer choices are not all encompassing).

   Here’s how to fix it:
   You could make it a dichomonious yes or no by asking:
   Do you currently own a Mazda? Do you currently own a Toyota?
   OR
   you could make the answer choices more encompassing;
   Which brand of car do you currently own?

   • Mazda
   • Toyota
   • Ford
   • Chrysler
   • Other
   • I don’t own a car
   • I own a car, but not one of the above
6. Size Does Matter – When deciding the types of questions you want to use, it’s important to consider your sample size. While short answer and essays can provide you with insight into why someone responded a certain way, this data can be very arduous to go through when you are dealing with a large sample size. Likewise, you cannot run data analysis on this kind of information with statistical software

Tiffany Henderson is currently an I/O psychologist for the Government and the Lead Organizational Consultant for her agency. Working in three different labs/research organizations, she has led teams through implementing multiple online systems/software and e-learning solutions and management information systems.

This is the last in a four-part series on online series. Read Part 1 (basics/overview), Part 2 (comparison of 4 survey tools), and Part 3 (step-by-step plan).
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This is third article in a four-part series explaining how to implement a great online survey. Catch up on the previous posts:

Part 1: Should You Create an Online Survey? We Explain the Benefits & Basic Terms,

Part 2: Four Online Survey Tools: Which One is Best for You?

Setting goals for your online survey is critical.

In order to obtain the most responses from the largest number of people in your sample, it’s important to send out your survey at the right time and in the right way. Follow these 13 critical steps:

1. Outline Your Goals – Be sure to do this before building your survey. What are you hoping to learn from your survey? Also consider whether you want to frequently survey your respondents in order to spot trends or if your survey will  be a one-time thing. (Keep in mind user fatigue.)
2. Keep it Short – This ensure the highest number of responses. Take the survey and time yourself to see how long it takes to complete. If it takes longer than 10 minutes to complete, consider revising your survey or eliminating a few questions and saving them for another time.
3. Go With the Flow – Questions should flow logically from one to the next. A user who stops to wonder why you’re asking something may quickly lose interest. Group questions on the same topic together to make the survey easier to read and complete.
4. Be Logical – Answer choices should be in a logical order and consistent throughout your survey. Scales should be presented from “positive to negative” or “excellent to poor.” For numeric  scales, higher numbers should mean a more positive answer or greater agreement.
5. Be Transparent – Create an intro page or paragraph at the start of your survey letting users know exactly why you’re collecting this data and how you intent to use the results. Stating your intentions upfront and letting your users know whether or not their responses will be anonymous create a sense of trust. This will also increases the likelihood that you’ll receive more honest responses. Example: “Responses will be kept completely anonymous and confidential.  All responses will be pooled together so that individual employees cannot be identified; therefore, you are encouraged to answer each question as honestly as possible. The results of this survey will be used to generate a summary report for senior leadership. These results will also be shared with management and staff to ensure we meet the needs of the organization.”
6. Define Open and Close Dates – Two weeks is typically considered an adequate amount of time. Inform users about the survey before it goes live. This will allow respondents to feel more prepared. If the survey is required, the notice will give them a chance to work it into their schedules. Have reminders ready to be sent out to respondents mid-way through, and then again one day before the closing date. (If you can, filter out users who have already responded).
7. Pick an Easy Format – Generally, radio buttons are easier to use than drop-down menus. Drop-downs provide a greater chance of error, as respondents could more easily chose an answer they hadn’t intended to choose. Cover all the possible response choices. Include options such as “Not Applicable” or “None of the above.”
8. Include a Progress Bar– Let your respondents know where they are in the process. Most popular online survey tools have this feature built in. Allowing users to gauge just how much of their time is going to be used will help to ensure not only more responses but more accurate responses.
   

   Sample of progress bar by SurveyGizmo

9. Funnel Your Questions – Start with more broad or general questions first to help build rapport. Later, funnel down into the more specific/sensitive questions. If users are reluctant to answer the more sensitive questions, and stop halfway through, you’ll at least have some data from the beginning of the survey.
10. Entice your respondents – We all love free things! Lure your users with a gift card or discount. If the survey is internal, entice your workers with an early out!
11. Check Your Rating Scale – Use either a 5-point rating scale or 7-point rating scale. Most researchers agree that 5 and 7 point scales are generally enough for users to make meaningful distinctions between choices. Be sure to define the choices. This too will help your audience to provide you with more standardized responses. For example: My definition of what makes a product good vs. great could be completely different from yours. Some rating scales have a neutral point while others do not. Depending on the type of question you’re asking and purpose of your survey, one might serve you better then the other. When deciding whether to include a neutral point or not, consider your target audience.
    

    An example of a Google scale that's too long

12. Know Your Target Audience – Create screening questions to ensure you are receiving information from your target audience. These questions will allow you to better control for any “noise” that might stem from people outside your area of interest.
13. Remember to Say Thank You – It’s always a good idea to include a “Thank you” at the end of your survey. People value their time, and knowing that you value their time as well, your users will be more inclined to participate again in the future. Most free survey tools offer this option.

The trick in survey creation is to construct a survey that will not only bring you valuable, actionable data when properly distilled, but also to present it in a manner that brings in the highest number of valid responses possible. Let us know how your survey went in the comment field below. Good luck!

Tiffany Henderson is currently an I/O psychologist for the Government and the Lead Organizational Consultant for her agency. Working in three different labs/research organizations, she has led teams through implementing multiple online systems/software and e-learning solutions and management information systems.

Coming soon: The last part in our four-part series on online surveys, Six Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make!

Some don’t respond. Others do and we exchange a number of emails with support you won’t see on Whinot.com. Here’s a quick peek inside.

Happy client:

Thanks! You guys are awesome. Like I said, I am at a very early stage, simply exploring my options. I would like to ask a candid question, if you don’t mind. How are you incentivized to help folks like me? What is your business model? If I do take a next step, how involved would you be?

Whinot:

Thanks for asking… Most importantly, we want to see more entrepreneurs and business owners be successful. We do that by providing expert advice like this for free. We hope that you find someone like Trevor who can help you with your immediate needs. If you find someone who can help, you can hire them for a short project (a few hours to a few weeks) at their hourly rate or a fixed fee. Whinot takes a 20% cut of that fee and makes sure the project is successful.

So this makes me wonder… Do we need to do a better job of making our business model clear up front? Or is it better to slowly reveal how we make money as the relationship with a customer builds over time?

This is the second article in a four-part series explaining how to implement a great online survey. Read the first part here: Should You Create an Online Survey? We Explain the Benefits & Basic Terms.

Well-developed online survey tools will allow you to easily define your survey questions and possible responses and then send users a link to  the survey – all in a free or basic version. Here we will compare the four most popular survey tools on the market: SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, Google Forms, and SurveyGizmo.

All of these tools offer free versions which can be limited in two ways:

1. the number of surveys/questions
2. the number of responses

Upgrading to a paid version will typically provide more access to data reporting, advanced statistical analysis, and more customization options.

If you are simply looking to get your feet wet – say, you just want to do some audience research to see who is listening, watching or reading, or product/brand analysis – you’re most likely going to be doing very basic analysis of the responses to open-ended questions. One of the free or low-cost tools will probably work fine in this instance. Some of the more sophisticated survey packages are likely to be considerably more difficult to use. They offer more benefits with larger sample sizes and when comparing and analyzing a number of different specific variables.

Whichever tool you decide to use, take advantage of the free version and take it for a trial run.

Below is a brief comparison of the four most popular free online survey tools. While the paid versions are discussed below, the chart at the very end only compares the free or basic versions of each tool.

1.) SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is perhaps the best-known survey tool in the field, offering a handy keyword search feature to help users navigate multiple surveys, security assurance, and question-logic add-ons to maximize the efficiency and accuracy of your surveys. SurveyMonkey offers a free basic version, useful for small and informal surveys. This version allows for very little customization of themes, a limited number of templates, a few already created surveys, no downloads of reports or data, and 15 different question types. You can include up to 10 questions and collect up to 100 responses per free survey.

With a well-designed survey creation and editing system, along with vast options for collecting responses – including generating code to produce a small pop-up window for your website: “We are conducting a survey…” – SurveyMonkey has become the preferred choice for a number of  associations.

For those looking for a no-nonsense survey tool that does the basics and does them well, SurveyMonkey is a reliable option.

2.)  Zoomerang

Zoomerang is similar to SurveyMonkey in many respects, but offers a somewhat more powerful package for somewhat more money.

With Zommerang’s free version, you have access to an unlimited number of surveys, a few templates, 15 question formats, the ability to branch questions and use skip logic, more customization options, and the ability to upload email contacts, publish by URL and/or e-mail. You can include up to 12 questions and collect up to 100 responses per free survey.

The more useful Pro package ($149/year for nonprofits) includes for unlimited surveys, questions, and respondents. The Premium package ($449/year for nonprofits) includes mobile surveys, comparison reports, multi-user survey sharing and collaboration, and statistical analysis.

Zoomerang is not quite as intuitive as SurveyMonkey, and it can be more difficult to learn. However, between the two basic versions, Zoomerang does offer more extensive reporting, with easy-to-read graphs on the first 50 respondents.

3.) Google Forms

Forms is basically a way to conduct a survey, with responses added automatically to a spreadsheet. Since its launch, Google Forms has been an easy and accessible way to collect large amounts of data. Best of all, it is absolutely free!

If you’re looking for a free service for small-scale surveying, this is hands down the best option out there. While other tools have a free option, they usually limit the amount of surveys and responses.

Although Google Forms only offers six types of questions, you do have the ability to add skip logic and branching questions. Likewise, Google Forms offers an unlimited amount of surveys and space for well over 1,000 responses. (You can reach up to 200,000, depending on the number of questions you have). Survey themes are robust; e-mail- or web-embedding is easy; and there are a number of ways to visualize your data.

You can either embed surveys into a blog post or site or share a link to the survey. Any responses are collected in a spreadsheet. As recipients complete the form, rows in a Google spreadsheet are populated, including a timestamp.

Currently the company is upgrading its Forms tool in Google Docs, adding a number of new features. Users now have a more compact, grid-like form in which to collect data. They can now quickly gather responses for a group of similar questions by simply labeling a few columns and creating as many rows as they like.

Summary charts also have clearer formatting of statistics and now support right-to-left text input, helping out those users whose written languages go from right-to-left. Developers can also integrate forms with their own applications and pre-populate a form with data.

4.) SurveyGizmo

SurveyGizmo offers a free version, as well as a low-cost pro solution ($19/month) with some advanced features, supporting up to 1,000 responses per month and basic logic. A range of more advanced packages are available from $49/month to $160/month.

At all levels, SurveyGizmo offers basic piping, fully customizable survey look and feel, and the ability to embed images and videos hosted on your own website. More advanced levels offer many randomization options (question options, questions per survey page, and pages themselves), skip logic, and more.

SurveyGizmo offers an API for integrating survey functionality into websites, blogs and other applications, including integration with Salesforce.com. With a fresh contemporary look and feel, SurveyGizmo allows for a build that immediately attracts the eye and imagination.

Another advantage is the Dashboard, which neatly displays all your surveys. It provides an instant view of the current number of surveys completed and in process with a map, daily response rate and satisfaction chart. SurveyGizmo provides a comprehensive training library, including videos, and you can have the starter course delivered by e-mail over 7 days. (A 25-50% discount is available for nonprofits).

This tool offers 23 question types along with an unlimited number of surveys and questions.The response limit is relatively generous at 250 per survey. Cannot email survey like. offers a wide range of packages for small to large organizations.

** All the tools described above provide tutorials and FAQ’s for navigating their systems and building your survey. Some do offer phone support, but this usually comes at an additional cost.

Tiffany Henderson is currently an I/O psychologist for the Government and the Lead Organizational Consultant for her agency. Working in three different labs/research organizations, she has led teams through implementing multiple online systems/software and e-learning solutions and management information systems.

Next in the four-part series: 13 Steps to Building an Online Survey.

In 2010, I started a company called Socratic News. It is still in a relatively early stage of development, but I have already learned things that could be relevant to other entrepreneurs. Here are seven pieces of advice based on the biggest mistakes I have made up to this point.

Front page of Socratic News on Jan. 26, 2012

1. Start a company you are interested in. Everyone tells you to start a business you are “passionate” about. While that advice is on the right track, it could stand to be clarified. Socratic News was originally an unbiased news site. I was frustrated with the bias seen in the news, especially on television. In a sense, you could say I was “passionate” about making the news less biased – I believed it would be a good thing to do. But was I “interested” in unbiased news? Not in the least. I didn’t even read unbiased news myself a lot of the time. It was only when I asked myself, “What would I do for a job if I could do anything?” that I changed the company’s direction. I was interested in political theory, especially libertarianism. I wanted to be able to read and write. So I gave the site more of a libertarian focus. It has done much better since.
2. Get a job in the beginning. I started Socratic News directly after graduating from business school, but I took over a year until the traffic on the website began to increase. None of the stuff you do in the early stages of a company is urgent. They can easily be done after work or on weekends. In the beginning, you are trying to find a formula that works and begin to build a following. It can take a lot of time. If you have a job, you can save money. If you choose the right job, you can also learn more about your industry.
3. Don’t do it by yourself. I started Socratic News by myself. I thought I didn’t really need the help. That was a mistake. Not only is it boring to sit in front of a computer by yourself all day, it is helpful to get constant feedback and motivation from other people. During the first three months, I was in a business incubator with 12 other companies. Even though the other people in the incubator weren’t working on my company, just having people around to constantly bounce ideas off was a huge help. I found my productivity dropped after the incubator ended. Also, if you choose the right partners, they should be able to fill skills you lack and more than make up for the equity you are losing. In my case, I don’t know how to write code, and so I had to contract out to developers whenever I wanted to make a change. This would sometimes take a lot of time, and it was very costly. It would have been much smarter to partner with an IT guy from the beginning.
4. Content is more important than style. I paid way too much attention (and money) trying to make the website look as good as possible. However, all of the improvements to the design of the website had no noticeable effect on traffic. Only after I started paying more attention to the content, did I start to see an increase in traffic. The same mistake is probably made by people in other industries. If you are starting a restaurant, for example, it is probably better to pay more attention to the quality of the food than the layout of the restaurant.
5. Don’t waste time on the company description. I spent a lot of time rewriting the “About” page on the website. I rewrote it more times than I can count, and I was never happy with it. I think the problem is that in the beginning, you really don’t know exactly what your company is. Making a detailed description is likely to only limit what your company can eventually become. I finally decided to make the description of the website as short and vague as I possibly could. I will likely make it longer and more detailed as the company continues to evolve.
6. Don’t think too much. In the beginning, I spent too much time trying to figure out what the “right” course of action was in different situations. Don’t waste your time. Just go ahead and try your best option. If that doesn’t work, try the other. If that doesn’t work, figure out something else. This will allow your company to evolve and grow as quickly as possible. It’s better to be like a baby learning how to walk: Just start walking. You’ll fall over a lot, but eventually you’ll figure it out.
7. Don’t give up. This is the one that I haven’t made (at least, not yet). Starting a company is a lot harder than you probably think. I remember people saying how hard it was, and I was like, “Yeah, maybe for you.” But it hasn’t been easy for me, either. There will be plenty of setbacks, but as long as you keep working at it, you will eventually get the excitement of seeing your company begin to grow.

Davison Westmoreland received a B.A. from Duke University in 2004, an M.A. in Government from Johns Hopkins in 2008, and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia in 2010. He is the founder of Socratic News.

This is the first article in a four-part series explaining how to implement a great online survey. Read the second article here: 4 Online Survey Tools: Which One is Right for You?

Why Create an Online Survey?

With online surveys, you can gather a plethora of information about customers and employees faster and with more accuracy than ever before. Data from online surveys can guide you in starting a business, understanding and expanding your current client base, sustaining your existing client base, and obtaining feedback from your employees. When done right, online surveys provide valuable insight into otherwise unseen perspectives.

Benefits of Online Surveys

• Eliminate the cost of data entry. Responses do not have to be transferred from paper or interview tapes; they go straight into a database.
• Eliminate the cost of editing. The computer can catch many errors, such as missed questions.
• Increased anonymity, relative to traditional pencil paper surveys where the respondent is often in the same room or building as those giving the survey
• Increased accuracy. Users can feel more at ease, because typically they can access online surveys from the comfort of their own homes. This comfort can allow for more honest and thus more accurate responses.
• Higher response rates. Because of the increase anonymity and ease of online surveys, you will be more likely to obtain feedback than through traditional methods, such a pencil-paper surveys, phone surveys, exit interviews with colleagues or member of management, etc.
• Precise execution. Online surveys ensure computer-generated randomization patterns and skip logic are followed and applied accurately.
• More convenient. Most online survey tools today can be accessed remotely from home computers or even cell phones. This makes it easier and more convenient for users to respond.
• Quicker response time. That convenience translates to faster responses.
• Website integration. Most survey tools will let you embed surveys created on their site into your existing website. This will allow your users to experience a smooth transition to the survey. They won’t have to leave your site at all!
• Data analysis. One of the main differences between more expensive packages and their cheaper counterparts is their ability to help you to analyze the data and understand the meaning behind the results. While most packages provide simple reports, more advanced packages allow cross tabulation to determine data relationships between different sets of questions. Some even allow complex statistical analysis.

Common Survey Terms

• Skip logic – allows users to skip sets of questions that do not apply to them based on content that they have already answered. This makes for a less frustrating process for the user. Likewise, you can use skip logic to create screening questions, allowing you to screen out respondents whom you might not be interested in targeting.
• Piping – allows you to pull answers from one part of a survey into another. Skip logic and piping often go hand in hand.
• Randomization – The order of a set of questions, or the set of answers to a given question, can often affect survey responses, and thus the quality of your data. Randomizing the order of particular question or answers will help to eliminate this issue. Likewise, randomizing will make it harder for respondents to go though and select the best choice for all questions.
  For example: Say you’re having your employees complete a survey on their satisfaction with your company’s current sexual harassment policy. Let’s face it, your employees are busy. They are going to be reluctant to spend the 5 minutes to complete the survey. If your answer choices are all the same, say A) is always positive B) neutral and C) negative, then your respondents may just choose answer choice A the whole way through in order to get through the survey more quickly. Randomizing the order reduces the likelihood that this will happens, and helps to ensure your users are reading and thinking about the questions. Thus, you’ll be more likely to obtain accurate and insightful data. Likewise, the process of completing the survey won’t seem so mundane!
• Double-barreled questions – also called leading questions, or loaded questions. They attempt to tackle more than one issue in a single question. For example: What is the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation for you? (The fastest might not always be the most convenient.)

Tiffany Henderson is currently an I/O psychologist for the Government and the Lead Organizational Consultant for her agency. Working in three different labs/research organizations, she has led teams through implementing multiple online systems/software and e-learning solutions and management information systems.

Now read Part 2 on how to pick your online survey tool. We’ll compare SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, and Google forms. Look for Parts 3 and 4 coming soon!

The question: How did a startup company with no website and less than $40K in revenue end up with mentions in Inc. Magazine, Mashable and the Wall Street Journal?

Here’s my scoop:

Inc. Magazine

Actually, Whinot got press in Inc. Magazine a few times. I’ll focus on the first time, though, because that’s the most telling.  In September 2010, I heard about an awesome service called Help a Reporter Out, or HARO for short. (Where did I hear about it? I forget.) But I signed up and started reading the press queries on business and finance, which come out three times a day.

That first month, I saw a query from Inc. Magazine about sales mistakes. I submitted an honest and detailed explanation of the sales mistakes I had made so far with Whinot. I also researched the reporter, Donna Fenn, and tried to craft the pitch to her background.

What do I mean by that? Well, from what I found out, I knew that Donna wrote a book about young entrepreneurs with “upstarts” (not startups). So I started my pitch by highlighting that “I am the 28 year-old Co-Founder and CEO of a 9 month old upstart.” (Read the rest for yourself.) Did that make a difference? I don’t know.

But what I didn’t do is give a real concrete example that Donna, and the readers of the article, could sink their teeth into. Luckily, I got a shot to clarify my lessons learned in a follow-up e-mail. The rest is history. I have to say, seeing my company’s name in Inc. Magazine was pretty cool.

Wall Street Journal

In February 2010, Wall Street Journal ran a piece called, “How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo.” It was written by a guy named Richard Greenwald, who was a professor and dean at Drew University studying the topic of freelancing. My co-founder, Ben Baran, was also in his academic pursuit of a PhD.

There was a ton of overlap in Richard’s article and our vision for Whinot. Ben sent Richard an e-mail, and he got back to us to learn more about Whinot.

Keep in mind: We didn’t even have a website at this point. We had a LinkedIn group, that was it. We had a quick call with Richard, which initiated a relationship. As Whinot got started and had news to share, we sent it to Richard and others to keep them updated. In July of that same year, Richard replied to one of these updates saying that he was writing another piece for the WSJ. We offered to demo the new Whinot site, and we did that demo with Richard a few days later.

I was absolutely ecstatic. This could be our big break! That high continued for a few weeks as we waited for the piece to be released. I told everyone I knew that my little startup would be in the Wall Street Journal.

Well, I was eating my words as weeks turned into months and nothing came out. “It’s in the editors’ hands” and “It’s supposed to come out next month” were the only updates I got. By October or so, I figured the article had been scrapped.

So you can imagine my excitement when I got this Google Alert on a Sunday afternoon the following February (2011):

I learned the following morning that the article was in print when I bought five copies at 7-Eleven.

The site saw a boost in traffic for a few days, but it didn’t turn out to the be big break I once dreamed of. Not sure what else I was hoping for …

Mashable

While I was dealing with my depression related to the seemingly lost WSJ article, I had other PR opportunities to keep me busy. Via SnapEngage, I got this chat message on the website one day. Aliza Sherman was doing a bunch of research on the crowdsourcing industry for her book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing.” She had found out about Whinot through my guest blogging on The Daily Crowdsource.

We setup a time to chat and I told her about Whinot and everything else I had learned about the crowdsourcing along the way. We stayed in touch in the coming months with an e-mail or tweet here and there.

Six months later, Aliza wrote an article for Mashable titled “18 Ways to Earn Money From Crowdworking.”

I didn’t get a Google Alert about this one for some reason. Instead, a few days later, an expert who read the article registered with Whinot and told me about it. Again, it was very cool to find Whinot in Mashable.

So what?

So what does all this PR really mean? Well, it strokes the ego for one. Two, it raises awareness for your business and your vision. And it helps move the needle forward toward building something great.

I’ve learned it’s actually not as hard as you might think to get great press. I’ll leave you with a few practical tips:

• Use helpareporter.com
• Guest blog on relevant sites (Maybe on Whinot?)
• Strike up a meaningful dialogue – not a sales pitch – with reporters/freelance writers in your space
• Stay in touch with those same people
• Be fast to respond when potential opportunities do come up
• Be patient until they develop
• Say thank you when they do

What’s your story on your first major PR?

My dad taught me my first pickup line.

It wasn’t, “Are your legs tired? Because you have been running through my mind all day.” Or the lesser known, “How much does a polar bear weigh?” (Answer: “Enough to break the ice.”)

It  wasn’t a pickup line for women at all. It was a pickup line for new business: “Would you have any objection to reviewing your insurance plan with me some time?”

For fun, I would go up to his friends — or even strangers — and ask that question.

These days, my pickup line is, “Tell me about your business.”

I like this line for a number of reasons. It takes the focus off me and puts it on the business owners. It’s non-assuming. And it allows me to ask a lot of questions to discover ways Whinot can help.  It’s the beginning of a friendly dialogue, rather than a sales pitch.

With so many service and software providers, the last thing business owners want is another sales pitch. Instead, they want solutions. It’s hard to offer solutions though when it’s not clear what the issue is.

In the perfect scenario, the pickup line leads to the issue, and then to a solution.

What’s your favorite pickup line?

Flowers of 2011:

• Redefining the Whinot business model to be more scaleable.
• Launching Whinot 2.0
• Finding prospective partners in a number of organizations, including: alumni associations, business incubators, state/local government agencies focused on commerce, and industry groups.
• Generating more revenue than we did in 2010.
• Finding new ways to leverage the community of experts to grow Whinot.
• Making the right financial decision to take a full-time job and work on Whinot part time.

Weeds of 2011:

• Still feeling like our future direction isn’t clear.
• Not being as far along as I would like.
• Still struggling to figure out the best way to reach our customers to generate awareness, consideration and ultimately conversion.
• Still not having a team of fully engaged partners in the business.
• Struggling to make the decision whether to take a full-time job and work on Whinot part time.

Goals for 2012:

• Make it even easier for clients to engage with experts on Whinot.
• Explore the different direct-to-customer marketing opportunities and understand what works and what doesn’t.
• Provide experts more visibility into what happens with clients to whom they provided advice.
• Get at least one formal partnership relationship in place with a few of the potential partner categories outlined above.
• Get more than one formal partnership in place with at least one of these categories. This should position us to scale up in that category after getting the first few partners and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work.

Thanks for a great 2011. I look forward to what 2012 holds for Whinot.

Kyle Hawke
Owner, Whinot

Here are a few things I’ve learned about web-based businesses and entrepreneurship in this journey over the last two years:

In 2009 I set out to bring the benefits of a big business consulting firm to small businesses at a price point they could afford.  This was on the back-end of five years at a big consulting firm and at the front-end of an MBA.  Consultant and MBA. Some might say I was ripe for real-life business lessons.

1. Don’t try to manage overseas developers on your own. They will do whatever you ask. And that’s not a good thing.

Based on my consulting experience, I had done some technology stuff. I wrote requirements docs, design documents, test scripts, blah blah blah. I even did some CSS and HTML, more or less. When it came to web development, I knew just enough to be dangerous.

So I set out and hired a team in Ukraine through Elance. I gave them a hundred pages of design docs and got a fixed price job for $13,000.

They were off to the races. They took the specs and did exactly what they said. That’s where things went wrong: They did exactly what I told them! Never did they question the specs or make suggestions on how to actually design a system or business that people would use on the web.

I ended up with a platform that technically worked, but missed the mark in terms of being a viable web business. And never did these guys say, “Wait a minute. What are you trying to accomplish here?” or “This functionality doesn’t make sense.”

Oh, and I tried to save a few bucks and do the web design myself by learning Photoshop on the fly. That was hilarious. Here… see for yourself.

2. Get someone on your team who will give objective feedback. Keep that expert at an arm’s length.

The Ukrainian developers were getting paid to do what I asked them to, not to tell me I was wrong. And my friends and family who were helping me either drank the Kool Aid, incorrectly believed we were doing everything right, or didn’t want to hurt my feelings and tell me when we were headed down the wrong path.  Do yourself a favor and hire someone whose job it is to tell you when you’re wrong, why you’re wrong (so you don’t do it again), and how to fix it.

I found some guys who go by the name “Web Cardinals” who did this in 2010 but they were so brutal that I fired them after 10 hours.

Six months later, after all what they told me would happen happened, I went back to get their help. We’ve been working together successfully for a year now.

3. Just because you can dream up a feature doesn’t mean you should add it.

One feature I wanted added in Whinot 1.0 would have allowed users to help finance the business in a crowdfunding-type model. I thought it would be cool. Oh, and another one was the ability to share and sell documents.

Well, now I had three business models within my tiny little startup. None of them worked, and together they were really confusing. I was trying to fly a plane with three or four wings.

4. Designing the concept is work, too. Don’t be too anxious to jump to development. You will save money in the long run with well-thought-out designs.

Fast forward to 2011, after I spent $18,000 on three-wing aircraft that crashed and burned. The whole 1.0 process was not a waste, by any means. I learned a ton about what customers and experts wanted. It was time to start over. Back to the design documents.

In January, I re-hired the guys (the brutes) I fired last year because I knew they were what I needed to succeed.  From January through September this year, we worked on process flows, wireframes and use cases.

In June, I was more than anxious that we were over-designing the site and business. And I was annoyed because all of this work wasn’t real work. It was design! In my mind, the real work was development.

I remember complaining to Michael one day over Skype. He replied: “Design is work, too.”

He was right. We were developing the system; it was just on paper instead of PHP. We had wireframes that I was using to do usability tests and get user feedback on the new system. And when we discovered something wasn’t right or clear and had to be fixed, all it took was a few mouse clicks to fix things. This was in contrast to expensive development time if we hadn’t discovered these things until the system was built.

That may be one big difference between technical and non-technical founders. Technical founders have the liberty to start development sooner. Non-techies have to rely on solid designs before moving to development because it’s harder and more expensive to make changes when someone else is pounding out the code.

5. No lorem ipsum on wireframes.

Speaking of wireframes, I think we had 90 of them or something crazy. When I started wireframing some time around March, I did what I always saw in wireframes: inserted “Lorem Ipsum” wherever there was text that I didn’t know what to write and I didn’t want to think about it just yet.

“I’ll figure out the text later, that’s easy.” HAHAHA

Writing copy is hard too. Copy isn’t copy. It’s your tagline; your unique selling proposition; it’s your 10-second pitch. It’s all that stuff that … wait … makes customers open their wallets!

So why would you put some jibberish latin text in there? Not using lorem ipsum forced me to think about the messaging. And it made me explain how users would/could/should use the platform. You can’t do usability tests on wireframes with lorem ipsum, either.

Bottom line for non-technical founders:

Know your limitations. Find an impartial expert. Think the strategy through carefully. Don’t underestimate the importance of the design process. Write the copy; it’ll force you to think your strategy through again.

Are you a non-technical co-founder? Did you struggle with these things or something else? Be HONEST!