One major indicator of the health of our economy is the state of the automotive industry. Since cars are one of the largest purchases we will make in our lifetime, we tend to put a lot of thought into it, and can generally afford a new car only during good times.

Being that times are not so great for the Detroit 3 and car sales are dropping, let’s look at some strategies that can help dealers sell cars more efficiently. This will hopefully be interesting to everyday people, and vital to car dealers to read.

I was recently reading Ari Herzog’s post about how avatars changed online, and I thought he brought up some excellent insights that you would enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, an Avatar is

 a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities.

In the early days of the internet, there was much fear of the internet, and the openness of it.  Additionally, slower modems handled small avatar graphics much better than large graphics. These were also the days where internet dating was laughed at because of the unreliability of the photos people did post.

As an entrepreneur, you often need to make do with less, go up against larger competitors, and take big risks.  One of the most important tasks for you to complete is figuring out your raison d’être, or “reason to be”.

What I mean by “reason to be”, is you need to figure out why you are doing what you are doing in the first place, what your goals are, and why you are the right person at the right time to get it done.

With the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have more ways than ever to get your business in front of potential customers.

Graphic artists can showcase their designs with custom Twitter profiles and Myspace backgrounds. Programmers can strut their stuff by designing apps and plugins that they can give away for free as list building tools to create an audience aggregator, and PR professionals can get the word out for their client.  For the creative marketer, the list of ways to use social networking for self-promotion is virtually endless!

I recently reviewed the book How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Other Social Networks by Brad Schepp, who had interviewed myself and several others.

Here is an excerpt from the book, offering my tips for using LinkedIN to grow your business, and a few tips that weren’t in the book:

I found clients in the following ways through LinkedIN:

By type of company

When I had a service to offer a particular type of person, industry, or geographical location, I used the advanced search to target the decision makers.

Testament to just how many social networking sites seem to have popped up in the last few years, Brad and Debra Schepp, husband and wife and co-authors of 18 other books aptly titled their latest book “How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Other Social Networks“.

The 256 page book could not have come out at a better time, given the economy, and the relevance to 9.8% of Americans (and counting).

Taking from the skills undoubtedly sharpened over the last 18 books they wrote, Brad and Debra take a step by step, detailed look into how one can harness the power of social networking specifically to land a job or freelance work.

The OpenOffice.org project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, which is the primary contributor of source code to the Project. Other major contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, and Google.

Additionally, over 450,000 people from nearly every part of the globe have joined this benevolent Open-Source Project with the idea of creating the best possible office suite that everyone can use.

Cut Costs

In the current economy, the entrepreneurial spirit has been challenged in many new ways. Small businesses simply cannot afford to spend money on highly priced software programs, so out of this struggle and need the open-source software movement has begun.

When President Obama unveiled Cash For Clunkers, a government program to trade in old inefficient cars at dealerships in exchange for new efficient models, many people applauded the effort for its laudable goals:

• Lowering pollution in the air by having newer, cleaner emission cars taking the place of older cars with worse emissions
• Jump-starting the American auto industry, which had been selling so few cars that dealers, factories, and suppliers were shutting their doors.

My fascination with restaurants continues; I was at a restaurant today, and noticed a neat thing when I opened the restroom door to walk in.  All at once, the lights turned on, a fan automatically started, and an air freshener sprayed the air with some flowery scent. My immediate thought after “cool!” was that this was a great way to show how much the restaurant cared about the customers.

Why am I telling you about this? Because the larger lesson all business owners can learn here is:

I was at the Toy Fair in New York City a few months ago, where thousands of toy companies show off their newest and greatest products.  Having an educational rug manufacturer as a client was the perfect excuse I needed to spend a few days there.

While just having a booth at trade shows can certainly be a useful way to drum up some big business because the shows are audience aggregators, in a bad economy you need to take it a step further to get the most out of the trade show – if nothing else because of the high cost of having a booth.  Here are some tips I’ve put together in the hopes of helping other trade show exhibitors.