5 Startup Naming Rules From SXSW

If SXSW Interactive is any indication, and it usually is, then this is the age of the startup. It also means this is the age of the unfortunately named startup. We've all come across a company's name that's missing all its vowels, has superfluous "Z"s tacked on, or is so many words hacked together that its meaning is completely lost.

Gary Backaus, chief creative officer, and Justin Dobbs, associate creative director at Memphis-based ad agency archer> malmo gave a presentation on Monday at SXSW with five simple rules for naming your startup: 

1. You're not naming a startup, you're naming a brand.
According to Backaus, the biggest mistake you can make naming your new startup happens at the very beginning. If you have a name already in mind, while it may be your first instict to see if the domain name is taken, that's the last thing you should do. More than likely it won't be available, and that's when the arbitrary alternate spellings and additional letters start happening for many entrepreneurs. A much better strategy is to think about your brand name in the context of the real world, not among other startups or as a URL. Come at the name from every possible angle, make lists of adjectives and the human qualities you want to emulate.

2. Make the right first impression. 
Your name should create a first impression that’s positive, intriguing and clear. "Think of your name as your [brick and mortar] sign," Dobbs encourages. It can either drive traffic to you or drive it away. Your list of potential names should fit within your brand positioning, be unique, and be easy to read. This is where intentional misspellings or extra "Z"s could be a significant hindrance.

3. Don't create conceptual or technical hurdles.
Backaus put it simply: "You don’t need a big idea for your name. You need a name for your big idea." If you have to constantly explain the meaning or the pronunciation of your name to people, especially people that you pitch to, that's a major hurdle. In no way should your name be a disconnect from what you want to accomplish with your brand.

4. When necessary, be descriptive.
Descriptive doesn't mean boring, especially if your startup is in a niche or technical field. Another big reason to avoid the early pitfalls of checking domain name registries is because a company name you've invented that's unavailable could be paired with a simple descriptive word to create your final, custom, website name.

5. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Let's say you already have a startup name, but a shift in your company's focus arises and you feel the name should change. This is ultimately a judgement call, but if your current company name is not tied to an individual product, and your overall brand identity and values have not changed, your current name may be just fine.

"Naming is hard," Backaus said. It's not an exact science, and there's no perfect how-to guide that will work for every startup. If you spend time at the beginning thinking about the one thing you want your company to do, who your audience will be, and your competitors' names, you're on the right track. When you have your final candidates for a name, just be sure to Google them and check what Google Images comes up with. It's always a possibility someone else came up with your name first and it's tied to vulgar slang or images online.

What have been your experiences with naming your company?

by Bryan Keplesky

10 Ways to Use Social Media to Increase Your Website Traffic

With the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn growing over the last few years, more and more people are using Social Media to communicate. In fact, many consumers turn to these sites to find products and services, as well as, to get opinions from others.

Here are 10 Ways that your business can use Social Media to increase online traffic to your website:

1. Share Blogs on Social Media Sites

The absolute best way for business owners to drive traffic to their websites by using Social Media networks is through blogs. Essentially, blogs are similar to regular articles, but they are written from the author’s perspective, and they usually welcome comments. Add new blog posts frequently and link to these on Social Media networks.

2. Update Statuses Frequently

One of the best social networking strategies involves updating statuses frequently, but not frequently enough to put off visitors. Daily updates are generally sufficient, and they should inform consumers of any new products, sales or information that is related to the company.

3. Build Backlink Relationships

It is very common for small business owners to backlink to one another’s Social Media profiles as a form of free and complementary advertising. For instance, a business that sells pet products may choose to offer consumers a link for pet boarding, and the pet boarding company may return the favor. These agreements are usually pre-arranged.

4. Hold Advertising Campaigns

Business owners should hold frequent online advertising campaigns in order to get more website traffic. As an example, a business owner can offer consumers the chance to win a free product or a significant discount once their Facebook page has so many ‘likes.’ The drawing should be held as promised, and the name should be chosen randomly from among people who have ‘liked’ the page.

5. Promote Other Small Businesses

Social Media networks are fantastic ways to promote other small businesses, so it may also be helpful for business owners to start a thread in which another business can post updates and links to promote their business. As a whole, the participants in the thread will gain exposure to other companies that offer products and services they desire.

6. Post Photos

Photos are always a great way to increase consumer interest in products, so it is important for business owners to post them on Social Media frequently. Some great times to do this include when a new product is added to a line, when a blog post is about a particular product, or when a certain product or service goes on sale.

7. Get Consumer Opinions

Consumers want to know that their opinions matter, so asking for opinions on items or services on a Social Media network can work wonderfully. When a pet store owner is thinking of adding a new product, for example, they can post a photo of the product and a brief description, and then, ask consumers if they would be interested in purchasing it if the business chooses to stock it.

8. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is another phenomenal Social Media Strategy that can cause a sharp increase in the number of website visitors. Essentially, business owners form agreements with popular bloggers in which the guest blogger will write a positive review about a product or service, either for a cash payment or a free product. Then, the blogger allows the business owner to link back to the blog on their Social Media pages.

9. Word of Mouth Advertising

Social Media is a huge venue for word-of-mouth advertising, and business owners should capitalize on this in any way possible. Owners can ask customers to ‘like’ their Facebook pages or include their name in a ‘Tweet’ when they are satisfied with their products or services. They can also offer prizes for those who mention the business name in Facebook or Twitter comments and updates.

10. Article Marketing

Article Marketing and Social Media networking go together like salt and pepper. Consumers want information, and well-written, short, informative articles are just the way to deliver. The articles should be related to the industry’s niche, located on the company’s website or an article marketing site, and then linked via a Social Media network.

These ten ideas are some of the best and most cost-effective ways to advertise online with the help of Social Media. Businesses can truly thrive when they make the most out of the available opportunities, increasing their online presence and driving online traffic to their website.

What are the best money making business ideas that can make you become rich? What is the best business to start? Well, this article is an answer to these questions.

As this year draws to an end, you need to position yourself properly because there are a lot of income opportunities available that can take you to whole new level. Whether you are an entrepreneur or investor, you will surely find this compilation valuable. So without wasting your time, below are 30 best money making business ideas that can make you become rich.

• Event and party planning

If you have been complimented on your parties, you might be good enough to be a party planner. Many people who are throwing parties will desperately need your service. Let them know you can handle everything from invitations to the catering, from the entertainment to cleaning up afterwards, from the wine shopping’s to decorations. The best places to herald your services would be in the entertainment section of most of the daily newspaper.

I will recommend some soft sell magazine, because placing an advert in some of these magazines will surely go a long way in getting some customers. Generally, this work goes for a flat fee, depending upon the size of the party.  From N15,000 to N200,000. Think of what you are going to make in a year if you are doing at least 2 parties in a month.

• Biography Writing

A lot of writers are going to be instant Millionaires this year and even next. I checked my record and discovered that a lot of Nigeria Business men, CEOs, Politicians are going to be 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, and 80 years. If you have a passion for writing, you can target their birthdays, fix a date for the lunching and you are good to go. Some of them have a lot of companies and friends that are ready to donate to the lunching of the book. So what are you waiting for to target a Nigerian Millionaire today and be an instant millionaire.

• Computer class instructor

Computers have become part of everyone’s life, not only in the workplace, but in the home as well. They are part of our jobs and also part of our entertainment. You can check the computer book section of a bookstore near you and use the knowledge you have gained to teach others how to begin using a computer; how to use it more efficiently, how to get more out of it, or how to use specific software programs. This type of class can be offered through your home but you might also consider contacting a local computer retailer and offer to conduct the classes in his/her store. This would bring traffic into the store that is specifically interested in his product as well as give you access to a variety of machines and software to demonstrate with.

• Photography Business

All of us have seen professional photographers at sporting events. We may have used the service of professional for a wedding. But what about the local Pee Wee soccer league or the neighborhood blocks party. Most people enjoy good pictures, but most people don’t have the knowledge or experience to take good pictures consistently. If you enjoy using a camera, whether it still camera or a video camera, there is money to be made with it. Perhaps the easiest way to begin is to take the camera to a local youth sporting event and begin taking pictures. Be sure to have inexpensive brochures available explaining to the proud parent where they can order actions shots of their own little super stars in action. A few big weekends of that type of freelance work will let you see how big this market can be.

• Selling educational materials

Selling educational materials is a big business today. Pencils, Exercise books, recommended textbooks, graphical tables, and drawing equipment are some of the materials students cannot do without on a daily basis. People who locate their shops near these schools are bound to make a lot of money. If you can get your shop near any of these schools, you are bound to make a lot of money. If you don’t have enough money to rent a shop, you can get a table and display some of your ware or you can get an umbrella or canopy. Make sure you know the relevant materials that are in demand in this environment; your success in this business is directly related to your ability to sell at a price that is very competitive.

• Pure water business

Do you have a fridge, freezer or you live close to cold rooms; then you can start a pure water business. It is true that millions of people are in the business today, but there is still room for one more person who is still passionate to make it in the business. Markets, schools churches mosques football matches playground and parties are some of the places you can get good business. Other ways of making money is by targeting very big events, securing a stand, rent a freezer and you will make some money.

• Printing and selling GSM recharge card vouchers

Printing GSM recharge vouchers could equally mean printing money. We all know that GSM recharge cards are the fastest selling product today in the country today. Imagine that you are the one producing GSM recharge vouchers that are used in your locality. I don’t know how many GSM subscribers are living in your area but I am sure Nigeria has over 40 million subscribers. You can start your own recharge card printing business. The printer cost N38, 000; you can start with Pins from N20,000. You can print and sell recharge vouchers in the values of all MTN, GLOBACOM, STARCOMS and AIRTELcards. You can never run out of recharge cards or experience scarcity.

• Homemade bread and setting up a bakery

The amount require to set up a Bakery is directly related to the cash at hand, if you want to start small you can get a small parcel of about half a plot or a full plot of land and build a clay oven, it will cost you about N400, 000 to start, while it will cost between N4, 000,000 to N5, 000,000 or more to start on a large scale.

• Setting up a security company

Setting up a security venture is a very lucrative business, to a lot of people, setting up a security company is a capital-intensive project. A lot of people have been scared away from attempting to set up one because of this mind-set and mentality. It is very possible to start or set up a security company with little or no capital. Multinationals pay as much as N65,000 per security officer and the security company collects N15,000 while they pay N50,000 to the security officer.

• Television and Radio production

Nigeria currently has over 140 TV Stations and 200 radio station spread across the Country. There are different types of shows on our Television and Radio; such as current affairs, news, sports programme, Automobile, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Shoppers Guide, Maritime Television, Politics, Aviation, Finance, Insurance, Cultural dances, Personality Profile, Educational Programmes, Musicals, Fashions, Construction, Oil Industry, Religion, Hospitality and Tourism, Real Estate, Dating Game Show, Agriculture, Women Empowerment Programmes,, School Quiz Competition,  Teenage Programmes and so on.

It is imperative to tailor your show towards your professional background, orientation and finally interest. Nigeria movie industry is not making money like when it started 16 years ago as TV and Radio production is now more lucrative as TV and Radio producers now rake in Million of naira from sponsorship fee.

30 Best Money Making Business ideas that can Make You Become Rich

• Real Estate Business

The boom in property sector is already showing in the high cost of cement, even property stocks on the exchange are smelling-hot. This emerging wealth is sure to simmer in to the hands of both the medium and small income earners. It is now glaring that in the face of increased cost of land and property in the real estate sector, there is actually a big opportunity for many who know the secrets of getting it cheap when others are still ignorant and selling high thereafter. After all, that is what real estate is all about, except for the intelligence you need to acquire in order to play in the market rightly. As a new entrant into the industry, all you need to do is be the link between the buyer and the seller; and you are entitled to a particular commission.

• Website designing

Website designers are always in demand by corporate organizations, government agencies NGOs as they are willing to pay big to get their website designed. Some of them are also looking for website developers because some of them need to update the information on their sites. Make sure you don’t price yourself too cheap and make sure you get the required training. A website designing course can take a week or two; if you can browse the net very well, there is a lot of FREE software online that can guide you step-by-step on how to design a website.

• Setting up an NGO

Setting up an NGO strongly depends on the nature and character of the NGO. However, you must make sure you follow your passion; be it taking care of children, old people, environment, or solving social economic problem etc. All you need to do is to start with the little you have; starting with your immediate environment. Let all the corporate organizations and individual in your vicinity know what you are doing. You don’t even need an office; you can start from your house, look for credible people to work with especially influential individual, who can assist you to raise money through their friends. Millions of dollars are budgeted yearly for NGO in Nigeria by foreign donor agencies but such funds are returned to those foreign agencies at the end of their financial year.

• Stock brokerage

Stock brokerage business is a profitable business. Like every other money making venture. It has its own challenges. This is because the market is not stagnant, prices of stocks move upward and downward. In Nigeria, stock brokerage business has not been fully exploited. This is because we are only dealing on equities and not on derivatives. Once you have made up your mind, you don’t need an office; just look for a reputable stock broking firm to work with. The more clients you can convince to invest their money in the stock market, the more money you’ll make.

• Make money as a registered independent petroleum marketer with NNPC

This is the foremost and mother of all the other oil businesses because it provides you with an expansive area to play in this business. For instance, as registered petroleum marketer with NNPC, you can access the following opportunities:

• Own Depots
• Own filling stations
• Import/Export petroleum products

However, to become a registered independent Petroleum marketer with NNPC, the starting point is the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the regulatory arm of the petroleum Industry and find out their requirement and what area you want to engage in, either as a depot owner or filling station owner. And once you are able to meet the requirement, you will be given a license for storage and sales.

• Set up a micro finance bank

The micro finance, regulatory and supervisory framework for Nigeria was introduced to galvanize and empowers the poor and vulnerable people by increasing their access to factors of production. To get started, Micro finance Banks would be required to be well capitalized, technically sound and orientated towards lending based on the cash flow and character of clients. The micro finance bank provides for two categories of MFBs. Credibility would be another major issue for the emerging micro finance banks. Depositors would need solid assurance of the safety of their funds, just as the MFB operators would by the same token require some form of guarantee of repayment of their credits.

• Party equipment rentals

Renting party equipment has become big business particularly in many big cities. Canopies, chairs, stage platform, ice block, drums, cooking utensils, table cloth and other party equipment are in hot demand by party organizers. There is hardly a weekend when parties are not held. Your initial step is to find out fees charged for items and for how long. Then you should investigate the cost of making or buying some of these items. How much you make is directly related to the number of customers you have. A dozen of plastic chairs is being rented out at the rate of between N300 to N400 per dozen, while double canopies goes for N800 each

• Haulage contractor

Haulage includes using trucks and Lorries to convey goods from one point to the other. The movement could be within a city. During conveyance, goods are accompanied by owners. In most cases, truck owners do not go scavenging for loads. They leave their Truck/Lorries to transport companies while haulage contractors obtain trucks from transport companies to convey goods. As an entrepreneur, your role is that of a haulage contractor. Take note, Truck owners welcome contracts that are long term compared to one-off. Let your mark-up be minimal, but you will double your income from payment for goods collected on return trip. Depending on the number of trips and the number of vehicle used, you can earn above N100,000 per month.

• Generator importation and sales

PHCN’s problems began with the total neglect of the industry by the then military government between 1980 and 1999. The near collapse of the industry was due to the poor funding by the government, mismanagement of the utility, corruption, poor service delivery and load shedding, use of substandard materials, electricity theft, poor revenue drive and non-payment of bills by consumers, technical and non-technical losses. You can import any brand of generator into the Country. If you don’t have money, banks are ready to assist would be investors. Just make sure you provide a good after sales service to your customers

• Yam flour production

Processed yam flour is a simple devise for the preservation of yam and making them available at our meals table all year round. Besides, it enhances the storage process and the movement of the product.  The preservation process may be supplemented with the usage of chemical preservative, which are common in Nigeria markets. Yam flour is processed through grinding, drying, parboiling, drying and pulverization process. I visited a Company that produces Yam flour recently; I waited for 2hours before I could collect my pack just because they can’t meet the demand

30 Best Money Making Business ideas that can Make You Become Rich

• Franchising

Do you want to sell foreign product in Nigeria? If yes, then franchising is for you. A Franchise is an agreement or license between two parties, which gives a person or group of persons (The franchisee) the rights to market a product or service using the trademark of another business (the franchisor). Both franchisor and the franchisee have a strong vested interest in the success of the brand and keeping the customer happy. Today, Franchising is available to service businesses, manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, and even professionals services in the medical health care, fast food and beverages hospitality, educational services, training management, business support, estate management, health, beauty and so on.

• Flour milling

The consumption of bread and other bakery products such as biscuits, chin-chin, gala, meat pie, among others have created a huge market for the wheat flour industry, and it is continually expanding by the day. These items have come to be accepted as part of our dietary need either as food or as snacks, which is taken in between meals. Flour milling is not however restricted to wheat processing alone, several Nigerians cereals and tuber crops are being milled and preserved to powdery flavor, so as to enhance their industry uses and preserve their shelf life for domestic purposes. These include the corn flour, cassava flour, millet flour etc. Processing them into flour and bagging them therefore holds great prospects, considering the fact that these agricultural raw materials are locally sourced. Flour enjoys extensive usage in the bakery, brewing, confectionery, pharmaceutical as well as the food processing sectors of the economy.

• Road haulage transport business

Transport business in Nigeria is as old as the nation itself and there is no doubt that those in the business have been known to have contributed in no small way to the economic development of the country. Transport plays an important role in most business activities. Efficient transport is an essential component in the production and distribution process; commonly referred to as supply chain logistics.

As a new entrant into the business of Haulage business, you can decide to buy a Trailer or more and station it with any of those multinational companies. They will maintain your Trailer for you, employ a driver for you. At the end of every month, all you need to do is to go there and collect your cheque; they pay between N400, 000 to N600,000 on a Trailer every month. Before you can be part of this, you need to register with them as a contractor or fall under another contractor in their fleet. Secondly, you may decide to be an independent operator to some of the big companies in the Country, they will give you a way bill; it might be 10 to 15 trips.

• Create an e-book

If you have some special and extensive knowledge about a particular hobby, activity or skill, then put it to use and write about it. Maybe you know several different ways to tie knots. Maybe you are really good at making homemade Christmas decorations. Maybe you have extensive knowledge about taking care of a sick loved one. Or maybe you know some special tricks in preparing meals for large or small families. You can sell an e-book over and over again. If you only make 50 cents per sell; 10,000 downloads of your book will make you $5,000.

• Get paid to decorate

Imagine having a rewarding, high-paying job that lets you use your creativity to make homes and businesses more beautiful and comfortable. Welcome to the world of interior decorating.  There are few jobs that offer so many benefits. As an interior decorator, you will have the satisfaction of making your vision a reality. You will meet interesting people, and because many people who hire interior decorators are wealthy, you will likely spend time in many beautiful homes. If you start your own interior decorating business, you will enjoy the freedom of being your own boss and could earn N50,000,000 or more per year.

• Start your own bottled water business

Bottled water is extremely popular these days. That is why starting up a home-based bottled water business may prove to be a lucrative venture. Purchase all the necessary equipment and designate a room in your house for this project. Start small and just work your way up as your bottled water business clientele grows.

• Start a food business

Owning a food business is the first step for many entrepreneurs to the world self-employment. A food business can mean any of a number of business ventures, from temporary food stands to catering companies. Depending on which type of food business you plan to own, you will have different investment levels. If you run a temporary food stand, very few funds are needed to get started. If you plan to run a restaurant or even a high class catering business, quite a bit of capital is needed to get started.

• Become a manufacturer representative

If you are a top seller and have years of experience under your belt, going independent as a manufacturer’s representative may be your ticket to sales success. If you like to sell and yearn to be out on your own, the life of a manufacturer’s representative, also known as an independent sales rep may be for you. Experienced salespeople tell us being a manufacturer’s representative is the graduate level of selling, offering potentially higher earnings and freedom from company politics.

• Aluminum door and window manufacturing

Manufacturing aluminum storm windows and doors is a relatively simple process that can even be conducted right from a well-equipped home based workshop. This business start-up will appeal to entrepreneurs with some construction and mechanical aptitude. Once again, aluminum storm windows and doors are easy to manufacture as the material required is referred to as extrusions. It is a simple process of cutting the window framing rails to length, wrapping the glass in a rubber gasket, and attaching the rails that are screw-fastened in the corners.

• Employment and career publications

Starting a desktop publishing business that specializes in producing a monthly employment and career guide newspaper is a fantastic new business venture to set in motion. The paper can be distributed throughout the community free of charge and supported by charging companies advertising fees to list their employment and career opportunities in the paper. Additionally, the paper should also include useful information and tips for readers on subjects and topics pertaining to securing gainful employment. The tips could include information, such as how to prepare for a job interview, ten secrets to a winning résumé and more.

• Internet trainer

  Believe it or not, there are still lots of folk; including many senior citizens and retirees who don’t have a clue how to access the internet or where to go once they are on it. If you’re a tech whiz and you like nothing better than tinkering online; then you can teach these individuals learn how to navigate the information superhighway with ease as an internet trainer. You will give seminars, workshops, day-long courses or provide one-on-one assistance at senior centers and in individuals’ homes. And you can teach the basics or tailor your programs to the specific types of internet use your clients want to know.

  In conclusion, these are the top best 30 money making business ides that can make you become rich. You don’t even need to invest in all, just select one of the businesses listed above and concentrate on it. Success will surely be yours.

His work concerns matters of life and death. Besides driving crime rates down, he has to battle terrorists. As New York City's police commissioner he has succeeded well enough that some powerful people are urging him to run for mayor.

By David Whitford, editor-at-large

In his office atop Police Headquarters in Manhattan, Police Commissioner Kelly works at a desk once used by a predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt.

FORTUNE -- "I'm a rookie," Ray Kelly begins.

New York City's top cop is sitting in a back room at the Highliner on 10th Avenue and 22nd Street, waiting for a Cuban sandwich while sipping lemonade. He's been coming to this restaurant since 1976, when it was the Empire Diner and Kelly was a lieutenant in Manhattan's 10th Precinct. The story he's telling goes back a decade before that, to the night he made his first arrest.

"I'm by myself," Kelly continues. "It's almost four in the morning. I'm in the doorway. Two guys come down the street with a girl. She gets shot with a shotgun. She screamed and they began to run. But I had a running start. So I jumped over the girl. I knew right away the arrest was more important. I grab the guys, I get the shotgun, then proceed to put a tourniquet on her leg. She was shot with birdshot, which is lots of pellets, you know."

Blood everywhere. The girl was screaming. But she survived, leg intact, and young patrolman Kelly earned his first police commendation. "I got both of the guys," he says plainly, "got the gun, and helped the girl."

Kelly's got a classic copper's mug -- a "nineteenth-century face," as the New Yorker once described it. Round head, small eyes, boxer's nose, tight lips, and an unreadable aspect that cracks like pond ice into a crinkly grin whenever he's amused. He likes a dark suit with pinstripes, well-shined shoes, a bright tie. He is not a tall man. I caught a side view of him this afternoon at headquarters. He was at the head of a long table, running a meeting of his 20-member executive team. His eyes lined up with everybody else's but only because his seat sat a tad higher on its hydraulic lift than theirs. His toes barely brushed the floor.

MORE: Why lawyers are still fighting over 9/11

Kelly may have the toughest job there is. The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country. Running it is not unlike running a midsize Fortune 500 company -- except that the stakes are much, much higher. Kelly manages a $4.9 billion budget, 250 buildings, 7,000 pieces of rolling stock, and 50,000 employees, most of whom carry handguns. One of his operating units is devoted to fighting terrorism. Like a CEO, he contends with a vast and varied cast of stakeholders who scrutinize his every move, but the metrics by which his performance is measured all have to do with life and death.

New York in 2012 is averaging a little over one murder per day, on pace to record the lowest total in decades. This in a city that experienced a horrific 2,245 murders at the bloody peak of the crack epidemic in 1990, when there were a million fewer New Yorkers than there are now. Criminologists can argue about how much credit Kelly deserves for a trend whose drivers are many and complex, and whose origins precede his arrival. And critics of Kelly's aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics can ask, "At what cost?" But no one can deny that New York City on Commissioner Kelly's watch has become a dramatically safer place to live, work, visit, and invest. Consider this: According to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet, over the past two decades the average life expectancy in New York City has risen faster than anywhere else in the country -- in part because New Yorkers today are 80% less likely to get rubbed out.

But in the world ours has become, fighting crime covers only half of Kelly's job description. He also has to protect New York City from another terrorist attack. "We say that terrorism is theater," Kelly says, "and this is the world's biggest stage." Kelly's counterterrorism bureau, the first of its kind, is led by a veteran federal prosecutor whose prior posting was at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. It works with an NYPD intelligence division, run by the CIA's former head of covert operations, that deploys 12 New York City cops in foreign cities. And it has a new, $100 million surveillance network, called the Domain Awareness System, that oversees wide swaths of Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

Here, too, Kelly appears to be winning. Does he deserve all the credit? Of course not. Has he trod on civil liberties along the way? Some would say so. The Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for its takedown of a secret NYPD program that spied on American Muslims. And yet it's a fact that despite what the NYPD counts as 14 tries -- including a plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting its suspension cables -- there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11.

"I feel totally indebted to him," says real estate developer Mort Zuckerman. Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg says, "I think Kelly has made life safer in the city." Larry Silverstein credits Kelly for giving foreign investors the confidence they needed to bring "hundreds of millions of dollars -- trillions over time -- back to the city of New York." Silverstein, who signed a lease on the World Trade Center in July 2001, is now rebuilding. "If people lived in fear," he says, "this would be a fool's effort."

MORE: How NYC parks emerged from their lawless days

Certain powerful New Yorkers think what all that adds up to is an opportunity for Kelly, currently an independent, to run for mayor in 2013 on the Republican ticket. (Mayor Michael Bloomberg's term expires at the end of that year.) Many of them were gathered in the ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria on a warm night last spring for the annual fundraiser for the New York City Police Foundation, whose top-donor list includes billionaire Ira Rennert, former Revlon International (REV) chairman Paul Block, and Ivanka Trump. Ask Kelly, who is 71, if he wants the job and he always gives the same answer: "I have no plans to run for public office." But earlier this year Kelly, or persons close to him, did reach out to potential backers. "I think he came away with a sense that there were wealthy people who would throw their support and funding behind him," says one who was privy to those meetings.

"There's a crew in the city that are conservative Republican businessmen that kind of come together and pick and choose a candidate if they want to get involved," says former New York Republican state chairman Bill Powers, now a lobbyist. "Ray would attract all of those guys and ladies." Powers has already lined up Georgette Mosbacher, the prominent Republican fundraiser, to chair Kelly's finance committee should he decide to run. Powers has done his own polling and says the commissioner's numbers are "spectacular. There is no doubt in my mind that he can be the next mayor of New York City."

Kelly being fitted for a suit; standing by camera feeds from the city's Domain Awareness System with counterterrorism officials Richard Daddario (facing camera) and James Watters; with K-9 officer Robert McArdle and Clancy

On the night of the day the towers fell, Ray Kelly found himself alone in a bleak Midtown hotel. A fleabag, he called it, one block from the old CNN studios at 33rd and Eighth. The network put him up there so it would have access to his expertise. For which Kelly could only be grateful because he had no place else to go. He was out of the police force at the time, working in the private sector. His apartment, across the street from the World Trade Center, was inaccessible. His wife was away on a trip, and he had determined that his grown sons were safe. From his window, Kelly could see smoke rising in the glow downtown -- only three miles away, but it might as well have been 3,000. "I had no role," he says, recalling how useless he felt. "I couldn't go there."

Kelly grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. His dad was a milkman, and his mom was a checker at Macy's. During college he took a part-time job as a police cadet on the telephone switchboard, because he knew he wanted to go to law school one day and he thought the department might pay for it. In the end the feds covered his law school tuition at St. John's through the GI Bill (Kelly took time out in his twenties to lead Marines into battle in Vietnam), but by then he was hooked on "the excitement, the adrenalin" of police work. Even after he earned another law degree at NYU and a master's in public administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard, Kelly kept his badge, rising steadily through 25 commands, all the way to commissioner in 1992 under Mayor David Dinkins.

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When Dinkins lost his job two years later to Rudy Giuliani, Kelly lost his too. (Not a surprise. Every mayor wants his own commissioner. "It's the most important appointment he makes," says former mayor Ed Koch.) Kelly spent the next seven years far from New York: In Haiti, as director of an international police force restoring order after the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and in Washington, where he served President Clinton as undersecretary for enforcement in the Treasury Department, and later as director of the Customs Service. When Clinton left office in January 2001, Kelly came home to New York, looking for a job.

"You're crazy," Ace Greenberg, then CEO of Bear Stearns, told his people when they brought him the idea of making Kelly the firm's director of security. "He's not gonna stay here. He's so overqualified it's ridiculous." But Kelly, offered a lot of money and the title of senior managing director, took the position. Then came 9/11. Two months later, Nov. 6, was Election Day. On Nov. 7, Kelly got a call from the mayor-elect, asking him to return as commissioner. "Once I thought about it," Bloomberg says, "there was nobody else."

One of Kelly's own first hires was David Cohen, the CIA veteran he charged with revamping the NYPD's intelligence division. Like Kelly, Cohen had left government work after many decades and was finally cashing in -- in his case, analyzing political risks around the globe for Hank Greenberg at AIG (AIG). Kelly knew exactly how to pitch to a guy like that. "I myself had been out for a while," Kelly says. "The job is intoxicating. People miss it. Money makes up for some of it, not all of it. I was able to get some people back into it who wanted to play in the game. The song was still in them, as someone put it."

At Ground Zero Kelly visits the memorial to the 23 NYPD officers killed on 9/11.

Terrorism was the new reality. Kelly had witnessed it twice now. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people, happened on his watch. On the night of the explosion, standing at the edge of the floodlit crater, Kelly had been assured by a supposed expert that "this building could never come down." Kelly knew better now. And having had a taste of Washington, he understood that the burden of protecting New York from another attack was ultimately New York's to bear.

After 9/11, Kelly had a free hand to remake the police department. Besides Cohen, he recruited a retired three-star Marine general, Frank Libutti, to create the antiterrorism bureau. He basically redrew the precinct map to include distant NYPD outposts in London, Singapore, Amman, Jordan, and eight other foreign cities, and raised private funds from the Police Foundation to cover the extra costs. "The fact that something happens overseas, you say, 'Well, that's not your concern,' " says Richard Daddario, the NYPD's current deputy commissioner for antiterrorism. "It can become our concern. And if it becomes our concern here, it's too late."

Kelly authorized Operation Nexus, under which New York cops regularly visit hardware stores, self-storage facilities, scrap yards, and plastic surgeons' offices, the goal being to touch anyone whose services a terrorist might conceivably employ. (Homeland Security does something similar, but they send letters, says Cohen: "We send detectives.") And if you've spent any time in New York recently, you may well have witnessed a sudden, frightening display of force by the heavily armed Hercules unit -- an unsubtle reminder to anyone who might be watching that Kelly's NYPD stands ready to defend the city.

Kelly transformed standard police work in the city too. By the time Kelly began his second tour as commissioner, crime had been falling for more than a decade. His charge was to keep the trend moving in the right direction, but with a frozen budget after inflation and ultimately about 6,000 fewer cops. "The job is to do the job with the resources we have," Bloomberg says he told Kelly. "Not to say, 'If I had more resources, I could do the job.'"

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Kelly got some help from a fortuitous wave of retirements. So that even as payroll was shrinking, new cops were continually joining the ranks. That let Kelly leverage New York's diversity by hiring more blacks and Latinos, as well as native speakers of languages such as Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, and Hindi; the NYPD has been a majority minority police force, at the patrol level, since 2006. And he assigned new cops to high-crime neighborhoods where they were needed most.

Initially, almost everybody thought Kelly was doing a great job. But the more recent scoring has been mixed. The AP series shined a light on the seamy side of the war on terrorism.

Among the surveillance targets was a Staten Island mosque that is known for publicly condemning Islamic terrorism. "We were disappointed," says Suhail Muzaffar, the mosque's Pakistani chairman. He worries the revelations may have led "to disenchantment among our young people." Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, is willing to admit that "Ray Kelly has one of the toughest jobs in the world. There's no way to end crime, there's no way to end police abuse. All you can do is harm reduction." But lately Lieberman has taken a tougher stand against the practice of stop and frisk, the targets of which are overwhelmingly black and Latino young men. (Kelly's counterargument begins with the fact that more than 90% of shooting victims are also black and Latino young men, and ditto for the perps.) The NYPD was also widely condemned for its treatment of some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, especially after a videoclip of a policeman gassing a demonstrator went viral.

Kelly travels the city in his Chevy Suburban rolling command post.

Kelly is unapologetic. Longtime New Yorkers may recall that the commissioner used to be a big advocate for so-called community policing -- soft strategies like midnight basketball and after-school programs that aim to reduce crime by strengthening neighborhoods. "Yeah, fine," Kelly says now, "nobody's against that. That's chicken soup. But in terms of getting guns off the street, we're proactive." Since 2002, the number of recorded stop-and-frisk incidents has grown sharply, from less than 100,000 annually to nearly 700,000. Carnegie Mellon criminologist Alfred Blumstein describes the increase as "staggering," even while conceding "the stop and frisk was in a sense appropriately targeted."

"Exactly," says Kelly, who adds a staggering statistic of his own: Such stops last year netted more than 8,000 illegal weapons, including 819 guns.

At last count the NYPD was contesting four major lawsuits aimed at limiting stop and frisk. The Domain Awareness System may pose even more troubling questions. It's a massive, networked array of public and private surveillance cameras, license-plate readers, radiation detectors, arrest records, incident reports, and facial-recognition software that the NYPD developed with Microsoft (MSFT) and is marketing to law enforcement agencies all over the world; New York City will get a 30% cut of the profits. Already it sees everything river to river in Manhattan south of Canal Street and between 30th Street and 60th Street.

MORE: Former FBI cyber cop worries about a digital 9/11

When a man shot and killed a former colleague across the street from the Empire State Building in August, NYPD officers were able to link the 911 call instantly to a surveillance camera at the scene. Seconds later, all available cameras within a 500-foot radius were summoned, one of which, around the corner, caught the shooter as he pulled his weapon on police and was himself shot and killed. "It's the most advanced system of its kind in the world," Daddario says proudly. He credits it in this case with quickly ruling out a terrorist attack, and so preventing a massive and unnecessary police response. But how will New Yorkers feel when the rollout is complete, and nothing occurs in public in the city without the possibility, at least, that the police are watching?

One evening last summer, I accompanied Kelly to a gathering of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives at a banquet hall in Howard Beach. The conversation among the officers was all about Kelly's prospects if he decides to run. Assistant chief Gerald Nelson, patrol borough commander for Brooklyn North, told me "of course," he would support his boss, and he had no doubt he would win: "He's a workaholic and he's a brilliant man. So anything he sets his mind to do, he'll get it done."

His age is a factor. Bloomberg would support him -- he thinks he'd make "a very good mayor," but adds, "Ray's gotta be feeling like me. We're both in our seventies. It gets tougher to get up in the morning." He doesn't have to decide right away. With the NYPD currently enjoying a job approval rating above 82%, it's hard to imagine how he could be running a more effective campaign if he were in fact campaigning. How badly does he want it? Even his friends aren't sure. One says he suspects the idea would never have occurred to him if it hadn't occurred to others first. But the pressure to run is building, side by side with a shadow organization that's just waiting for the word from Kelly.

--Reporter associate: Doris Burke

This story is from the October 29, 2012 issue of Fortune.

Tips on Social Media for Small Business: #1 Why You Need It

Social media is now an essential part of the marketing mix

As the recent report from Econsultancy and Adobe has demonstrated, most companies now look at social media as a key part of their marketing and overall business strategies. 66% of digital marketers surveyed (working for companies with an annual turnover of more than £100m) agreed that ‘social media is integral to business strategy’, while 67% said that social media activity was ‘integral to their marketing mix’.

It seems to be even more important for smaller business organisations,  those with a turnover lower than £100m (SME or SMB).  A Manta survey of 600 small business owners across the United States indicates that 90% are actively engaged in social networking sites and 74% perceive social networking as valuable — if not more valuable — than networking in-person.  According to another recent analysis of more than 300 Chicago-based news sites, Facebook and Twitter drive more than half of all referred visits for small business sites, three times the percentage of larger sites.

As Lisa Barone states in her analysis of the Chicago study, it’s also a testament to the power of getting involved in your local community, online and off: if you’re taking the time to engage people on Facebook and to create content that is valuable and relevant to their needs, you have a great opportunity to significantly increase the traffic to your Web site.

Small businesses are struggling with social media

However, the news isn't all good.  The Manta survey revealed that 58% of surveyed owners said they struggle with promoting their Facebook pages — if they have a page at all. Recently, the UK's Guardian newspaper ran an article about how small businesses are struggling to cope with the challenges of social media. According to Business Network International (BNI)'s latest survey, 75% of business owners have been "put off" a particular company due to their poor use of social media.

It's at those smaller companies that this blog series about starting social media for small business is aimed.  I don't intend to focus on which content SMEs should be posting or how to boost SEO, but rather  how to get organised: who should be doing what, some useful tools, and some important safeguards.  If you are looking for good examples of style per channel and use of content though, here are some examples of some small businesses which are getting it right and winning customers through their social outreach.

Successful small business social media cases

Fallowfields Hotel runs the @Fallowfields UK Twitter account and regularly tweets out menu items, hotel news, and the head chef's guest tweets to its 25,000-plus followers, many of whom follow links through to the hotel website.

Southport Road Dental practice uses YouTube testimonial videos to reassure prospective patients: dentist David Hickey promotes the films via YouTube and Twitter and drives traffic through to the website.

Included in business coach Cath Daley's social media arsenal are her online blogs, linked to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, which target different user groups. "Blogs are a way of establishing your professional credibility and expertise to a wide audience while giving added value to my subscribers. Original online content raises brand awareness, improves SEO, and engages with existing and potential clients and referral partners. LinkedIn is the channel of choice for professionals and because of the nature of the business services I provide – communication and presentation skills training – more enquiries and referrals come from LinkedIn than any other platform, which I monitor via email."

Bookbinder Susan Green has an online shop at etsy.com, which she promotes primarily through Twitter - but also now, due to the visual appeal of her products, she is using Pinterest boards to help showcase her work.

Next posts in the series

The next posts will look at Social Media Policy and Social Media Channel Ownership ... meantime, here's a great infographic from that Manta study mentioned earlier, demonstrating clearly the value of social media for  600 small business owners across the USA.