According to technology entrepreneur and researcher Vivek Wadwha, women entrepreneurs continue to be poorly represented in technology businesses.

Wadwha enlisted the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) to analyze data on 549 successful entrepreneurs. Some ways male and female entrepreneurs differed:

• Women were more motivated by the encouragement of business partners.
• Women counted on business partners as key funding sources more often than men.
• Women rated prior experience as more important to their businesses' success than did men.
• Women valued professional and business networks more highly.
• Men felt the financial pressure to earn an income more strongly than did women.

But there are also many similarities. In general, men and women entrepreneurs had equivalent education, an early interest in entrepreneurship, similar work experience and similar access to financing. They also shared the same motivations: the desire to make money, to be their own bosses and to see their ideas come to fruition.

Given the similarities, Wadwha writes, "We remain perplexed by the dearth of female startup executives. Evidence suggests that this does not reflect a failure on the part of women but rather a societal failure."

Cindy Padnos, managing director of Illuminate Ventures, has researched the role of women in high tech. Illuminate Ventures’  research found that women-led high-tech startups generate higher revenues per investment dollar and are less likely to fail than those led by men. Women-led venture-backed tech companies are also more capital-efficient, starting with one-third less capital than those owned by men but reaching similar revenue levels in the same time period.

Given the practical advantages of women-led businesses, Padnos is confident that the number of women in the technology industry will grow. Wadwha notes that in India — a much more conservative country than the U.S. — women are rapidly taking top roles in business. Rapid change in India's economy may be one reason women are more accepted as businesspeople.

From Small Business Trends

Where are All the Women High-tech Entrepreneurs?

As a small business owner, I prefer simple tools. I like having one tool that I can push to the limits over a slew of them that I have to manage. It makes my life a little easier and m processes more streamlined. Which is why I'm a huge fan of using Google Alerts.

You're probably already very familiar with Google Alerts. Google lets you set up as many Alerts as you'd like on as many different topics as you'd like. You tell them what to track, what kinds of content to track (News, Blogs, Video, Groups, or Comprehensive ), how often you want it and they'll create you a list every day and send it to you via email or RSS. Google Alerts have always been a super easy way to track brand mentions and listen in to conversations, but that's not all they can be used for. I thought I'd break down a few of my favorite ways to use Google Alerts and see if maybe some of them could help you as well.

Here are six ways I use Google Alerts.

Track Keywords

This is how most of us start out using Google Alerts. By creating Alerts based around your most important keywords you're able to find new information about topics you've told Google you're interested in. Doing this can help give you food for blog entries, guest articles, newsletters and help you stay better informed overall. Keeping on top of what's happening in your industry will help you make better decisions in your business and alert you to new products or strategies that can help you do things smarter. Using Google Alerts to track relevant information is great.

The problem with tracking broad keywords is that Google often finds information that's not as relevant as you'd like. To help cure this a bit, you can use advanced search operators to help you filter out bad results. For example, last week if you were a florist interested in what flowers were hot for Valentine's Day, you could have set up an alert for [Valentine's Day + flowers]. This would make sure that you only received flower-themed Valentine's Day articles, instead of everything being published about the holiday. In the same way, [Valentine's Day -flowers] would omit any mention of Valentine's Day where the term [flowers] was present, while [Valentine's Day OR flowers] would show mentions where at least one term was included. It's all about making your results more relevant.

Track Yourself

An obvious offshoot of tracking broad keywords is to use Google Alerts to also track your brand name, the names of all of your employees, the name of your blog, your domain name, any product names, etc. Anything that is associated with your company and is unique enough that it can be tracked, should be tracked. Being able to quickly spot conversations taking place about you on the Web allows you to become part of them. Whether the mention is someone giving you props, asking a question about your product, or even someone taking shots at your brand, knowing about it means you can respond. In the days where small miscommunications can become big online reputation management nightmares, the 'knowing' part has become increasingly more important.

Track Competitors

A few months ago I wrote an article offering up 11 Competitive Intelligence Tools for SMBs. The first tool I mentioned on that list was Google Alerts. Use Google Alerts to track mentions of your competitors, their products, and anything else you know about. The same way you're tracking your own mentions, you should be tracking those of your competitors. It's just good business.

Track New Links

As a small business owner, it's really important to pay attention to the links coming into your site. Sure, you want to find the conversations and the people talking about you, but links are important for lots of other reasons. They may help you identify new partnerships, new sites in your industry, places to guest post or promote content, or even the pages on your site that most connect with users. And of course, if you're tracking links to your site, do I even need to tell you to track links to competitors' sites as well? If people are linking to them, then there's a good chance they may be up linking to you, as well. Find ways to duplicate their success.

Find Content Stealers

Another way I use Google Alerts is as a low maintenance way to find content stealers. I used to work for a company that had its entire Web site stolen on a daily basis. Someone would come, copy the whole thing, and then slap it on a new domain and change the contact information. Now as a blogger, I have folks who, sometimes well-intentioned, will take complete blog posts and repost them on their own blog. And then, of course, we all know about scrappers who will take whatever they can get in order to throw ads on it. If you know that you have a piece of content that gets stolen often or there's a flagship piece on your site you really want to protect, take a unique selection of that post and create an Alert for it. If anyone posts it on their site, you'll be notified and can go about getting them to remove it.

Find Customers

Another interesting way to use Google Alerts is to get Google to track down potential customers for you. If you run a local bakery, set up a Google Alert for the phrase "who sells a, Yahoo Answers, Flickr Groups, Google Groups, and other question/answer-types sites. If people are out on the Web talking about a need that your business fills, Google can help you find it.

Are you using Google Alerts in any cool or exciting ways?

From Small Business Trends

How To Get More From Google Alerts

If you’re looking to become a franchise owner, there are several ways for you to increase your chances of success. One way is to arrange some time to talk with the operations people at franchise headquarters, and if possible, the president of the company. Some well thought out questions can have a huge impact on your decision to become a franchisee.

Here are five questions that most people I’ve consulted with never thought to ask:

• Can I have some specific examples of problems that your franchisees have experienced, and how your employees jumped in to help out?

(You are trying to find out how good their support team is. There should be some great “stories” of how they were able to alleviate a franchisee's problems)

• What types of people have you found to be super-successful as franchise owners in your system, and what types of people have been below average?

(You are trying to find out if there are any patterns that you can detect with either the really successful franchisees, or the ones that have not done so well.)

• What are some of reasons you have turned down prospective franchisees?

(Here, you are trying to find out how serious they are about finding the best franchise owners.)

• Do you have any ongoing litigation with any franchisees? Can you tell me about it? If not, if you've had any litigation in the past, can you share what it was about, and how it ended up?

(Lots of franchise and non franchise companies experience the many pleasures of lawsuits. Listen carefully to their answers. Who sued who? What really happened?)

• Are there any major technology/equipment upgrades planned for the current system?

(Upgrades could be equipment upgrades that the individual franchisee has to pay for, or major technology upgrades that the franchise company pays for.)

Questions like those are not commonplace. That’s the point. The more you can learn before you invest, the better you’ll feel when you write a $35,000 check for the up-front franchise fee to the franchisor.

The entire business world is becoming more transparent. Allow me to rephrase that; The entire business world is learning that transparency is really the way to do business. Not many industries will be able to escape this fact in the near future.

Shel Holtz and John C. Havens wrote a book called “Tactical Transparency” last year, and it’s an important one. Here’s what Paolo Tosolini, the New Media Business Manager at Microsoft Corp. said after reading the book;

“Transparency is a necessary journey that takes effort and time, but has high rewards. Organizations of any size should recognize the value of being transparent and make employees part of the journey.”

Employees of the franchise companies that you are researching may or may not be able to answer some, or even all of these questions. If they can’t, they should at least be willing to go the extra mile to get those questions answered, though.

Recently, a franchise candidate of mine submitted a list of questions to a franchisor that were amazing. The franchise director came back with answers to all of them within 24 hours. Even I was impressed. I wasn’t as impressed as my franchise candidate though. He’s getting ready to visit the California headquarters of this franchisor, and make a yes or no decision.

Do you think it had to do with the way they consciously chose to handle my candidate. (A guy who just wants to make sure he’s doing the right thing for himself, and his family.)

Update!  The gentleman who visited franchise headquarters in California decided to become a franchise owner. His in-person visit with the executives of the franchise company mirrored the phone and email exchanges that took place during his information gathering stage. His expectations were met. (According to my franchise candidate, they were “exceeded.”) In the end, that’s all he wanted.

Consumers can’t be “slammed” into making purchases anymore. They want to feel that they are in control of the buying process like never before. Companies that understand this will be successful ones. Companies that allow the buying process to happen naturally, will win. Companies that refuse to adapt to our rapidly changing buying environments, will fade away.

From Small Business Trends

5 Great Questions To Ask Franchise Company Executives Before Buying A Franchise

There's nothing difficult about heading to Twitter and creating an account to represent your business. What is difficult is knowing what kind of account you want to create and the voice you’ll be using with it.  That takes some thinking about.  There are many different types of Twitter accounts that you can create.  You need to decide what’s going to be most effective for you.

Do you want to be strongly corporate and spend most of your time talking about the business? Do you want to create a personal account where you downplay what you do and focus more on relationships? Do you want to go totally left field and tweet as a syrup bottle? Don't laugh. People are doing it! The type of Twitter account you create will depend on your goals for using it and, to some degree, your comfort level sharing information with your audience.

Below are some of the most common account types SMB owners are using on Twitter, along with some examples of each. Which ones do you identify with?

The Totally Corporate Account

There's a difference between being a business owner on Twitter and being a business on Twitter. When you take The Totally Corporate Account it means that you’ve decided to tweet as the company itself. There’s no employee or real personality publicly tied to the account in any way.  The focus is on promoting business news, blog posts, deals and to offer customer service.  It’s not on building genuine relationships with customers. Everything that is done is done from the perspective of The Company.

For example, @JetBlue uses its account to tweet about flight deals, @Starbucks talks about offers on coffee, and we all recently saw @SouthwestAir use its account to do some reputation management when they got themselves into trouble. All three accounts take a 100 percent corporate approach to talking to Twitter users. We don't know the face(s) behind the account or have any deeper understanding of the company’s voice because of them. The account is just there to keep us up-to-date on news and handle customer service complaints as they come up.

The Corporate-led Persona Account

The Corporate-led Persona allows the business to tweet as a Corporation, but to also include a bit of personality and insight behind the person publicly running the account.  Customers will be able to tie a face and a name to the account to help build a community around it. All of the tweets coming out will still be able the corporation, with the exception of a few spice of life tweets to add some flair and personality. However, it will still be very clear that the person tweeting is doing so on behalf of the company and that’s their reason for being there. It is in no way seen as a personal Twitter account.

For example, we know that @ComcastCares is Frank Eliason, @Zappos is Tony Hsieh, and @DunkinDonuts is the cheerful Dunkin Dave. They're corporate accounts but they include branded personas working to build a community around what’s going on. When we tweet at Zappos, we know that we're talking to Tony.  It provides an outward face to the company.

The Strictly Personal Account

A personal Twitter account is one with no obvious tie to any business or corporation. The person is tweeting as themselves, for themselves. They tweet about what they're doing and where they're going; they tweet after hours and on the weekends. The account is there to build relationships and to gain information.  We know the person works for someone but that “who” doesn’t play into their daily activity.

Lots of people choose to keep personal Twitter accounts. For example, my little brother is on Twitter. He’s a college student and has no business reason to do be there.  For him, Twitter is just another social network that he can use to talk to his friends, comment on his classes or to share links about his favorite TV shows or Apple products. There's no corporate slant there. Just him communicating with his network.

The Business/Personal Hybrid Account

A hybrid Twitter account is what I see most small business owners creating. It's an account that mixes both the personal and professional. You can tweet about what's going on in your industry, what blogs you're reading and any struggles you're facing as a person in your field. But then you use the same account to tweet about taking your kids to the movies and what you’re making for dinner. You mix both worlds, even if that means alienating some who'd rather not know about the other. However, you don’t dilute your efforts trying to grow multiple accounts.

This is the approach that I use with @lisabarone, as do many other business Twitterers. Under the Hybrid approach, we share links during the day and talk about work, and then go home to tweet about what's on TV and what we're doing with our families. It's a relationship-heavy approach that mixes both the professional and the spice of life tweets.

The Character Account

Character-based accounts have the tweeter posting from the voice, perspective and insight of an object/animal/plant/whatever. Everything is done through that character and the tweeter never breaks that character. It may sound silly, but we're actually seeing a lot more businesses take this approach as they look for a way to stand out and connect with customers. If you do it right, it's often ingenious. If you don't, well, you just look silly.

Some of examples of this in action? There are plenty. Aflac tweets as a the @aflackduck, the National History Museum tweets as a whale with its @nathistorywhale account, @mrsbutterworths tweets as a syrup bottle, and @ColonelTribune is the voice of the Chicago Tribune and a totally made up figure.

There's no right way to use Twitter, just like there's no wrong way. However, there is the right way for you and that's what you need to determine. You may even decide to adopt multiple account types. The question to ask yourself is, what’s going to help you get your message across? Built your strategy.

From Small Business Trends

Which Type of Twitter Account Should You Create?

These days, many of your customers may be tightening their purse strings.  Others are holding off on spending — period.  There’s a lot of pressure on small business profit margins.

The good news is that times like these present the perfect opportunity to take a long hard look at your business practices - to see how you and your business can become more profitable.

This Thursday I’ll be hosting a webinar, together with profitable growth expert, Andy Birol, to outline practical strategies that you can implement immediately to lead to higher profits and grow your top line and your bottom line.  These are not theories – these are practical tips and tactics that you can apply to your business – TODAY.

We’ll cover how to:

• reduce and rethink your cost of delivery and service
• identify which customers are creating your highest profit
• increase profits from existing customers
• package products for new channels
• find new customers like your best ones today
• convey the kind of value that customers will pay a premium for

Please join us for this free 1-hour Intuit webinar:

Who: Anita Campbell and Andy Birol, presented as part of the Intuit webinar series

What: Free webinar – Make 2010 Your Most Profitable Year Ever

When: February 18, 2010, at 10 – 11am PST (1 – 2 pm EST )

Where: this is an online webinar you can participate in from the comfort of your office and computer. Join us live!  Archived event will be available afterwards.

Register:  Sign up NOW to attend (takes just a minute to register)

Hashtag for Twitter discussion: #IntuitSMB

From Small Business Trends

Free Webinar: Improve Your Profitability With Practical Tips, Not Theories

Self-employed businesses are often on top of the world – that is, until the dreaded tax time arrives. Keith Hall, a certified public accountant and the National Tax Advisor for the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), joins Anita Campbell for an in-depth discussion on tax related matters concerning small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Every year, the NASE's Tax Talk program fields more than 10,000 small business questions, many of which come during tax season.  Keith Hall shares his top tax tips for small business owners and the self-employed and answers some of the most frequently asked questions by small business owners.

Below are the questions we asked Keith:

• (2:47) First Keith, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be connected with NASE?
• (4:25) Do I have to have a CPA or tax preparer assist me with my tax return?  Can I do that confidently on my own, maybe using some of the software that’s out there today?
• (7:37) If you had to list the most common mistakes that small business owners make on their tax return, what would they be?
• (10:08) Are there “red flags” that would subject your tax return to a greater chance of being audited or questioned in some way?
• (13:15) Are there any brand new issues this year regarding taxes that we should be aware of?
• (15:15) I know there are different “expensing” rules in place, is the Section 179 expense still in place for 2009 and 2010?
• (20:05) What can we do now to reduce the amount of our taxes that will be paid on April 15th?
• (27:16) Can you point out a couple of things we can start doing right now to save taxes on our 2010 tax bill?
• (28:40) Where can people go to learn more, Keith?

Brought to you by our sponsor:

- Listen to Keith’s full interview now by clicking the red and yellow player below -