This Thanksgiving-shortened week’s posts all spring from something I’m thankful for: two recent social media strategy training presentations for non-profit organizations. Based on incredible turnouts for both social media training presentations, non-profit social media strategy must be a hot topic!

One question from both sessions was how to attract a follower base for your non-profit organization.

These 16 ideas across 3 different areas should aid non-profits in growing a social media audience as much as they do other types of businesses and individuals as well:

Be a Good Social Media Participant

1. Be human and socially intriguing – This applies both visually (depict a person in your avatar) and in interactions (demonstrate personality and let people know WHO they’re interacting with online).

2. Interact with people – Engage with people on relevant topics. Talk, respond, and initiate conversations.

The powerful Greek god, Kronos, learned from his own parents that he would be overthrown and killed by a yet-to-be-born-child. Not one to take chances, as each of his five children were born, Kronos devoured them preemptively.

Business history is replete with examples of entrenched market leaders preying on upstart competitors by killing them in the market or devouring them through acquisitions. On the face of it, multinationals and startups seem natural enemies—start ups covet the multinational’s big customers, and multinationals bully the startups in order to maintain market dominance. And both compete for resources: startups thrive on multinational-trained managers with powerful contact lists, and multinationals suck up huge quantities of the best technical human resources with promise of cash and careers.

What’s it like to present your elevator pitch before an auditorium full of people? What did the finalists do well and what could they have done better?

Last week, the contestants in the Elevator Pitch Contest (presented by The University of Miami’s Launch Pad entrepreneurship center) had just 90 seconds to deliver their message and then another 90 seconds to field follow-up questions from the judges.

Entrepreneurs use elevator pitches to get the notice of investors, customers and others who can benefit their business. The pitch should be short — about the length of a typical elevator ride — meaty and rehearsed enough that it sounds natural.

We’ve unveiled VentureBeat’s picks for the 10 best video games of the holiday season. And this year’s picks really show how much the $20 million U.S. gaming market has changed in the past year. The growing influence of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and mobile gaming experiences such as the iPhone are clear to see. These games have great single-player experiences, but many of them also have excellent social sharing and multiplayer experiences too, a factor that’s becoming increasingly important in this market.

Another trend we’re seeing in games is that the more beautiful they get the more complex and harder to play they are. But users have no time to learn how to do something that is difficult when it should be easy. So what we’re seeing in the market now is a simplifying of the user interface. If you start out simple, you can take your player into intricate game mechanics and sophisticated stories.

Small Business Innovation Research awards are federally funded grants that can be great source of funding for your high-tech business. Learn the secrets of winning SBIR awards from an expert.

Fred Patterson is the President & CEO, The Commercialization Funding Coach

We are proud to announce the first annual SBIR Hall of Fame Awards. The SBIR Hall of Fame awards will be made to firms with a long period of extraordinary success of research, innovation, and commercialization within the SBIR program.

Hall of Fame Eligibility

For the SBIR Hall of Fame, nominees must be previous SBIR awardees that have contributed significantly to the program’s goals over a period of time through their work.

Any individual who owns and operates or who bears principal responsibility for operating a business that received an SBIR Phase I and II award or STTR award may be nominated. Partners who jointly own and operate a business may be nominated as a “team,” so long as the number of individuals in the team nomination does not exceed four. Nominees may have previously received a Tibbetts Award, although receipt of a Tibbetts Award is not required. Nominees must also be residents of the United States or its territories and will be subject to background checks.

Ok, you’ve been hustling for 2 months, selling the shit out of your vision to all of these amazing investors, trying to pickup a few nickels to rub together, and finally…finally, finally, finally, you have persuaded 6 or 7 very smart folks to cough up some seed capital. Today the money hits the bank. You did it! You got Keith Rabois, Ron Conway, Eric Schmidt, FirstRound Capital, and Jeff Bezos to give you $1 Million. You go out, drink 15 shots of Tequila, puke, wake up the next day, and you say to yourself “thank god, I can finally get back to thinking about my product. 30 days or so pass, you have a few conversations with one or two of your seed investors, and then you realize “hmmm, I have all these smart people around the table, I should probably try to involve them as much as possible in what we’re doing.” It has been about a month since you closed the round, and you say “I know! I will right a MONTHLY update.”

You sit down, and the first sentence of your update reads as follows:

“All, we are so excited to have everyone on board. This is the first of our monthly updates. Every month we will write to you and tell you what’s going on with the company and how you can help”

Today's economy is the worst period in decades for small businesses and startups to obtaining financing, writes The Wall Street Journal:

Ensconced in a strip mall behind a Carpeteria outlet, Derek Smith has been tinkering for two years with a wireless electrical system that he says can help schools and office buildings slash lighting bills. With his financing limited to what he earns as a wireless-technology consultant, he has yet to hire his first employee.

This is a far cry from his last start-up, which he cofounded in 2002. At the two-year mark, that company, which makes radio-tracking gear for hospital equipment, had five employees, about $1 million in funding from angel investors and offices with views of downtown San Diego.

"When I started this the plan was to go out and raise a bunch of money," says Mr. Smith, who is 36 years old. That was in late 2008, just as financial markets around the world collapsed. "I quickly discovered I can't do what I did before."

DUBLIN — Antoinette Shields had a plan to keep her tall, blue-eyed son, Kevin, close at hand. When she took over her boss’s construction company in 2002, she hoped to retire at 55 and give her son the business.

But it is not working out that way. Mrs. Shields’s company, which once employed 26 people, is now down to 8, still afloat in Ireland’s collapsed economy, but barely. Though Kevin graduated from college two weeks ago, she has no work for him, and he expects to emigrate to the United States or Canada next year.

“That is where we are,” Mrs. Shields said. “Sad, isn’t it?”

Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Any down-on-his-luck person who's been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. In grimy late 19th century Chicago, she pioneered the idea of settlement houses that offered night classes for adults, a kindergarten, a coffeehouse, a gym and social groups meant to create a sense of community among the downtrodden of the neighborhood. Her Hull House was a residence for about 25 women, and at its peak was visited by more than 2,000 people a week. As her community influence grew, Addams was appointed to prominent state governmental and community boards, where she focused on improving sanitation, midwifery and food safety and reducing narcotics consumption. An ardent pacifist and outspoken advocate for women's suffrage, Addams was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Rather than follow a well understood game plan, energy technology entrepreneurs need to think more like chess players on the fast-changing global stage.

A panel of clean-tech entrepreneurs and financiers here at the MIT Venture Capital conference yesterday discussed ways to navigate the regulatory and commercial landscape. Their strategies reflect how energy innovators and their financial backers have had to adjust over the past few years to have a shot at succeeding.

One persistent challenge for energy technology entrepreneurs is getting the money and permits to build either an initial production facility to make goods, such as solar panels or biofuels, or test a product at large scale.

Making the transition from individual contributor to manager, or entrepreneur to “corporate” executive, is one of the most difficult shifts most of us will face in our careers. A study conducted by a national management consulting firm a few years back indicated that more than 40% of newly appointed managers fail in their first 18 months on the job!

As a consultant working with many entrepreneurs attempting to grow their businesses either for continuity purposes or for sale I see them experience many of the same issues.

In many cases these issues boil down to developing and maintaining effective relationships.Our educational system has a bias towards “technical” skills and individual achievement. Winning means getting the best grades and “setting the curve” as an individual.

Here are some of the most common mistakes I have observed in “new” managers:

1. They fail the “politics quiz.” Organizational politics are a fact of life. Don’t sacrifice key relationships because a colleague or subordinate has a talent for getting face time.

2. Don’t try to “clone” yourself. Of course you’re brilliant, that’s why you were promoted. However, good management is getting the best out of the staff you have. Improving employee performance is a process not an event.

IT BRINGS a whole new meaning to freeze frame. A team at Nokia in Finland has created one of the unlikeliest computer displays yet - the world's first ice touchscreen.

It is not a practical device, of course, but the screen is being seen as a step towards an era in which the surfaces around us gain computing capabilities (see "What is ubiqitous computing?").

"This was a playful experiment, but one that we think showed interactive computing interfaces can now be built anywhere," says Jyri Huopaniemi at Nokia's research lab in Tampere, whose team built the touchscreen, dubbed Ubice, or ubiquitous ice.

Bike trials is a form of mountain biking where the rider attempts to go over an intense obstacle course without putting her feet on the ground. Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill is a master at street trials. In this demo video, he rides around Scotland's Edinburgh Castle, bunkers on the island of Inchgarvie, and a power station in the Scottish Highlands. (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

How do men and women small business owners approach innovation differently? That’s one of the questions the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is seeking to answer through a six-country study that’s going on as we speak—as one of the organizers of the study, I’m looking for entrepreneurs in the U.S., both male and female, who can take a few minutes to participate in an online survey.

Business creation has long been known as a driver of economic growth, and new firm formation is often seen as an indicator of a healthy and growing economy. New firms challenge the status quo with new ideas or innovative approaches to existing market needs, forcing incumbent firms to either improve their products and processes or be overtaken in the marketplace. In this process of economic natural selection, only the fittest firms remain, and economic growth is stimulated.

Yet, it is increasingly recognized that one size does not fit all in terms of economic policy and enterprise support: targeted and proactive policy and programmatic support is needed to foster small firm formation and innovation in particular. There is also a growing recognition that fostering small firm formation in general does not ensure economic self-determination and opportunity for all. Women and other socially excluded groups are often left behind if an “open for all” approach is taken in business development.

Some Texas angel investor groups are hoping their members take advantage of a federal provision exempting them from capital gains taxes on investments made by the end of the year. But others question whether it’s too late in the game.

The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 includes the provision for investments made from Sept. 27 to Dec. 31 as a way to create more jobs during the sluggish economy. More check writing by angel investors would be a huge benefit to Austin’s startup community because the Central Texas Angel Network is one of Austin’s most active investors in early-stage companies.

The act’s provision, referring to “gains on qualified small business stock,” applies to investments only in C corporations with gross assets of $50 million or less after Aug. 9, 1993, and before it issued the stock. The provision includes other requirements such as a five-year holding period, but the Angel Capital Association is recommending that members capitalize on the window of opportunity.