Are You the Right company to be Pursuing Social Media Management?</h1> <article> <h1>Are You the Right company to be Pursuing Social Media Management?</h1> <p>Will Scarlet — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:59:54 GMT</p> <p>Social Media Management is a very effective method of promoting a website via the use of the very popular web 2.0, user generated content websites such as Digg, Del.icio.us,reddit. If a submitted content is successful, this can send thousands of visitors to a website in a short period, potentially leading to numerous incoming links. This method of promoting content via social media sites is commonly termed as linkbait.</p> <p>Businesses strive to find the best avenues to connect with their audiences. Today, social media is one of those avenues that not many companies are pursuing. Social media management can be a platform that is associated with many risks for those companies.</p> <p>If you have a business who has been ignoring the web 2.0 trend and the social media mangement, look out-the tide is shifting now and you are about to be left behind. The rise of social media did not happen overnight. The power of the internet to unite people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for socializing on the web-all these things and more led to the rise of social media mangement. And this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business-now and many more years to come.</p> <p>The current trend is not just using blogs, but also social networks and other web 2.0 applications to spread news, connect, create buzz, interact and socialize with others-both for business and visibility. Now companies are struggling to adapt to this new trend in order to deal with their customers.</p> <p>We 2.0 technologies are used take content to the customers. RSS, social networks, web and desktop widgets, blogging, user communities and more can help a company easily reach customers to communicate a company’s message and increase brand awareness.</p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Creating a Blog with Wordpress</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:58:42 GMT</p> <p><strong>Create a Blog with nsHosting™ for WordPress®</strong><br /> <br /> Today it seems nearly everyone has a blog – and it’s easy to see why. A blog is an ideal communications vehicle, whether it is for personal or professional use. Business blogging, in fact, has reinvented the way business owners build and maintain customer relationships. When businesses stop talking to their customers and start talking with them, they have a unique opportunity to truly put a finger on the pulse of their industry. <br /> <br /> If you want to create a personal blog or one for your business, you’ll need to give careful consideration to the blogging platform you choose. With <a href="http://www.networksolutions.com/web-hosting/wordpress/index.jsp" target="_blank">nsHosting™ for WordPress®</a>, you can enjoy a comprehensive package of blogging essentials powered by the leading blogging platform.<br /> <br /> This all-in-one package is designed to give you the tools you need to create a blog that gets people talking, including:<br /> <br /> <strong>Quick Publishing</strong><br /> Don’t have time to create a blog? See how hassle-free it can be with the WordPress® publishing platform. Even users with little technical skill can build a blog in minutes with the WordPress® simple interface.<br /> <br /> <strong>Design Themes</strong><br /> A blog should reflect the personality of the individual or business it represents. No matter what the nature of your business or personal interests, you’re sure to find the right “face” for your blog among thousands of WordPress® themes at your fingertips. You may even build your own template given that it uses a WordPress® theme format.<br /> <br /> <strong>Free Domain Name</strong><br /> You can give your blog a unique address on the Web – at no extra cost with an annual purchase! Give careful thought to the domain you choose, as it will impact the image you convey online.<br /> <br /> <strong>Personalized Email</strong><br /> When you use a free email account for business purposes, you risk appearing less than professional. A personalized email matches your domain name and, therefore, boosts your brand. Your email address will also include 10 email boxes.<br /> <strong><br /> Hosting Space & Bandwidth</strong><br /> Pictures, video and podcasts are common components of a blog, yet they can result in a negative user experience if server space is lacking. nsHosting™ for WordPress® includes 50 GB of disk space to accommodate your storage needs. In addition, 500GB of monthly bandwidth keeps your blog’s interactive elements running smoothly.<br /> <strong><br /> Regular Reporting</strong><br /> Once your blog is up and running, you’ll want to know how visitors are interacting with it. Statistics and reporting can help you pinpoint your blog’s strengths and weaknesses and make the necessary adjustments. <br /> <br /> When it’s time for your voice to be heard, nsHosting™ for WordPress® provides the complete package you need to make a strong statement.<br /> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>During an Economic Downturn, Small Businesses Still Need to Focus on Marketing</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:59:26 GMT</p> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt">Most small business owners will tell you that the past year has been challenging. Due to the economic downturn, many small businesses have seen a decrease in sales, an increase in operational costs, and more limited access to funding. Small businesses, however, still continue to thrive. According to the Small Business Success Index, a joint research effort between Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, 56% of small businesses made a profit in 2008*. The Small Business Success Index (SBSI) also found that despite the poor economy, most small business owners are optimistic about their business’ future.</span></p> <div> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt">According to the SBSI, there are six main factors that affect a business’ health and overall success. Small businesses that excel in these six areas are likely to be more competitive, more profitable, and more posed for growth than their counterparts; those that fail to focus on these areas are more likely to not reach important business goals, including growth and profit. The SBSI found that while today’s small businesses have a relatively strong grasp on some of these areas, including customer service and business regulation compliance, other areas are still problematic. In June of 2009, the SBSI found that the average score for small businesses in the area of marketing and innovation was only 70 out of 100, or the equivalent to a C- on a letter-grade scale. Marketing and innovation is a critical area to excel in, yet many small businesses are having trouble doing so. </span></p> <div> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt">To increase their competitiveness, small businesses must use innovative marketing tactics to appeal to new customers and maintain their current customer base. Unfortunately, limited access to capital and other side effects of the economic downturn have placed restraints on the amount of money small businesses can spend on their marketing efforts. SMB owners are now seeking new, non-traditional alternatives to older marketing strategies. While some businesses have been able to adapt, many still feel lost as to how they can use marketing to drive their business while still staying within a tighter budget. </span></p> <div> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt">On Tuesday, September 29, Network Solutions® is hosting the GrowSmartBiz Conference in Washington, D.C., that will focus on overcoming the challenges that small businesses are currently facing. The conference will cover ways small businesses can improve their performance in the six areas of the SBSI, including raising capital, growth strategies, and cost-efficient marketing techniques. Attendees will hear the insight and advice of keynote speaker Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of <i>Wired</i> magazine, as well as get the chance to network with other small business owners. Whether you’re an experienced business owner or a budding entrepreneur, the GrowSmartBiz Conference promises to be educational for all involved in the small business world. </span></p> <div><span style="font-size: 10pt"> </span></div> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt">To learn more or register for the GrowSmartBiz Conference, visit <a title="http://www.tinyrul/gsbiz" href="http://www.tinyurl.com/gsbiz">www.tinyurl.com/gsbiz</a>. MySolutionSpot™ members and visitors will receive a 50% discount by entering the code GrowSmartMSS.</span></p> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <p><span><span style="font-size: 10pt">*The Small Business Success Index, an ongoing measurement of the overall health of U.S. small businesses, was commissioned by Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. To take the survey yourself, click</span></span> <span><span style="font-size: 10pt"><a target="_blank" href="http://cli.gs/vVyDu3"><span style="color: #0991ac; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none">here</span></a>.</span></span></p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Calling All Real Estate Agents: Your Potential Customers Are Looking for You Online</h1> <p>Nit Sujatanond — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:29:01 GMT</p> <p>If you belong to the real estate industry, you know better than anyone that your industry is fiercely competitive. However, you also understand that you must invest money to make money. Therefore, you continue to purchase property listings in local newspapers and/or real estate magazines.</p> <p>The truth is the efficacy of these listings is limited because every real estate agent and company in your town is also utilizing the same marketing channels. To stand out, you should take advantage of the untapped resources available online. By doing so, you are not only going a step beyond your competitors but also responding to new consumer trends.</p> <table align="top" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td>Research has shown that real estate shoppers are heavily relying on online sources when researching new homes, apartments or neighborhoods. <br /><br />In fact, data from a May 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project report, "The Internet and Consumer Choice," states that 50% percent of their survey respondents search Web sites belonging to real estate agents and companies, 51% research communities or neighborhoods online, and 54% take video or virtual tours of real estate properties. <br /><br />The study goes on to say that 42% of these real estate shoppers search online newspaper classifieds, 32% search ad sites, 24% browse community blogs and 19% post and view messages on online forums. These significant percentages show that for these shoppers, the information they find on the Internet has the power to influence their purchase decisions. </td> <td> </td> </tr> </table> <p><b>Responding to New Trends</b><br />Now that you recognize the possibilities that come with the Internet, how should you take action? If you want to take gradual steps, then first create ads for online classifieds and ad sites. These ads are practically identical to your print ads. The only difference is that they are online. Once you have submitted these listings, post messages about your available properties on community blogs and message boards.</p> <p>While smaller actions like these can help expand your reach, the most effective strategy is creating your own Web site. Your real estate Web site will not only help you develop a Web presence, but it will also help strengthen your brand. It will create a centralized location where real estate shoppers can conveniently browse through and learn more about your company and the properties you represent. Furthermore, because of the flexibility of your site, you will have the space necessary to describe in detail each property and the community in which it is located. The more perks you can highlight, the more convincing you will be.</p> <p>Responding to new consumer trends will prove to be quite beneficial for your real estate business. And, in addition to exposing your business to real estate shoppers who practice online research, you might even attract new clients.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to Write Press Releases That Get Noticed</h1> <p>Susan Wade — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:20:38 GMT</p> <p>In the world of public relations, companies use press releases in an attempt to garner positive media coverage. And reporters turn to releases to prompt story ideas. Generally, press releases promote some type of “real” news, that which involves controversy or change. But in the Internet world, press releases are written and used entirely differently. Understanding the differences between the two will help you know who, what, where, when, and how to use them effectively to get noticed.</p> <p>Press releases distributed on the web are typically used to generate content for search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the efforts to generate free organic listings high on the results page for a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. </p> <p>Search engines use “spiders” to read through the contents of the web, based on keywords that have been entered. Spiders go out and “crawl” the Internet by following links, indexing web pages as they go. They read the content found on a site and follow all of the related links. And what spiders are looking for is relevant, up-to-date, and unique content.</p> <p>Web-based press releases enable you to generate that fresh content for SEO and to build the inbound links that spiders traverse. Because media coverage isn’t the ultimate goal, you can distribute a greater number of releases that, frankly, aren’t all that newsworthy. Some topic examples include: the launch or enhancement of a product or service; an announcement of a new project or client engagement; details regarding a company executive who will be speaking at a conference; the hiring of a new executive; or information on philanthropic work you are doing in your community.</p> <p>While a traditional reporter may stifle a yawn over any of those topics, bloggers love releases. Because they have far more leeway in what they choose to write about, a good blogger can weave a highly entertaining blog post around even the most mundane product announcement. And many bloggers subscribe to RSS feeds, so they can receive emails of press releases on topics that interest them. Best of all, spiders love crawling blogs and following their featured links.</p> <p><b>Tips on Writing a Release</b><br />Once you have a topic, you must be aware of how best to write a web-based press release. One critical element your release must contain are keywords, those words or phrases that people enter into search engines in order to find what they are looking for. Remember, spiders are searching for keywords and using them to index and rank web pages.</p> <p>Free tools are available on the web to help you find the most popular keywords related to your products, services, industry, or business. Google’s tool can be found at: <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2">https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2</a></p> <p>Another tool, Wordtracker, has both free and paid subscription versions of their tool. The free version can be found at: <a href="http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/">http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/</a></p> <p>With a solid list of keywords, you can draft your release, weaving them into the title, into a subhead, and then repeating them several times throughout. Within your release, be sure to include hyperlinks on various keywords that will jump readers to specific pages on your site that you want them to visit. You should also include the date at the start of the first paragraph and be sure the release is no longer than one page.</p> <p><b>With Your Release Written. . . Now What?<br /></b>With your release ready, you can post it to your site (for example, in a Recent News section) and send it out through one of the many press release distribution services on the web. </p> <p>You can leverage some of the services that are available for free, including:<br />• Free Press <a href="http://www.free-press-release.com/">http://www.free-press-release.com/</a><br />• ClickPress <a href="http://www.clickpress.com/releases/index.shtml">http://www.clickpress.com/releases/index.shtml</a><br />• PR Leap <a href="http://www.prleap.com/">http://www.prleap.com/</a><br />• I-Newswire.com <a href="http://www.i-newswire.com/">http://www.i-newswire.com/</a><br />• PRLog <a href="http://www.prlog.org/">http://www.prlog.org/</a></p> <p>Or, look to a site such as PRWeb, a paid service with a lot more outlet feeds and greater distribution that includes the likes of Google News, Yahoo! News, USA Today Online, and others. (<a href="http://www.prweb.com/destination.php?awsrc=prwebsearch_pressrelease_fp&gclid=CNSSpf7WnJUCFQpjnAod7m9nfg">http://www.prweb.com/destination.php?awsrc=prwebsearch_pressrelease_fp&gclid=CNSSpf7WnJUCFQpjnAod7m9nfg</a>)</p> <p>The more often you can update your content, the more the spiders will like it. Even still, you want your releases to have some value and depth. For small to medium-sized organizations, distributing a release twice a month to support your SEO efforts is a good goal. If you are not sure you can crank out that many releases each month all on your own, distribution services also offer writing services.</p> <p>Learning how to effectively use web-based press releases is both a cost-effective and efficient way to elevate your SEO strategy–and garner more attention on the web.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) What Does It Mean?</h1> <p>Victoria Wors — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:54:35 GMT</p> <p> It is no secret that labor unions in the United States have been on a decline in membership since the 1970's. The loss of most of the world's largest manufacturing plants and a move to a service and consumer based economy has contributed to labor's demise. Attempts in recent years by labor organizations such as the Service Employee's International Union (SEIU) along with various other groups to organize hospitals, retail establishments, janitorial companies, etc. have increased as our manufacturing base has decreased, however most attempts have met failure. The reasons behind labor's failure to organize these groups are many but the main reasons include:</p> <ul> <li>Management's ability to control access to employees</li> <li>Companies utilize time limits in current legislation to it's fullest to exhaust labor's organizing efforts</li> <li>Challenging unionization attempts by demanding a secret ballot election through the National Labor Relations Board to insure each employee can vote without intimadation</li> <li>Sanctions against employers for possible Unfair Labor Practices (ULP's) amount to neglegible fees</li> </ul> <p>The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will address these by:</p> <ul> <li>Making it illegal for management to hold meetings with employees to present their case of why a union is unnecessary</li> <li>Reduce time limits requiring a company enter into negotiations with a union within 10 days of a union being sanctioned by the NLRB</li> <li>Eliminating the opportunity for a company to challenge a union's organization attempt with a secret ballot vote. </li> <li>A union will be recognized as the sole representative for a collective group of employees by presenting authorization cards signed by 50% plus 1 of the identified group, NO SECRET BALLOT</li> <li>Should the company and the union not reach agreement on a contract within 120 days of the union being recognized, an arbitrator will be assigned to finalize the sections of a contract remaining.</li> <li>The intial contract will be in effect for 2 years with no chance for employees to decertifiy</li> </ul> <p>Given these very extensive changes to current labor law in the United States companies need to begin, if they have not already done so, to evaluate their human resources policies and procedures and the strength of the communications between management and employees. Unions are not successful where employees "preceive" fairness and credibility of management in their organizations. Often a company should engage an outside consulting firm to conduct opinion polls, human resources audits, personality assessments and review of employee litigation claims to determine the "health" of the company's relationship with it's employees. An outside firm can present an honest and unbiased report to management versus using internal personnel.</p> <p>We have identified in this article organization attempts with typically lower paid and lower level employees, it should be noted that groups traditionally not known to be union organizing targets ARE attempting to organize. Groups such as doctors, engineers, and other professionals are seeking to organize just as non-professional groups have done so for decades. The same activities to determine the "health" of relationships should be employed with these groups as well.</p> <p>The message is clear, companies need to begin to prepare for sweeping changes in labor law if not in 2009, certainly in early 2010. Becoming unionized will NOT be automatic if companies dedicate efforts to communicate more effectively with employees and address their issues in timely and effective ways.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>4 Tips to Thrive During Recession</h1> <p>Tara Rethore — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:27:35 GMT</p> <div class="Section1"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Most experts agree: times are tough!<a name="_ftnref1" href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/articles/AddPost.aspx#_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id:ftn1;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character:footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Yet amid all the bad news, our clients tell us that some organizations are doing well – maintaining revenues, outperforming the competition, continuing to build for the future, and seemingly, weathering this ‘perfect economic storm’. Likely, these are the organizations that created – and are executing – a Recession Plan<a name="_ftnref2" href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/articles/AddPost.aspx#_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id:ftn2;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character:footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a>. That’s the approach they’ve taken in anticipation of a downturn to prepare for and thrive during recession. Executing well will help these organizations to accelerate out of the recession.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">So what can you do – right now – to help your company thrive during this downturn? We’ve identified four levers to battle the storm and execute effectively during these very turbulent times.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;text-indent:-0.25in;text-align:justify;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .25in;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Hold firm</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;text-indent:-0.25in;text-align:justify;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .25in;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Streamline</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;text-indent:-0.25in;text-align:justify;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .25in;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Invest</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt 0.25in;text-indent:-0.25in;text-align:justify;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .25in;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Anticipate</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Hold Firm</span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Extraordinarily high volatility in the stock markets makes us all nervous. And nervous investors amid enormous uncertainty often breed panic. The same is true in business. Review your strategies and prioritize. Move managers with recession experience into key areas of your business. Don’t panic. ‘Hold firm’ does not mean toss your business plan. Adapt your regular operations meetings to encompass strategic and operating questions – are you putting time, money, and people into the right things?</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Streamline</span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Continue to seek ways to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and take additional cost out of your business. Think ‘CUSTOMER”. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Now is the time to retain them and, as competitors flounder, to be in the right position to win new business. Reduce complaints, rationalize product launches, extend winning products, organize and prioritize the sales force’s efforts on profitable customers. Elsewhere, focus on the business processes that flow back from dealing with the customer; clarify decision rights, push authority and accountability down into the organization, and ensure information gets to the right people to solve issues collaboratively – and quickly. That way, you enhance efficiency, manage costs, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;">and</i> still deliver what your customers expect.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Invest</span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">In people, ideas, and new opportunities, tools, and processes that will strengthen your position post-recession. Perhaps counterintuitive – but when others are heading to the bunker, your organization can act early and nimbly as the situation evolves. Ask others how your vendors, customers, and competitors are weathering the storm. Take this opportunity to build stronger relationships with all of your stakeholders. And invest in your own people to build the flexibility to adapt to changes in the size and shape of your business. In turn, that helps to bolster morale and support the tough decisions required to deal with market pressures. Investing in the workforce supports efficiency and cost management while also building good will for the future.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Anticipate</span></b></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Rethink your dashboard. Consider the critical few metrics that tell you customers are well-served and operations are performing adequately. Fine tune those few measures to be hyper-sensitive to both internal issues and the market so that you can act with more definition and speed to address opportunities or threats. Be sure those 3-5 metrics both monitor progress and anticipate changes, particularly those that tell you a recovery is coming. </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">M. Beacon Enterprises can help.</span></b></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Thriving during recession requires achieving the right balance between these four levers. We can help you anticipate by working with your senior team to identify specific actions in each of these areas that your team can execute now.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;text-align:justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;">Contact M. Beacon Enterprises for an independent review of your situation – and to thrive during recession.</span></p> </div> <p> <hr align="left" /> </p> <div style="mso-element:footnote-list;"> <div style="mso-element:footnote;" id="ftn1"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><a name="_ftn1" href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/articles/AddPost.aspx#_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id:ftn1;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character:footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;">“Extreme weakness (in the Institute for Supply Management’s index of manufacturing activity), and the very rapid deterioration, should essentially end discussion about whether the economy is in recession.” </span></i><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;">(<span style="text-decoration:underline;">Financial Times</span>, 10 October 2008)</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Gautami;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;">Collapse of the US housing market has upended the economy, frozen credit markets, and saddled financial firms with (billions in)…write-downs and losses.”</i> (<span style="text-decoration:underline;">The Washington Post</span>, 10 October 2008)</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-size:x-small;font-family:Times New Roman;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="mso-element:footnote;" id="ftn2"> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoFootnoteText"><a name="_ftn2" href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/articles/AddPost.aspx#_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id:ftn2;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character:footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;"> See <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;">Are you ready for recession?</i> by Tara Rethore and Marian Bradshaw-Knapton, December 2007.</span><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p> </div> </div><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Higher education not a factor in micro-business success</h1> <p>Doctor Strategy — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:31:53 GMT</p> <p>A recent study by Dr. Dan Geller (2007) found no correlation between the educational level of micro-business owners and the practice of strategic planning in their companies. Dr. Geller studied 228 micro companies in Northern California and found that 163 respondents (70.56 percent) hold bachelor’s, master’s, or post-graduate degrees; yet there was no correlation (r = -0.0370; p = 0.5723) between the educational level of the micro-business owner and the practice of strategic planning in the company. In other words, incidence of strategic planning did not go up with higher education.</p> <p>Based on previous scientific studies, which established correlation between the practice of strategic planning and micro-business success, and Dr. Geller’s study, which found no correlation between the educational level of micro-business owners and the practice of strategic planning, the conclusion is clear – higher education is not a factor in micro-business success.</p> <p>Dr. Geller’s findings raise a question. Why would highly educated business owners, who have the knowledge and who understand the importance of planning in business, not practice such activity?</p> <p>One reason is that micro-business owners lack the time to do so. Since traditional strategic planning methodologies were designed for very large companies, they are complex and time consuming. To help micro-business owners practice strategic planning, even though they have very limited time and resources, Dr. Geller developed the Instant Strategistâ methodology, which allows one to develop a valid and practical strategic plan in less than eight hours. “Clearly,” says Dr. Geller, “even a busy business owner can afford that.”</p> <p>Dr. Dan Geller is the President of Instant Strategistâ (www.instantstrategist.com), a strategy-research company established in 1998 in San Rafael, CA, to help micro businesses succeed through the practice of quick and easy strategic planning. The company offers a range of planning tools, including a book, software, audio and video CD’s, to help busy micro-business owners plan their way to success. For more information go to www.instantstrategist.com, e-mail info@instantstrategist.com, or call toll free at 866-343-5537.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Basics Of Blogging For A living</h1> <p>Rose Dylan — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:07:01 GMT</p> <p>It's 2010 and you'll have to have been living under a rock to avoid discovering about the concept of blogging for a living. And perhaps it is because you are considering blogging as a possible source of income that you are reading this. I have been blogging for a few years now and am sharing some of the things that have helped along the way. When all is said and done, what you get out of your blog depends on what you put into it. Loads of people get excited and jump in to blogging but few succeed at it<br /> <br /> <strong>Before you get started</strong><br /> <br /> <strong>Niche</strong>. . Who is your market? It really is important to determine this before getting your domain name or hosting. Does the niche you selected have a need you can fill? It determines what your content is going to be and helps direct how you speak to your audience in your posts. Also if you know the market then it is easy to identify the breaches in the market and fill them<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Work Schedule</strong>. You need a schedule to work to. Treat your blog like a business. Have a set number of hours everyday that you work on your blog and stick to it. Obviously your schedule will vary if you do this part time from if you are going to be a full time blogger. I would suggest dividing your time into three. One part for generating content, one part for your own education and the last part for generating traffic to your blog <br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Commit to a posting frequency</strong>. There is no doubt in my mind that the more frequently you post high quality content on your blog, the better it does in the search engines and visitor allegiance is improved. I would suggest posting at least three times a week to start with and once you have your audience you can slow this down. Having said that only post as frequently as you have useful information to share. <br /> <br /> <strong>SEO from The Start</strong><br /> Search engine optimization should start before you put the first word down. Good SEO means a ton of search engine targeted traffic to your blog. It's the difference between looking for traffic to your blog and having the traffic come looking for your content It should be reflected in your choice of domain name, the titles of your posts, the categories you use to archive your posts etc. It could actually determine the blogging platform you decide to use. Wordpress we all know has a fair amount of search engine optimization enhancing plug ins. Having said that though, the best SEO you can do on your pages is in the choice of words you use<br /> <br /> <strong>Become The Go to Guy In Your Niche</strong><br /> As a newbie blogger, you do not need to be that guy in your niche i.e. the guy ith all the answers. As long as you are enthusiastic about learning about that niche and aim to become an expert in the niche. We have all seen those hurriedly thrown together blog posts that just do not make any effort to make a connection with you the reader. You know the blogs we never go back to. And we also all know the blog posts that excite us when we are reading them. The ones that you read them and you feel energized and motivated. This is the style of writing you want to aspire to and choosing a niche you are excited about is a big step towards achieving this<br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Jump Right in</strong><br /> <br /> <strong>Perpetual Newbie</strong>. You really want to go through the planning stage of your new blogging career very quickly and then jump right in. You have to keep in mind that no blogger started off with all the knowledge in his or her head. We all learned as we went along. And the best way to learn is by doing. So get that blog up and running. Do your niche selection and determine which blogging platform you want to use but get stuck in. The risk of being a perpetual newbie is you never get anything done. <br /> <br /> <strong>SEO Is Crucial</strong>. Good SEO must be the start point of each and every post you write on your blog. Select the keywords you want the post to rank for. Different posts should be optimized for a different set of keywords so that your posts cover a larger section of your niche in the search engines. Include your keyword or keyword phrase in your post title and early in the content of your article. Keep this concept in mind when you are generating backlinks to your blog. You want to use anchor text backlinks that contain the keyword you are optimizing that particular post for. Also aim to write about 350 to 500 words per post. To rank well in the search engines the spiders prefer to find a lot of words on your pages. The content must be original. I would advice not to use PLR articles or other content that can be found elsewhere on the internet. Write your own posts or outsource your content creation but make sure that your content is original<br /> <br /> <strong>Social Networking</strong>. Your reputation is only as big as your network so you need to get busy building a network of friends in the blogging world and in your niche. Mybloglog and technorati are good places to start networking with other bloggers. Blogcatalog is another decent option Facebook and linkedin are social networking sites that are popular with internet marketers. They have a wide variety of groups and you could find one or two in your niche. See what other bloggers are doing, learn from them and their mistakes. <br /> <br /> <strong>Blogging Platform</strong>. The two most popular platforms are Blogger and Wordpress. A lot of internet marketer and professional blogger swear by wordpress. It's great because of the versatility it provides. Blogger does not have the advantage of a whole host of plug ins but it does well in the search engines and the learning curve is not neck breakingly steep. The question may also arise as to whether to purchase your own hositng account or to use the free blogging platforms. As a professional blogger the aim is to host your own blogs. However as a beginner you could opt to use the free blogging platform and then migrate it to your own server once you have started making money from the blog. The one major disadvantage of this though is the loss of your backlinks you would have generated to the free hosted blog. Also a domain name and hosting service are not prohibitively expensive so for a few dollars, it certailnly is worth starting with your own hosting account<br /> <br /> <strong>Getting Traffic</strong><br /> <br /> <strong>Search Engine Optimization</strong>. This has been mentioned before but highlights how important SEO is to getting traffic to your blog in the long term. Each post must be optimized on an individual basis<br /> <br /> <strong>Keynote articles</strong>. These are articles that comprehensivey and exhaustively cover a particular subject in your niche. They are so thorough that they become the reference articles on that particular subject. Every once in a while, find out what people in your niche are most concerned about, what is giving them particular difficulty and write a pillar article on that. This article will act as a magnet for visitors to your site and could help establish your reputation as an expert in the field<br /> <br /> <strong>Blog carnivals</strong>. Blog carnivals are a very effective method of getting the word out about your blog. A blog carnival is a blogpost on someone elses blog that collects the most relevant articles on a particular subject. When published, the carnival post has a short intoduction to what the carnival is about then has snippets of blog posts that have been accepted on the carnival. There is then a link under each snippet to the blog where the original post is i.e your blog If your post gets accepted in someones carnival it's a good thing both for SEO and direct traffic<br /> <br /> <strong>Article marketing</strong>. No article on traffic generation os complete without at least a mention of article marketing. Article marketing involves writing high quality articles and submitting these articles to article directories online. If the article is accepted, there is a bio box or about the author space where you can put an anchor text link to your blog Do not use the same content on your blog for your article marketing campaigns<br /> <br /> <strong>Guest blogging. </strong>A little like article marketing because you are generating articles and submitting them to other peoples' sites. Instead of submitting your article to an article directory, you submit it to someone else's blog. You must make sure that the blogs you submit to attract visitors that are targetted to your niche, commands a lot of traffic and have a decent reputation<br /> <br /> <strong>Social Bookmarking And Blog Directories</strong>. Most of them are no follow so the backlink is not worth much from the SEO perspective but it does tell other people that your blog is out there. Social bookmarking sites need a little work to build a reputation. The earlier you start building a reputation or a network at the social bookmarking sites the better it will be for your bookmarks when you eventually start bookmarking your blog posts<br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Back to school</strong><br /> <br /> Apart form learning as much as you possibly can about your niche, you must also keep up to date with what's going on in the world of blogging. People come across novel methods of getting traffic to blogs every so often. There are new software being developed, new rules regarding sharing of information and a myriad of things.Staing abreast of these developments can be daunting. A great way to get information is to join forums in your niche, forums about blogging and internet marketing forums There is a wealth of information shared in the forums on a daily basis. For tips on internet marketing, the warrior forum has a lot of marketers sharing tips and ideas. Whatever you do, keep learning and keep implementing what you learn <br /> <br /> <strong>Monetization</strong><br /> So you now have a blog with a few high quality posts that are getting a decent amount of traffic to it. The question is how do you make money from your blog. <br /> <br /> <strong>Google Adsense</strong>. Requires you to register with Google adsense and acceptance to the program is not automatic. adsense is an ad serving program that allows you the blog owner to make money by displaying ggogle adsense ads on your posts. Google gives you a code to place on your blog. This code leads to the display of adverts relevant to your blogs content on your pages. You get a small amount of money each time someone clicks on an adsense ad on your pages. With a large number of visitors per day and a large number of clicks, the earnings soon add up Adsense is quite popular with blog owners and webmasters because it is easy to use<br /> <br /> <strong>Affiliate Marketing</strong>. One of the leading methods of making money online and a really cool business model As an affiliate marketer you promote other peoples products and get paid a commission if a desires action is achieved. This could be a sale or a sign up. In affiliate marketing, you do not have any physical contact with the product so no storage or shipping required on your partYou role is simple to send buyers to the merchants site through a special affiliate link unique to you<br /> <br /> <strong>Promote your Business</strong>. It may well be that you have a business that you are trying to promote. Or perhaps a product that you wish to sell. The reach of your blog increases the audience to which you can market your business or product to Your blog could be your internet portal to get the word out about your business or product<br /> <br /> These are just a few of an infinite methods of making money from your blog. <br /> <br /> So that was a crash course on getting started with blogging. <br /> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Top 10 Small Business Resolutions for 2010</h1> <p>Melissa Makfinsky — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:39:10 GMT</p> <p>It’s that time of year again when we make resolutions that will help guide us into the New Year. As a small business owner, this is the perfect time to make a list of resolutions of things you can do to help grow and solidify your business in 2010. Think of it as reinforcing your business plan -- or in some cases, rewriting your business plan to take advantage of new opportunities. </p> <p>What will you do this New Year to help your small business grow? What plans can you put in place now to guide you through the coming year? Join the conversation here: <a href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/tell_us/what-s-on-your-wish-list-for-the-upcoming-year-2191/">http://www.mysolutionspot.com/tell_us/what-s-on-your-wish-list-for-the-upcoming-year-2191/</a></p> <p>To help make 2010 a perfect “10” for you and your business, we’ve compiled a list of our top 10 resolutions for small businesses.<br /> <strong><br /> 10. Evaluate what worked</strong><br /> Evaluate what worked for your business and keep doing more of it, stop doing what didn’t. To quote Albert Einstein, “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Achieving your business goals is about having specific goals with deadlines, analyzing what works and what doesn’t, and regularly evaluating your progress against your goals. The biggest difference between businesses that succeed and businesses that don’t is the simple act of making it happen. Don’t linger, take action and move towards your goals. Decide what you want to achieve, and then design a plan to get there.<br /> <br /> <strong>9. Continue to learn and improve</strong><br /> In order to stay successful in business, you must commit to continue to learn and improve. Education is a never-ending process. What you learned before may now be obsolete. Once you’ve learned something new, a new knowledge arises. Surround yourself with useful information and knowledge. Enroll in training courses in the areas you are less experienced in. Participate in seminars and workshops. Find a successful business mentor whom you can emulate, to guide you in your operations. Hire experts and coaches in a particular field to help answer questions. Research new business ventures and ideas. Adapt and learn from other successful businesses, adopt similar techniques. Stay persistent, work hard and continue to learn new ways to improve your skills and abilities.<br /> <br /> <strong>8. Practice good communication skills</strong><br /> Communication is a two-way street. The only way each side can get the desired outcome is by taking the time to specify goals, the associated objectives to meet them and any foreseeable barriers. How you communicate is just as important, if not more so, than the product or service you are trying to sell. As a small business owner, you need to be able to talk with confidence to your customers, vendors and employees and also interpret types of non-verbal communication. This year resolve to (1) be aware of non-verbal cues; (2) take care with electronic communications; (3) communicate confidently; (4) stay connected with employees; and (5) collect customer feedback.<br /> <br /> <strong>7. Treat your employees well</strong><br /> If you have experienced, motivated employees, you are probably already treating them well – paid them competitive salaries and benefits, provided training, acknowledged their contributions. If, on the other hand, you turnover is high and employee morale is low, you should consider changing the way you hire, manage, and reward your staff. Seek to hire employees with drive, dedication and a commitment to working with others to get the job done right. Empower employees by giving them knowledge, resources, authority and managerial support. Reward employees when they provide stellar customer service. By practicing the Golden Rule, treating employees as you would like to be treated, your business will be ultimately rewarded.<br /> <br /> <strong>6. Serve your customers well</strong><br /> Knowing how to meet and, more importantly, exceed expectations will allow you deliver exceptional customer service consistently. Listen to customer feedback and conduct focus groups with your customers to see what they really value. Make training an important part of creating a culture for customer service excellence. Make errors a part of the journey and empower employees to acknowledge and react to them accordingly. Apologize for the problem and really listen. Beyond satisfaction, this will build customer confidence and loyalty.<br /> <br /> <strong>5. Market, market, market</strong><br /> Before you embark on your next marketing campaign, think first what it is you want to achieve. Inform customers and prospects about your company, products, services, website, or other offerings. Persuade your target audience to do something specific in response to your marketing activities. Create in the mind of customers and prospects the perception that there is no other product or service that is quite like yours. Establish a connection, or relationship, with customers. Convince customers and prospects to think positively of you. Announce something positive about your company. Any opportunity you can seize, or create, to further your marketing plan deserves consideration. Be a relentless promoter of your business. Get creative. Have fun! Remember that little things can equal big impressions.<br /> <br /> <strong>4. Get the most out of networking</strong><br /> Take advantage of opportunities to improve business contacts. Networking events and organizations are great ways to meet a group of people with similar interests who are open to opportunities to work together and help each other achieve a common goal. Networking also helps small business leaders talk to prospects and educate potential customers. A valuable network is one that is alive and growing daily. Successful networking really comes down to your approach to networking, your ability to listen and to communicate effectively, and the relationships you build. Make sure that the events and meetings you attend have the potential to help build relationships that will benefit both you and your contacts. <br /> <br /> <strong>3. Regularly back up your data</strong><br /> Backing up data is vital for business. Commit to make better use of technology and backup software that helps keep your business protected from possible failure. Regular data backup doesn’t have to be painful or expensive. Ideally, you should look for new technology that allows for automatic, off-site backups that protect you even further by storing your critical data at another location. Most of these packages are affordable and are worth their weight in gold when disaster strikes.<br /> <br /> <strong>2. Clean up your credit</strong><br /> Improving your credit takes time and practice. Naturally, we tend to focus on what’s important right now. But when it comes to making major financial decisions, like committing to a small business loan, it’s important to learn and take the necessary steps towards improving your credit before it becomes a crisis. Commit to these three best practices: (1) keep revolving credit balances low; (2) pay your bills on time; and (3) check your credit report.<br /> <br /> <strong>1. Set aside a rainy day fund</strong><br /> Managing cash flow for a small business is much like riding a roller coaster. And with today’s economic situation, having cash on hand is more important than ever before. One method to ensure you’re never short is to open a reserve account which can be set aside for emergency use. If possible, try not to use lenders as an emergency cash reserve. Borrowed money will only add to your debt and delay the negative impact of your financial emergency if you’re unable to pay it back immediately. Having a reserve account ensures that you will always have an extra cash cushion.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Your Web Site: The 24 Hour Workhorse of Your Professional Services Firm!</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:06:17 GMT</p> <p>Getting your professional services business online is about connecting with potential clients and partners. But gone are the days of having a website merely to publish your office address and phone number, and expecting new clients will find you! These days most firms treat their website effectively as another sales and service channel, undertaking business development and client support 24 hours a day. For professional services firms, such as management consultants, health care professionals, and legal or financial service providers, a professional web site can provide significant benefits in helping you market your business and service your clients.<br /><br /><b>Basic ways your web site can support your marketing activities</b><br /><br />Today you can use your web site as the center of your overall marketing activity. Your web site can help you expand your messages to potential clients, especially if the services you offer are complex and not easily explained in a short advertisement. There is a limited amount of information that can be included a radio, TV or print advertisement and these mediums can be very expensive. However, if you include your company's domain name in a small advertisement you can direct your customers to your web site and guide them through the services you offer in detail. But there are many more ways your website can help you manage and grow your business.<br /><br /><b>More advanced marketing techniques</b><br /><br />With a little imagination, your web site can be a lot more than simply an expanded brochure about your services. If you already offer a printed newsletter, you can offer this online instead, reducing the costs of printing and mailing, while helping the environment too! You can send the newsletter out via e-mail, and then archive previous editions online. By adding a sign-up box on your web site, you can potentially reach out to prospective customers and showcase your expertise by regularly sending them your newsletter. If you offer a service that can be best explained using audio, video or photographs, you can include links from your e-mail newsletter to multi-media files housed on your site.<br /><br />Adding images that explain your services graphically can be a very strong marketing tool. For example, dentists can showcase their work by displaying "before" and "after" photographs of their patients, and even letting potential patients submit questions online about specific procedures.<br /><br />Another way to share your expertise with potential clients is to start a blog about a topic you understand intimately. You can blog about a variety of things, not just related to your firm; for example you can write posts about new trends in your industry, new services you are offering, case studies about your existing clients, and post reminders about seasonal events such as quarterly tax deadlines or upcoming legislative changes. Search engines like to index blogs because their content is often updated frequently, and other bloggers will often link to a post that they find valuable, which can bring your site lots of inbound links. A well-written blog can give you great credibility in your field.<br /><br /><b>Creating 24 hour Client Service</b><br /><br />A lot of your staff's time is probably spent answering the same questions over and over again, such as directions to your office, or the services you provide. These are the questions potential clients will ask before they engage your services. Displaying the answers on your Web site and will free up a lot of time for your office staff, and ensure that there are no miscommunications with potential customers. <br /><br /><b>Forms, forms, forms - many ways to enhance your clients' experience!</b><br /><br />By putting a contact/ inquiry form on your site you enable clients to contact you on their own schedule, rather than during regular office hours. This can be very convenient if your clients have a busy schedule, or are even in a different time zone or country. <br /><br />If your office sets appointments for you to meet with your clients, you can streamline this activity and make things easier for your customers by setting up an online appointment service. Many clients would rather schedule their appointments online because it gives them the option to look at their calendar rather than potentially juggling with a cell phone and calendar while driving in their car, or having to make appointments while in the office where other people can overhear them. An added benefit is that your web site is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week so, again, clients with busy work schedules don't have to worry about remembering to call during office hours.<br /><br />If you integrate your online calendar with an automatic e-mail service, you can even e-mail a reminder to your clients a couple of days ahead of their appointment. This is more convenient for many clients and saves you the expense of having someone call to confirm your appointments.<br /><br />For healthcare and veterinary services providers, you can also make it easier for clients to call in prescription requests or refills, by providing an online form that they can complete and submit ahead of time. This form can generate an e-mail to your front desk or technicians to enable them to prepare the prescription ahead of time, rather than when the client arrives at the office at the busiest time of the day!<br /><br />Another use of online forms could be to provide price quotations to a potential customers, or qualify them for a financial service. These types of forms can be very useful for services such as insurance policies and loans. While you may not be able to provide a quotation automatically online, you can easily create a form that can be sent via e-mail to someone in your firm who can generate the quote and call the potential client back. <br /><br />Additionally, forms can be a great way to gather feedback from your clients. You can post forms or online surveys and ask for feedback from your customers. The advantage to this is that you can obtain opinions almost instantaneously, especially if you e-mail your existing clients to ask them to complete the survey. By describing a new or existing service and asking for their ideas, you can gain valuable insight into how to position your service in a fast, economical way. Involving your clients in the development of new services not only makes these services less risky, but also gives your clients a sense of engagement with your firm.<br /><br /><b>Improve employee effectiveness</b><br /><br />A web site is also the fastest, most economical way to disseminate information within your organization. Instead of relying on the haphazard distribution of memos and e-mails, employees can visit their company's Web site at their convenience. You can password protect an employee-only Web site, or intranet, so that sensitive information remains within the company. <br /><br />Your web site can also function as the online repository of all of your service and client information, reducing paper work and filing of customer records. It is fairly easy to create an online content management system to store important documents. Some systems will even allow your staff to collaborate on documents, such as legal contracts or financial filings. If you decide to go this route, be sure to secure your website in a way that prevents hackers and other unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information.<br /><br />A further step is to create what is known as an "extranet" whereby selected clients can access part of your intranet created specifically for them. They can then post materials that they wish you to work on directly to your site, or review documents you have been working on for them. Questions about work status and version control are instantly resolved when clients can see the progress of their projects online.<br /><br />In summary, you should think of your web site as more than just your address on the internet. Your web site can be a valuable tool to increase your firm's productivity and radically improve client satisfaction. </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Companies Call Social Media Marketing “Tradeshow Marketing” For the Online Medium.\</h1> <p>Oliver Feakins — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:07:27 GMT</p> <p>Prior to starting at a social media marketing agency, I was a corporate sales executive. Throughout my career I loved attending trade shows. It was different; it got me out of the standard routine of cold calling and scheduled meetings. It also appealed to me because of the unique way in which I could get in front of my potential client base to build relationships, answer questions and build my company’s brand. Management would always try to cut tradeshows from the marketing budget listing the expense and time that goes into them as the reasons. They would also complain tradeshow marketing was hard to justify because there was not a clear Return on Investment (ROI). With the rise of social media marketing, I’m beginning to see a lot of these same questions and concerns being raised about Social Media Marketing that were once raised about tradeshow marketing.</p> <p><br /> Like tradeshows, Social Media Marketing is about engaging a passionate group of potential customers and turning them into brand evangelists or enthusiasts. So instead of directly selling to a consumer (which you can do as well) you are hoping to indirectly sell them by influencing key influencers within the target market. The goal here is what is referred to as ‘viral exposure’ of your company’s brand and or product to people that will share your company’s message peer-to-peer, using the invaluable ‘word of mouth’ messaging we all strive for. Companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks and other leading companies have seen outstanding results from their Social Media Marketing campaigns and have pushed social media into their mainstream marketing mix.</p> <p><br /> So how can you measure the process of generating “buzz”? Trying to measure the return on social media by using traditional online metrics is like trying to fit a square plug into a round hold - it just doesn’t work. It’s easy to measure visits, sales, inquires or other conversion items attributed to the Social Media Marketing campaign by using analytics. You’re then able to attribute a cost per visitor or even a cost per sale -just like handing out coupons at tradeshows. What you can’t account for is the buzz and brand building that Social Media Marketing offers. It may take months (and usually does) for Social Media Marketing campaigns to gather enough steam for companies to start seeing the results and even then they often come in ways that can’t be easily tracked. Some companies prefer to look at the number of engaged users from a campaign. They track server logs, monitor RSS feed subscriptions, count friends on social networking sites and users on widgets and many other ways. They then assign a cost per engagement metric. Be assured that as the campaign continues to build steam and generate lots of positive “buzz” about your company you are able to see your initial investment pay off and continue to grow right before your eyes. Like trade shows were to off-line marketing, Social Media Marketing builds and maintains a large list of potential brand enthusiasts that will work for your brand for free!</p> <p><br /> I’m a firm believer that a unique set of metrics needs to be defined for Social Media Marketing campaigns. When you take the cost of the campaign, along with the amount of engagement, site visits, sales and inquiries you’re able to put a number to the ROI of the Social Media Marketing campaign. And it’s important not forgot the other benefits to Social Media Marketing such as an increased in back links and rankings. These two very important benefits bring in tons of qualified traffic and also produce sales as well.<br /> This inability to show hard trackable results is just one example of the difficulties of attributing a comprehensive ROI to social media. In my opinion Social Media Marketing agencies need to do a better job explaining social media ROI along with reasonable expectations to their clients prior to starting any kind of viral or social media marketing campaign.</p> <p><br /> Like tradeshows, corporate marketing executives are going to have to accept and realize the fact that there is a conversation going on right now in your industry within the social landscape. Socially “savvy” companies are already in the conversation and are subsequently enjoying the benefits of talking to potential customers in a somewhat “empty” space. By adding Social Media Marketing to your current marketing campaigns you can join the conversation and get in front of a highly influential set of individuals that have the ability and really influence and engage your company’s target market at the peer group level.</p> <p>Oliver Feakins is the President of WebTalent SEO, a full service internet marketing company and social media company based in Lancaster, PA. With a strong expertise in seo services, Oliver has helped clients from startups to publically traded corporations increase their reach online for over 8 years. WebTalent SEO can be found at http://www.webtalentseo.com .</p> <p><br /> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Get ready for the 'New Normal'</h1> <p>Tara Rethore — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:03:14 GMT</p> <p>Economic news now suggests a move toward recovery. Certainly, that’s good news. Having weathered the recession, what can you do to help your company recover well?</p> <p>This pre-recovery period is a critical one for business. The speed, extent, and strength of recovery remain uncertain. Not all sectors will recover at the same rate or time. And, consumer confidence is a long way from pre-recession levels. We suggest four actions to enhance your position and channel your energy toward a more optimistic future.</p> <ul> <li>Focus</li> <li>Rethink</li> <li><span><span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Adapt</li> <li>Invest</li> </ul> <p><b><i>Focus </i></b><i>on customers.</i> True, we always say that. It’s even more important now. Focus on what you must do to get the clients you ultimately want -- by identifying, then delivering, what they need post-recession. Understand that even with pent-up demand, customers may not return to business-as-usual. Review your own customers’ recessionary behaviors. Focus on the metrics that tell you where and how you’ve failed them.</p> <p><b><i>Rethink</i></b><i> old ways and programs.</i> Faced with limited demand and severely constrained resources, many of our clients postponed initiatives. Rethink the programs you tabled. What did you <i>stop </i>doing? What has changed since then? What are you doing differently today that makes good sense for the future? New capabilities, innovations, and attitudes are often born from crisis; take advantage of these and avoid a backward step.</p> <p><b><i>Adapt</i></b><i> your strategy</i>. Are you moving forward as fast as you want to be? Are you stuck? Consider strategic <em>management</em> in lieu of traditional strategic planning which can be static or episodic. That involves more frequent reviews and responding to key market ‘triggers’ more rapidly. “The new priority [is] to be able to shift course on the fly.”<a title="" name="_ftnref2"><span><span><span style="line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> We can help you build flexibility and adaptability into your mangaement processes and approach. That lets you manage the uncertainty; take better decisions amid emerging facts.</p> <p><i>Continue to <b>Invest</b> in people and innovation (even though it’s counter intuitive)</i>. Organizations that invested during the recession can move forward rapidly. Leverage the stronger relationships you’ve built with your customers. Invest in projects that help you leap frog the competition to gain a strong foothold quickly. Reward your people for helping your company survive the recession and move those with experience in innovation and building relationships with customers into key positions to strengthen your customer base and build new business areas.</p> <p><b>M. Beacon Enterprises can help</b>. Being ready for recovery requires looking and thinking ahead, while systematically identifying lessons learned during recession. It means listening to your customers with new ears and acknowledging the new reality they face. Our expertise and independent perspective helps you find the right mix of focus and investment – quickly. Together, we’ll identify specific actions to manage strategically into full recovery and beyond.</p> <p>Contact M. Beacon Enterprises for an independent review of <i>your </i>situation – and to accelerate your recovery.</p> <p><b><i>Tara J. Rethore</i></b></p> <div style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 0pt;">703.625.9124</div> <div style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 0pt;">TRethore@MBeaconEnterprises.com</div> <div><br /> <font size="+0"><hr align="left" /> </font> <div id="ftn1"><a title="" name="_ftn2"><span><span><span style="line-height:115%;font-size:10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a><font size="2"> Joann S. Lublin and Dana Mattioli, WSJ.com, <i>Strategic Plans Lose Favor</i>, 25 January 2010.</font></div> </div> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Holiday Season 2009: Prepare Now, Profit Later</h1> <p>Jill Rafalowski — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:50:00 GMT</p> <p><span>If you’re a small business owner, odds are you’ve already started thinking about the upcoming 2009 holiday season. It may still be summer, but the perfect time to prepare your business for the holiday rush is right now. By starting early, you can increase your chances of profiting later.</span></p> <div> </div> <p><span>Summer is the perfect time to begin planning your business’s holiday-season strategy. Since most shoppers usually wait until November to make the bulk of their holiday purchases, you still have time to research, plan, and prepare your business for a successful holiday rush.</span></p> <div> </div> <p><span>So what should you start doing in August? Here are a few suggestions:</span></p> <div> </div> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b>*Determine your target audience.</b><span> August is the perfect month to figure out who your potential customers will be. Take a look at who your current customers are, and who your customers were during previous holiday seasons. By using this information, you can adjust your advertising and marketing campaigns to better appeal to your projected audience. </span></p> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b><span>*Determine what your best-selling products will be. </span></b><span>First, take a look at your inventory. Your current best-sellers could very well maintain this status during the holiday season, so promote them. If you have any new products that look promising, promote them as well. If your customers keep asking if you carry Product X, then by all means start stocking and promoting Product X. </span></p> <div> </div> <p><span>Next, do a little research. Ask your customers, friends, and family what kind of gifts they’re going to look for this holiday season. Browse the Internet for products that are starting to garner a lot of buzz, look up the current gift-giving trends, and look for articles that predict trends for the 2009 holiday season. Compare these results with your targeted customer demographic: If you have the products they’re going to want, then promote them; if you don’t have them, get them and start promoting.</span></p> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b>*Increase your customer reach. </b><span>If your business doesn’t have a social media presence, now is the perfect time to get involved. Most social media outlets are free—<a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter™</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook®</a>, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/">MySpace®</a>, and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn®</a> are all 100% free services that are actually effective. Once you join these sites, you can start conversations with potential customers and keep them updated on your store’s new products, sales, promotions, and so forth. You can also use these sites to research product trends, as discussed above. </span></p> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b>*Cater to pre-shoppers.</b><span> Although a lot of shoppers wait to actually purchase gifts until later in the fall, their research begins much sooner than that. With the economy in its current state, consumers want to be sure that they are spending their money wisely. They want to feel confident that the products they purchase are both high in quality and worth their cost, so they turn to the Internet for gift ideas, product reviews, and price comparisons. </span></p> <div> </div> <p><span>If your business has a website or an ecommerce store, you can include SEO-friendly content that appeals to your target audience. Do a little keyword research, and include relevant keywords in your product descriptions and site content. Offer shopping advice, promote hot products, and include a ‘related items’ list for each product in your inventory. By making more of your products visible, you’re exposing your customers to more possible gift ideas. This can result in more sales for your store.</span></p> <div> </div> <p><span>If you own a brick-and-mortar store, find a way to feature promising products. This can be done via an email newsletter, through in-store ads, on your business’ website, or through product recommendations by in-store sales associates. Never underestimate the power of persuasion: If your customers feel that you are truly passionate about Product X, they will be more likely to consider purchasing Product X. </span></p> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b>*Adjust your budget.</b><span> The holiday season is not the time to skimp on spending. Think about all the costs that could—and probably will—go up: shipping costs will rise; you may need to keep your business open for longer hours, resulting in more pay to your employees; you may need to hire extra staff to keep up with order demand; and it is critical to boost your advertising efforts during the holidays. As the old adage goes, “You need to spend money to make money.” By preparing your business for an increase in costs, you’re also improving your chances for an increase in revenue.</span></p> <div><b> </b></div> <p><b>*Plan your promotions. </b><span>Since August is a little early to start running holiday shopping promotions, use this month to plan them. First make a list of promotions that will work for your store. Some popular promotions include free shipping offers, ‘spend more, save more’ deals, percentage-off sales, and ‘deal-of-the-week’ promotions. After you decide which promotions you’d like to utilize, figure out <b>when</b> you’re going to implement them, and determine <b>how</b> you’re going to market these promotions. Include your promotions everywhere you can—on your website, via email newsletters, in newspaper advertisements, through customer mail, via your Facebook® page and other social media outlets, and so on. If your customers are not aware of your promotions, your business will not benefit from them.</span></p> <div> </div> <div><b> </b></div> <p>The holidays can be stressful for everyone, especially retailers. With so much potential profit on the line, it's best to start thinking about the holiday season while it's still months away. Preparing your small business for a successful, profitable 2009 holiday season doesn't have to be hard—think ahead, start planning, and get ready to profit!</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Link Building Company Spills The Beans On Building Backlinks</h1> <p>Oliver Feakins — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:52:51 GMT</p> <p>Having a Web site and a Web address doesn’t mean that people (other than your spouse, parents and best friend) will visit it. Hiring a link building company is an action you may take so that people searching for the services or products you offer will find your site.</p> <p>One way to get people to find you is to rank high in search engines. And one means to help you rank high is to have many links from other Web sites linking to your site. Called backlinks, these help your site come up high in search results at Google or Yahoo! or other search engine because search engines figure that sites that have many sites linking to them must have a lot of good, solid information within them. Link building services help create those backlinks for you.</p> <p>It’s akin to a third-party endorsement or referrals. The more links, the more people like your site, the better your site must be (or so the search engines think). Hence, the Googles and Yahoos! will rank your site higher than a competitor’s site that doesn’t have as many links.</p> <p>Search engines also will look for keywords in your Web site that people use when they perform searches, but the more people who link to you without you linking to them (backlinks) the more popular the search engines believe your site to be. Which means a better ranking for your site. Which is another reason you may wish to hire a link building company.</p> <p>There are several ways you can build links to your site without hiring link building services . For example, you could write short (300-500 words) article about your product or service and then submit it to several article directories. Article marketing, as this is called, is a great way to get focused traffic to your site because of the outreach well-known article directory sites such as EzineArticles.com, Goarticles.com, Isnare.com and others have.</p> <p>Another fun way to build backlinks is to comment on blogs and forums. Be sure to include a link to your Web site or blog in your “signature” line. You also should contribute something worthwhile to the forum or blog conversation. Comments such as “I agree” or “Nice post” are obvious signs you’re only in the conversation for your needs and will get tossed on your virtual keister quickly. Post a comment only when you truly have something interesting to say.</p> <p>You can write and submit the articles, as well as perform other link building services yourself. But this does take a lot of time. As a business owner, your time is at a premium and you should focus your efforts on the things you do best.</p> <p>So it may be time to hire a link building company to do perform link building services for you. You’ve gone to the trouble, expense and effort to create a Web site that offers the public your terrific product or your much-needed service. Link building will help them find you and a good link building company will ensure that you’ll receive a terrific return on your investment.</p> <p>Oliver Feakins is the President of WebTalent SEO, A full service SEO company offering internet marketing services to companies nationwide. For more information on Oliver's company visit http://www.webtalentseo.com .</p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>What Are Meta Tags and How Can They Help My Site?</h1> <p>Travis Petersen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:59:20 GMT</p> <p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Introduction</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Getting your website found by search engines and making your way to the top of the rankings is tough—it’s a time-consuming process involving a lot of trial and error, the creation of good, quality content, obtaining quality backlinks from respected sites in your industry, and building and maintaining a site with an easy-to-navigate architecture that allows search engine spiders to move from page to page, indexing the site’s contents properly.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is a lot of debate about the use of meta tags, and whether or not having keyword-rich meta tags really helps your site. The truth of the matter is, there is no expert consensus as to whether or not Google uses meta data at all, but many SEO experts are sure that meta data is helpful for Yahoo!, and when it comes down to it, including keyword-rich meta tags is easy to do and doesn’t hurt. So we recommend that all sites include the meta description and meta keywords tags, as well as the title tag (not technically a meta tag, but often used in conjunction with them), and we recommend that sites use relevant keywords in those tags.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>So, What ARE Meta Tags?</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Simply put, meta tags are information that is placed in the “head” area of web pages that is not seen by visitors to your site that are using a web browser. Since the Title tag is visible in the top bar of the browser, it is technically not a meta tag, though it is often considered in conjunction with the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag. The most often used meta tags, and the ones we will discuss, are:<br /> </p> <ul style="margin-top:0in;"> <li class="MsoNormal">Meta description tag: <META name=”description” content=”Keyword-rich content goes here.”></li> <li class="MsoNormal">Meta keywords tag:<span> </span><META name=”keywords” content=”relevant keywords separated by commas go here”><br /> </li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal">Just as it is important to use the Title tag, and include a relevant keyword, it is important to include keywords relevant to the content on the page in your meta description and in the meta keywords tag. With the meta keywords tag, it is easy: just include a comma-separated list of keywords (we recommend two or three per page, so as not to overdo it—you don’t want to look like a spammer!). The meta description can be a bit more tricky.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The meta description should be written in one or two complete sentences. It should make sense when read, because this is often what shows up in search engines to summarize a site that appears in the SERPs (search engine results pages). We recommend including one or two keywords that fit naturally into a one or two sentence description that summarizes the content on your page, or gives a tease that searchers might find enticing when choosing a site to click on from the SERP.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For example: Say your site sells toys for small dogs. You’ve already decided on “small dog toys” and “toys for small dogs” as the keywords to place in your meta keywords tag. A simple description for your Home or About Us page might read:<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Pup Palace offers an extensive selection of toys for small dogs. Shop for small dog toys here.”<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s short, sweet, and contains two keywords that are relevant to the site.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>How Can Meta Tags Help My Site?</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Most search engine optimizers believe the title tag is an important ranking factor, but the benefit of meta tags has lessened over the past few years. Initially, the keywords tag was the main way search engines looked to find out what was on a site for indexing purposes. When this led to exploitation of the keywords tag by spammers, the engines found other ways to index. The keywords and description tag can still be beneficial, however, especially if they are used in a way that is relevant to the content of the page on which they are contained.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is a fairly common belief among SEO experts that Yahoo! still gives weight to meta tags. While no one knows if Google does or not, the description is usually what appears on Google SERPs to summarize the pages that appear in the results. If you don’t use the description tag (and use it wisely) a random snippet of text containing the relevant phrases can be pulled out of context and shown in its place.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Since the meta tags are easily added, and there is no risk in using them, the use is recommended.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Conclusion</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Meta tags are just one piece of the SEO puzzle. The world of organic search marketing is constantly changing. Network Solutions’ experts are constantly working to keep up to date on the latest trends and changes. Check back often for more helpful articles.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Small Businesses: Wants and Needs</h1> <p>Charles Nagel — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:27:44 GMT</p> <p>There is no shortage of software, books, seminars, and social networks for small businesses. Truly, a wide array of distractions and enticements exist for the manager’s attention and affections. In many ways, it’s similar to driving down the highway with a plethora of billboards competing for the entrepreneur’s focus and action. As service providers to small businesses, we have to be able to sort through the sea of distractions and offer services the small business manager will truly value.</p> <p>So as CPAs, consultants, software providers, and even small business owners ourselves, we must ask this question: what do owners, managers, and entrepreneurs really want and need?</p> <p> </p> <p>As a small business consultant and a small business owner for many years, I’ve often had to address this question. In discussion with hundreds of SMB (small and medium business) managers, we compiled the following list which provides insight into the thought/value paradigm of the typical SMB manager.</p> <p>What SMB Managers Value:</p> <ul> <li>Things that are cost-effective to me, bargains.</li> <li>Things that solve my problems or help me avoid mistakes.</li> <li>Things that make my job easier and more manageable. I’m over-whelmed at times.</li> <li>Things I can touch. Things I can control.</li> <li>Things that are dynamic and show movement. I can see light at the end of the tunnel.</li> <li>Things that touch multiple senses yet are easy to use and not complicated.</li> <li>Things that don’t require much reading.</li> <li>Things that have immediate gratification.</li> <li>Things that will make or save me money.</li> </ul> <p>While this list is not exhaustive, it does help us understand the needs and values of the SMB manager. Of course, an offering that violates one or more of these data points, such as a solution that is expensive, difficult to use, or time consuming, is immediately put on the “not valued” list by clients.</p> <p>SMBs are managed by people who are typically the subject matter experts. They “know” the products and services better than anyone else and more importantly, it is actually what they love to do. Anything that takes them from what they love to do is generally place on the “not valued” list. And this is probably as it should be. After all, working in the business as the subject matter expert is likely why they started or purchased the business in the first place. It’s what we call the “entrepreneurial paradigm”. That’s why solutions that allow SMB managers to spend more time in the business instead of on it (bookkeeping, etc) are so valuable to SMBs. Remember, we’re talking about their value perspective, not what we as service providers think their value perspective should be.</p> <p>As an example, I’ll tell you about a solution we’ve developed to address the above issues. This solution is called <a href="http://www.qvinci.com/">Qvinci<sup>®</sup></a>. The application is full of functionality while offering ease of installation and point-and-click usability at an affordable price. Two main components make up the application: first, it displays QuickBooks<sup>®</sup> and Excel<sup>®</sup> data graphically in a simple dashboard. Second, it offers point-and-click tools to do everything from projecting future performance, to lease vs. buy calculators, to setting early warning indicators to monitor things like expenses, etc. Because the dashboard updates automatically as data is added to QuickBooks<sup>®</sup> or Excel<sup>®</sup>, the manager always has the most up to date information at their fingertips—saving time and fostering better decision making.</p> <p>The idea behind the software is to provide small business managers with a tool that meets their wants and needs: a means of aggregating data and displaying it in a usable format, tools to foster better management, and an accessible user interface. Providing this solution in an easy to install and use format and at an affordable price makes this solution more valuable.</p> <p>Especially in these economic times, service providers must re-address their services to clients. It doesn’t matter if you are a CPA, consultant, or software provider, you must answer the small business manager’s wants and needs. It’s the sure way to enhance your unique value to your client and increase client retention. And that’s something that every small business service provider wants and needs.</p> <p>Charles Nagel</p> <p>CEO<br /> Qvinci<sup>®</sup> Software<br /> <a href="http://www.qvinci.com/">www.qvinci.com</a></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Writing for the Web: Hook the Search Engines and Your Readers</h1> <p>Travis Petersen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:55:01 GMT</p> <p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ever since people figured out that optimizing text for search engines was a good way to get rankings, way back in the dark ages of the early 2000s, it seems that the quality of text on websites has lost something. That something is “readability.” How many times have you searched for something on the web and been led to a site that reads something like the following?<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Our small dog toy website sells the best small dog toys around. If you’re looking for toys for small dogs, small dog toys, or a particular small dog toy, you’ve come to the right place. Dog Toy Warehouse is your one stop shop for small dog toys and all of your small dog toy needs.”<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We bet it’s quite a few.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The good news is that the search engines have caught on. Stuffing keywords into website text where it doesn’t belong, or overdoing it in terms of writing “optimized” text that’s only for the search engines, doesn’t work quite as well as it used to in achieving higher rankings. That’s because it’s the job of search engines like Google and Yahoo! to provide searchers with what they are looking for—relevant content that answers the question or provides the product they are searching for.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>So what do we do now?</b><br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When writing “optimized” text, think about optimizing text for readers first and search engines second. What do visitors to your site want to do? If you sell small dog toys, tell them about the toys you sell so that it’s easy to make an informed purchase. Inform them of discounts, promotions, and shipping policies. Think of yourself as someone who wants to purchase a small dog toy, and work backwards.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Give readers the good news</b><br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A good way to think about it is to consider how journalists write news stories. Write a catchy, informative headline, and if your text is geared toward what web searchers are looking for, a keyword phrase should naturally appear within it:<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Small Dog Toys: New Product Lines Available Now”<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Place the most important information, about your product or service, at the beginning of the text. Web users read quickly. Web users scan text. If you don’t hook them right away, it’s very possible they won’t read to the bottom of the page to figure out if you offer what they want. In this way, too, writing for the web can be like writing a quick news story.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Include keywords in bulleted lists</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While keywords might not naturally appear within paragraph text, using them in bulleted lists of available products or services is a good way to get them into the text without it seeming unnatural.<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Good content is spider food</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Providing helpful, relevant information is the goal of the search engines. Help the search engines, and they will help you. Write informative articles that readers will want to read, and the search engines will reward you. Have at least a few paragraphs (250 words is a good number to shoot for).<br /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Conclusion</b><b><br /> </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There’s no one that knows more about your business than you do. Whether you write your content yourself, or employ a copywriter from an organization like Network Solutions, use your inside knowledge to provide your site’s visitors with the information they need. There’s no easy trick to writing for the search engines—the good news is, now there doesn’t have to be.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>5 Ingredients to Succeed In Affiliate Marketing</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:39:26 GMT</p> <p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">The idea of being mere passengers on a ship meant to sail to the farthest points of the earth does not appeal to people who like to put their destiny into their own hands. They have the desire of maneuvering the ship themselves, of being able to take the ship anywhere they want to. Being aboard a ship on its way to a particularly great destination is something each and every one of them dreams of, and the knowledge that they have the capacity to steer it themselves is what makes them actually want to.<br /> <br /> Perhaps this is the reason why more and more people are succumbing to one of the most popular businesses around – affiliate marketing. It is because in this business, there are no bosses to order the employees around. There are no deadlines to meet and no clutter of work do to. One only needs to be equipped with the tools needed to succeed in this business, and he is bound to get what his heart ultimately desires.<br /> <br /> Just what are the things needed to be able to succeed in affiliate marketing? What must one have within himself to be able to do well in this industry? <br /> <br /> There is a lot of competition involved in affiliate marketing, and to be able to rise above the norm, one must be equipped with just the right stuff necessary to propel himself forward. There are five things one must ultimately possess if he wants to achieve the glory he is yearning for and these five things are a must for him to be able to stand out from the rest.<br /> <br /> The very first quality one must possess is the willingness to learn and be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory is scary stuff if one is not properly equipped, and he might get lost amidst a jungle of the unknown. Learning the tricks of the trade is also an important aspect of the game, and one’s willingness to know it all will give him far better advantages in the business than he could ever imagine.<br /> <br /> The second quality one must possess is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem apparent. Although several months may pass without good news, it is important for one who has his foot in the industry to hold on and wait. It is this quality which will save him from giving up after investing a lot of time in his business.<br /> <br /> The third quality one must possess is self-determination. If one wants to conquer the affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. A 'Never Say Die' attitude is a quality each and every affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an affiliate marketer there.<br /> <br /> The fourth quality one must possess is discipline. If one knows how to teach himself to work everyday with all the energy he can muster, then he is close to achieving what he has set his heart to having in the first place.<br /> <br /> The fifth and last quality one must possess is optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsays should not discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing what he has to in order to make life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Neither should anyone influence his attitude toward the business, because once in it, it is a must for him to be the captain of his ship and the master of his soul.<br /> <br /> The ingredients to success in a business such as affiliate marketing are diverse but the most important thing one needs lies within himself alone. It is he who has the capacity to do everything, to be able to realize his dreams, and the desire which fuels his heart in doing so is the gasoline which should keep the engine going.<br /> <br /> In summary the five ingredients for a successful affiliate marketer are:<br /> <br /> 1. Willingness to learn and to be trained<br /> 2. Willingness to invest time and effort<br /> 3. Determination<br /> 4. Discipline<br /> 5. Optimism<br /> <br /> Affiliate marketing is all about putting one’s fate into one's own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able to steer one’s ship into that part of the ocean where a certain kind of serenity can be found, one that permeates the atmosphere as the ship sails calmly on.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">Author: Steve Sharpe</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"></span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">To get your free ebook 'Article Marketing Avalanche', please visit<a href="http://www.articleland.co.uk/" target="_blank"> http://www.articleland.co.uk</a>. Steve Sharpe is the CEO & Editor in Chief of<a href="http://www.informationbooth.net/" target="_blank"> http://www.informationbooth.net</a> and<a href="http://www.articleland.co.uk/" target="_blank"> http://www.articleland.co.uk</a>. He has been in internet marketing for a number of years and can be reached for further information at his websites.</span></p> </article> <article> <h1>Black Friday Press Releases: Get Head Start on Your Online and Media Marketing for the Holidays</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:13:31 GMT</p> <p>When you run a retail business, whether selling online, in a brick-and-mortar store, or a combined online and brick-and-mortar business, the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is where you move from the red to the black. Black Friday (the Friday following Thanksgiving) and Cyber Monday, the unofficial beginning to the online holiday shopping season, are important days for retailers. While you may notice that holiday decorations are appearing earlier and earlier in stores, as early as Halloween or even before, in an attempt to stretch the holiday shopping season even further, most people still do their holiday shopping from Black Friday until Christmas Eve, with the days between Christmas and New Year’s big for returns, bargain shopping, and clearances.<br /> <br /> Preparing for Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) is not merely a matter of dressing up your store, or your online shopping cart storefront, with holiday trimmings. To be fully prepared, you should map out your marketing strategy well ahead of time, beginning in July or August, in order to capitalize on early shoppers and to get a jump on the competition.<br /> <br /> Whether you run an online business, a brick-and-mortar store, or a hybrid of the two, an online optimized press release campaign can be beneficial in driving search engine traffic and publicizing announcements for the holiday season. The following will outline a strategy for thinking ahead and maximizing the potential for exposure and search engine benefit for optimized press releases.<br /> <strong><br /> What is an Optimized Press Release?</strong><br /> <br /> Though it is the standard industry term still, what a “press release” does is changing. In the past, press releases were created by businesses and sent to newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets in order to encourage journalists to write stories about new products, events, or services. An online optimized press release, however, is different.<br /> <br /> Rather than depending upon the media to publish the content of the press release, businesses can now create optimized press releases and distribute them on the World Wide Web through paid services like <a href="http://www.prweb.com" target="_blank">PRWeb.com</a> or free services like <a href="http://www.free-press-release-center.info/" target="_blank">Free-Press-Release-Center.info</a>. While the media still make up a large portion of the audience of these sites, and will occasionally pick up releases for writing stories, these releases are also distributed across the World Wide Web via RSS feeds, blogs, and search engines like Google® News, Yahoo!® News, and Bing™. It is a quick way to get an announcement out to the broader Web audience without relying on the media to translate the message for you. Including keywords that relate to your announcement, your business, and your site’s own search marketing efforts (SEO and PPC) is essential.<br /> <br /> In addition, optimized press releases should contain links back to your business’ website. These links, especially from a site like <a href="http://www.prweb.com" target="_blank">PRWeb.com</a>, are of great SEO value to your site, and will help your site appear higher in rankings for important keywords.<br /> <strong><br /> Using Optimized Press Releases for Holiday Promotion</strong><br /> <br /> Like many other kinds of holiday promotions, plans must be set in motion long before November in order to prepare for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday push. When running a press release campaign, it is good to run at least one release, maybe more, before the holiday season begins. This introduces your business to distributors, RSS feeds, and search engines, and lends an added air of credibility when issuing releases just preceding and during the holiday season.<br /> <br /> Depending upon the size of your business, releases should be issued quarterly, bi-monthly, or monthly, in addition to when you have a big announcement. If you have releases that have garnered attention in the past, from search engines or the media, your name and business will be likely to attract more attention and stand out from the glut of releases and promotions just preceding the holiday season.<br /> <br /> Also, issuing optimized releases regularly helps your site’s search engine rankings via backlinks. The more valid releases you issue, the greater the benefit. <br /> <br /> Once you’ve begun your regular campaign, it’s time for the big holiday announcements. Know what your promotions are going to be at least a month ahead of time. We recommend creating a draft of your holiday release as early as October, so that you will have time to perfect it and make any necessary tweaks. Use keywords from your SEO or PPC campaigns in addition to holiday related keywords. Even though you are using this as a promotional tool, write it as you would any other news announcement—this will give it more credibility, and thus higher page placement, on distribution sites with human editors.<br /> <br /> If you are stuck for an announcement, tie into the times. Link your product or promotion, using a clever hook, to a high-profile movie release or big trend as the holiday season approaches. A good example of this is a release for a company promoting anti-aging cream referencing the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.<br /> <br /> You may be thinking to yourself, “I am too busy running my business to come up with a clever announcement for the holiday season.” That’s where the specialists at <a href="http://www.networksolutions.com" target="_blank">Network Solutions®</a> come in. Let us work with you to develop a regular press release campaign and learn your business, and when the holiday rush hits, we’ll be able to help.<br /> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>5 Secrets Executives Should Know About Customer Surveys</h1> <p>Terri Schepps — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:51:55 GMT</p> <p> </p> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:#333399;">Secret #1: </span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color:#333399;">Executives need to know what customers are saying and thinking</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;">Executives seeking feedback from their customers will get a view point like no other. Who better to ask than your customer about what you’re selling, your staff, the experience, whether or not they know someone else that may want to purchase? The accuracy and precision of decisions made based on up-to-date customer feedback is priceless. </span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:#333399;">Secret #2: </span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color:#333399;">Executives can use survey data to save expenses and generate profits</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;">Executives review numbers when it’s too late. Balance sheets, sales reports and statistics are results not the details needed to see what is driving results. If a customer is not having a good experience they can either complain or take their business somewhere else. Companies can be blind sighted by several issues: untrained staff, inadequate resources, poor quality and the list goes on. It only takes a single negative experience for your customer to decide they’ve had enough. </span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:#333399;">Secret #3: </span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color:#333399;">Customers want to give meaningful feedback</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;">Customers are usually left to their own when it comes to feedback. Without a crystal ball there is no way to identify which customers have positive or negative feedback to share. Very few companies seek pro-active feedback from its customers, yet customers will readily share their feedback when asked. When customers are engaged on this level, the message goes beyond just a simple survey or phone call. Companies who actively seek feedback from their customers can use this exchange to enhance and improve the relationship they have with its customers.</span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:#333399;">Secret #4: </span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color:#333399;">Surveys can generate referrals and inform customers about products/services offered</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;">Customers are not always aware of all the products offered. Companies want their customers to be aware of the full product selection, but it can be challenging keeping customers informed. Referrals can dramatically increase if customers simply know they are desired. From the beginning, the customer should know the goal is for them to be so pleased with the service or product they would, if given the opportunity, refer others.</span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:#333399;">Secret #5:</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color:#333399;">Surveys don’t have to be annoying, time consuming and costly</span></b></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;">Having dialog with customers as a routine course of business, limiting the information collected to relationship indicators, executives have the power to monitor and even change customer experiences for the better. Customer surveys can be used to collect relevant, real time information. With the right strategy, customer surveys are a sound investment of time and money. </span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#333399;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><strong>11 page executive report is available by request: </strong><a href="mailto:surveys@rrc.us.com"><strong>surveys@rrc.us.com</strong></a></span><span style="font-size:10pt;"> <b>Subject: Executive Report</b></span></span></div> <div style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><b> </b></div><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Living Your Brand; Interview with Chris Sciarra, Owner of Konasports</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:23:03 GMT</p> <p><strong>Introduce yourself and tell us about Konasports.</strong></p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.konasports.com">Konasports</a> was started in 1969 by my father Mike Sciarra, and has been a well established store for almost 40 years. He started the business making surfboards in his father’s garage in Wildwood, NJ. It has since grown into a retail store and about five years ago we decided to expand our business by taking it online. We launched an ecommerce website giving more exposure and accessibility to our product line. We used an ecommerce package from <a target="_blank" href="http://www.networksolutions.com">Network Solutions</a>® for our shopping cart and it has enabled us to really get the Konasports name out to a larger audience and make our products more accessible to our customers. <br /> <br /> <strong>What are the brand values on which Konasports was founded and how are they still reflected in your day-to-day business activities?</strong> <br /> <br /> Konasports was built on two main values - family ties and the surfing lifestyle. My father grew up on a surfboard and will still hit the waves to this day. Surfing is still a big part of what we do. I surf, my brother surfs and a large number of our employees surf. Our business practices reflect the surfing lifestyle by taking each day as it comes, planning and practicing for every big “break”, and perfecting our business to run smoothly and with style. Staying close to our roots has helped us grow our business to what it is today. We are proud of our family business and we make that known, everyone we interact with, partners, vendors, and customers become part of our extended our family. <br /> <strong><br /> How have you expanded your product line and/or market reach? What growth have you seen with each expansion?</strong></p> <p>Konasports has expanded rapidly thanks to our online business. You can say it has really put us on the map. It helped us grow the business, earn respect within the industry, and has enabled us to become the elite surf shop on the East coast. Since we entered this new sales channel, Konasports is receiving the recognition it deserves. Within the past year we have partnered up with some big names in the industry: Billabong®, Volcom®, and Hurley® to name a few. These partnerships have not only helped to grow our reputation they’ve also allowed us to open up additional marketing avenues online. <br /> <br /> <strong>Are there products you choose not to carry or partnerships you did not pursue because they don’t support your brand? </strong></p> <p>Yes, we want to partner with vendors who will go out on a limb and help us, just like a family member would. We have partnered with some great vendors who have helped us tremendously in this growing process. Unfortunately, we have decided to eliminate some vendors who did not fit it with our family or work well with our brand values. In this industry it’s a two way street we need cooperation from the vendors as well as they need cooperation from us. <br /> <br /> <strong>How have you been able to keep your brand relevant for 40 years? What has helped you to stay in tune with your niche market?</strong></p> <p>From the beginning until today, my father, Mike and longtime manager, Tony have always treated customers like they were family. My mother, who has worked along side my dad for 30 years has helped to stay focused on our key values and has always served as the backbone of the business. Customer service has always been a key component to our success. Without the time, energy, and dedication to our customers, we would not be here today. <br /> <br /> We have been able to stay in tune with our market by living the surfing lifestyle and knowing what kids today want. It is all about buying stuff that is cool and that is hot. We find out about hot trends by every year attending industry trade shows and researching the newest and hottest products. We rely heavily on the reps from the vendors to help us buy the best stuff that kids want. This is why the relationships we have with our partners and vendor are so important to us. <br /> <strong><br /> What would you recommend as key tools, processes, or policies that help build a loyal customer base? </strong></p> <p>I would advise that it takes hard work to build and retain a loyal customer base. Our family has worked hard to build Konasports into the best it can be. We have serviced our customer base by listening to feedback from our customers. We’ve improved customer service, added new product lines, and began reaching out to customers through new channels. We have watched the trends and have grown our business in a way that strengthens our brand by embracing technology that makes it easy to do business with us and keep up with the latest news in the industry. As I mentioned before we’ve added ecommerce capabilities, but we’ve also branched out by maintaining a blog, engaging in social media networks, and distributing a newsletter. We’re even soliciting direct feedback through a poll on our <a target="_blank" href="http://www.konasportsdotcom.blogspot.com">Konasports Blog</a> to see what features our customers would like to see improved on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.konasports.com">Konasports.com</a>.<br /> <br /> <strong>What is your marketing approach for Konasports? Do your campaigns use an overall brand message; do you focus on specific products, what’s your marketing strategy?</strong></p> <p>Our marketing strategy is to buy the latest and greatest products from the top brands in our industry and deliver on the needs of our customers. By focusing on top brands we position Konasports to be perceived as one of these top brands recognized by our customers and shoppers. We highlight these brands on our website, create promotions around specific merchandise, and feature some of the different brands we offer in our social media outlets. For example, Konasports is holding a contest in July via Twitter where participants have a chance to win a pair of Bearpaw™ Boots.<br /> <br /> We continue to promote Konasports using a mix marketing avenues including affiliates, coupons, SEO optimization, press releases, radio ads, and newsletters. And of course we maintain a strong web presence through our robust online store in addition to our well known retail location.<br /> <br /> <strong>Have you involved yourself in social media channels?</strong></p> <p>If so, how has it affected your business and brand? Yes, we now work closely with social media channels like Twitter™, YouTube™, FaceBook™ and MySpace™. These avenues have helped us virally market Konasports and spread promotions that we are running very quickly. It has been a big part of our marketing strategy and demonstrates to our customers that we are a forward thinking company and will hang out in the places they hang out.<br /> <br /> <strong>What aspects of running Konasports do you enjoy the most?</strong></p> <p>I love the challenges that each day brings. When you are an owner of a business you tend to look at things a lot differently. You always want to do better and the work is endless but that is what makes it so fun. My goal everyday is being the best we can be and if we do not put the effort forward we will not reach that feat. This is the message I proclaim to my employees everyday. <br /> <br /> <strong>What tips would you share with others trying to build their brand and grow their business?</strong></p> <p>Any specific advice for those businesses selling online? I would say it takes hard work and a lot of passion to build a strong and recognizable brand. You need to be passionate about what you do and not be afraid to make mistakes. Learning from my mistakes has helped shape the business we have created today. If you do your homework and closely study your business you will be on your way to success. But along the way do not expect anything to come easy. My motto is “If you are passionate about your work and its lifestyle, the rest will fall in place”. </p> <p> </p> <p>If you would like to contact Chris Sciarra or read his professional bio, please go to: <a href="http://www.mysolutionspot.com/chriskona34/">http://www.mysolutionspot.com/chriskona34/</a></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Advice and Tools for Building Your Brand; an Interview with Anthony Pappas</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:00:04 GMT</p> <p><strong>Introduce yourself and tell us about the Pappas Group. </strong></p> <p>As the founder of the <a href="http://www.pappasgroup.com" target="_blank">Pappas Group</a>, I’m proud to say we are one of the Washington region's leading branding and interactive design consultancy. I’m the president and executive creative director. Most recently we have led rebranding initiatives for Blackboard Inc., Discovery Education, Honest Tea, Washington Kastles™, and Washington.org. Prior to establishing the Pappas Group in 2003, I was vice president and executive creative director of Proxicom's Brand & Experience Group where I developed and executed creative strategy and interactive marketing/design. One of my newest ventures is a column in the Washington Business Journal, Branding - the Bottom Line, where I discuss how your brand can have a huge impact on the bottom line.</p> <p><strong>Based on your experience, what makes a strong brand?</strong></p> <p>Understand what your customers want and deliver upon that need consistently. Remember you are in business for yourself, but really you are in business for your customers. Pay attention to them and learn their habits and behaviors if you want to be successful.</p> <p>Your brand should stand for something. Remember, not every brand is for everyone. Put a stake in the ground; decide what you are going to do and why you are going to be in business. The people who need and want your product or service are the ones that will become your customers.</p> <p><strong>What specific advice do you have for people just starting out with a new business and trying to define their brand?</strong></p> <p>Learn about your customers, but don’t forget about your competitors. It is critical to know your competition, especially if your potential customers are already familiar with your competitors. When you’re building your brand determine what you want to stand for and build it. Show your customers that you believe in something and that it sets you apart from the competition. Demonstrate what makes you special and different than others playing in your space. For example, if you are selling jewelry you are not going to design all kinds of jewelry, you will need to refine and define yourself – maybe it’s with antique jewelry, maybe it’s made of sea glass, or maybe it has a specific cultural influence. Regardless of the type of jewelry you choose to sell, you will draw a targeted customer base and identify yourself as unique from the competition.</p> <p>When I founded the <a href="http://www.pappasgroup.com" target="_blank">Pappas Group</a>, I researched branding agencies in the DC metro area to gain an understanding of who my competition would be and what I could do differently that would truly set my agency apart. What I found was a gap in service offerings, at the time, there were no agencies in the area that were using a strategic approach to developing brands; they were all specialty implementation shops. This gave me an opportunity to show what the Pappas Group would stand for – a complete end to end brand solution from strategy through implementation. By doing this research we were able to claim our niche and develop a successful brand for the Pappas Group.</p> <p><strong>What specific advice do you have for people who are trying to reinvent their brand and business?</strong></p> <p>For business owners who are thinking of reinventing their brand, it’s important to take a step back and ask why am I doing this? Is it because the industry is changing? Is it because your services are no longer relevant? Or is it because your image is tired and has lost momentum? What ever the case, be honest with yourself. Look at your business objectively, and admit the true issue is that is causing you to want to rebrand your business. Typically, the issue you think is the problem is really only a symptom of a larger problem. This will help you identify if you need to rebrand or if you need to reinvent. When you rebrand you establish new positioning for the company, when you decide to reinvent you create a new way of doing business, and a new way of thinking that will permeate through everything you do. </p> <p><strong>What are some effective tools that you find useful when cultivating a brand?</strong></p> <p>Take a minute to ask yourself these 4 questions. Your answers should address impacts to your brand, not necessarily your company.</p> <ol> <li><strong>What do you want the brand to be?</strong> The answer to this question should never change over the years. For example, Disney’s brand is about making people happy, and they’ve kept that their focus for the past 86 years.</li> <li><strong>What do you want the brand to do?</strong> The answer to this question can and should change over time. Determine goals for your business, for example you may start off by wanting the brand to showcase you as a provider of a specific product or service, after you’ve demonstrated this you may want to show that you are a forward thinking company and focus on innovation.</li> <li><strong>What do you want people who interact with your brand to feel?</strong> Do you want your customers to feel safe? Cool and hip? Entitled? Empowered? Write down your answers, these will end up serving as the rules for your brand.</li> <li><strong>What do you want people to say about your company?</strong> When a customer is describing their relationship or experience with your company what do you want them to say? What are the words you hope they’ll use or the stories they’ll share with friends. Do you want them to discuss how you were friendly, easy to work with, open and honest, and delivered on time? </li> </ol> <p>If you write out these statements it will help your brand to become more concrete. When you have formalized your brand and have rules to follow it can influence and help drive decisions across your business. </p> <p><strong>What is a positioning statement, and what is the importance of developing one?</strong></p> <p>Simply stated, your positioning statement is everything. It outlines how you want to be perceived by your target audience and why they should choose you over a competitor. Just remember, honesty is key when you are developing your positioning statement.</p> <p><strong>How can a small business owner build brand loyalty? Can you recommend some tools to encourage brand loyalty from customers?</strong></p> <p>The way you build brand loyalty is by being honest, authentic, responsive and effective. Authenticity is crucial to survive in this day and age where information is so easily accessible. Customers can quickly run comparisons against your competitors, get recommendations and reviews, and can uncover and broadcast any indiscretions or lies your may be hiding. Being responsive and effective are reflective of the times. People expect things fast. You need to keep up with trends, deliver and respond quickly to their changing needs needs.</p> <p><strong>How can I protect my brand in the exposed world of social media?</strong></p> <p>You can’t. Social media is a channel not a thing and to be honest it’s now a major part of how things work and every day lives. As I mentioned before, be authentic about who you are then you have nothing to hide. If you are faking ratings and comments about your restaurant people will find out. Stop worrying about protecting your brand and just deliver quality products and services on time and everything will fall into place.</p> <p><strong>When should small business owners consider branding individual products in addition to the brand of their company?</strong></p> <p>Different strategies work for different companies. What I see more often is people brand their company to match the product they are selling. For example, if you sell zip lines and you name your company Zip Lines Inc. then you really don’t have much room to grow. What I’d advise when you are creating your brand is to dream big. Is it possible you’ll want to expand your business and grow your product suite with parachutes, hang gliders, and other types of airborne equipment? If so, think about how you will name and position yourself. Use those four questions I shared earlier in the interview to define what makes the most sense for your business. Really think about how you want to be known.</p> <p><strong>During tough economic times many companies turn their message to focus on value and price, what impacts can this have on the over all brand, if any?</strong></p> <p>Tricky question, relevance is important to answer this. Price cutting can have a long term effect and could potentially surface some uncomfortable questions from your customer base. They may wonder why you haven’t lowered your prices before or why your markup is so high. Take a look at companies like Niemen Marcus® or Porsche®, cutting prices is simply not an option for them if they wish to retain their brand image. These brands stand for prestige and luxury. With this in mind, a price cut would completely diminish these brands, leaving them empty and their customers searching for a true differentiator. My advice to small business owners, find other ways to thrive in this economy, for example don’t drop prices, but be flexible with payment plans, or create a referral program to help boost sales. </p> <p><strong>Any last tips or advice you’d like to share about building a strong brand?</strong></p> <p>Just because you may be small doesn’t mean you can’t build a great brand. Learn from the big ones out there. Let them make the mistakes and then follow the good stuff. Good luck with your brand objectives!</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Top 7 challenges every affiliate marketer will face</h1> <p>Ryan Jones — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:43:59 GMT</p> <p><strong>Introduction</strong></p> <p>So, you have seen ads on TV late at night advertising that you can make millions of dollars simply by promoting other people's products or services online via affiliate marketing (such as the <em>Short Cut to Millions </em>commercials you see from time to time about people striking it rich with their program). Or maybe you are looking for work at various job hunting sites like career builder and see a catchy work at home opportunity that seems to have your name on it (herbalife is an example of that). Whatever the program there is out there, just about any work at home program will say that it is easy to make millions simply by promoting whatever the companies have to offer. Of course, if you are like a typical newbie at affilite marketing (like I am) when you do take up that program and start working on earning commissions, you will probably find that successfully generating sales and income (let alone big commissions) can literally be easier said than done. Also, depending on your skill level, making good money online can literally take days, weeks, or even months before you can get good results. I have done affiliate marketing since last July with no prior sales and marketing experience, and I can tell you first hand that making money online certainly does take lots of work. In this article I will cover at least 7 obstacles you will face when it comes to generating income online. Note this article is completely in my own opinion, and you are free to agree or disagree with me.</p> <p><strong>Challenge #1 Finding a profitable niche to build your website around</strong></p> <p>If you are looking to make relatively quick commissions online, you will find that many veteran affiliate marketers all say that you must find a highly profitable <u>niche</u> to build a website around. A "niche" is basically the general theme that your website is built around. For example, if you built a website about your favorite vacation spot (we will take Seattle, Washington as an example), and wanted to build a website about Seattle, then your niche would be "Seattle". Ideally, most expert affiliate marketers (i.e., Ken Evoy, Rosalind Gardiner, Average Joe Marketer, and others) will tell you that you need to build a website around a narrow niche that is often searched for that gets low results on search engines. For example, if you have dogs, and want to build a website centered around dogs in general, you can do that, however if you do a search for "dogs" in most search engines (such as Google or Bing), you will find that you have millions of different websites you are competing with for the top spot on search engines (they say you should appear within the top 20 results of a key word search on search engines for best results via search engine marketing). Also, most search engines give all new websites a page rank of 0 initially (especially Google), and so your site would be near the far end of the search results unless if your site climbs in rank. Of course, finding the best possible niche to build a website around is not easy either as even many long tail key words are getting taken (especially popular niches). If you were looking for ebooks on dogs for example, you would realize that when you do a search for "ebooks on dogs" at Google, you would find that there are more than 4,000,000 different listings for websites on dogs. So, finding the perfect niche to build your site around will take time and energy. Of course, there are ways to simplify the task as there are tools out there to help you find the perfect niche. This brings us to obstacle number 2.</p> <p><strong>Challenge #2- Competing in more competitive fields- </strong></p> <p>This type of challenge is certainly common when it comes to turn key websites (or those websites you can purchase from various providers, such as Yourbizwebsites, Amazon, and plug in profit sites that come loaded with prebuilt commercial content covering various subjects and all you really have to do is to plug your affiliate id on the links you have and just promote the site to make profits, instead of having to build the site from scratch) as well as most multilevel marketing firms where you have a sign up link that you have to promote to build your downline. So, let's say you decided to take a competitive field in affiliate marketing and build say a website on the Xbox 360. While the Xbox 360 is a hot topic to build a website around, you will find that there are many other websites that are on the Xbox 360, but you do it anyways. You can go that route, but search engine marketing alone is probably not going to be the best route to go at first (unless if you can build up your inbound links and thus your search engine rankings in a short amount of time). Of course, there are ways to market more competitive niches, such as building a website around multiple topics (if you build a generic website), doing paid advertising (where you can literally buy traffic to your site for a certain ammont of money), as well as straight up guerrilla marketing (i.e., blogging, social networking, posting classified ads, door to door sales, etc). Of course, it can take both time and money for you to build your client base or get any real results with this strategy. Also, if you opt to do paid advertising, some key words are more expensive to bid on than others (ideally you want to get as mainly clicks for your dollar as you can get for as low price as possible, but some key words are bidding at $1.00 per click or higher, which you will need to spend more money for optimal results, and can get expensive after a while). Even free traffic building techniques do have their obvious pros and cons (and can take a long time to generate good results depending on how you promote).</p> <p><strong>Challenge #3- Low skill level</strong></p> <p>Ideally if you plan to take up affiliate marketing, it helps to have some successful marketing experience, preferably in a commission sales setting. This is because being an affiliate marketer is essentially a commission sales job, which means you get paid for what you sell (though some companies pay on a per click or lead basis). Naturally, some products and services will be easier to sell than others and it certainly does pay to know what you are doing when you take up marketing. If you are good with commission sales programs, then affiliate marketing can be very profitable for you, whereas on the flip side, if you are a total newbie, earning commissions can definitely be easier said than done, and it can take months, weeks, or even years before you get good results if you don't know what you are doing. On the plus side, there are mentors out there (even with some of the companies that specialize in affiliate marketing), but many of them do charge their clients for their services (which can be expensive depending on who is mentoring you). There are also videos, ebooks, and regular books out there, but not all of them are free, and some may be more helpful than others. It might be easier to not go at it alone, and recruit people into your business that can help you get started. For example, if you don't know how to make a website, then you could hire someone to build your site for you and you can focus more on promotion, list building, and budgeting. Of course, I do not recommend affiliate marketing to anyone who does not know what they are doing and have little or no prior commission sales experience (unless if you are willing to hire people to help you promote your business).</p> <p><strong>Challenge 4 - not putting a hole in your budget</strong></p> <p>With affiliate marketing, you are essentially running your own business. You set up your own website, you run marketing campaigns yourself, and so fourth. Like just about any kind of business, you can expect to spend money with affiliate marketing, with common costs including web hosting for the website you build, advertising, maintaining a mailing list for your subscribers, training material, and the like. Of course, if you are not careful about how you spend your money, costs can add up after a while. I made that mistake myself by pouring more than $2000 into my affiliate marketing efforts by buying ebooks, spending lots of money with paid advertising, a $500 ebook on list building, as well as upgraded memberships at traffic exchanges, and so now my money is extremely tight. There are plenty of resources out there, and you will likely attract spammers with your efforts (especially if you advertise on Craigslist as people will solict you trying to get you to join their classified ads service), along with the occasional scam artist that wants to rip you off on something, but then if you give your money to every service out there, you will likely find yourself in a pit sooner or later (such as huge credit card debts). Of course, there are ways to keep costs down, such as choosing your hosting service carefully (some services are more affordable than others you know), getting the most cost effective resources for your business, try to get as many clicks for each dollar you spend on pay per click ads, as well as not taking up every offer you see out there. </p> <p><strong> Challenge 5 - becoming a "spammer magnet"</strong></p> <p>Alan Gardyne from the Associate Programs website (see resource box below for link) rightly says in his tutorial article, "18 Step Affiliate Program Tutorial" that after you have built your website and are waiting for people to buy from the companies you represent, you will become a prime target from spammers, as well as occasional scam artists alike (Gardyne). Since you have to expose your presence online, post your email address on sites, as well as joining various networking sites online, you will likely get get other web marketers who try to solicit you on stuff. For example, if you have invested in the multilevel marketing business, sometimes you might get people from other MLMs that try to recruit you into their MLM firm, usually saying that theirs is better than yours. I get that myself, as I have been a Global Domains International Member since September of 2008, and now I get people from other MLMs trying to get me to join theirs (some noteworthy ones includes: carbon copy pro, vemma builder, xango juice, alive max, and push button extreme). Of course, I am not about to invest my money into multiple MLMs out there since not only would that get expensive after a while and plus it helps to get a decent conversion rate with one program before moving onto another (which is common sense). One other thing worth mentioning is that if you put your phone number up online, some people WILL call you offering services for money. I remember a while back when I first joined Legit Online Jobs, for example, I got a guy representing the company wanting to offer me 1 on 1 coaching service for at least $2000 up front. Of course, $2000 is a lot of money to invest in training for affiliate marketing business (especially if you can go to friends, your former employer, or even college professor for advise, or even getting a good ebook for less than $100 that explains the opportunity in detail). Bottom line, new marketers beware: other marketers are coming after you for your money. Of course, there are a few ways to curb spam, such as not signing up for every newsletter you find online, being mindful where you post your information, having people "work" for your sign up, or even referring them to other advertising services.</p> <p><strong>Challenge 6 - Promoting your website or program without spamming</strong></p> <p>In the last section, I talked about trying to promote a website without spamming, and now I will talk about a similar issue that you will likely encounter online: how to promote without spamming. Of course, I am not talking about spam as a good thing, but now days where people are extra weary about web marketers and spammer, some people have a very broad definition of what "spam" is. For example, let's say you don't have the money to advertise your website on pay per click advertising (AdWords can get very expensive if you are not able to generate sales with it after all), and so you decide to write a classified ad on Craigslist. You can do that, but there are two things to watch for: 1) Craigslist does prohibit direct affiliate marketing, and 2) there are flaggers lurking around on Craigslist often looking to enforce the rules to the letter, and so if your ad looks too catchy, or you make your affiliate marketing efforts obvious (I am sure that we have all made that mistake at some point), someone will flag your ad and it will get deleted. Consequently, one has to mask their promotional efforts a bit to avoid "spamming" Craigslist. Also, for companies that have invite systems (such as Global Domains International), naturally you will probably try to invite people you know to join your downline, but then if you are not careful about who you invite, some people may get upset and treat your invite as "spam". Even on forums and social networking sites, you will find that some are more lenient than others about what you post, as well as sites where there are "stalinist" moderators who consider even linking to your own site as "spam". Some forums even have restrictions on what goes on your signature file. In fact, the other day, I had an interesting thing happen to me, I used to be a member at a popular business forum called business forums, and I don't know what I said or did (or maybe it had something to do with me showcasing my website in the advertising section on the site), but one day when I tried to log in, I found out that my ip address was banned. Obviously, I am not normally the spammer type, but I must have pissed someone off there unintentionally, and the admin decided to ban me (he never even gave me a warning or gave me a chance to explain myself). Luckily that was just one several forums I was a part of, but that example is to illustrate how easy it can be to cross the line and be considered a "spammer". Perhaps the best things you can do to avoid "spamming" is to mask your marketing efforts when doing free methods, not posting referral links on social networking sites (unless if they don't restrict them), and taking things slowly. Another thing you could do is go the path of least resistance, as there are sites that are more lenient about how you promote than others. For example, one type of site I tend to favor are traffic exchanges since one can simply post almost any link they wish to promote (though some restrictions apply), surf other webmasters' ads and get easy page views that way. The only downside to traffic exchanges is that you will find that the conversion rate is not very good with those as most fellow surfers will likely visit your website mainly to get credits, and so you would have to surf lots of sites (ideally at least 1000 credits' worth of sites per day minimum) if you want best results with them, which can take time and work (like spending up to 6 hours or more per day surfing countless sites for credits). You could also focus more on offline promotion where you can show of your links to friend, family, and other people you come across.</p> <p><strong>Challenge 7 - Going "impressions" and "clicks" to actually getting "leads" and "sales"</strong></p> <p>This is a challenge I am facing now and can't really provide and answer to this: if you market your website properly, you will find that most of the time you will only get hits and occasional hits for the links you have. Of course, the real challenge is to be able to go get some of the hits to turn into sales or payable leads. You might get 1000 impressions, and 100 clicks on average, but if none of them convert to leads or sales, it can be extra tricky to earn money with affiliate marketing. It would be nice if companies paid on a per click or 1000 impressions basis, but that is not so with most companies. Even with Google AdSense, which pays on a per click basis, it can be tricky to generate extra clicks each day. Perhaps the best way to improve your conversion rate (or sales, payable leads/clicks, etc) is to get feedback from people and try to build up traffic and tweek your site to give people reasons to do more than just clicking on your links.</p> <p>Well, that are all of the challenges worth pointing out for now, and I will plan on posting more as I come across more challenges over time. </p> <p>Ryan Jones is the webmaster of <a href="http://www.snohomish-ebook-store.net/" target="_new">http://www.snohomish-ebook-store.net</a>, which contains ebooks on a variety of subjects, including topics on web marketing, and so if you need extra resources for your business, you are welcome to check it out. You can also view his blog at <a href="http://www.iblog.at/ryansjones">www.iblog.at/ryansjones </a></p> <p>Other links: Gardyne, Allan, "18 Steps Affiliate Program Tuturial", <a href="http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/188/1/Affiliate-Program-Tutorial/" target="_new">http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/188/1/Affiliate-Program-Tutorial/</a>, Associate programs, published on 1/28/2006</p> <p>www.businessforums.com</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Local Search Marketing - Interview with Svetlana West</h1> <p>MySolutionSpot Editor — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:27:45 GMT</p> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>1.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>Introduce yourself and tell us about your position at Network Solutions®?</span></b></p> <p><span>Hi, I am Svetlana West, Product Manager for Online Marketing Services at Network Solutions®. My job focuses on providing affordable online marketing solutions to small businesses that are looking to grow online and get found by potential customers searching the Internet for products and services they want to buy. Our services range from Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and Local Search Visibility that deliver quick results through targeted online marketing campaigns to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Online Press Releases and Email Marketing that grow the visibility of a Website over time and keep customers coming back to your Website.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>2.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>How is local search marketing different from regular search engine marketing?</span></b></p> <p><span>Local search marketing is a component of search engine marketing. Customers looking for local businesses online type search queries that include not only the “what” (e.g., a product name) but also the “where” such as street address, zip code or city name. Thus, “lawyer in New York” or “pizza restaurant in Manhattan” are examples of local searches. Local search marketing can be very effective as it targets customers in a specific geographic area. </span></p> <p><span>Local search marketing can be as simple as creating a business listing in the Internet yellow pages such as Kudzu.com, for example. It can also be a Pay Per Click tactic that involves bidding on local keywords to have your ads appear prominently in the sponsored listings of search engines. You can also optimize your Website with keywords that are local in content, thus attracting visitors from your geographic area of service.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>3.<span> </span></span></span></b><b>Which are the best local directories to submit to?</b> </p> <p><span>The big names come to mind – Google® Maps, Yahoo!® Local, MSN® Local, AOL® Local, YellowPages.com®, Superpages.com®, Citysearch®, etc. We also have our own Network Solutions ® local directory called <a href="http://www.thinklocal.com/">ThinkLocal™</a> with over 17 million businesses listed. It is a good idea to submit to as many directories as possible to ensure that you are reaching out to your potential customers who favor various places when it comes to searching for local businesses online. You will also gain an added benefit of multiple links pointing back to your Website, which is an important factor in achieving higher search engine rankings.</span></p> <p><span>The submission process to individual directories can be time-consuming. That is why, services that submit your listings automatically to the various directories, without you having to visit hundreds of sites, are a cost-effective and convenient way to blast your local information to hundreds of directories out there.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>4.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>How does local search interact with properties like Google Maps and MapQuest?</span></b></p> <p><span>Internet users can look for local information in two ways. They can go directly to the search engine such as Google and type what they are looking for. If a local qualifier such as a zip code is entered, Google will return local business results. Alternatively, users can go directly to Google Maps or MapQuest and look for local businesses there. Results similar to the search engine page will be returned here. Each listing will be flagged on the map. The “More info” link provides more information about each business, including customer reviews.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;"><b><span><span>5.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>I’ve noticed Yahoo!® Local includes user ratings, how do these impact my listing?</span></b></p> <p style="page-break-after: avoid;"><span>User ratings for local business listings are attractive to both potential customers and search engines. Customers can learn more about your business and its offerings from user ratings and reviews. Search engines view user reviews as additional content that is directly related to your business, which helps move your Website rank upwards in the search results. </span></p> <p style="page-break-after: avoid;"><span>As a business owner, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the type of ratings and reviews that you get online. If you happen to receive a negative review, try to reach out directly to that customer and understand why they were unhappy with the service or product. You may even be able to turn them into one of your company advocates. </span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>6.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>Network Solutions® has a new tool for Local Search Marketing, can you tell us a little about it?</span></b></p> <p><span>We are very excited about our Local Search Visibility service. This service is your gateway into the world of local search marketing. You enter your business information into a simple, one-step form. With a click of a button, this information is syndicated to our network of more than a hundred local online directories, including Google® Maps, Yahoo!® Local, MSN® Local, YellowPages.com, Kudzu.com and many more. Your business listing can be as detailed as you want to make it, including company description, products and services, brands, hours of operation, payment methods, etc. This service is priced at $39.95 a month with no setup fees. </span></p> <p><span>Our service comes with a keyword suggestion tool that automatically prompts keywords that are popular on the Internet and should be included in your business profile. The Delivery Center tracks the status of your submissions and provides links to directory and search engine listings as they become available. The on-demand reporting tracks the performance of your Website and business listing in the top search engines and business directories, day by day.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>7.<span> </span></span></span></b><b>What is the average cost for local search marketing?</b></p> <p><span>You can create local business listings in places like Google Maps and YellowPages.com free of charge. However, it takes time. If any of your information changes later, you will have to update each individual listing, one at a time, which is a tedious process. Therefore, it is often a good idea to take advantage of services similar to Local Search Visibility from Network Solutions that submits your information to over a hundred local online directories with a click of a button. You can come back and update your information in one place at any time. You can choose to pay for a service like this on a monthly basis. This will cost you anywhere from $20 to $70 a month. Or you can sign up for an annual plan that offers one, two or more months for free.</span></p> <div> </div> <p style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b><span><span>8.<span> </span></span></span></b><b><span>Aside from submitting to local directories, do you have advice for a larger local marketing strategy?</span></b></p> <p><span>If you target market is local, make sure that your Website is optimized for local search by selecting local keywords that will bring your site to the top of search results when someone is looking for products and services in your geographic area. It is also a good idea to complement your SEO efforts with a Pay Per Click campaign that targets local keywords as well. Your ads will only appear to customers entering local search terms. </span></p> <p style="page-break-after: avoid;"><span>Obtaining a local or 1-800 phone number that you can track is an excellent way to monitor the ROI on your local marketing campaigns. The number can be featured on your Website or included in your direct marketing materials. When a potential customer calls this number, the call is tracked and recorded. You can view the call details (e.g., origin, duration, etc.) as well as listen to the recording online. </span></p> <p><span>When developing your marketing strategy, think big and think creative, but also don’t forget to take advantage of the people and resources right in your own community.</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> </main></body></html>