Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Internet Advertising for Small Businesses - Social Media Integration
With the advent of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and the introduction of social media marketing had completely changed the face internet advertising for small business owners. What started out as a fad in marketing is quickly becoming an integral part of any business be it a totally online business or a traditional local business. Social media integration is now a common place for most successful businesses online and offline.
Many local businesses still need to realize the fact that social sharing is not a fad, it is a way for people to broadcast their activities and thoughts online. If those people are sharing their experience about your product or service, you want to know what they are saying and address any issues they may have had.
Integrating social media with your internet advertising is a fast way to build your business brand and create loyal customers who will recommend your services. You eliminate the need for pushy or hypy sales tactics and concentrate on developing relationship between your small business brand and customer. Creating a trust and word of mouth using your potential and existing clients based on the information you share. By providing this helpful and related content or information, you generate even more equity in your clients.
That is why it is important to have social media integration with all of your content or information on your small business website. When someone finds your content, reads it and finds it interesting they want to share it with their social networks and friends. Even if they are not the once who will buy your product hire your services someone they shared your content with could if they are looking for that service. If the content on your business blog is good people will start sharing it creating targeted viral marketing for your small business. All because you have social media integration on your small business blog.
Why?
Because the people who read your content already have an interest in your service or product, making them highly likely to become your customers. If your services are as good as your content then you can create a successful business faster. That is why you need to have social media integration with your content.
With the benefits of integrating social media into your internet marketing efforts can be huge for a small business that is just starting out in the sea of competition. Its easy and low cost marketing. With the technological advances like the iPhone, BlackBerry, iPads where your potential customers have access to any information they want in the palm of their hand it will become necessary for any business if they want to stay in business in the coming decades.
Click here for more informational content and for help in your internet advertising for your small businesses
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Small Business Marketing Plan - Choosing The Right Domain Name
Download now or watch on posterous
Small Business Marketing Plan - Choosing The Right Domain Name.mp4 (3118 KB) Click here for more information on online marketing for your small business
How to Make a Website for Small Businesses in Toronto – Using Eye-Catching Graphics==>>http://bit.ly/bpjXlb
Monday, July 26, 2010
Small Business Marketing Plan - Choosing Domain Name
One of the fundimental steps for any small business marketing strategy and getting found on search engines like Google is choosing the right domain name. Many business owners wind up choosing the wrong domain names for their business websites which often results in a failed or a very expensive marketing campaign with little to no results. Spending a lot of effort and money and never quite reaching the first page of Google.
In this blog post you will learn:
- What is a domain name
- What is the difference between a good domain name and a bad domain name
- What you should avoid, that most business owners do wrong, when choosing a domain name and how to avoid it.
- The importance of having a keyword rich domain name as part of your small business marketing strategy.
What is a domain name?
A domain name is the part after the http://www. and it ends in the .com .net .ca (.ca is for Canada) or other extentions.
An example of famous domain names are Google.com, Twitter.com, Facebook.com YouTube.com.
A good domain name is SEO friendly (keyword rich). A Keyword rich domain name is key to any successful business marketing strategy online because it is the foundational step in ranking highly and getting found by your customers.
What you should avoid (i.e. bad domain names):
- Choosing a "cool' domain name for your business
- Using your company name, unless your business name is keyword rich.
Lets use the example my company as an example. My company name is Fast Track Marketing Success however my domain name is SmallBusinessAdvertising.ca for my new business website, because of the number of searches for this keyword. This one step allowed me to rank on the first page of Google for the "small business advertising" keyword in a matter of few weeks with a few posts for a brand new website.
At the time of this video I have less links then some of the more high authoroty wites however I have a 100% keyword density domane name which boosted me to show up higher on the first page of Google search results than websites like entrepreneur.com and about.com with a lot less content.
When choosing your domain name try to get an "exact match" domain name for best results eg. DogTraning.com
If you cannot get an "exact match" then your next option is to go for a "phrase match" eg.MyDogTraining.com or DogTrainingBlog.com
Idealy you want either an exact match or a phrase match domain name, but if you are unable to get those you may consider a "broad match" domain name. For example TrainingYourDog.com, the keyword "dog training" becomes "training your dog"
Having your keywords in your domain name will help you in your marketing efforts for your small online or local business. This is the first step foundational in search engine optimization.
Unless you have an extremly high marketing budget you should stick to these boring but SEO friendly and keyword rich domain names. Do not be tempted by cleaver or cool domain names. They are not worth the hassle and the only person who will see it and knows it exists is you.
Just by following the simple tips will allow you to rank faster in search engines like google, save you a lot of effort, time and money when you are trying to achieve high search engine rankings for your local business or online business.
You can find the best domain name from doing your market research. If you have not yet done any market and keyword research check out my video tutorial for "Doing Your Market Research".
For small business marketing and SEO help click here Search Engine Optimization For Your Small Business
Remember rank,share, comment and ask questions on this post.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
I'm not a baby person but this is just too damn cute and funny ==>http://bit.ly/9QnSQA Enjoy your weekend :)
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Why You Should Do Market Research For Your Business Marketing Strategy [pls comment] ==>> http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Why You Should Do Market Research For Your Local Business Marketing [pls comment] ==>> http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Want To Know How You Rank As An Entrepreneur? Take The Founder Institute Test==>> http://tcrn.ch/acVHeL
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Branding, Why It should Start Build Your Small Business Brand
Branding is very important for achieving success in any small business and marketing strategy. However to my horror when I asked on my social media sites the question "What is your brand? most business owners answeres were either their company's products or service. I want you to understand that a brand is NOT a company name, logo, product line or the service your company provides. If you want to have a successful business and a strong internet marketing strategy your local business should not become known just for the services or products you sell.
When it comes to any small business niche, be it a dentist, real estate agent, insurance broker, the truth is you have a lot of competition, if all you do is you promote your services or products. The only way for you to see some leads and customers is to have an unlimited marketing budget to out market your business competition.
From my experience most small and local business owner do not. That is why personal branding is so important especially if you want to survive in business using online marketing for your business.
What is a brand?
Simply put, a brand its you and what your business values are. It is the core benefits that you offer to your customers and clients. Be it people looking for your services or your current customers. However just offering a "great" service or product is not enough to building a personal brand.
Here are some Personal Branding Tips:
1. Find out what your target market is struggling with, the solution to this are the "core benefits" for your small business market
2. Start looking for the solution, researching and learning, so that you gain knowledge and can start creating quality blog posts, articles and videos that you can share with your market. Become the "Go-To" Person in you local niche market.
3. Become active on social media or networking with local meet up groups, listen to what people are saying so that you can identify their needs and provide them with more solutions, this will start positioning you as a leader and growing your small business brand. This does't mean pitching then your services or products, but offering valuable information how their issues can be solved.
4. Grow your credibility by offering even more valuable information or training when they opt-in to your mailing list or become your business leads.
5. Be sure to communicate with your customer list, make it easy for people to connect with you if they have a question. Make note of any special dates that your current customers may be having. For example take note of birthdays or anniversaries. Make them feel like you care about them not just getting their money.
6. Always concentrate of offering great value for free, like information or personal discounts, and blow them away with anything that they pay for.
These are just some tips to growing your small business brand and creating a strong internet marketing campaign. These are probably the most important. The main thing you should take away from this article is that if you just concentrate on providing value and much needed information with time you will position yourself as a leader in the your business niche.
People will start to connect with you, know, like and trust you. Eventually, with a little hard work and time on your part, you will start to see the customers and referrals roll in . Remember building a small business brand takes time and effort. You might hit a few snags along the way. But if you honest to your business brand you will find that you can persevere and achieve growing success in your business for years to come.
The secret to growing a brand is to identify the problems and finding the solution. Most customers firs search for information on search engines like Google to find a solution to their nice problem. That is why if you want to create a solid local or small business that stays in business for years you need to start marketing locally on the intent and build a strong business brand. Contact me, Justyna Lam to learn how I can help you create and grow your Small Business Brand.
Comments are appreciated :)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
My friend entered the Benjamin Moore contest & needs your votes, if you like her design, the name is "WENDY G."==>>http://bit.ly/c05cnR
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Local Small Business Marketing - Are You Using Google Analytics?
When it comes to local small business marketing, online or offline, it is important to know where your traffic and leads are coming from. If you had a business for more than ten years you may be used to having a marketing budget and throwing that money in to newspaper ads, yellow pages ads, radios or,if your marketing budget was hight, TV commercials.
Whenever someone came into your store or called your business, you never really knew what marketing avenue worked best for you. So you'd again throw money at the same marketing strategies. Never getting a clearly defined ROI for each of your marketing strategies. When internet marketing came on the scenes as a small business marketing strategy, savvy business owners jump on the online marketing bandwagon and started marketing.
However, many still do not know where their traffic is coming from because they do not track what is happening on their websites. Never getting any clear return on investment by finding out what small business marketing, online strategies, are working for them and which are not. This is one issue that can be solved easily by using a free tool called Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google available with your Google account. It tracks how much traffic you get each day, how long your website visitors spend on your website and how many pages they browse. You will also know where they are coming from, from paid advertising sites, from free traffic sources like social media, or perhaps organic search results from Google, Yahoo or Bing (MSN).
Google Analytics will also show you in exactly which regions your small business marketing strategies are working. Not only which countries or provinces that the majority of your online traffic is coming from, but also which cities and towns they are located it.
You will also be able to track which search phrases your website visitors are using to find you so you can further expand your website content for these keywords. You may find keyword phrases you may have not thought about in your research.
The benefits i listed of having Analytics for your local business website are just a small list of what can be done with this tool. I wanted to outline the benefits of this free Google tool without writing a small book about it.
Google Analytics is a must have tool in any small business marketing arsenal. It allows you to have a constant hold on the pulse of your online marketing campaign allowing you to know precisely which marketing efforts are working your your local business and which are not.
Enabling you to shift your marketing money away from what is not working into what works, strengthening your small business marketing strategy and growing a strong business with a higher ROI then you imagined possible for your business.
If you want to use the power on small business marketing on the internet but want to concentrate of serving your customers and growing your business contact me, Justyna Lam for a free consultation by filing your contact information in the form on my website http://smallbusinessadvertising.ca
Monday, July 19, 2010
How to Make a Website for Small Businesses in Toronto – Using Eye-Catching Graphics
Creating the right website for your local small business in Toronto is a crucial strategy for the online marketing of your small business. In today’s world most of your customers are internet savvy and most likely have a smart phone like a Blackberry or an iPhone, putting the internet in the palm their hands. Not having a website for your business today is like shooting your business in the foot.
It is also important to keep your customers on your website by making the website easy to navigate, as well as neat and attractive. Using eye-catching graphics on your website strategically placed that add to the esthetics of your site but does not distract your visitors from taking your desired action, either to buy your product, visit your store or to contact you.
Having cute Flash graphics may impress your website visitors. However, they may very well work against getting any conversion from your site…why?
Well you see some of that fancy, impressive flash may take time to load, depending on your customer’s internet speed and computer it may drastically slow down the loading time and result in your visitors clicking off your website out of frustration.
The purpose of graphics is to enhance user experience and at the same time give your visitors a little push to read your article or blog posts that will persuade them to take your desired action or buying your services or become your business lead.
Videos are a great way of adding graphics to a small business website. Videos can entertain your visitors, inform and enlighten them on your services, as well as mark you as an expert in your field. Also, videos can tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do, call, buy or become your business lead. A video about your small business, what services you offer in the greater Toronto area will enhance your website, will brand you and your local business and at the same time will sell or create a lead for your business.
However, if you decide to use graphics in the form of picture, flash or videos be sure that it has a clear and defined purpose. Look honestly at your website graphics and be honest with yourself…
Are they eye-catching graphics?
Does it do a good job at branding you and your local small business?
Do the graphics take away from your desired action (i.e. Contacting you or making a sale)?
Are the graphics confusing? … A confused mind says No.
Eye-catching graphics are great. But remember when designing your local business website, simpler is better. You should have a clean, visually appealing website where your visitors can easily opt in to be your leads or contact you for more information. Always make it easy for your visitors to contact you, that is the main purpose of having a website and marketing your small business on the Internet.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Personal Goal Setting; The Foundation for Long-Term Wealth [blog] http://dld.bz/jGrD Companies Still Use Social Media With No Strategy [blog] http://dld.bz/jGps
Thursday, July 1, 2010
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