Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Article: The Laws of Brand Focus and Contraction and Why Bloggers Should Care
The Laws of Brand Focus and Contraction and Why Bloggers Should Care
http://performancing.com/the-laws-of-brand-focus-and-contraction-and-why-bloggers-should-care/
I’m a marketer by profession, and one of the basic laws of building a brand tells us that a highly focused brand is stronger in the long-term than an unfocused brand. In other words, the most powerful brands own a word in people’s minds.
On the other hand, there is another marketing law that tells us it’s better to be the leader in a category than it is to be better. That’s because the category leader, meaning the brand that is first to enter that market, owns the broad word that defines the category simply by being first. Later entrants into the category are challenged with the need to differentiate their own brands from the category leader in order to steal market share from that pioneer brand. For example, Microsoft might own “operating system” in the world of personal computers, but Apple owns “design”. Apple effectively positioned its brand against the category leader by differentiating its brand as a market challenger that was focused on a very specific part of the category which the leader couldn’t offer as well as Apple could. The strategy worked for Apple just as it does for many other brands in many other categories. And guess what? It works for blogs, too. If you take a step back from your blog and the social web, you’ll see that your blog is just one within the broader category of blogs and websites that publish content about your blog topic. There is probably a leader in that category, and there are many, many smaller competitor blogs in that category. The first step to finding focus for your blog is determining what that area of focus will be, so you can effectively position your blog against your competitors. What is the category leader doing and how can you bring your own niche expertise to the category to challenge the leader? Think of it this way — if you write a blog about parenting, then you have a lot of big competition from established blogs and companies with deep pockets and pre-existing brand awareness to work against. However, if you find your focus and contract your content and brand to that niche, then your chances of finding long-term blogging success are far greater than if you keep a broad brand and try to compete head on with the bigger players in your category. Looking at the concept of brand focus from another perspective, consider General Motors. This is a company that focused on the wrong thing for many years. Upon seeing the dollar signs that selling large, gas-guzzling vehicles like Hummers could bring to the company’s bottom-line, focus shifted to these money-making brands. Short-term earnings trumped long-term sustainability for General Motors. When the economy tanked, so did General Motors. Today, the Hummer brand is nearly gone and General Motors has been vocally touting its new focus on fuel-efficient vehicles for the future. Suffice it to say, you don’t want your blog to go the way of General Motors, because a bailout for your blog is unlikely. Instead, make sure you choose an area of focus, your niche, that has long-term potential, so you can stay competitive and hold your position against the market leader and other blogs in your category.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
How to Make a Website for Small Businesses in Toronto – Using Eye-Catching Graphics==>>http://bit.ly/bpjXlb
Want To Start A Blog But Not An Expert In Your Niche- Read These Blogging Tips To Becoming One http://bit.ly/aYn5zu
Monday, October 25, 2010
Doing Market Research For Your Greater Toronto Area Business [pls comment] ==>> http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Awesome Article: Social Media Marketing – Popularity vs. Trust
Social Media Marketing – Popularity vs. Trust
It can sometimes be a struggle to discuss with clients that it generally doesn’t matter how many followers you have within your Twitter account(s). Getting a mass of people to click on your “like” button on Facebook isn’t going to make you an instant success either. Neither of these will nail the issue of trust, either.
When it comes to doing any kind of business online where you use social media as a channel for connecting with your followers, it’s much better to have a small following of loyal fans than a massive following of people that generally don’t care about what you have to say. There is a stigma that people feel “bigger is better”. It’s more a matter of showing off for some business owners and it hurts them in the long run.Read more here:
http://localwebscience.com/2010/10/social-media-marketing-popularity-vs-trust/
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Business Blogs - You MUST Feature The Right Categories
When it comes to small business advertising, business blogs play an important part in marketing and creating a trustworthy brand in your niche. However, when blogging for business, most businesses overlook the structure and fail to feature the right categories for their blog.
Think of your business blog as a virtual filing cabinet, if all your content is not categorized correctly or not categorized at all it will be almost impossible for anyone to find any information, no matter how great your content may be. If its too much trouble for your website visitors to find what they need they will leave and never come back the same goes for those pesky search engine bots, if your content is not neetly organized in the right categories.
Categories should be the most searched general keywords for your niche, you will find these through doing your market research. Often these are the most competitive keywords in your niche however having your categories named this way will is one of the first steps in on-page SEO and it will help you get your most important keywords always into your url. You also must make sure that your perma-link structure will look similar to this: http://yourseofriendlydomain.com/yourkeywordrichcategory/titleofyourpost
Using the right categories in your business blog not only makes your blog more search engine optimized but it offers a more user friendly experience for your visitors. They will be able to search your blog for content based on your categories quickly, this means they will stay on your site longer. Google will note how long visitors spend on your site, therefore the longer your visitors stay on your site the more authority it will appear you have. This is crucial to Google and will play greatly in your search engine rankings.
It also allows the search engine bots to crawl your website quicker and easier helping your in the long run in your search engine rankings. Featuring the right categories will give your content a better chance of being found and indexed by Google and other search engines as well as giving you a stronger chance of being found on the first page of search results. Not to mention that using the right categories will give your business blogs a professional and organized feel as your content will be more easily found by your website visitors and the search engines.
User experience should be your first concern when it comes to small business advertising on the Internet. That's because if your visitors like your content and can easily find the information they are looking for they will stay longer on your website and you will have the opportunity to create an even stronger relationship and trust with your prospective customers. Remember that if your visitors find your website valuable and keep coming back, the search engines will also start liking your website and you will start seeing your business blog on the first page of the search engines sooner then you may think.
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Video shows you how to do quick market research for your business[vid tutorial] ==>>http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Monday, October 18, 2010
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Doing Market Research For Your Greater Toronto Area Business [pls comment] ==>> http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Article: Blogging Strategically Not Tactically And 5 Steps to Do It
Awesome blog worth reading and implementing for both offline and online businesses!
Blogging Strategically Not Tactically And 5 Steps to Do It
http://performancing.com/blogging-strategically-not-tactically-and-5-steps-to-do-it/
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Article: Injecting Poison Into Your Brain
Great article by Jeff Walker about how the media is molding our brains to think and believe the worst of humanity and our economy.... This is exactly the reason I don't watch TV... A must read for any entrepreneur!
Injecting Poison Into Your Brain
http://jeffwalker.com/injecting-poison-in-your-brain/
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Saturday, October 16, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Can internet marketing work for your business...on is it a wast of your time and money? [blog] http://bit.ly/aVivXL
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Video shows you how to do quick market research for your business[vid tutorial] ==>>http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Video shows you how to do quick market research for your business[vid tutorial] ==>>http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Friday, October 8, 2010
Branding, Why You Should Start Building Your Small Business Brand [pls comment] ==>>http://bit.ly/93Esmp
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Article: 10 Tips For Entrepreneurs And Start Ups Looking To Embrace Social Media
10 Tips For Entrepreneurs And Start Ups Looking To Embrace Social Media
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/09/22/10-tips-for-entrepreneurs-and-start-ups-looking-to-embrace-social-media/
10 Tips For Entrepreneurs And Start Ups Looking To Embrace Social Media
Posted on Jan 11th, 2009 by Niall Harbison
I’ve been involved in a couple of start ups over the last couple of years and in both, due to having very limited marketing budgets, social media has been the main form of our marketing activities. This is the same for nearly all starts ups these days, social media is often the first port of call as it is cheap (often seen as free), accessible and fairly easy for founders and small teams to embrace. It’s a fairly logical step to start promoting your start up through social media because most entrepreneurs will have a decent personal network anyway so getting the message out to them is a next logical step. I wanted to share 10 of the top tips that I have picked up about using social media for start up businesses…
You Have Incredible Freedom
Many large organizations are crippled these days because getting one Facebook update, a tweet or blog post has to pass through several departments before getting sign off from legal. The beauty of being a start up is that you don’t face these challenges. Whatever you feel like saying you can pretty much just say, You can give people sneak access to products, share interesting facts about your company, do short videos or talk to your customers in the way you see fit. As a start up you have the incredible luxury of being able to push your message out and engage in the way you see fit with very few limitations. Embrace that freedom and share useful information that big competitors can’t.
It Won’t Be A 3 Month Quick Win
I’d always urge start ups to take a long term view on social media. Chances are you won’t get much out of it in the first 3 months. Nobody will read your blog, your Facebook page will have a few friends and family as fans and it’ll feel as if you are talking to yourself on Twitter. Building a network takes a lot of time. It’s only after a year or two of networking online and building relationships that you start to see the real value. Most start ups and businesses jump in to social media thinking it will solve all their problems only to be disappointed by the results and leave. The one piece of advice I would have here is to really stick at it because it will work in the long run but it takes time and patience.
Social Media Won’t Help Your Traffic That Much
Too many start ups I see use social media purely as a function to drive traffic to their website. Special offers, discount deals, pointing to blog posts with awards or just coming in with the hard sell will never get you anywhere. You need to find an angle. I love small start ups that share stats for example or give me a glimpse behind the scenes of what they are building. I like to know about the personalities behind the company. I won’t click on a Facebook update where you try to sell me something but if you show me a picture of you and the team drinking beers after a hard week chances are I might interact with that content. For all the talk of social search and Twitter driving traffic it is still very much about search engines if it is traffic you are after, chances are 70-80% of your traffic will come through search engines with tiny amounts coming through social media.
Ask Yourself Will It Actually Drive Sales?
Business is fairly straight forward…you need to bring more money in than you have going out. If you are going to be spending money or time on social media then you need to ask yourself the hard question of is it actually going to lead to sales. This may seem confusing given that I say not to come across with the hard sell in the last point but at the same time you can’t be doing social media for the good of your health. If you have set out to market yourself using social media then you need to set some goals. Will the fact that you provide outstanding customer service via Twitter keep your customers loyal and mean they keep coming back to you? Can you give away lots of information that is useful to your customers via a blog so as they keep coming back and eventually buy your premium services or products. I’d have very clear established goals as to what you want to achieve from your social media activity as a start up and I would plan for them over a long period of time.
Don’t Get In To Thinking Social Media Is Work
I cringe at the amount of time I see some people involved in startups on Twitter every day. I was guilty of it myself in the early days but it’s important to remember that twitter is not work. Sure you can use it in some of the ways above to get a little bit of leverage for your business but sitting on there all day reading links and talking to people is not actually working. I know it sounds very obvious but too many people lose sight of that and get caught up in social media. It is as it’s name sugg
Article: Small Business News: Social Media and the Entrepreneur
Small Business News: Social Media and the Entrepreneur
http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/09/small-business-news-social-media-and-the-entrepreneur.html
Small Business News: Social Media and the Entrepreneur
Small Business News September 20, 2010 By Small Business News
Social media and entrepreneurship represent the perfect partnership in today’s small business world. Free and easy to operate social media tools have made it possible for almost anyone with an idea and the willingness to work to create their own dream small business. What is it you would like to do? There’s probably already a social media tool to help you do it.
Social Media Startup
A social media startup guide. Ever wondered how effective social media really is at helping you grow your business or start it in the first place? Sian Phillips doesn’t. Not anymore. In this post, Sian recounts how she started her consulting business and already had her first clients by the end of her first week with no other effort than starting a blog and launching accounts on Twitter and Facebook. How’s that for ROI? Bloggertone
Facebook ads revisited. Facebook ads are the latest and greatest online small business advertising and marketing tool since…well, since Google Adsense. We’ve reported on them here at Small Business Trends before, of course, but this post from online marketig consultant Chris Piepho may give the most comprehensive overview of all. Small Business Shift
Building a community for your business with Twitter. Twitter may have just 140 little characters per post, but the impact it can have on your business is enormous. How can you use those 140 characters plus other neat tools to build a community around you brand? Check out this awesome primer that shows how entrepreneurs can use this amazing free tool to change their business operations forever. Search Engine Journal
Entrepreneurship
Keeping your entrepreneurial focus. Keeping yourself on track whole working to start your company can be one of the hadest challenges you face as an entrepreneur. So many distractions compete for your time, others who, perhaps, would like to harness some of your talent for their vision. Student and entrepreneur Zack Shapiro has these helpful words about creating a “filter” for your entrepreneurial focus that keeps you from spreading yourself too thin.The Startup Student
How many hats do you wear in your small business? We’re guessing if your like a lot of startup entrepreneurs it’s probably a lot. There’s providing your product or service. (That’s the easy part and the reason you got into business in the first place) and then there’s everything else. There’s no way of delegating when you’re a solopreneur meaning you’re the only one in the office and there’s no money for outsourcing. Montreal Financial
Marketing
Don’t let blogging create another stressful aspect of your business. Sure, blogging for your business is important, critical maybe. Getting your message out and engaging with others you find on the World Wide Web can really get results but don’t let your blogging create stress or siphon off energy that should be spent on your core business. Fortunately, busy business blogger Kiesha Easley has a solution that will increase your productivity. bizchickblogs.com
To “like” or not to “like,” that is the question. And a lot of people visiting your Facebook profile today are taking too much time to answer it. Those fans could represent new sales or new referrals or both. So what do you do? There are ways to build up your Facebook following. Let’s look at one strategy. The Torch
Are you abusing social media marketing? There are rights and wrongs when it comes to use of social media…and when it comes to just about every other aspect of business as well. The price you will pay for breaking these rules is a poor reputation with many of your potential customers and perhaps even some negative reaction on the social Web that will keep spreading long after your bad behavior. It seems hard to believe that marketers doing any of the things mentioned in the post above aren’t aware what they are doing is wrong. But it’s best to remember that you reputation is always important online or off so don’t start down this path. KISSmetrics
Search
It’s still about the content. From blogging to social media to SEO for your site, it’s important for online entrepreneurs to keep in mind that every aspect of your business still relies on content. Seems obvious, right? When is the last time you visited a site and was impressed by the lack of content there? Keeping content fresh is the key to your social media ills. MySEMExpert
SEO
How to get found on Google. If a tree falls in the woods, the old saying goes, but no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound at all? The same can be said of content on your Website or products or services you offer customers if no one ever finds your tiny site in the ocean of Google search results we are all deluged with daily. Fortunately there are ways to improve your Google ranking that aren’t rocket science. inBlurbs
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Monday, October 4, 2010
Doing Market Research For Your Greater Toronto Area Business [pls comment] ==>> http://bit.ly/abjHkV
Why Use Blogs For Your Milton & GTA Local Business Website [pls comment on blog] http://bit.ly/clCWGZ
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Small Business Online Advertising Through Social Network Development
When it comes to small business advertising your best business prospects usually come through networking in your local community. This is true for online advertising for offline businesses as well. Your best prospects will come through your social network. Often when it comes to online advertising and social networks many entrepreneurs will quickly come to think about social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which is correct but not the whole spectrum of social network development via the Internet.
Social network development through online sources includes anything in the web 2.0 circle. Web 2.0 includes social networks like blogs (Wordpress or Blogger, Posterous), micro-blogging sites like Twitter, status update sites like Facebook and MySpace, news voting sites (Digg, Reddit, Mixx), bookmarking sites (Delicious,Google Bookmarks, Dijingo), video sharing sites (Youtube, Viddler), article directories (Ezine Article, GoArticles) and forums. In order to create a strong Social Network and your Business Brand ideally you want to implement all the Web 2.0 social networks. An aggressive online advertising strategy like this will show your potential customers your professionalism and separating yourself from your competition, since most small local businesses do not implement even one of these powerful online networks in their small business advertising strategies.
There are countless social networks that you can use for online advertising of your business and it can be overwhelming at first but luckily it all can be tied together by using some very simple and inexpensive tools.
The first is a free tool called Posterous, this is itself a blogging platform but the beauty of Posterous is that you can integrate all of your blogs, micro-blogging platforms and status sites on the Posterous network, and with just one e-mail you can distribute content to your Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter accounts and blogs. This network will help you develop a stronger social network for your niche because it enables you to reach your market on multiple social media platforms.
My other favorite tool that I use to help with my social network development is Synnd. Synnd allows me to reach social news voting sites, bookmarking sites, article directories all from one control panel. I do have to mention that this is a paid tool but it is worth every penny and more. This is what ultimately helps you gain visibility on the Internet and help you with ranking highly on search engines like Google. It saves you the trouble of bookmarking or voting for your own content, which is often frowned upon by the voting and bookmarking sites, and it gets your content real votes from actual. No black-hat tactics of creating multiple accounts on any of these social networks and spamming your content.
With these two tools online advertising through social network development becomes quick easy. All you have to do is to regularly create great niche specific content and distribute it using these two tools. If this too seems like work for you, you can always designate this crucial marketing strategy to one of your employees or higher a social media manager, like myself, to do all this for you. You also have to remember when it comes to the platforms like Twitter and Facebook you will have to, once in a while go in there and interact with your audience, but this is a task that you can too outsource, but first I suggest you try it yourself... you may enjoy it.
Without implementing and being visible in these social networks you may be missing a wide range of customers that turn to the Internet, and these networks, when looking for products/services in you niche market. When it comes to online advertising you want to be everywhere that your potential market is. This also will help you gain more search engine visibility giving your site more authority than that of your local competitors who are not using the online strategy of social network development.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Video shows you how to do quick market research for your business[vid tutorial] ==>>http://bit.ly/abjHkV
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