Building a home-based internet business the right way
Posted on August 28, 2009 | Filed Under Blogs, RSS and Podcasting
Can a business still use a blog in a meaningful way, or have the new social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, superseded this tool? Several years ago, many companies abandoned their static, flat websites that lectured customers with facts that could have been straight out of their Annual Reports, and began including blogs. There they announced their latest products and received customer input in return, and discovered that blogs were a valuable public relations tool.
It’s well known in the business blogosphere that Dell Computers led the way, being one of the first companies to make such a change. Even as successful a business as Dell was, a barrier still existed between the company and its customers, many of whom had frustrating complaints that weren’t being addressed. When the company set up to receive blog entries, the turnaround in its relationship with customers was remarkable. General Motors, too, had a similar experience.
And for anyone considering building a home business online the benefits of blogging can be enormous.
While some customers still prefer regular email newsletters with the latest business news, others are eager to unclog their inboxes and check a company blog instead. A business can reach people in all of these ways, each serving different needs. One advantage of using the blog, however, will be that the posted information won’t vanish off the bottom of the page as quickly as Twitter updates. Nor will the responses from customers.
Businesses do need to be cautious about raising customers’ expectations, however. While an almost one-on-one relationship might be possible between a small business and its customers, larger companies may not be able to respond to all queries or complaints, and this could damage its reputation if it’s not careful.
But another use for blogging, and one that businesses might not even consider at first, is for internal communication. Even though employees can keep in touch via email, meetings or conference calls, an internal blog can focus on one department or a single project, providing a central place for a team to receive regular updates or make an informal record of their progress. This will keep these employees up to date without their own email inbox piling up to an unmanageable level.
Even though blogs are now in many ways less active, they still have a purpose in giving up-to-date business information and news to customers and receiving feedback from them. Belonging to the more tried and true internet establishment, they provide information in a more permanent form than other media, yet allow a business to remain in fruitful, friendly contact with its customers.
About this Post
Permalink | Trackback |
|
Print This Article | Leave a Comment
Get Ready to ‘Go Viral’, But Only If You’re Really Prepared
Posted on August 28, 2009 | Filed Under Online Business, Promotion and Marketing
Viral marketing is a term which has recently acquired some renown in the world of online business as new strategies in social marketing have been making their mark on Internet commerce. In brief, it’s a method of marketing which encourages people from all walks of life to spread the word as much as possible. When this “word” is actively pushed forward, it has the opportunity to expand exponentially, thereby reaching a massive audience, just as a virus could spread during an influenza outbreak.
There are quite a few internet marketers out there who are trying to initiate a viral marketing strategy, or they’re doing everything they can to make their products or services “go viral”, but most of these people just don’t realise that this is possible only if they pay particular attention to the essential elements which are necessary for this to work.
To begin with, you need to have a product or service that’s easily saleable and highly scalable. You can create a “buzz” about anything and everything, as we have seen from examples within the popular media. For instance, who would’ve ever thought that several million people would log onto their computers and then go to a specific web page so that they could watch the video from a webcam streaming a pile of cute puppies sleeping in someone’s bed? Although most of the time, in real marketing terms, you need to start off with products or services that can inspire a great deal of excitement.
Many people feel that one of the best ways to create a viral marketing campaign is to start with something that’s free. The word “free” is of course one of the most powerful in our language, and it almost always creates attention of some kind. Consider giving something away for free in the knowledge that should your marketing campaign become effective, you will have the attention of large numbers of people to whom you may promote and potentially sell other products.
Whatever you’re selling, you need to be able to sell large numbers of it through your website development strategy. The ability to scale easily from small to very large is essential, as is your transmission method. You must plan ahead of time if you’re serious about creating a viral marketing campaign – and remember, scalability is very important. If you are not able to keep up with the demand, your initiative is dead.
If you really want to create a buzz about your product or service, it should have a certain element of “coolness” to it. What sets it apart – what is its unique selling proposition? Find something to create that spark, and you may also be able to feed off some current trends to help you. Consider researching “Google trends” online – it’s a great resource for learning about what’s hot, what may even be volcanic or what’s not.
Your viral marketing project should be able to utilise existing communication networks. Networking is very hot these days, and social networking within the Internet world even more so. Place your message succinctly into the correct networks to achieve your goal. If you really want something to go viral, you should try and take advantage of another network’s network. Construct great press releases and sew a seed in that particular area, for example.
Whatever product or service you’re using to initiate a viral marketing campaign, you must make sure that you have correctly implemented your back end operation. It’s no good giving something away for free or at reduced cost – creating a great viral marketing explosion, if it doesn’t lead you to significantly increase the sales of your keynote product or service. Many people have successfully initiated viral marketing exposure, but haven’t really benefited from it, as they didn’t have a clear overall strategy in place!
Michelle Dale is Chief Executive of Virtual Miss Friday, an adept and highly-proficient Virtual Assistant Service which works closely with enterprising people who really want to succeed in their chosen field. If you’d like to learn more about online business building success strategies that are tailored to your needs, contact VMF today!
About this Post
Permalink | Trackback |
|
Print This Article | Leave a Comment
Small Business Blog Marketing Tips
Posted on August 26, 2009 | Filed Under Business and Management
If you own a small business, chances are that you are probably quite familiar with the “feast or famine” cycle that most small business owners go through, where there’s either too much work going on for you to handle it all, or not enough business coming in through the door.
If your business seems to be affected by the “feast or famine” cycle, then I want to show you a simple, easy, smart, quick and inexpensive way to start alleviating this condition.
It’s called blogging about your business.
Basically, you start a business blog, then write about your business and publish the information online through your blog.
Let me explain why this is a very smart thing to do, and how it can help you ride the ups and downs of small business life.
First of all, starting a business blog is simpler, quicker, cheaper and easier to do than setting up a small business web site. In a moment, I’ll share with you some valuable business blogging tips you will want to know about when starting a business blog.
Secondly, by adding regular content to your blog that educates people about the benefits of your business, products and services, you will not only create more trust and authority with potential customers online when they visit your blog, but you will also increase visibility and exposure for your business in your particular niche market.
So … how will this help you successfully manage the “feast or famine” cycles that most small business owners experience?
Well, in times of “feast”, you can simply refer people to relevant posts you have made on your blog that provide them with the information they are looking for. Every business owner is familiar with the often frustrating experience of having their valuable time taken up with the same explanations of how, why, what, when and where certain aspects of their business are done. Rather than spend 30-45 minutes or more reiterating the same thing over and over again to luke-warm prospects, why not write an article about it and publish it on your blog? Then, the next time someone calls you and asks you to explain this very same thing, rather than waste an hour of your or your staff’s time, just ask them for their email address and email them a link to your blog page where you have posted this information. Your prospect can then research the subject in their own time and call you back when they are ready to move to the next step.
Now … if, in your blog you have set up a way for people to opt-in to a database (such as a newsletter subscription form, or special report), then you have already taken a vital step towards helping your business survive in times of famine. When work slows down, you can contact your list subscribers with special offers, or send them an email about products or services they may want to consider at that point in time.
By integrating small business blog marketing into your regular business activities, you will be providing genuine service to those you cannot service immediately, as well as creating a prospecting pipeline for leaner times.
Five Essential Small Business Blog Marketing Tips
Small Business Blog Marketing Tip #1 – Host Your Business Blog On Your Own Domain
Although many small businesses set up their business blog on blogging platforms that offer free hosting, this can be a costly mistake in the long run. It also indicates that the business owner is not aware of what a valuable asset a business blog can be. By setting up a blog on your own domain name, you are ensuring that all traffic, content and links pointing back to your content pages are growing the value of your web property and not someone else’s, and also that they won’t suddenly disappear if, for, example, you decide to take your business to the next level and change blogging platforms or switch hosting providers.
Small Business Blog Marketing Tip #2 – Set Up Your Business Blog Using A WordPress Blog
WordPress provides an ideal business blogging platform (hosted on your own domain name, of course). Wordpress is free, and supports an active community of plugin developers and professional designers who have created thousands of plugins that can add incredible functionality and powerful features to your blog, as well as thousands of professional themes you can use to completely change the look and feel of your business blog. Best of all, most WordPress plugins and themes can be downloaded free of charge, and customized for your own business use in many instances.
Small Business Blog Marketing Tip #3 – Automate Your Business Blog Marketing SEO And Search Engine Indexing Functions
Although a WordPress blog is quite easy to install and set up, the default installation is fairly basic and lacks most of the functionality you need to ensure that your content is automatically optimized for ranking better than your competition in the search engines, as well as getting quickly indexed and added to the search results of all the major search engines and blog directories. This is by no means a “negative”, as WordPress allows you to quickly add all of this functionality by simply installing and activating certain plugins. All you need to do is spend a little time learning which plugins work best together to help automate your blog.
Small Business Blog Marketing Tip #4 – Add New Content Regularly To Your Business Blog
Every small business owner I have ever met carries a jaw-dropping amount of information in their brains about their business, their industry, expert tips on buying, installing and using their products and services, benefits and features, comparison data on competitor products and services, etc … In fact, there is no shortage of information to provide potential new customers with. Many small business owners, however, don’t fully understand how much leverage they can generate for their business by turning this information into short informative articles, announcements, interesting posts, news releases, answers to frequently asked questions, etc … that can attract the attention of people searching online for solutions you can help deliver, educate and engage potential customers, and funnel visitors into a process that delivers not only great value and service every step of the way, but that can ultimately lead to new customers and new sales of your products and services.
Having a simple plan to add 1-3 articles per week to your business blog can lead to amazing results. As I have just stated, there is no shortage of information when it comes to coming up with ideas to write about your business. If you commit to investing as little as 20 – 30 minutes a day to business blog marketing activities, you can transform your business quite rapidly.
Divide your business blogging time as follows:
- Spend 40% of your time researching topics to write about. Start an ideas file and add to it every day – even just the title of a blog post will do.
- Spend 40% of your time writing your article. Open up a simple notepad text file and just write on a topic the same way as you would if you were explaining something to a prospect one-on-one. Keep the style conversational, use your own voice and don’t worry about editing anything until you finish writing at least 500 – 700 words (4-5 short paragraphs)
- Spend 20% of your time editing and proofing what you have written, then publish it. You can always easily edit your post later if you need to add, modify or delete sections of your post.
Using the above activity schedule, if you invest just twenty minutes a day, five days a week into maintaining a business blog, you will spend a total of 40 minutes researching (e.g. reading other blogs for ideas), 40 minutes writing your post(s), and 20 minutes editing and proofing your post. This is enough time to add one or three new posts every week or so, and start growing your business online. Keep this commitment for one whole month to get the blogging habit and do this for three months before evaluating your performance and your results. I guarantee you will be more than pleasantly surprised!
Small Business Blog Marketing Tip #5 – Use Your Business Blog Performance Data To Improve Your Business Results
As a small business blog marketer, your goal is to deliver content that will attract new visitors to your site, engage and build trust with your readers, and then direct them to areas of your site where they can either get more information about the benefits of using your products and services, contact you for the next step, or place an order once they have made a decision to buy.
Setting up a simple information system that tracks where visitors to your blog are coming from, what keywords and phrases they are typing into search engines and other sites to find you, how long they stay on your blog when they visit and which pages they visit the most when they are browsing through your blog can all provide valuable information that you can then use to improve your business, deliver better customer service … even uncover a demand for new products and services.
I hope you have found this information useful and I wish you great business blogging success. For more information on how to start your own business blog, including step-by-step video tutorials on installing and using WordPress, automating your business blog marketing, setting up an information system to monitor your business blog performance and growing your business online faster with a blog, watch the video below or go here: Starting A Business Blog
About this Post
Permalink | Trackback |
|
Print This Article | Leave a Comment
SEO for your business
Posted on August 25, 2009 | Filed Under Blogs, RSS and Podcasting
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it has become known by, is an essential ingredient for any web site to achieve success. However it can be very puzzling for website owners especially for those new to the whole idea of promoting on the web. There are often three reactions the whole concept of SEO ;
1. Some feel that it’s a waste of time and that simply the act of putting awebsite on the internet is sufficient.
2. Some think that they can just do it all themselves and that there isn’t much to it.
3. Many feel that it is unquestionably something that should be delegated to a professional and that their valuabletime is better spent doing things for their companies that they excel at.
All three perspectives have merit, for a few companies just having a domain is sufficient. The type of business this would work for is one that’s unlikely to have people hunting for their services on the web. As an example a private Chiropractic practice in areasonably small city.
In barely bigger cities, depending on the amount of competing companies have sites online, it could be possible to get great results by doing a touch of promotion yourself.
For the majority getting it to work best actually does need the services of a professional Search Engine Optimization expert.
Search engine optimisation is a field that is continually changing and the systems and methods that need to be used to get good search engine visibility are also an ever changing phenomenon.
the brilliant thing about using SEO services to get your website to rank highly in the search engines is that it is advertising that not only is working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days each week. It’s a way of bringing in buyers that are actively searching for what you are offering.
Consider the conventional types of advertising – paperspapers, mags, TV, local papers or radio. They’re all a sort of shotgun approach, sending your marketing far and wide in the hope that your future clients happen to be reading, watching or listening to them at precisely the right time.
While with search engine promoting it is simply possible with good SEO services and a well set up site, to put your offering directly in front of the individuals that have purposely looked for your product or service by typing it into a search engine.
Another great thing about using search engine optimisation to boost your business, is that it is measurable. Unlike more normal forms of advertising, it is wholly possible to track what quantity of folks come to your website. Not just that you can tell where in the world they come from, which keyword phrase they previously found you, which search engine they came via and how many came via each of the keywords.
with additional standard advertising not only is it a shotgun approach, usually itisn’t measurable and usually the costs concerned are very high.
Article by John Black
About this Post
Permalink | Trackback |
|
Print This Article | Leave a Comment
Search Engine Optimisation
Posted on August 25, 2009 | Filed Under Blogs, RSS and Podcasting
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it has become known by, is an essential ingredient for any site to achieve success. However it can be very confusing for website owners especially for those new to the entire idea of marketing on the internet. There are usually three reactions the entire idea of SEO ;
1. Some feel that it’s a waste of your time and that simply the act of putting an internet site online is enough.
2. Some think that they can just do it all themselves and that there’s not much to it.
3. Many feel that it is certainly something that should be delegated to a professional and that their valuabletime is better spent doing things for their businesses that they excel at.
All three views have merit, for a few businesses just having a website is enough. The kind of business this would work for is one that’s unlikely to have people hunting for their services online. For example a private Chiropractic practice in areasonably little town.
In barely larger cities, depending on the amount of competing businesses have sites online, it may be possible to get superb results by doing a touch of promotion yourself.
For the majority , however , getting it to work fine actually does need the services of a professional Search Engine Optimization specialist.
Search engine optimisation is a field that’s constantly changing and the systems and techniques that need to be used to get good search engine visibility are also an ever changing phenomenon.
the great thing about using SEO services to get your website to rank well in the search engines is that it is advertising that not only is working for you twenty four hours a day, 7 days each week. It’s a way of bringing in buyers that are actively looking for what you are providing.
Consider the conventional types of advertising – newspapers, magazines, TV, local papers or radio. They are all akind of shotgun approach, sending your advertising far and wide in the hope that your potential customers happen to be reading, watching or listening to them at precisely the right time.
While with search engine promoting it is simply possible with good SEO services and a well set up site, to put your offering at once in front of the folk that have purposely looked for your product or service by typing it into a search engine.
Another great thing about using search engine optimisation to boost your business, is that it is measurable. Unlike more normal forms of advertising, it is wholly possible to track how many people come to your website. Not just that you can tell where in the world they come from, which keyword phrase they once found you, which search engine they came thru and how many came thru each of the keywords.
With more standard advertising not only is it a shotgun approach, in most situations itisn’t measurable and usually the costs concerned are very high.
Article by John Black
About this Post
Permalink | Trackback |
|
Print This Article | Leave a Comment