Tag Archives: social media

Keeping Business Momentum Moving During the First Quarter and Beyond

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Business profitability moves in a cyclical pattern. Typically, the first quarter of the New Year is the slowest, and is often the most difficult to survive, particularly for small businesses. It’s natural that sales taper off during this time of year – customers are recovering from their holiday spending, they’re preparing to pay Uncle Sam what they owe and the winter doldrums have set in as well. However, there are a few things that you can do to help ensure that you keep your business moving forward.

Set Goals

Goal setting is an important consideration for any business in any industry. However, it’s important that you go about setting your goals in the right way. Use the SMART method, and you’ll have a significant advantage over the competition.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Each goal you set should follow these criteria. Moreover, you should set your goals as early as feasible, so you can have a plan in place to work toward during the slow months. Often, action translates to momentum, though you’ll need to be prepared for a different sort of momentum than what you experience during busy sales periods.

Goals keep your company moving forward, even if you’re not experiencing a high level of foot traffic or your website sales have slumped. However, your goals during this time of year should differ from those you set during busier months. Focus on business improvement, refinement, new project planning and the like instead.

Determine Needed Improvements

Often, keeping a business moving isn’t all about actual selling. Sometimes, it’s about finding things within your business to improve. The slower months of the year are the ideal time to dig deep and identify what you can do better and how you can change it. This can apply to any area of your business, from shipping and receiving to marketing and promotion – you might find new software that streamlines your receiving process, or perhaps you’ll work on creating a marketing campaign directed at current customers from your existing database rather than focusing on bringing in new ones. Now is the time to take stock of your business, identify areas where change is needed and then make those changes.

Advertising Still Matters

Just because you’re stuck in the doldrums of the dreaded first quarter, it doesn’t mean that you should stop your advertising. However, it’s the perfect time to investigate new marketing methods that you might have wanted to check out but lacked the time, earlier in the year. For instance, if you’ve been considering social media marketing but lacked the time, get started. Maybe you’ve have considered starting a newsletter to keep your customers informed, or you want to conduct surveys to gather vital data. Now is the time. You’ll also find that because the season is slower for pretty much all businesses, your own marketing messages will get more traction.

Plan New Projects

Because these months are slow, you’ll have time on your hands that can be put to good use in the area of project or product planning. If you’ve been thinking about starting a new project, offering a new service or releasing a new product, this is the perfect time of year to get started with the process. You’ll find that the productivity and energy your new planning generates spills over to other aspects of your business as well.

Keeping a business moving forward during slow periods is a challenge for every business owner and CEO. Have patience, set goals, improve your company, try new things and that momentum will continue.

Don Elfrink is the owner and operator of AutoMatStore.com, a company selling auto mats throughout the nation. Before AutoMatStore, Elfrink was the operator of an automotive production site. AutoMatStore focuses on logo, carpeted, molded and all weather floor mats.

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5 Google+ Marketing Tips for Your Small Business

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Your small business only needs to maintain a presence on Facebook and Twitter, right? Wrong. Even though Google+ can seem like an afterthought in social media, ignore it and you’ll miss out on an enormous audience. There are five things you can do on Google+ to promote yourself in a new and exciting way and boost your brand’s awareness:

1.       Use the “About Page” to link your website

Take advantage of this opportunity to tell the audience about your company. This is the perfect place to add important keyword links for your site. Another cool feature is that Google+ allows you add bullet points, so you could simply list your products and services and have them link to pages on your website, which go into more detail.

2.       Plan events

Gmail accounts are ubiquitous, and Google+ has really neat optimized features for users. Their event feature, for example, is a great tool to use if your company would like to plan webinars, parties or other events. Regardless of whether or not they are Google+ users, their invitation will sync up with Google Calendar and help you track attendance. It’s also a great way to keep track of planning and logistics related to the event before, during and after!

3.       Create frequent optimized posts

By including keywords in your Google+ posts, you will ensure that you show up whenever your followers search for that keyword. This feature is called social search and it is especially effective for those with a large following. By frequently posting relevant content, you are increasing your chances of coming up in Google search results, which is one of the biggest benefits to maintaining a Google+ page.

4.       Be a Google Author

Google is constantly looking for new ways to authenticate content. By setting up Google Authorship, you are establishing yourself as a credible source for content. This means that you will be trusted by Google and will be able to reap all of the SEO benefits that come with that. By simply adding a photo of yourself and a miniature bio, you can drive tons of traffic to your page and significantly boost awareness.

5.       Talk to the right people

Google+ is all about talking to the right people, and it makes it pretty easy to do so. One way to do this is to join communities that are relevant to your company’s industry and interests and becoming a valuable part of the conversations. Once you have done this, you can begin to form relationships with people, and when they add you to their circles, you can add them to your company’s. Once they are in your circle, the things you post will show up for them.

Danielle Pacelli is the Marketing Coordinator at MycroBurst/Logo Design Guru. MycroBurst is based in Langhorne, Pa. and is an online marketplace for graphic design. MycroBurst provides custom designs through crowdsourcing. Follow Danielle and MycroBurst on Twitter @MycroBurst.

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How Much Capital Do You Need to Start Your Company?

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The process of starting a business is usually associated with that of accumulating large sums for start-up capital and marketing campaigns. Businesses have now moved away from that sort of thinking and have found easier and more innovative ways to get their companies up and running without having to find an outrageous sum of money. This calls for a total change in the mindset of the budding entrepreneur and a level of commitment to the process.

Starting a Business with Zero Capital

This will be a challenging task with many hurdles to jump, but once you are dedicated to the process you will make it. Here are a few tips.

1. Seek a Partner

Partnerships offer a great means of starting a business. Once you find someone who shares your passion and enthusiasm to become your own boss, then you have covered the first base. If you are really serious about finding someone who shares your vision and is willing to put his/her shoulder to the wheel and help build the business, you must be prepared to treat them like a partner and not a hired hand. If you pay someone for an hour, they will give you your money’s worth, but a partner takes the job more seriously.

2. Start Your Business from Home – Eliminate Expenses

You do not want to start your business with expenses hanging over your head, so eliminate those expenses. Start your business from home to avoid the cost of rent. If you’ve found someone to work with as a partner, then you should both start off doing all the work instead of hiring workers. Work it that way until you reach some point of profitability or some transitional point in the business (expansion) that would require added hands.

3. Get a Business Website Going

Depending on the nature of the business, you could start off with a business website. If the business idea does not require a brick and mortar building, then your first option should be a business website. If you do have a brick and mortar, then you can still have a website up and running in a short time. A good domain name is essential to your online presence, so you would want to spend some quality time selecting one. You can still get a good domain name without spending hefty sums. A free site from WordPress or Tumblr will also be a good starting point. You can start advertising your business through blogs or use the social media platforms, and they are all free.

4. Free Legal Advice and Incorporating Your Company

There are lawyers who offer free services, so you can get legal advice and documents that you can modify to suit your business needs. Incorporating your company may have to wait until you start earning, but until then you can register your company as a LLC, which may be the best business structure for now. You can also go through with the IRS procedure as well.

Jack Harding is a business consultant. He enjoys consulting upstarts and blogging about his insights on various business blogs. Visit Wish.co.uk to see how this upstart utilizes fun marketing to maximize its customer reach.

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3 Ways Social Media Can Help during Tax Season

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In the midst of tax season, it’s easy for some aspects of your small business to take a back seat. Since it’s important not to lose focus, sometimes the best solution is to utilize the convenience of social media.

Here are three simple ways social media can help during tax season:

1) Schedule Content in Advance

Although most experts indicate that real-time posts are the most effective means of engagement via social media, there is no harm in scheduling content from time to time to stay connected to your customers.

Free tools such as TweetDeck will allow you to write posts for future publishing and enter the precise moment when you want them to go live.

If you already subscribe to any paid tools for social media, most of them also include this functionality, so be sure to investigate that possibility as well.

2) Keep an Eye on Key Updates

As a business owner, you naturally want to stay abreast of any tax tips tailored specifically to your purposes. A great place to see a comprehensive list of new tax-related stories is on the popular tech and news site, Mashable. This group, known for their social media savvy stories, has a category dedicated to tax articles.

3) Ask the Experts

There are a bevy of thought leaders who regularly contribute via social media platforms and may be able to offer you personalized advice. For example, there are open LinkedIn groups that offer answers to common business tax questions, and hashtags such as #taxtips that offer free help on Twitter.

Just remember to breathe and digest all of the information one day at a time. During tax season—and beyond—social media allows for faster responses, more outlets for help and increased online activity for the business in your absence.

Tassoula E. Kokkoris is the social media manager at Guidant Financial. She is published in The World According to Twitter, and has contributed to several publications including the Digital Solutions Blog and Startupchamp.com. She tweets for Guidant via this handle: @guidant.

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How to Celebrate Holidays on Social Media

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The digital community expects you to stay on top of major holidays year-round. It looks pretty bad when a business overlooks a widely celebrated holiday and just goes along with the usual content and strategies. Holidays are a great way to create excitement, make noise, and even boost sales. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1.       Change your cover photo

Whether you are trying to spread some Valentine’s Day love or some Christmas cheer, a great way to start is by updating your cover photos to reflect that. Social media is becoming more visual by the day, so give the people what they want – pictures! Find or create an image that reflects your business and the holiday and make it your cover photo on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and any other platform.

2.       Tweet festively

Maybe you just want to say “Happy Halloween,” but there is an easy way to get attention for doing so. Get in on the trending topics on Twitter by using hash tags. When users search for the holiday or click on it, they might just come across your tweet and re-tweet it and follow you. Get creative and get noticed!

3.       Pin to win!

Pinterest is building quite the following and is an excellent tool for your business to use. A great way to promote your business during the holidays is to host a “Pin It to Win It!” sweepstakes and let your audience get their hands on a generous gift – promote it as a holiday gift. Simply have them follow you, re-pin a certain pin, and include a hash tag for a chance to win something your business offers or some other great prize. Users tend to keep their eyes open for these types of offers when holidays roll around.

4.       Offer an exclusive discount

Offering a coupon is an easy way to get a boost in sales. Offering a coupon code that is exclusively for your social media following will make them feel appreciated and help gain loyalty. Make the offer fan-gated in order to ensure that only your fans and followers are able to redeem the offer.

5.       Give helpful advice

The holidays can be stressful, but maybe you can help. Remind them of the goods or services your company provides or offer them useful tidbits. An easy way to do this is to write a holiday-themed blog post and promote it on all social media platforms to get the maximum amount of readership.

Don’t miss out on a golden opportunity for your company to shine by missing holidays and looking cold and unwelcoming. Open up your digital door and invite everyone in! 

Danielle Pacelli is the Marketing Coordinator at MycroBurst/Logo Design Guru. MycroBurst is based in Langhorne, Pa. and is an online marketplace for graphic design. MycroBurst provides custom designs through crowdsourcing. Follow MycroBurst on Twitter @MycroBurst.

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5 Places You Should Be Focusing Your Brand

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It is not uncommon for businesses to feel overwhelmed when trying to create an effective brand. There are so many factors that play a role in your brand’s growth that it might seem like there are too many little things to worry about in the process before you get to the more important areas. But never fear – focusing on these five things will help you stay on track when it comes to your brand.

1. Get a Logo Design
Having a logo design created is one of the first and most important tasks you should focus on when developing your brand. The logo will be the face of your business and will either stick in consumers’ minds or be easily forgotten. Work with a professional designer to come up with a design that will speak to your target audience and represent your brand well.

2. Don’t Forget Stationery!
Once you have the perfect logo design for your company, be sure to stock up on pieces of stationery that use the design. It’s important to have business cards, envelopes and letterhead that feature your logo in order to maintain consistency and professionalism. If you plan to build trust and loyalty with customers, it is important that they see how serious you are about your business. Stationery is a simple way to convey that message.

3. Launch a Website
Today’s consumers spend a great deal of time on the internet and they research services and products before purchasing anything. Building a website that is professional and easy to navigate will guarantee more sales. This will also make it easier for customers to refer your brand to others. Be sure to provide plenty of information and organize it on your site it in a natural way.

4. Get Blogging
Creating a blog as an extension of your brand’s website is a great way to get noticed quickly online. It’s important to update the company blog at least on a weekly basis. Writing blog posts will update your customers on your brand and enable you to discuss topics that are of interest to them. And as a bonus – searching for keywords found in your blog posts could also drive new customers to your blog!

5. Be Social
One of the easiest ways to communicate with your audience is through social media. Once you have established a logo for your brand and have developed a brand voice (funny, informative, techie, etc.), you should get your brand on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and other social media platforms. Make sure you post content regularly and engage with users to establish good rapport.

Branding your business can be tricky, but making sure you accomplish these five things will keep you on a path towards success! These goals are easily attainable with some time and thoughtfulness, so don’t miss out on building a great brand and creating a loyal customer base.

Danielle Pacelli is the Marketing Coordinator at MycroBurst/Logo Design Guru. MycroBurst is based in Langhorne, Pa. and is an online marketplace for graphic design. MycroBurst provides custom designs through crowdsourcing. Follow MycroBurst on Twitter @MycroBurst.

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7 Tips to Creating the Best Online Shopping Experience for Customers

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Catering to customers online is a huge benefit to retail store owners.  However, e-tailing is different from in-store retailing, and store owners need to stay aware of the differences in order to maximize the benefit of selling online.  To ensure the best online shopping experience possible for your customers, take into consideration these seven tried and true techniques.

1. Make it easy for customers to find your website. Improve your marketing both online and off. Make sure you understand how to use your site analytics to find out more about how users are finding your site – is it through Google or other search engines? Referrals from other websites? Analyze how customers are finding you and compare your search engine ranking for various terms to that of your competition. Consider using AdWords or other advertising, email marketing, and social media marketing to ensure you get your target audience to your website.

2. Create a great website design and user experience. Once users have found your site, do what you can to keep them there by making your website pleasing to look at, interactive and helpful. Make it easy for customers to navigate your site with a clean layout and design. Study how other online stores organize their websites, and use their sites as a model. Differentiate yourself through your content, not your user interface.

3. Ensure that your customers know they can trust your site’s security. Display privacy policies, security badges, anything that shows that your site is trustworthy and safe to log into and save information on. After all, your website is trustworthy, right?

4. Make products easy to find. If your site is well-organized and you include a search bar, customers will be able to easily find what they need (and maybe items they didn’t know they were looking for!) Make searching the site as easy as possible so potential customers don’t leave and go somewhere else.

5. Include useful product descriptions and reviews. The great thing about a brick-and-mortar store is that customers can hold your products in their hands to get a feel for the item and its size and weight and even try them out to make sure they work as expected. If you want to hold customers’ attention online, make them feel like they’re trying out a product in the store: Give a brief but detailed and accurate description, including size, weight, color and functionality of the product, and add the ability to leave behind user reviews complete with pictures for customers to browse through.

6. Give them a deal they can’t resist. Want free shipping? A complimentary sample? Batteries included with a product that specifies batteries are not included? Often customers do their research on multiple sites before making a purchase, so once they’ve landed on your site, offer them a great deal to ensure they make their purchase there rather than moving on to see what the competition has to offer.

7. Offer great customer support. Some customers may want to buy from you, but have problems when it comes to checkout. Others may have questions about a product that are not answered on your website. Still others may buy a product and be dissatisfied with it. If you offer great customer support with the option to call or email in the event of a problem, not only will you gain more customers, you’ll retain these customers and get their positive recommendations. Users will continue to come back to your site again and again if they know you’re responsive to their needs.

About the Author:
Valerie Cecil is a research coordinator, marketing specialist and writer for Outbounding.com. Her work allows her to investigate many topics, ranging from online consumer relations to effective communication in the workplace. When she is not working, she enjoys kayaking, watercolor, and scouting out the cutest Gift Boxes From Retail Packaging she can find.

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Guest Post: How to Shift Your Mindset from Cutting Costs to Generating Revenue

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As small business owners become increasingly uneasy about the removal of tax breaks, increased taxes and potential new costs for employee health care benefits, there are a plethora of articles cropping up everywhere on how to tighten the belt on the budget. Cutting costs on your insurance policies, voice and data plans, and credit card processing are always advised on the “to do” list and companies are often told to avoid cutting costs on customer service, marketing and employee perks.

These are all viable ideas, but they all miss the target.  Instead of only concentrating on reducing expenses, why not focus on what you can do to shift your mindset over to increasing revenue?

Mindset Shift

The things that you are passionate about and give your time, attention and energy to often wind up paying it back in your favor which is why making the mindset shift from what costs you can cut to how you can generate your business more revenue is so important.  If you concentrate only on reducing costs, where is your focus?  You are pursuing a mindset of reduction when you give all of your energy to focusing only on financial matters.  Is it good to be certain you have the best plan and the most effective use of your money?  Of course!

Ask yourself what it is you really want. When you focus your time and energy on generating more revenue, you’re working to surround both your business and yourself with a financial means that can help you both grow and excel together. Focus mainly on cost-cutting and you are working on a reduction rather than an expansion mindset.  Concentrate on staying positive and working to give your business what it is that it really needs.

How to Begin Generating Revenue

1) Marketing Campaigns

Was it the campaign where you targeted your database of repeat customers?  You looked through your most successful campaigns for the last few years, sat down with your marketing team and designed a printed postcard which followed a clear, specific theme and hit the key buying triggers of the best campaigns.  You may have even had so many good ideas that you designed a series of campaigns and hit several buying triggers.  For the coming year, if you find that with all available marketing channels you no longer have as much time to design campaigns from scratch, why not check out free downloadable templates online? Design sites like PrintPlace make for great options with less generic, more professional print-ready postcard templates you can easily customize for your business.

2) Taking a Personal Approach

Perhaps one of your most successful marketing campaigns involved making personal visits to each of your top customers.  Should you decide to repeat this again, it’s important to remember to take the following steps:

Call ahead and set an appointed time to do lunch or coffee.

Ask them questions displaying genuine interest in them and their business.

Bring along your latest product brochures and explain how your products work to serve them the best.

Follow through on your pre-determined call to action and depart with an order in your hands, knowing that you provided the best possible customer service.

Online Marketing

  1. Twitter, Facebook, Splurgy, Pinterest or Google+ campaigns could all push traffic to your special offer. Guy Kawasaki’s book What the Plus is a comprehensive guide to Google+ and a comparison of Google+ to other social media sites.
  2. You could increase their awareness to watch for your special offers.  Anyone who called in the special code from the campaign could receive an extra bonus product or special discount rate.
  3. A special QR (quick response) code could be placed on your business card, brochure or postcard campaign.  This QR code could direct them to a specific page on your website to receive a special only available with that code.

Be Creative to Generate Revenue!

Combine the most successful campaigns of the past and test them in combination with new marketing methods to achieve the best of all possible worlds.

Elaine Love’s expertise is in small business, marketing, branding and publishing.  Her credentials include Masters Degrees in Communication, 30 years of entrepreneurial awards including “International Innovator of the Year,” World Class Speaking Coach, and author of 3 books.  Elaine prints her business cards, stickers and brochures with PrintPlace.com.  Contact Elaine on Google+ at +Elaine

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5 Budget Friendly Tips for Marketing Your Small Business

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A business is a business regardless of its size. But when it comes to marketing, big companies are able to splurge more on their marketing tools while small businesses have a much smaller pool of finances to be resourceful in. Limited resources shouldn’t be seen as a challenge – it’s actually an opportunity to be more creative with how you market your business.

Lacking some creative juices for marketing strategies? Worry no more with these budget friendly marketing tips!

1)      Don’t underestimate old school marketing tools. I’m not asking you to print 10,000 flyers or brochures. You can start with 100 and distribute them in places where there are a lot of people and high volumes of foot traffic. Supermarkets or coffee shops can be great spots to start and both of these tend to offer community bulletin boards to post materials on. Continue to carry business cards everywhere you go since you never know just who you may meet when you’re putting up these flyers. Get as creative as possible when going the paper route –  why not make a calendar with your company details in it for 2013?

2)      Utilize social media. Social media has made it easy to reach a broad audience and spend a relatively small amount of money, if any, in the process. Create a blog on your company website and put all your company updates in there. Include activities and plans which you think might interest more people and create Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote the posts out on.

3)      Create promotions and great deals. People love promos! If you’re selling a product, you can create a Buy One Get One deal. For services, you can have a ‘Bring a friend and get 50%’ promo. Of course, you should be able to study your promos first. Make sure that you would still get a steady stream of revenue brought in from it. After all, it is your business and you need to make a profit from it!

4)      Create local events. Do you have friends who sing? Why not invite them to come up with a small concert at your storefront on a weekend you offer a big sale? That will lure in customers both new and familiar alike. Promote your products by providing free samples or trial sized items and offer up additional coupons for discounts on your next purchase.

5)      Build good relationships with your customers. Nothing beats great word of mouth! Make sure that every customer will have a good experience by using or experiencing your products or services and develop a rapport with them personally. Invite them for coffee or send them personalized emails of thanks. With that simple gesture, you will be able to retain your current customers who will refer you to their relatives and friends.

Marketing your business shouldn’t be taken for granted – your customers are your backbone to the success of your company!

Barbara Watson is a small business owner. She loves to help small time entrepreneurs in making it big in their respective industry. Apart from that, she is also a regular contributor for Phoenix Kiosk. They have a great team that will help your business with software and hardware needs. 

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LinkedIn Endorsements: Useful or Useless?

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Recently, LinkedIn launched its endorsements feature, which is essentially a simplified version of the LinkedIn recommendation.  But do these endorsements hold any value?  I think they do, but I don’t believe they’re as useful for social proof of skills as they are for the indirect messages they convey to others.

Infinitely easier to offer than a recommendation, a LinkedIn endorsement takes one click to bestow.  As a result, it’s likely that endorsements aren’t taken nearly as seriously by those who offer them as recommendations… and if recommendations aren’t all 100% sincere, you can imagine what that means for endorsements.

That being said, there is still some useful information that can be picked from them:

1)      They serve as a check and balance.

Moving forward, endorsements will likely serve as another item on the checklist for recruiters and employers.  Rather than give additional credit to those who have them, individuals who do not may send up red flags.  In other words, just like old-fashioned references, endorsements become the norm.

2)      They act as evidence of soft skills not listed on one’s profile.

A great example of this is amiability.  Very few people will openly brag about how well-liked they are by their peers on LinkedIn – and those who do are probably dirty rotten liars, or are otherwise oblivious to how wrong they are.  But because endorsements are given by others (who probably like you at least a little!), they can serve as a handy indicator of how easy to get along with a person is.  The only exception to this is with recruiters, which in some cases receive endorsements from people who are only seeking to push their agenda and land a job.  While these endorsements might very well be true, they also come from individuals who have little to no relationship with the recruiter, suggesting an ulterior motive.

3)      They typically offer insight into who the person’s closest connections really are.

Again, you can exclude recruiters from this category entirely.  Apart from them though, I believe endorsements to be a great indicator of a person’s inner professional circle, and here’s why: you can’t solicit an endorsement formally like you can with recommendations.  Someone has to be thinking of you (or you must reach out to them informally) in order to endorse you, and for that to happen, you had to have some sort of meaningful interaction with them.

The Rule of Three

Like recommendations, it is possible to offer too many endorsements.  I would argue that the rule of three serves as an excellent guideline: when offering endorsements to another, endorse up to one third of their listed skills, to a maximum of three.  Anything more and your gesture won’t be taken seriously (the same as if you took a survey and rated every single question 10 out of 10 – it looks like you don’t actually care).

The Bottom Line

Endorsements should be seen more as a personal branding tool than as social proof of your skills. More than anything, they are an indicator of your professional likeability… which comes in handy when you’re trying to market yourself to others!

What’s your take on LinkedIn endorsements?  Leave me a comment and weigh in!

Jason Repovs is the blogger behind The Personal Professional. He is a professional marketer who share thoughts on marketing and leadership from a Generation Y perspective. Jason has a passion for relationship building, organization management, personal branding, and affecting change.

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