Have a great product you don’t know what to do with? May is National Inventors Month, and the Women Inventorz Network (W.I.N.) wants to help women inventors make their ideas a reality by providing the practical steps and know-how to do it. W.I.N., which is the only independent organization for women inventors in the U.S. and Canada, evaluates submitted products based on 10 criteria such as retail readiness, marketing, logo design, website effectiveness, etc., and provides guidance in making necessary improvements. Founders and inventing experts Dhana Cohen and Melinda Knight wants W.I.N. to be a launch pad for women inventors to get their products found.
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Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Women Inventorz Network (Women Inventors Organization)
April 5th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichFood and Restaurant Trends to Watch From the Fancy Food Show
April 5th, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
If you own a restaurant, specialty food business or even a grocery store, you’ll want to know about some of the food trends spotted at the Fancy Food Show earlier this year. PizzaMarketplace recently reported on some trends that small business owners can make their own:
Gluten-free foods: Gluten-free product offerings were plentiful at the show, and today’s gluten-free products taste better than those of years past. One reason gluten-free is a growth industry is that people with Celiac disease (an allergy to wheat-based products) have a lifelong reason to commit to a gluten-free diet, so this is a trend with staying power. Of course, plenty of other consumers are going gluten-free either to show support for family members who need to, or because they believe it helps with weight loss, bloating or other health and beauty issues.
Coconut: Coconut is a hot ingredient in all types of food (including on pizza!). Think of how you can use coconut milk in alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, in sauces and in desserts. Of course, traditional coconut also has a role in menu items.
Vegetable and fruit oils: Gourmet and flavored olive oils have shown their staying power and have even inspired olive-oil-only stores. Now, the passion for oils is expanding to include fruit and vegetable oils such as walnut oil, truffle oil, pumpkin seed, chili oil, cherry pit oil or tomato seed oil.
Beer as an ingredient: Craft beers are here to stay, and the latest iteration is using microbrews as ingredients in recipes. Beer Flats Crackers (in porter and pilsner flavors), beer candy and even beer jelly were spotted at the Fancy Food Show. In addition to prepared, packaged foods, restaurant owners can also feature meats cooked in beer, breads made with beer or beer-infused sauces. Of course, don’t forget to offer suggestions for pairing beers with foods on your menu or providing a beer tasting menu.
Salty and sweet combinations: Sea salt caramels, chocolate with bacon—salty-sweet combinations continue to be popular. Think about new ways you could mix salty and sweet flavors to break customers out of their familiar flavor combinations.
Image by Flickr user Sing Chan (Creative Commons)
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Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Business.com (Business Marketplace)
April 4th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichCheck out the relaunch of an oldie, but goodie: Business.com. Since 1999, when the site first appeared on the scene, it has gone through many changes and owners. The makeover of the marketplace site is a reflection of the new developers, digital marketing experts, designers and a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction researching how active buyers use the Web to make purchasing decisions. Business.com still helps its visitors discover, compare and purchase the products and services they need. Start by selecting a category, from 401(k) plans to Web design services, and then answer a few questions to help the site narrow down your choices. Also, check out the helpful guides and articles to offer you advice with your decision.
Google+The Online Marketing Project: How to Improve Your Online Presence One Step at a Time – Part 3
April 4th, 2013 :: Monika Jansen
In this four-part series on online marketing, I have taken inspiration from The Happiness Project. Instead of improving your life one month at a time, I am breaking down the essential pieces of marketing so you can stay organized and focused as you tackle each element.
You can read my first blog post on updating your website, putting together a mobile site, and listening to what people are saying online and my second, on putting together an editorial calendar, improving social media engagement, and blogging. Let’s move on to steps 7 – 9.
Step 7: Share Images and Videos
When you look at the rapid growth and success of YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram, there is no doubt that people respond to and connect with images and videos.
- Become a shutterbug – Get in the habit of taking photos during the day-to-day and of new products, employees, customers, and events. Share them on social media.
- Have a goal for videos – Before you spend time on making a video, decide whether you’re making it to build awareness around your business, increase sales, or strengthen your brand. Once you have a goal in mind, your video will be more focused and relevant for your audience.
- Hold contests – If you really want to engage your audience, hold a photo or video contest. Choose a theme and prize, and consider making the contest open to community voting to really up the social sharing quotient.
- Use YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram – You can create your own channel on YouTube for videos, and, if you’re not using them yet, share your photos on Pinterest and Instagram to reach new audiences.
Step 8: Start a Monthly Newsletter
Because newsletters arrive via email and require the recipient to at least read the subject line, newsletters are a great way to reach your audience and stay top-of-mind with them.
- Keep it focused – Skip the introduction, focus on one to three short and relevant articles, and put your best information at the very top.
- Make it worthwhile –Include something special in each issue to reward your audience for reading it, whether it’s a coupon or early access to a new product or service.
- Get creative with the subject line – As I mentioned above, your subject line can make or break how many people read your newsletter. Get creative to pull people in, whether it’s through humor or irreverence.
- Include images – People are drawn to photos in newsletters, especially ones that include people, so try to include relevant images in each newsletter.
Step 9: Put Together an Ebook or SlideShare Presentation
Bundling blog posts on one topic into an ebook or SlideShare presentation is a smart strategy to employ, as it lets you reuse content you’ve already created. While your ebook is great to share with your audience, SlideShare comes with a built-in audience: It is the world’s largest content-sharing community for professionals, with 60 million visitors a month who view 3 billion slides.
- Think like a children’s book author – Make it fun, visual, and interactive with videos, games, or surveys.
- Use stories – Stories are highly engaging, and the more success stories you can weave in, the more you will position yourself as a go-to expert and problem solver.
- Teach your readers – Add tips, tricks, helpful hints, or other actionable information to make your content more usable.
- Focus each page/slide – Stick to one point per page to keep the layout clean and uncluttered.
- Include a strong call-to-action – Tie it back to the subject of your ebook or SlideShare, and explain the benefit of working with you.
- Add contact info – And not just a phone number! Include your website address, email address, and social media follow buttons.
Stay tuned for the fourth and final blog post in this series, where I’ll cover advertising, hosting an event, and content centers.
Of the above marketing steps, which do you find easy to do – and which do you find hardest?
Image by Flickr user Capt’ Gorgeous (Creative Commons)
Google+Small Businesses’ Financial Outlook Falls
April 4th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
By Maria Valdez Haubrich
How are small businesses across the country feeling about their financial futures? According to the latest Capital One Small Business Barometer, not too positive. The study asked small business owners about their opinion of the current economy and their financial and business projections for the next six months.
In the most recent survey, conducted at the end of 2012, small businesses’ concerns about the future had risen, with more than one-fourth (26 percent) of small businesses polled saying they believe economic conditions will decline over the next six months. That’s a 12-point increase from Q3 2012. In addition, more than one-fourth (27 percent) of small business owners said their company’s financial position was worse than a year ago, up 11 points from the same time in 2011 and up 4 points from Q3 2012.
Given these concerns, it’s not surprising that just one-fourth of small businesses say they plan to hire in the next six months. “Among the small businesses we’ve surveyed, we are still seeing significant caution about prospects for growth, as well as hesitancy about making investments,” said Jon Witter, President of Direct, Consumer and Small Business Banking at Capital One, in announcing the survey. “Looking ahead, confidence in the economic environment will be key.”
As to the overall economy, the outlook isn’t great. While 44 percent of the small businesses surveyed believe economic conditions are holding steady, that’s a drop of 7 points from the same time in 2011. Fewer than one- third (28 percent) expect economic conditions to improve in the next six months, and the same percentage expect conditions to get worse.
The national Small Business Outlook index, which ranks business prospects for the next six months on a scale of significantly worse (1) to significantly better (10), continued its downward trend throughout 2012, hitting 5.6 in the most recent survey. What factors matter most to small business owners’ outlooks? Price margins and profitability topped the list, followed by cash flow and fuel prices.
Small business owners are keeping a firm grip on their budgets, with just 13 percent planning to increase spending in the next six months—down from 20 percent who planned to increase spending at the end of 2011. In addition, the number planning to cut spending hit 25 percent—the highest it’s been in two years, and up 8 points from the Q3 2012 survey.
With limited plans to increase spending, it’s not surprising that more than two-thirds (68 percent) of entrepreneurs polled don’t plan to hire in the next six months, either.
How do these opinions relate to your own outlook, both for your business and for the economy as a whole?
Image by Flickr user Michael David Pedersen (Creative Commons)
Google+Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Anoto Live (Digital Writing Solution)
April 3rd, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichIs the scanner going the way of the fax machine? If so, how will you get your handwritten forms into digital format? Anoto Live gives you the tools to turn your handwriting into digital text all by just handing you a pen—a special pen, of course. Anoto helps companies stay competitive by making it easier to receive and send data quickly. The new digital writing solution requires minimal user training and transforms any piece of paper into a live document that enables information to be sent instantly to any back-office system. Additionally, a complete image of the form is available if needed.
Google+Big Companies Are Hiring. What Does It Mean to Your Business?
April 3rd, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
Big corporations are beginning to hire again, data from a variety of sources show. What does this trend mean to your small business? Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that hiring seems to be on a steady upswing. After adding 236,000 workers in February, payrolls may add 216,000 new jobs in March, one expert cited predicts.
While job growth averaged 167,000 jobs per month in the second half of 2012, so far this year it’s reached about 200,000 per month. Another economist Bloomberg cites projects the U.S. will add 2.5 million jobs in 2013, up from 2.2 million last year.
Some other encouraging signs:
- While the overall U.S. unemployment rate is currently 7.7, it’s steadily decreasing.
- The number of unemployment claims is dropping, reaching 339,700 a week in the month ended March 16, for the lowest it’s been since February 2008.
- Temporary-help-services payrolls hit 2.58 million in February, the highest they’ve been since August 2007 and an increase from 1.75 million when the recession officially ended in June 2009.
- The housing market is finally strengthening, even in areas that were struggling long after the recession officially ended.
There are a range of reasons why companies are hiring, including:
- Stronger demand for products and services
- Need to replace employees who were laid off during the recession
- Easier access to credit and business loans stimulating growth
Meanwhile, a couple factors could hinder the newfound growth:
The government budget cuts brought on by the sequester could lead to federal government layoffs and a drop in payrolls caused by loss of government jobs. Ultimately, cuts could trickle down to reduced demand for services and products from private businesses, hurting those jobs, too.
Businesses could be reluctant to hire if the Affordable Care Act turns out to raise health insurance costs prohibitively.
What does job growth mean for your business?
- With large and midsized companies starting to ramp up, if you want to compete for qualified employees, now is the time to start thinking about hiring needs.
- Consider hiring temporary employees if you’re leery of taking on full-time, permanent workers until the ACA’s effect on your business shakes out.
- While companies of all sizes are having difficulty finding skilled, experienced workers, bigger companies are becoming more open to taking on less-skilled workers and providing on-the-job training. You may need to do the same.
Image by Flickr user bgottsab (Creative Commons)
Google+Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Mogreet Express (Text Messaging Platform)
April 2nd, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichMogreet Express is a self-service text messaging platform that gives small- and midsized businesses the power to initiate text message marketing campaigns and send multimedia messages (MMS)—all at their fingertips. MMS messages step up your mobile marketing game by creating visual customer interactions including video, pictures and audio. Text message marketing gives small businesses the highest open rate of all types of mobile marketing (98 percent), and Mogreet Express makes your messages more intriguing and therefore more memorable. Business owners are able to build a mobile customer database and drive sales with branded promotional offers.
Google+The Online Marketing Project: How to Improve Your Online Presence One Step At A Time – Part 2
April 2nd, 2013 :: Monika Jansen
When you think about online marketing, there are a lot of pieces to consider. To make your life easier, I have ripped a page from The Happiness Project and put together a one-step-at-a-time plan to improve your life.
In my first blog post, I covered Steps 1 – 3: updating your website, putting together a mobile site, and listening to what people are saying online. Let’s move on to steps 4 – 6.
Step 4: Put Together an Editorial Calendar
After looking at Google Analytics and listening to what your target market says, you know what topics to cover as you create content. Stay organized by putting them in an editorial calendar:
- List topics – Start by narrowing down the topics to the ones that are most relevant to your expertise. Then brainstorm – what areas can you cover for each topic?
- Choose content platforms – Decide what pieces of content go where. Blog posts are great for how-to’s and advice, which can then be shortened into newsletter articles. Quick tips, offers, updates, photos, event announcements, and company news are perfect for social media.
- Decide on timing – Finally, decide how often you want to publish content. Blog posts work best when you publish at least once a week, but it’s perfectly fine to publish your newsletter monthly. When it comes to social media, though, you must be active on it every day, so plan your schedule accordingly.
Step 5: Improve Social Media Engagement
Because social media is constantly evolving, I think improving social media engagement is an ongoing goal for all of us small business owners. Here are 3 basic things we should always be doing, no matter what social media platform we’re using.
- Find your audience – Research social media networks beyond the biggies – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. Look at Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Viddy, and others to see if your target market uses them.
- Learn what to share where – Because each social network is used differently, the information you share on each should be different. For instance, you could keep social messaging on Facebook and Google+ and social alerts on Twitter.
- Respond – The best way to increase engagement on social media is to throw out questions to your audience and respond to their comments and questions.
Step 6: Start a Blog
Because search engines reward sites that are regularly updated with fresh content, starting a blog makes a lot of sense if you want to increase traffic to your site and improve search rankings. A blog will also boost your thought leadership and position you as an expert in your field.
- Set up a blog schedule – In the previous blog post in this series, you learned how to set up an editorial calendar; time to add your blog to it. While blogging every day is ideal, it is not always realistic. Aim to publish one blog post a week on the same day at the same time so people will come to expect it.
- Choose your topics – In the first blog post in this series, you learned how to listen to your target market. Since you know what topics they care about most, sit down and write out a month or two of blog post ideas at once to make the writing process go faster.
- Make your content actionable – The most useful and shareable blog posts are the ones that teach your audience how to do something. Focus on making all of – or most of – your blog posts actionable.
- Write clearly – No matter how much you know, focus on writing in a straightforward style that is easy to read and understand. Keep your content as concise as possible, and don’t repeat yourself.
- Back up what you say – When possible, use examples, stories, and statistics to back up the point you are making.
Coming up next in Part 3, we’ll look at visual content, newsletters, ebooks, and SlideShare presentations. Since most of this post was on content marketing, what’s your biggest challenge when creating content?
Image by Flickr user kewl (Creative Commons)
Google+How Are Small Businesses Benefiting From Cloud Computing?
April 2nd, 2013 :: Karen Axelton
By Karen Axelton
How are small businesses using cloud computing, and how are they benefiting from it? A study by CDW reported on CIO.com found that more than half of businesses surveyed are moving at least some of their functions to the cloud. What they’re using the cloud for, however, varies by business size. For small and midsized businesses, storage is the primary way they use the cloud, while bigger companies and government agencies use cloud services mostly for collaboration and conferencing.
Of course, these aren’t the only things the cloud is being used for. CDW found that companies are also using the cloud to handle messaging, to access office and productivity suites, and to use business process apps.
No matter what types of functions they move to the cloud, doing so brings many benefits to companies of all sizes, CDW’s survey contends. Greater efficiency was the major benefit, cited by 55 percent of respondents. Close behind were greater employee mobility (49 percent), improved ability to innovate (32 percent) and freeing up the IT staff’s time to focus on more important work (31 percent). However, cloud computing may not save as much money as you expect: Just one-fourth of respondents said that reducing IT costs was a major benefit of cloud computing.
If you’re considering moving some of your business functions to the cloud or using cloud computing to access new applications and services, keep the following advice from CDW in mind:
- Carefully analyze costs and benefits before making the decision.
- Start small, using cloud services for functions that are simple to implement, aren’t business-critical and don’t put your company’s data or processes at risk.
- Ease your employees into using cloud computing by leveraging their familiarity with consumer cloud services that they likely use, such as Spotify or Dropbox.
- Keep track of your ROI to ensure that cloud services are truly saving you money or providing additional benefits that make them worth the cost.
- Always review cloud service providers’ contracts and terms carefully. Make sure the provider’s security precautions are suitable for your needs, and know what type of customer service assistance you can expect in case of a problem.
- Make sure a cloud provider’s offerings can scale up quickly with your company as it grows. This can be one of the major benefits of using cloud services, but you also need to know what costs will be as you add users, applications or services to make sure the solution is still cost-effective.
Image by Flickr user Kevin Dooley (Creative Commons)
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