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Archive for 2010

Small Biz Resource Tip: App Inventor

December 31st, 2010 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich

App Inventor

Want an app that helps you run your business better, connect with customers better, and increase sales, but can’t find the perfect one for your business? Create your own! Google has an App Inventor in beta that allows you to design how the app will look and behave. Instead of having to write code, the App Inventor makes it easy for anyone to create their own app by using already existing blocks to choose from. Your app can inform, educate, ask questions and even have the app talk out loud from your mobile device. Add a GPS-location sensor and customers or employees will know where you are at all times—if you want them to.

Tags: Resources, small business apps, Technology
Posted in Resources, Technology | No Comments »

Most Popular Posts of 2010

December 31st, 2010 :: Karen Axelton

As the year draws to a close, here are the top posts GrowSmartBusiness readers liked in 2010. Even in 2011, they all have some valuable advice to offer your small business.

How will the new IRS audit program affect your small business? Rieva Lesonsky explains it all here.

Looking for marketing ideas on a budget? (Aren’t we all?) In this post, Monika Jansen shares the 10 top budget-conscious marketing ideas for small business.

What is “generational marketing” and how can you make it work for your small business? Find out in this post from guest blogger Jessie Newburn.

Are you working on a project—whether a marketing piece or a website launch—that involves a designer? Businesspeople and designers don’t always speak the same language. Save yourself money, time and hassles by having these 8 things figured out before you meet with your designer.

BoatLoanWorld.com founder Ray Ruiz shares his small business success secrets in this blog post.

Tags: business success, small business
Posted in small business | No Comments »

10 Social Media and Marketing Resolutions for 2011

December 31st, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

The word “resolution” is heard so often around the beginning of each year it’s become almost meaningless. They are half-heartedly made and quickly forgotten. These resolutions are different, though. They’re ones you do want to make, and with that whole fresh-new-clean-slate feeling that comes with a new year, now is as good a time as any to implement some of them.

Your 10 social media and marketing resolutions for 2011, in no specific order:

Use a social media dashboard. I love Hootsuite, but TweetDeck and Seesmic are also super popular. It doesn’t matter which you use, though, just pick one so you can better manage Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media platforms you use.

Get active on LinkedIn. Finish filling out your profile and keep it updated. Go through your business cards and connect with the people you really want to keep in touch with. Link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account so the blog posts and other useful information you post on Twitter is seen by your network. Answer questions via LinkedIn Answers. And the list goes on.

Create a custom landing page for Facebook. I used Hy.ly, which is free and really easy to use (read more about it here). A custom landing page is a memorable way to welcome new people and give them a reason to “like” you.

Join conversations on Twitter. I know you know social media is supposed to be used for engagement. But you probably don’t take full advantage of Twitter to build a community and start discussions, do you? (Don’t feel bad, I don’t either, so this really is one of my resolutions.) Search for hashtags (#) of terms you use and want to talk about. Pull up the list of tweets that use those hashtags and jump into the conversation (just use the hashtag in your tweets).

Add calls to action to your website. To convert your Web visitors into leads, add prominent messages on your website that offer something of value. It could be a white paper, free consultation, eBook, or special discount for new clients. The call to action can be a button or link; the person will click on it and get redirected to a form where you’ll gather their contact information before sending them what you promised.

Add video to your website. Search engines love videos, so by adding one to your website, you will greatly improve your chances of being easily found during an online search. The video need not be long, but it should be fun, engaging, and professionally produced.

Start blogging already! You know you should blog, so start. Make sure your blog is integrated into your website (in other words, it looks like another page of your website). Put together an editorial schedule of what you’d like to write about. You don’t need to publish every day, but at least twice a week is preferable, and your blog posts need not be long, just full of useful info.

Analyze your website. Check Google Analytics and Website Grader on a regular basis so you know how you’re doing: what pages people visit the most, what information they download from your site, how long they stay on your site, what blog posts generate a lot of traffic, etc. Use this information to improve your marketing and social media efforts.

Optimize your website. Stop procrastinating and hire an expert to optimize your website so search engines can find you. Not all SEO “experts” are created equal, so ask around to find someone with the experience and methods to get you the results you want.

Repurpose content. Reuse the content you have already written for other purposes. Turn blog posts on a certain subject into an eBook. Use short articles you have written for your newsletter for your blog. Break down a white paper into a few blog posts.

Good luck! And Happy New Year!

Image by Flickr user draml (Creative Commons)

Tags: blogging, blogs, calls to action, Marketing, seo, social media, social media dashboard, video, web analytics
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Day 1 – Creating Your Facebook Business Page

December 30th, 2010 :: Navin Ganeshan

Note: This post originally appeared on the Solutions Are Power blog, where you can find more from Navin Ganeshan.

This is the first in a series of articles on getting started marketing your business on Facebook – a series we’re calling”T’is the season to be social.”

Yeaah..you made it to Day 1, congratulations! The first step in getting your business on Facebook is ..well, getting your business on Facebook – that is, creating your Business Profile. In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps needed and highlight some important factors to consider.

But first, you might be wondering how a business page is different from a personal Facebook account (or profile) you might already have. It’s simple, a Business Page clearly identifies you as a business and has characteristics best suited for marketing. We recommend that you use a Business Page instead of only using your personal account since it gives you more control over how you present yourself.

But this doesn’t mean your business presence needs to be devoid of all personality. Check out this interesting post on how to apply your personality to make your business presence more genuine. The best business pages (or websites for that matter) are those that artfully combine marketing with personality and authenticity.

Step 1. Registering the Business Page

From the Facebook home page, click on Create a Page at the bottom. If you’re logged in automatically, you will need to logout to see this page.
Choose Local Business and select the type of business from the drop list. Type in the name of your business.

Important

This name will be used extensively on your profile in all your marketing activity, so

- Keep it short and digestible – e.g. Sinful Organic Cupcakes, not Sinful Organic Cupcakes Café & Catering
- You might want to first search (on Facebook) for other business pages with the same name, which might allow you to tweak the page name to differentiate

Your business page can be linked to your existing Facebook personal account, if you have one, or you can create a Facebook login by providing an email address and password. Note that Facebook will not allow you to create a new account just for the business page if you already have a personal account – it validates this using your email address. Here’s a great article on other considerations of linking your business page and your personal account

Now, wait for the confirmation email and click on the validation link to access your newly created profile.

Step 2 – Describing your business

The next step is to provide all the information that you will want your friends and visitors to see about your business. You will see your profile with the Getting Started page when you click on the link in the validation email. As you complete each step, the Getting Started page gets shorter and shorter and will ultimately go away altogether.

Think carefully about the profile picture or logo you want to use. This can be your business logo, a photo of your storefront or even a product (e.g. cupcakes!). Depending on the nature of your business, you can also use a photo of yourself. Whatever it is, give it some thought and be creative.

Provide a brief but creative description of your business. Remember that this is not the place to list all your services or try to fully express your personality. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities for that.

Step 3 – Making your first connections

The Tell your Fans section allows you to add your first business contacts and connections.

These can be your friends, your contacts or your customer list. Facebook allows you to import contacts from virtually anywhere – your email service, a file or other social networks like LinkedIn. If you already have a customer database or program, be sure to export the data in CSV format (all you need are email addresses).

Important

Since you’re marketing your business, you would want to add as many contacts as you can find. You might want to review the list, but don’t be shy.
Remember that Facebook uses email addresses to find contacts, so that’s all you need – and more important, that’s the only thing that matters, so ensure you have the right email addresses.
It’s always a good idea to start off by first adding only a couple of “friendlies” – contacts who can help you verify that things look right before you make the big announcement.

Step 4 – Account Privacy Settings

If you created a new Facebook account earlier in the process, you will want to review the default privacy settings to make sure that what you share and who you share it with is business-friendly. To access this, click on Privacy Settings link in the Account menu.

Important

Managing a Facebook presence is all about sharing, so don’t be overly restrictive, especially if you plan on using your Facebook account only for business marketing.
But if you opted to use your existing personal account (earlier in step 1), it is especially important that you review those settings to ensure you’re not “over-sharing”. For example, having status updates about having a bad day at work may not be top form for marketing.
In any case, make a note or reminder to revisit the privacy settings after a few months. You wil have a better sense for what kind of information will want to share (and what kind of friends you have) after you start using it.

Step 5 – Choosing a username

Your Facebook “username” is a short identifier that can be appended to the Facebook url such as www.facebook.com/SinfulOrganic that makes it easy for users to access on the Web. This is helpful in marketing your business on store windows or flyers. You can define this by accessing the Account Settings from the Account menu. It will require you to validate your identity using a mobile phone number.

Important

As with your business name, keep this short. If the username you want is taken, consider creative alternatives – based on your region (/SinfulOrganicVA) or even catchy phrases (/BeSinful). Anything is better than numbered suffixes (/SinfulOrganic2635)!

And that’s it! Your basic profile is done and you’re ready to start sending out those updates. Next in the series, we will show you how to promote your business, get connections to like you, and how to be creatively use wall posts and status updates.

Tags: Facebook, Marketing, social media
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Small Biz Resource Tip: Custom Toll Free

December 30th, 2010 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich

Custom Toll Free

Few successful businesses today can operate without a toll-free number to attract customers out of the local area. If you’re doing business on the Web, it’s a necessity. Customers who have access to a toll-free number will make more purchases and return less merchandise. Custom Toll Free can help you find and acquire a quality toll free number suited especially for your business. If you’d like a vanity number, you can search Custom Toll Free’s extensive database of numbers to see if it’s available. You can also use their Reverse Lookup Tool to see who owns a certain number.

Tags: Marketing, Resources, Technology
Posted in Marketing, Resources, Technology | No Comments »

Want to Make the BtoB Sale? Win Over the Office Manager

December 30th, 2010 :: Karen Axelton

By Karen Axelton

Does your business sell BtoB products or services to other small businesses? A recent study from the Enterprise Council on Small Business offers some useful advice for making the sale: Get to know the office managers at your prospects’ companies.

If you thought the only purchasing decisions office managers got to make involved what color of manila folders to buy or when to re-order paper clips, think again. Perhaps that’s true for huge corporations, but in small businesses, ECSB research found that office managers are essential partners in a company’s day-to-day operations and in making purchasing decisions.

Because a small company’s office manager typically has a close relationship with the business owner, he or she directly impacts many of the purchases small businesses make. In fact, ECSB data showed the office manager is the single most important employee involved in purchase decisions (including researching, recommending and/or buying) in seven out of 10 product categories.

Specifically, office manager is the employee most likely to be involved in decisions involving the purchase of building and maintenance; HR; insurance; office supplies and furniture; shipping and mailing; subscriptions and publications; and telecommunications. He or she is the second-most-likely person to be involved in decisions about purchasing computer hardware and software, and banking. And he or she is the third-most-likely person to be involved in purchasing decisions about marketing and advertising.

An old piece of BtoB sales advice that still holds is to always be nice to the gatekeeper. Think of the office manager as the gatekeeper to your clients’ purchasing decisions, and as you market to small businesses, keep their office managers in mind. ECSB suggests some tips for winning over the office manager:

Give office managers free trials of the products or services they are most likely to purchase for the business.
Read ratings and reviews about your products or services. Ratings and reviews are the top source of information employees turn to when buying or recommending a product.
Create a marketing message that conveys how your product or service will not only help the office manager do his or her job, but also how it will help the overall business. When office managers were asked what makes them recommend a product, “Helping the business” was more than five times more important than “making my job easier.”

Tags: sales
Posted in Business Development, Sales Process | No Comments »

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Business

December 30th, 2010 :: Thursday Bram

Making resolutions when New Year’s comes around is a fairly common practice — but when’s the last time you made any resolutions for your business? Sure, you probably set goals fairly regularly, but it’s worth taking this time to reflect on what your business could do just a little bit better. You may not need to get your business exercising on a Stairmaster, but there are always a few leaves that can be turned over at the beginning of a new year to boost your business success.

Keep your bookkeeping up to date: No business owner likes to admit that you haven’t taken care of all those receipts sitting in a shoebox somewhere, but it’s not an uncommon problem. If keeping your books is something that is an issue, now is the perfect time to explore ways to improve the situation.
Lose some dead weight: If you’ve noticed a lag somewhere in the way your business operates, it’s often easier to just say that you’ll deal with it later. Well, with the New Year almost here, maybe it’s time to make the decision to fix whatever is slowing you down.
Learn something new: One of the best ways to keep your business competitive is to keep looking for new methods and tools. Make time in your schedule for you or your team to learn more about what’s out there and how to implement new techniques into your business.
Find a mentor: If moving forward with your business has been tough lately, one way to start figuring out what else could help you is to talk to a mentor — someone who has already been through this stage in a business’ development — so you can get some tips and speed up the process.
Expand your network: Considering how heavily most businesses depend on networks to find both new customers and new vendors, it may be worth revisiting your network and building upon it. Going to new networking events isn’t enough, though. Strengthening your existing networking and getting outside of the groups of people you regularly network with are equally important.

Of course, these are just examples of resolutions you can set for your business. With 2010 ending and 2011 beginning, you have the opportunity to look at your business and see where you can really improve things. Even better, the end of the year is a perfect time for transitions because there are a few that you’ll probably have to make anyway.

No matter what resolutions you choose, make them reachable and measurable — if you can see how you’re going to reach them, resolutions are easier to work on, just like any other goal. Something as simple as writing your business’ resolutions down can make them much easier to reach. After all, what’s the point of making a resolution if you aren’t going to work on it?

Image by Flickr user Sally Mahoney (Creative Commons)

Tags: business success, small business
Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »

Small Biz Resource Tip: HiDef Conferencing

December 29th, 2010 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich

HiDef Conferencing™ from Citrix Audio Online

One of the challenges of running a virtual company is getting the team together for an important meeting or to work together on a project. Even if your company just has different office locations, the travel expense can prohibit your team from collaborating efficiently and productively. Enter the new HiDef Conferencing from Citrix Audio Online. The service allows conference members to feel like they’re in the same room from wherever they are and can be accessed from any landline, mobile, smartphone or VoIP service like Skype. And in most cases the audio quality is better than regular phone lines.

Tags: Resources, Technology, Workforce
Posted in Resources, Technology, Workforce | No Comments »

Does Your Business Need a Disaster Plan?

December 29th, 2010 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Do you think your small business has no need for a disaster plan? “I don’t live in earthquake country or flood territory,” you might think. Well, disasters that affect small businesses don’t always have to be natural ones. A burglary, fire or even a major power outage could spell disaster for your company if you haven’t properly planned for it. Seasonal issues such as blizzards can shut a company down. And if a key supplier or business partner in another state or country is affected by a disaster, it could have crippling effects on your supply chain and operations.

I hope I’ve convinced you that every business—no matter how small–needs a disaster plan for protection. Here’s a step-by-step plan to get started.

1. Risk assessment. Begin by assessing the risks your business faces. What natural disasters could affect your region or your key suppliers? What other issues could hamper your ability to do business?

2. Operations assessment. Next, assess your internal operations and figure out which are most crucial to keeping the company up and running. IT, accounting and telecommunications might be on your list. Contact each service provider to see what backup plans they have in place in case of an emergency.

3. Data protection. Disasters can destroy data if you haven’t protected it in the first place. Always back up your data and store backups offsite. These days, there are dozens of online backup services that house your data “in the cloud.” Find out where your backup provider houses its backup. Have someone at your company responsible for backup and, most importantly, from time to time try restoring backed-up data to be sure it works.

4. Employee safety. Protect your staff by creating an emergency evacuation plan. Post this where everyone can see it and have regular runthroughs so people know what to do if a disaster strikes during work hours. Put one person in charge of safety and have a deputy backup person in case he or she isn’t there.

5. Alternate location. If a disaster renders your office or store unusable, where else can you and your staff work in the interim? Figure out if people can work from home, or talk to business colleagues to see if you could rent short-term space in their facilities on an emergency basis. Also check into office suite options in your area; these businesses rent space and access to business services on an as-needed basis.

6. Insurance coverage. Don’t forget to make sure your insurance covers the risks you’ve found. Flood and earthquake insurance, for instance, aren’t usually part of standard policies. Your agent can make recommendations as to what you need and keep your insurance up to date.

Business.gov has several good resources for disaster planning and assistance. Check out their site and, like a Boy Scout, you’ll be prepared.

Image by Flickr user David Hunter (Creative Commons)

Tags: disaster planning, small business
Posted in Small Business | 2 Comments »

5 Ways to Effectively Nurture Leads

December 29th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

While generating leads is super important, it is even more important to hang onto them, convince them what a huge difference you’ll make in their lives, and convert them into clients. Nurturing them can, unfortunately, take a while. Ever hear of the “Law of 29”? It states that a prospect won’t turn into a client until they have viewed your marketing message 29 times. Twenty. Nine. Times.

It’s worth the effort, though: Companies that use lead nurturing have closing rates 300 percent higher than competitors who don’t nurture qualified and qualifiable leads (thanks to HubSpot for that statistic).

There are five ways to effectively nurture those prospects: drip marketing, blogs, newsletters, LinkedIn Answers and social media. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that you always need to include a call to action.

1. Drip Marketing

Funny name, but a great description that refers to sending, or dripping, messages to prospects over time. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to help you automate drip marketing, and be sure to send your prospects information based on how they contacted you. So, if it’s through your website’s contact us form, email them. If they contact you via Twitter, respond with a tweet.

Early in the buying cycle, send white papers, your newsletter, and/or eBooks. By the middle of the buying cycle, send special invitations, datasheets, and/or demos. At the end of the buying cycle, when you are ready for them to decide already, send pricing, feature comparisons, and/or testimonials.

2. Blogs

Invite prospects to subscribe to your blog, where, of course, they will receive useful, interesting, and relevant information on a regular basis. Engage with your readers by asking questions: do they agree or disagree and why; what has their experience been; should you write more on this topic? By starting discussions with your readers, you are also connecting to prospective clients and hopefully pushing them along the sales funnel.

3. Newsletters

A great way to keep your name in front of prospective clients! Just remember to only write a little bit about your company and a lot about your industry’s best practices, mistakes to avoid, easy ways to do x, etc. Feel free to repurpose blog posts, but always keep it short and include information your reader can use.

4. LinkedIn Answers

If you meet a prospective customer at a networking event, send them an invitation to join your network on LinkedIn (just personalize that invite!). Once you are connected, they will see your activity in their weekly LinkedIn update, including the fact that you are answering questions others have posed (and they can read those answers, too).

5. Social Media

Think of social media as a lead nurturing tool. You might not even know someone is a lead until they’ve been following you on Twitter or Facebook for so long they’ve gotten 29 messages (chances are high that they don’t read everything you post). This is why it’s so important to consistently send out useful, interesting, and engaging information, including outright calls to action.

What other tools or methods do you use to convert prospects into clients? I’d love to hear about them!

Image by Flickr user Rosalxxi (Creative Commons)

Tags: blogs, drip marketing, lead conversion, lead generation, lead nurturing, Marketing, newsletters, sales process, social media
Posted in Business Development, Email Marketing, Marketing, Sales Process, Social Media | No Comments »