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Web.com Small Business Toolkit: CreateSpace (Amazon’s Self-Publishing Tool)

January 14th, 2013 ::

CreateSpace

Have you got something to say, some wisdom to impart, or some knowledge of your industry you think others would want to read? No longer do you have to find a publisher and a book designer to get your words published. CreateSpace is an Amazon.com company that provides easy tools to self-publish your book so you can make your content available to millions of potential customers. Media formats supported through CreateSpace include books, DVDs, CDs, video downloads and Amazon MP3s. Products are made as customers order them, so you don’t have to pay upfront fees for inventory. Plus, CreateSpace takes care of the customer service and order fulfillment on your online retail orders.

 

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Posted in Marketing, Resources, Small Business, small business, Technology, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

The Online Marketing Habits of Highly Successful Small Businesses

December 10th, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

How can your small business reach the elite group of high-achieving small companies? Online marketing is the key, suggests a new Forrester research study commissioned by Act-On Software. In the face of continuing economic uncertainty, the study, “Driving Revenue in a Volatile Economy, found that the top-performing small businesses are those that truly embrace online marketing.

The study identified these lessons small businesses can take  from top performers and large companies:

  1. Don’t automatically cut your marketing budget in a down economy. Top performers were less likely than bottom performers to cut their marketing budgets (33 percent vs. 56 percent). On the contrary, top performers prove that maintaining or increasing marketing spending does pay off in terms of revenues.
  2. Take lead generation seriously. The top-performing small businesses carefully manage sales leads, vetting, qualifying and nurturing them before handing them off to sales to close. They were also willing to spend more to get new leads, while bottom performers spent their time and money trying to squeeze new sales from existing customers.
  3. Adopt digital marketing techniques. All small businesses in the study focused primarily on traditional marketing techniques, such as print advertising, tradeshows, events and seminars. However, top performing businesses were more likely to have adopted digital marketing tactics and technology tools to help scale their marketing efforts.
  4. Get serious about social marketing. While larger businesses are realizing that “social media” is not just an abstract tool for generating buzz, small businesses are lagging behind in developing a social media strategy and making social media part of the sales pipeline.
  5. Increase collaboration between sales and marketing. By working together, these teams can drive leads more effectively and close more sales.
  6. Invest in marketing automation. Companies that automated marketing functions had better results. For example, 61 percent of top performers used CRM vs. just 46 percent of bottom performers. And only 5 percent of bottom performers used marketing automation, compared to 28 percent of top performers.
  7. Measure results. Nearly half of the bottom performing businesses did not measure any aspect of their marketing. In contrast, top performers measured everything.

Visit Act-On’s website for a free ebook, 7 Marketing Habits of Today’s Highly Successful SMBs.

Image by Flickr user ganesha.isis (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Technology, Thought Leadership, Web Design | 3 Comments »

3 Simple Tips for Improving LinkedIn Lead Generation From an Expert

November 26th, 2012 ::

LinkedIn lead generationEver hear of Neal Schaffer? He was named by Forbes as a Top 30 Social Media Power Influencer. He is a prolific blogger at Windmill Networking, a popular social media conference speaker, and an award-winning author of two books: ”Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing” and “Windmill Networking: Maximizing LinkedIn.”

Basically, if you want to know about LinkedIn, you turn to him! Marketo recently published an interview with Neal about using LinkedIn for lead generation. Here are my top 3 takeaways:

1. Stop ignoring your company page

According to Neal, you have to do 3 things to take full advantage of your company page – all of which, I have to say, are pretty darned easy to do:

  1. Build a following with relevant status updates
  2. Include keywords everywhere for SEO purposes
  3. Get recommendations for each of your products or services (rather than your company as a whole)

2. Create content that answers questions

I really love this point Neal makes: People do not call you for an answer – they search the Internet for answers.  If you create content that 1) answers questions, and 2) is full of keywords, then people will find you and begin to view you as a thought leader.

3. Use LinkedIn Groups

Share the above content you create in relevant groups. LinkedIn Groups, as Neal points out, are where the professionals are online – they’re not necessarily looking for answers on Facebook, but they are within LinkedIn Groups.

Do the above, and Neal says that people will start finding you. Your status updates will pop up in their network updates.  You’ll be discovered through search results. You’ll drive brand awareness and lead generation in groups.

Do you use LinkedIn for lead generation? What tactics have been most successful for you?

Image courtesy of marsdd.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

How Can Your Business Become a Breakout Brand?

November 23rd, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

Want to make your business a “breakout brand”? Then you’ve got to make consumers “fall in love” with you, according to a new survey  commissioned by rbb Public Relations and conducted by IBOPE/Zogby International.

What exactly is a breakout brand? “Breakout Brands recognize the value of emotional attachment and have adopted strategies [for]…delivering better services and/or products, elevating a category with new ideas and focusing on the customer, not the competition” is how the study defines the concept.

Being well-known or admired isn’t the same as being a breakout brand, the study notes. While 23 percent of consumers immediately identified Apple as a breakout brand, some big names–including Nordstrom and BMW–did not make the cut despite being well-respected for their quality and service orientation. The top 10 breakout brands customers chose are Apple, Amazon, Chick-Fil-A,Wal-Mart, Costco, Starbucks, Google, Zappos, Toyota, Ford, Trader Joe’s and Southwest Airlines.

A
 strong majority of 
respondents (85 percent)
 say it’s very or 
somewhat important  
to do business with 
a company they have
 strong emotions for. Breakout Brands
 inspire these 
connections, which leads to strong brand 
ambassadors arising 
organically.

In addition, nearly all respondents (92 percent) say it is very or somewhat important for a company they do business with to show interest in them personally. Those living in the South and Central regions were far more likely to say personal interest matters to them than those living in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Millennials (18- to 24-year-olds) are the age group most likely to say emotional connections matter.

Emotional connections pay off for brands: The study found some 83 percent of consumers are willing to pay more when they feel a personal connection to the company. In fact, almost 20 percent of consumers would pay up to 50 percent more for a product or service from a brand that puts them first.

Instead of trying to chase their competitors, the study’s authors advise, brands would do better to focus on putting the customer first. Rbb notes that certain industries have greater potential to benefit from breakout brand behaviors. Specifically, customers say personal, proactive customer communication is more important in healthcare, professional services and technology, while it’s less important in the beauty products and apparel industries.

Does your business have the potential to become a breakout brand? Rbb says the strategy can work for any size company, and has created a whitepaper that you can download for free to learn more.

Image by Flickr user Sean McEntee (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Branding, Marketing, Small Business, small business, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

Visual Content Today and Tomorrow: What the Experts Have to Say

November 5th, 2012 ::

Gazing into a crystal ballMarketo recenty published a blog post that included a video with the insights of 8 thought leaders on visual content – along with where they think it’s going.  Here’s what they had to say:

Tim Ash, CEO at SiteTuners

Visual content is like what synthesizer music was in the early 1970s – everyone does it.  Don’t autoplay videos or put sliders on your page with rotating ads that distract from your calls-to-action. If you do, our reptilian brains will take over and we will flee from information overload.

Matt Heinz, President at Heinz Marketing

Right now, you’ve got memes and great infographics. We’ll continue to evolve and visuals will get richer in content. We are lazy – we want something short. Infographics work well for that reason – they’re short and easy to digest. I think infographics will get shorter and even become series.

Jason Keath, CEO at SocialFresh

Memes are based on images, Facebook timeline is based on images, Pinterest is huge, and so is Instagram.  Words are less important, so search is harder and monitoring who is talking about you is harder.

Nichole Kelly, President at Social Media Explorer

It is engaging, people like it, they share it. But does visual content drive revenue? That is what we’re trying to figure out.

Marcus Nelson, CEO and Founder of Addvocate

Content is king; it always has been.  You need to decide where it is going to live and then direct everyone to one place so you have a central depository of content. Good content creates thought leadership and positive first impressions, and you can control it.

Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group

Visual content is a response to the amount of data out there. Visual is an easy way to share information, but it doesn’t tell the whole story – so don’t take everything at face value.

Craig Rosenberg, Funnelholic

Visual content is going to be huge. Right now, in B2B, it’s terrible. We are still just getting used to writing thought leadership content. Most videos are awful and boring right now. What is interesting is taking those same core content marketing ideas and putting them in a new medium. Using video for demos or product training has done great.

Jeff Widman, Cofounder at PageLever

Visual content tells a story better than static text. Facebook uses an algorithm that promotes photos, so photos perform much better in the news feed. MTV found that their photo posts reached 6x more fans than text and generated 13x more clicks.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start adding as many photos as I can to my Facebook posts! What is your favorite takeaway from these thought leaders?

Image courtesy of fightitoutlblog.com

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Posted in Marketing, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

How to Turn a Boring Topic Into a Viral One

October 24th, 2012 ::

Viral marketing“There is a market for humor and weird and interesting things. An infographic can turn a boring, geeky topic into a highly creative, viral one.”

-Brian Wallace, NowSourcing.com

How does more traffic to your website, more links to your blog, more social sharing of your content, better awareness of your company, and greatly improved search results sound?  Pretty great, especially if your company is operating in a highly competitive space.

The infographic experts at NowSourcing do just that. “Infographics are a lot more engaging than a blog post, but of course, they are a lot more work.  Good infographics bring together words, ideas, a story, a lot of research, and good design.”

Here are 5 examples of how Wallace’s team turned a boring topic into a viral one:

1. Financial Services

You can’t get more boring than financial services.  When a payday loan company in England asked NowSourcing to do an infographic on bartering, it just so happened that Oscar Mayer had just launched a crazy campaign in the U.S. featuring one guy traveling from New York City to Los Angeles with nothing but bacon to barter.  Yes, this was serendipitous, but the Art of Bacon Barter infographic still accomplished its goal: turn a boring topic into a viral one.

Did you know? PayDayLoan actually has an entire section called Fun Stuff on their site devoted to visual content. Talk about creativity!

2. Concrete Polishing

Again, a truly boring topic. Concrete Reflections wanted to increase their search position for a few concrete-specific keywords.  When asked if they had a sense of humor, the company replied yes, and the Concrete Mafia infographic was born. The infographic focuses on why the mafia uses concrete to bury dead bodies.

Did you know? New York’s concrete industry was once a mafia-owned monopoly. For real!

3. Poker

OK, poker isn’t that boring of a topic, but PokerSites is not a very exciting online destination – it’s a guide to poker sites, just as its name implies.  The company wanted to get more visibility from audiences other than gamers, so NowSourcing created an infographic on infamous casino cheaters.

Did you know? There are an average of 5,000 HD cameras per casino.

4. Home Security

Home security is one of those snooze-worthy topics that you don’t think about til it’s too late. HomeSecuritySystem.com’s infographic looks at the world’s biggest art, diamond and bank heists of all time.  

Did you know? In February 2003, $100 million worth of diamonds were stolen in Antwerp, Belgium. Police still don’t know exactly how it happened.

5. Online College Guide

Like PokerSites, Degree Jungle is also an online guide – to online college programs. Their infographic, The Cost to Educate a President, is not only fun and interesting, but very timely!

Did you know? Both Obama and Romney earned their law degrees at Harvard.

One more thing:

Once you spend time and money on an engaging infographic, put it to even more work by adding a call-to-action.  You could link to a downloadable white paper that your infographic summarizes, a QR code linked to your free, downloadable iPhone app, a link to a free trial or even just a link back to your website.

Do you have a favorite infographic? Why do you love it?

Image courtesy of internet-marketing-blog101.com

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Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Thought Leadership | 5 Comments »

What Is Content Syndication, and How Can It Help Your Marketing?

October 2nd, 2012 ::

One of the things you are doing as part of your marketing strategy is creating content, from blog posts to whitepapers, to demonstrate your expertise, build thought leadership and generate leads. Instead of sitting on all of that valuable content, put it to work for you –monetize it.

You can do this through content syndication, a content-sharing strategy in which your content is reused by other websites and online media outlets.  (This strategy applies to images and videos too – and you see it in newspapers all the time.)  Because this is a strategy I am definitely interested in myself, I did some research and found 3 main benefits to content syndication:

  1. Greater reach – If you want to increase visibility for your company, products, or services, I really can’t think of a better way to reach more people at once with little effort on your part.
  2. Earn extra money – While you will not make a living from content syndication (unless that is all you do! – think advice columns and Dave Barry), you can certainly make some extra money, always a good thing.
  3. Generate leads – When someone engages with your content, they are most likely in need of the product or service you offer.  Reach out to them simply by asking if they have any questions.

Before getting started, be sure to ask the content syndicator the following:

  • How long have you been in business?
  • Will you republish my content, or repurpose it? If you are going to repurpose it, how will you do so?
  • What other websites will my content appear on?
  • Where will my name and company be listed? Will they be hyperlinked to my website?
  • Will the content link back to the original on my site?

Once you get established with a content syndicator (or two) and find it beneficial to your bottom line and sales funnel, ask if they would be interested in an ongoing agreement, in which you provide content regularly.

2 highly regarded content syndicators include:

Mochila – an online media marketplace for both content buyers and sellers.

NewsCred – their syndication platform uses an API to make it easy for publishers to find your content, and then you can track and analyze your content on 3rd party sites so you can see what’s working.  Best part – they let you stay in control of the entire process.

If you have syndicated content, what was your experience like? If you haven’t syndicated content, would you try it?  Leave a comment below!

Image courtesy of aisquared.com

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Posted in Marketing, Thought Leadership | 11 Comments »

Are Marketers Ruining Social Media? 3 Tips to Ensure You Don’t

September 27th, 2012 ::

Are marketers ruining social media? That is the question posed in a really great article I came across on Forbes.com in which Shel Israel points out all the things that marketers are doing wrong on social media – and thus corrupting the experience of what social media should be.

Here’s what Israel said marketers are doing wrong, along with my suggestions on how to get it right:

1. Marketers are starting to view social media as transactional, rather than conversational.

Tip: Keep your focus on sharing, not selling. Yes, it’s good to talk about your company every now and again, but when you do, make sure you’re sharing something valuable that will spark a conversation.

For instance, when I announce on my Facebook page, “Hey everyone, Company A just launched a new website that I wrote the content for!” I can offer a tip on writing a call-to-action for your contact us page.  Tooting my own horn AND sharing something that is useful – score!

2. Marketers are turning social media into a marketing tool at the expense of other uses – like product development, recruiting, customer support, etc.

Tip: This is why you need to put together an editorial schedule.  If you want to keep the content you share a nice mix of topics, plan it out, because it’s so easy to get stuck in a one- or two-topic rut (just like you do when it’s time to make dinner and you decide it’s omelet night – again).

Simply make a list of all the topics you’d like to cover.  For me, that would be marketing, social media marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn; finding an intern when need be; sharing info on an online marketing tool that I love; posting photos from events I attend; answering FAQs in the form of a tip – I could go on, but you get the point.

3. Marketers are posting messages that are more corporate than individual.

Tip: Keep your messages personal. Use “I” instead of “we.” And if you use “we,” define who “we” is. Be honest and straightforward – be you.  Always keep in mind that your target market is made up of people, and people like to do business with people they like.

I always write the way I talk, so focus on doing that and resist the urge to write and re-write your Facebook status update. Otherwise, you could find yourself spending 15 minutes trying to get one sentence perfect – so perfect, it sounds like a robot wrote it.

Have you noticed a change in the social media content that brands are posting?

Image courtesy of when-is-now.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership | 7 Comments »

4 Easy Ways to Generate Leads on Forums

August 29th, 2012 ::

questions

LinkedIn Groups, Quora and HighTable are all great Q&A forums that allow you to demonstrate your expertise – and demonstrating your expertise and thought leadership is a great way to generate leads and find new clients.

Here’s how:

1. Answer questions

Yes, this is probably obvious, but if you want to really make an impression, you have to go beyond a simple, one-sentence answer.   You should back up your answer with statistics or examples of how you’ve successfully done x for clients.  Offer tips on how they can do x, along with alternatives they may not have considered.

2. Comment on other answers

If you agree, explain why.  If you don’t, be polite and civil while you explain why it might be better to do x this way instead of that way.  As above, if you can offer tips on how to do x, all the better.

3. Look for questions on related topics

In business, there is a lot of crossover from one topic and area of expertise to another.  Take marketing.  Though I am a copywriter and editor, and I know a great deal about social media, branding and marketing strategy.  Look for questions on topics that are related to your area of expertise to broaden your reach.

4. Visit forums routinely

As with any part of your marketing strategy, consistency wins the day.  Just as you make time to check email and post on your business’s social media accounts every day, visit forums and answer questions on a regular basis, whether it’s once a day or once a week.

If you want to delve into forums deeper, you could start your own forum.  However, this is a bit of time commitment that requires continual marketing and engagement.  If there are no forums on your topic of expertise, though, it might be worth trying out.

Have you successfully used forums to generate leads?  What tactics did you find worked best?

Image courtesy of valdosta.edu

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Posted in Marketing, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

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