UnintentionalEntrepreneur Articles

One key element of search engine optimization Be getting links to point towards your site. The more links referring people to you, the better your standings and relevancy with search engines. Shows that there’s something about your site and can be a big factor in determining your ownership of that content. Link marketing, as it’s called, is something you may want to consider in your campaigns.

According to the Tribe Internet Marketing agency, before a link marketing campaign can be started, it is important that your website’s main technical obstacles have been removed. Once you’ve done that, you can work on having links pointed to your site. The benefits of this? This campaign will ensure that new visitors come to your website.

How you execute a link marketing campaign depends on your budget. If you don’t have a large budget for this, then Search Engine Watch has some suggestions on how you could do more for less:

Donate services for publicity. Essentially this is lending your services pro bono. Find a non-profit or community organization and see if they would be interested in your company’s help. In the Search Engine Watch article, they are suggesting that you volunteer your services, but then also inform the media or influential people about your efforts as a way of them paying attention to you & your company.

Become a guest writer or columnist. If you’re cash-strapped, then being a guest writer on another blog or publication might not be a bad idea. This is probably especially helpful if you are talking about things relevant to your company and/or product.

Link recovery. You might want to link to a website, expecting some sort of reciprocal response, but often it doesn’t exist. It is suggested that you contact that other party to see if they would add a link back to you. Or, if a blogger or publication listed you in an article, seek them out and do a follow-up to see if they would be interested in another post with more detailed information.

Will clients recommend you? Don’t discount asking your clients or partners for recommendations. If you’ve done an outstanding job providing a service, then your clients should have no problems writing a review of you and linking to your site – thereby increasing your popularity.

Don’t forget your business groups. If you want a popular referral, then look no further than with business organizations you might be a part of. Will your Chamber of Commerce link back to you or can you find a way to be placed on a membership directory?

Local and niche directories may carry some weight. Specialized lists of companies managed by human-beings and not automated can carry some weight in the SEO space. If someone has created a list of companies in your field that would reap positive benefits for you and your company, don’t be afraid to see what it would take to be placed on that list with a link.

Remember, the more links pointing to you, the better your search position on sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo. However, make sure that these are relevant and credible sites as well. Links from a blog on Network Solutions holds more weight than by a website run by a spammer. Do you know who’s linking to you?

Source: Search Engine Watch

Small business owners interested in finding out how to start using social media should join the Tweet Chat #sbbuzz on Feb 23^rd, 8-10PM (EST).

Tweet Chat on Small Business Success

Anita Campbell, Editor of Small Business Trends, will moderate the discussion to provide additional insight on how to effectively use social networks to generate results.

SBBuzz is a Twitter Chat that allows people to follow a group conversation across Twitter using the hashtag #sbbuzz for search filtering and adding their comments using the hashtag to create a stream of conversation.

For instructions on how to participate in the SBBuzz Tweet Chat, you can go to http://sbbuzz.wordpress.com/instructions/

Pre-tweet Radio Show with Anita Campbell

Prior to the Tweet Chat, Anita will be interviewing Shashi Bellamkonda, “Social Media Swami” (Director of Social Media) here at Network Solutions and Founder of Happenings, Advice and Technology Thoughts, and small business owner, Dr. Alan Glazier, join Anita Campbell for an in-depth discussion on the results of the Small Business Success Index. This special episode will be followed up with a TweetChat at 8:00PM EST including @ShashiB and @smallbiztrends using the hashtag #SBBuzz@SBBuzz.

If you haven’t heard of the Small Business Success Index or SBSI, the SBSI Index measures how they are doing in six key areas of business: capital access, marketing and innovation, workforce, customer service, computer technology and compliance.

To download a copy of the Small Business Success Index and also find out how your business scores on the six key dimensions of small business success, visit www.growsmartbusiness.com.

And of course, don’t forget to join us and Anita on the #sbbuzz chat on Tuesday, Feb 23 from 8-10pm EST!

In talking about search marketing, one of the things that should come up is how to do banner advertising. You know what banner advertising is…you see it all the time when you’re on your favorite website, whether it’s CNN, ESPN, TechCrunch, Network Solutions, Best Buy, etc. They’re everywhere! They must be good, right?

Wrong.

I’ve titled this post “Understanding Online Advertising – Banners, Banners, Everywhere!” for a reason. I wanted to share with you the good and bad about how to do a banner placement. These aren’t going anywhere for some time, but recent statistics and blog posts have made it clear that there is a growing trend away from banners towards something that can generate more buzz and a higher ROI.

But first, if you’re interested in going forward with a banner campaign, then here are a few things you might want to be aware of:

• Multiple sizes: When you’re going to choose a banner, every website has different requirements – including banner sizes that they’ll take. Here are a few banner sizes that are quite common: 728×90 (leaderboard), 468×60 (full banner), 234×60 (half banner), 125×125 (square banner), 120×600 (skyscraper), 160×600 (wide skyscraper) and 300×250 (medium rectangle)
• Restricted file sizes: Once you’ve chosen the appropriate size, make sure to keep it light. A majority of the time you’re going to have your banner ad served through a publisher like Mediaplex, DoubleClick, or someone else. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has published some good guidelines on recommended sizes which publishers adhere to. Keeping them to these size restrictions will help serve them quicker and make them more accessible to everyone.
• Don’t think only static content: in the beginning of online marketing, all we had to deal with is static, non-movable content to promote our message. These days, we’re now able to have animated banners with limited movement or even flash-based, pop-up banners. More interactivity could possibly lead to conversions.

So now we know a bit more about banner advertising, let’s look at what the recent trends have to say about it:

In a study done by email marketing company VerticalResponse and posted by MarketingPilgrim.com, small & medium businesses (SMBs) are becoming more wary about banner advertising. In 2010, VerticalResponse says that SMBs will migrate towards search engine marketing, email marketing and/or social media, BUT 54.2% of those polled will not use banners this year.  The report goes on to say “of those that are currently using banner ads, less than 20% of businesses with 11-100 employees reported increasing their banner spend this year (and about 7% of businesses with <10 employees).”

Here are some additional statistics from 2009 that you might find interesting from ComScore:

• Clickers are an increasingly rare group - Only 1/6th of internet users clicking on at least one display ad in March 2009
• Heavy clickers continue to account for a disproportionate amount of advertising clicks - 4% of internet users account for 67% of all display ad clicks
• Within 4 key advertiser categories we see consistently that clickers are a small group accounting for a minimal proportion of category site visitors and page views - Non-clickers show more consistent category interest than clickers

Now I’m not suggesting that you completely abandon your banner advertising program. It does seem that with way more effective touchpoints to reaching customers, companies are moving towards dropping banners from their arsenal. I seriously doubt that banners will be gone in the next five years because for most companies, placing banners on their website is perhaps the main way for them to reap any monetary benefits from it.

When you do decide to do a banner campaign, be aware that your creative and message needs to be in synch with your other marketing efforts. Don’t try and list all your information on the banner, even though you may have the flexibility with animated banners. Your banner advertising needs to have a clear call-to-action so that people will feel inclined to click on it. Be simple but creative and find that hook that will get people to really pay attention.

In fact, think about banner advertising like this: you’re going to have banners be the first thing customers will see. It’s an advertisement on a website so chances are that the deal/product you’re offering should have a story behind it. Amongst all the noise, there should be something catchy and telling about it. Just like an advertisement in a magazine, you want to basically tell the tale without giving too much information but enticing them to click for more.

So if you’re interested in having a bit more creativity in sharing the information about your product, then by all means choose to do a banner. You’re going to be able to take advantage of using Flash, multimedia, sound or a wide array of banner components to get your message across. Don’t discount them yet…banners are here to stay. Just make sure you can convert.

In one of my previous posts here on Unintentional Entrepreneur, I covered the basics of search engine optimization. Contrary to what you might think, this post is not going to be a repeat of that post, but focus on a different aspect of online marketing: the advertising side.

When comparing between the two types of online marketing, here’s a helpful rule/analogy for determining which to include in your marketing…when looking for a place to live, you can either rent or buy. In this case, you want to buy a house to own, then you choose search engine optimization, but if you plan on renting, then choose search engine advertising.

Search engine advertising consists of several different types of programs, including paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. The main emphasis on each of these types is that you are paying for placement. It’s not organic or natural. You’re “forcing” your way onto a website or search engine to get people’s attention towards your product. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it can be highly competitive and possibly even effective.

What’s pretty great about search engine advertising (SEA) is that you can be more targeted towards who you want to reach. While you’re not able to target specific individuals to cater to their needs, you will be able to look out across demographics and reach them. For SEA networks and even search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, you’re able to select by geographic location too. So imagine if you’re posting an ad on a search engine for a new tech startup, you might look up relevant keywords, but then address the different demographics AND also focus your ad placements on people who searched from IP addresses located in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Chicago, etc – where most tech influencers may reside. You could also implement this strategy to intercept people who might be looking at your competitors. If company B is seeing people look up search terms for company A, then company B might want to buy some ad placements for those keywords and get their name out there as an alternative.

So how can you measure SEA efforts?

CPM: Cost per thousand viewers was the original method used for pricing online advertisements. CPM remains the most common method for pricing banner ads.

CTR: Click-through rates measure the number of times an ad is clicked as a percentage of views of the Web page on which the ad appears. Banner ads have CTRs that are generally 0.5 percent or less. In comparison, individual search engine ads can have CTRs of 10 percent, even though they appear alongside organic search results and competing paid search advertisements.

CPA: Cost per action quantifies costs for completing specified activities such as attracting a new customer or making a sale. Affiliate networks [Affiliate networks] operate on a CPA basis. CPA systems function most effectively when sales cycles are short and easily tracked. Longer sales cycles rely on exposure to multiple types of ads to create brand awareness and purchasing interest before a sale is made. Longer sales cycles and sales requiring multiple customer contacts can be difficult to track, leading to a reluctance by publishers to participate in CPA programs beyond initial lead generation.

CPC: Cost per contact tracks the cost of interacting with a client or potential client. In traditional marketing, CPC is viewed as a one-way process of reaching target audiences through means such as direct mail, radio ads and television ads. Search advertising provides opportunities for two-way contacts through web-based chat, Internet-based calls, call-back requests or mailing list signups.

TM: Total minutes is a metric being used by Nielsen/NetRatings to measure total time spent on a Web page rather than the number of Web page views. On July 10, 2007, Nielsen announced that they would be relying on TM as their primary metric for measuring Web page popularity, due to changes in the way Web pages provide content through audio and video streaming and by refreshing the same page without totally reloading it. Page refreshes are one aspect of Rich Internet Applications [Rich Internet Applications] (RIA). RIA technologies include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Microsoft Silverlight.

In a report published by ad network DoubleClick in May 2006 (PDF), they listed out some great tips on setting up your own online advertising program:

1. Set clear objectives. Make sure that you know what goals need to be met when you set out on creating online advertising programs. What’s the end result that you want to achieve?
2. Segment audiences. Don’t just spray and pray with your marketing budget. Look at which of your audience/community do you want to reach out to. Who will be most likely to respond positively to your message. Be sure to note the time and day and other logistics to ascertain when is the best time to reach them.
3. Optimize media and creative. Plan on making changes often to your campaign. Don’t think that you can just post your ad and then leave it alone. You will have to measure the results and make constructive and productive changes throughout the campaign. Budgets can easily be used up if you have competitive keywords – make sure you’re reviewing it often.
4. Review, assess and improve. At the end of your campaign, look at it to assess whether you have really met your objectives. Did you reach the right people? What lessons can you take away from this to help improve/enhance your next campaign?

You should be aware that while it is simple enough to buy placement and make an ad, there are some things that can make it quite complicated. One of them is looking for what keywords you want to use. If you’re trying to reach people who search for “US Government”, you might be surprised that there are probably a ton of ads that appear. The more popular the term, the more expensive it will be. Before you open up your marketing wallet, be sure to do your research to see how expensive a term is currently – and I say currently because these costs change quite frequently.

If your product is often misspelled also, you might want to consider investing your money in purchasing the incorrect spellings as well. So for companies like Flickr, they may choose to buy search terms like “Flicker” or “Flickre”, etc.

When doing research for your keywords, there are a couple of tools that you might want to try. Some are only available after you sign a deal with a search engine or if you buy the software outright. For many search marketers that I know, one of the tools is WordTracker which you need to pay for. Another one that is popular is through Google and is their keyword tracking tool.

Another thing you should be aware of is that if you buy an ad on a search engine like Google or Bing, one of the things you should note is that your ad will not only be on the search engine, but it could also appear throughout their network. The major search engines have a giant network of ad publishers that could show your chosen ad. This is something to be mindful when you look at your analytics and you see referrals from an unknown source – it could very well be from your keyword ad.

While these are tips to get you started on your online advertising program, there is much more to talk about. In the next post, I’ll talk more about banner marketing in the scheme of online advertising. However, if you’re interested in learning more or getting your online marketing campaign started, Network Solutions has a great service for that.

Sources: Wikipedia, DoubleClick, and iab.com

For small businesses who are interested in getting their name out in the world, one thing that might hinder purchasing a 30 second spot at the Super Bowl is the cost. Well what can you do to still have the same impact? Try using some form of search engine marketing – it’s probably more effective and definitely cheaper to execute.

One form that is perhaps the more cost-effective is Search Engine Optimization. Instead of buying advertisement placements on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, you focus on the actual content of a website. Also known as SEO, this form of marketing places more emphasis on the search engines analysis on content than more than simply forcing your way to your attention with ads. A better definition can be found from Wikipedia:

SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

So what are some tips as it relates to creating a great SEO strategy?

• Common sense is always the best guide. One of the key elements of SEO programs is to seed your keyword into the copy in an appropriate manner. That means making the content relevant to the reader and making sure that it matches what your users want to see. This means that if you think that salespeople are looking at your site, then you should probably make your content sale-like. However, if getting your main keyword included an appropriate amount of time leads to a page that is difficult to read, then don’t do it.
• Don’t forget about the meta tags. In your HTML document that forms your website, you’re going to need to include information in the code that will help search engines find your site. According to eHow, you should use the keyword meta tag and the description meta tag as a minimum. The robots meta tag should only be used to indicate that the page is not to be indexed. For search engines, they’re not going to read all of the page, but one of the common areas scoured is the beginning parts of the HTML document – this would be the meta tags that are hidden from public view. Don’t leave that part out.
• Make sure that your site has a page title. In your HTML code, you should make sure that it has a page title at the beginning of the page. Search engines will look at this as a major component to determine whether the page is relevant to that search. So if you are looking for the keywords “domain names”, then you would see Network Solutions appear because they have in the page title “domain names”.
• Understand the formatting – specifically the H1 header tag. Include an H1 page title in the body section of your HTML document that has your main page keyword within it. Include secondary keywords when possible and try to push the benefits that the page promotes.
• Provide good solid content first and foremost.
• Structure your page so that your main page keyword appears twice in the first paragraph, once in the second paragraph and is scattered throughout the rest of the text to achieve the required density.
• Cross linking between pages of the same website. One additional way to get the search engines to notice your website is to engage in cross-linking. Now this isn’t to mean that you should link to every page that’s out there. Rather, it should be a bit more quid pro quo. You link to more relevant websites and if they do the same, that will increase your search prominence in search queries.
• Make sure your URLs are readable both by search engines & by humans. When you are making websites, don’t have your URLs be filled with strange characters or symbols. The more that it represents actual words filled with keywords, the better your chances are at getting picked up by search engines. Just looking at this post, you should see the URL include the words “search engine optimization” and “small business”.

To learn more about search engine optimization, you can look at a variety of sources. Don’t forget that Network Solutions can also provide you with sources on doing SEO campaigns. To help assess your needs, be sure to check out our online marketing calculator – this scale will determine what’s your right search strategy.

Source: eHow

The Superbowl Shuffle

Originally posted over at Solutions Are Power:

I remember when I was a kid the Bears won the Superbowl and everyone was crazy for the Chicago Bears. So much was the love for “da Bears” across the country that they made a record that immortalized the team and made household names of Mike Ditka and William “Refrigerator” Perry.

This record was called “The Superbowl Shuffle“.

According to Wikipedia, “The idea for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” came from record producer Randy Weigand, who was a friend of Willie Gault‘s. They had met through Randy’s girlfriend, Courtney Larson, who was a cheerleader for the team. Weigand had noticed a dance routine on the Amos & Andy television show called “The Kingfish Shuffle” and thought that a similar performance by the Bears players would be good for marketing.”

They filmed it to raise money for needy Chicago families and with the music video it became a phenomenon. If you have ever seen the video, which I have included below, two things come to mind for me – great marketing and not taking yourself too seriously.

We put together a special “Superbowl Shuffle Domain and Hosting Offer” for the 2010 Superbowl. More on that at the end of this post.

Big Game Shuffle for Your Business – Shuffling to Renew or Transfer Your Domains

For this 2010 Superbowl, Network Solutions has put together a special offer for Sunday and Monday. $6.99 domain names and 25% off hosting packages so you can “shuffle” on over to start or keep using Network Solutions as your small business solutions provider. Check these out:

25% 35% off hosting – Use code HOSTSOC001

New Domains $9.99 – Use code SUPERDOM06

Domain Transfers for $6.99 – Use code DOMSOCIAL3

REMEMBER: This is only for 2010 Superbowl Sunday and Monday

With the Super Bowl literally around the corner (it’s this Sunday), one thing that I thought might be an interesting discussion is the annual tradition of millions of Americans have besides watching the actual game – it’s about the commercials. What television ad will raise eyebrows, cause people to gag, or perhaps remember for the next 365 days until the next Super Bowl. Sure, there will be commercials for perhaps the staple companies, like Budweiser or Pepsi and maybe Tostitos, but frankly, how many of us actually recall most of the ads we saw a week after the game? This is something to consider when you’re trying to come up with a brand.

Earlier today, I heard a thought-provoking scenario: is it better to have a better brand before a product or a better product before an established brand? The answer is the latter – work on creating a great product and then work on your brand. For more companies, if you’re going to recall a company with a great brand, you’ve probably paid more attention to their identity instead of what they actually are producing or servicing. I suppose it’s like a guy going out with a girl – is it better for the guy to pay attention to his hair or the girl?

Going back to the Super Bowl, in a study done by Markitecture, the percentage of people who actually remembered any of the Super Bowl commercials was around 9%. After spending millions of dollars, is that something that you want to leave with? In the table above, Markitecture looked at the awareness factor with respect to the commercials that aired during the 2007 game. Obviously the companies that continuously advertise each year would gain more awareness (e.g. Budweiser, Bud Light, Coca-Cola, etc), but for smaller companies like Gillette, GAP, Macy’s, etc, do you think spending $2.6MM on a 30 second ad was the best use of their resources?  If you have a good product and brand, it will surely stand out above all the noise and people will know what it is you do and what you produce.

It’s not necessary for you to go and spend millions of dollars just to have your brand be noticed. It all starts with making sure people can FIND your brand to begin with. Are you getting the word out about your brand through your friends and contacts? How about through traditional means? Actually…let’s back that up. Have you first secured your own web domain? No? Why not? Do you know that your web domain is basically your home on the web? It’s how people will find you on the Internet. If not, you better go make sure that it is – just because someone has it before you does not mean that they’re required to “give up the goods” just because you ask – they bought it first, fair and square. So if you don’t want someone to poach your domain, you better go purchase it right now.

Here’s some tips for you to understand how to pick a domain:

• Make your domain/web address your company name – it’s definitely for brand consistency, but also to tie it all together…when you tell me the name of your company, I’m going to assume that it’s also your web address.
• Try and purchase a .com domain extension, not a .info domain – a majority of Internet users will automatically assume a .com extension. Each extension (e.g. .org, .net.) is used for specific types of companies and organizations – this is really crucial when choosing one and dealing with tax purposes.
• Don’t just purchase one domain – if you’re serious about your brand, you’re going to want to protect it from squatters. Make sure you get all the major variations of your domain, including extensions. So domain.com, domain.org and domain.net are at least the ones you should invest in.
• If you have any slogans or mottos that you want to protect as well, you might also be interested in purchasing those domains as well.
• Your domain is also a key factor in search results – search engines use your web address as a large component on assessing your relevancy and position on search engine results.
• Variations of a domain can be used against you – during one of the presidential campaigns, then-President Bush’s team bought all the positive sounding domains and also the negative ones so that they couldn’t be used to spread negative news or info about him or his running mate. If your brand is facing such a crisis, this might be something to be proactively looking into.

Website domains are becoming hot commodities in the Internet age. If you’re thinking your company will be making it big, you might want to secure the domains as quickly as possible.  To help you get started, Network Solutions has a couple of discount codes to help you secure your domain:

• $6.99 domain purchase for social media has a new coupon code: DOMSOCIAL1
• $6.99 domain transfer for social media has a new coupon code: DOMSOCIAL3

So go buy your domains now!

Source: Markitecture

We all need to get by with a little help from our friends. When you have a small business you get by with help from advisors and helpers. Advisors have a certain expertise and wisdom that you can rely on for guidance and mentorship. Helpers are those that can help with various tasks you don’t like doing or don’t have time for with your schedule. You might have a few already but you should always be on the look out for smart people to advise and help your business.

Entrepreneur.com sums up the challenge well “The good news is that there are many ways to get access to the expertise you may need. The bad news is that just the process of managing your advisors and advice can be a challenge, especially when the advice you get from one expert conflicts with that given by another. However, the most critical mark of a good advisor is his or her ability to provide essential information that enables you to make a qualified decision.”

The article goes on to say “Learn to recognize when you are facing a decision that you feel insufficiently informed to make, then find and contact advisors. There are experts in practically every field. Make your decision only after you feel confident in your grasp of the information.”

So your next question is probably, where do I find great advisors and helpers? We did some research and came up with some great resources.

Where Do You Find Great Advisors and Helpers?

Keeping it Local

There are great local resources and development agencies that can help you with your business. There are two that come to mind – SBDC and SCORE. SBDC stands for Small business Development Center and SCORE stands for Service Corps of Retired Executives. These offices have resources and people that are experiences in startup issues and small business challenges.

Getting Your Temp On

Getting temporary help is great and you can get it from agencies like Kelly Services and Manpower but you can also get them from universities in the form of internships. I personally worked with some of the local business schools to hire MBA students looking for great consulting projects to build their resume and affordable labor for me that can do complex analyst level work.

Finding Help Online

Granted, there are many great online resources for information on small business (like the one you are reading now) there are some web sites to find people with specific skills that would work remotely. Sites like elance.com and AssistU are great for specific task based help. I also love sites like Advisor.com and PartnerUp for searching for advisors

Parting Advice on When to Know You Need Advisors and Helpers

Closing this post, I would offer this from the same Entrepreneur.com article and sums it up nicely:

“There is one other point worth making here: Experts and advisors all have limitations, and differing sets of experiences and perspectives. Your job is to factor these elements into your decision-making process. For example, if you ask a patent attorney whether you should file a patent, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll say yes. On the other hand, a business advisor may suggest you forego the cost of a patent and get to market as quickly as possible, putting your available resources into marketing rather than intellectual property.

When it comes to conflicting advice, be willing to listen to what you may not want to hear. Ultimately, you’re the one who will be dealing with the consequences of your decisions. The most important thing to remember is that the decision is yours alone. If your advisor is unable to support your independence in this way, you may want to find another advisor.”

While we often talk about seeking funding from investors or by bootstrapping our startups, we must remember that not everyone in the world has the same luxuries as us in terms of funding. There are perhaps millions of new businesses emerging around the world, but while many are promising, they may eventually stumble into oblivion because of lack of funding. But that’s where Kiva comes into play.

Kiva is a great website started by Mark Flannery and his wife in 2004 devoted to providing microloans to up and coming businesses. No, not tech businesses, but across a variety of industries. Taken from their website, the organization started when both Flannery and his wife, Jessica, were visiting East Africa conducting impact evaluation surveys for Village Enterprise Fund and Matt filmed interviews with small business entrepreneurs. It was there that they saw and heard firsthand how small grants of only $100 – $150 had been used to build small businesses which could then support a family. Essentially it’s all about what they term as “peer-to-peer” microlending.

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiablecredit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of a wider range of financial services to the very poor.

In the five years since Kiva was founded, a total of over $117 million loans have been made to small businesses thanks to over 600,000 lenders. While you might think that simply giving money to a business you don’t know much about will reap no rewards, then you should know that Kiva has an astonishing return rate of 98.27 percent! Headquartered in San Francisco, Kiva is the world’s first online micro-lending platform and is heavily supported by celebrities and used by schools and other organizations around the world to help others in need.

Here’s how you can use Kiva to help a small business:

First, through microfinancing institutions in various countries around the world, these businesses seek out the funds. While you are apparently donating to Kiva, your money is being distributed through these microfinancing institutions – essentially placing Kiva in the role of a middleman. Once the institutions receive requests for funding, they’ll submit a profile to the Kiva system. If you’re interested in being a lender and supporting a business somewhere in the world, simply start loaning money through PayPal or a credit card. Money is then distributed to the entrepreneur and over time they will repay back the loan. The cycle then continues.

It should be noted that Kiva will currently only give an interest rate of 0% to lenders and the minimum amount that lenders can give is $25.

That’s it. The process of giving is simple and the reward is that you’ll help fund some really great companies. You can check out Kiva by clicking here.

I just came back from several networking events and the one question that I’m constantly asked is “who are you?”. So I tell them what I do. Then they ask me what company do I work for, to which I reply as well. But then here’s the interesting part…they ask me what my company does. And that, my friends, is the pitch that people are always paying attention to. So as you’re planning on getting your company noticed, what is the pitch you’re giving your network, investors, clients, strangers, etc? Just how are you framing your “elevator pitch”?

According to Scott Gerber from Entrepreneur.com, there are six (6) steps to creating the perfect pitch, especially when looking for investors:

1. Less is always more. Remember that your elevator pitch should not last any longer than 30 seconds. You have very few and precious moments with your “target” so don’t plan on dropping all your knowledge in as little time as possible. Instead, just be succinct enough to leave the pertinent information to entice them to want to find out more at a later time. According to Gerber, investors need to be confident that your business will attract and retain customers. If they don’t grasp your concept in a short time span, they may presume that customers won’t understand it either.
2. Never hypothesize. Execute, execute, execute. Investors don’t want to know theories or unproven facts. Show them that you have real figures and proof that you can actually make happen what you say. A company with cash flow, a track record and real-world experience has a better chance of getting investors than a business plan forecasting large returns.
3. Leave the hockey sticks on the ice. Don’t be nonsensical. Present realistic data and information. You can show them your 50,000 ft view, but don’t exaggerate or investors will lose interest. Show investors that you have a grasp on reality with three versions of financial projections: best case, moderate case and worst case.
4. Learn to love discount stores. Don’t be too conservative in your projections, but try and be as cheap as possible. Show that you’re fiscally responsible. Investors want you to be in a position where everything is on the line.
5. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your business won’t be either. Before you ask for hundreds of millions of dollars from your investors to help fund multiple ventures, Gerber suggests that you sit down and prove that you’ve actually got a strategy to work on the first venture. Show the investors that you’re serious and have the means and the skills to make your first venture a success and pay out. In other words, demonstrate that your business can crawl before you say it can walk.
6. Choose not to be the smartest person in the room. Don’t try and be the smartest person in the room. Instead, understand your limitations and bring in the appropriate help to address any weaknesses in the group. You can’t do everything by yourself so be prepared to bring in people you trust and are skilled in the areas you are not.

So how do you go and find the right investor? Well you should take a look at Guy Kawasaki’s thoughts from his book Reality Check on how you can attract the attention of investors you want – many of which will make sense.

First of all, do your homework before you approach any investor. You’re going to need to make sure that Sally Sue or John Doe actually invest in your industry. If they don’t, then you’re sure to be wasting their time and yours. Find out more information about what other investments they make and other things that will reinforce your belief that these are the right people – don’t pick them just because their name sounds familiar or they have a lot of money to give.

So how do you get introduced? Kawasaki believes that you can do so through a variety of ways – by a partner-level lawyer, a professor of engineering or through an executive of a company that is being funded by the investor you’re reaching out to. In an earlier post, I had a chance to hear straight from venture capitalists how they want to be contacted, and the similar belief amongst the VCs was that you needed to go through a referral source. The best way is to have someone close to the VCs make the introduction – going through a cold call might not be the best way to get your foot in the door.

In short, make sure that your elevator pitch to investors and interested parties is succinct, relevant, and factual. It should be addressed to the investors you truly think are relevant to your company after being introduced by a close associate.

Now pitch away.