All Entries Tagged With: "small business"

Blog Marketing 101 For Small Businesses

You may think that this downward trending economy is not a good time for blog marketing, but it’s actually the best time in the world to start a blog and consistently communicate with your target audience. There are several good reasons beside “it’s a cheap form of marketing” pitch. Here are some other good reasons why blog marketing is so effective and that you should be doing it right now:

• The economy won’t always be sour – True. What goes up comes down and what comes down goes up. When the economy is popping again your blog will be aged, seasoned, and well developed. You will have established yourself as an authority in your niche and have built real staying power.
• You need the content – Blog marketing is content. Every time you post a new blog entry you are adding new content to your website. More content means more search engine mojo.
• You are the authority, so act like one! – People love to do business with authority figures. If you don’t have a blog then you’ll have a more difficult time establishing yourself as an authority.
• Your competition has a blog – Blog marketing is no longer an option. If your competition is doing it then you should be doing it too. Otherwise, you’ll fall behind in the search engines and never catch up.
• It’s fun watching the results – Like seeing success appear before your very eyes? Then start a blog. It’s like magic!
• It’s a link popularity contest – Link popularity is very important and a good off-site blog can help you build more links faster.

There are six reasons to start your blog marketing strategy today. How many more do you need? Find out why blog marketing is the best thing to do right now.

How To Ruin Good Blogging Advice

I found a great article about blogging online. I agreed with every word. Up until the last paragraph. It really was a beautiful article. Clear, sound advice. Then, the author made one huge mistake. I mean, HUGE. Here’s the article minus the mistake:

Blogging For Small Business – How to Build Your Reputation

By Barry Deen

Blogs have taken the internet by storm. More and more people are setting up blogs, and in the most part they die off within their first year, before they pick up any momentum. Most people set up blogs to build their reputation, sell products and get traffic to sell ads.

Although blogs have been around for a while, many small businesses are still not taking advantage of all the benefits a small business blog can provide to your bottom line.

* Creates awareness about your service / product

Many businesses have great, innovative products – especially in the technology sector. A major problem small businesses run into is getting the word out about their product on a small marketing budget. Creating a blog will create awareness about your product and ultimately drive sales.

* Builds your reputation as a subject matter expert

If you are an expert in your field, it is very beneficial to write about what you do and how you do it. The quality of your content is key. It may seem counter-intuitive to give away your “secrets” – however most people will find your articles because they are not the experts and are looking to learn.

* Strengthens your Search Engine Optimization strategy

The better quality articles you write, the more likely it is that other people will link to your articles. Link popularity is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Additionally, with correct code structure, you can create an internal cross linking strategy that will drive your PageRank higher.

This is all great advice. I don’t disagree with a single word. A blog is perhaps the most powerful marketing tool any small business owner can employ. If you can write then it’s a great free tool. If you can’t write and you need to hire a ghostwriter then it’s a low-cost tool that you can work to your advantage.

But the writer of this great article then went on to give some very poor advice. What was that? Here it is in all its pristine glory:

These are some of the benefits of blogging for small business. Setting up a blog is very cheap, often times free (www.blogspot.com or www.wordpress.com) and all you have to risk is your time.

Folks, I would not set up a business blog on a free host. You lose all control of your content that way. I have seen people set up 10 blogs at WordPress.com and lose it all overnight because one person made a spam report. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s spam. If WordPress or Blogger executives think it is spam then they can, and will, take it down. You lose it all.

Instead, spend $10 to buy a domain name that you have control over. Set up a WordPress blog on your domain name and write to it every day. That is the best SEO you will ever have and it will only cost you $10 plus the cost of hosting, which is usually no more than $60 per year.

The above article was written by:

Barry Deen is President & CEO of Web Strategy Canada and one of the top affiliate marketing specialists in Canada. For information on how to make money online, checkout http://www.makemillionsathome.ca For information on Barry Deen and his company, Web Strategy Canada, visit http://www.web-strategy.ca

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Deen

To learn more about business blogging contact a qualified blog consultant today.

Are Blog Carnivals Effective?

As a provider of commercial blog content we’ve never had an interest in blog carnivals. We didn’t need to. Our focus was on SEO and lead generation. But we’ve noticed that Caroline Melberg at Small Business Mavericks is hosting a blog carnival on her blog.

We hope Caroline’s effort goes well. While we’ve never taken an interest in blog carnivals ourselves, perhaps this will open up doors for some of our clients who want to participate in a business blog. The title of Caroline’s blog carnival is Gonzo Business Carnival. You can read the rules on Caroline’s blog, but in a nutshell, if you written any blog posts about business then you quality to enter.

Our thoughts on this is you can’t lose. Even if nothing comes of the blog carnival and you enter, you still get a link back to your website and the possibility of increased traffic. While this is what we’d call untargeted marketing, that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective marketing. We’re open to it until we see the results. Meanwhile, we encourage you to think about participating.

Blog & Mobile Marketing: How Mom & Pop Took On Pizza Hut And Won

(Source) “While our major competitors have either mobile ordering or text ordering, we’re the first to offer both nationally. When you use Total Mobile Access, a hot and delicious Pizza Hut pizza is just a click or a text away.”

Now, I found this interesting. Regular readers of this blog a few days ago saw us discussing an article by Gene Marks at BusinessWeek in which he said small businesses don’t need mobile marketing (among other things, including a blog). Well, how does Gene propose that these small business owners compete with the likes of Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut?

If you were around back in the 1980s you’ll remember that Wal-Mart drove many small business retailers out of business just by opening up locations in their neighborhoods. Smaller businesses couldn’t compete with Wal-Mart’s low prices and availability of a wide variety of products. Now, because Pizza Hut is willing to embrace 21st century marketing, small towns run the risk of having no choice when it comes to ordering pizza. Their only option will be Pizza Hut. That is, unless the small town business owner gets with the program and stops marketing like it’s 1999.

Internet marketing is not as difficult to understand as some make it out to be. Just picture this: Mom & Pop Pizza, across the street from the local Pizza Hut, which has been a staple of Rural Small Town, Texas for 20 years because of it’s handmade pizza dough and real Italian-style pizza, decides to add a blog to its 5-page website. Previously, the website consisted of a home page, an About Us page, a page that consisted of the full menu of items (a favorite among the local population), a page for the kids, and the Contact Us page where people would go for the phone number when they called in their order. But Mom & Pop decide to upgrade their website.

Among the upgrades are:

• An interactive blog
• A mobile ordering button on the blog’s sidebar
• And a mobile ordering button on every page of the company’s website

That’s it. Because the company’s owners took the time to understand SEO, local mobile phone users and passers through can easily find their website, read their blog detailing the process the family uses to make its pizzas (along with many other fun and interesting facts about the community), and call in their pizza from their mobile phone on their way over. Because of modern technology, Mom & Pop just became more competitive without losing its small town family charm. Not bad for science fiction. Except it isn’t fiction.