POST CATEGORY : Marketing

3 Must-Watch TED Talks For Small Business Success

TED Talks are taking the business world by storm. Short for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, TED itself is an annual conference that brings together leaders from these three industries to share their expertise with the crowd.

Past events have featured speaking appearances by top executives from companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and J.J. Abrams have also spoke at these conferences.

3 Must-Watch TED Talks For Small Business Success

So what can you take from a TED Talk? Plenty. Here are three success lessons small businesses can learn:

1. A Social Media Presence is More Than a Profile

Several of the more recent TED Talks have been focused on social media – surprise surprise.…

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What Social Media Metrics Matter for Your Local Business

Local businesses tend to understand the inherent importance of metrics, but when it comes to social media platforms, it can be confusing to figure out what’s most important. Perhaps part of the difficulty with social media platforms is they provide so much information to businesses it can be hard to determine what to focus on.

what social media metrics matter and why

Unfortunately, a common response when overwhelmed is to become indecisive and not take action. Therefore, in this post, I’m going to share specifically what metrics you should pay the most attention to and why.

Your Facebook reach. You can see the impact each of your Facebook posts has had with this metric.…

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3 Video Marketing Tips For Small Business

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a moving picture may be worth 10,000 views? While that may be a stretch, the value of online video marketing for small businesses is real – if production and promotion are approached strategically.

One of the biggest difficulties small businesses face in developing an online video presence is the dollars – so many entrepreneurs scratch their head at the cost of video production for online marketing. Yet, beyond these misconceptions exists a video reality – developing an online video marketing strategy can be a cost effective way to increase brand awareness, and maybe even generate leads.…

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Tips to Reconvert Leads (and Why It Really Matters)

Your website is out marketing your local business 24/7, right? If it’s doing a good job, you’re getting a lot of visitors. With a good call to action, hopefully a fair majority of your visitors are taking an action on your website.

As positive as any action a visitor takes on your website is, a simple visit to your site does not make this individual a solid lead. Instead, you have the opportunity to re-convert this individual (or in other words, convert him or her). After a number of the right interactions with your site, this individual begins to develop into what could be a solid lead.…

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Three Key Steps To Starting a Web-Based Business

keys tip to starting a web-based businessAs an online marketing specialist, I’ve seen too many online businesses go bust due to poor planning. Trust me, you don’t want to blindly dive into the world of online business.

If you don’t know what you’re doing from the get-go, it doesn’t take long to lose your investments. These three steps will help you on your way.

1. Research your market carefully.

Whether you plan to sell a product or service, you must be sure there’s opportunity to turn a profit in your specific online market. For example, my boss initially wanted to start an insurance brokerage “” until he realized that thousands of individual insurance companies were already vying for the same customers online.…

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5 Ways To Use Google+ For Business

5 Ways To Use Google+ For Business

Google Plus is not only for social communication but has proven to be an effective tool for business. Whether it is used in cost reduction efforts or to save time, Google Plus has numerous features designed to improve business productivity and efficiency. Businesses should try Google Plus to determine how the tool can facilitate business growth.

1. Google Plus Hangouts for Video Conferencing

Google Plus Hangouts allows users to collaborate and meet with remote clients and employees. A face-to-face meeting is often more personal than just the phone. Google Plus Hangouts will facilitate videoconferencing when business people cannot reach a central location for a meeting due to budget constraints, schedules or flight delays.…

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Top 7 Gmail Tips and Tricks

Top 7 Gmail Tips and Tricks

As a loyal Gmail user for many years, I have watched Google’s golden child evolve into an incredibly efficient and functional interface. Most of the savvy user “hacks” from the good old days have now been built right in to Gmail, but this old dog is certainly able to learn new tricks.

Here are the top 7 ways to improve your Gmail experience, from Labs and other add-ons to hidden features and hacks.

1. Remove ads with Gmelius

Gmail’s text banner advertising is fairly non-intrusive, but sometimes the ads displayed are so similar to the email you are reading or writing, it’s just plain creepy.…

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How Could Going Green Benefit Your Small Business?

The reasons to go green are often pitched as necessary changes for the continued existence of the world with growing populations and pollution. While not wrong, going green often comes with a stigma of raising costs of business, and in an unstable economy it can seem dangerous to go through any dramatic change in doing business.

How Going Green Could Benefit Your Small Business

Here are some examples of ways going green can save you money and be good for business, all while helping the environment.

Any PR is Good PR, but Positive PR is Better PR

While it may seem like a bad way to think about going green, the fact is that it can easily turn into a great marketing campaign.…

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What Is Zurker And Do You Need To Know About It?

Not one to miss out on an opportunity to stay in the loop with all things social media, I have decided to keep a very close eye on new social networking site Zurker. Since the name first started circulating around in February, there has been much speculation and interest in the new start-up and it has only continued to grow.

Zurker

The name Zurker will frequently come up in conversation or I’ll stumble across another article on my internet travels.   I can safely say that I am both curious and fascinated in Zurker. Here’s why:

Zurker is owned by their members

The first thing that comes to mind is some sort of secret members society.…

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Local Business – Only 1.3% of Fans Actively Engage on Facebook

Only 1.3% of Local Business Fans Actively Engage on Facebook You read that title right. Of the millions and millions of users on Facebook, a new study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that almost 99% of Facebook fans do not engage with the brands they follow.

The study recently published by AdAge selected the top 200 Facebook brands to track over the course of six weeks and studied how many likes, shares, comments, tags and posts occurred for each. The result was that only 1.3% of fans actively engage. That number drops even further to only .45% when you remove the new “˜likes’ from fans.

At first glance, this number might catch you a bit off guard; but is this really that much of a surprise?…

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