Edgy Presentations Add More Power to Your Social Media Marketing
August 11, 2009
I started looking for alternative presentation tools for one of my always traveling friends and found Zoho Show . It is completely free for personal use, presenters can access their presentations from anywhere. You can export your slideshow to PowerPoint if needed, share your presentation online and track how many people have viewed it.
Presentation sharing site Slideshare is growing in popularity, users can upload Word documents, text files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files as well as files created with Open Office (odt) and access them from the Slideshare site when presenting. There is a 100 MB maximum allowed upload file size limit.
OpenOffice 3 Impress is a free software for creating effective multimedia presentations. You can use 2D and 3D clip art, special effects, animation, and high-impact drawing tools. It is possible to save your slideshow as a PowerPoint file.
Google Presentations belong to the Google Docs and Spreadsheets family. One advantage that Google Presentations has over PowerPoint is the fact that all steps – the presentation creation, development, viewing and sharing can take place online.
Sliderocket is another emerging web-based tool. Users can incorporate video and publish their presentations online or embed them on their websites. Their free plan provides 250 MB of storage.
And yes, you have to learn presentation design from Garr Reynolds.
Spice up your presentations, spread your ideas!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4bd8bd50-a13d-4bb1-917a-eb9669a68a51)
Viral Marketing Flourishes in Recession
August 6, 2009
Image by luc legay via Flickr
Many small businesses have cut their advertising budgets and put their marketing efforts on hold. Their satisfied customers, social networks, and happy business partners therefore become their main promoters. As this is the year of reinventing, recycling and repositioning for many small businesses, let’s think about the best ways to help the above mentioned groups spread the good word for your business.
- Give away information, products or services within target groups in your social network.
- Make it effortless for your best customers to provide information about you and your product (hand out business cards, promotional materials, etc.)
- Offer products and services that can easily fit the needs of different companies – from small to very large.
- Understand common motivations and behaviors – find common needs – create mutually beneficial partnerships.
- Utilize your existing social networks, become a “go to person” on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as well as in your local Chamber of Commerce.
- Take advantage of other people’s networks to gain exposure for your products and services.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=596f6b25-9fc5-4404-8013-a5a50afec141)
12 Rules for Being a Great Marketer
April 8, 2009
I found a great post by Steve Tobak on the BNET site. Here’s what he tells us:
12 Rules for Being a Great Marketer (Part I, Rules 1 – 6)
- Sales is your friend. The whole “natural tension between sales and marketing” thing is a dysfunctional crock. Sales owns the customer relationship. As a marketer, one of your key functions is to facilitate sales’ ability to sell your products. You need each other and your goals can and should be aligned.
- Be patient with your boss and peers. Not coincidentally, strong leaders and managers often tend to be controlling individuals. That means they can become easily frustrated with things they don’t understand, i.e. marketing. Be patient and pay attention to their feedback.
- Remember, you have way more customers than you think. The executive staff, your peers, product development, manufacturing, sales, finance, HR, employee communications, they’re all stakeholders in the marketing function. Treat them as such.
- Bond with the development and product people. This goes way beyond educating and teaching. These are very smart people with a strong, vested interest in what you plan to do with their product. Bond with them, listen to them, understand their issues and concerns, make them partners in your “process;” it’ll pay off big-time.
- Teach, teach, teach. Successful marketers are strong communicators and educators. Spend as much time teaching and educating internally as you do networking and meeting with customers externally. Again, it’ll pay off.
- Measure and communicate results. The biggest slam on marketing is that it’s an expense black hole with no metrics to measure results. Be disciplined. Spend 10 percent of your budget on metrics for key programs and take the time to communicate results – both good and bad – to stakeholders. Do it.
Collaboration is Key in Virtual Communications
March 27, 2009
I am always looking for good web-based collaboration tools as I constantly need to collaborate virtually. That’s how I found Onehub, this tool is not simply for collaboration, it can be used as an FTP replacement. With a free account you can only set up one hub, where you basically can upload 1 GB of files. Your hub can include calendars as well in addition to discussion boards, task lists, images, RSS feeds and video.
Paid accounts are available too – from $19 per month up to $249 per month. Details are available on the Onehub website.
Central Desktop is a great collaboration and project management platform. It has too much power for a solopreneur, but is great for teams and workgroups to share information and communicate with other members. Paid accounts start from $25 per month.
How Should You Improve Your Web Presence in 2009?
March 25, 2009
Static websites are out. Make sure your website is interactive to keep visitors coming back. Small businesses need to improve their online marketing efforts to ensure their websites meet visitors’ needs and expectations.
Add customer reviews, feedback and testimonials. If you are selling products online, provide customers the ability to provide product ratings and reviews. It enhances the user experience and gives prospective buyers the confidence to buy as well as leads to customer loyalty. So, if a customer was happy with their purchase from your online store, make sure you add feedback to your website.
E-newsletter: An e-newsletter is a must-have tool that makes it easy and cost effective to communicate with a mass audience. First, make sure you have a content rich e-newsletter. Make sure you are promoting it. Add an e-newsletter sign-up form to your home page and give visitors proper incentive to subscribe. If you don’t have a large email list yet, no worries. Add a forwarding feature to the newsletter so your subscribers can forward your newsletter to their friends, and colleagues.
RSS feeds: Forrester Research, in its “RSS 101 for Marketers” report, said, “RSS is a powerful tool that marketers should test and deploy to proactively maintain relationships with their customers.”
RSS is a technology that enables users to “subscribe” to content from websites without providing an email address. When the content is updated, users automatically get notified and their “RSS Reader” pulls this content directly from the source. Since the content is pulled instead of “pushed”, marketers don’t have to worry about their message being caught in spam filters.
Have a blog on your website? Integrating multiple RSS feeds into your website allows visitors to read the content that’s most important to them.
SEO is making its way into marketing plans and budgets. By focusing on SEO, businesses have the potential to increase their position in search engines, increase traffic to their websites, and as a result, drive revenue. Begin your SEO efforts by ensuring that all of your web site content is optimized with the keywords your prospective customers will use to find you. Relevant content is the key to achieving higher rankings in search engines. Don’t know which key words are right for your business or how to begin optimizing your content. Use Wordtracker.
Consistent message throughout your web content: Websites need to be updated with new content regularly to keep customers coming back. Focus on message consistency. Make the message in your email campaign cohesive with the message on your website. All forms of communication including your website, e-newsletter, collateral and advertising should consistently deliver the same message in order to maximize the potential of your marketing efforts.
Rethink Your Small Business Marketing
March 25, 2009
Email marketing – Hire an expert if you feel that you are not cut out to manage databases and lists. Find a reliable vendor to work with. Constant Contact and Vertical Response are good.
Direct Mail – How effective is your Direct Mail marketing? Are you measuring your results? Anything printed has to be carefully thought out as you may be wasting money, time and natural resources. Maybe you could upload most of your marketing materials to your website and switch to email marketing campaigns.
Discounts – Are you offering special extras, online only content or freebies? Consider online coupons, try Intellogy.
Viral Marketing – Are you creating compelling content that is picked up and shared person-to-person via social networking sites?
Have you considered creating your company profile on Merchant Circle or Facebook?
What Can Small Business Owners Learn From Obama
January 20, 2009
1. Leadership skills – he put together a great team for his campaign and motivated his people all the way.
2. Never give up, believe in yourself, even if you have no reason to do so, polls did not always predict Obama as a winner.
3. Presentation skills – Obama is one of the most eloquent and self-confident speakers I have ever seen. Practice!
4. Social media marketing – get away from ads to building online communities, just like Obama did.
5. Viral marketing – get everyone talking and singing about you. Where are you now, Obama girl?
6. If you can’t get to young consumers otherwise, send them a text message or an email- speak their “love language”.
7. Go to gym and play some ball – relieve your stress, basketball plays big part in Obama’s life.
8. Buy some nice clothes and look sharp – I loved Obama’s suit on election night!
9. Supportive spouse or partner is always a blessing – keep your spouse and partner happy. Have you noticed the smile on Michelle Obama’s face?
10. Humble beginnings don’t always mean humble lives – with hard work, passion and dedication small business owners can beat the odds, just like Obama did.
Father of Accounting
December 29, 2008
Well, bookkeeping can be inspiring…..Let’s talk about numbers before 2008 ends…Henry Ford is often looked up to as the father of mass production; doctors have their Hippocrates, and philosophers have Plato. But who is the father of accounting?For a long time, accountants did not recognize the name of Luca Pacioli although about the same time Columbus was discovering America, Luca was writing the directions for double-entry bookkeeping. Pacioli was the first person to describe double-entry accounting, also known as the Venetian method. This new system was then state of the art, it revolutionized economy and business. Pacioli’s directions became the most widely read mathematical work in all of Italy, and his work was one of the first books published on the Gutenberg press.
The fact that his book “Summa de Arithmetic, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita” was illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, added needed credibility. (Where is Leonardo now when I am planning to write a book?)
Small Business Lessons Learned in 2008
December 28, 2008
1. Not very profitable, but time – consuming demanding customers tend to refer prospects and customers who reflect their style and values.
2. Customers who value you and what you do are the best referral sources.
3. Set boundaries for your customers from the outset, tell them “This is how we work…”, otherwise they will create their own boundaries.
4. Pay attention when your prospect complains about being treated badly by the rest of the world including partners, vendors, consultants and former customers – you may become the next entrepreneur they will complain about.
5. If you are a coach or consultant, try to avoid customers who have never worked with a consultant, unless they show sure signs of their willingness to learn and implement new things.
6. Social networking is important, but prioritize – plan your activities and their frequency, otherwise social networking becomes a burden.
7. Get to know your associates, subcontractors and business partners before you commit to long-term projects – mavericks may be crucial to changing this world, but they may not always contribute to helping you achieve your goals.
8. Become a frequently improving, always up-to-date resource for other small business owners and your customers.
9. Reward your best customers, subcontractors and business partners.
10. If you are very driven, results oriented, nimble and forward looking – don’t take on customers who are not.I am sure that 2009 will be a year of re-evaluation, reinvention, recycling and repurposing as we all try to find smarter cost-effective ways of living and conducting business. Will small business owners see a light in the end of a tunnel in 2009?
Small Business Advice, Found at Barnes and Noble
December 22, 2008
Our family likes to hang out at Barnes and Noble. I am happy my kids still prefer books to video games. Today we stopped at our favorite hangout again. While my husband and kids enjoyed delicious hot chocolate and cookies, I checked out some business books I had not seen before, including Small Business Bible: Second Edition by Steven D. Strauss.
Marketing to small business owners differs from marketing to non-profit organizations, but here it was, black on white, the list of suggestions to keep in mind when dealing with small business owners:
Small business owners buy when the pains get too great to bear.
You have to put your product or services in front of the owner again and again – when the time of pain comes – you will be the one he/she remembers.
Small business owners don’t want to be bothered – so get down to business and benefits.
Small busineess owners don’t want to be sold, therefore your job is to educate them, without a heavy hand. Lead them to the water – when they are ready, they will drink form your well.
Time and money are huge considerations – explain how your product and service saves time and money as well as makes your prospect’s life easier.
Small business owners dream of reducing the risk. Show them that your product or service carries little risk.
