6 Ways to Grow Your Small Business
November 23, 2010
When Fortune magazine interviewed several leaders of large and small firms, they gave a few eye-opening pieces of advice on how to grow a business. Check these out to determine whether any of their formulas could become growth-growing points in your business.
* Find an edge over competition. Look at your industry’s biggest cost and time constraints and focus on those areas of your business.
* Describe your business in 1-2 words. Own a phrase that illustrates your product or service. Then Google it to see if you have chosen the right one. A beverage company used “enhanced waters” for example.
* Focus on one measurable priority for your company, not a dozen. For 90 days, focus on one problem area of your business.
* Control your cash flow. Construct a business model that fuels your growth without the need for outside financing.
* Use blogs, white papers, YouTube and Twitter to align your marketing materials with the phrase you own.
* Make changes faster. The fastest-moving companies huddle daily to drive their priorities.
Why Your Company Needs a Social Media Marketing System in 2010
January 23, 2010
One-way, top-down communication does not work as well as in former days. Today, companies must create conversations with customers and deliver useful content at the moment their prospects, clients or constituents need it. Many firms will need to reinvent their marketing in 2010.
Marketers can’t push products on people. They have to think like journalists and create a dialogue with their audience to earn a prospect’s trust. Free or low-cost applications such as blogs and podcasts, in addition to social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have changed the old rules. In addition, free social networking applications can be used for managing your company’s reputation, conducting market research, monitoring your competitors’ efforts and collaborating with your colleagues. Twitter can also serve as a platform for your company’s customer service.
Ideal clients can now be reached with targeted messages that cost a fraction of the old expensive advertising campaigns. In addition, social media marketing and PR efforts often allow instant feedback and measurable results, so businesses can immediately see which marketing strategies are working for them and which ones are not. Read more
To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?
November 28, 2009
Some small businesses are hesitant to embrace social media. Blogging seems time consuming, Facebook scary or unknown. At the same time, old marketing strategies don’t seem to work any more.
Business owners may not always realize that they need to re-visit their marketing plan to create and adopt a marketing system to get results. The same principle can be applied to Social Media – do your research, learn from others and create a well thought-out Social Media Marketing Plan to implement your Social Media Marketing System and benefit from social networking.
During last couple of months I have been helping my clients research social networking opportunities for their organizations. They have been using Twitter and Facebook to listen and learn before they plan and create their own Social Media Marketing Systems. This is what we’ve learned:
- Make Twitter a part of your marketing strategy – Social Media Marketing System. Do your research and determine whether your business could use free social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook for market research, customer service and/or for reaching your target market.
- Improve your professional skills, products and services by paying attention to what your competitors, potential clients and current customers are raving or complaining about.
- Learn how to educate and inform your target audience, share information about the articles, products and opportunities that your followers/fans may find useful.
- Person handling tweets/posts/fan pages for your organization should be familiar with the web and web-based tools.
- Make it your goal to become an “informer” who has the potential to be a “trust agent” – someone who is an expert and has an ability to influence other people.
- You only have 140 characters for one tweet, use them wisely.
- Avoid words and phrases that may attract unwanted followers/fans.
- 100 loyal followers/fans/subscribers who look forward to reading your tweets/posts may be worth more than 1,000 random followers.
- Learn to use Twitter/Facebook/Blogs as your company’s online reputation management tool.
- Don’t waste your time if you don’t have a social networking strategy.
Are You Fatigued by Facebook and Twitter?
October 15, 2009
Facebook gave us a way to find old classmates and renew friendships, find clients and share ideas.
Email has given us a way to quickly conduct business or send silly stuff to co-workers and friends.
So now we have IM, text messaging, friends on Facebook, and constant communication by 140 characters or less on Twitter.
All of this messaging is great as it is supposed to bring us closer to our friends and find new ones, but if we aren’t careful, these interactions can harm our real-life relationships. Columnist Elizabeth Bernstein quite recently said that she is experiencing Facebook fatigue because loved ones are sending so many photos of their children or parties, forwarding funky quizzes, and posting dozens of jokes. And they are tweeting about their whereabouts and what they are doing at the present moment.
To improve our daily interactions, Bernstein says: Before posting an item, ask yourself if it’s something you would want one of your contacts to send to you. Reward people by responding to interesting messages.
While private blogs can be platforms for political ranting, it can be considered poor form on Facebook to constantly post your political opinions.
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!
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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.
Obama Turned Out To Be the Best Marketer
November 8, 2008
Here’s what I wrote in my blog post ‘Who would make the best small business marketer – Clinton, McCain or Obama?‘ in May:
“Senator Obama has the biggest potential to be a web savvy small business marketer. I can see him being successful at creating and delivering marketing messages to/for professional services firms. He is a very good speaker who does not get into too much detail (tactics), but understands his audience and can win over younger decision makers.”
As it turns out he did win over millions of young people by utilizing new technologies and creating vibrant online and offline communities.
Working Anywhere and Everywhere
October 21, 2008
Digital nomad is not a title or a profession. It represents the mindset and lifestyle of people who have chosen or allowed to break free from a cubicle and make their living working anywhere and everywhere. New technologies enable us to do so. One of my recurring nightmares now and then is a dream where I find myself working in a gray cubicle covered
with yellow sticky notes, eight pairs of eyes looking at me all at once. This dream motivates me to get back on my laptop and learn new software in addition to developing multitude of other new skills. Wikipedia states that “traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries.” Times are changing partially driven by corporate economies
of scale and societal circumstances. I see this trend from cubicle to home based work expand in the future across national economies both in developed and emerging markets.
Read more about Digital Nomads on digitalnomads.com.
Where Can I Get Web 2.0 for My Small Business?
October 6, 2008
Several small business owners have asked this question. Well, sometimes it’s hard to respond.
For me Web 2.0 is a mindset or a philosophy. It is a way of creating dialogs with your audiences via the world wide web. Everyone participating becomes a contributor. Finally there is a level playing field for like-minded individuals. Small business owners, hockey moms, pet lovers, etc. can become thought leaders and create their own communities if they have passion for a certain topic or field and they are willing and able to share their interest and knowledge.
We don’t have time for this knowledge sharing stuff and online networking some small business owners say. Could I just put up my website and update it once or twice a year? Yes, you can. But you may miss out.
Web 2.0 has opened new avenues for keeping up with global connections as well. I have been able to re-connect with people in different countries via social networking tools. It is amazing – they can get glimpse of my life and accomplishments by looking at my profile and I can see what they have been up to. I can see their current photographs and family life…and avoid asking embarrassing questions.
