"We blog so you don't have to!"
Today’s consumers are smart, savvy, and more sophisticated than ever when it comes to buying things. The internet has made comparison shopping trivially easy — but it’s also opened the floodgates for all kinds of hazards: Spam websites, shady fly-by-night merchants, and shoddy knockoff products galore. The result is that if you’re lucky enough to … Read more
Recently I did a little math and calculated that I had written or edited some 15,000 blog posts in my career to date. That’s a mammoth number… and it’s taught me more than a few lessons about what to do and what not to do when writing a blog post for your business. Today I’m … Read more
Dale Carnegie said it best: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Attracting new customers and retaining existing ones requires more than simply pushing out marketing messages and waiting for results. Consumers are … Read more
You’ve seen them on Twitter and maybe even Facebook — they’re denoted by the pound sign, immediately followed by a term. Hashtags are tools used by Twitter users to ensure tweets are grouped with other tweets on the same subject. A tweet about issues relating to small business, for instance, might be followed by #smallbusiness. … Read more
Business owners have repeatedly heard about the importance of social media marketing. As anyone with a social media account has likely learned, however, some people appear to have misunderstood the message. Yes, social media marketing is important but, as with any other marketing campaign, it’s possible to overdo it and scare people off. Consumers have … Read more
Too often, company blogs can feel like a one-man show, with the same voice providing the same information to employees and potential clients over and over again. One way to break things up is to occasionally feature an expert on your blog. By choosing a person who has experienced in your field — and isn’t … Read more
Just when we thought our attention spans couldn’t get any shorter, along came micro-blogging. In 140 characters or less, people can tell readers all about how great dinner tasted or what they think of the latest political scandal. So why, in the breakneck social networking world, would people take the time to read 300 to … Read more
Internal newsletters have long offered a great way to share information inside a company. Published by employees, for employees, these publications can help workers feel more involved in the business’s day-to-day operations, boosting overall morale. But as attention has shifted toward the internet, the company intranet has taken the place of those newsletters. Enter the … Read more
An endless stream of articles outline ways to maximize the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. Rarely, however, do you hear anyone speak highly of the ROI they get from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other forms of social media. In short, it’s a lot of work for little reward. Who cares if you have 3,000 … Read more
Many small businesses gear their websites to the customer next door, keeping in mind the local community. But in a nation that is becoming increasingly multilingual, can small businesses afford to assume everyone who views their site or sets foot in their storefront speaks English? The U.S. Census says no. In 2009, 20 percent of … Read more