Ideas for Business

Podcasts are a handy way to connect with your clients or potential clients, but many small business owners aren´t sure how about starting with podcasts. It´s really a great idea, though and one that visitors to your website will enjoy. In fact, many more people are likely to subscribe to a podcast than to a blog!

To make your podcasts even better, here are a few tips.

5 Podcast Tips

• Keep it short. While some podcasts of an hour do well, the majority of people simply don´t have much time to listen to you, so keep your podcast below 30 min. to attract more listeners.

• Make it useful. No one wants to listen to chitchat on a regular basis, though there is certainly room for this in a business podcast. Offering information and tips that your listeners can use will keep them coming back.

• Speak clearly. If you are normally a fast talker, it might take some practice for you to get to the point where you can speak nice and clearly so everyone can understand you.

• Plan it out. You don´t need an exact script, but having a plan for your podcasts is a good idea to keep you from getting drastically off track.

• Watch the noise level. If you are recording at home, make sure you find a quiet room to do so. Phones ringing, kids yelling and the TV blaring is not only distracting to you, it can lower the quality of the podcast.

Podcasts don´t have to be very complicated. You can simply record a 15 minute one to your computer and put it up for your website visitors to listen to. As long as you keep it short and informative, with a good dose of your own personality, everything should go just fine.

For anyone who has read the stereotypical blog, an online journal, blogging for business seems a bit silly. However, while blogging has many different faces, and one of those is most definitely personal, that doesn´t mean it is any less effective for promoting your business. In fact, blogging is a great way to help your business grow for a variety of reasons.

Why Business Blogging is Great

• It´s cheap. You won´t find such a great method of publicity for next to nothing anywhere else!

• You become an expert. When you are writing daily or several times a week on a specific topic, people come to recognize you as an expert in that field and you´ll have more credibility for your business.

• Search engines will love you. It´s a well-known fact that blogs are a big deal for search engines who just love frequently updated material. With all the posts you´ll be putting out, you can be sure that you´ll rise through the ranks faster than just a website.

• Build connections. There´s nothing like a blog to create connections throughout the industry. You link to websites and blogs that interest your readers and others link to you. It can be a huge boost for your publicity.

• Create a community. People who trust you are far more likely to buy from you, so using your blog comments to create a community can really help increase sales and lets you make new friends, too.

Blogging for business is definitely a good idea. It is a very easy method of connecting with potential clients and it costs virtually nothing, depending on where you host your blog. If you haven´t already started a business blog, I would highly recommend doing so. You´ll be amazed at the difference.

I recently updated my website, Small Business Mavericks and wanted to let you know, so you can check out the new features.

First of all, if you go to the main page, you´ll notice that there is a free ebook available, the Business Owner’s Guidebook to Website Design and Promotion. This is a great book that we are presenting because it can really help you turn your business website into a functioning sales site. If you have had any interest in making your existing website better or if you are still thinking about setting up a business website, the Business Owner’s Guidebook to Website Design and Promotion ebook can guide you through the process. Since it´s free, you have absolutely nothing to lose!

The other change has been to the Website Design and Promotion page on the site (see a trend here? Time to start thinking about getting your website up and running and promoting your business!). I would suggest that you stop by and check it out, get an idea of how we can help you. There is plenty of information on this webpage that could be very important for the future of your small business website.

While I am presently an offline/online media relations guy, my background spans a variety of media and tactics. As such, I have always been fascinated with the phenomena of Superbowl advertisements. What other event allows you to generate buzz simply by making a media buy?

When it comes to search, it is nearly useless to play Monday morning quarterback with Superbowl advertisements. Whether Budweiser had a funnier ad than FedEx is not necessarily relevant to our world. But in order to determine whether companies maximized their $2.7 million investment, it is important to assess the lasting impact on searches for their products.

In a trend that is sure to continue, many companies endeavored to drive traffic to their website in hopes of generating online buzz. Godaddy.com was certainly the most explicit about this tactic, sending viewers online to catch a racy “forbidden” ad featuring NASCAR sensation Danica Patrick.

An immediate analysis would have declared Godaddy a winner, with two million hits to their website immediately following their advertisement. Unfortunately, the hype didn’t last. Disappointment with the not-so-racy-as-advertised advertisement turned into negative buzz, and nobody is talking about the ad today.

Even if the end product had been more effective, how would it have helped Godaddy? One of the benefits of purchasing a Superbowl spot is that people search for their favorite ads the next day. Thus, Godaddy will become more closely associated with Danica Patrick. It is not clear to me how this drives their business model, which is to sell domain registration services.

When it comes to failure to capitalize on post-game searches, however, Gatorade stole the show with an absurd ad featuring a dog drinking out of a dish. In addition to being confusing and devoid of a punch line, the ad could only compel you to search for “dog bowl”, or “dog drinking” to try to find the ad. Unless Gatorade is doing battle with Petsmart, this represents a wasted opportunity. Basic rules of brand compliance apply to the search world as well.

In fact, I would argue that the night emerged with only one clear victor. Tide’s “Talking Stain” ad, which featured a shirt stain literally drowning out a prospective employer’s list of accomplishments, was a masterpiece. Entertaining enough to be memorable, and smart enough to speak to a male audience, the ad was hailed as a smart, brand-savvy winner.

The sheer quality of the ad generated continues to drive Online searches, and the search engine path to finding it aligns with Tide’s business model here. Anyone unfortunate enough to need a search for “shirt stain” in Google will see the ad on the first page of searches. Happen to have an interview coming up? Want to know how to fix that nasty stain out of your fancy suit? A search for “stain Interview” yields numerous references to the Tide Stain Stick. Quite a feat considering Spray n’ Wash has had a similar product on the market for quite some time.

In short, the campaign plays into the way people truly interact with the web.

5,500 customers have taken their hand at crafting their own talking stain ads, via an online contest sponsored by Tide and powered by YouTube. That’s 5,500 forceful brand advocates with strong communication skills. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of YouTube clicks on the ad itself, the official parody site has become one of the top 50 most subscribed channels on YouTube, with nearly 500,000 clicks on the top ten videos alone.

Is it selling Tide Sticks? You bet it is. The pack of six Tide Sticks is the number one selling stain remover on Amazon, and outsells even the brand’s familiar powder detergent.

Given Tide’s recent success, rest assured that companies will endeavor to emulate the model. Expect silly viral campaigns, contests and the like, to abound in the wake of the 2009 Superbowl as agencies look for ways to justify tremendous financial investments in their work.

My prediction: The Patriots win, and most of these companies fail because they have yet to understand how people interact with brands online.

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Instant messaging has opened up a whole new type of networking. You don´t have to be face to face, but you can talk in real time. Often, you can even choose to speak audibly to the other person or use a webcam to make the experience more personal. This can be invaluable for meeting with other people and networking, especially if you hold a conference chat with several people at once.

However, instant messaging isn´t always a good idea. Here are the good points, first.

• You can carry on a conversation, almost like you would in real life.
• Links are easily shared by simply copying and pasting.
• You can set up shared folders to send files back and forth.
• It´s free to network with people around the world.

When is instant messaging a bad idea? Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject.

• If you aren´t careful, IM can take up all your time.
• It´s easy to get chatting about Paris Hilton or something equally unproductive!
• Time differences can make this a very awkward way to meet up.
• You may not want some people to know that you are online at times.

Instant messaging for networking can be a great way to go, but only if you manage your time well. Don´t spend hours chatting about the weather. If you are an IM addict, you may find it useful to set time limits, such as only allowing yourself to chat at certain times of the day. Find a way to manage it and turn it off if you find yourself distracted. Networking should be something that helps your business, not something that takes you away from it.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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