Ideas for Business

Email marketing is commonly associated with the bigger or more successful companies in the internet community, but how do you think they got to be successful? That little extra contact with your potential clients will give you an extra boost in business.

How do you become successful in email marketing like the big businesses?

• Get personal. Reveal a bit about yourself in your emails, one detail at a time, to let your readers know you`re human.
• Be useful. Nothing gets deleted faster than an email asking for money, not when that is all it has to offer! Give out some helpful information and you`ll be rewarded with more clickthroughs.
• Don`t waste time. Long-winded emails are a waste of time. As are emails that have nothing to say. Don`t waste people`s time and make sure you only write when you have something to say.
• Keep learning. There`s never a good time to stop learning about email marketing. So keep reading about it, learning and testing the latest techniques and you`ll be good.

Email marketing can be a great boost to your business. Don`t assume it`s only for larger businesses, try it for yourself!

It seems like a lot of work to build up decent links and truthfully, link building can take up a lot of your time, so why not just buy the links? While those who have been online for some time know that this can be a death sentence for your search engine traffic, if you`re newer to the world of link building and SEO, you might not be aware of the issues surround paid links.

You see, it used to be just fine to buy links. People picked them up for a song left, right and center and they got a lot of great “Google juice” and sent their websites soaring through the search engine ranks. It was a time when it was extremely easy to beat out the competition simply by investing enough money in links.

Then Google became aware of what was happening and gave a warning, letting website owners know that they weren`t going to allow this. Very few people listened until there was what we call a “Google slap”. The top websites lost their PageRank if they had paid for links. There was a lot of chaos in the world of paid linking at that point and a short time later, even more people were Google slapped.

These days, most website owners are paranoid about buying links and for good reason. While it may seem like a faster, more efficient method of link building, it`s not a good idea to risk your traffic this way.

The Internet is quite an appetizing prospect for entrepreneurs. No matter where you work from, there are a few services that can make your business run more smoothly, and afford you more to time expand, rather than deal with mindless administration or problems when half-baked software breaks down.

1. Engage with new software

To change your business’ fortunes, new software is crucial. HTTP is what the web has been built with, but by upgrading to a brand new system, to Web 2.0 tools, user interfaces can look smarter, work faster, and catch the eye of the consumer who wants a more engaging shopping or consumer experience than just clicking through static pages, refreshing pages and having to navigate through tables of links to find what they are looking for. Software like Adobe’s Flex is an example of software that can make purchasing much more intuitive, consumer friendly, and better for business. The newer the software, the faster it works, and often, the cheaper it is to develop brand new applications - as you’ll see in the applications below.

2. Prosper

Kiva is a pioneering small charitable loans company that provides loans to third-world producers, which are subsequently paid back to the donors, and then can be paid out elsewhere. Prosper takes this micro-credit system and turns it: offering micro-credit loans for your business. If you’ve already got a successful business and want to manage loans from friends and family, or ask people to ‘bid’ to give you a loan, all with interest of course, then Prosper may be the place to find the cash injection. Peer lending has been hugely successful in the charity sector, and with a business incentive, and visible profiles of the businesses looking for loans, you can either use this as a way to use capital and exchange ideas with brand new businesses, or find your own money, without having to deal with any bank managers.

3. Campfire

Keeping in constant contact with your employees when running a virtual business, which is typically outsourced and fragmented across the globes, is crucial. With so many chat applications in use, Campfire offers one place to gather around. One of the key features is the ability to create password protected chats with clients, sharing media in real time. The application integrates well with 37signal’s other elegant software, like Basecamp. Campfire is described as “a godsend for groups”, which summarizes it nicely.

4. NetworthIQ

For the Web 2.0 businessman, award winning web application Networth IQ both keeps tracks of your finances, as well as your net worth. And for the competitive businesses owner, there’s even an option to compare your successes with people your age, or in the same industry sector.

5. Wesabe

As with many financial applications, Wesabe can integrate with your bank account, and create a report for you and your business which allows you to take better control of your business. Perfect for small start-ups, Wesabe also offers the ability to seek financial advice from fellow business owners, and talk money with people who understand the problems and risks involved in running a small business - perhaps worth signing up if only for the community involved.

6. Google Calendar

With so many people using Google for everything from email to blogging and photo sharing to document writing, it’s often easiest to use what people are already familiar with and stick to the free applications that integrate well with similar other free services. Google Calendar enables different calendars for different people, or even different clients, so that all of your employees, wherever they are, know who is meant to be doing what and when. This app makes it easy to keep on top of it all, assigning them task and changing the schedule, virtually.

7. Remember the Milk

A virtual office deserves virtual to do lists, or at least it makes sense to do use them. Rather than writing reams of to do lists for all of your projects, clients and workers, use Remember the Milk to do everything. The most integrated of all to do list clients, Remember the Milk can be shared with your contacts, placed onto a map, organized in every way you need, whilst maintaining the simplicity to get your work done, and your to do list clear.

8. LinkedIn

Virtual businesses need virtual business cards. LinkedIn is the place where you can advertise yourself, and you business, to people all around the world. Set up a profile and reaquaint yourself with old colleges, get recommendations from current workers and get introduced to a network of contacts in your field, all of whom you can allow to see your background, your expertise, and your company. Who needs a business card when you be linked to all these people digitally, automatically?

9. EyeOS

Eye OS, Eye Operating System, is a web-based operating system that allows you to create a virtual desktop that can be used wherever you are working. Like your Windows or Mac desktop, you can ensure that you always have your applications and your files with you wherever you are. Virtual business needs virtual space: EyeOS may provide just what you’re looking for.

10. Kayak

Even virtual businessmen need to travel, and since you probably aren’t spending someone else’s money, when you need to connect in the real world you’ll want to find the cheapest, fastest and most efficient way of getting there. Kayak does a lot of the hard work for you, finding cheap flights from over 140+ sites at once. With a clean interface and all the extras you need including hotels and car rentals. Kayak is the way to get where you need to go.

11. Sales Force

For Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, Sales Force is the market leader in providing marketing, sales and service, professionally running your business operations and ensuring business growth. Everything your business needs can be managed and outsourced to Sales Force.

12. Harvest

When working for clients, you want them to recognize how swiftly, or how comprehensively you’ve undertaken the work they’ve asked you to do, and how much you deserve a continued relationship. Harvest allows businesses to track time, log any expenses that you and your business incurs, and then allows you to invoice clients with a breakdown of exactly how the workflow proceeded. With nothing to install, all of your colleagues, virtual or sat next to you can use the interface. With smart desktop widgets and a strong emphasis on customer service, Harvest is a robust and simple way to conduct and manage business relationships.

Note from Lee:  GasPedal and the blog council have partnered to deliver another BlogWell event (this time in Chicago) focusing on case studies from large companies on the topics of blogging, social media and online community building. I am pleased to introduce a guest blog post from Tonja Deegan, winner of a free pass from TopRank, who was a media sponsor of the event. Enjoy! 

Liz Strauss, Amber Naslund, Tonja Deegan

A common thread that wove through the case study presentations at BlogWell was that the majority of the time, someone within a company took a chance, started something small online to make a connection and watched it grow.

For Allstate, Lizzie Schreier went to the company leadership with the idea to communicate with customers online, possibly through a forum. The leadership ended up placing bets that she wouldn’t be able to get approval from legal. She started small - the forum didn’t even focus on insurance - but eventually built the site into an active forum and now has help from another employee and an agency.

The Mayo Clinic also encountered naysayers. When Lee Aase proposed a YouTube channel with videos from the clinic and patients, people said, “Isn’t that where people put videos of squirrels skateboarding?” The company began first by offering mp3 files to media, moved to a corporate-branded space on YouTube and now has Flip recorders and a new sharing site just announced at the conference.

When H&R Block began experimenting with social media, they created a fictional character, Truman Greene, with several videos as the online fanatic for H&R Block. They quickly found that it did not generate the interest they were looking for compared to when they did what people expected them to do: answer tax questions.

In addition, all of the companies that I listened to also have corporate Twitter profiles (@mayclinic, @hrblock, @allstate, @uscoastguard). The willingness to test and adopt new technologies to further connect with customers and others is a common trait with those that really understand the power of the consumer.

Large and small brands in the audience asked questions that brands everywhere continue to ask: What if something goes wrong, what if it’s not approved, what if we get sued, what if we get made fun of, what if …  And the secret answer to those questions is to do what each company at BlogWell did when they tested online engagement, found out that it works and continue to spread it into more networks and technologies.

As Paula Drum at H&R Block said, ROI is “Risk of Ignoring” social media. When you nurture and communicate with your online community, your company will reap the rewards of brand recognition and increased brand awareness.

Tonja Deegan is the digital and social media director at Airfoil Public Relations and writes at:  http://cleartheair.airfoilpr.com.

Thanks for the great coverage Tonja!

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BlogWell - Growing an Online Community originally appeared on the Online Marketing Blog. © 2009. http://www.toprankblog.com

Blogging has become such a staple part of the internet now that it`s not uncommon to find that most people you meet either have their own blog or read one. You`ll be impressed at how much you will increase your traffic with the right blogging techniques.

So, just what are the right blogging techniques?

• Be consistent. Writing a post once randomly in a month isn`t going to bring in any visitors. If people know that you post every Tuesday and Thursday, however, they will anticipate your posts and show up.
• Be useful. Two lines with an affiliate link is not a good blog post, yet that`s precisely what many business blogs contain these days. Instead, make sure that you are giving readers something that can be genuinely useful.
• Create a community. Respond to the comments people leave on your blog. Leave interesting comments on other people`s blogs. Email those that you want to stay in touch with and build some relationships.

There`s a lot you can do to make sure your blog is a success. And of course, if your blog is successful, your business will be, too. The added SEO that will come about as a direct result of your blog will help our business grow, as well.

If you aren`t sure about blogging yourself, then consider hiring a ghostwriter to do it for you!