Ideas for Business

When it comes to marketing your small business website, there is no one right way or a single wrong way. There are effective and ineffective ways. What we try to do here on the Small Business Mavericks blog is to give you an overview of the online marketing options available to you and let you choose the ones that will be most effective for your business. Since every business, and every small business website, is different, they all require different marketing strategies to maintain an effective online marketing campaign.

For many small businesses, a simple strategy of blogging and article marketing can be very effective. For others, you might be better off with an intensive PPC campaign. Or you may require a strong social media marketing effort. But almost all online marketing should begin with a well-optimized website and move out from there.

Even after building your small business website, you can probably benefit from all of the above marketing strategies. But your budget may stand in the way of performing some of the tasks you want to accomplish. That happens. The important thing to keep in mind for any small business is to work within your budget to design the most effective online marketing strategy for you. If you need help with this, we’re here to be your guide.

How agile is your marketing?  Do you have layer upon layer of approval processes, committees, lawyers, and executives who need to sign off on every piece of external communication before it goes out?

If yes, your business is structured for a pre-Internet world, and unfortunately this means you will always be at a disadvantage compared to agile competitors designed to take advantage of a connected society.  An inescapable truth is the web rewards companies (and people) that are nimble.

People interact deepest with thoughts and ideas that have character and personality.  And if there is one thing that removes this, it is the superfluous layers that design by committee creates.  It rips the personality from content piece by piece as it passes though each filter, and is the antithesis of agility and what makes for compelling communications.

With social media topping the most popular digital marketing tactics of 2009, there are many challenges and opportunities for marketers.  Concurrently one of the largest challenges and opportunities is the idea of being agile, a quality that defines brands and individuals who have leveraged the web to become industry leaders.  This runs counter to the past - decades of marketing in a pre-digital world have created unnecessary redundancies, since previous generations of communications tools and processes moved slowly by comparison of what we have today.

As we see businesses and marketing ideas designed to take advantage of new systems permeate our world, the previous models become more dated and disrupted.  This is the natural order of things in a society undergoing changing technology and communications trends at an accelerated pace.

What hasn’t changed is that share of voice matters as much, perhaps more than ever.  Right now, it’s being siphoned from the overly cautious to those able and confident enough to move effortlessly.  Survival for marketing professionals depends on their ability to find a way to work around the artificial barriers that can’t be removed and carve out a path of least resistance for their external messages.  In essence, they need to become more agile.  Companies that attain influence in the social web are defined by this.

Fresh content only happens as a by-product of being agile

As Lee previously noted regarding developing a social media and SEO friendly website, fresh content is an essential element of popular sites:

To play the search and social media game, a web site must be in the content publishing business. Search engines and participants of the social web respond favorably to the signals created from frequent updates.  Participation in off site social channels can be brought into the corporate web site through RSS or widgets providing web site visitors access to additional forms of information and interaction with the company.

Consistency with publishing fresh content - without sacrificing quality - benefits both social media and SEO.  More content simply means more potential entry points from the engines and consistent publishing plays naturally into building a brand and subscriber base in the social web.  You don’t achieve consistency and quality in a timely manner without agility.

Every company is now a media company

As more businesses realize the truth, that every company is now a media company, the number of organizational entities contributing content to the web will continue to increase.  Yet as the supply of content increases, the aggregate amount of attention available remains static, meaning the fight for attention is an aggressive, daily battle across the spectrum of niches.

Media companies, businesses and individuals are all vying for that finite amount of attention, and the most responsive and active (with a purpose, of course) reap the traffic, links and attention of the social web.  Thinking like a new media company - being agile and quick to adapt, is the right mindset for success.

Being agile let’s you jump on opportunities at the intersection of digital PR and SEO

Capturing search traffic from journalists, bloggers and other web influencers by responding and reacting to hot news items in your industry is only possible if you’re able to move your responses quickly from draft to publish status.  You’ll get on the radar of journalists covering a trend story this way before the competition.  According to a recent survey from the Arketi Group:

When asked how journalists use the Internet:

• 95 percent say search (Google, Yahoo!, etc.)
• 92 percent say reading news
• 92 percent say emailing
• 89 percent say finding story ideas
• 87 percent say finding news sources
• 75 percent say reading blogs
• 64 percent say watching webinars or webcasts
• 61 percent say watching YouTube
• 59 percent say social networks

Nearly all journalists use search as a research tool for discovering content related to their story.  The very real result of being an agile web publisher is gaining visibility amongst reporters, which leads to placement as an expert within a story and puts you on the path to develop a relationship with that reporter as a reliable source of information. It’s an area that has been proven time and time again to be true - traditional media, social media and SEO are interconnected in a symbiotic fashion and being weaved together tighter daily.

Hedging negativity

A few companies have been able to prevent a groundswell against their brands by being free to respond directly to consumers and rectify negative situations before they reached that unstoppable tipping point several unfortunate companies have experienced.  So agility doesn’t just help build your brand, it’s also a factor in social media reputation management.

As the Internet shifts into real-time, the advantage of even being slightly more agile goes up

What makes real-time compelling is the immediacy of information, and consumers are being trained to demand content from media, businesses and each other instantaneously.  Agility is the only option here - and if you can become even slightly more agile than competitors, you can position yourself ahead of them with ideas, products and content time and time again.

Conclusion

Agility mixed with the right content marketing strategy and long-term planning is a surefire formula for success, and is the mindset we’re excited to see more and more companies and forward-thinking marketers embrace.  Enabled by the web, individuals have long used the fact that they are able to be more agile than media to level the playing field with traditional gatekeepers.  Now savvy marketers are doing the same thing for their clients and companies.  Embrace agility from the top down and watch your social marketing efforts soar.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Influencing The Social Web: Agility Is A Factor | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

When it comes to online marketing do you know what your most important online tool is? The one for your small business?

Is it your newsletter? Twitter? Facebook, LinkedIn? Google? Nope. None of the above.

The most important small business online marketing tool is a well optimized website. This is particularly true of small businesses that operate in a small geographical area. You are competing against other local businesses - online and off line. Your website is the best tool for reaching prospects online, through the search engines, and through other online marketing vehicles.

Your small business website is your hub, your base of operations for doing business online. Through your hub everything about you should flow, maybe not as a direct conduit, but in some kind of manner. Your social media campaigns should drive traffic to your website. Your website should receive search engine traffic. It should also receive your word of mouth traffic. Your networking traffic. All of your online marketing efforts should drive traffic to your small business website. And that’s why it’s the most important online tool you have. It’s your best sales tool.

The Daily Survey Panel is an excellent points-based site that has earned me $95.75 since June 8, 2008 and which currently ranks 12th out of my top 30 survey sites. You can choose to have emails sent daily to your inbox, but I prefer to use a link on my browser and do these surveys the first thing every morning along with several other daily survey sites that I like. There are four daily surveys that you can take: Consumer Study/OTX (120 points = $0.60), Consumer’s Opinion Survey/GiveUsYour2Cents (110 points = $0.55), Consumer Data Survey/Greenfield (120 points = $0.60) and OTX Daily Consumer Survey (120 points = $0.60). In addition, there are generally two or three other surveys from a variety of other sites that range in payment from 110 to 400 points ($0.55 to $2.00). The sheer number of surveys available is one very good reason to join this site.

Other good reasons to be a member of the Daily Survey Panel is that they have a $1 minimum pay out, they pay via Paypal very promptly and they have excellent customer service that responds immediately to any problems that may arise. PayPal incentives are processed with 24 to 48 hours and checks arrive within two weeks. The panel is open to residents of the USA, Canada and the UK. Although only one account per household is allowed, two or more people may join from the same household as long as they have separate computers with different IP addresses. For every friend you refer you will receive $1 for every month they are active on the panel. As long as your friend keeps participating every month (earns at least 200 points) your account will be credited $1 per month.

In addition to PayPal and check payments, you can also receive the following gift certificates:

$5.00 - Amazon.com Gift Certificate 1000
$25.00 - Restaurant.com Gift Certificate 1500
$10.00 - Olive Garden 2000
$10.00 - Starbucks 2000
$10.00 - Disney Dollars 2100
$10.00 - Home Depot 2100
$10.00 - Target Gift Certificate 2100
$10.00 - Walmart Gift Certificate 2100
$25.00 - Disney Gift Card 5200

The Daily Survey Panel has a very strict privacy policy. They do not collect any of your information for demographic purposes unless they have your permission; they do not trade, sell or share information that is registered with them; they never opt you into any mailing without your permission; and, they never require you to give them your address unless it is needed for incentive redemption or to investigate an account accused of fraud. Daily Survey Panel is a spyware-free site.

Chris Crum has a useful article at WebProNews on sponsored Twittering. It seems that popular entertainment blogger Perez Hilton makes a pretty good buck selling sponsored tweets. Of course, most of us aren’t Perez Hilton or enjoy his level of influence. That’s a different matter.

Today’s question is, Should you charge for sponsored tweets?

I’m leaning against it for small business owners. Here’s why:

• You want your Twitter account to be about your relationship with your followers, not your relationship with your sponsors.
• You could get a reputation as a sponsor hound if you do it too often or choose the wrong sponsors.
• Your small business will likely suffer by accepting a few dollars for a sponsorship when you really want people to buy your products and services.
• Since paid tweeting is often paid by CPC, cost per click, unless you have a lot of followers - like more than 100,000 - you probably won’t make much on sponsored tweeting.

You have to decide when you set up your Twitter account just want you want Twitter to do for you. If you joined Twitter to promote your business then you shouldn’t use sponsored tweets. The only time I’d say you should accept sponsored tweets is when what you are tweeting about will interest your followers, then you should do it for that reason and not for the money. But be open about your sponsorship. If people find out that you are accepting sponsors and you haven’t been transparent then you could have some credibility issues.