Ideas for Business

If you’ve ever used the classifieds in your local newspaper then you’ll appreciate Craigslist. You’ve probably even used it. Maybe you listed a garage sale item for sale, or maybe you bought something from someone who posted on Craigslist. Maybe you picked up something that was offered for free there. But that’s not all you can use Craigslist for. You can also use it to expand your business.

There are two basic ways you can use Craigslist for your business. You can list jobs that you might have and find employees or you can list your services. Craigslist has a category for both.

But if you really want to get real at marketing through Craigslist, beyond just listing your products for sale like everyone else does, join one of the forums. Don’t go in there marketing yourself. Just join in and have fun, meet people, enjoy yourself. Focus on developing relationships. It’s a lot like other forums, except that Craigslist is a local forum that services your city.

For instance, you can go into one of the community forums for the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and just meet people who are local to you. Get to know them on a personal level before you start trying to market your services. Not in a coy way, but just in a casual way.

Craigslist is more than just a classified ads site. Think of it as a hot forum for your local area. And join in, have fun.

From time to time I run into someone who says they don’t need SEO, or who doesn’t want to take the time to learn about it. They claim they can be successful without it then point to their current level of success as proof.

While there’s no doubt that a person can be successful without SEO, to suggest that SEO isn’t necessary because you can be successful without it is to miss the point.

For those not in the know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of writing your website’s content so that it can be more easily found in the search engines. If you don’t do this then you are essentially shooting in the dark where search engine marketing is concerned.

You could just promote your website and business through social media and paid advertising models. Just forget about SEO. But when you consider the cost of running an SEO campaign and the potential benefits, why would you? Consider these:

• Every search engine ranking you achieve is free; no one pays to be at the top of the search engine organic positions.
• 80% of all web traffic for most websites comes from search engines.
• You can rank up to two pages on the same website for every search term you target. That means if you have a 100-page website and you have 100 key phrases that are important to you then you have 5,000 potential page 1 positions on each major website from which each of your potential customers may perform a search.
• A well-run search engine optimization campaign has a better chance of delivering targeted traffic to your website on a long term basis than the same level of competence in a social media campaign.
• PPC and social media marketing are considered short term marketing strategies. While effective and beneficial in the short term, if you want effective long term reach then SEO is the best approach no matter what business you are in.

I’m not suggesting you should drop social media or paid search strategies. On the contrary, keep them and don’t change a thing. But if you have not implemented an SEO strategy for your website or business then you should consider adding SEO to your online marketing portfolio. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

There comes a time in the life of every small business Internet marketer that begs a difficult question (or a simple one). Today I discovered three very important questions for Internet marketers of the small business variety. These questions are right up there with “what’s the meaning of life” so if you have a little time on your hands, let’s get philosophical.

1. What Does It Mean To “Go Google?” - Asked of John Battelle. Apparently, it means to change from being a Microsoft freak to being a Google geek. Or something like that. What it doesn’t mean – any more (or maybe it does in part) – is to search for something. Maybe they’re afraid of being out-Googled by Bing.
2. What Is The Value Of A Link? – This one is a bit more important than the first question. It’s also a little bit more difficult to answer. But Vertical Measures makes a worthy attempt with this infographic. Discovered by Gab Goldenberg. A few things to note:
   • Link building methods that used to be on everyone’s list (ie. content distribution, blog and forum comments, reciprocal links) are now the easiest and lowest valued of all.
   • The highest valued links are the hardest to get.
   • A PR10 link is worth more than 28 million average links (really?).
   • And the truly interesting part: A PR1 link is worth 11 average links (hmmm, that one takes some contemplation).

   I’d be interested to know just how they came up with those values. Wouldn’t you?

3. Do You Need A Private Data Center? – Twitter does. Personally, I think once you get to a certain size then it’s inevitable. A business has needs. And the last thing you really want is for your business to have hiccups due to server failures and outages. That’s happened a lot to Twitter and if it doesn’t get under control then Twitter could be one of those “businesses” that goes by the wayside.

   So ask yourself now, Do I need a private data center?

Have you discovered the meaning of life yet? How about your small business Internet marketing strategy? Discovered it yet?

Skype is a software program you can download to your computer and talk person to person with anyone in the world over the Internet. It’s called Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP by industry insiders.

VOIP has been around for a while and in some quarters it is quite popular. Small businesses, however, have not taken to it in the same way big businesses have. If you work for a large corporation where you frequently discuss business with other employees of the corporation who office in a different location from you where you’d pay long distance phone fees then you may already by using VOIP. But it may be a different provider than Skype, which is free. There are paid VOIP services that offer more and better services than Skype. But we’re not talking about those.

A small business cannot afford more costly VOIP services. That’s why Skype has been a good alternative. It’s free. But Skype has recently introduced a pay-per-call model. It works like this:

• You put the code on your website that shows a Skype button
• Your website visitor sees the Skype button and clicks it to call you
• You answer, pay the per-call fee

Will this give your business the edge over the competition? It may.

Imagine that your website visitors can call you for free at the click of a button. You’re there to answer and offer immediate assistance to their needs. It’s free for them and you pay only when you get a call. Would it be worth it?

I think so, but there is one catch. Your caller has to have Skype loaded on their computer. Otherwise, they won’t be able to make the call. Still, it could be a competitive edge. Would you use it?

For years we’ve been preached to, and I’ve preached pretty heavily, that online marketing is about drawing people toward you. Interruption marketing doesn’t work online. In fact, if you are a Seth Godin fan then you’ve likely heard that song and dance more times than you can count.

There’s no wonder why. Interruption marketing, for the most part, is not an effective online marketing strategy. It doesn’t work for SEO, articles, blog marketing, social media, video marketing or most other free channels online. However, PPC ads are somewhat different.

Think for a second about what you are asking your PPC ads to do. You want them to attract the attention of people who landed on a specific page looking for information about a topic and get those people to click on the ad to visit your page instead. In essence, you are asking your ads to interrupt people in their browsing plans.

Great, you say. I’ve built my entire online marketing strategy on the attraction concept and now you’re telling me to interrupt people. What gives?

Nothing gives, really. It’s just a little insight I’ve gleaned from reading SEO ROI. They were speaking specifically about the content network, but the insight is relevant to traditional PPC as well. Even on the SERPs, when searchers get the top 10 results for their search query, your ad is hanging there waiting for their attention. Here’s the problem: 80% of the searchers won’t click on it. You’ve got to SCREAM at them to get their attention.

While most online marketing is about attraction, PPC advertising is about attention. Get it any way you can. Make your ads scream. They are, after all, in the business of seeking attention. And to do that, they have to be remarkable.