Discover what happens when ‘Love It or List It’ collides with the small business world
What would the cable TV love child of CNBC’s The Profit and HGTV’s Love It or List It look like? I think it would look pretty much like A&E’s new program, Save It or Sell It. The new reality series features Robert Hirsch and Eric Casaburi. The pair visit struggling businesses whose ownership is torn between throwing in the towel and cashing out, and revitalizing their businesses. Along with being aired on A&E, you may find it on the History Channel and FYI. It debuted at 11 p.m. on Nov. 5, so it looks like the programming heads are taking a very cautious approach to their commitment. For casual viewers – and business owners interested in gleaning some tips from the two experts – I would recommend scouring your listings right now to find an episode. When I last checked, it looked like they were rebroadcasting their original episode a few more times. I’m not sure when (and if) new episodes will be released. I don’t know if the show will make it in the long run, but I need to say that it heartens me to see reality programming that revolves around businesses, both large and small. I say this for two reasons: In scripted TV shows and movies, businesses are typically portrayed as the villain; shows like Save It or Sell It, The Profit, and Undercover Boss show the human and community-building sides of business. With business failures outnumbering business startups in recent years, we need more inspiring stories about people who are willing to pursue their ideas. We need to rekindle the entrepreneurship spark. Casaburi mixed his passion for fitness with his entrepreneurial spirit to found Retro Fitness back in 2004. The chain of fitness clubs now does $150 million in yearly revenue. Hirsch was in on the first dot-com boom, founded Adventure Central, and has a portfolio of seven companies that span direct-response marketing and technology. Show your support and get a few tips along the way: Check your local listings! ...
read moreNew study blasts common SEO beliefs out of the water
How do you answer these questions: Are you packing your blogs with keywords or painstakingly trying to get your percentage of keywords exactly right? Are you trying to make sure that the first sentence of your articles contains your keyword? Are you plugging your keyword into your headlines? If you answer “yes” to one or more of those questions, you’re in good company. Expert copywriters have been employing keywords in those ways for as long as the goal of search engine optimization (SEO) has been on the scene. However, experts can be wrong. The evolution of search Most of you understand that Google and the other search engines are constantly refining their algorithms. This has transformed the way search engines use our “on-page” keyword usage in rankings. Let’s roll back the clock to the early days of SEO to illustrate this point. In the beginning (hey, there’s a catchy phrase!), websites could essentially trick search engines into thinking their pages were relevant to keyword searches by “stuffing” keywords into the content of their pages. Sometimes they would even do this with tiny type at the bottom of pages that contained hundreds of keywords. Eventually search engines figured this out. Google realized that most of these pages were garbage and pushed them to the bottom of search results. This process of search engine algorithm refinement has continued and for a long time, SEO-focused copywriters have felt that a keyword “density” of something like 3-5 percent would be best for ranking on search page results. For a while now, Google has been saying that it doesn’t use keyword density, yet many in SEO don’t completely trust Google when it makes that claim. However, a very thorough study by SEM Rush seems to prove that keyword density – and even specific keyword usage – has very little impact on how well pages perform within search results. As you can see from the graph above, if we give the most important ranking factor – number of direct website visits – a value of 100, the keyword-related on-page SEO strategies only rank a six apiece. This is not to say that high ranking pages didn’t include keywords; what SEM Rush found is that this usage has virtually no impact on how those pages ranked. The right way to write Businesses – both big and small – are now using long-tail keywords in their SEO because the competition for the short keywords is so intense, it’s almost impossible to achieve a high search engine page ranking (SERP). If that describes your situation, you don’t have to worry about exactly matching your long-tail keyword throughout your content. SEM Rush confirmed something Google has been telling us for quite some time now: “(If) you plan to rank by long tails, having an exact-match keyword in your on-page SEO elements is not crucial. In fact, it is more important to diversify the semantic core of your text (emphasis mine) and make it relevant to the target keyword rather than copying it.” In other words, talking about your subject (keyword) and explaining it in a variety of ways using plain language is your best strategy. Imagine you’re trying to teach something to someone and that person isn’t getting it immediately – you try explaining it from a different point...
read moreThis week in small business: Get ahead with 2018 tips and predictions
It’s that time of year when we look back at 2017 and make predictions about 2018. But, along with those traditional articles, this week we have a wealth of comprehensive marketing and management guidance. Leadership, management, and productivity Uber had a security breech and kept it secret. It shows that cybercrime can hit anyone and both the security and the PR implications are dire. You can’t over prepare, so check out Shawn Abraham’s malware protection tips on StaySafeOnline. Caroline Howard gives us the 19 most powerful women in business, 2017 edition. Sage’s Nancy Harris outlines how small businesses can leverage talent and tech to level the playing field. On TV, The Price is Right is a game. In business, getting the price right is much more than a game. Darian Kovacs’ article on four psychological techniques to improve pricing should help you take home the grand prize. Are you like most of us and looking for more insights into digital currencies? If so, read Jennifer Spencer’s article on its risks and benefits. Sleep tight. Taylor Stone tells us how to improve our sleep and along with it our productivity. Marketing and sales Predictions are coming in full force now. Here are Kimberley A. Whitler’s 2018 C-Suite marketing predictions. This infographic by Dave Furness gives us his top 20 ways to increase e-commerce conversions. Heike Young takes a fresh approach in her article for the Salesforce blog, 4 Marketing Secrets for Intimacy at Scale. It’s always good to get back to basics and that’s what I appreciate about AJ Agrawal’s 3 Marketing Channels You Need To Master In 2018. Is a new website on your 2018 radar? If so, Kristen Hicks’ 5-step new website marketing plan will come in handy. Casey Wilson has taken a good approach in her piece about three audience targeting tactics for your digital marketing campaigns. If 2018 is going to be the year you get serious about exporting, you should check out David Bensoussan’s Forbes article on building an international marketing strategy that adopts the “mother tongue.” Gabriel Shaoolian tells how he generated more than $20 million in new business using cold email outreach. Need to know how to budget for an influencer marketing campaign? Morgan Kaye has some guidance for you here. Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead has given us a good roundup of the 10 top livestreaming video tools for small businesses. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Savin Weera describes the top five members of your startup team in his article for Austin Startups. If you’re a young entrepreneur looking for some marketing tips, Nicholas Cole has three for you in his Art Plus Marketing article. Politics, government, and the economy John Wasik says that the GOP tax overhaul plan will slam some small businesses. Before anything is finalized, check out the problem he...
read moreThe challenge of boosting growth in a low-inflation economy
For anyone who was around during the hyper-inflation days of Presidents Ford and Carter, the current economic climate as something of an Alice-in-Wonderland feel. I say this because in those days the Fed was continually hiking its interest rate to bring down inflation. Today, the Fed is more worried that there isn’t quite enough inflation in the economy and, interestingly enough, its solution is the same: raise the interest rate. (But to be fair, the modest rate hikes envisioned by the Fed are nothing compared to the way it boosted rates back in the 1970s in its attempt to strangle inflation out of the economy.) I think our unfamiliarity with this persistently low inflation may also relates to some recent business survey results and employment news: Unemployment ticked down to 4.2 percent in September while the economy lost 33K jobs, Business owners say that it’s more difficult to hire people than it was six months to a year ago (and it wasn’t easy then, either), The labor participation rate is finally going up, and Many businesses (58 percent) don’t plan to raise wages because it doesn’t seem to affect hiring or retention, yet the recent employment statistics showed the biggest jump in hourly wages (2.9 percent year over year) in a long, long time. Most of the lost jobs are due to the hurricanes, so we can expect them to bounce back quickly as businesses get back on their feet. What is interesting to me is the persistent difficulty businesses have hiring people yet they seem somewhat reluctant to sweeten the salary pot. The recently released PNC Bank Survey concludes that small and mid-size business leaders, while curbing their enthusiasm, remain optimistic on the economy. The same survey says that although hiring is a huge problem, offering higher wages hasn’t helped. I find it difficult to square this finding with the fact that hourly wages are up nearly 3 percent over last year. Someone is boosting wages out there. Since fall 2016 the percentage of employers planning wage hikes has gone from a low of 28 percent, to a peak of 41 percent, to 37 percent in the most recent survey. I suppose that minority large is enough to make a decent impact on wage growth. The inability of higher pay to attract or retain employees may reflect the reality of a long-term low-inflation environment. People aren’t frightened by escalating prices eating away at their spending power today. I suspect this is especially true for professionals who depend on their cars for their work. With fuel prices at reasonable levels, many have been able to pocket the savings. According to Gus Faucher, chief economist of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., “Hiring has become more difficult across all skill levels. Organizations even report that they have turned down business because of a lack of workers. That said, the one ongoing problem with the economic expansion remains persistently soft wage growth. Given the low unemployment rate and consistent complaints from firms about the difficulty in finding workers, wage growth should be stronger. Wage growth is likely to pick up as the job market continues to tighten.” (Faucher said that before seeing the latest numbers, yet he could be right. We know that these statistics are constantly revised, so that 2.9...
read more10 tips to put a winning retail year-end game plan in place
In basketball they have “crunch time.” In baseball, they have “the bottom of the ninth.” In football they have the “hail Mary.” In retail – and related industries – we have the holiday shopping season. We’re all quite well aware of the fact that for stores, it’s “make-or-break” time. It determines whether retailers will finish the year in the black, or have to live with the financial legacy of a “losing season.” To keep with our sports analogies, let’s call a time out, huddle up, and go over the important things to remember during this yearly two-minute drill: Review how your holiday season went last year. Refresh your team’s memory on what went well and where you feel you dropped the ball. Get suggestions and buy-in on fixes. If you’re going to change hours and be closed on certain days, be sure to update those listings everywhere they are published: Internet, ads, phone system, email signatures, etc. Be sure your inventory records are accurate and kept accurate so employees in your location can have good information and so your website tells the truth to customers. Decide on shipping policies. Set your “drop dead” dates and make sure they are well communicated to your customers and your team. Prepare your team to deal politely and tactfully with customers who are likely to be under more stress than usual. Stressed out employees dealing with stressed out customers is a recipe for customer service and brand image disaster. Review important policies, such as returns and exchanges, to be sure that everyone is reading from the same rule book. Deal with all online reviews and comments quickly. Use systems in place on sites like Yelp and Amazon to handle complaints. Make a special effort to keep your premises tidy and well organized. Sometimes it feels like shoppers can do as much damage as a Category Two hurricane. Take care of all staff scheduling questions early. Understand where your bottlenecks usually occur and take special steps to alleviate those problems. Finally, if prognosticators are even close to correct, retail should be booming. This means that you and your team should be expecting heavier traffic, and consequently more challenges to the systems you have place, your training, and – to put it frankly – your patience and endurance....
read moreThis week in small business: The real driver of economic good times revealed
If our elected representatives need to be clued in on the importance of small business to the country’s economic wellbeing, a good place to start would be reading Mary Ellen Biery’s article based on Sageworks statistics. And, for those of us who actually work for a living, the marketing, productivity, and entrepreneurship articles here are well worth the investment in time. Politics, government, and the economy Drawing on recent Sageworks stats, Mary Ellen Biery gives us nine amazing facts on the impact of small businesses. Writing for MarketWatch, Jeffry Bartash details the type of spending that leads to economic and real income growth. Leadership, management, and productivity Adrian Ghila says that delegation doesn’t work in small businesses and she gives leaders an alternative approach. Hey ladies, you need to check out Carol Kinsey Goman’s success tips for women in a male-dominated industry. If you want to boost your bottom line, review Choncé Maddox’s five proven ways to cut costs. Here’s some truly practical advice from Rob Star: 10 Tips to Prevent Burglaries at Your Small Business. The next wave in productivity improvement will come from “bias mitigation,” says Amanda Greenberg. Marketing and sales Have you tried “cause marketing”? Maybe you should, because according to Bryn Dodson, it isn’t dead, it’s evolving. We have the state of the union address and now Brian Sutter gives us the state of small business marketing in Forbes. Annie Pilon covers a wide range of areas in her 10 tips aimed at growing your small business. Facebook Messenger chatbots are the latest entry in digital marketing. To get up to speed check out Michael Stelzner’s article. Sheila Kloefkorn explains how to use best practices on your marketing budget. Not all marketing is online. Susan Friesen gives us ideas for combining offline with online marketing to build your credibility. Constance Brinkley-Badgett lists what she believes are the best Internet marketing services for small businesses in several categories. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Get off the dime with the 20 motivational quotes to inspire your next business idea as curated and introduced by Murray...
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