This week in small business: Bootstraps, myths, and zombies
If you need some inspiration and advice for your startup, you’ll find it in this week’s collection of curated content. And, all the great marketing tips won’t hurt either! Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation How does a married couple with no e-commerce expertise get to 30K+ customers and $5M+ in annual revenue from their living room? Read Tom Popomaronis’ article to find out. Jesse Tevelow and his cofounder struggled with their startup, then they made a pricing move that generated six figures in less than 30 days. Tevelow explains the price vs. growth paradox. Kandia Johnson’s advice for entrepreneurs is simple, yet profound and to the point: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Have the itch to be an author? Chris Myers gives us three things every entrepreneur needs to know before writing a book. Jim Duffy’s article for The Guardian focuses on “Zombie startups” and why entrepreneurs are failing to grow their businesses. Think globally, entrepreneur locally. That’s the bottom line when Chris Myers tell the story of Colorado-based entrepreneur Lani Dolifka. Vinay Dora may have been inspired by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman in his article Three startup myths busted. Leadership, management, and productivity Need money? Do a self-check against Jared Hecht’s seven reasons you won’t qualify for a loan. I don’t know if I totally believe him, but Chris Jager says he has 11 ways to boost productivity without coffee. See if Rafi Chowdhury’s article lives up to the promise of its title: Everything you should know about time management and productivity. I hope you won’t need these: 5 SEO Best Practices for Crisis and Reputation Management, by Sophie Maerowitz. Jason Wheeler talks to Lauren Leahy, the Chief Legal Officer for Pizza Hut, about women competing and cooperating with other women in a male-dominated profession. Marketing and sales Gen Zers may be the most social-media-savvy demographic on the planet, but Deep Patel nonetheless has four social media marketing tips they need to learn. Don’t accidentally make the SEO errors Ron Dod outlines and hurt your e-commerce site. Fail to plan, plan to fail. Deborah Anderson explains how to incorporate your startup social media marketing tasks into a day’s plan. Zac Johnson offers five solid methods to drive social media traffic back to your site. In his Entrepreneur article, R.L. Adams offers a curated list of his top 10 marketing conferences for entrepreneurs. Ryan Klein gives three “pros” and three “cons” in his discussion of whether or not marketing conferences are worth it. If you’re changing domains, plan for unexpected SEO costs, advises Jim Stewart....
read moreCheck out Bing’s video series and ad budget friendly conversions
If you could lower you online ad cost per conversion by more than 60 percent, would you do it? I’ve long heard that advertising on Bing has some advantages over Google’s AdWords program, so the other day, when I received some information from Bing, I decided to look at the platform more closely. The first thing I want to point out to you is Bing’s excellent five-part video introduction to advertising on its platform. These are short videos – about three to five minutes each – that take you from the absolute basics of getting a campaign up and running to optimizing your campaign. Spending 20 to 30 minutes with them to make sure you catch all the details would be time very well invested. Bing will also connect you to an advisor to help you set up and create a custom strategy for your business. Wow. a real person! I suggest you take advantage of all of these resources. You can set your ad budget as low as you want to make it a very cost effective way to get a taste of search engine marketing (SEM) can do for you. And, as I said above, when there’s the possibility of saving 60 percent on conversions, it should make you even more primed to check out Bing. By the way, I didn’t pull that number out of thin air; it’s from a study Owen Gill summarized for Search Engine Watch. Gill is a digital marketing executive at Hallam Internet in England. However, noting that Bing doesn’t get as much traffic as Google, the number of conversions over a given period of time will be fewer, so in the long run you may want to advertise on both platforms. The good news is that the information you pick up going through the Bing instructional videos will apply to virtually any online advertising environment....
read moreUse tutorials to establish authority and build relationships
The YouTube “stars” I’m most impressed by are those who have created a large following by publishing a series of tutorials on a given topic. These topics vary from how to apply make up to how to get started coding HTML to how to get really creative in your scrapbooking. I’m impressed by this group because they have large numbers of fans yet their expenses are very small. Aren’t these the things that small business owners everywhere what to achieve – lots of customers at minimal expense? Simply stated, what these YouTube stars are doing is creating an ongoing series of tutorials. This is a strategy that will work for many small business owners, whether the content you create is video or any other format. And, there are other benefits along with those I’ve already mentioned: You are usually creating evergreen content, so it will stand the test of time, You can cross promote between tutorials to lead people into the next “episode,” You can “tease” your next installment to create anticipation in your audience, You establish yourself as an authority in your field when you have a solid series of tutorials, and You can plug your tutorials into a drip marketing campaign. Let me go into a little more depth on two more benefits. Direct sales While your tutorials need to be centered around delivering great content to your followers, they often provide the perfect opportunity to make a good sales pitch as well. One major success story centers around a woman who started a YouTube series that demonstrated how to use hair extensions. She soon realized that she should be selling the extensions she was demonstrating. If you create a truly excellent tutorial that uses an equally excellent product, people will want to buy it. You can easily direct them to your online store, your toll-free 800 number, or your product page. Multi-use content You should be regularly adding tutorials so you’re creating a growing body of work. First, these tutorials can be adapted for different content formats. Videos can be turned into blogs and blogs can be turned into infographics, to give you two examples. Next, closely related tutorials can be turned into white papers or video training discs and finally, these white papers can be combined – with some infographics added – to turn into books. When you have a published book, you are officially a top authority, as I see it. To get started with your tutorial series, sit down and brainstorm about 10 episodes or articles. This preplanning will help you put together a cohesive series that you can properly promote. When you try “flying by the seat of your pants” your series won’t be able to realize its full potential. If you know where your series is headed, then at the end of each episode you can give your audience a roadmap that highlights your upcoming journey together. This builds your audience. If you can’t use each episode or “chapter” to self promote, you’re missing a valuable opportunity with your...
read moreEven more strategies to find business blog ideas
I’ve written and published a lot of advice on how to find business blog ideas to engage and grow you customer and prospect. I come back to this topic occasionally because it’s important and causes a lot of frustration among those responsible for digital marketing and content creation. When we can pursue a fresh, new strategy, it pumps a little life into our routines. I want to share a fairly simple idea with you today, but it’s a good one, and one that may even get you out of the workplace and away from your computer screen for a couple of hours. Why not touch bases with the analog world to find digital content inspiration? Spend some time browsing the publications that interest your customers and clients. You probably subscribe to some of these; skim them for ideas. (More guidance on that in just a moment.) But don’t stop with the publications you have in your possession. Take a trip to a large library and cruise up and down their shelves of magazines to find publications you might not regularly read. Grab a handful and sit down with them…and your smartphone. Start thumbing through the magazines looking for interesting topics. You will get some good general ideas very quickly. When you come to longer articles, consider the major topic, but also look for the subheads. They can reveal smaller topics that you can cover in shorter blog posts. I said to keep your smartphone handy. Use your camera and an app like Evernote to capture ideas. Snap photos of headlines and artwork. Be sure you organize them in a way that will allow you to find them when you actually need them! In Evernote they can all be stored in one notebook. Consistently using a keyword like “article ideas” doesn’t hurt either. Let me give you a solid reason why taking inspiration from traditional publications makes a lot of sense. Printing a magazine is expensive. When editors decide to publish an article on real paper, they have to be convinced that there is reader interest in the topic. Honestly, online publishing isn’t so picky, in fact, it works in almost the opposite way. While traditional publishers need to believe that something is worthwhile before printing it, online publishers often “print” a whole array of articles in order to find out what articles are a hit with readers. Before I close this, let me give you the links to a few articles on my site that suggest even more business blog ideas and strategies to inspire topics: 10 sure-winner blog post ideas 4 little-known strategies for creating powerful marketing blog topics Need Blog Ideas? Steal Them! How lazy people discover great blog topics How about you? Do you have any favorite ways to jump start your creative process and develop good blog topics? Share them in the comments section...
read moreBring Simplicity to Your Small Business
I was reviewing a calendar of various “special days” recently and I noted that a few weeks ago it was “National Simplicity Day.” I guess things were a bit too hectic in my life to notice it at the time… Sorry. Generally, I load these pages up with things you need to do to push your small business forward, but it’s also wise to step back, reflect, and find areas where you can simplify your life, both professionally and personally. Being a small business owner means you have to wear many hats, and it’s likely that most of your employees are juggling multiple roles as well. While a lot of this is inevitable, there are ways that you and your team can make this three-ring circus act a lot simpler. First, consider delegating certain tasks to a part-time administrative assistant, or even a virtual personal assistant. This may seem like a big expense at first, but when you consider all the tasks that can be removed from your plate, you begin to see many better ways that you could be spending your time. The benefits are two-fold: You have more time to do the things you are better at and enjoy, and/or you can simply enjoy more time for non-work related things. Second, set aside time every day to do your least favorite task or something you fear doing so they doesn’t build up into a tremendous obstacle that seems impossible to overcome. When you walk into your office day after day to see the growing stack of invoices, unfiled receipts, or messages that need returning, you probably feel overwhelmed even before the day even begins. Keep these tasks under control by doing a little at a time. Once it becomes a habit, you’ll find a sense of peace creeping in. Don’t forget that many of these most hated tasks can be delegated as well! While we’re on the topic, it’s also a great time to consider how simple your services are for your customers. Is it easy for them to pay you? Easy for them to contact you? Easy for them to make repeat orders or leave reviews? The simpler these processes are, the more your customers are likely to return, and the less you are likely to be facing a pile of unpaid invoices month after month. Finally, when it comes to something new, stick to the “one per time limit” rule. Learn one new skill a month, develop one new business contact per week, or set one new primary goal for the day. I’m reminded of a simple fact of the English language: Priority means prime concern or most important consideration. You simply can’t – and shouldn’t – have more than one priority. By setting your sights on just one new task at a time, you ensure that you’re giving each new item your complete dedication. This can help reduce feelings of overwhelmed anxiety and make your schedule seem far more...
read moreThis week in small business: Harsh truths, sweet fragrances, and sound advice
Jo Malone’s fragrance company story passes the smell test, Joleena Louis recommends a prenup, and Jessika Phillips gives delivers some harsh marketing truths in this week’s collection of curated content. Dig in! Leadership, management, and productivity If you’re a local merchant, you need to read what Jia Wertz has to say about the long-term impact of Amazon on your ability to survive. Are you a leader looking to increase your productivity? If so, you’ll appreciate these 10 productivity hacks from startup founders posted by Susy Alexandre. However, you don’t have to be a big-time founder to be productive. Courtney Connley relays five productivity habits of high-performing employees; #5 is one you don’t see stated that way very often, or at all. Attention women entrepreneurs: A prenup may be your best friend. That’s according to Jenny Odegard’s article where she interviews attorney Joleena Louis. Jim Morack does a great job examining the critical relationship between customer service and sales. Have a little time to watch some videos? Zameena Mejia has three inspirational TED talks you should check out to help boost your productivity. Marketing and sales You won’t consistently hit your target if you can’t improve your aim, that’s why Ruby Rusine’s infographic on matching your social media KPIs to your goals is so relevant. Ouch! Jessika Phillips delivers the 12 harsh truths of marketing no one wants to talk about. After you’ve faced those harsh truths, then it’s time to check out Joyce Solano’s Forbes article to learn the three marketing mistakes you need to avoid. (Hey! No pain, no gain!) Writing for HubSpot, Marcus Andrews says that the future of social media is now and outlines the trends we need to know. Annie Pilon sends you to a lot of excellent curated content in her article, 10 Tips for Creating an Online Marketing Strategy to Consistently Bring in Customers. Here are seven reasons to start a new focus on inbound marketing from Martin Zwilling. (Number one is very revealing and something that needs to be internalized.) Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Jo Malone started her fragrance business from her kitchen table, later selling it to Estee Lauder for millions. Carmine Gallo relates her inspiring story in this article. If you’re bootstrapping your startup or want to lengthen your “runway” then you need to watch every nickel and dime. Kelly Lovell’s advice on how to whittle down your travel costs will prove valuable. Few things are as important to entrepreneurs as their personal brands. Take Marsha Hunt’s advice – it will serve you well. Sometimes the best way to support women entrepreneurs isn’t to take the “feel good” approach. You need to go way beyond cheering them on, says Lisa Abeyta. Tech entrepreneur and investor Arie Abecassis gives you five ways the best board members will add value to your startup. Politics, government, and the economy Robb Starr pulls together the data from Paychex’s last small business employment report. Job growth is tailing off a bit – 0.7 percent slower in July than last year at the same...
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