Big Ideas for Small Business

Remember that clique in high school? That group of kids connected by some common interest or belief or personal characteristic? Or how about the Chamber of Commerce, your local church, the Rotary Club, or the Girl Scouts? These are all examples of social networks in our traditional world views. Now in the days of Web 2.0, we have numerous free online services that are allowing connections to be made between people and businesses and it can be hard to know where to begin or how you can use these services to promote your business. Many social networking sites are available and most target specific types of connections.

Here’s a short list of sites to explore and their intended focus: (more…)

by Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF

There is quite a bit of talk on the Internet these days about this new social media service called Twitter. So what is it? Well, basically, it’s a way to keep up to date with what people in your social circle are doing. This is what Twitter has to say about itself:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate
and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers
to one simple question: What are you doing?”

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Your success as a business person firmly rests on your ability to motivate your customers and clients to perform the actions you want. You want to change what they think, feel, believe and do. I ran across a fact-filled website, ChangingMinds.org,  describing many methods of persuasion and I’d like to share three of these by describing examples you can use to motivate your customers to buy.

(1) Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
This method of persuasion relies on a sequence of actions by you (the seller) to trigger a response in the customer and ultimately motivate them to act on your final call to action.

• Grab Their Attention – All you need is a simple attention grabber. Let’s say you work a cosmetics counter. Your customers are likely motivated by their need for beauty. Your displays could invite them to come closer for a look with big, glossy blow-ups of their favorite celebrity using the product. (more…)

The holiday season is quickly approaching and it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to get a piece of that $30 billion dollars in predicted online sales. I’m not going to lie to you. That’s a small increase in comparison to the growth of 19% the previous year in 2007. What’s important to note, is that traditional brick-and-mortar businesses can expect a 1.5% growth (the smallest since 1991), while online retailers are predicted to see a 9% increase. If you don’t already have a Pay-per-click campaign in place for the next 6 months, then read on.

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and how does it work?
Let’s see the Wikipedia entry for this one:

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites, such as blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers’ website. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. (more…)

I hear ‘ya. You work long hours. The bottom line is a predictable disappointment. And you just don’t know which brush fire to put out next. But the frigid reality is that if you run a business of any kind in the US right now, you’re trying to position yourself in the face of long-term financial uncertainty. Only the strong will survive and it’s best to remember that the size of your punch is not always as important as the consistency of your attack.

With this in mind, I’d like to offer you what I consider to be the absolute minimum you should be doing with your website. And I mean, doing repeatedly. Not just once so you can say, “Oh, I’ve tried that and it didn’t work”, but really commit yourself to this effort for at least six months. I guarantee that you will see web traffic improve, online and offline sales increase, and you’ll end up with more money in your pocket. And the best news is that ALL of these essentials require very little cash and very little computer tech ability. What makes them work is the repeated application. Rinse and repeat.

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