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Small businesses don’t always have the ability to hire a full staff to get things done—but with online business tools (many of which are free to use), you can organize your business, cut strategic corners, and take care of more day-to-day tasks than you ever thought possible.
Here are a few fantastic resources that can help you take control of your small business’s progress, brought to you by top leaders in the online business arena. Take a look at what these online business tools can do for you!
- “11 Tools & Resources to Help You Discover Content to Share Online“ by Blue Kite Marketing
If you haven’t heard of StrawberryJ.am, LinkedIn Today, or AllTop—what are you waiting for? You may think you’re trucking along just fine on your own, but consider how much time some of these shortcuts could save you—time that could be better spent running your business.
One of the most comprehensive lists we’ve seen. BizSugar provides an excellent list of tools—many of them free—to help give your business that forward momentum and keep it going!
- “How to Build a Billion-Dollar Startup” by Steve Blank
This post puts the movers and shakers in the social media arena in perspective. A mere decade ago, no one ever could have imagined how “social media” (whatever that is) would help launch businesses into the lives of their customers. But whatever the shifting format, the goals remain the same: value and connections.
TAGS: business tools, cut corners, how to, online business, online tools, running your business, share online, Small Business, small businesses, social media, startup, tools & resources
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This week ClickAndInc wants to help you stay on track with that business blog you’ve set up for SEO purposes but aren’t quite sure what to do with. These blogging pros will get you out of your slump, get you focusing on the right aspects of business blogging, and get you on your way!
- “Why ‘Interesting’ Is a Very Overrated Blogging Quality” by Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion
Worried about being interesting? Here’s some great news: you don’t have to be! You can’t be everything to everyone: many have tried and failed. Interesting is relative, and if you waste your time worrying about being anything to everyone, you won’t have any time left for blogging. (And you shouldn’t be worrying about being interesting anyway—you should be worried about staying relevant.)
- “12 Sneaky Business Blogging Tricks to Dominate Your Market” by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger
It’s not enough to simply create a great business blog—you need to know what your competitors are doing, how many people they’re reaching, and how that’s working out with them so that you can learn from their successes and mistakes. Only by going undercover and spying (legally, of course) on your competitors will you be able to isolate and define their strengths (i.e. areas of your own business where you need to step it up and compete) and weaknesses (i.e. opportunity to go above and beyond and excel)!
Lacking a little in the blog-post-inspiration department? Ameena is here to tell you too bad!
Are you blogging for inspiration, or business? If you’ve got all the time in the world to sit around and wait for a bluebird to alight on your keyboard and show you the way . . . I want your job. But this is real life—if you’re blogging for business, stop thinking of yourself as a blogger: it’s business. Put your head down and power through, and get it done.
A great follow-up to Ameena’s post—once you’ve resolved to beat writers block once and for all, Stanford gives you some great tips on how to do it.
Happy blogging Friday!
TAGS: ameena falchetto, blog post, blogging tricks, business blog, clickandinc, pushing social, remarkablogger, sales lion, seo, the sales lion, writers block
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This week’s collection of outstandingly helpful/witty/otherwise awesome blog posts focus on Social Media.
There’s a fine line between using Social Media as a useful free tool, and using it as a colossal waste of time. Here’s how to focus your efforts so that you can spend the majority of time doing what you do best: running your business.
- “Twitter: The Modern Day Complaint Department” by Mark Hayes of Shopify
Sure, you’ve got a Contact Us tab on your website (right?), if a disgruntled customer skips that and jumps right for Twitter, you need to know about it. This article shows us (1) how to know when someone’s talking about you—even if they haven’t used your @handle—and (2) what to do about it. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t “ignore it until it goes away.”)
- “5 Ways to Make Pinterest the Newest Asset To Your Company” by Erin Nelson of Small Biz Bee
Pinterest, that virtual pinboard of visual bookmarks, is all the buzz in the marketing world of late; business owners want to know how they can leverage the explosive popularity Pinterest has accumulated to their own advantage. Ms. Nelson explains.
This is a great little article filled with tips to keep us focused on the task at hand. Remember, your greatest asset is your time—don’t waste it with useless social media brain-drains. It’s a trap! Bonus: at the bottom of the post is a collection of tools that can help your G+ experience be a productive one.
- “These 7 Simple Tweaks Will Get You More Blog Retweets” by Stanford of Pushing Social
If your blog isn’t being retweeted, it turns out there’s a simple way to fix that: ask for it. Stanford gives us an overview of how to set up your blog, structure your posts, and follow up with tweets efficiently and effectively.
- “15 Ways to Use Facebook Pages for Business” by Matt Hamilton of Social Media Today
You’ve got a profile, and you’ve uploaded your contact information—now what? Mr. Hamilton sheds light on several areas of your business that Facebook might be able to help you with, some that you may not have thought of!
Have you found any other great resources that illuminate how social media can help your business? Share them here!
TAGS: blog, Business, company, complaint department, entrepreneurs, facebook, pinterest, post, retweet, social media, twitter
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Image by David Chartier; used under a Creative Commons license
It’s clear (or it should be clear) that your company needs a business blog. And you don’t need to be a professional writer or blogger to maintain your business blog—you’re a knowledgeable professional; just write what you know.
But even the most knowledgeable professional occasionally runs out of ideas. If your Write About This list is running dry, here are a few instant sources of blog post ideas that will get your fingers flying again in no time.
Find out what your customers what they want to know, and tell them.
You don’t have to set up a fancy pop-up poll to get valuable feedback. Just check with your customer service representatives (or your own email inbox). If customer service is telling you they answer the same question a few times a month, consolidate those answers into a blog post! Not only does this solve your immediate content problem, but you can save your own workers’ time by giving them a useful resource to direct these inquiries toward rather than writing an essay for each person asking.
I do this frequently myself. Our copyrighting division receives countless questions about exactly what constitutes copyright infringement. I asked our order processor to give me a few of the common ones, and I wrote a blog post about it. (Then, a few weeks later, I got some more feedback from our copyrighting division and wrote another one—bonus! Your customer’s inquiries are a stream of blog topics that will never run dry.)
This leads us to another point to keep in mind when you’re considering blog post ideas:
Blog posts don’t need to directly translate into sales.
Blog too much about your specific services and offerings, and your blog itself becomes just another extension of your website: great for SEO in that you’re continuously updating content and putting good keywords out there, but not so great for your readers. (If they want to know about your services and products, they’d be looking at your website—right?)
Our copyrighting division doesn’t provide legal advice, nor do we provide services to musicians with copyrighted material who believe their work is being infringed upon. But our customers have shared their concerns and misunderstandings about copyright infringement with us, and we responded by doing some research and providing that information to them.
Blogging about what your customers want to know, rather than solely yourself, places you in a position to gain customer respect and become known for your helpful advice. You may not make an immediate sale as a direct result, but customer loyalty and respect is an excellent first step!
Don’t assume that every reader is an expert in your industry.
Here at Click Industries, we’ve come to understand that our business filings division attracts two main groups of clients: busy corporate professionals who just don’t have the time or desire to track down and draft paperwork to register a DBA or a foreign corporation, and brand new entrepreneurs, excited about their new business opportunity and bewildered by the myriad requirements and options.
While we don’t tell people what they should be doing in their specific situations (this would constitute legal advice—one of the reasons we’re able to keep our prices so low), we do provide general information to our customers so that they can make good, informed decisions about their businesses (in consultation with their lawyers, of course).
While our website language is designed to be informative to small business owners in all stages of their entrepreneurial journey, the blog is an excellent place to go into detail above and below that level of understanding. We’re able to spend one blog post on accounting software, and the next exploring the basics of corporate bylaws.
Your non-industry family and friends are great sources of feedback in this department. Find a volunteer and have him or her read your last few blog posts. If they’re scratching their heads halfway through the first one, ask them to explain what’s confusing them, and write a blog post on the very basics. Sure, some of your readers will already know—but you might provide valuable clarification to a whole other level of readers (as well as a refresher course for the rest).
You can’t go wrong with a Top Ten list.
Really. It’s scientifically proven. (Or it should be, anyway.)
Your list could be anything. Start jotting down some ideas: top ten best _______, top ten worst _______, top ten ways to _______ . . . the list goes on. And with an introduction, an annotated list of bullet points, and a conclusion, you’ve got yourself a complete blog post before you know it!
Just start writing!
If all else fails, it might be time for some good old-fashioned stream-of-consciousness writing. (Hey, it got me through my undergrad English classes!) You know your industry. Put your fingers to the keyboard and just start writing until you can’t write anymore. Then, skim what you’ve done, isolate your strongest cohesive thought or idea, and expand on it until it’s a blog post (and, of course, save the rest of your musings for later inspiration)!
Happy writing!
TAGS: blog ideas, blog post, business blog, content, customers, top ten list
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According to Google, 97% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. And according to common knowledge (have you ever heard anyone offer to Bing something for you?), most of those people are using Google to do their searching. If you’re wondering how to position yourself so the people searching for your kind of business end up at your listing, the answer is simple: Google Places.
Google Places is the ultimate in location-based searching and results, and it’s easy for you to jump onboard. Just follow these few steps.
- Create your business listing. If you’re a new small business, it’s likely that you’re not listed yet. Simply log into your Google account and click on “add new listing” to get started. Select your county to get started!
- Claim your business listing. After you’ve listed your business (or if your business was already listed with Google), you’ll need to claim it as yours. Google will confirm that you’re the rightful owner of the business by calling you (make sure to provide your local business phone number — your area code is important!) or sending you a letter, so you know that no unauthorized person can set up and take over your Places listing.
- Add your description. Google doesn’t let you put URLs, phone numbers, or extraneous keywords in your business name; the description field is the place where you can expand on what it is you do. Don’t keyword-seed — the most important thing here is that you’re giving consumers a useful description of your business so they want to head right over. The best Google page ranking in the world isn’t going to help if all people see when they click is a bunch of nonsense.
- Add pictures to your listing. Give people a visual sample of what’s waiting for them will help entice your customers to visit.
And now, for the best part — Google Places is absolutely free to use. And while Google Tags has gone the way of the dinosaur, there’s a new kid on the block: Google Boost. This service provides an ad for your business on Google Maps, giving your small business extra exposure. And it’s free to set up — you’re only charged for actual ad clicks. For any customers who click on your Places business listing, you don’t pay at all.
If your small business isn’t listed on Google Places, what are you waiting for? With the increasing number of smartphones — most of which use Google’s mobile search, and a good number of which have a Google-connected navigator program — it’s absolutely crucial that you keep up with the emerging technology if you want to remain competitive. Head over to Google Places and sign up your business today — you can thank me later.
TAGS: business listing, google places, local business, Small Business
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Missing The Forest (your business) for the Trees (your website)
Posted By Matt on Monday 11 April 2011
The proper amount of effort to put into all things web-related has come up in conversation quite a bit lately. I was recently talking with my dad about a friend of his who doesn’t put much effort into his website and how that may hurt his business. On the other hand, is it possible to put too much effort into your website? Can that hurt your business too?
Absolutely! The Web is everywhere. All of our customers use the web to start their businesses with us. (And we’re honored!) But that doesn’t mean that, as a new business owner, you should be dumping your resources into your company’s web presence.
There are countless companies out there anxious to take your money to give you a quick, easy website. When you add up the costs of a domain, hosting, and even the most basic template-based website service you’re likely looking at committing to hundreds of dollars worth of expenses. Now consider the time that you’re throwing at these tactics – it takes lots of time to develop your website, even using WordPress or a similar service.
Aside from your website proper there are facebook, Twitter, blogs, Linked-In, advertising options, craigslist, STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!
It’s not that these things are bad – they’re definitely not – it’s just that there’s a slippery slope here that can lead small business owners to lose sight of their core business by getting bogged down with all-things-web. It starts with an evening at the computer, which leads to a day spent writing content for your website, and then it’s been a week and you’re still tweaking things and during all of that time what have you really done to help your business grow?
Putting your company online will not make your business great. It can help, but it’s not the be-all, end-all solution. For small businesses, word of mouth is likely still the best way to get discovered. For almost all businesses it holds true that past customers are your best future customers (worthy of a separate post).
My recommendation is to figure out the right measure of Web for your business and to really set some boundaries. Maybe set some mileposts along the way (when I get five clients, I’ll hire someone to do my website). With the possible exception of web developers, your website only offers a limited peak inside your business and what makes you great and should not consume more of your resources than such a limited peak warrants.
Once you decide to dive in, be smart about it too! It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Here are some simple steps to setting up a good website for a reasonable price:
- Get a good domain! If your business is Sally’s Sea Shells, try for sallysseashells.com. Many domains are still unregistered and can be snatched up for $15 or less.
- Find a trustworthy developer. They don’t have to be the top of the line – finding a student on Craigslist can work wonders. You just want someone comfortable with setting up your hosting and installing things directly to the server.
- Install a CMS, or Content Management System such as WordPress or Joomla. These will let you leverage a template for a quick start to your website without having to invest in a designer.
- Use a widget to allow customers to share your website socially, through facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and more. Let your customers do the work for you!
Good luck!
TAGS: business website, craigslist, home business, starting a website, website design
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