Uncategorized | Internet Marketing for Small Business

Top 10 Forums Every Small Business Should Belong To

The top 10 small business forums that every small business owner should be participating in.

Startupnation is a community full of entrepreneurs who want to learn from each other and teach each other.

This forum is packed full of resources for the small business owner.

Discover all there is to know about online business world in this community forum.

All things small business marketing in this popular forum.

This forum has opportunities for small businesses to request capital from visiting investment firms.

The Admin Zone is a forum for the owners of online communities to discuss techniques and ideas.

Econsultancy delivers the latest discussions on digital marketing.

Hang out with small business owners and be party to the latest exchanges of views and information on small businesses.

Get your business know-how from the 13,000 other participants of this small business forum.

This forum is full of ideas and resources for those considering starting a new business.

10 Small Business Marketing Must Reads – Weekly Link List 04

This weeks interesting small business marketing reads from across the web.

Google Rolls Out Ad Tags Nationwide

5 Easy Steps to a Winning Social Media Plan

How to Do a Simple Marketing Checkup

Five Best Places to Set Up Shop Online

11 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page Outside Facebook

Playing Marketing Games on Twitter

Google’s “Caffeine” Update Has Arrived

Facebook Facts (Some of Which) You Probably Didn’t Know

How to Create a Tagline for your Business

If you have ever wondered how to create a tagline or even why you would want to, here is something to ponder. Creating a tagline is essential for your business. Not only does is it a marketing tool that can state clearly on your marketing efforts what you are about, but it is a chance to stand out from the crowd and let them know what you do differently. It’s especially important if it isn’t obvious what your business does from the name.

To create something that will work for you, keep these points in mind:

be clear about the purpose of your business
what value are you offering to the customer ?
what is something special that makes you stand out from others?
how can you get your message across in a clear and precise way that won’t leave others wondering what you mean?
be passionate and convey some energy if possible

For example for a bakery, you might choose something along the lines of: Fresh hot breads that make your mouth water.

This tagline brings across the fact that you supply breads, that they are made on the premises most likely otherwise they would not be hot and fresh and that they taste so good they make your mouth water.

Places that you will use your tagline are:

your blog header
your email signature
forum profile signatures
your business card
your website about page
any paper products that you use such as receipts, envelopes, letterheaded paper

In my next post we will look at the why and hows of creating your elevator pitch.

101 Useful Resources for Online Entrepreneurs & Small Businesses

I came across this post recently and was quite taken aback about how many really useful websites are listed that can benefit small business owners. As more business owners use the internet to build up their businesses, more resources & support are becoming available.

Check out this great post by blogtrepeneur.com to find useful tools for yourself … from contact management to invoicing to finding funding… and even some social media/network sites for business people.

http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2008/03/10/resources-for-online-entrepreneurs/

101 Ways to Promote Your Business Online & Offline Now Available

Yippeee.. very excited today as my book ’101 Ways to Promote Your Business Online & Offline’ is now available on Amazon.com.

Please do take a look at it, and I’ve got another one in the pipeline. The next one goes into further detail about how to approach some of these ideas and lessons learnt from having done them myself.

Just click on the picture to go to the Amazon.com page.

Use Shopping Sites to Promote and Sell Your Products

Using price comparison sites and shopping sites can expose you to new customers who could buy your products. This can also boost traffic to your site too and get your site and brand more well known.

To use a shopping bot you will need to build a feed. Then your products will be listed and they will be displayed when a user searches on particular keywords or they navigate through the menus to the areas selling your products. All products available will be listed with prices. On some sites, the lower the price, the higher your listing will be. On other sites, your product’s listing position will depend on your merchant rating, which changes depending on how many products you have sold.

Some sites will charge a one off set up fee and then will charge per click through. Other sites are free but then will charge per click through. When a customer clicks on the product, they will be taken through to either your website or your merchant store. Be sure to optimise your products with keywords and ask your customers for reviews on your product and service. You don’t even have to have your own website for some sites, as the site will set-up an online store for you.

Google Base – you can create a product feed and supply this to google base. This will give you some good visibility as products on google will usually be displayed on the first page of a keyword search. This is what feeds the google products site.

Yahoo – you can build your own online store.

Pricegrabber – to list your product here is free.

shopping.com – as you sell more products, your merchant rating will rise and you will be seen by more people.

http://www.nextag.com– this site asks for you to bid how much you would pay for a lead.

Ebay – well known marketplace where you can set up either an auction for your product or a ‘buy now’ option. Online store.

Amazon.com/marketplace – amazon is well liked by google and comes out well in search results. Online store.

Facebook marketplace – on this application a potential customer can ask to see items that are within so many miles of him. Currently free to list items for sale. Facebook account needed.

The Ultimate 5 Steps for an Online Business

Ok, the following 5 steps are what needs to happen to make money online. I’m going to be blogging to you about how to go about these steps, and I’m also going to explore the many different ways there are of promoting your business. The more traffic you have the better. Apparently each subscriber that you have to your blog is worth US$1 per month, so imagine if you have 5000 subscribers that you are going to be sitting quite pretty.

So let’s get down to some business now, here are the 5 steps that are key to your online business. These will work with any niche that you have selected. We will look more at how to select a niche in the next blog.

Building up a list of customers who have potential to buy something from you is key to making money on the internet. The key 5 steps are:

Identify your product
Build your website or webpage where you have an opt-in area for subscribers to sign up
Send traffic to the page with the opt-in
Capture the leads with the opt-in form
Send newsletters and emails with the products or services that you want to sell

There are many ways you can promote yourself to get your traffic. In the next posts we will be looking at these.