Does Your Online Marketing Feel Like Throwing Darts?

Remember the carnival game where you had three darts to throw at a wall full of balloons to win the giant stuffed panda?  Most of the darts would hit the wall, or skim by the balloon, and if you did manage to pop a balloon it would typically be for a rather unexciting small plastic whistle and definitely NOT the giant stuffed panda.  The problem with this game is that you don’t know where the panda prize card is pinned, and you may not have the greatest aim.  But you know it’s there somewhere so you just keep on paying …

select a compelling blog topic

How to select a compelling blog topic

Blogging is a lot about trial and error. You might start with one idea, think of another, and write two or three blog posts on the topic before realizing it’s not doing well. One way to avoid this is to choose the topics you write about ahead of time – if you know in advance what your next article will be about, it’s much easier to plan out what you need to research and get started!   You need to consider whether it is of general interest and your subject matter expertise and passion for the topic. For example, if …

How Your Small B2B Business Can Rock Social Media

The questions we typically hear most often from small businesses about social media are: Which social media networks should I consider? What type of content should I post? These are great questions and we have certainly seen a lot of boring Business-To-Business (B2B) content on social media.  It often seems that only Business-To-Consumer (B2C)  businesses know how to sell the sizzle in the steak, so to speak.  What business owners seem to forget when delivering their message to other businesses is that those businesses are run by people.  And people still like to have their attention grabbed, even if it …

How Often Should A Small Business Blog?

The simple answer is, it depends upon how much impact you want.  Let’s start by reviewing some of the reasons a small business owner would want to blog: To demonstrate expertise in their line of work To get the word out about something new To share a frequently asked question with a broader audience, allowing the opportunity to share a link and shorten a future operational task To improve their search engine ranking (each blog brings new traffic when linked from social media and Google loves fresh content) To connect with new people To have something original to share in …

Recipe For “Brand Chocolate”: How To Be Irresistible

How do some brands seem to have that irresistible quality that creates a loyal following of happy clients who talk about them and refer others?  How do some brands seem to be found while others disappear? To explain, I like to use the analogy of a chocolate shop.  The chocolatier’s dilemma is that she has this amazing ingredient to work with that so many people will enjoy once they experience it but there are other chocolate shops on her block, so many ways she could prepare her chocolate, and so many different customers she could serve.  So how does she …

Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

This year has shown us that any doubts we may have had regarding the dominance of mobile is over. Mobile is clearly where it’s at. That said, as I have often advised, behind every digital campaign is real people who are seeking information, education and entertainment. Responding to real people requires that your brand be authentic to who you are. Data analytics may be cool but it represents the behaviors of actual people so if we remember to speak to those people with our content in a way that responds to their needs, then we are more likely to make …

Retweeting protocol for small business owners

What’s the proper protocol for re-tweeting when you own a small business? I am frequently asked by my clients what is the correct way to re-tweet. Here are some helpful hints that I have compiled: Following the User. You shouldn’t automatically assume that you are already following this particular user, so make sure by checking your account. If that user was interested enough to share your content, then you should reciprocate when appropriate. Look at their profile to see if they’re a person or organization you’d like to follow and if so, then add them. List the User. If you …

Make Your Business Stand Out on Twitter with These Secret Tips

  Utilize a dashboard The mightiest twitter tools include Dashboards such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite etc. fall under the bracket of the most powerful twitter tools. Why? Because they expand beyond Twitter’s ability of displaying single columns of tweets as well as the standard right panel information that we see when we log on to twiiter.com. Dashboards allow you to customize and create your twitter experience the way you want. You can have streams show only mentions of your Twitter handle, or you can go for advanced options such as creating a column that displays all mentions of your product, …

A Hashtag Primer for Small Business

A hashtag is a keyword or phrase preceded by the hash symbol (#), that people include in their social media posts. Essentially, it makes the content of your post accessible to all people with similar interests, even if they’re not your followers or fans.  For instance, let’s say you’re an Apple fan and that you’re playing with the idea of buying an iPhone 5. A simple “#iPhone5″ search on any social network will open a dedicated news feed with all iPhone 5 latest updates, deals, rumors and hacks. The results you see on this feed are the aggregated posts of …