Message Delivered: Solve Your Customer’s Problem via Text

March 15, 2013
Barbara Jones

Have you been toying with adding SMS (texting) to your marketing mix, but are wondering how best to do it?  Quick Answer: Solve a problem for your customer and it will garner you the best results. Here’s an example that we can all relate to:  You leave your house mid-morning to run errands, only to find that about three hours later you’re famished, but don’t know where to go nearby to grab a bite to eat.  Making matters worse,...

11 Steps To Mastering The Art Of Human Networking

March 13, 2013
Mario Armstrong

Networking online, through social media channels, email, and LinkedIn, is something everyone I know does pretty well. After all, you can take all the time you like to compose your pitches and online networking comes without the stress and anxiety that often accompanies face-to-face interaction. But by no means should...

Show Me The Money, eCommerce!

March 11, 2013
Lisa Thomas

If your website is all about making money for your business, mostly through the transaction of goods and services, then by definition it is an eCommerce site.   As with any business, making money requires investment, and running a lucrative eCommerce site is no exception.  By investing and integrating these five money-making traits into your site, your business will be bound to bring in even more money in 2013: mobile, social, personal,...

Secrets To Social Branding Success For Small Businesses

March 5, 2013
Cheryl Burgess

Welcome to the social media conversation of 2013, where business and marketing communities have accepted the why of social media, and now they have begun asking the how. Everywhere we look, small businesses are ready to go social, but many of them are wondering where to begin. With so many social media options...

Ready For A Small Business Barn Raising?

March 4, 2013
Susan Solovic

This past week I saw an inspiring news story about the success of a downtown business district in a small community in the St. Louis, Mo. area.  Only two retail spaces were vacant in this small town.  That’s in sharp contrast to many small town main streets with boarded up buildings and a ghost town appearance....

Let Cloud Do The Heavy Lifting

February 28, 2013
Hsuan-hua Chang

When we hear about the Cloud, we often hear about VM (virtual machine). VM is important to Cloud services because it allocates the resources that you need automatically. For those of us that use Windows, we are familiar with Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.). Since those...

Battle For The Marketing Budget

February 27, 2013
Brian Solis

Social is as social does. That’s me doing my best attempt to channel Forrest Gump. Why? Because like in the movie, this expression essentially signifies that people will follow what others do, often without knowing why. Sometimes it’s important simply because everyone else is doing it. Call it a form of social proof if you will, the age-old psychological phenomenon where, in...

Say “Cheese” With Social

February 26, 2013
Cheryl Burgess

Small businesses are realizing that social media is here to stay, and they are taking notice because becoming a social brand can help drive revenue.  Traditionally, small business have used outbound advertising platforms like direct mail, cable television, newspapers or yellow pages, but today outbound marketing strategies have largely been replaced by inbound strategies.  Integrating social...

5 Ways To Re-Up Your Social Media Resolutions For 2013

February 22, 2013
Mario Armstrong

This year, among other New Year's resolutions, I decided to dedicate myself to increasing my following on social media, interacting more with followers, and inserting myself into more conversations online. But now that we're in the middle of February, and things are starting to slow down and we're all finding that we're...

3 Habits Of Highly Successful Cloud Users

February 20, 2013
Catherine Scaramuzzi

The recent announcement of Atari filing for bankruptcy brings back misty memories of watching my brother’s epic Ms. Pac-Man-record-breaking afternoons when we were kids.  It was the stuff legends were made of.  I share these stories with my children in a magical way so that when they see the rare Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine, they are sure to say,...

How To Pull Your Marketing Budget Up by Its Bootstraps

Alan See

The term "bootstrap" is often used to describe situations of self-reliance.  It means to develop something that takes significant effort with little or no assistance.  In the world of marketing, this often equates to operating with a very limited budget.  The economic ruckus created by the fiscal cliff suggests 2013 will be a bootstrapping year...

Make Content Marketing Work For You

February 19, 2013
Rieva Lesonsky

If it seems like you’ve been hearing and reading the words “content marketing” more often this year, you’re not imagining things. Content marketing—that is, creating and sharing content such as articles, videos or whitepapers—is one of today’s hottest marketing trends. BusinessBolts’ Content Marketing Survey Report polled small business owners and marketers about how they use content marketing,...

Beat Office Bullies With Better Policies

February 18, 2013
Susan Solovic

Social media is a valuable marketing tool for small businesses.  No doubt about that.  And employees can be excellent brand cheerleaders via social media.  However, the misuse of social media by employees is infiltrating the workplace creating negative consequences for employers.  We’ve recently seen situations where employees have bad-mouthed their boss and/or the company they work for, sometimes resulting in termination. ...

Cloud: There’s A Reason For The Rush

February 15, 2013
Allyson Fralish

It's hard to believe, but many of the technologies we now find indispensable took a long time to catch on. I ran across this chart with some interesting examples. It took 40 years for refrigerators to reach most U.S. households, 30 years for color televisions, and 55 years for air conditioners. Makes you wonder how people did without....

Does Doing More With Less Mean Delivering More With Less?

February 13, 2013
Brian Solis

We need to do more with less. Sound familiar? This is a statement I hear in almost every strategy and planning meeting I attend on behalf of enterprise and startup clients alike. The idea of course is to accomplish great feats, beyond the output or achievements of years gone by, without the previous resources exploited over time....

Is The Cloud Hot Air Or A Silver Bullet?

February 8, 2013
Allyson Fralish

Nearly every day I come across an article discussing how the cloud can help small businesses grow or be more productive. Just as often, I see a headline claiming the cloud is just a lot of hot air. So, which should we believe? Is the cloud truly an asset to companies looking to grow?...

4 Disruptive Technologies To Watch In 2013

February 6, 2013
Mario Armstrong

Gartner, the well-known information technology research and advisory firm, recently released a list of its top 10 technologies and trends for 2013. The list covers a wide range of technologies that will most disrupt IT and business-as-usual over the next twelve months. Today I'm going to take a look at some of their findings and share my own insights and opinions....

Need To Be Convinced That Social Media Networking Is Serious Business?

February 5, 2013
Cheryl Burgess

Now that the New Year is underway, the question I keep hearing on everyone’s lips is, “What’s the best advice for small businesses to increase their social media networking?”  Fortunately, I have the privilege of being a part of a vibrant community of networking experts who were more than willing to share their wisdom and advice for...

SWOT It To Me!

Jean Hendricks

Being a marketer, I’ve often used a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) Analysis to help me create a marketing plan or to launch a new product or feature.  The SWOT Analysis was created by Albert Humphrey in the 1960s and it is still a useful business tool today.  Since we...

Are Old Habits Limiting Your Small Business Success?

February 4, 2013
Susan Solovic

During the past holiday break, I had the opportunity to read a number of great books. Some fiction (I love mystery novels), but most were business related, and one was all about habits. Everyone has habits. Some are good habits, such as taking your vitamins every morning, while others are not so good, like eating a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce every night before bedtime. At the start of a new year, many of us resolve to break...

5 Tips For Managing And Meeting Customer Expectations

January 25, 2013
Victor Rozumny

“An expectation is a premeditated resentment.” -Unknown I encourage you to meditate on the above sentence for a few minutes. How true has this statement been in your personal life?  How about in your business interactions, with peers, supervisors, and/or customers?...