Blog Col 2

BLOG POSTS

Crafting is our speciality, we craft beautifull web site and templates, your business with us will benefit in most better way, so why wait buy now and gain great web site from our team.

Considering Becoming a Marketing Consultant?

By: admin10.10.2010 Comments: 0

When a small business is starting to get their feet wet, the people involved usually don’t have a strong marketing background. Most entrepreneurs that are starting a business are an expert in the niche that they have opened their business in, not an expert in marketing, promotion, advertising, or online marketing. That is why many of these entrepreneurs begin to consider whether or not there could be some value for them in hiring a marketing consultant, such as a consultant who is an expert in local business SEO.

The value of a marketing consultant does need to be based partly on a parties own experience in marketing. There are some entrepreneurs who have started more than one business. Such a person might have much more marketing experience than someone that is starting their own business for the first time. The less experience that you have, the more worth your money it is going to be to hire a marketing consultant.

A marketing consultant, even though they cost you money, can actually end up saving you a great deal of money in the long run. That might sound oxymoronic to some people, but it is very true. The reason a consultant can save you money is because they can keep you from making mistakes. If you try and do all of your marketing on your own, there is a very good chance that you’re going to spend some of your marketing budget in areas where the money should not have been spent. A good consultant will keep you from making exactly these types of mistakes.

A marketing consultant that is versed in local search engine optimization is someone that could be very useful to you. Local search is becoming one of the best ways to promote a local business, especially if it has a physical location and is not just an online entity. Let’s face it; far more people use the internet to find the businesses they need now, rather than using the older methods, like yellow pages or newspapers. So, it is critical that you try and drive interested parties to your location rather than to your competitors’ locations.

A marketing consultant should be able to tell you where you should be putting your time and money online. For instance, if there is heavy competition in your sector in the local search field, they might direct you towards a social marketing campaign. The social aspect of the internet has also become a very important tool that many people use to help them locate local businesses.

Another great thing about hiring a marketing consultant is that they are a resource that can help you learn. If you decide to hire a marketing consultant, there is nothing saying that you have to continue using their services for the life of your business, and indeed, most people will not. Instead, use them to get your business off on the right foot, and do your best to learn everything you can from them. Learn what marketing techniques are going to work best for your type of business, and familiarize yourself with the way they approach online marketing and local search. This can give you the tools to successfully market your business on your own, long after the marketing consultant has been let go.

Most new businesses fail within the first three years. It is during this startup time that you need the most help to get your business off the ground, which makes that the perfect time to hire a marketing consultant. They can give you the boost that you need to generate some momentum for your business, which should then hopefully be able to carry itself forward from then on.

Email Marketing in Local Business

By: admin10.10.2010 Comments: 0

Any local business is going to have to turn to the internet in order to find ways to thrive today. However, when you’re trying to promote your new local business opportunity online, it can be very easy to become completely overwhelmed by all the options you have when it comes to how to go about marketing your business. There are SEO, Social, Content, and Email options to consider, along with many more. Of all of the available means, they all work in one way or another and perhaps work best in combination. The one method that you absolutely can’t afford to ignore, though, is email marketing.

The reason that email marketing is so important is because it has consistently demonstrated the highest rate of return out of all the various areas of online marketing. With such a huge ROI possible through email marketing, you simply can’t afford to ignore it. The more time and money that you spend on email marketing, the quickly you can start generating some big returns for your local business.

Email marketing is all about generating a list. You need to capture as many email addresses as you possible can in order to create a mass emailing list that you can send messages to about your business. Now, when building this list, there are several important things to remember, but the most important is that you familiarize yourself with, and follow, all of the applicable CAN-SPAM regulations. You don’t ever want to be accused of spamming, or it could have a very negative effect on your business.

There are lots of ways that you can gather email addresses in order to build your list. The most common way is to put a sign up form for your list or newsletter on your website. However, you’re going to need a way to convince visitors to actually sign up. What most successful email marketers do is offer their customers something in return for signing up for the list. A good example is when a company offers a free report or eBook to those who sign up. Using an incentive is the surest way to grow your list quickly.

However you build your list, the larger it grows, the more powerful a marketing tool you have at your disposal. The important thing to remember is to not just send your list sales message after sales message. The best results typically come when someone structures their list like a newsletter. Share news and events with your subscribers, and offer them some genuinely useful content in all the emails that you send. This will make them much more likely to open the emails. If you just make every email a direct sales message, you will quickly find that people start to lose interest in opening your mails. If you make them interesting though, they will open them. This leaves you the perfect opportunity for a small mention of a product for sale, for example, something which you’re offering a special on for that week. That is how successful email marketing works.

When getting ready to embark on an email marketing campaign, you’re going to need to set yourself up with some sort of an auto responder program so that you have all the tools for managing your new list. The best programs, like Aweber and iContact, include all the tools you need for creating and managing a double opt in list. They provide people with a way to unsubscribe from your list, and help you make sure that you’re not sending out any emails which could be considered spam. You can also use them to generate an easy to use sign up form for your website.

uQast – A Powerful Rich Content Distribution Tool

By: Scott Gallagher9.10.2010 Comments: 5

Well, I gotta say, sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time. I’ll keep this short, as I’m sitting in a room with 200 people watching something as I type this, that I think, is likely the next BIG thing on the Internet.

No, not big like SEO. Big like the WWW. Bigger than local.

At the Stompernet event, on 10/9/10 at 4:27 pm Brad Fallon, Stompernet CEO, annouced for the first time publically uQast.

uQast is an amazing way to deliver real, user rated, user driven content with a powerful affilitate program.

There is currently a patent pending under the name of Brad Fallon and Andy Edmunds. This patent is for ReviewRank, their proprietary algorithm. Brad is an SEO legend. He knows algorithms. He understands and has beat the algorithm for Google. Heck, it’s his company that has taught me. I have 100’s of keywords #1 in Google. Try Googling [local marketing].

Here it is folks…the live link!

http://dev.uqast.com/learn_more.htm

I mean, this is awesome!

Anyhow, Brad revealed a few new tibits of information for the algorithm. It’s your typical stuff, marketing. This is user driven content, right? So, let’s see, what are the factors? Maybe….
-how much it’s shared
-opt-in numbers (email opt ins right on the publishers page on uQast!)
-Conversion to sales
-Reviews
-Likes
-Tweets
-Time?

The launch is in three phases.
1. The Internet Marketing Crowd (once they have 10,000 affiliates!
2. Content Providers (hey, we have all these affiliates to promote your stuff!)
3. The World!

This is going to change local musicians, authors, publishers, you get it!

Folks, this is a way to monetize sites like youtube. It’s brilliant! Well, youtube is for consumers generated useless media. This is about quality. Period. It gets better.

Google TV (GTV) is being launched next month. We know this is going to change how we watch media in our homes, forever. Now LMS students will have the freedom to watch their favorite LMS content on their big screen and listen to me through their surround sound system!

I just gotta say, the features of this are AMAZING. We hear it’ll be live in about a week.

Here is another link. http://dev.uqast.com/tennisplayer

Lead Generation with Social Media

By: admin22.9.2010 Comments: 0

Social media has become one of the most important aspects of the internet from a marketing perspective. Ensuring that you are familiar with how social media works, and launching an effective social media campaign is something that can really help a local business to succeed on the internet. When you’re looking for marketing tips for small business owners on the internet, one of the common themes that you will see again and again is that you need to start making social media work for you.

First, we need to look at the concept of lead generation. Essentially, when discussing an online marketplace, a lead could be defined as anyone who visits your website or, if you’re looking for a more narrow definition, a person who contacts your company regarding your products or services. Either way, social media can be a very effective tool for generating these types of leads.

Social media can be any type of media or content that you create online. Many people are unclear about the definitions of social media, but it is essentially any type of content which can be shared, commented on, linked to, and which becomes more popular based on how many people are interested in it. Written content and articles, videos, audio material, and graphical content can all be social media.

All of these types of media can help drive people to your website. In order to get people to view your media, which is the important first step, and then to follow the link from that media back to your website, there are things you need to focus on. You need to create great media which people have a reason to view, you need to make media that people want to share, and you need to give people a reason to bother clicking through to your site.

There are basically three types of social media which can help you to generate leads. These are entertaining, informative, or newsworthy. Controversial media typically falls into any of those three categories, but can also be viewed as its own type of media which can also effectively generate considerable attention.

When you create entertaining media, you need to make sure that you are not advertising. Instead, make a genuine effort to entertain people on the internet. The link or mention of your company in the media is all you need to generate traffic if the media is genuinely entertaining for people. This can be the best type of media to go viral, because if it is generally funny or entertaining, the people who see it are going to recommend it or share it with their friends. This is the key to lead generation through social media.

If you’re creating informative media, you set yourself and your company up to be an expert in your niche. This is a great move because then the people that visit your site will already trust in your business and your area of expertise. This makes visitors more likely to decide that your product or service is the one they are looking for. Provide real information that provides a real benefit to readers for the best results.

Newsworthy material in your industry is perhaps one of the best kinds of social media, because it will rise quickly through the ranks on sites like Digg. In addition, if you’re posting newsworthy information on your own blog or social networking profile, other people in the industry will be very likely to link to it or recommend it to others. This can drum up a lot of attention very quickly for your company, as well as improving your SEO profile due to increased back links to your site.

Google taking Pictures of Local Businesses

By: Scott Gallagher21.9.2010 Comments: 0

Announced earlier this year, Google is providing free photo shoots for local companies.

Unannounced by Google, this Google employee informed me today that Google is now being proactive in contacting businesses to set up a free photo shoot. This photo shoot will provide a complete business walk through. This was taken today right near Buffalo at the Olympia Family Restaurant.

See what this company is doing? Whether we have a bird’s eye view from space, or the intimacy of being inside, Google is digitally creating the planet. With this type of media, and a healthy dose of borrowed from the Milk industry, Google is preparing for an enormous shift in global commerce. In fact, they are leading this shift, consciously and willingly changing how consumers make up their mind about spending their money.

Uhm….hello America. Wake up! I’m sure it’s not a bad thing, but corporate programming is in place here. Just like the milk farmers in the 80’s, the demand must be created for a small business to invest in Internet Marketing. While there are dozens of options available to a small business, Google is attempting to educate the busienss population of certain IM options, but not all of them. While organic traffic provides about 4x the traffic as paid, you can’t pay Google for #1 listings…but you pay our students to get you there or hire a company like CCS Internet Marketing.

I don’t think this is another case of corporate control. I mean, I can make a great living running my own business, however I learned from a young age that if I focus on my customer first, the money follows. Chasing the money is always a chase with the customer. I genuinely believe that Google is really trying to make the world a better place. I believe they are trying to solve the problems of information. For Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, it was never about the money. It’s about the money for all of their shareholders. I guess that’s why these two still maintain control.

Is a Blog Useful in Local Business?

By: admin18.9.2010 Comments: 0

When you’re marketing your small business online, you have to decide what types of online marketing efforts are going to actually provide you with results. The goal is to start driving traffic to your website, into the doors of your physical business, and to ultimately start making sales. A blog can be one of the most useful tools in this regard, and is something that should be considered by anyone starting to promote their local business on the internet.

Blogs are useful because they provide a way for customers to connect with a business. Often, there is a disconnection between the customers of a company and the company themselves. When you run a blog, especially if you run it properly, it allows you to create a sense of community around a business. This makes customers feel like they are much more closely involved with your organization. This raises trust levels, and trust is a key component to making any kind of sale.

Blogs are also useful because they can be updated regularly, which helps to keep customers reminded about your business. One of the mistakes that are made by many businesses is to allow their customers to forget about them. If a customer online doesn’t think about your business when they need your products or services, there is a good chance they’ll turn to another company for those products or services if they are the first company that comes to mind. If your customers are constantly reading about the advances and work your company is doing, they are going to be much more likely to think of you when looking for your type of service.

A blog also gives you the ability to communicate directly with your customers, which is a very valuable thing when it comes to online marketing. The days of a website existing successfully in a vacuum seem to be very much behind us with an ever increasing emphasis being placed on the social aspects of the internet. If you have a blog, your customers and visitors can comment on your posts, and this is something that you should take advantage of.

When customers comment on your blog, it is important that you respond to them. You should look at a blog as a great opportunity to engage in a conversation with your customers. Not only does this allow you to further build the trust in your company, but it also helps to provide feedback on your business. You can receive important information about what your customers like, dislike, and hope to see in the future in your business by actively conversing with them through the comments on your blog posts.

A blog is also useful for your business simply because of the SEO benefits that it brings. In order to get your site to start ranking strongly in the search engines, you need to get people to link to your site. A static site with no real content is not something that many people have interest in linking to. A blog that is updated regularly with valuable content and information, however, is something that many people, including other bloggers, are eager to link to. The SEO benefits of links back to your blog are very large.

In order to get the most from your blog, you need to update it regularly. Focus on offering up interesting industry news, entertaining anecdotes, and insider looks into your company. If you do this, people are going to come back to your blog again and again, and they will link back to your site. All of that for only a small investment of time once or twice a week makes a blog important to have.