SmallBusinessNewz

Business Blogs Only Work if You Use Them

The New York Times recently ran an interesting piece about how most blogs on the web are abandoned, or at least very rarely updated. The article cites a study performed by blog search engine Technorati, which found that something like 95% of blogs it tracks had not been updated in the past 120 days (from the time the research was collected). Is This a Problem That Plagues Your Business?

Where is Blogging on Your List of Social Priorities?

Everybody's going on and on about how businesses should be using social media. Obviously that includes me, as you know if you've read SmallBusinessNewz for any length of time. What are small business owners actually using social media for though? What do you use social media for? Tell us.

Is the Social Media Profile Replacing the Website?

Adam Ostrow at Mashable has an interesting post about social media making corporate sites irrelevant. The post talks specifically about a campaign that Vitamin Water is currently running, which directs consumers to its Facebook Page rather than its website.

Promotion Through Facebook

Social media has opened up many new doors for marketing. While it pays to be smart in how you actually do your social media marketing, there are a variety of ways you can build exposure, and these are different from network to network. Facebook is of course a hugely popular social network, so it stands to reason that it is one marketers will go after first. There are several ways you can use Facebook to market your business.

Blurring the Lines Between Ads and Content

The importance of how you spend your online advertising dollars has never been stressed as much as it should be now. The economy has made sure of that. It there was ever a time for you to get the most bang for your buck, that time is now. This is why it is a good idea to deliver ads that audiences actually care about. That means get them engaged.

Tracking Brand Perception to Aid Business Improvement

What do people think about your brand? It's a simple question, with perhaps not as simple an answer, but nevertheless it's an important question to ask yourself as a business owner or marketer.

What Are You Trying to Achieve with SEO?

SEO guru Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has posted a great article looking at the different reasons a business would use search engine optimization tactics, and when and how to use each one. He looks at the following SEO objectives:

eBay Trying to Lure Back Sellers?

I posted about this at WebProNews already, but I think the information is worth sharing here too. eBay is enforcing policy changes (again), in what seems like a cry to get abandoning users back selling with the auction site.

25 Articles from 2008 Worth Remembering

Being New Years and all, I thought it would be fun to go back over some of the articles I have written for SmallBusinessNewz over the past year, and revisit some of the better ones. You may have missed some of them, and if not you may want to revisit some of the things I have talked about, especially now that the economy has reached this point.Please don't take this as an ego thing on my part. These are just some articles I got generally positive responses to, and I wanted to present a round-up to close out 2008. Enjoy.

Customers Want Reviews, Free Shipping

There are some interesting findings from both Nielsen and Hitwise recently made available. Both look at online shopping during the holiday season, and provide some insight into some things businesses trying to sell their goods and services online may want to consider.