Thanks to the advent of idiot-proof video cameras that automatically upload your videos to the web, it’s never been easier to make your own videos for marketing, promotion, or education. Yet few entrepreneurs feel confident using videos online to market their small business.Typically, if they’re even willing to make a video, they’ll be far too critical of the results. So they won’t post the video online because they want to make it “perfect”.
Last week, Jay Baer wrote a post about how brands are responding on social media. Jay’s premise was that companies that can respond withing minutes on the social sphere are sending out a far more positive message than those that dilly-dally.
According to the Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey from Constant contact, small businesses are becoming more savvy with social media marketing and are using it more & more to interact with customers.
It’s no secret that companies allocate a great deal of time and effort to develop credible blogs that draw additional traffic to their sites. Unfortunately, small business owners oftentimes find themselves at a disadvantage. They might not have the experience or finances needed to establish a blog that will increase their company’s SEO — or so they think.
Almost every day a small business owner comes into my office to share his or her dream with me. Sometimes they’ve already got a business, whether it’s a storefront, a home office, or a retail space. Other times it’s just an idea that they want to bounce off me to see if it makes sense. Often the person comes in covertly during their lunchtime so their boss won’t know about their desire to escape the cubicle and create something new. This is the best part of my day.
Here are 5 great questions to help your business thrive in any economy:
What’s your plan for today? Many small business owners treat each new day, as if they had an endless supply of days, rather than a strict ration. By failing to invest the best they can into each new day, they have days, weeks, months years and decades, where they make a fraction of the progress they could.
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie. When you close a deal, what’s your next step? When you sign the contract, shake the hand and file the paperwork – what comes next? Is there a next? Or simply a next customer?
A while back, someone mentioned to me that most entrepreneurs switch Virtual Assistants (VAs) every 6 months or less. Frankly, I was shocked!While there have been a few VAs I’ve used for just a short period of time or one-off projects, I’ve been with my main team for 6 years. I’ve even worked with the same VA in India for more than three years.
As the local component of the online space continues to heat up, it is starting to get very crowded. There is Google, Facebook, Groupon, foursquare, Gowalla, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, IYP, YellowBook, Merchant Circle, InsiderPages etc, etc., etc.—the list goes on and on. As with anything in life, if there are a lot of options, you are either happy for the choices or confused and frustrated by too many options. In the online space, especially as it relates to SMBs (small and medium businesses), frustration and confusion are often the reactions to just how much can be done online.
Submit Your Article
Advertise
Newsletter
