Tips Business Online

Here's a conversation I have all the time with small business people: do I need a website or not?

I make websites, so I will say that 99% of the time, my answer is: yes, you do need some sort of website. I don't think you need to spend $10, 000 on it (in fact, most of the sites my company makes are much less than this), but I do think you need something, and here are the reasons why:

-- Your business is online anyway. If you have a business with a listing in the Yellow Pages (remember them?!), your business is "Google-able, " meaning it's going to come up in one or more directories when people Google you. If you're wondering if people are Googling you, I will tell you that almost every person I ask does not use the Yellow Pages to find phone numbers anymore-they just search for the business' name and dial the number. You want the website for your business to be the first thing that comes up when people search for your business' name, even if it's just to get the phone number. Your website is going to be the best, most updated information. That can no longer be said for the Yellow Pages, I'm afraid. Since most online local business directories get their information second-hand from the Yellow Pages/ the phone company, a change could take a very long time to propagate throughout all of the directories. Even if you're a plumber, you need a way to get an accurate phone number out there, wouldn't you agree?

-- People are talking about you (good and bad). If you have no website and no social media, you are basically rolling the dice when it comes to your online reputation. If someone happens to search for your business and the first thing they find is an awful Yelp review, you're probably not going to get the chance to prove yourself to them. If they search for your business and your website and social media come up first, you can control the message there. Once these key pieces are in place, over time you can take steps to fill up the first page of Google with mostly search results you control (like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, photos from your business, etc). The first step to this is your website. Case in point: almost every time I am hired to do a "reputation management" job (meaning: someone said something bad about you or your business in a lawsuit, a bad review, or a customer service situation gone wrong), I almost always find that the person or business in question either has no website, or has no control over their website. This is always where I start with a reputation management cleanup job.

--A website will save you time and money in ways that you probably haven't even thought of yet..A few years ago, my company was hired by a New York City literary agency that had no website presence at all. They figured "why do we need a website? We get enough submissions as it is. " This reasoning is logical enough, but when I went in to meet with them, I discovered that they had an entire staff member allocated just to answering the phones, and that most of her job was simply clarifying the business' address (because they had different addresses listed resulting from a years-prior move). We quickly put up a website that solved this problem, and now that staff member is making much better use of her time in activities that actually grow the business.

--A website can get you business without you having to work for it. Again, I am not telling you to put $10, 000 into some fancy website with a bunch of bells and whistles you and your customers don't need. But, even if you're the guy who removes bats from people's attics (don't laugh-that guy is one of my clients), your website is going to show up in the search engines, which means that people you don't even know are going to call or email you for services.

So, how important is a website for a small business? I would say "very important. " At least as important as your phone number, in fact. Every year, more people use the internet to find services (from restaurants to dry cleaners to tax preparers and everything in between). You owe it to your small business to be part of that world!

Running your own internet-based business from the comfort of your home is a dream shared by millions of would-be entrepreneurs around the world. Making that dream a reality is achievable if you have a solid understanding of what you are getting yourself into. The following are some tips that can help you avoid some of the pitfalls that prevent many small business owners from reaching their goals.

Write Out Your Plan

Grab a notebook and a pen and physically write out the goals you are seeking to accomplish. This is not your 'business plan', it is simply your ideas for your business model on paper. You may find yourself altering or adding to them once you see them in black and white.

Know Your Market Audience

I believe in the idiom: 'sell what sells', but if you are middle-aged and you are selling PC gaming accessories to young adults, you need to stay on top of the latest industry news. Visiting online forums and reading relevant publications are a great way to keep yourself informed.

File Your Corporate Papers

Whether you file as a sole proprietorship, LLC, or other corporation, once you have a solid idea for your business model, it is time to make it official. First, file for an EIN (Employer Identification Number) with the IRS. This is free and only takes about five minutes on the IRS. gov website.

You then want to file your paperwork with the state your business resides in. Contrary to popular belief, none of this requires a lawyer. Your local state website will have all the necessary information regarding filings for your business including: paperwork, costs/fees, and business name availability. You will need to print out the paperwork and mail a check to your state capital. You should receive your official business papers within 3-6 weeks.

Resale Certificate

Once you have established your business and legalized it with your state, you can apply for a resale certificate. The resale certificate serves two purposes: 1) It shows wholesalers that you are a legitimate business and 2) protects your customers from having to pay sales tax while doing business on the internet. (Note: customers purchasing goods from you in the same state your business is located in are subject to that state's sales tax, if any).

Taxes

The dreaded tax question always rears its ugly head when it comes to the subject of a new company. Unfortunately taxes are unavoidable. Whether you use an accountant or file your taxes yourself, keeping excellent records of any transactions that involve your business is the best way to not only estimate what you may owe at the end of the year, but also avoid any penalties if you get audited. Print out all of your expenditures, sales records, and costs every month and file them separately. Make copies of your receipts, but save the originals as well. Tax laws are constantly changing, so keep up to date with any new regulations that may affect your business.

With the technology that is available today, there is no reason that you should fail in your network marketing business. Using the internet is crucial and Facebook is what you should put some time and effort into if you want success.
Social media has exploded in the past couple of years so why not use it to your advantage. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are on Facebook so if you use it correctly, you can build a strong and profitable business.

After you sign up for Facebook you have an option to create a fan page where you can use it to build your business. The advantage of a fan page is you can separate your business followers from your personal followers such as friends and family. As network marketers once you introduce your opportunity to your friends, it is good to separate them from your fan page so they don't feel annoyed and pressured. I'm sure we all have experienced that issue in this industry.

With Facebook you can post articles from your blog, you can create a post, promote your page, post a video, pay for leads on a pay per clip basis and many other options. Getting your info out there is very simple using Facebook once you learn how it works. There are training courses that you can take to learn the system but some of them are not that good and some are expensive as well. If you look around you can find one that works for you and start using Facebook to your advantage. Why not, most successful entrepreneurs use it, so why not you?

I checked out several of these training sessions available and spent more than I wanted to, but it taught me what I needed to know. Since then I have discovered one that is affordable to everyone and it is very good. If I waited until I found this system I would have saved a lot of money. A costly error on my part but that's how we learn. You can get this system right now and you can save money. Start building your business using social media where you can reach millions of people to build your business. You can spend a small amount of money well spent if you are serious about your business and would like to take it to another level using the internet.

If you've been looking at your keyword data in Google analytics, you will of course be aware of the frustrating 'not provided' section. Sadly it's becoming much more dominant in terms of percentage and we suspect the future outlook is bleak; with all keywords being hidden from SEO professionals. Google's decision not to display this data could be more detrimental than either the Penguin or Panda updates were. Many websites suffered terribly when these updates were rolled out, many of which have still not fully recovered.

How will this affect how you do your SEO in future?

Accepting that keyword data will be going for good is a start. Try to ascertain the best approach to this new playing field; delve deeper into page metrics and performance to see what the real driving force of your website revenue and conversion is.

Are keywords still important?

Absolutely! Keyword searches are what users type to find things, unless something really radical in search happens I don't see that changing. You will still optimize your pages for key phrases and monitor your page rankings, if you can see you rank well for a term you optimized on, then there's a good chance that's the keyword that's driving your traffic for that landing page.

What other methods and tools can be deployed to get around the 'not provided' issue?

Google Webmasters is a good place to start but has its limitations. You can't compare years, nor can you access data more than two months old. However there is additional information provided which isn't in your analytics, so it's well worth looking. There is also useful data on video, image and mobile search too. Google Core reporting API is another useful tool for getting the data into Excel to extrapolate your data.

What is the impact in terms of reporting?

Anyone who has used an SEO agency knows that keyword rankings dominate the reports so this will affect reporting immensely. Clients will need to be educated and convinced that it's due to the SEO team's efforts in writing, syndicating content and social media that is actually driving the traffic.

Conclusion

Content is king, as we all now know, and this change validates that strategy now more than ever. Writing great and compelling content will not only improve your rankings, it will force marketers to be more creative and produce better websites. I can see why Google has made this decision, but I will sorely miss having access to my keyword data.

We all know that Social Media is a powerful marketing tool, and when used in the right way it is very effective. If used in the wrong way, however, it can just waste your time.

The tips in this article are designed to help you use your time wisely and effectively when working with social media marketing.

1. It is important that you blog high quality content every day if possible. Statistically you will get up to five times as much traffic as if you blog only once a week or less. High quality content that is relevant to your site is essential to your success.

2. It is a really good move to incorporate customer service into your social networking. It is likewise important that your social media pages are organized well so as to allow your customers to navigate easily and find what they need quickly.

3. Another helpful tactic is the use of check-in deals. Offering rewards to users that respond quickly to your specials is also a great way to keep users coming back.

4. Customer appreciation goes a long way. When a customer posts frequently on your pages, recognize their value. Communicating directly with them is usually worth the time that you put into it. Every now and then give them a great deal or offer that will leave them happy and keep them coming back.

5. Whatever it is that you sell it is a good idea to dedicate a section that offers solutions and ideas, especially to people who are new to the product. This helps differentiate you from other sites that are out there just to sell. It gives your site more legitimacy and authority.

6. Do not fall into the temptation of bragging about yourself through your tweets. An authority on the subject states that tweets about personal accomplishments should be left to friends and family. On the business side of things such tweets are usually counter productive.

7. If you want your customers to "like" you, give them a reason to. For example offer them a bonus or a special price on their first order. Do something to make them happy to choose you over another site.

8. It is important to incorporate "share" icons and social following to your site and all of your communications.

9. Most are surprised to learn that it is better for you to follow few people. The search engines give more importance to those who have a lot of followers, but do not personally follow a lot of people. So be very selective with who you choose to follow.

10. Social skills are obviously at the heart of social media. For someone who is using a social network just for fun it comes natural to be social, however, for most of us that are in it to make money it can be a challenge to keep things social. A good way to keep yourself in check is to regularly read other sites and look for tactics in them that will help you. There are also a lot of good sites and books out there on social relations that might be worth looking into.

If you follow these tips you will surely boost your social media marketing skills. Taking the time to understand the inner workings of the social media system is well worth it. You will see a big improvement in your work!

Being a small business owner is not an easy job in today's demanding business environment. You got payroll to meet, customers to keep happy, bills to pay, etc. Not to mention trying to grow your business amidst all this chaos. The key to business owners being able to meet the demands that are being placed on them is to create systems in their business. Being able to implement systems in your business leads to automation and automation leads to freedom. One of the areas where systems and automation can have a real impact are in our sales and marketing functions.

The key to growing your business relies on capturing your leads and then to stay in front of your prospects until they are ready to buy. Most of your customers will not be ready to purchase your product or service the first time they contact you. The reality is it will take most potential customers on average 4-8 times hearing from you before they convert to a sale. One of the most powerful sales and marketing automation systems on the market is a product called Infusionsoft.

Infusionsoft allows a business owner to capture their leads from places like a website, Facebook, landing page, etc. Once you've captured the lead, you can then you can nurture the lead through a series of nurture sequences. Infusionsoft will help you close the sale by identifying whom your hot prospects are. One of the most powerful features in Infusionsoft is lead scoring. With lead scoring based on behavior, I can increase or decrease a prospects lead score. For example, let's say I sent out an article talking about some aspect of my product. Well, I want to know who is clicking on the article link. What I would do is once someone clicks on my article link, I would I assign a lead score of 3 points. Once someone actually clicks on the article link, their lead score goes up by 3 points. Conversely, let's say lead unsubscribes to my newsletter. What I would do in that case is subtract 25 points from their lead score. This tells me that this person is probably not too interested in my product or service. Again, Infusionsoft helps you identify who is hot and who is not.

I love the fact that I can put Infusionsoft on auto pilot. Having Infusionsoft automatically reach out to my leads and invite them to some kind of event, read an article, or just simply meet with me is very powerful. It saves me a lot of time. If you are a small business owner and have not yet discovered the power of sales and marketing automation software, I would invite you to learn about it today. Having systems in your business to help grow your business can be an absolute game changer to achieve huge success.

Developments in cloning have been amazing, but unless your customer base is made up of sheep, they haven't meant much to marketers. That said, there's a way you can "clone" your best customers, so you can do business with more of them.

Really getting to know your current customers is a critical step in finding new ones. The better you know the reasons your customers chose you and what they really think about you -- versus what you believe they really think about you -- the better you'll be able to target other people who are likely to do business with you.

The fancy marketing term for this is "customer modeling. " Once you create a model of your ideal customer, you can use what you've learned to make more effective decisions about your marketing.

Given that business owners get pretty upset about the money they invest into marketing, you'd think they'd have a good idea of what works and what doesn't -- or you'd think they would try to find out. But when I've asked most business owners what led their current customers to choose them, they weren't sure.

The dead giveaway is when they answer questions like that with "I think..." instead of "I know..." statements. "I think most people find us on the internet" or "I think most of our customers are referred by friends" or "I think they see our coupons. " It's almost never "I know that 63 percent of our business is a direct result of our cable TV advertising. " If you know exactly why customers choose you and how they find you, congratulations. You're already ahead of 98 percent of the businesses out there.

Want to know an amazingly powerful, amazingly effective way to learn how your customers found you and why they chose you? Ask them. It's really that simple. Oh, you could hire a marketing research firm and invest five figures in surveys and focus groups, and you'll get answers to those questions, but it's far quicker, easier, and economical to simply take a moment or two to ask a couple simple questions of every customer. Questions like "So how did you find us? " and "What brings you back? "

It takes less than five seconds. You can make the questions part of the regular cash register conversation, just as many businesses do when they ask their customers for zip codes. Not only will you gain some valuable insight, but you'll create an opportunity for your employees to engage customers by showing a genuine interest in and appreciation for their business.

If six out of ten customers mention that they came to you because they heard you on the radio, you may want to increase the percentage of your budget that goes into radio commercials. If most cited the sign out front, you'll want to give thought to putting more effort into your front windows and possibly beefing up the sign.

If customers tell you they keep coming back because of the friendly service they receive from your staff, let the staff know that, and then give them raises or other rewards. If they're the key to keeping your business, it makes sense to keep them happy. Sadly, too many businesses regard front-line employees as easily replaced robots. If your customer research confirms their importance, making sure they know how important they are to your success may be the best marketing investment you'll ever make.

The more you know about your customers and why they make the choices they do, the better you'll be able to position your business to serve them. Just as important, they'll regard your interest as genuine, and not as something intrusive. By asking questions and acting upon their answers, you'l